Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
5.
Nala Sinephro: Endlessness
Across Endlessness, Nala Sinephro’s second album, her preparations construct and dissipate to disclose the file’s anchoring arpeggio, which itself morphs all the time, handed off like a baton between synth, piano, and harp. This is a log of liminal moments, blurring the house between orchestral ensemble and bed room ambient undertaking. Sinephro doesn’t restrict herself to being a harpist, synth participant, and bandleader—she turns into a collage artist.
Throughout its fixed transformations, Endlessness is all the time compositional. Its base unit isn’t the droning chord, however as a substitute the articulated phrase—nonetheless serene, this can be a music of statements, not mere soundscapes. Her fractal melodies channel trendy modular noodlers as a lot as basic jazz solos. Still, Sinephro carves out a habitat for every of her gamers, lots of whom are based mostly within the South London improvisational scene, which units the LP’s ceaseless concepts to a human tempo. Both dreamy and deliberate, expansive and centered, this assortment’s ten tracks unfold as if to level towards the very that means of the phrase endlessness: We see the impossibility of this idea, however Sinephro makes us really feel as if it’s in attain. –Daniel Felsenthal
Listen/Buy: Rough Trade | Amazon | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify | Tidal
4.
MJ Lenderman: Manning Fireworks
Manning Fireworks proceeds like a best hits assortment. Every line is a brief story. Its jokes are profound, its knowledge ridiculous, its irreverence wide-eyed and irresistible. It is a file so immediately elemental, you’re feeling compelled to sing each guitar riff, to tear each melody, to cite lyrics like “goin’ on trip brings the worst out of everybody” as mantras. On his fourth solo album, MJ Lenderman, the tragicomic Southern rocker of the second, channels heroes like David Berman and the Band however fills his pithy songs with time-stamping specifics (Guitar Hero, an all-seeing smartwatch, the “houseboat docked on the Himbo Dome” that deserves a dedication plaque in 2024’s collective imaginary) that make his persona self-effacing and trendy. The misplaced protagonists of Lenderman’s windows-down country-fried bangers typically sound like vexed middle-aged divorcées who might or might not ever get their shit collectively and but stir empathy; “manning fireworks” finally looks like an allegory for boyish surprise that simply would possibly gradual the unstoppable crawl from child to jerk. That playful awe is aglow within the attractive dissonance of a fiddle, the lonesome grace of a clarinet, a Sonic Youth-worshiping noise-drone tour on a tune that claims “Don’t transfer to New York City,” no much less! Beguiling, humorous, exuberant and true—typically the alchemy is good for a contemporary basic. –Jenn Pelly
