Our look at the best new collections out this month, also featuring Willi Carlisle and Nastazia Bazil.
Speedial by Samuel George Franklin | Words: Lloyd Bolton, Sam Schilpalius
Our monthly roundup of the best new albums and EPs returns. We were blown away by 'Light of the Late Night', the debut collection from Speedial. They line up alongside debuts from Hank, Keo and Nastazia Bazil, as well as the welcome return of Willi Carlisle with his new album 'Winged Victory'.
Speedial – 'Light of the Late Night'
A new favourite of London's live scene, Speedial's music combines the bedroom orchestra instrumentation of the likes of BCNR, caroline and peers Rabbitfoot, but takes a uniquely abstract approach. Songs are built around subtle builds and enduring hooks, inflected by post-rock and noise influences, anchored by drums from Joe Killick, who also plays with wing! 'Sharing Oxygen' is a particularly delicate cut, taking the band's sound to the sort of awesome minimalistic space of a Sigur Rós song. All four tracks, possess an addictively immersive quality, full of vivid swells, yearning saxophone and nifty licks. (Lloyd Bolton)
Keo – 'Siren'
Keo have finally arrived with their debut EP 'Siren'. The release comes after years of growing their live sound through an array of support and small headline shows, building a demanding and loyal following. Vulnerable opener 'I Lied, Amber' perfectly sets the tone of the EP. The track almost feels like an internal argument, an array of wild thoughts that have been carefully hand-picked and strung together. The way vocalist Finn Keogh manages to make his emotion felt is compelling and is a staple of every Keo release we have heard so far from the band. It's not always you see a debut release flow this effortlessly and feel this refined, which is all the more impressive given how young the group is. Whilst this is only a first proper taste, 'Siren' makes clear that the band have well and truly found their sound. (Sam Schilpalius)
Hank – 'Spiralic'
The debut EP from Hank distils the quartet's ability for combining hooky melodies with disquieting details over a fuzz of mutated post-rock. 'Stand On Yr Star' exchanges alienated vocals over tight drums, which manage to keep a hold over the song even as it explodes into its chorus. 'Temp Fix' is another highlight, showing the best of the band's ability to reconcile weird elements with melodies as a recording of an overheard conversation is interspersed, fading in and out of intelligibility like a fractured memory. This EP is a triumph of restrained experimentalism. Nothing is overdone for the sake of it, the vulnerability of its tender moments remaining intact while sonic embellishments feed back into the weirdness of their disquieted emotion. (Lloyd Bolton)
Nastazia Bazil – 'from Beirut to anywhere'
The debut album from Nastazia Bazil crystallises her infectious and defiantly DIY approach to songwriting, emitting at once the inherent joy of living and the pain of the deprivation of such joy for the oppressed. 'Take me to the beach oh yeah!' is a live favourite, ridiculous in its gleeful simplicity as a gloomy verse gives way to the titular chorus, at which it is impossible not to smile. The basic keyboard style of this song is repeated across the album in a truly punk fashion, insisting on the infinite superiority of creation over empty virtuosity. Another highlight, 'Not everyone is born equal', revolves around a beautiful keyboard riff, over which Bazil ruminates on the misery of lives warped by wars survived or ongoing, a depressingly relevant consideration for the Lebanon-born Bazil. Between the lows and the hard-fought highs of this record, Bazil shows the immense power of expression that can be concentrated in a voice, a keyboard, a drum machine, and not much else on this inspiring debut. (Lloyd Bolton)
Willi Carlisle – 'Winged Victory'
Willi Carlisle is back with his latest album, 'Winged Victory'. Following 'Peculiar, Missouri' and 'Critterland', which feel relatively modern and sonically sprawling, this record by comparison drills into the traditionalism at the core of Carlisle's work. There are several adaptations of existing folk songs, from the uncredited 'We Have Fed You All for 1000 Years' to Richard Thompson's 'Beeswing', as well as a version of Lavender Country's 'Cryin' These Cocksuckin' Tears' with original verses added in. Between these covers and originals, Carlisle reaches through a heritage of (predominantly American) folk music to anchor his music's politics of sexual liberation and political egalitarianism in the tradition of his predecessors. In this sense, perhaps the greatest triumph of the record is 'Big Butt Billy', a talking blues with a Blaze Foley tone, which redirects the familiar trope of truckstop lust upon a non-binary server before spiralling into blank verse to interrupt the song with ruminations on the meaning of life and the wonder of the universe. In this relatively stripped-down setting, Carlisle's clear-eyed, oracular declamations recall the spirit of Bascom Lamar Lunsford, whose recordings capture his work as a folk singer but also as a politician and preacher in the 1920s and 1930s. Let us hope Carlisle's CV grows similarly various, we could use that right now. Willi for President! (Lloyd Bolton)
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