William Tyler
Time Indefinite
Nashville native William Tyler, formerly of Lambchop and Silver Jews, first flew solo under his own name in 2010, winning acclaim for acoustic guitar instrumentals inspired as much by modern classical music as progressive folk artists like Robbie Basho. For all their melodic diversions and deft time-signature changes, his records evince a luminous, countrified calm - which is why the opening track on his first album in five years truly startles.
It begins with a monstrously degraded, though soft-edged mechanical grind, before warped synths, treated found sounds and recording hiss take over, finally morphing into an epic, slow-mo symphony of eerie loveliness. It’s an introduction to Tyler’s most personally expressive record yet, born from an existential crisis involving isolation, loneliness and addiction, which folds his dulcet guitar work into tape loops, drone and lo-fi electronic noise.
Not every track is like ‘Cabin Six’, though ‘A Dream, A Flood’ and ‘Hardest Land To Harvest’ are similarly experimental. By contrast, ‘Concern’ is a softly glowing guitar exposition underlaid with a sustained synth gush. ‘Howling At The Second Moon’ is a sweet beauty built from twangled strings, while closer “Held” combines guitar chimes with gently clopping beats and gaseous drone to conjure a hard-won new dawn for its author.
Label: Psychic Hotline
Eska
The Ordinary Life Of A Magic Woman
“Music running through my veins” is a fitting mantra for Eska Mtungwazi, as voiced in the opening track to her new album. Yet for all her achievements – from performing with the likes of Grace Jones and Nitin Sawhney to receiving a Mercury Prize nomination for her debut LP in 2015 – the London-raised singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer has had trouble establishing herself as a solo artist and reaching a wider audience. This should change with her long-awaited follow-up.
Its 13 songs, which combine or swoop between soul, electronic rock, art pop, psychedelia, funk and even alt-folk, underline Eska’s standing as a consummate artist. They offer a suitably broad-spectrum showcase for her extraordinary voice, which is by turns throaty, energised roar, soulful ache and pure, sweet cloud piercer.
There are echoes of Brittany Howard (on the groovy ‘Human’), Prince circa Around The World In A Day (throughout, but notably on ‘Daddy Long Legs’) and Kate Bush (‘The Edge’) but Eska casts her own shadow. The set zings with the power of self-determination and having made it this far in an industry where even the parameters of difference are clearly marked. Her second chapter opens here.
Label: Earthling Records
Floral Image
Gone Down Meadowland
It’s in no way disparaging of Norfolk to remark on its low alternative-music profile. Aside from Let’s Eat Grandma and Brown Horse, both fine acts, the county seems to generate little noise. Now, Norwich quintet Floral Image have upped the volume considerably with their self-produced debut.
Gone Down Meadowland is more kaleidoscopic reverie than raucous affair. It includes 10 syntheses of 60s pastoral psych pop, kosmische, 70s space rock and groovy, jazz-tinged fusion, over which hover the spirits of Syd Barrett, The Beatles, Hawkwind and Neu!
The cheerfully chooglin’ ‘Burning 305’ and whacked-out, heads-down epic ‘Howling Dog Song’ would likely win nods of approval from Australia’s wild men of experi-rock, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. Perhaps inevitably, though, Gone Down Meadowland is more measured than Floral Image’s live shows, where they let rip on the keys-heavy, frantic swirling of ‘Sun For Hire’, among other songs. What they have in mind here is simply music “you could either dance to or be absorbed by” – a target they have unarguably hit.
Label: Fuzz Club
Maria Usbeck
Naturaleza
An Ecuadorian singer/songwriter based in Brooklyn, Maria Usbeck makes smart and off-kilter yet wholly accessible modern pop music. The former frontwoman of Selebrities made a bold move with her debut solo album, singing entirely in Spanish. Her follow-up, 2019’s Envejeciendo, explored the philosophically complex subject of ageing. Now, with album number three, she contemplates our relationship with nature as we near the ecological point of no return.
Despite the heavy subject matter, the album’s songs are neither gloomy nor didactic. Song titles like ‘Pink Lake’, ‘Mantarraya’ (giant manta ray) and ‘Garza Azul’ (blue heron) might signal Usbeck’s personal drive for greater connectivity but it’s conveyed in light-handed, even playful music that adds Latin-jazz and indie-folk inflections to a synth-pop base, with lyrics that switch between English and Spanish.
The ghosts of Prefab Sprout and The Blue Nile flit by in ‘Mar’ and ‘Hallucinations’, while on ‘Iguana’, reverbed shoegaze is interrupted by a passage of artfully treated piano. ‘Mantarraya’ is a standout, its daydreamy sweep punched up with crosscurrents of percussion.
Label: Cascine
