Northernheads New Releases vol. 1 (2021)

Before you slag Taylor Swift the real star on this alternate version of HAIM's "Gasoline" is the drum beat that middle sister Danielle lays down binding the song together. It was Swift's agency that took HAIM to another level, but they are by no means a 'girl group'. For our money HAIM is pound for pound the best new pop group of the past decade bar none. Women In Music Part III, which landed near the top of many year end lists, only cemented that stature. Swift lends her star making machinery taking lead vocals on "Gasoline" (although the original is still largely better). On "3 A.M.", a song almost ruined by a skit of a late night booty call voicemail (inspired by Andre 3000's The Love Below), oldest sister Este Haim is joined by Thundercat also on the bass (thankfully minus the skit) highlighting the silkiness of the groove.

El Michels Affair is the name that American producer and multi-instrumentalist Leon Michels releases his music under. Michels, whose releases are often defined by a crisp boom bap live drum sound, is best known for his work with various members of the Wu-Tang Clan. After performing live with Raekwon at a concert, the group began working with other members of the group releasing instrumental versions of their classics and solo work on 2009's Enter the 37th Chamber then 2016's Return to the 37th Chamber. Michels is also a frequent collaborator with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys and has recorded for artists such as Lana Del Rey, Dr. John and Action Bronson. On "Ala Vida" from the forthcoming album Yeti Season (coming out March 26 via Michel’s label Big Crown) you hear all the hallmarks of the El Michels Affair sound.

Michels is a founding member of The Menahan Street Band which features musicians from Antibalas, El Michels Affair, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings and the Budos Band. The group was founded by Thomas Brenneck while living in an apartment on Menahan St. in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick. Their debut album, Make the Road by Walking, was released in 2008. Various songs from Make the Road by Walking have been sampled by hip hop artists including Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Kid Cudi and 50 Cent. Menahan Street Band's new single "Devil's Respite" is textbook sample ready material produced by Brenneck in the collective’s own Diamond Mine Studios in Long Island City, NY. The instrumental appears on the just released album The Exciting Sounds of Menahan Street Band (out February 26 on Daptone Records).

Montreal electronic phenom KAYTRANADA new release "Caution" debuted on the Chinese intelligence gathering platform TikTok as part of their Black History Month celebration. KAYTRANADA's release was for users (presumably highly sexualized children) to blend into their videos only later being uploaded more broadly to streaming platforms. TikTok also commissioned a cover of the 1971 gospel standard “Like A Ship” by Leon Bridges which premiered alongside the KAYTRANADA track.

There have been so many post humous releases attributed to J Dilla born James Yancey that there's good reason to be skeptical. "Anthem" (featuring Frank 'n Dank) isn't a particularly well known Jay Dee track from the 2013 double single Anthem/Tracks with instrumentals, a capella and Dilla's original mix ready for the club. Ric Mayes "Anthem" remix is that strangest of things, adding virtually nothing to the original- if anything taking away far too much. For some reason he's buried Frank 'n Dank's vocals in the mix making them sound murky (unless that was intentional). Similarly he's backgrounded the best non-quantized MPC drum rhythms of Dilla's on the original as well as a sort of snake charmer sounding flute sample. The choices are so odd it's worth listening to the original alongside it for comparison because it's unclear how he managed to so royally fuck up the original track.

Last week Freddie Gibbs, the rapper from the Jackson 5's hometown of Gary, Indiana, released a cover of Gil-Scot Heron and Brian Jackson's (no relation) 1974 track "Winter in America". Gibbs version of the song, which was produced by Leon Michels co-owner of Diamond Mine studios (El Michels Affair and The Menahan Street Band), appears on his newly released EP Black History Always/ Music for the Movement Vol. 2, which also includes contributions from Tobe Nwigwe (“Wake Up Everybody”), Tinashe (“I’m Every Woman”) , Brent Faiyaz (“Eden”), and Infinity Song (“Undefeated”). But Gibbs surprised fans when also this past week he released a deluxe version of his landmark 2014 collaboration with Madlib titled Piñata. The extended version runs nearly four hours long and is divided into five different parts. The first section is made up of Piñata’s original 17 tracks, which included appearances by Danny Brown, Raekwon, Earl Sweatshirt, Mac Miller, BJ the Chicago Kid, and others. Part two features loose tracks and their instrumentals, such as Gibbs’ “Cocaine Parties”—a take on Kanye West’s 2016 track “No More Parties in LA.” The third section is instrumentals of Piñata songs, the fourth and fifth sections are Alex Goose remixes and their instrumentals, respectively.

DRAM (which stands for Does Real Ass Music), born Shelley Marshaun Massenburg-Smith, made a splash with his debut album Big Baby DRAM including the massive single "Broccoli" featuring Lil Yachty. After the follow-up the 2018 EP That's a Girls Name the artist went awol. Shelley announced his return via Twitter recently saying after the flurry of attention he "took some time to focus on my health, voice, and growth—focus on me.” Now the artist returns with his new single "Exposure" under a new moniker the easy-to-remember FKA Shelley DRAM. By whatever name "Exposure" is textbook DRAM who has a really singular super positive R&B voice that leans away from the ebulient humour that's characterized his earlier releases.

"Unpleasant Breakfast" and "Heavy Covenant" (the lead single) play back to back at the midpoint on the group's new release Open Door Policy (produced by Josh Kaufman who worked with singer/lyricist Craig Finn on his solo album We All Want The Same Things and is a member of Bonnie Light Horsemen who had one of the best albums of last year).  Open Door Policy is textbook Hold Steady with lyrics in "Unpleasant Breakfast" about "twisted sheets on the trundle bed/ and the anti-psychosis meds/ made you feel all marooned" suitable to any of their albums. That particular track though has a bit of a funked up groove that almost eludes to electronic music that's not totally indicative of the band's sound over all (although that's certainly one influence, think "Most People Are DJs"). "Heavy Covenant" is more your straight ahead Hold Steady anthem in the vein of 2006's Boys and Girls In America (which if you want to feel old was 15 years ago). "Heavy Covenant" opens with the the lines "with the wine glass on the microwave/ and the ashtray in the kitchenette", reminding the listener, the clever kids in the Hold Steady audience, of Finn's hero poet William Carlos William's central dictum "no ideas but in things". The things, the wine glass, the ashtray are inextricable from the themes represented in the song themselves, much of which is pretty standard Hold Steady fare. The protagonist is Finn's idea of a modern day Willie Loman from Death of a Salesman, only his character stays over an extra night to score some party stuff: “I sell software made for offices/ It increases their efficiency/ Hospitals and local governments/ It’s a pretty heavy covenant.”

"Hall of Death" is the second track released from Bonnie Prince Billy and Matt Sweeney's forthcoming album Superwolves (a follow up to 2005's Superwolf).  Sweeney is likely best known as a member of Chavez and the supergroup Zwan, composed of Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, lead singer/guitarist and drummer of The Smashing Pumpkins, bassist Paz Lenchantin, of A Perfect Circle, and guitarist David Pajo of Papa M and Slint. As a session musician and engineer Sweeney is known for his work with Johnny Cash, "Cowboy" Jack Clement, Iggy Pop, Adele and Run The Jewels. In recent years his work on Sturgill Simpson's breakout album A Sailor’s Guide To Earth is of particular and historic note. Sweeney and Oldham's collaboration extends back to 2005 when they released the 5 song EP I Gave You under the moniker Bonny Sweeney. Then again in 2011 they put out another couple singles "Must Be Blind" backed by "Life in Muscle".  In 2020 the duo again collaborated on two singles "Make Worry For Me" and "You'll Get Eaten, Too". "Hall of Death" was co-written with Ahmadou Madassane and features another Tuareg guitar phenom Mdou Moctar, electric bassist Mike Coltun, and drummer Souleyman Ibrahim. The real standouts on the track, which ends up sounding like a psychedelic sub Saharan sea shanty when Oldham is through with it, aren't however Oldham and Sweeney it's the prolific guitar work of Madassane and Madou Moctar which bring the track to life.

"I Want To Go To The Beach", from Iggy Pop's 2009 experiment Préliminaires, is just one of a slew of recent covers that Bill Callahan and Will Oldham have been putting out together. The track features Cooper Craine (a member of Chicago bands like Bitchin’ Bajas and CAVE). The cover follows Hank Williams Jr's 1979 song "O.D.’d in Denver", Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ 1967 song “Blackness of the Night" and their deceased friend David Berman (Silver Jews) song "The Wild Kindness" (from 1998's American Water) sung in harmony with his wife and former bandmate Cassie Berman.

Craig Finn's "Eventually I Made It To Sioux City" off of 2021's All These Perfect Crosses, which first received a limited release through Record Store Day, is a collection of outtakes, demos, and acoustic reworkings from his three previous solo records. As with 2019's I Need A New War the lyricist expands his cast of characters, to include for instance Ulysses S. Grant on "Grant At Galena", rather than dig into the horde of characters who populate his song cycles in the Hold Steady. “I guess I felt...that visiting them for a song at a time might be more interesting than putting them through a number of phases,” said Finn after the release of 2019’s I Need a New War. On Finn's solo output there's less if any of the stabbing syllabic, sing along hooks that HS fans adore. Still, absent the guitar twang the lyrics to "Eventually I Made It To Sioux City" with a different instrumental backing could easily be a Hold Steady song: "He said that I should call you at this number/ He said that he'd make sure you knew my name/ He said let him know you're new in town/ And you could really use a friend right now/ Tell him that you want to come and hang".

Ignorance, the new release by The Weather Station (Tamara Lindeman), represents a stark departure sonically for the artist who has become associated with the stand and deliver solo acoustic folk vernacular. Consciously struggling with environmental guilt, including from her own resource intensive occupation, Lindeman broke with the past and hired a group of musicians from Toronto's jazz scene crafting slick sonics that scarcely resemble her prior work. As a lyricist Lindeman is a fascinating creator whose lyrics on the page more closely resemble prose or short stories, causing her songs to rarely follow the ABBA or AABA song structure. It's hard not to draw a parallel between the almost quasi-naive sentiment in Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Cab, ironically an artist whose penumbra has often engulfed Lindeman's own light. "Parking Lot" seems particularly apt today as residents in Toronto's East York recently went viral with their pleas to save a parking lot "the hub and heart of their community" from being turned into housing for the homeless. Of the song Lindeman has said:

"'Parking Lot' is my strange gentle disco song about a humble encounter with a bird and being tired and being in love, and being heartbroken in ways I didn't quite yet understand. I don't fully know how everything connects in this song other than it obviously does. I wanted to make the recording very passionate and beautiful while also being very muscular while also being very gentle, and so I did."

The Who's "Pictures of Lily", like nearly all of their material, was written by guitarist and primary songwriter Pete Townshend for inclusion on the 1971 album Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy, a compilation of previously released singles. In a May, 1967 interview with NME, Townshend actually coined the term "power pop" to describe the song.  The song is ostensibly about the singer's lamentating about his inability to sleep. In order to sooth him his father gives him a picture of the song's titular hero Lily, who may be an old Vaudeville star Lily Bayliss, or Lillie Langrie an old music hall star and mistress of Edward VI. After feeling better and drifting off to sleep the son wants to meet the person in the photo, asking his father for an introduction. His father informs him, sadly, that "Lily" has, in fact, been dead since 1929. Initially, the singer laments, but before long turns back to his fantasy. Townshend has been quoted as having written the song as "merely a ditty about masturbation and the importance of it to a young man." The song was first played live in 1966, and they continued to play it on tour until 1968. It returned to make a one-off appearance at a show in Passaic, New Jersey on 11 September 1979, where singer Daltrey forgot the lyrics and they went straight to Free's "All Right Now". During the period that the song was recorded, in 1967, Kit Lambert, the band's first "real" manager, according to Townshend, mixed the song. He filmed the band recording the song, showing the four bandmates performing, with Keith Moon being recruited for the high notes in the song (even though Pete Townshend can be heard telling Keith he "keeps jumping on John's part", however, other live video footage shows John Entwistle, the band's bassist harmonizing and playing the French Horn). Daltrey has said the French horn solo was an attempt to emulate a World War I klaxon warning siren, as the Lily girl was a World War I-era pinup. This version of "Pictures of Lily" (Pete Townshend Demo) is from The Who's forthcoming new Super Deluxe Edition of The Who Sell Out which features 112 tracks, 46 of which are unreleased. The Who Sell Out was originally planned by Townshend, Lambert and Chris Stamp as a loose concept album including jingles and commercials linking the songs stylised as a pirate radio broadcast. The concept was born out of necessity as their label and management wanted a new album and Townshend felt that he didn’t have enough songs. The original plan was actually to sell advertising space on the album but instead the band opted for writing their own jingles paying tribute to pirate radio stations and to parody an increasingly consumerist society. The sleeve features four advertising images, taken by the renowned photographer David Montgomery, of each band member Odorono deodorant (Pete Townshend), Medac spot cream (Keith Moon), Charles Atlas (John Entwistle) and Roger Daltrey & Heinz baked beans. The story goes that Roger Daltrey caught pneumonia from sitting in the cold beans for too long.

Is Fats Domino's November, 18, 1956 performance of "Blueberry Hill" on the Ed Sullivan Show the greatest 1:38 seconds of televised music ever? Yes. Recently released as a single the historical moment now exists as an audio document as well. 

It's a reasonable question to ask how much a listener modestly interested in The Band will get out of the 50th anniversary reissue of their third album Stage Fright. Rather than simply remixing or remastering the album, Robbie Robertson has made a somewhat gutsy decision to completely revisit the album by changing the order which the tracks appear in.  The album, which emulates The Band's live show, came at a difficult juncture for the group as members Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel became mired in alcoholism and heroin addiction. Robertson took some slack for the merited decision to include some still photos of Levon on the nod from smack sleeping it off during the Stage Fright sessions which was recorded by Todd Rundgren (an odd choice) on a small vintage play house stage in Woodstock, New York. Apparently the track order was upended by a decision to put Levon's songwriting contribution "Strawberry Wine" and Manuel's "Sleeping" as the first two tracks in order to encourage them as song writers. The Band was out on their historic Festival Express tour, crossing Canada by train with everyone from the Grateful Dead, Buddy Guy and Janis Joplin, while the album was being mixed- something they'd been intimately involved with previously. On the re-release of the album Robertson, apparently going with the running list they originally intended, kicks off with the one two punch of "W.S. Walcott Medicine Show" and "The Shape I'm In" then side B ends with "Sleeping" seeming like a premonition of Manuel's death by suicide in 1986. Most of side B has ended up on side A and vice versa to good effect.  You'd have to be a real audiophile to notice the difference between Bob Clearmountain's remixes and Rundgren's own, but the alternate mixes of "Sleeping" and "Strawberry Wine" (which crackles like a front porch ditty with a suitably hoarse throated Levon giving the song a totally different sentiment) are noteworthy. The best part of the collection is the complete concert from Royal Albert Hall, London England in 1971, the sort of high quality bootleg that would have previously only been available to bootleggers and live concert trading devotees, from which this version of the seminal "King Harvest" was pulled. Probably the best songs or those from Calgary Hotel Recordings 1970 including two versions of a new song "Get Up Jake" which Robbie is taking the band members through. "Get Up Jake", a song which hasn't been butchered by constant radio airplay, would get a live airing on the famous New Years residence at the Academy of Music in 1971. The version of "Get Up Jake" which appears on Rock of Ages is from the December 30th show. Here in this hotel recording you hear that rarest of things: Robbie Robertson's voice. In actuality there are very few songs by The Band where Robbie sings lead vocals, or vocals at all, "To Kingdom Come" is one, and not even on the final version of this song. 

Bonnie Prince Billy and Matt Sweeney collaborate on Superwolves

As exciting as it is that Bonnie 'Prince' Billy (the musical pseudonym of Will Oldham) and Matt Sweeney have completed a follow-up to their 2005 collaboration Superwolf entitled Superwolves (out April 30 digitally and June 18 physically via Drag City), arguably the real stars of the lead track "Hall of Death" are the Tuareg musicians who play on it. "Hall of Death" was co-written with Ahmadou Madassane and features guitar phenom Mdou Moctar, electric bassist Mike Coltun, and drummer Souleyman Ibrahim. The track's release follows the November preview of the album's lead track "Make Worry For Me" which features Pete Townsend (not Pete Townshend) on drums and Mike Rojas on keys.

"Hall of Death", which ends up sounding like some sort of psychedelic sub Saharan sea shanty once Will Oldham's laid down his vocals, is really distinguished by the improvised lead guitar work of Mdou Moctar which gives the song much of its relevance and structure. Sweeney, a celebrated guitarist, composer, sound engineer and producer known for his work with Johnny Cash, "Cowboy" Jack Clement, Iggy Pop, Adele and Run The Jewels, knows how to choose and get the best out of the musicians he works with. In recent years his work on Sturgill Simpson's breakout album A Sailor’s Guide To Earth (and The Butcher Shoppe Sessions) is of particular and historic note. 

Outside of this host of production credits Sweeney is likely best known as a member of Chavez and the supergroup Zwan, composed of Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin, lead singer/guitarist and drummer of The Smashing Pumpkins, bassist Paz Lenchantin, of A Perfect Circle, and guitarist David Pajo of Papa M and Slint. Sweeney and Oldham's collaboration extends back to 2005 when they released the 5 song EP I Gave You under the moniker Bonny Sweeney. Then again in 2011 they put out another couple singles "Must Be Blind" backed by "Life in Muscle".  In 2020 the duo again collaborated on two singles "Make Worry For Me" and "You'll Get Eaten, Too". 

Ahmoudou Madassane, oddly, or fittingly, is a bit like a Saharan version of Sweeney himself. The musician, writer and actor recently composed the instrumental score to a film Zerzura, described as "the first ever Saharan acid Western, telling the story of a nomad’s search for a magic city of gold,".  It sounds like exactly the sort of thing that Oldham, Sweeney or their known collaborators like Bill Callahan might cook up themselves. Musically Madassane is known for crossing boundaries and pushing the limits of the Saharan Tuareg guitar tradition, evoking the desert journey on his free form, often psychedelic improvisations.

Ahmadou Madassane is a prolific backing musician in a number of groups including for Mdou Moctar, Les Filles de Illighadad, and here for Superwolves contributing rhythm electric guitar. The surging lead guitar which largely defines "Hall of Death" sonically is played by Mdou Moctar (also M.dou Mouktar), the stage name of Mahamadou Soulemeymane another Tuareg songwriter, known for playing on a left handed stratocastor, one of the first musicians to perform modern electronic adaptations of traditional Tuareg folk guitar music. His unconventional interpretations of Tuareg guitar quickly pushed him to the forefront of a crowded scene. 

Mdou Moctar is a singular and fiercely creative figure in his own right, having first come to prominence through African cellphone mp3 trading. He later reached a broad global audience with the release of his music on the compilation Music from Saharan Cellphones: Volume 1 compilation. Mdou Moctar has the starring role in the 2015 film Akounak Tedalat Taha Tazoughai, which literally translates as "Rain the Color of Blue with a Little Red In It". It tells the story of a musician from Agadez, who struggles with competing artists, a difficult home life, romantic problems and his own internal strife. Transforming the Tuareg nomadic narrative the protagonist rides around the desert on a purple motorcycle.  The film is an homage to Prince's Purple Rain and Jimmy Cliff's The Harder They Come; and is influenced by Moi, un noir, Jean Rouch, Italian neorealism and poverty row films. 

Sweeney and Oldham's decision to work with the Tuareg virtuosos was well considered with Sweeney noting: “I love the challenge to write melodies for Will to sing. Struggle with that challenge too. Knowing that Will’s voice will elevate the melody makes me reach higher and dig deeper for the tune. Makes me want to match it with a guitar part that holds his voice like a chalice holds wine (or blood, or whatever is needed to live the best life). I also love singing harmonies and responses to this voice of his.​”

In a statement Oldham said "the chemistry comes from lives, lived separately, in which music is crucial sustenance".  The one-time devotee of R. Kelly continued saying “we listen with gratitude and awe, knowing that we belong in there. We construct our dream selves with the faith that these selves will have their chance at life. We know what we are capable of doing and just need each other’s support to bring the imagined languages to life." The pair started recording the album five years ago but their first studio session only took place a year ago at Strange Weather studio in Brooklyn (the mixing of which Sweeney supervised), then a second session at the Butcher Shoppe in Nashville (which Oldham oversaw the mixing for).

In one of those signs of the times Sweeney had a lucrative if not entirely creatively profitable collaboration with Nashville's David Ferguson on a five track collaboration for the video game Red Dead Redemption 2: The Housebuilding EP (released February 12). The title track of the EP, "The Housebuilding Song", had been a fan favourite of gamers since it's inclusion in the game in 2018.

This is just one of a handful of new releases for the ever fecund Bonnie Prince Billy who had a busy 2020 with another album length collaboration with Three Queens in Mourning entitled Hello Joy, as well as his own full length I Made A Place. Sweeney is also featured on Oldham and Bill Callahan’s cover of Hank William, Jr.’s 1979 track ‘O.D.’d in Denver’.

In a statement, Sweeney said, “One of the many beautiful things about the original ‘O.D.’d in Denver’ is the contrast between Hank Williams, Jr.’s effortless carefree vocal and the song’s bleak desperate words.” He added, “Hank’s version’s narrator thinks he’s gotten over his night in Denver—I wanted this WillBilly track to feel like we’re catching our singer deep in the fear spiral.” 

This past October Bill Callahan and Oldham also recruited Chicago musician and fellow Drag City records artist AZITA last year for a cover of Yusuf / Cat Stevens’ 1967 song “Blackness of the Night.”

Then last month Callahan and Oldham collaborated again on the release of a cover of Iggy Pop's "I Want To Go To The Beach" (from his 2009 experiment Préliminaires) with Cooper Craine ( a member of Chicago bands like Bitchin’ Bajas and CAVE). 

The duo also worked on a version of their late friend David Berman’s Silver Jews song “The Wild Kindness,” singing in harmony with Berman’s widow and former bandmate Cassie Berman.