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Queen-Size Life. Mountaineer
On route to the new album Mountaineer releases a new single. What the previous single already suggested, is shown here even more: this album came with a bigger budget. The regular band setting is more in the background, while up front a trumpet tries to steal away all your attention. Don't fall for that trap! Queen-Size Life is a ballad, slow but extremely beautiful. It is a song like Marcel Hulst already has a few to his name. This one is just bigger, because of the trumpet(s), the strings and the angelic background vocals that weave themselves around Hulst's voice full of melancholy observations and more than just a hint of sadness. The cherry on the cake are the few sparse and oh so slow piano notes closer to the end. As I already wrote, I have heard a song like this from Mountaineer before but never at this level. Two songs into the album, I can't wait to hear more. A little more patience is called for before 'Country Dragon' sees the light of day on 3 April.
Lise Catharine is releasing her singles faster than I can keep up with. In between my review of two weeks ago, there is also the single 'Ticket To The Moon'. The Best Is Yet To Come is also a slow ballad with the clear sheen of melancholy longing hanging over it. You can find the song in a bare version on You Tube from 2022. In 2026 that guitar is still there, but around it Lise Catherine not only plays with your mood and but also with your ears. All sorts of atmospherics and treated vocals come by, turning the song into something far more mysterious than just a woman's voice and an acoustic guitar. What I arrive at, is that Kate Bush is all over The Best Is Yet To Come, without it becoming a typical Kate Bush song from say 1981 to 1985. For that it is far too itself. The best description is, The Best Is Yet To Come is intriguing song, while pleasing at the same time.
"You have the right to remain silent, or not" opens the EP that U2 dropped unexpectedly recently in the song 'American Obituary'. Let's face it, this is no 'Vertigo', the last U2 song that truly shook me. It is a song that breathes life and that is more than I can say from any U2 song since 2005. I can be mistaken but I don't think I own a single U2 song since the album holding 'Vertigo'. Now U2 albums and me is not, never has been a successful combination. Even the two best of albums are too much of a good thing for me. Listening to Days Of Ash, six songs short, I am not held back by the length of the album and not by the quality of the songs. The EP is not earth shattering but it is good and I'm glad to be able to say so. With drummer Larry Mullen jr. back behind his drumkit the band is complete again also. In 'The Tears Of Things' U2 does a Bowie. In general, I notice that the band does not try to be bigger than itself. The band lets the songs do the work and not the band work the songs. Because of it, U2 comes down to earth and shows itself as a sort of naked truth version of itself, unplugged without plugging out. I have to say that this is a U2 I rather like. Until very recently, I expected never to want to buy a U2 record again. It looks like I have to change my mind.
Okay, does anything really, really happen in Javelin? If I'm honest, no there isn't. My ears tell me the same chords go over and over. Then why am I so attracted to Javelin? I can't tell you from a technical, rational level. Where the feeling side of things is concerned, the song makes me feel warm inside. The way it slowly but surely becomes bigger, the way more instruments and voices come in that change not so much the atmosphere of the single as expand it, simply touches me. To find Kevin Morby on this blog, you have to go back ten years to find a review by Erwin Zijleman. I have encountered the name Kevin Morby for sure but never got into his music. If you ask me to compare this song, then I arrive at The War on Drugs. Luckily, Kevin Morby does not draw Javelin out to seven or more minutes. This single pleases me no little. Album 'Little Wide Open' arrives in stores and online on 15 May.
In 2025 Mei Semones stayed in London with Liana Flores and her impressions of that visit were turned into Koneko, where the two harmonise together. Those who have read my reviews of the Japanese-American singer-songwriter Mei Semones know what to expect. Koneko, her latest single, does not make any move towards not meeting expectations. The bossa nova and jazz is all over Koneko. If you ask the average person where this song comes, 99.99% will answer Brazil. What is missing here is the indie twist Mei Semones usually throws into a song, making things far more confusing. This is a perfectly relaxed bossa nova tune that is released to announce an extensive tour of North America.
Postman? What is this rapper who has gone out of style over twenty years ago doing on a French label?, I wondered when I read the announcement in an email. Luckily for Ukranian singer-songwriter Kostiantyn Pochtar ('Postman' in English) I read beyond the title, because what I am listening to is an interesting singer-songwriter song. Postman worked on his new record in the Polish mountains. Window Loop is on the one hand a song that has a traditional build up. Kostiantyn Pochtar sings and is accompanied by an acoustic guitar played in a muted way. Slowly more enters, an electronic beat, a bass, some kind of synth and an electric guitar playing one chord stroke, leaving space and time before the next chord. Later on crackling enters giving the impression of an old 45 that has been abused a few times too many. Postman always keeps the lid on things. Window Loop is not exploding, things move underneath the surface here. More is underway. EP 'Phantasma' is set for release on 17 April.
New Zealand singer-songwriter Vera Ellen is back. Her album 'Ideal Home Noises' still comes by regularly in my home and car. It is one of the better albums coming out of New Zealand this decade and one of the best subtoppers all over. With Gayfever Vera Ellen is delivering once again. She manages to attract with her way of singing and talking and everything in between the two. The music both supports and decides to go its own way in the right moments, creating two interesting moments at once. Yes, I can multitask as I am able to follow both paths at the same time. Gayfever is reassuringly Vera Ellen and yet is more exultant. The extras in the song are almost overdone for a Vera Ellen song (as I know them). They are not, this is what musical richness sounds like. The video though is quite weird but no less surprising. Her new album, ‘Heaven Knows What Time’, is released on Flying Nun on 1 May.
Fini Tribe formed in 1980 in Edinburgh during the postpunk era. The six piece band recorded during the years 1982 - 1987 and is re-releasing its output forty plus years down the line. The single Me And My Shadow is typical for the time. There's little light let into the music, if any. The singer puts on the deadest voice he is capable of (not very, I'm afraid). The rhythm is almost machine like. Forty years before AI could be asked to produce such a mechanic beat. The two guitars and the keyboard take care of the melody, of course stocky and in a straightjacket with an extra pull on the wraps. The song works though, exactly because of how the guitars and keyboard play off each other. The single was recorded in a session when most of the boys were still in secondary school. Taking this fact into account, the single is quite alright. Album 'The Sheer Action of Fini Tribe: 1982-1987' was released on 11 February.
It has been a while since I listen to a Violent Femmes song. Even my favourite album 'Hallowed Ground' has not been put on for quite some time. The Sophs could have fooled me, if Sweetiepie had been released as a long lost Violent Femmes song. The only thing that would have put a little doubt in my mind perhaps, is the fact that the song does get a poppy feel, where the band of old always had some darkness around it at the time. Sweetiepie is an uptempo country-rockabilly song with a moutharp and all. The Sophs play with the rockabilly sound like it should, with the little moments where only the drums keep up the song and rhythm before everybody joins in again. This song is just big time fun, let's not mince any further words on it.
We have to go back to the Covid years to find Abrasive Trees on this blog. With a new album under way, as yet unnamed but slated for May, the band around Matthew Rochford releases a new single called Carved Skull. Yes, the music is almost as dark as the title suggests. No, this is not death metal, not even close. I would put the music somewhere between symphonic rock and 1980s doom and gloom without moving into postpunk. So, expect a deep bass and a drums that pounds the skins and layers upon layers of guitars that all together take their time to play the song home. The mood is created and drawn out. Listening to the intro I'm even remembered of the way Sadeness integrated Gregorian singing into pop somewhere around 1990. Monks have gone mostly out of fashion, but their ghosts hover in Carved Skull. Jay Newton (guitars, backing vocals), Matthew Rochford (vocals, guitars, synth) and Will Tyler (drums, bass, backing vocals), assisted by Ben Roberts (electric cello) and Yunala Songweaver (backing vocals) create a mood that is somehow befittingly sacred for the second quarter of the 21st century.
Wout de Natris - van der Borght
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