Ten albums of new songs for these new times
With Christmas just around the corner, reviewer Steve Moffatt shares 10 2020 album releases which have helped keep him buoyant throughout the pandemic.
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The COVID-19 pandemic may have disrupted and changed life as we know it but it hasn’t slowed down the release of some highly listenable new music.
The events of the past few months in the US – the spread of the pandemic and coping with life in isolation, the Trump daily dramas, the Black Lives Matter protests – have spawned a wealth of material for recording artists large and small and some of them have been on high rotation in my household.
Back in June Norah Jones released her seventh studio album, Pick Me Up Off The Floor, with some of her strongest material for some time, and a month or so back that other diva of jazz/blues Diane Krall put out one of her best efforts, This Dream of You. Both are highly recommended.
Fans of jazz piano were well served with Lullabies, the poignantly simple last solo album of the late, great Dave Brubeck – a collection which includes the famous Brahms Lullaby along with some lovely tunes Brubeck wrote for his grandchildren. And Chick Corea released a fascinating and entertaining live album, Chick Corea Plays, on which he talks about classical music and jazz, morphing Mozart into Gershwin, and Scarlatti, Scriabin and Chopin into Bill Evans and Thelonius Monk, ending with some of his own delightful Children’s Songs. He even calls three members of the audience up on stage to join him in improvised duets.
And late this year came the devastating news that master improviser and living jazz legend Keith Jarrett had lost the use of his left hand after a stroke. Realising that he may well never be able to perform again he authorised ECM to release a double album of his Budapest Concert, recorded in 2016 – another of those miraculous in-the-moment suites of contrasting styles that sprang fully formed from his brain to his fingers.
The Black Lives Matter protests had a huge impact as well, both in the pop and jazz worlds. Ambrose Akinmusire, known both for his artistry as one of today’s finest trumpeters (as well as the long titles of his records) used his album, on the tender spot of every calloused moment, to make his angry and impassioned point condemning the recent deaths of Afro-Americans at the hands (and knees) of white police officers. The final track Hooded Procession (read the names out loud) is a sparse song with a tolling effect on the keyboard – he had previously recorded a young girl reading out the names of the dead (to date) on his 2014 album The Imagined Saviour Is Far Easier To Paint.
Making a powerful debut on the Blue Note label, alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins produced a harrowing evocation of a 1918 lynching in Georgia on his Omega album. Mary Turner – An American Tradition is his reaction to the killing of a pregnant woman who was hanged upside down, had her unborn baby killed before being burned. Other lynchings are dealt with before a four-movement suite offers some consolation. All in all a great album from an exciting new talent.
And there’s no stopping 1960s soul songstress Bettye Lavette who gives her raunchily clapped-out 74-year-old vocal cords a workout with a collection of songs by other black American singers including Nina Simone, Billy Holiday, Nancy Wilson and Dina Washington on the bluesy Blackbird album.
If you prefer your singers on the smoother side outstanding jazz vocalist Kurt Elling has made an imaginative and beautifully crafted album, Secrets Are The Best Stories, marking his first collaboration with Wayne Shorter’s pianist of choice, Danilo Perez, on the excellent British jazz label Edition Records. Elling shows his finely developed interpretative skills and a voice that combines the baritone mellowness of Sinatra with the ethereal high tenor of Chet Baker.
And another singer with a voice like a smooth and subtle single malt is San Francisco Bay’s Kenny Washington who, after studying saxophone at uni, joined the military and became vocalist for the famed US Navy bands. Later he was noticed by Wynton Marsalis, performing with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in Marsalis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio Blood On The Fields.
His debut studio album, What’s The Hurry, covers a selection of standards including Stars Fell On Alabama, S’Wonderful and Sweet Georgia Brown. He’s one to watch. As Marsalis says: “If you love music, you’ve got to love Kenny!”
Finally if you are a fan of US rock band The National – and we are legion – front man Matt Berninger has released a superb debut solo album, Serpentine Prison. His smoky baritone vocals are so much a part of the band’s sound that this could be mistaken for another top-notch offering from the Cincinatti outfit, except for the fact that Booker T Washington – he of Green Onions fame – lends his unmistakeable Muscle Shoals Hammond organ sound on a few tracks, including the standout One More Second.
Intelligent lyrics and a healthy dose of world weariness make this album ideal for contemplative moments.
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