Weekly Music Roundup: Big Beautiful Day, Cubafonia, & "Carol" – WNYC

Jordan Klassen (Mandy-Lyn )

Week of Feb 20: This week, Cuban music both funky and serene, a lament for the Internet-addicted, and a raucous yelp of empowerment.

PREMIERE: Moody Chamber Pop From Jordan Klassen

Singer/songwriter Jordan Klassen is going to be releasing an EP called Curses on March 3. Today we premiere the EPs opening track, called Carol. The title track is already out there and gives us a reason to visit with the Vancouver-based songwriter; Carol, with its unusually accented piano figure and its evocative cello section, gives us a reason to stay. Check it out and youll see what I mean.

A Lament For The Internet Age: Nobody Hangs Out Anymore

Omar Sosas Afro-Cuban Journey Goes To Senegal

Weve heard pianist Omar Sosa, on disc and in our studio, over the years as hes steadily moved from a Latin jazz sound to something more spiritual, and grounded in the deep African roots of his native Cuba. Omar lives in Barcelona, where he met up with Senegalese kora player and singer Seckou Keita. On Friday the 24th, they release their album Transparent Water, a translucent set of sonic meditations in which the piano and the kora, a 21-string, two-row harp from West Africa, are beautifully intertwined. (Keita actually plays an older, 22-string form of the kora, for those keeping score at home.) Theres a live Barcelona performance of standout track Dary available online, but here is the version that opens this remarkable album.

Cubafonia May Inspire Cubaphilia

A Ray Of Sunshine, from PWR BTTM

The queer punk duo known as PWR BTTM had a good year last year their live shows, a mix of punk and glam attitude, supported a strong debut album, Ugly Cherries. In May, theyll release Pageant, their sophomore effort, but theyve released their first single this past week. Its called Big Beautiful Day, and it is essentially a song of personal empowerment you know, a be who you really are kind of thing. But this is PWR BTTM, so it has a cheeky quality to it as well: a line about boys who have no choice is followed by a spoken Jesus Christ, lets help them! All this while the duo traffics in all kinds of punk and garage rock tropes yet somehow manages to make them sound fresh thats the real beauty of Big Beautiful Day. For those with tender sensibilities, or kids, enjoy the FCC-friendly version of the song online. Otherwise, heres the over-the-top video with the songs unexpurgated lyrics:

Kishi Bashis New Video Is A Mini Film Noir Kaoru Ishibashi makes cinematic pop under the name Kishi Bashi. As a classically-trained violinist, he has displayed a real gift for creating almost orchestral layers of sound both in the studio and in a live setting, as hes proven on past visits to Soundcheck. If you missed his last album Sonderlust, released last fall, heres a good place to start: a brand new video for the song Cant Let Go, Juno. The song wears its emotions on its sleeve, its pulsing synth-pop dressed in layers of strings (both real and synthesized, by the sound of it). In the video, however, Kishi Bashi is impassive, playing a car service driver who finds various strands of reality impinging on his little car-sized universe. Most of it leaves him unmoved, until the simple but affecting end.

Here Is Aldous Hardings Song, And Here Is Its Enigmatic VideoNew Zealand singer Aldous Harding writes songs whose stark, gothic imagery is usually accompanied by an equally stark piano or guitar. She is also a riveting live performer, as we discovered when she visited us last year. Those song often dont so much tell stories as they do sketch a character or suggest a situation often at a point where a crossroad has been reached, and a choice must be made. That is the case with her most elemental and chilling song, Horizon. A simple falling piano figure that never changes supports a song about making a choice: it seems to be about choosing to stay with the familiar and the comfortable, or striking out for parts unknown, but I could be wrong. Here is your princess, and here is the horizon, is the repeated refrain.Live versions of the song have been on Youtube for a while, but now Harding has released her album, also called Horizon, in which the title track has acquired some backing vocals and stray instrumental sounds while still maintaining its bleak beauty.