Syria in mind; punk adventures
Bedouine “Solitary Daughter” (Spacebomb)
The second song from the Echo Park-based singer’s forthcoming self-titled debut album is a quiet affair, one that gracefully expands from a minimal guitar line to velveteen orchestration across fourplus minutes.
Born Azniv Korkejian in Aleppo, Syria, to Armenian parents, the artist immigrated to America as a child.
She offers subtly mesmerizing folk rock with phrasing and delivery that suggest the late English singer-songwriter Nick Drake. Like the rest of her debut, “Solitary Daughter” was produced by artistproducer Matthew E. White, who is issuing the album on his Spacebomb imprint. “Leave me alone to the books and the radio snow,” Bedouine sings, her earthen, warm voice draped in musical comfort as she requests some solitude.
In another song on the coming album (June 23), “Summer Cold,” the artist inserts “an interstitial piece to re-create the sounds of her grandmother’s street in Aleppo,” and later adds that because of the Syrian civil war, the “sonic memory” is the only way that Beduoine can return to her birthplace.
Chris Price “Stop Talking” (Omnivore Recordings)
songs suggests an artist determined to properly develop his work before letting it go.
While these songs were germinating, Price produced reboot records by cult artists Emitt Rhodes and Linda Perhacs and worked with musicians including rock band Low, bassist Tal Wilkenfeld and longtime Beck collaborator Roger Joseph Manning.
Price is admired in the power pop community, an oft-insular world that lives and dies on catchy hooks and earworm-worthy melodies. But Price’s brand of stickiness is less rigid and more pessimistic and recalls the music of songwriters including Alex Chilton, Gene Clark and Aimee Mann, none of whom ever shied away from hard emotion.
Plus, the album is less claustrophobic than a genre album and revels in spacious, inventive arrangements and instrumental flourishes.
“Hi Lo” is propelled by a stuttered rhythm, with Price layering his voice until it becomes a kind of choir underscoring his lyrics. The woozy “Pulling Teeth” opens with dissonant strings before easing into a cavernous ballad: “You and me, we’re not good people,” Price sings as a violin moans in the background. “You and me, we don’t have patience / For the world and our friends / And all their problems.” Good thing Price has music, then.
Wavves “You’re Welcome” (Ghost Ramp)
After an ill-fated relationship with Warner Bros., the magnetic San Diego-born punk band returns to the underground for its sixth album. It’s the first on founder-singer-guitarist Nathan Williams’ Ghost Ramp imprint, which last year opened a store in Chinatown and specializes in punk records and video game soundtracks.
An album full of scream-along non-sequiturs and a giddy sense of adventure, “You’re Welcome” is hardly a departure, but it does signal Williams’ willingness to experiment with structure. Songs work through verses and choruses, but each has moments in which Williams messes with structure, as though he’s setting off controlled demolitions in busy city blocks.
Opener “Daisy” maneuvers with breathless, humming riffs and a weird little guitar line before a chorus arrives as if in a cloud of dust. “Come to the Valley” is a joyous mess that’s supported by a baffling, repetitive loop that pauses at one point for an eight-bar doo-wop break.
Album closer “I Love You” enters with what sounds like an old country music sample, redirects into a heartfelt love song and lands on a ridiculous guitar solo. What follows is a weird tangle of backward orchestral samples, bleeps and big-beat drumming. If the record seems messy, in fact it’s the opposite. There’s intention in every measure.