Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Bassist duo defies genre divides
Get ready to rumble. Virtuosos Christian McBride and Edgar Meyer play double bass duets on their first joint album, “But Who’s Gonna Play the Melody?” — and it will give your sound system a workout.
McBride and Meyer swap the lead on their instrumental recordings, which include original tracks and cover songs. Despite the limitations that come with being a two-man bass band, McBride and Meyer explore all manners of music while defying genres.
The duo has the bona fides to make lemonade out of lemons. McBride is a jazz superstar fluent in R&B. Meyer’s remarkably diverse resume ranges from bluegrass to classical music. Together, they draw on a multitude of genres, plucking, bowing and showing just how expressive their 20-pound instruments can be.
Listening to Meyer and McBride is a physical experience, especially with good speakers, and the sound waves they generate could dislodge a nightclub from its foundation.
But the album isn’t just about booming. Meyer and McBride make music that’s engaging even when the notes are too low to hum. The basses growl, snort, buzz and crack wise. They share rhythms, engage in conversation and explore divergent syncopation.
The mood is generally jolly, and even the typically melancholy “Days of Wine and Roses” moves at an oddly jaunty tempo. “Bebop, of Course” gets jazzy, while “Canon” mixes the 17th century with the 21st. “Philly Slop” is an invitation to dance, and the stop-start “FRB 2DB” would tickle James Brown.
Best of all is Bill Monroe’s “Tennessee Blues.” Meyer and McBride make it a fiddle tune, sawing with a zeal that could topple timber. In short, they get down. — Steven Wine, Associated Press
British pop singer-songwriter Declan McKenna is back with the bright and experimental “What Happened to the Beach?”
At 16, McKenna burst onto the music scene with his 2015 hit “Brazil,” a protest anthem about FIFA’s politics, a song that has over 480 million streams on Spotify. He has since released three albums; this record purposefully moves away from previous thematic projects, revealing that McKenna, now 25, is focused on sonic experimentation.
The record was made largely in Los Angeles. That location and its chill, sunny, sometimes blasé attitudes served as inspiration for McKenna, who told Rolling Stone UK that the album “doesn’t always demand your attention” in the way some of his past works have. Instead, many of the tracks act like soundscapes, collages of feelings and observations represented by layered instrumentals, found sounds and distorted vocals.
By not “demanding attention,” the tracks are free to become melodically strange and compelling — immersing the listener in the buzzed, dreamlike world they exist within instead of simply soundtracking reality.
That’s especially felt in “Breath of Light”: “Would you catch me in the center of your cosmic sin/ Where the devil’s sippin’ cordial I just can’t win,” set to a background of percussion and synths, with contorted whispers and hums.
Some tracks have more traditional indie pop hooks: “Nothing Works” is fast-paced, upbeat and catchy; “It’s an Act” softens into a trippy serenade; and “Mulholland’s Dinner and Wine” reflects on the characters and setting of LA with a warped production that recalls other contemporary psychedelic pop like Still Woozy and Glass Animals.
But then there are moments like “I Write the News,” “Wobble” and the album’s three collaged interludes, “Mystery Planet Pt. 1-3,” that shake the listener out of that familiar atmosphere for a moment, almost as if to remind them that they’re under McKenna’s trance.
Throughout the project, it’s clear that this is simply a freer version of the McKenna listeners have come to know — one who’s willing to make boundary-pushing, personality-revealing choices with his productions, just as he always has with his lyrics.