Make way for Uncle Sam’s girls
When Mumford & Sons experimented on last year’s album, Delta, they sought the help of two female singers from across the Atlantic.
One was West Memphis native Abbey Smith, who performs under the name Yebba. The other was Maggie Rogers, whose fondness for banjos and acoustic guitars made her a natural fit.
We’ll be hearing more of Yebba when she guests on Mark Ronson’s forthcoming album, Late night Feelings. But Rogers is ready to up her profile now. Fresh from supporting the Mumford clan on last november’s UK tour, she uses her first solo album to branch out into dreamy pop and dance.
The Maryland singer, 24, got her big break three years ago. Raised in a rural town near Chesapeake Bay, she was studying music at the Tisch School Of The Arts in new York when R&B superstar Pharrell Williams dropped in to host a masterclass. Impressed by her half-finished song Alaska, he told her: ‘I’ve never heard anyone like you before.’
The deceptively simple track became an online hit and was later a highlight of Maggie’s debut eP.
A fusion of folk and dance, it also sets the tone for an album of modern, machine-tooled pop with a big heart. Produced by Paul McCartney’s latest associate Greg Kurstin, heard It In A Past Life is quirky enough to be credible but catchy enough for the charts.
Several tracks begin gently before soaring on a bed of featherlight electronics and infectious hooks. Give A Little features Rogers harmonising with herself as Kurstin creates a stately chorale by multi-tracking her soft, breathless soprano.
elsewhere, she keeps things simple on the Stevie nicks-like piano ballad Past Life, before heading for the dancefloor on the pulsating Retrograde, informed by the Berlin nightclubs she frequented on a visit to europe.
She packs an emotional punch, too, owning up to romantic vulnerability on R&B ballad Say It — ‘I cannot fall in love with you, I cannot feel this way so soon’ — and the gospel-tinged Fallingwater, featuring former Vampire Weekend member Rostam Batmanglij.
her mixed feelings about overnight fame are laid bare on Light On. having been ‘overwhelmed and scared’ when Alaska became a sudden viral success, she’s now at home in the spotlight. On this evidence, that’s just as well.
n Another American, Sharon Van etten, returns this week. It’s five years since the new Jersey singer last made an album, but she hasn’t been taking it easy.
As well as providing the score for Katherine Dieckmann’s film Strange Weather, she gueststarred in netflix sci-fi series The OA and appeared in a revival of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks.
She also became a mum for the first time, and her baby son is clearly a source of inspiration on Remind Me Tomorrow, an album written while she was pregnant and recorded with ‘stains on my shirt and oatmeal in my hair’.
VAn etten, 37, has revamped her music since 2014’ s Are We There, swapping acoustic guitars and piano for vintage synths and drums.
If her touchstones were once Patti Smith and neil Young, her new songs look to Depeche Mode and trip-hop act Portishead.
new collaborator John Congleton occasionally overplays his hand by drenching decent material in electronic noise and distorted bass. On the better songs, though, the pairing works a treat.
It’s an album that reveals its charms gradually. Low-key opener I Told You everything is dominated by droning electronics, but Remind Me Tomorrow bursts spectacularly into life on the eighties influenced Comeback Kid, Jupiter 4 (named after a synthesiser) and the thunderous Seventeen. The latter encapsulates Van etten’s growth. Written about an abusive relationship from her past, it was originally a country lament in the style of Lucinda Williams. now a swirling wall of sound, it sounds more like Bruce Springsteen or Arcade Fire.
Both albums are out today. Maggie Rogers begins her tour on February 14 at the Academy, Dublin (maggierogers.com). Sharon Van Etten starts her tour on March 21 at the Mill, Birmingham (sharonvanetten.com).