Guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela a passionate noise
B+ Rodrigo y Gabriela Mettavolution ATO
For those who claim the guitar’s reign as a lead instrument is done, judge and jury must turn to Rodrigo y Gabriela, the Mexican classical guitar duo who’ve long made radical right turns into flamenco, prog, folk and thrash metal. Together since the 1980s, Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero create an insistently undulating and passionate noise that compares to Metallica or Sonic Youth and is a torrid testament to the intimacy of their relationship.
The duo’s fifth studio recording and its first new album in five years is familiar and fresh. Made up of six crisp, briefly original tunes and an eerily epic (and long) cover of Pink Floyd’s most sinister suite, “Echoes,” Mettavolution is as calmly collected as it is nerve-racking. The warm title track is a delight — sharp, cutting, direct. “Witness Tree” and its more clattering, cacophonous sister, “Terracentric,” show off the pair’s lusty vigor, while a serene song such as “Electric Soul” is sultrier, yet equally agile. Their take on Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” is as full-bodied and obtuse as the original, yet foreign and unique is its own marvelous manner, filled with deep, languid lines. The only thing better than hearing Mettavolution at home, in the dark, might be seeing it played live and vibrantly under hot lights.
Hot tracks: all — A.D.AMOROSI The Philadelphia Inquirer
B Daniel Norgren Wooh Dang Superpuma
Daniel Norgren’s devotion to American roots music is undisguised on his latest work. But the Swede with the big Scandinavian following is anything but a copycat.
Trippy, edgy and daring, Norgren’s first international release makes the case one more time that cross-cultural exploration remains the most fertile frontier in popular music.
It is fresh, rough-edged perfection.
Norgren’s music is a raw melange of coarsely elegant vocals, gently distorted guitar and piano set against a backdrop of unhurried bass and drumming.
The opener, “Blue Sky Moon,” is a three-minute blend of one-note mood intonations, chirping birds and gentle strumming. It might be art but there’s not much to it. The brilliance is yet to come.
As the first cut fades into “The Flow,” a regal bass line and cymbals give way to gentle, chord-based piano, followed by the most restrained electric guitar. What comes next is a remarkable run of original songs filled with innovative, blues-based surprises.
Norgren sings of trains and John Wayne movies in what could have sounded trite but is somehow magical. The lyrics are instruments in the soundscape he creates — one more sign that Norgren has done something distinctive, different and new.
Recorded in a farmhouse in Sweden, this is the kind of low-idle Americana that calms the spirit.
Hot tracks: “The Flow” “Rolling Rolling Rolling,” “When I Hold You in My Arms” — SCOTT STROUD The Associated Press
SINGLES
■ Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber, “I Don’t Care.” This clever, clockwork song has Sheeran abetted by the pop pros Max Martin and Shellback. True to Sheeran’s catalog, it’s a tale of insecurity at a party that somehow turns to romance: “You take my hand, finish my drink, say shall we dance.” The crucial clockwork is Afro-Caribbean: the syncopated backbeat that links dance hall, reggaeton and dembow, which is stripped down and then decorated differently verse to verse. Along the way arrive high piano chords, backup “oohs,” a “hell yeah” out of Beck, floating keyboard notes and Bieber’s Auto-Tuned vocals joining in for star power in the guise of male bonding. Without that Afro-Caribbean beat, the song wouldn’t exist. — JON PARELES
The New York Times ■ Mary J. Blige and Nas, “Thriving.” Of course “Thriving” rhymes with “surviving” in Mary J. Blige’s latest parcel of motivational advice. Her message — “I’m a diamond ’cause of pressure. The bigger the trial, the bigger the blessing” — is delivered atop a tense, urgent, two-bar vamp and a sustained tone that run nearly nonstop through the track, hinting at psychedelic-era Temptations. Even in such tight confines, Blige stokes a gospel-charged conviction. — JON PARELES
The New York Times ■ 10k.Caash featuring Matt Ox, “Kerwin Frost Scratch That”
■ 10k.Caash featuring GUN40, “Aloha”
Dallas shout-rapper 10k. Caash has released “Kerwin Frost Scratch That” (a collaboration with the feral young rapper Matt Ox), basically a hard-core song of a hiphop track that’s reminiscent of the earliest Beastie Boys mosh anthems. He also put out a video for the recent single “Aloha,” which smushes together early Odd Future pastel absurdity, Dallas rap viscosity, SoundCloud rap distortion (remember that?) and the hilarious confidence of someone who still can’t quite believe rapping is his job. — JON CARAMANICA The New York Times