Here is our playlist for last week
Durand Jones and the Indications – Morning in America
Dominique Fils-Aime – We Are Light
Stone Foundation – The Light in Us
Alejandra Ribera – Courage
Blow Monkeys – Time Storm
Horsey – Lagoon
Gabriels – Love and Hate in a Different Time
The OBGMs – All My Friends
Paul Weller – In Another Room
All of Bob’s selections are from the sampler cd which accompanies the June 2021 issue of Mojo magazine. Paul Weller is the guest editor who picked all the tracks.
Durand Jones and the Indications – Morning in America
Durand Jones and the Indications are a multi-racial neo-soul band from Bloomington Indiana. Blake Rhein and Aaron Frazer, two students at Indiana University got together with singer Durand Jones
This is a 2019 song but sounds like a early 70’s soul classic reminscent of The Isley Brothers or Curtis Mayfield. It’s called, “Morning in America” Neo soul at it’s finest.
Dominique Fils-Aime – Three Little Words
Fils-Aime’s “Three Little Words UPDATED MAR 8, 2021 9:39PM EST – With touring off the table, Canadian musicians with anticipated new records are finding new ways to approach the traditional release cycle – PUBLISHED MAR 6, 2021 9:30AM EST” completes a trilogy of albums celebrating the history of Black-American music, while Tobi’s “Elements Vol. 1” fuses hip-hop, jazz, pop and R&B.
ANDREANNE GAUTHIER/HANDOUT
From the Globe and Mail
Stone Foundation – The Light in Us
Stone Foundation (featuring Laville) – The Light in Us. From Warwickshire, and Inspired by Stax Records, the Spencer Davis Group, and the Style Council, this Warwickshire, England-based modern soul band released material at a steady rate for over a decade before Paul Weller offered to produce their 2017 album, Street Rituals. That record, and its 2018 follow-up, Everybody, Anyone, were their first albums to grace the U.K. Top 30, and paved the way for the late 2020 LP Is Love Enough?
Alejandra Ribera Courage (Single)
COURAGE – Collective Lockdown Music VideoAlejandra makes her most audacious move yet – bringing us an electronic pop creation to spread courage and strength in uncertain times. COURAGE May 22, 2020
Alejandra Ribera is a Canadian pop and jazz singer-songwriter, who performs material in English, French and Spanish.
Of mixed Argentine and Scottish descent,[1] Ribera was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, and has been professionally based in Montreal, Quebec.[2] She released her debut album, Navigator/Navigateher, in 2009,[3] and followed up with La Boca in 2014.[3] NPR’s Alt.Latino referred to La Boca and her voice as Alt.Latino’s favorite of 2014.[4]
Some of the proceeds from Courage will go to support Doctors Without Borders
Alejandra Ribera has written a song called ‘Courage’ to lift our spirits during these uncertain times. With the help of friends from Singapore to Switzerland – a collectively crafted “home lockdown music video” accompanies its release.
Co-produced by Rob Wilks and Brett Shaw (Florence + the Machine, Foals), this is Alejandra’s first foray into the world of electronic pop. “I normally write quite introspective mellow stuff. When I realised I’d written a whole song about the catharsis of facing what most frightens you I thought it should sound fairly epic. I knew it would take a lot more than me and an acoustic guitar.”
Blow Monkeys – Time Storm
The Blow Monkeys were an eighties band primarily know on this side of the pond for 1984’s “Digging Your Scene”
The band has been close to Paul Weller since then as both groups performed in the 80’s on the anti- Margaret Thatcher Red Wedge Tour
Horsey – Lagoon (single)
Londoners Horsey – centred around the core duo of Jacob Read (aka DIY fave Jerkcurb) and Theo McCabe – are almost certainly one of the most baffling yet brilliant new bands we’ve come across in a while.
Despite keeping a fairly low profile in terms of press and releasing only a handful of tracks online, the group have built up a firm live following, recently touring with King Krule and selling out none-too-small venues in their hometown.
Why? Because, from the glitzy gold sequinned jackets they sport onstage to the funny, noodling, dark-hearted jazz they tout, Horsey are intoxicatingly odd. Their tracks meander through chintzy piano, to shouty call and response heckles to – on occasion – something resembling a rock opera. They are basically uncategorisable and on new offering ‘Bread & Butter’ they’re doing nothing to make themselves more palatable.
This “Time Storm”from forthcoming album
Gabriels – Love and Hate in a Different Time
Gabriels – Love and Hate in a Different Time
Gabriels is a LA based group made up of singer Jacob Lusk and producers Ari Balouzian and Ryan Hope. ‘Love and Hate in a Different Time’ is their new single. This is anohter example fo how vintage soul music can be done in the 21st century. Gabriels explains, “Love and Hate in a Different Time is about how we appear to be losing the ability to peacefully be together in a space and express ourselves. Together. We have always endured agendas of hate, hardship and war but we have in someway always found a way to be together and put aside our differences. However in recent times with the development of the technology/disinformation it appears this is tested.” Here is an amazing video or as they call it, “a short film”
The OBGMs – All My Friends Album – The Ends
From Exclaim Magazine!
After returning with new single “Not Again” last month, the OBGMs have lifted the curtain on a new full-length record. The Toronto punk trio will release The Ends on October 30 through Black Box Music.
“This album is about death, wanting to die, and fighting for something to live for — it’s the end of all things. I feel this is the one of the most important cross-genre albums this century,” explained vocalist/guitarist Densil McFarlane in a statement. “We are Nirvana, we are the Beatles, and the Stones. We are really changing the dimensions of which the game is played like the Steph Curry of this rock shit. We all have feelings of doubt, uncertainty, and I used to live there. I’m trying not to die there. If I’m going out, I’m going out shooting.”
Produced by Dave Schiffman and recorded at Toronto’s Dreamhouse Studios, The Ends follows the OBGMs 2017 self-titled debut. McFarlane recalled that after touring that record, “I thought me and music was over… My life wasn’t very good at the time, people around me were dying, and everything I was making sucked. I thought it was a sign that I needed to do something else.”
another great song – to Death by the OBGMs
Both Dominique Fils-Aimé and The OBGMs are on this year’s Polaris Short list.
Paul Weller – In Another Room
Paul Weller – In Another Room was is a 2019 rarity released as a 7 inch on the experimental label Ghost Box. “Ghost Box is a record label for a group of artists exploring the misremembered musical history of a parallel world.”
Paul Weller, a British institution has been releasing music for almost 45 years. Whether as the leader of The Jam, Style Council or solo, Weller has had dozens of hits single and lps. In North America though, he is mainly remembered for 1982’s “A Town Called Malice”
Here is the Style Council Performing at Live Aid 1985.
The Daily Telegraph said of Weller: “Apart from David Bowie, it’s hard to think of any British solo artist who’s had as varied, long-lasting and determinedly forward-looking a career. The BBC described Weller in 2007 as “one of the most revered music writers and performers of the past 30 years”
Here he is still plugging away in 2020
Whole-Hearted 