Spectreview 2/25/19 – Nakhane, Apples With Moya, Desperate Journalist, SPELLLING

For a guide to the color rating system, click here.

Welcome to Spectreview! Listen to this! Here’s the music roundup for the week of 2/25/19:

-LIGHT SLATE BLUE-

In America we’ve reached a point in gay rights where, in most major cities, queer people can enjoy an openness of life without almost any kickback from those around them (as long as you don’t spend too much time on the Internet). Within this environment it’s easy to forget how tough gay folk still have it in other parts of the world. South African musician Nahkane Mahlakahlakaka (formerly Tourè) is currently finding his honest voice in the arts, making waves as a star of John Trengove’s rebellious queer indie film The Wound and writing both an album and a novel centered around his struggles with resolving his sexuality with his institutionalized religion. The response from his peers was instant: Nahkane found himself in harm’s way, receiving real death threats from those who could not reconcile the traditionalist Xhosa culture with the gayness that was destined to exist in it.

This gives a grim literalness to the title of Nahkane’s sophomore album, in which he takes the bones of his acoustic debut and digitalizes them, fashioning a piano-led, electronic habitat for his theatrical musings. His vibrato, similar in feel to fellow avant-pop songwriter ANONHI (who guests on the glimmering “New Brighton”), anchors the frequent ballads and lends urgency to the uptempo numbers. Little purposeful flourishes jump out, like the mbira guitar breakdown in “Star Red” as he revels in memories of his grandmother, or the police sirens peppering the end of “The Dead,” itself a reworked track from his muted debut. “Clairvoyant” is a standout track: it’s positively electric, a galloping, vivid painting of Nahkane’s recent fears of dying in the hands of homophobes. Switching on a dime, “Interloper” struts and grooves with a learned confidence. Pacing problems abound however; there are a lot of ballads, and at times hearing Nakhane’s funereal warble over several slower numbers feels a little like watching a well-intentioned one-man play. You might check your watch a few times, but despite this, You Will Not Die is a powerful affirmation of identity in dangerous circumstances, and if you yourself are aware those circumstances are holding you back it’s definitely worth listening to.

Recommended for people who are still in the closet. It’s okay dude, air’s fine.

—-LOCAL SHOWCASE—-

-DEEP PINK-

Apples with Moya is half-comprised of members from Seattle’s Great Grandpa; led by Cam LaFlam and accompanied/produced by Dylan Hanwright, the foursome’s debut album luxuriates in a comparably gentler maturity to Plastic Cough’s cyclone of irrepressible id. The ennui is still present here, but it’s wrapped in a blanket sipping herbal tea, finding coziness in familiar alternative sounds. Like many Seattle indie rock records, the city’s overcast weather seeps into the crevices, softening the edges, dimming the light and providing an ideal bed for your more downbeat feelings. The guitars are warm and jagged in a way that recalls early slowcore, and LeFlam’s yearning, elastic vocals take flight around them in ear-worm choruses (“Feeling #11”) and anthem-ish declarations (“Praise Song”). The band finds space to hit harder on the Nirvana cum Built to Spill rocker “Petty” and the bipolar “Pack Lunch”. The record could have been shortened a song or two near the end, but on the whole it’s a breezy, enjoyable first outing and it’s well worth wiggling its way into your commute time.

Recommended for walking home on a clear afternoon.

-PURPLE-

And now we present to you “The Greatest Hits of Mid-80’s UK Rock.” Desperate Journalist could be a tongue-in-cheek tip to the sort of British music press that salivate at bands (like this) that splash in the waters of the Great British Bands of Yore. In Search of the Miraculous, like their previous works, is a nigh-extricable paste of 80’s indie and early 90’s alternative, all chorused guitars and big delayed drums. “Murmuration” immediately hits you with a wall of sound reminiscent of a sandpapered Jesus and Mary Chain, while “Ocean Wave,” a standout track, layers so much reverb on its post-punk foundation you’d swear you’d stumbled 30 years later into a DIIV concert. Jo Bevan leads the show with her vocals, but depending on the song she’s not given enough space in the mix for her voice to stretch out. That voice, like the band’s general sonics, is a chameleonic mixture of blockbuster UK rock acts: part Morrissey’s arpeggiated plateaus, part Dolores O’Riordan’s articulate flips, part Elizabeth Frazer’s spontaneity, part Bono’s throaty polemic screeds, conclusively not yet her own. While the band is more confident (and better produced) here than on 2017’s Grow Up, they have yet to find a specific unique angle on the bands they borrow from. That may come in time though: for now, it’s worth immersing yourself in Miraculous’ torrential swirl.

Recommended for NME and Spin.

-CHARTREUSE-

SPELLLING’s Mazy Fly is a head trip, the kind of album that takes getting used to before you start to understand its little world. It’s only vaguely unsettling, never beating you over the head with its weirder side, which is as it should be. At its core are the skeletons of adult contemporary songs, deftly arranged and performed by Tia Cabrol, that are then bored into and strung up by strange synth lines and resonant frequencies until they stand upright. The opening “Red” dunks you straight into the water with a disquieting vocal loop over a demented bass figure, but fortunately that’s about as close to the spooky carnival as the album treads, save for “Haunted Waters” and its tales of drowned black bodies. Closer listening bring out little brilliant details in the songwriting: a specific kick drum pattern evoking a heightened heartbeat, vocals that rise and fall in volume like ghosts reaching from across the veil, a sudden dryness in the snare that leads “Afterlife” into a heavenly saxophone reverie. There really isn’t a lot quite like it, so for this album definitely lend your ears. Just be prepared to find them fuzzy and full of holes when they’re given back to you.

Recommended for Halloween parties that need a lift.