The Sunn in the cloud. It’s not difficult to make an argument in support of a new Sunn O))) album, it’s just hard to fathom to whom one is arguing. With the band’s flooding of the marketplace and the fanatical fan base waiting in earnest, it might not be so off base to imagine that 95% of the buyers for their new, long-titled long-player Metta, Benevolence BBC 6Music : Live on the Invitation of Mary Anne Hobbs reserved copies of the double album (on transparent blue vinyl if still available_ on the first day of pre-orders. But for non-completist Johnny-come-latelies, it is available as a download, and streaming in full, on the Sunn O))) Bandcamp page. Or one of the two pages, that is, because there’s also a page where they’ve posted about 150 live sets. What makes Metta, Benevolence (available now digitally and physically next month via Southern Lord) stand out, and it does stand out, is how absolutely sublime it is. It is, on the one hand, an hour of their usual, slow, reverberating, distorted, grumbling and grinding drones. But within those depths, they’ve been hitting new highs with their last couple of studio albums, and this one (recorded in at the BBC studios at the end of a 2019 UK tour) finds their mind altering and/or expanding music in grand effect. While they are still, more or less, a guitar band, this incarnation includes trombone and organ and all six musicians play synthesizers as well, so it’s heavy on texture. The second half of the program is taken up by “Troubled Air” from 2019’s Life Metal, and it’s actually quite beautiful—sinister, sure, but beautiful. While the band is likely to keep filling the cloud with albums that, frankly, only sound so different from one another, sometimes there’s one that shines through. Metta, Benevolence is a good opportunity for non-obsessives to check in.
Silk Sonic is everything. Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak weren’t just the best thing about the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards broadcast way back in March, they were the only thing actually entertaining in an altogether dire broadcast. The pair made their new Silk Sonic known that night and, last month, made good on the promise with their first album. There’s nothing groundbreaking about An Evening With Silk Sonic (Aftermath/Atlantic), there doesn’t need to be and they never said there would be. It’s a quick half hour of attitude and old school grooves that floats from the speakers (think Stylistics, Commodores, Chi-Lites) with none other than Bootsy Collins calling out through the proceedings. It’s not all throwback—lyrically they’re not trying to hide their youthful age—but the fellas, with a veritable orchestra of strings and horns, are firmly entrenched in nostalgia for music a good decade older than they are. “Smokin Out the Window” may well be the jam of the year, and should, at least make Spielberg realize how big a boat he missed by not casting them in West Side Story.
To name but Phew. The singer Hiromi Moritani, known for more than 40 years by the stage name “Phew,” has always been hard to pin down, even within the ever eccentric realms of Japanese experimental rock. She’s established close relationships with German Krautrock and industrial elders and Downtown New York players, while working with the likes of the always inventive Otomo Yoshihide and Boredoms guitarist Seiichi Yamamoto back home. A reissue of her long out-of-print recording debut with the band Aunt Sally doesn’t do much to help pin her down, but it’s good fun trying. The band’s 1979 self-titled and sole release (out Dec. 2 digitally and on vinyl via Mesh-Key) is a wonderfully perplexing mix of anything-goes punk attitude with a childlike sense of innocence and discovery. While Aunt Sally is regarded as one of Japan’s first punk bands, there’s not much that sounds punk on the album. Closer parallels might be drawn to 60’s iconoclasts Captain Beefheart and Can or the British punk-era band the Raincoats. (In recent years, in fact, Phew has been working with Raincoats co-founder Ana Da Silva.) The album is barely a half hour but it’s simple joys (including songs built around “Heart and Soul” and “Frère Jacques”) make it easy to leave on repeat play.
Shilpa Ray is sick of it all. It’s been a long four years since Shilpa Ray cemented in song the glory days of Lower East Side indie rock on her Door Girl, documenting the desperation and violence of a scene she was pushing her way through. That album deserves to go down with the first records by New York Dolls and Blondie as love songs for the ugliness of the city. Recent Ray songs have been slow in coming, showing up on comps here and there or as digital singles, but taken together makes a strong suggestion that she’s as sick of society as she used to be of the scene. Her recent Bandcamp upload “Bootlickers of the Patriarchy” shows that not even the sisters get a pass in her taking of no prisoners. Hopefully there’s an album in the works. The world can’t wait much longer.
ON STAGE
Last month I wrote at length in these pages about Patti Smith, in particular about the power of her live shows. It’s something that shouldn’t be missed, and she’ll be playing her almost annual birthday concert (marking her 75th) at Brooklyn Steel on Dec. 28. But I can’t in good faith suggest going and I can’t in honesty say that I’ll be there. The emergence of the omicron variant should demonstrate to anyone who doubted as much that we’re still in the midst of a pandemic. As of press time, masks aren’t required indoors in New York state if proof of vaccination is shown at the door, but that isn’t a policy that’ll stop the spread, and there’s nothing prohibiting venues from being stricter than state guidelines. Bowery Presents venues—including Brooklyn Steel—aren’t requiring masks (also as of press time). The vaccine doesn’t keep anyone from carrying and transmitting the virus and symptoms might not show up for days after contamination, meaning anyone in a crowd could be unknowingly infected. I’ve been vaxxed and boosted and I’ll be sticking with venues where masks are required. Acting like we’re out of the woods is what’s keeping us in the woods.
