A Song For Friday: Andy Jenkins
A master songwriter returns in a new context. Also: Dan English, Ryli, Frankie Cosmos, Lisa/Liza, Omo Cloud, Lorde, Herbert & Momoko, and the Water Bodies compilation.
It’s been almost seven years since Sweet Bunch, Andy Jenkins’ monumental but tender and witty ode to singing, songwriting, and production, which not only hit my 2018 Top 25 but also took its place on my list of the 100 best albums of the 2010s. Produced by Matthew E. White, who also lent his magic touch to Natalie Prass’ The Future and The Past that year, Sweet Bunch was an exemplar of the rich, soulful Spacebomb sound.
Since then, there have been a couple of EPs, including The Garden Opens (2019) and Nothing No. 1 (2022), a sublime collaboration with Skyway Man and Molly Sarlé, that kept the flame in this fan’s heart burning. Today, that flicker becomes a full-on conflagration with the release of Since Always, a new collection that takes Jenkins in some new directions while remaining resolutely himself.
The songs are the center, of course, and they are incredibly well-crafted, with verses and choruses that seem instantly inevitable and novel at the same time. But, except for guitarist Alan Parker, he’s shed the creative partners of Sweet Bunch to work with some of the same people who assisted with Alex, the brilliant album by Daughter of Swords that reimagined Alexandra Sausser-Monnig’s haunted folk into bright, busy, and edgy new wave. Perhaps most important is producer Nick Sanborn, who is as unafraid to build up layers as he is to drop instruments out at will. Perhaps most startling, he adds electronic processing to Jenkins’ warm, plainspoken voice, putting him in an entirely new context.
For an introduction to the newly cybernetic Jenkins, check out Lovesick, which also features Jenn Wasner (AKA Flock Of Dimes) on vocals. Electronic percussion introduces the song, soon joined by a distorted keyboard and a slow guitar arpeggio. Jenkins enters: “Goodbye Joe,” he sings, “I got a feeling I'm just waiting for you,” sounding like nothing so much as a man talking to his bartender. Clouds of sound build up, and Jenkins and Wasner duet in an increasingly complex vocal arrangement focused on the comforting phrase: “No more tears.” The lyrics are as telegraphic as the music is immersive. Listen.
It’s a credit to Sanborn’s sensitivity as a producer that, while Since Always sounds very different than Sweet Bunch, it also sounds almost nothing like Alex. In the end, it sounds like nothing other Andy Jenkins and that’s something I can always use more of in any form.
Listen to most of the songs for Friday here or below.
Also Out This Week
Dan English - Sky Record When I saw English open for Maria Somerville in May, I was fascinated by his chamber-folk art-rock, which had delicate string and keyboard sections upended by searing guitar solos. But there was also a provisional quality to the performance, as when he would count off new parts during a song, ensuring the other musicians knew when to reenter. On this second full-length, his conception is presented in full, and the results are often rapturous and never less than involving. Need, which falls dead center in the track list, seems to put everything he wants to do on the table. It opens in yearning fashion, with finger-picked guitar and pedal steel, before the drums enter, along with the strings, leading to a sweeping descending keyboard riff. Eventually, the drums drop out, and we hear a voice reading an excerpt of Anne Carson’s “Short Talk On Major and Minor.” Talk about ambition! But when he sticks the landing on this proggy epic with a blistering guitar solo and a delicate coda, all you can do is applaud in awe. Sky record is full of such moments and demands your full attention.
Ryli - Come And Get Me On this marvelous debut, guitars jangle, the bass pulsates, the drums push, and the melodies could slake the throat of someone a week in the desert. There may be those forensic listeners who can pick out this label, that decade, or some underground scene Ryli is referencing, but I usually think that’s a pretty lousy way to listen to music. With songs as perfect as the breezy Friend Collector (“If you lend a hand, she’ll ask for two), the quartet of Rob Good (lead guitar, vocals), Yea-Ming Chen (lead vocals, guitar, organ), Luke Robbins (bass, vocals), and Ian McBrayer (drums, vocals) deserves way more credit than comparison-shopping, anyway. Ryli will be collecting many new fans and friends with this terrific album.
Frankie Cosmos - Different Talking While Empty Head from 2022’s Inner World Piece is still Greta Kline’s longest song, High Five Handshake from this head-rush of a follow up, may be her best. Starting off quiet and dreamy, it gets big and angular, before getting even dreamier. After another angular section, a massive drum fill leads to expansive territory and it takes on a psychedelic edge. Keyboards start to slither through the mix and then its over. That’s a lot to pack into 2:47 - and it’s still the longest song on the album! Working again with Alex Bailey (guitar) and Katie Von Schleicher (bass) and adding in Hugo Stanley, the next-level drummer from Palm, has paid big dividend on Kline’s most cosmic album yet.
Lorde - Virgin I am so clearly not the target audience for this Aussie pop queen. For example, I thought Solar Power, the 2021 pop-folk album many thought was a detour, was her best album. Her first two albums were good, but were at times an odd combination of bland and overwrought. Solar Power leaned into her songwriting and versatile voice and somehow broke producer Jack Antonoff out of his hyper-compressed rut. While he may have retreated since Solar Power’s polarizing reception, Lorde has joined forces with a whole new team, most notably multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer Jim E-Stack. This is a man who, this year alone, has his name on releases with art-folk icon Bon Iver and R&B/rap expert Aminé. And now Lorde, helping her realize an electro-pop avant-R&B vision that seems to have her linking arms with Billie Eilish on one side and Kelela on the other. Can we get that posse in effect?!? One highlight of Virgin is Shapeshifter, with a rattling, drum’n’bass-adjacent beat, over which Lorde speak-sings the first verse in an almost threatening rasp before moving into a double-tracked vocal that combines her low and high registers, sonic evidence of her ability to shift shapes. As the song builds towards ecstatic release, the constrained beginning only makes it more effective when she unleashes her voice at full power. And that’s a thrilling sound indeed.
Omo Cloud - Mausoleum On this debut album, Omo Cloud has found a balance between their high, piercing voice and music that whispers and screams with expert facility. The Summer, for example, has a dark riff at its core that sounds like something Page & Plant would have nicked for the Unledded tour. That Omo Cloud holds their own within an arrangement that gets denser as it goes on is impressive on its own. But the wealth of emotion, stemming from trauma and a search for identity, behind the songs seems to give them the strength to overcome anything. Mausoleum is a striking statement of purpose.
Lisa/Liza - Ocean Path Liza Victoria calls this EP of early recordings “a letter from my younger self.” With spare acoustic accompaniment and her lonesome voice, it also sounds like a missive from a collective memory. Haunting and elemental, it proves the fully fledged artist we heard on 2023’s Breaking and Mending was starting from a place of strength.
Herbert & Momoko - Clay After The Horse, 2023’s spectacular collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra, Matthew Herbert could have gone in any number of directions. This supremely chill collection, created with the ethereal-voiced percussionist Momoko Gill, seems to be just the right one. With songs that barely touch earth, even when they have a groove, the duo finds a space equally informed by trip hop and Sade, with the only off-note struck when Herbert sings, seemingly a bit out of his depth. But who can blame him for feeling himself momentarily while making such a lovely record? Not me, that’s for sure.
Various Artists - Water Bodies This intriguing collection of ambient tracks, many incorporating the sounds of or ideas about water, is the inaugural release from Gravity Pleasure, a Berlin-based “hydrofeminist” label that is one to watch. Lipsticism is the only artist I was familiar with of the 21 here, which makes me even more excited to have discovered it.