2 hours ago
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From London
Recommended if you like Tirzah, Loraine James, Space Afrika
Up next Debut album Goodness out 10 October
Over the past three years, vocalist Theodora Laird and bassist Caius Williams have built a committed hub for improvised music at Grain, a residency held at Avalon cafe in south Bermondsey. Inviting experimental music eminences – Steve Noble, Elaine Mitchener, Maggie Nicols – to play alongside younger generations, Grain nights feature Laird and Williams as the still points of this constantly turning little world. The duo also perform as Crosspiece (recently as support for UK band Caroline) with Laird’s serene focus a foil to Williams’s rougher, busier sounds.
Laird has previously recorded with Loraine James, and has played alongside Mica Levi and Tirzah. Her improvised work is concerned primarily with breaking language, then remaking it. That’s reflected in Goodness, her full-length debut as Feeo, as a capacity to work with extreme conviction without disrupting the delicate atmospheres around her. On this fairly still and grounded album, every syllable feels cared for, every utterance close and alive in the mix. Emerging from a London underground enamoured of submerged, grimy sounds, it feels like gulping clean, crisp air.
All manner of horizontally stretched textures – blemishing drones, light beats, uneven synth and piano figures, and Williams on guitars, bass and baritone – accompany Laird’s vocals. Their beauty belies a lyricist of poetic intrigue, of colours and bodies on the intensely simmering single The Mountain, and emotional insight. On Here, a mid-album highlight, Laird pleads with a lover to run away from a brutal city that has twisted both of them out of shape. “This place was built to last,” she sings. “It wasn’t built for love.” Hugh Morris
This week’s best new tracks
Thundercat – Children of the Baked Potato ft Remi Wolf
“When it’s all said and done, I did it for my health,” Thundercat croons – before a classic Brainfeeder jazz-fusion freak-out that doesn’t suggest retiring to the seaside with a blanket on your lap.
Hannah Frances – Life’s Work
“Learning to trust in spite of it” – namely love’s inevitable demise – “is life’s work,” the Vermont songwriter sings, her run-on lyrics blazing with purpose as a muted New Orleans-y rumpus creeps up on her.
Claire Rousay – Somewhat Burdensome
It’s slowcore season, time to dust off your Yo La Tengo records – and add the Canadian-American sound artist’s gorgeously moody guitar wanderings to the rotation. Listen closely: what sounds mournful actually teems with lively detail.
Anna von Hausswolff – Facing Atlas
From the Swedish pipe organist’s most ambitious, brilliant album yet, a pertinent hymn: “The world is full of shit and full of evil, but there you stand,” she marvels, her choral epic expanding into ritualistic, industrial-tinged ecstasy.
Charlotte Gainsbourg – Blurry Moon
“You’re gonna miss me / Under my blurry moon,” the divine Gainsbourg croons: easily done as she whispers barely there come-hithers amid a gorgeous waltz. But danger lingers: “It’s ever so nasty,” she slips in.
The Avett Brothers and Mike Patton – Eternal Love
Quite some way from the harebrained intensity of Patton’s work with Dead Cross and Mr Bungle, this country collab runs on rustic bonhomie. So lovely it’s actually unnerving, given the personnel.
Jordan Patterson – Hey Mama
Imagine Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’ retooled for the Gilmore Girls soundtrack, with fitting lyrics about a mother-daughter relationship delivered with impressionistic passion: what a gem.
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