James Blake - "Assume Form"
(Polydor / Universal, from 18 January)
One could guess it when James Blake played in the opening act of his buddy's "Damn" tour Kendrick Lamar through a surprisingly energetic set: In the life of the now 30-year-old Londoner, with his scared, electronically intricate falsetto soul a whole pop -Gener defined, let's call it post-R & B, something fundamental had changed. Normally one wants to avoid conclusions from the private life on the work of an artist yes, but Blake itself confirmed meanwhile the positive influence of its friend Jameela Jamil on its hitherto depressive mind. Also from England originating TV star ("The Good Place") came together already three years ago in both adopted home Los Angeles with Blake; Last August, the tender bard then announced a simple but engaging Instagram on a shared photo: "I love her".
No wonder, then, that on his fourth album, the first after the hard-to-digest tristesse torture "The Color In Anything" (2016), warm spring colors and lively sounds suddenly dominate. "I will assume form / I leave the ether" - I will make the ether, the ephemeral and the form, tangible, announces Blake over crystalline pearling and steel drum sounds and luxurious strings in the title song. The tempo is still timid, the voice shy, the text full of doubts, but one not only notices the alienated children's choirs in the background: In the formerly subdued music landscapes of Blake, it begins to flow and sprout.
Andreas Borcholte's playlist KW 10
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1. James Blake: Do not miss it
2. Sharon Van Etten: Seventeen
3rd Jadu: Peaceful army
4. Lost Under Heaven: Bunny's Blues
5. Steve Gunn: Vagabond
6. Anna Aaron: Boy
7. Alice Merton: Learn To Live
8. Relatiiv: Bad Girl
9. Jessica Pratt: Poly Blue
10. Efdemin: New Atlantis
Mile High makes tangible hip-hop outings with guest rapper Travis Scott, while "Tell Them" (with Moses Sumney) is weaving seductive Latin lianas around a fast-paced beat. Neo flamenco star Rosalía duels with Blake in the equally prancing "Barefoot In The Park", all energy levels are no longer on economy mode, but feverish "Into The Red", as a ballad in between. To the middle of the album Blake paused and marvels at himself: "Can not Believe The Way We Flow" he jubiliert in a polyphonic babble of voices and fragments of a sulky Motown anthem.
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But even though the contemplative gospel "Are You In Love" is almost radio-friendly and the mistrustful "Where's The Catch" presents a wet-and-nervous rap by Andre 3000: none of the genres that Blake roams through here manifest clearly, every hinted at Groove, every melody bow or mini-hook is hidden behind sound membranes. Back are the "glitches", the gaps and gradual rhythm shifts that Blake once established with his debut and the breakthrough album "Overgrown" as a trademark: All-out is not. Blake stays Blake. But the demons, the loneliness, the alienation, all this seems to be over for the time being.
The ghostly reverberated and restless single "If The Car Beside You Moves Ahead" from last year is therefore probably not included in "Assume Form", but instead the encouragement ballad "Do not Miss It", also published in advance. James Blake has not missed the opportunity presented to him - and opened up new musical and emotional worlds. An adorable puppy. (9.0) Andreas Borcholte
Sharon Van Etten - "Remind Me Tomorrow"
(Jagjaguwar / Cargo, from 18 January)
Everyone should be careful with whom he contracts. Clear. But if you're a singer / songwriter dedicated to strings and piano keys, you'd better think twice about sharing living space with a Jupiter 4 synthesizer owner. Because if you see this synthesizer day in, day out, the probability that you sometimes take it with you to your room, connects to your computer, and so unintentionally produces a completely different album from your own work.
That's exactly what happened to Sharon Van Etten. "Remind Me Tomorrow" is her new album. It is a text music scissors that cuts you out of everyday life in the most pleasant way. Musically, she is as drizzle-dry dramatic as possible, but lyrically - the title insinuates it - expresses her serenity.
Because big changes are behind the US musician. After the tour to the previous album "Are We There" (2014), she was annoyed by herself, her guitar and her work. She got together with her drummer. The meeting resulted in a child. The cover of the album adorns nursery chaos. It is a photograph that a friend artist had shown her when asked if art and children are compatible. Judging by Van Etten's album, they are. Absolutely.
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"I Told You Everything" the first song, can still be seen as a tender link to its predecessor. But as soon as it's over, the basses produced by James Congleton (St Vincent, Anna Calvi) boom. The production of "No One's Easy To Love" or "You Shadow" is so dense that it almost buries Van Etten's pleading vocals.
The cause of this development immortalized itself in a song name: "Jupiter 4" tells in doomsday mood of finding the great love. "Baby, Baby, Baby / I've been waiting for my whole life for a somebody like you" it sounds: More Kate Bush does not work. In the next song, "Seventeen", you hear the dark rumble fade away. The sun rises in the smog over America. Van Etten sings "Downtown harks back, halfway up the street, I used to be free, I used to be seventeen" and is now Bruce Springsteen. The only thing that can be said about this wonderful, "new" album is that you have to put "new" in quotation marks. But somehow that does not matter now. Reminds me about it tomorrow. (7.5) Julia Friese
Alice Merton - "Mint"
(Paper Plane Records / Sony, 18 January)
This guitar riff, that sounds like ... "Beat It", exactly, Michael Jackson's old street tune. With that - and the associated song "Learn To Live" - Alice Merton opens her debut album just over a year and a half after the hit "No Roots". Must be trusted, but for the pop Academy graduate Merton "Beat It" is of course just the right statement. The 24-year-old, who grew up in England, Canada and the United States, has beaten the German music industry until further notice. She has not only managed to make "No Roots" without much label support, an international success (including number one on the alternative Billboard charts in the US), she has also once taken time to pass the hype let and learn to live with him. That was worth it, because "Mint", named after the singer's peppermint fetish, has become a good, concentrated album.
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This is also because Merton keeps their affairs together in a tight circle. With her manager Paul Grauwinkel, to whom she dedicated the song "2 Kids" and the composer Nicolas Rebscher (formerly Balbina), she forms a self-sufficient cell - and so sovereign and strives for resilience often sound her songs. "Funny Business" for example, in which the somewhat frowning Merton loosens pleasantly - and at the same time emphasizes that she is not available for crooked things.
No bullshit. And of course, we're talking about pop, the ingredients are very clear: A riff, a striking bass line, a few sound antics and a biting hook - this is how Merton's efficient hymns, trained on disco rockers like the Killers, work. Sometimes, in "Why So Serious" or "Homesick", they may spread a bit too broad-legged on the mass market of the US instead of deepening the rigorous reduction that made "No Roots" so compelling and emphasizing the darkly drunk. In "Honeymoon Heartbreak" Merton then quite as Lana Del-Rey competition tries, but presses too much on the pathos tube. Anyway, everything has to be tried.
Listened to on the radio
Wednesdays at 23 o'clock there is the Hamburger Web-Radio ByteFM a listened-Mixtape with many songs from the discussed records and highlights from the personal playlist of Andreas Borcholte.
The defining element, though musically thinner, remains Merton's sonorous voice, which can unleash a sneaky growl to a feverish plea - as in the heavy-blooded "Speak Your Mind" or in the potential "No Roots" successor "Lash Out", which positions itself somewhere between Joan Jett and Gwen Stefani. On it a cooling mint leaves. (6.9) Andreas Borcholte
Lost Under Heaven - "Love Hates What You Become"
(Mute / Pias, from 18 January)
The pop dialectics of Ellery James Roberts is a very fine one: "My Generation's Burning / And Still We Sing Our Love Songs," he sings with partner Ebony Hoorn, accompanied by children's choirs in the programmatic Post-Millennial Tension as an accusation to all contemporary musicians not to be sufficiently aware of the political storm and social urge of the world situation, unlike Lost Under Heaven, of course, the band that recommended itself three years ago with their dazzling debut as a flaming Weltschmerz-Conduit What are Roberts and Hoorn doing today, three years deeper into the general Darkness? Singing love songs like the title song of "Love Hates What You Become", as if there were no today, just a utopian tomorrow.
Can one do - and also serves the mass or Poptauglichkeit of LUH, which the duo despite criticism praise so far remained denied. But then lets miss some of the present-fever of the debut. It's nice if Hoorn is allowed to sing long passages or singular songs alone with his fatalistic Hope-Sandoval-style ("Bunny's Blues", "Black Sun Rising"), but dangerously tense Lost Under Heaven only sound when Roberts is Redeemer pathos unleashed with a hoarse Jack White lament to hell blues ("Savage Messiah", "For The Wild").
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Musically, the currently ubiquitous alternative producer John Congleton (see Sharon Van Etten above) directed the electro-goth furor of LUH into more edible, as conservative, what the British NME already let it, LUH were just an intellectual step by Imagine Dragons Consorts removed. It lacks the rugged, post-apocalyptic karstification that made Haxan Cloak's Bobby Krlic's debut. It was they who ironically broke the songs of Uz and Springsteen's 1980s bombast of songs. Now he is serious. And the passionate rearing of the band in some place involuntarily funny. It will work in the stadium, in the sea of lights, where a rock band like Lost Under Heaven goes and belongs. (7.1) Andreas Borcholte
Rating: From "0" (absolute disaster) to "10" (absolute classic)