A Angelique Kidjo
Remain in Light
Kravenworks
Same as it ever was? Yes and no.
When Talking Heads released the masterful and influential 1980 album Remain in Light, the polyrhythmic funk/African fusion, melded with David Byrne's tense, often jittery vocals, also tapped into American angst and uncertainty about the future. The album reflected the profound influence of Nigeria's Fela Kuti, the Afrobeat pioneer. The original album's success sparked a tour that produced the acclaimed film Stop Making Sense.
Superlative African diva Angelique Kidjo heard the album when she left her native Benin for exile in Paris in 1983. Over the decades, she performed a few of the songs and finally, last year, began performing and recording the entire album. Working with producer Jeff Bhasker (Beyonce, Kanye West) on the recording, Kidjo says she wanted to create a "bridge between cultures."
Kidjo has taken these songs and brought them fully back to Africa. Her contemporary transformation of Remain in Light sounds more joyous, even with the denser rhythms and vocals, superb percussion, intoxicating polyrhythms and arrangements that dive deeply into the African guitar and horn sounds, reminding us of the profound influence of African music on American jazz, rock and soul.
Kidjo's rich and powerful voice, celebratory and commanding, underscores how very contemporary these songs remain. The pain in some of the subjects ("Crosseyed and Painless," "Listening Wind," "The Great Curve") is no less present. In many ways, they reflect the current state of this country as surely as they did in 1980s during the Reagan years. In many respects, the flow of music feels right, completely natural, richly organic and invigorating. Various African languages are also heard.
What is so wonderful about Kidjo's Remain in Light is that she has reinterpreted the original album in the very music that inspired it. Neither album is superior to the other; they are both superlative listening experiences that richly reward the listener. Both are essential; Kidjo has deepened our appreciation of the original and its thematic cultural and social depths.
The original album's biggest hit was "Once in a Lifetime," one of the best music videos of its time. In Kidjo's skillful and soulful delivery, the song is no less thrilling.
Hot tracks: All
-- ELLIS WIDNER
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
B Beach House
7
Sub Pop
For a band that traffics in ethereal and gauzy dream pop, Beach House also has a literal, rigorous side. Last year, the Baltimore duo of Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally released the truth-in-titling B-Sides and Rarities; now comes their seventh set of new material, 7, whose 11 tracks bring their released-song total to 77.
The album slightly adjusts the band's focus: self-produced with help from Spacemen 3's Sonic Boom (Peter Kember), it's a bit weirder and more complex around the edges than heavily reverbed albums like 2010's Teen Dream and 2012's Bloom, and its rhythms are sharper (often courtesy of touring drummer James Barone).
Guided by Legrand's lovely vocals, the lyrics focus on beauty that is either decaying or threatened. A few tracks drift gently and passively, but many others build to something dramatic, whether in the layered voices of "L'Inconnue," in the cathartic guitars that explode midway through "Dive," or in the gorgeous choruses of the synth-pop ballad "Woo" and the forceful "Last Ride."
Hot tracks: "Dive," "Last Ride"
-- STEVE KLINGE
The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS)
Style on 06/19/2018