Tony Stamp reviews an exploration of Uralic languages by Auckland musician László Reynolds, the easy-going guitar jams on Aussie band Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever's 4th offering, and jazz pianist Maria Chiara Argirò's pivot into lush electronica.
Uralic Songs by László Reynolds
Photo: Nariman Taghipouran
Here’s an album that identifies itself as different within its opening moments. Acoustic guitars waver between semitones. You can hear fingertips hitting the wood of the instrument. The player is Auckland musician László Reynolds, and when he starts singing, it confirms the suspicion that he’s channelling music older and farther-flung than contemporary Aotearoa.
He tackles six Uralic languages over the ten cover versions that make up the album. Expertly curated, they range from traditional tracks to more recent ones.
I contacted Reynolds for some backstory on this unique project, and discovered his grandfather was Hungarian, which piqued his curiosity. He picked up a few phrases in his teens, and eventually started to learn songs with the help of online translations.
This wasn’t just limited to Uralic languages - he told me he’s also done it with tracks in Italian, French and Portuguese.
Learning this just makes it more impressive how thoroughly he makes these songs his own. His rendition of ‘Szomorú vasárnap’ or ‘Gloomy Sunday’, is sparse and gorgeous. The track originates from 1933, but you can’t mistake the sincerity that Reynolds imbues it with.
He played every instrument on Uralic Songs, aside from the clarinet and cello which appear on a few tracks. It’s all very accomplished, and his voice is the best thing in his arsenal - pure and mournful, but malleable.
On ‘Szivárvány havasán’ it’s the only sound we hear, drenched in reverb, and aching with feeling.
The standout track for me is ‘Gyöngyhajú lány’, or ‘The Girl with Pearly Hair’, one of the more recent compositions here. It originally appeared on the 1969 album 10,000 Steps, by Hungarian space-rock band Omega. Their version is driven by electric guitars, but Reynolds’ is no less epic.
Uralic Songs is impressive for many reasons, and it’s also just a great listen, regardless of whether you understand the words or not. The songs say so much about László Reynolds, even though he didn’t write them.
One of his more drastic reinterpretations is ‘Куккук’, or ‘Cuckoo’, a tribute to the birdsong which signals the end of winter in Siberia. His voice is hushed and doubled, and blanketed by various acoustic plucks. It’s a lovely tribute to a far-flung place, from right here in Aotearoa.
Endless Rooms by Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever
Photo: Supplied
Bands contain their own precarious ecosystem, with multiple egos to manage, and differing amounts of spotlight required for each member. When more than one person is lead singer, I imagine things get trickier still.
Having said that, Aussie band Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever contain three, and if one thing defines their music, it’s its easy going nature.
Not that their songs don’t hit hard sonically, it’s more that, on their third album Endless Rooms, even with its newfound political underpinnings, they conjure the amiable feeling of hanging out at the pub with some mates.
‘Tidal River’ has some of the spark of late seventies Television. Tom Russo has a way of singing that dips into speaking at times, and we’re only 45 seconds into the track before he’s let out a ‘whoo’. It’s the kind of song where if you listen close enough, you hear every member doing something slightly out of the ordinary.
The album was written during the Australian wildfires of 2020, and under the exuberance of the music lie some pressing concerns: Russo sings “Ceiling’s on fire/ trains leaving the station/ It’s January and we’re on vacation”.
It’s one of a few songs here pointing out a kind of middle class apathy regarding things like climate change, but the band don’t let themselves off the hook either. Another line goes “Don’t point out what’s underneath/ keep the peace on the green leafed streets”.
As Russo told Stereogum, the song is partly about the idea of Australia as a lucky country, blessed with natural resources. He said “It’s not lucky for the First People that were dispossessed and continue to suffer from that”.
In the same interview Joe White said next track ‘The Way it Shatters’ touches on Australia’s treatment of migrants, and the former prime minister hiding behind his faith. In the chorus he sings “If you were in the boat would you turn the other way”.
Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever are led by singers Tom Russo, Joe White, and Fran Keaney, each of whom play guitar. Scottish band Teenage Fanclub sprang to mind as an outfit who take a similar approach, but here the singing is less polished, and the guitars are more inventive.
The bands’ approach to songwriting on the album informed its name, Endless Rooms. Lockdown brought them back to their roots, writing separately in their bedrooms. They said each track is like an empty room waiting to be filled. They also said it’s a reference to touring, which can wind up feeling like a succession of rooms.
The album’s sound is also based around rooms: those at a ranch two hours north of Melbourne where recording took place. Amps went in the upstairs mezzanine, drums downstairs. Mics were everywhere, capturing the sound of the house, and defining the size of the record. It really does sound roomy.
‘Saw You at the Eastern Beach’ has a kind of urgency that the band do very well, and contains another political dig, saying “The petrochemical factory glitters like so many precious stones, even through the bay windows of the quarter acre homes.”
These barbed lines add an interesting shading to Endless Rooms, moments that feel angry and a bit hopeless. They’re at odds with the music, which is consistently breezy, almost despite itself.
Mostly Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever are great at being a band - the singing isn’t technically perfect, but it’s heartfelt, and you can tune into any one of the three guitar parts on each song and hear something interesting, and often catchy. They’re a good example of something greater than the sum of its parts.
Forest City by Maria Chiara Argirò
Photo: Supplied
Electronic music started to be described as ‘pastoral’ sometime in the mid nineties, when a duo called Boards of Canada sanded the metallic edges off their drum beats, and made their analog synthesisers sound as organic as possible. Their 2000 EP doesn’t hide the impulse, titled A Beautiful Place Out in the Country.
A new album aims to plough this exact earth - the natural world by way of modern technology. What’s more surprising is that it’s by an Italian jazz pianist, who, after two albums in more traditional territory, has embraced lush textures and brittle rhythms, and added her voice to the mix. If jazz is made on impulse, this all feels premeditated.
Maria Chiara Argirò was a jazz fusion performer in her birthplace of Rome, before moving to London eleven years ago and continuing to do the same. Forest City is a brand new aural palette, but always feels like a progression rather than a left turn.
‘Clouds’ is built around synths and a loop of her own voice; the only jazz signifier comes from Christos Stylianides’s meandering trumpet.
‘Greenarp’ starts off traditionally structured before its rhythmic impulses take over. Agirò’s voice is prominent but shares the feeling of breaking down to its motes, submerged in the track’s gauzy texture.
It’s perhaps interesting to note that she didn’t write the lyrics for the album - that was done by Daniel Gadd. But she certainly conceived the idea or theme for each song, and the album itself.
She told Talkinghouse she was “trying to find a balance between the organic, natural environment and the industrial city to give an optimistic vision of the dialogue between these two contrasting worlds. It’s a concept record, about the duality of nature and city. An ideal world where, perhaps, nature and technology can coexist in peace.”
Even the title track's structure is conceptual - the jittery first half represents the city, and the dreamier second the forest.
Like a lot of this type of music, the thing I enjoy the most is its texture; comforting blankets of sound to sink into. That Maria Chiara Argirò has pivoted this way from jazz fusion just marks it as that much more interesting, and makes me wonder where she might head from here.
