Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats – I Need Never Get Old
Nathaniel Rateliff’s second album has already buoyed me through the past few weeks, and his show at the Lexington in June was one of the best I’ve seen this year. Anyone expecting the forlorn introspection of his debut might be surprised by this record: a collection of great, rough-hearted soul classics that carry a similar torch to Matthew E White, Alabama Shakes and Leon Bridges, only they’re just a little undone and dishevelled. It’s as if you took Sam Cooke and ruffled him about a bit. The album isn’t out until September but this is the opening track – a song so impossibly glorious I laughed out loud when I first heard it.
Aero Flynn – Crisp
In the early noughties, Josh Scott was part of the same Wisconsin music scene as Justin Vernon (then pre-Bon Iver and playing in DeYarmond Edison), his band, Amateur Love, its reigning kings. But at the precise moment Amateur Love looked set to take off, Scott balked and relocated to Chicago. As his friends’ music careers flourished - Bon Iver, Megafaun, Field Report, Peter Wolf Crier - Scott remained silent. He still wrote songs, but despite the constant encouragement, begging and beseeching of his friends, he refused to do anything with them. It has taken years, a time of illness, depression, isolation, to get him back into the studio, recording a new set of songs as Aero Flynn, with Vernon on production. The result is quite staggering – delicate yet danceable, intimate yet immense; I feel a little dazzled by the science behind its songs. This track gives just a hint of what the record holds, a song that ducks and dives and winds itself around you.
Maia – In the Springtime
I was teaching a writing course in Devon recently, when one of my students asked if I knew of Maia, a four-piece from Huddersfield. I’m ashamed to say that despite the fact they have supported Anais Mitchell and Sam Lee, won last year’s Yorkshire Gig Guide award for outstanding live band and, more pressingly, claim to have invented the sci-fi folk genre, I did not. This track is from their debut album a couple of years ago, but as it’s the first one I heard, and loved, I felt it was the one to share. It’s a wonderful melding of percussion, trumpet, ukulele, mandolin and voice, a simple tribute to the joys of spring, with some of the spirit of Stornoway. Hold tight for the moment around 2min 50sec when the song seems to unleash all its glee.
Spooner Oldham – Julie Brown’s Forest
In September, Light in the Attic will reissue Spooner Oldham’s sole solo album, Pot Luck, a collection of co-writes and self-penned classics first released in 1972. Julie Brown’s Forest gives you a taste: it’s a rich, resonant, ache of a song. If you don’t know Oldham, make the effort to acquaint yourself with his genius: a sculptor of the Muscle Shoals sound, one of the most revered songwriters writing in the deep south during the soul music boom of the 1960s, he’s responsible for tracks such as I’m Your Puppet, A Woman Left Lonely and It Tears Me Up. He’s also played keys for everyone from Etta James to Aretha Franklin via Wilson Pickett. This month he’s touring the UK with fellow songwriting legend Dan Penn. I recommend you beg, borrow or steal to get a ticket.
John J Presley
The eagle-eyed among you may spot Presley as Duke Garwood’s guitarist, but as his 2014 singles Honeybee and Left attested, he has his own musical splendour to offer. On 24 July he releases his White Ink EP, recorded with the great Liam Watson at Toe Rag studios. Presley cites his influences as Son House and Mogwai, and his music’s shape and sound do seem to sit midway between the blues of the Mississippi Delta and the beautiful enormity of my favourite post-rock geniuses. It’s a ferocious, belly-deep sound, but somehow tender with it.
