Wild God
By Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Well-known agony uncle Nick Cave and musical offsider Warren Ellis narrowed things down to just the two of them on 2021 album Carnage, but the Bad Seeds band approach is back on this, the first and title track of an album not due until August. It’s a very theatrical number of multiple gearshifts that goes a bit Bohemian Rhapsody at the three-minute mark before its thrillingly grand gospel-gothic final laps. Along the way Cave revisits Jubilee Street (a song from 2013′s Push and Sky Away), offers some memorable couplets (“it was rape and pillage in the retirement village”) and works himself into bit of a later declaring: “I’m a wild god, baby I’m a wild god.” For anyone not entirely convinced by Carnage, this sounds like a return to form. – Russell Baillie
Prologue
By Kamasi Washington
A rollicking eight minute-plus single of oceanic movements and flow from the man who believes more is better. Jazz composer-saxophonist Washington thinks big with sprawling, acclaimed and award-winning conceptual albums in his catalogue, notably 2015′s appropriately named The Epic which ran across three CDs. Prologue – full of whirling bebop saxophones, big band momentum and driving dancefloor beats – announces the forthcoming album Fearless Movement (May 3) which features Thundercat, George Clinton, Andre 3000 and various rappers. More joyful music from Kamasi for those who don’t usually care for jazz. – Graham Reid
The Milkman of Human Kindness
By Pickle Darling
Christchurch’s Pickle Darling has covered Billy Bragg’s 1983 hit The Milkman of Human Kindness, putting a wholesome, happy bedroom pop spin on what was originally a grungier 80s English folk-rock anthem. They make it work though, it slots perfectly into their discography as it is and it’s worth a listen for the silky soft vocal performance alone. – Alana Rae
Imaan
By Mustafa
If the terrific local dramedy Miles from Nowhere and its guitar-strumming lead character Said has prompted a question about Islam and singer-songwriters who aren’t Cat Stevens, this new track by Sudanese Canadian poet-turned-musician Mustafa might be just the answer. This gorgeous song follows last year’s Name of God on the way to a debut album later this year. In a nice bit of serendipity, the striking video clip stars Dutch model Imaan Hammam. – Russell Baillie
E Tu
By Lady Shaka
Pioneering hip-hoppers Upper Hutt Posse got in first with that title in 1988 but the DJ-producer samples the vocals from Aaria’s 2001 top twenty hit Kei A Wai Rā Te Kupu into an exuberant infectious club thumper. You can read more about Lady Shaka as she heads to this week’s Womad and Homegrown festivals, in a profile by Russell Brown in the latest issue of the Listener. – Russell Baillie
Goddess
By Laufey
Fresh from her chart and Grammy success with her debut album Bewitched, the Icelandic-Chinese chanteuse Laufey – like Norah Jones before her – bridges genres and on this new single moves from nightclub cabaret through Broadway pop (“You took a star to bed, woke up with me instead”) to a Streisand-like melodramatic flourish which wouldn’t shame Kate Bush. – Graham Reid
Strange World
By La Luz
In her solo career La Luz’s singer Shana Cleveland has explored acoustic folk and increasingly brought the sound of airy Californian pop to La Luz’s surf rock style. As she does here on a pop song which opens with fuzzed-up guitar then drifts into dream-pop and from the midpoint hits a spot between exotic surf music and psychedelia. An enticing single from a new album due in May. – Graham Reid
Shakes
By Luke Hemmings
5 Seconds of Summer’s lead vocalist, Luke Hemmings, has taken on a new solo track. Opening in an echoey flurry of dream-pop sounds, Shakes moves quickly through verses and choruses in what’s a smooth, sparkly love song. It’s very cohesive and catchy and plays to his strengths vocally in its consistently high notes. – Alana Rae
Jorge Grundman: ‘Evangelium secundum Ioannem – Capitulo 20 (Vocalise)’, from A mortuis resurgere (The Resurrection of Christ).
By Susana Cordón (soprano), The Brodsky Quartet
The Brodsky Quartet, who start their New Zealand tour with William Barton in Gisborne on March 14, have form with Jorge Grundman’s music, having recorded two of the Spanish composer’s string quartets. Here, the Brodskys team up with soprano Cordón for a meditation on Christ’s resurrection. Grundman is something of an all-rounder. As well as composing, he flirted briefly with the pop charts in the early 1980s, teaches sound engineering at a Madrid university, and devotes time to humanitarian causes, donating proceeds from his music to Doctors Without Borders.
