Monday Music Roundup

I was enjoying Japanese food a few nights ago with some good people, and yummy as it was, midway through my udon and sake I had a sudden void open up within my soul for some Wagamama.
Wagamama.
See — it makes you happy just to say it. It hit me like a bolt from the blue and I’ve been missing it ever since.

Wagamama is the name of a series of Japanese restaurants started in London, tasty – tasty – tasty. I first became acquainted with the Covent Garden one and have eaten at Wagamama each time I’ve been in London since — and I always have a good time. I read that they are opening their first US location in Boston on April 23. Go! Wasting time on the Wagamama website is also a poor substitute for the vittles, but fun — like a carnival. They have a Passion-O-Meter (I am, apparently, Hot Stuff) and Mystic Noodles fortune-telling (Saturn and Mars are making a mess of my noodle aura).

Mostly it just makes me hungry.

The Words You Used To Say
Dean & Britta
Former frontman of Luna combines with the voice of the most truly, truly, truly outrageous punk rocker of Saturday mornings in the ’80s, Jem (real name is Britta Phillips but if I were her I think I’d just change my name to Jem). This is from Dean & Britta‘s delightfully subtle new album Back Numbers, out now on Zoe/Rounder. These two also scored The Squid and The Whale, aka the most stunningly depressing movie I’ve seen in recent years – but hey, it sounded good.

Half-A-Life
Luce
This is an atmospheric new song today from San Francisco band Luce, off the soundtrack of a spooky hospital movie Sublime, featuring that guy from Ed. The song itself is not spooky at all, but rather a wistful, melodic latin-tinged affair. Luce is currently working on a new album (follow-up to the wonderful 2005 album Never Ending) and have announced a series of shows for the lucky California folks, including a special summer festival up with the North Bay hippies co-starring bluesy rocker Jackie Greene.

You Are The Best Thing (new)
Ray LaMontagne
This is such a naked, vulnerable song — and I’ve always much preferred the raw earnest Ray to the slickly produced Ray. I am pretty sure this is a brand new tune, several of you have written to me about LaMontagne performing it lately; this version’s from 12/16/06 at the Beacon Theatre in NYC. The mp3 is not stellar, admittedly, but the song certainly is. [photo credit]

Ballad of Humankindness
The Dears
A good friend breathlessly told me that I had to check out this song and my, how she knows me. I did indeed enjoy the song from the moment those opening beats started. I am a sucker for beats like this, the blending of the acoustic with the thumping danceable rhythm that just gets better as the song progresses. The tune, from Montreal’s The Dears‘ 2006 album Gang Of Losers (Arts & Crafts), builds into something fantastic —- even if the semi-preachy tones about all of us learning forgiveness and not judging the homeless are a bit heavy-handed.

Salala (featuring Peter Gabriel)
Angélique Kidjo
I have written before about the wonderful West African songstress Angélique Kidjo, and I always get into the Africa world-beat fusion of her music. She has a new album out May 1 called Djin Djin and it features a whole host of A-listers like Amadou & Miriam, Ziggy Marley, Joss Stone, Carlos Santana, Alicia Keys and this guy. Every time I hear Peter Gabriel’s gruff, velvety voice I say to myself, “I forgot how much I love Peter Gabriel.” The whole album is very good global listening.

World Music Wednesday

Angélique Kidjo represents a beautiful fusion of world cultures, and her music is not easily pigeonholed. While her native African culture flows beautifully through all of her releases, each phase in her life and in her music represents different influences.

Kidjo lived her childhood in the West African country of Benin, where she sang with her family and, in addition to her native culture, her brothers taught her to love soul music and R&B. By the time she reached her teens she was a local star, and knew all the lyrics to James Brown’s greatest hits catalog.

When she was 23, Kidjo moved to Paris, and was immediately embraced by the city’s thriving Afro-Caribbean music scene. During these years, she focused on her songwriting, and supported both American jazz legend Nina Simone, as well as South African star Miriam Makeba. Since then she has worked with artists as varied as Carlos Santana (wait, who hasn’t worked with Santana?), Prince’s personal producer David Z (during her Afro-funk dance phase), and sax-player Branford Marsalis.

My favorite disc, I think, from Angélique Kidjo is her 2002 release Black Ivory Soul, which fuses Beninoise music with a Brazilian sound from the Salvador de Bahia region. You may have heard the track she does with Dave Matthews, Iwoya, which I think is excellent, but there are a number of very good tracks on this disc.

- “Afirika“
A playful and harmonic song. Don’t you wish you knew what they were saying? It just sounds jubilant.

- “Okan Bale“
This reminds me of water. Kidjo wrote it in Brazil, “facing the sea.”

- “Iwoya“
Angélique and Dave (who was born in South Africa) go head to head, complementing each other’s voices. When Kidjo asked Matthews to sing with her, he first said, “I’m not singing with you. You scare me to death.”

- “Ces Petits Riens“
Another Serge Gainsbourg cover! This one shows how beautifully her time in France has influenced her music.

As Nigel Williamson from UK’s The Times said, “File under Africa? File under Caribbean? Just file it under superb.”