Noteworthy: New Music from Joe Bonamassa, Vikingur Ólafsson, and More
By Jon Hersey
Welcome to “Noteworthy,” a weekly update on new music and related news. This week’s noteworthy picks are:
_Blues Deluxe Vol. 2 _ by Joe Bonamassa
Joe Bonamassa is at the heart of today’s blues scene. Not only is he one of the purest practitioners of this long-loved American art, he’s a major proponent of passing it on to the next generation via his nonprofit, Keeping the Blues Alive. It’s all part of paying forward the favors he’s received from blues legends who came before him, including Eric Clapton, who joined him onstage at the Royal Albert Hall—fulfilling one of Bonamassa’s childhood fantasies—and B. B. King, who started hiring Bonamassa to open for him when the upstart was only eleven.
Despite his auspicious start, though, the child prodigy matured in a post-Stevie Ray Vaughan world, in which blues once again receded from the mainstream, leaving his career hanging by a thread. Bonamassa was dropped by Sony in 2000, six weeks after the release of his debut solo album. Nearly ready to throw in the towel, he and his manager Roy Weisman pooled the last of their money to record _ Blues Deluxe _ in 2003. “We started selling them out of the trunks of our cars. And once we figured that out—that you could make more selling thirty thousand copies out of the trunk of your car than you would have had you sold 1.5 million on a major label—the light went on.”1 It was an inflection point in Bonamassa’s career, and his latest album, Blues Deluxe Vol. 2, celebrates its twentieth anniversary. The album follows the same formula as its predecessor: eight cover songs and two originals. Bonamassa has performed and recorded plenty of covers over the years, but unlike Clapton, who peaked with his 1994 From the Cradle collection of classic blues covers, Bonamassa’s most intriguing work remains his original material. Such songs as “Drive,” from his 2016 Blues of Desperation, and “The Loyal Kind,” from his 2021 Time Clocks, thread the needle between his roots and more modern blues rock. Still, Vol. 2 demonstrates a love and mastery of the genre and the instrument, and it will please blues fans, particularly the album’s first single, “I Want to Shout about It,” with solos—as joyous as the lyrics—not only by Bonamassa but also onetime Vaughan sideman Reese Wynans on organ and Paulie Cerra on sax.
_ J. S. Bach: Goldberg Variations _ by Vikingur Ólafsson
Speaking of mid-career virtuosi rerecording timeless music, Vikingur Ólafsson just released his take on J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Ólafsson is something of a Bach specialist. His 2018 album of Bach’s solo piano works won BBC Music Magazine’s album of the year award.
The 1741 title page for Bach’s Goldbergs promised purchasers “the refreshment of their spirits,” and Ólafsson delivers. He’s been called Iceland’s Glenn Gould, one of the 20th century’s most celebrated pianists, who likewise recorded the variations—twice, actually: once in 1955 at age twenty-three, and again in 1980, two years before his death. Greater aficionados than I am no doubt will have much to say in comparing these to Ólafsson’s effort, but one thing will be clear to all: Ólafsson’s recording is more sonically vivid than Gould’s 1955 version and, if at times less sprightly than Gould’s 1980 rendition, also warmer and more pleasing. The variables here include not merely the musician and instrument but the recording space, gear, and techniques, all of which seem to provide Ólafsson the edge in terms of tone quality. Plus, whereas Gould (whose life ended in a shambles of disorders and addictions) let loose and hum-sang along with his playing loudly enough to distract listeners of his 1980 recording—listen to “Variation 16,” for instance—Ólafsson lets his piano do all the singing.
He says that “the Goldbergs are like an encyclopaedia about how you can dream on a keyboard,” and it’s a dream worth returning to.2 He recommends listening to the variations “first thing in the morning, every day for a month.” By the end, he promises, “you’ll have a lot of new ideas—and a lot of love for this music.”
_ Tether _ by Of Mice and Men
Few things could be stylistically further from the Goldberg Variations than the latest release from the California metalcore band Of Mice and Men. Tether features tracks titled “Warpaint,” “Shiver,” and “Eternal Pessimist.” Yet, despite the foreboding names and forbidding sonics, “the theme of Tether has to do with the idea of wanting to protect your loved ones from the storms of life,” according to vocalist and bassist Aaron Pauley. That’s fitting, given that this album, the band’s eighth, was written during the COVID-19 pandemic and government-mandated lockdowns.
Although Pauley describes it as “self-reflective,” the album might best be characterized as an outstretched hand, seeking to stabilize those in all manner of distressing situations. “Integrations,” for instance, is about rebuilding one’s life—particularly, from the psychological standpoint—after hitting an awful low. It “musically represents how we have a deep psychological need to organize our chaos,” explains Pauley.3 And “Warpaint”
is about how the thing in your life that you’re struggling against can feel personified as a monster or a creature hunting you, and how it can be in our nature to acquiesce to those sorts of things. But the more present we can be in our lives, the more we can put up a fight.4
The song is well-encapsulated aggression that might likewise appeal to those facing real monsters, whether Russian troops in Ukraine or Hamas terrorists in Gaza.
_ Supernova _ by Aidan Bissett
Far away, in yet another corner of the musical universe, is Aidan Bissett’s Supernova. At a time when at least half of new music features lyrics that make zero sense—I mean it, try listening to any new releases playlist without melting brain cells—Supernova strikes a welcome contrast. Granted, there’s nothing revolutionary or deeply artistic here, just a modern update to the pop formula that has worked for decades: simple, catchy songs with anthemic choruses about getting the girl of your dreams, or losing her, or merely dreaming of her. Or, as in the album’s opener, “People Pleaser,” realizing that she’s actually the girl of your nightmares:
If you see that girl called people pleaser
Don’t trust her eyes when you get what you needed
She’ll eat you alive
All in one bite
You get the point: It’s all about girls and love, requited or not.
The album is lightweight in another sense, too; its seven songs span just twenty-two minutes. That’s fitting, perhaps, for a twenty-one-year-old who built his following with Instagram reels less than a minute long. Yet, for all its recycled themes, Supernova gets something right. It’s fun, sticky, and, at times, just different enough to bend your expectations without breaking them.
_ Néo-Romance _ by Alexandra Stréliski
On that note, I can’t help but bend the “new” in this first installment on “Noteworthy” new music to tell you about Alexandra Stréliski’s Néo-Romance, released in March 2023. Deeply influenced by film music and such Romantic composers as Chopin and Schubert, it is yet another collection of hauntingly gorgeous piano music from the Canadian neoclassical composer.
If you’re not familiar with her work, Néo-Romance may not be the place to start: It’s darker than her other albums, such as the lullaby-esque _ INSCAPE _ (played multiple times daily in my home in efforts to put our four-month old to sleep). That’s understandable; similar to Tether, it was written during government lockdowns in response to COVID-19, and while Stréliski retraced the steps and uncovered stories of some of her Polish-Jewish ancestors. Although it anchors the more depressive end of the spectrum in Stéliski’s catalog, it is beautiful nonetheless and a particularly fitting soundtrack for fall. Light some candles and be whisked away as you string up some Halloween decorations.
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That’s “Noteworthy” for this week. I hope something here will strike the right chord for you. Let me know what you like, or don’t, and why. And let me know what you’ve been listening to lately—I’m always looking for good music suggestions!