New Summer Sounds from Tank and the Bangas, Tatum Gale, Professor Shorthair, and More
Tarionna “Tank” Ball
New Orleans music comes from home studios as much as clubs these days, as many of these recent releases show.
Labor Day has passed, summer’s over, and I have some clean up work to do. In the last month or so while I was traveling with the family, a number of New Orleans-based releases crossed my desk. Many of them came out of home studios and other similar DIY set-ups, but just because the groups aren’t born in the clubs doesn’t make them less worthy of attention.
One release that didn’t spring from humble origins is Tank and the Bangas’ new The Heart, The Mind, The Soul. Late last week, they digitally released the album that started as three EPs produced by The Roots’ James Poyser, Iman Omari, and Robert Glasper. Physical versions will be out October 11, and the project foregrounds the spoken word art that was Tank’s calling card from the start. On their own, the songs all show the craft, commitment and sense of musical adventure that is central to the band’s identity, but for me the narrower focus misses the interplay with other sounds that makes their music so rich.
Poysner and Omari connect Tank’s spoken word to different flavors of hip-hop while Glasper plays up their jazz side, and the guests throughout suggest the company they rightly think they should keep. In addition to the producers, the album features contributions from Jill Scott, aja monet, Samara Joy, J. Ivy, and Baya Bey, and their presence cements Tank and the Bangas’ place in the company of artists making progressive Black music.
Tank limits the number of voices she uses to her dreamiest, most deliberate few, and that works, but when she juxtaposes those voices with all the others in her head, it works better. On Green Balloon and Red Balloon, Tank and the Bangas’ presented a version of the Black musical experience in all its multi-dimensional richness. Forty or so years of pop, jazz, funk, R&B and hip-hop show up in dialogue with each other, and that’s their special sauce. They change musical, intellectual and aesthetic registers at full speed to be comic, romantic, ambitious, nurturing, raunchy, realistic, wise and so much more, switching gears from verse to verse and song to song. The Heart, The Mind, The Soul narrows them.
That said, their fearlessness and their willingness to play the long game is admirable. They make music with the confidence that there will be more, and that allows them to pursue the ideas they’re emotionally, musically, and artistically moved by now. The Heart, The Mind, The Soul is rich and committed and represents where they are now. I simply find them richer when this kind of material lives in juxtaposition with all their other impulses.
Tatum Gale was born in Portland, Maine and spent time in Brooklyn before moving to New Orleans. He leads with his piano, which he employs sparsely on this summer’s “Your Day” and “Chickadee Eye.” You can hear his affection for James Blake in his spare, late night earnestness, but his impulses are more pop than Blake’s. He’s not as experimental and relies on a simple melody and a hushed, intimate vocal to make his mark. “Chickadee Eye” is bolder as it is stripped down to just a few moody piano chords and an almost spoken vocal, but Your Day” is the tune that will stay with you. You may not remember who made it, but you’ll want to hear it again.
I’m not sure yet who Gold Connections are musically, but everything I’ve heard so far interests me. You can hear a lot of indie bases covered on 2018’s Popular Fiction, then in 2021 singer and songwriter Will Marsh moved to New Orleans, worked, and had some life until music caught up with him. Working with friends, family and members of Motel Radio, he recorded the upcoming album Fortune, due out on October 25.
The most recent release, “Easy,” has a clipped style that brings The Cars’ first album to mind, and while I haven’t found more of that sound in what I have heard so far, I’m interested, particularly when the guitarist breaks the tension with jangle pop moments.
New Orleans’ DJ Professor Shorthair has a remix of “Vudú y Chachacha” by Austin’s El Combo Oscuro due out September 6. The original has a sexy, psychedelic Latin groove that he ramps up, making everything sound a little more watery. Subtle drum additions give the track additional street cred before Rakaa Iriscience of Dilated Peoples drops a verse.
If I were Olivia Valentine, I would update my bio on my Bandcamp page. The band—it’s not a woman named Olivia—says it is “an indie band that defies convention with their innovative sound and eclectic musical influences,” but that’s not what I hear on their new “My Records Back.” Think about all the smart, indie rock bands you liked or were told you’d like and Olivia Valentine has a little of them in its DNA. It’s not as florid as Flaming Lips, not as acrid as Sonic Youth, not as scattered as Pavement, but somehow if you triangulate between those targets, you can find them.
Carter Scheuermann and Alina Paiz are Graffiti, who might want to rethink the kind of name that’s impossible to search for online. Their sweet, charming bedroom pop merits more attention than that name will get them. I enjoyed the video of Carter and Alina explaining how they made “Dragon Wings,” and had the feeling that their output represented new ways of existing in the music world. They didn’t discover it, but they’re not alone in living a largely digital life where social media’s not a tool but a community that has its own customs and culture.
Musically, I like this but look forward to hearing what they make when they rely less on off the shelf presets.
Creator of My Spilt Milk and its spin-off Christmas music website and podcast, TwelveSongsOfChristmas.com.
