Quincy Newton – Oh My My
Genre: Psychedelic / Freak Folk, Americana, Jazz Fusion
You don’t meet a lot of people that worship Odin and embrace Scandinavian deities these days. Actually, if you have a habit of attending black-metal concerts, you meet plenty of those. But, you don’t meet many that actually take it seriously. For the most part, declaring your allegiance to Odin is a great way to get attention, or, at the very least, a conversation starter.
Ye ol’ music that couldn’t quite crack it in the charts works in much the same way. Sure, I don’t mean to claim that people don’t play jazz anymore. But, even Conservatory students are preoccupied with a modern iteration of jazz, not what Wes Montgomery might have been able to come up with. You see, just like classic rock, jazz and other forms of semi-archaic music, are flavours.
Quincy Newton’s great tune Oh My My uses traditional jazz and folk elements to terrify. It’s a really clever stylistic choice. The Apocalyptic visions described by the singer fit right alongside the acoustic jazz guitar and fiddle. The production too works to suggest that this might just as well be a pre-War recording stopping only at adding hiss to the tape. It’s a convincing left-turn into vintage horror, and smart use of musical complexity.
Maja Lena – No more flowers
Genre: Psychedelic / Freak Folk, Chamber Pop, Lo-fi Rock
There are things that musicians simply can’t get in class. And, many of these things aren’t even the kind with which you are born and can be easily attributed to pure talent. Many of the greatest tricks of the trade that an artist can learn can only be acquired through experience. This, naturally, means that the artist must make themselves available to experimentation and failure. It seems, in fact, that nobody is able to tower above others before facing a few blows to the ego.
In fact musicians, singers especially should be wary of learning too much from their teachers. Sure, if they apply themselves enough, they should be able to achieve something akin to technical perfection. This is, after all, the ultimate goal of taking any course, right? But, when they do manage to reach such a level, usually, the artists are reduced to mere players. It’s good to be capable, but one shouldn’t rely on this.
Maja Lena’s No more flowers feature the kind of singing that cannot be taught by a teacher. It’s singing that comes out of a breath that does not adhere to classic restrictions. It sounds like the kind of singing that is achieved by recording immediately after climbing the hill. It’s a novel way to consider breath and intonation. And, it’s a sound and a strategy that works very well within the archaic folk sound that Maja Lena works with here. It’s a sound that brings to mind the 1960s, pre-Hippie, British folk bands. This is a sound that is just as precious.
