The new albums of the week and answers to what connects Helene Fischer and Johnny Cash and why music producer Maya Jane Coles is currently delivering the best current craft.
What do Helene Fischer and Johnny Cash have in common? Well, both of them hit the charts from areas that for a long time, from a pop perspective, appeared to be the ghastly empire of the barbarians. Hic sunt leones on popist so to speak. One made hits, the other country. But there are also differences. The most important: Cash also made it onto the turntables of the features bourgeoisie. Unfortunately, this did not go without a good deal of corpse-busting. Rick Rubin packed a couple of acoustic guitars under the half-dead Cash’s voice, which was humming with the last of his strength rather than sung – the hit album was ready.
A previously unpublished live recording has now been released. Can there be much more to come after the famous Folsom Prison and San Quentin concerts? It can. The show “At the Carousel Ballroom”, recorded in April 1968, the cover decorated with flowers in the proper style, is energetic, casual and has an impressive sound quality. June Carter Cash is there too, freshly married to Johnny, and it seems like they’re almost listening to their honeymoon. In addition to the hit hits “I Walk the Line” and “Ring of Fire”, Cash and Band also play the folk classic “This Land is Your Land”, cover Bob Dylan and offer so much outlaw poetry that it becomes unmistakably clear: Country is actually no “right”, conservative music, but the neighbor of the blues. Particularly nice: “Bad News”. The culprit is so angry that he even defeats the gallows rope – Johnny accompanies it with the appropriate snotty noises.
Maya Jane Coles: “Night Creature”
(Photo: I / AM / ME)
Maya Jane Coles is also closer to Helene Fischer than she presumably believes (if she knows the German chart blockbuster miracle). They both make music that will seem hopelessly uncool in 2021. In the case of the British-Japanese DJ, this is house. Or at least a contemporary descendant of it. Four to the floor, sweeping synths, one or the other master vocal track. Strangely enough, Cole’s music is not uncool at all, but the best current craft, born from the melancholy of the night at least as much as from the hope of sweaty post-Covid parties. Her tracks radiate urban warmth, never moan monotonously, but have a clearer dramaturgy than many top ten songs thanks to precisely placed, twisted voice snippets and beat manipulations. You can also dance to it, by the way. Who hasn’t forgotten it yet.