The fourth album from Methyl Ethel sees a slight shift in direction. Announced in January, it sees the band break from the 4AD label to move to Future Classic, and it sees an elevation for Jake Webb to take a more prominent role of front man, not too dissimilar to Oli Alexander’s way of thinking with Years + Years.
Are You Being Haunted? looks to bring out more of the band’s electronic side, while returning to the studio where they made their first records. This is a significant nod to the passing of a dear friend who Webb recorded with at the time.
What’s the music like?
Smart, chic and extremely enjoyable. There are some excellent songs here, tightly packaged and produced with a knowing hand. Proof is especially good, its winning couplet “What can you see now?” dressed with sweeping strings. “My head is heavy, I’ve had awful dreams!” sings Webb. Something To Worry About is great power pop on a larger scale, strutting its stuff with a stately tread. Kids On Holiday is similarly inspired, with torch song lyrics and occasionally irregular rhythms.
Neon Cheap is if anything even better, making a lasting impression with its sharp couplets and catchy hooks. Matters zips along, showing the strength in depth of the album as it leads onto the epic Castigat Ridendo Mores, which has a wall of sound at the heart of its chorus. Finally In A Minute, Sublime, offers a questioning coda, by turns elegant and powerful.
Does it all work?
Yes – because the Methyl Ethel approach is an ‘all killer, no filler’ variety. The album is a compact design, clocking in at around 40 minutes, and packs plenty of incident and verve into that time.
Is it recommended?
Yes, enthusiastically. The new chapter looks set to be a fruitful one for Methyl Ethel, and with Are You Being Haunted? it is off to an auspicious start.
Take some time out this weekend – three minutes and forty-one seconds to be precise – and enjoy this video, a taster of pianist Vanessa Wagner‘s new album Study of the Invisible.
Released today on InFiné Music, the album is a carefully constructed suite of modern piano music, taking in minimal approaches but casting its net wider to hear from composers such as Caroline Shaw, Julia Wolfe and Harold Budd.
Arcana will carry a full review of the album, and an interview with Vanessa where we discuss the recording of the album and her approach to the piano. For now, though, enjoy the peace and stillness of this video!
You can read more about Vanessa Wagner at her website – and to hear more from the album, listen on by using the Bandcamp link below:
This was made during the first Covid lockdown, described by its author as ‘a strange vacuum of feeling lonely and isolated’. However Amphior – aka Mathias Hammerstrøm – emerged from the period with a positive outcome, connecting with himself as a person and addressing some long-held feelings on introversion and sensitivity. Another Presence allowed him to express those feelings and be more himself in the process.
What’s the music like?
Haunting. It is possible to hear what sound like disembodied voices in many of these tracks, and though they are not noticeably lyric-based there is a primeval vocal quality to a lot of Amphior’s writing.
Void, the first track, has wisps of sound in the middle ground, some of them vocal, above a distorted and cracked profile underfoot, like standing on a large geological feature in a cold wind. The voices become more ominous in the course of the second track Phantasm, as does the darker musical language. After these two heavier pieces of music, Imaginary Shelter is just what’s needed, a comforting wash of sound and soothing harmonies. Dream Traveler offers the same welcoming cushion, though is consciously on the move, with that sounds like slow footsteps in the snow. The slow walking continues, with gradually changing vistas, as Sleepwalker takes in a range of colours both dark and light, before Pathfinder pans right out again. The warm colours of Another Presence find Amphior returning to a settled harmonic base, from which What Was Lost offers thick ambience if a hint of unresolved conflict, before ultimately fading away on the wind.
Does it all work?
Yes. Through the eight tracks here Amphior captures both the claustrophobia and strange, twisted freedom lockdown seemed to offer in equal measure, the qualities complementing each other while never becoming fully satisfying. Here the music is ultimately satisfying, finding its resolution from darker thoughts and feelings earlier on.
Is it recommended?
Yes. Another Presence is an affecting and occasionally disquieting listen, moving at a very slow pace as it examines feelings and experiences held deep beneath the surface. Ultimately those examinations bring forward a positive and deeper calm, the listener able to appreciate the long form ambience of this extremely descriptive album.
Adrian Williams Symphony no.1 (2018-19, rev. 2021)
Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth Studio recording 1-2 December 2021
Written by RichardWhitehouse
The 21st Symphony Project, launched five years ago by the English Symphony Orchestra and Kenneth Woods, has seen several impressive premieres – with this First Symphony by Adrian Williams its most ambitious yet, whether in terms of underlying conception or overall impact.
Now in his mid-60s, Williams has been a notable presence – albeit on the periphery – of music in the UK for several decades (more information can be found via the web references below); his advocates including Raphael Wallfisch and the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. Regular listeners to the ESO’s digital concerts will have encountered his striking Chamber Concerto ‘Portraits of Ned Kelly’ and intricately wrought eloquence of Migrations for strings; aspects from both resurfacing here, if on a considerably larger scale and exuding correspondingly greater force.
Playing almost 50 minutes and scored for a sizable orchestra including triple woodwind, five horns, four trumpets and four percussionists with harp, piano and celesta, the present work is evidently a summation of where its composer has reached over the course of his musical (and likely extra-musical) odyssey. Not that there is anything gratuitous or self-indulgent about the outcome; indeed, for all its formal complexity and emotional reach, this is music created out of inherently basic motifs – its initial three notes and their rearrangement generating the first movement’s main themes as well as outlining a long-term tonal trajectory which, though not pursued as systematically as in the earlier symphonies of Robert Simpson, remains as a focus throughout the intervening activity and the focal-point toward which such activity is directed.
From its imposing Maestoso epigraph, the opening Stridente unfolds against the background of, without thereby adhering to, sonata-form principles – its motivic components drawn into a continuous and frequently combative evolution necessarily left unresolved at the close. There follows a Scherzando that eschews ternary design for a through-composed format proceeding by tension and release to its decisive ending. To say the ensuing Lento is the expressive crux of this work might detract from the plangent, desolate tone of music whose frequently sparse textures and elliptical harmonies re-affirm that ‘less is more’. Despite its Energico marking, the finale unfolds with slow-burning momentum made cumulative by channelling its motivic evolution towards a Dolente apotheosis whose outcome is as inevitable as it is transcendent.
An impressive piece in terms not only of ambition but also realization. There are considerable technical challenges on route, but these are met with conviction and no little resourcefulness by an expanded ESO often tested while never fazed during its eventful course. Woods directs with his customary discretion and an attention to detail that goes a long way toward clarifying music which feels ‘complex and luminous’ as much in spirit as by design. Whether or not the outer movements might yield greater panache could only be determined under live conditions.
It might also be noted the designation is no idle boast, Williams having been commissioned to write a successor the ESO will schedule at a future date. Even were it to pursue a wholly different course, the achievement of this First Symphony is one not likely to be diminished.
You can view this concert from 25-29 March at the ESO website, and thereafter for ESO digital supporters here. For more information on Adrian Williams, head to his website or an extensive biography on the MusicWeb International site
Louise Alder (soprano, above), Joseph Middleton (piano, below)
Beach 3 Browning Songs Op. 44 (1889-1900) Clara Schumann Er ist gekommen Op. 12 No. 1; Warum willst du and’re fragen Op. 12 No. 3; Liebst du um Schönheit Op. 12 No. 2 (1841) Lili Boulanger Clairières dans le ciel (excerpts): Elle était descendue au bas de la prairie; Vous m’avez regardé avec toute votre âme; Au pied de mon lit; Nous nous aimerons; Si tout ceci n’est qu’un pauvre rêve (1913-14) Alma Mahler Laue Sommernacht (1910); Ich wandle unter Blumen (1910); Licht in der Nacht (1915) Libby Larsen Try Me, Good King: Last Words of the Wives of Henry VIII (2000)
Wigmore Hall, London, 21 March 2022
Watch and listen
review of online broadcast by Ben Hogwood Picture of Louise Alder (c) Gerard Collett
Soprano Louise Alder and pianist Joseph Middleton are renowned for consistently original programming, and this recital for a BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert at the Wigmore Hall recital was no exception. Assembling songs by five women composers, they offered a fascinating juxtaposition of style and text setting, offering further proof that the music of Clara Schumann and Alma Mahler need no longer operate in the shadows of their husbands.
Given the freshness of the air in Southern England it was entirely appropriate that the pair should begin with a vibrant song from Amy Beach, The year’s at the spring. The first in a trio of Robert Browning settings, it had a sprightly tread, in contrast to the Ah, Love, but a day! of Beach’s short cycle, where ‘summer has stopped’, which found the singer in a worrisome state but easily negotiating her higher range. The third song, I send my heart up to thee, was subtly prompted by Middleton’s arpeggiated piano
The Schumanns’ year of song was not just exclusive to Robert, with Clara publishing three settings of Friedrich Rückert that year. They made a powerful impact in this concert, with a tempestuous account of Er ist gekommen (He came in storm and rain). There was an intimate air to Warum willst du and’re fragen (Why enquire of others), tinged with longing and sung by Alder with a beautiful, natural tone. Liebst du um Schönheit (If you love for beauty) was lost in love, prompted by Middleton’s easily flowing piano.
In her all too brief life, Lili Boulanger gained for herself a reputation as a vocal composer of impressive standing, a view boosted by this quintet taken from Clairières dans le ciel, settings of 13 poems by Francis Jammes. When singing of the ‘girls who are too tall’ in Elle était descendue au bas de la prairie (She had reached the low-lying meadow), Alder soared to the heights, while the pair enjoyed Boulanger’s harmonically elusive writing, Middleton upholding the tension beautifully in Vous m’avez regardé avec toute votre âme (You gazed at me with all your soul).
Au pied de mon lit (At the foot of my bed) stood out as one of the most memorable songs of the recital. A character picture, it was vividly painted by the pair before a turbulent and passionate episode, notable for Alder’s sublime vibrato control at the end. The anticipation of Nous nous aimerons (We shall love each other) hung heavy on the air, with appropriately rich harmonies, before the singer’s lower range brought rich colour and notable control to the slow Si tout ceci n’est qu’un pauvre rêve (If all this is but a poor dream).
We then heard a trio of Alma Mahler settings, strongly chromatic and – in the case of Laue sommernacht (Mild summer night) – particularly sultry. The Heine setting Ich wandle unter Blumen ( I wander among flowers) was short but urgent, before a second setting of Bierbaum, Licht in der Nacht (A nocturnal light) brought us back to earth for deep contemplation. The song rose briefly to acknowledge the rapturous brightness of the star ‘above the house of our Lord Jesus Christ’ before sinking into the dark lower end of the piano once again.
Libby Larsen’s song cycle Try Me, Good King took as its inspiration the last words of the five executed wives of Henry VIII, giving Alder the opportunity to characterise each of the fated women. She did so with impressive power and guile, Katherine of Aragon hanging on high above a worrisome chord, with Anne Boleyn then fraught with trouble. As with the earlier songs Alder’s body language was a powerful visual aid, taking Boleyn’s words ‘Try me’ up to the very skies above. Larsen’s setting for Jane Seymour exhibited a special radiance, while Anne of Cleves was given a resolute if ultimately skewed march. The final Katherine Howard proclaiming her innocence to ultimately deaf ears, insisting her innocence before really scaling the heights of anguish.
As an encore, Alder and Middleton gave us Florence Price’s Night, a chance for the soprano to spread her wings with longer phrases. Perhaps surprisingly there was a hint of Richard Strauss here, enjoyed in the piano part by Middleton – the song capping an hour of discovery and vivid storytelling.
For information on Louise and Joseph’s album of French song on Chandos Records, Chère Nuit, click here
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