New and noteworthy

The Rituals of Hildegard Reimagined

Laura Cannell

One way into the otherworldly sounds that Laura Cannell makes with her recorders, medieval harp, and love for the music of the 12th-century nun and mystic Hildegard of Bingen is to play Cannell’s “O Ignee Spiritus” and a recording of Hildegard’s “O Ignis Spiritus Paracliti” back to back. You’ll hear not only what Cannell cherishes in the source material but also what elements of it she considers to be translatable to a secularized epoch: not Hildegard’s profoundly orthodox lyrics apparently, as Cannell forgoes those altogether, but definitely Hildegard’s almost ecstatic sense of peace. Or is it her inexplicably peaceful sense of ecstasy?

Every Kind of Uh-oh

Charlie Peacock

Forty years after his Exit Records debut, Charlie Peacock delivers a wise, bold, and challenging album that ranks with his best. Dan Dugmore’s nearly omnipresent steel guitars provide the atmosphere, but it’s the hooks (try getting “One Small Pebble” out of your head) and the lyrics that make the musicianship and vocals (Peacock’s and his guests’ and background singers’) signify. CCM radio won’t play “The Only Remedy” because it contains a crudity, but Americana radio might. Make that “should.” The song could pass for peak Paul Simon.

Ensoulment

The The

The The’s Matt Johnson may not want the following revelation shouted from the rooftops (he’s on tour, after all, and could do without the boycotts), but he has been red-pilled. “So get with the program. Get in sync. / You’d better self-censor for wrongthink”—and that’s just the first song. In the next one, he laments that the “London [he] knew is gone,” while the U.S. gets its comeuppance in “Kissing the Ring of POTUS.” Johnson speaks more than he sings, amid sounds and melodies that in underplaying their hand increase their grip. “I’m just trying, in a way, to sort of capture the zeitgeist,” he told American Songwriter. He has.

Welcome In

Tianna

YouTube hosts lyric videos to all eight of these songs, but you won’t need them, so clearly does this sweet-voiced Liberty University grad (major: criminal psychology) enunciate. Her vocal malleability, meanwhile, complements the subtle complexities of the melodies, melodies that invite singing along but that take the occasional unexpected turn. Somehow, neither “pop” nor “folk” nor “contemporary” nor “Christian,” each of which she is, conveys how fresh she sounds.

Sergio Mendes Associated Press/Photo by Brian Ach

Encore

Long before the Brazilian musician Sérgio Mendes died in September at the age of 83, his inventively syncopated blend of bossa nova and 5th Dimension-lite vocals had come to be regarded as little more than a novelty. True, from 1966 to 1970 he’d been a mainstay of the adult-contemporary charts, and younger, hipper performers occasionally paid him homage. But otherwise his bid for immortality came down to an ever-growing series of nearly identical best-ofs, and, fair or not, a footnote was what he’d become.

Then, three years ago, in a video titled “The Most Complex Pop Song of All Time” that has been viewed 7 million times so far, the YouTuber Rick Beato demonstrated why “Never Gonna Let You Go,” a hit from the 1983 album Sergio Mendes, is a work of genius. Mendes didn’t write it (Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann did) or sing it (Joe Pizzulo and Leeza Miller did), and he barely played on it (percussion only). But he did select it and oversee a recording for the ages. Not bad for a footnote.