Part of that might be because the band is so large: with ten members, The Suffers aren’t short on creative potential or ability. But there’s a whole lot more to them than just creativity: they sound like they stepped out of the era of Al Green, Earth, Win & Fire, The Temptations, and Aretha Franklin. But according to a brief interview with NPR, they’ve also been steeped in everything from Latino ska and hip hop to country and R&B.

That could explain why The Suffers don’t seem attuned solely to soul music as a genre, but great music as a whole. There’s a sense of restraint throughout the album: vocalist Kam Franklin doesn’t hold back, but knows when to hold off for the sake of the song, for the sake of the art.

Franklin might be the band’s strongest asset. She’s a powerhouse performer, an incredible singer, but she’s also the biggest reason they don’t sound like a copycat band or a cover group. Her sense of restraint keeps them from coming off as completely old-school. It’s not exclusively about holding off on the big chorus reprise, but it’s also about holding off on some of the genre’s most typical conventions. While the music is big and loud — and nearly punk-like in its celebration of the power in its own performance — Franklin avoids walking the same path and becoming as melodramatic as Aretha Franklin often did.

For a debut record, The Suffers is stunningly self-realized, and the band seems incredibly self-aware. That sort of vibe is what separates them from the rest: it’s something that allows The Suffers to carry soul music into a sense of its own modernity without losing what made it so special before. This Houston band is all soul, all the time, but the power of this record lies in its performance.

The Suffers will make for quite a live show.

The post The Suffers: The Suffers appeared first on Unsung Sundays.

The Mercury-nominated band, now signed to the legendary Blue Note Records, is known for its experimentation with acoustic instruments and electronic noises. Their playfulness with textures is arguably what got them that Mercury Prize notation in 2014, but on Man Made Object they take it to the next level.

The statement from Blue Note explains that the band wrote many of the songs with electronic instrumentation first, and then found ways to transpose it to piano, acoustic bass, and a standard drum kit.

What they arrive at is something that Blue Note is pegging as “acoustic electronica”, but honestly, it’s not something you’ll recognize as such from the get-go. Although GoGo Penguin doesn’t play any jazz bebop the way that traditional fans will expect, this still has all the hallmarks jazz fans will recognize: unpredictable time signature changes, unusual chord progressions (and unusual chords, period), all played to an upbeat and constantly-moving groove.

It’s the groove that appears to fascinate GoGo Penguin. Although Man Made Object doesn’t have standout tracks in the traditional sense (and I doubt the trio is aiming for traditional senses to begin with), the album is at its best when the band experiments with the groove. Not unlike the best electronic music, they’ll unexpectedly change the groove and break with the previous time signature to drop the piano from a peak into a momentous, pounding rhythm — like they do by the tail end of Unspeakable World.

That makes it sound like electronic music, but I would never classify it that way — although their interest in the textures of it is quite clear. In the end, though, experimental jazz has always been about textures. Exploring those through electronic music is interesting, and GoGo Penguin have carved a unique identity through that exploration, but ultimately it’s still jazz music. Jazz music has always encouraged exploring. It’s just that GoGo Penguin have found a different way of doing it.

And it sounds darn great.

The post GoGo Penguin: Man Made Object appeared first on Unsung Sundays.

Not unlike her first EP, this is a brief set of tracks, but the two are clearly linked. The album art is incredibly similar, and the two work well side by side.

With Act II, Kane gets to express her influences in even more obvious way. The gospel influences are turned way up. Kane’s pop influences are more obvious too — her recording time with Prince undoubtedly had an impact — but she blends it with R&B and soul in a fantastic way that sounds nearly British thanks to its infusion of pop sensibilities.

That being said, Kane doesn’t sound like a British pop singer. She sounds purely Chicago: well aware of her roots, and not afraid to sound like her inspiration. (From that perspective, Nina Simone would be proud of this record.)

On Dead Or Alive, Eryn leads a listen-and-repeat bridge with her audience, and her ability to command a tremendous stage presence is obvious. She gets the small crowd positively riled, which is fantastic. It’s tremendously revealing of her potential.

But it’s also, in some ways, the weakest moment out of both her EPs because it reveals her recording limitations right now. I love what she’s doing with her music, but she’s writing songs that are almost too mature for the size of her existing audience. She’s writing stadium-sized tracks, but she doesn’t have the career momentum to properly capture them in the studio as of yet. While I have no doubt that Dead Or Alive would be an incredible song to witness live, on record, it loses its impact.

I don’t know if it matters, though, because this big moment happens on the album’s final track and it leaves you wanting more. The sheer presence of her voice is compelling, and gets you excited for her starry future. That future can’t come fast enough.

The post Eryn Allen Kane: Aviary: Act II — EP appeared first on Unsung Sundays.

But where most of those bands (great examples being Motel Raphaël or Girlpool) would actually write largely-positive songs, The Prettiots offer a biting satire of the entire genre. On Boys (I Dated In Highschool), the girls sing about their exes by name and explain why the relationships never worked out — and they’re not exactly nice (one ex wouldn’t dump his other girlfriend because “she gave great head”). On Suicide Hotline, they sing about pulling a Plath and sticking their heads in the oven to end it all — completely sarcastically, as they explain.

They’re not just a ball of negativity though. Songs like Kiss Me Kinsi are, well, exactly what they sound like — cheerful ballads.

But The Prettiots reveal a lot about themselves with a cover of The Misfits’ Skulls, which they make completely their own. It’s a revelation, but it also reveals what makes The Prettiots tick: this trio is more interested in writing music that, not unlike The Misfits, pokes fun at society in a popular genre du jour.

It’s an experiment that largely works, and is one of the better albums in its genre that I’ve heard for a long time. If you’re still not convinced, check out Stabler.

The post The Prettiots: Funs Cool appeared first on Unsung Sundays.

But 40 Winks, a Belgian duo, has gone on to have a successful career in experimental instrumental hip hop, using the ideas on Sound Puzzle to realize their sound and lay out the foundations that they would continue to play off for the next decade.

Sound Puzzle is an amalgamation of many influences, which may be obvious from the title, but what’s impressive about the record — and 40 Winks as an artist — is how it manages to merge all these sounds and make something cohesive out of it. It’s weird, but not in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable — that weirdness is what makes it unique. The record makes for a compelling Saturday morning lounging at home.

The music also feels as if it tells a narrative, thanks to some well-placed vocal interludes that tell something of a story behind a husband and a wife. The music follows the narrative thematically, and as the marriage begins to deteriorate, the beats and loops become a little more rhythmic and tense.

This makes Sound Puzzle feel like an incredibly coherent album; you shouldn’t skip tracks or be selective if you want to hear the whole experience. Amazingly, this still holds up despite the deluxe version’s additional tracks.

This could be because the additional tracks were originally included with the release in 2007, but in a limited edition print run of 100 cassettes. Times have changed though: with updated (and much more interesting) cover art, the record is now on vinyl for the first time (an infinitely better listening experience than a tape, of course), and those additional tracks are available for all of us to enjoy.

It’s a good time to be a fan of 40 Winks.

The post 40 Winks: Sound Puzzle appeared first on Unsung Sundays.