The most moving song op Help 2 is ‘Warning’ by the American Cameron Winter. The song by the introverted frontman of Geese, also a known solo artist, fits in with the theme of the benefit album: it has a lonely atmosphere, plaintive singing and a melancholic frame by a ferocious cello. ‘Warning’ is an emotional ‘warning’, a call for humanity.
This is how Winter expresses the meaning of Help 2, an album which was specially recorded by a group of artists who donate the joint proceeds to War Child. This organization, founded in 1993 during the war in the former Yugoslavia, provides help to children in war zones. Published in 1995 The Help Album with songs by Sinéad O’Connor, Oasis and Radiohead, among others, in aid of War Child.
And now there’s part two, featuring 23 songs by two dozen artists from America, Ireland and the UK. The urgency for a next benefit album had increased, according to the organization’s figures. At the time of The Help Album Ten percent of children worldwide were exposed to war violence. At the moment it is one in five children, or twenty percent. These are young people in Sudan, Gaza and Ukraine. It is the largest number since the end of the Second World War.
Even though they are all Anglo-Saxon (no bands from African countries, for example), Help 2 has collected attractive contemporary names, heard in the reggae of Greentea Peng and the meaningful hip-hop of Young Fathers in ‘Don’t Fight The Young’. Many solo contributions in particular were successful. Besides Cameron Winter, there is the warm-blooded Sampha. And even a group like the British Wet Leg sounds ‘solo’ here: accompanied only by sparse guitar chords, singer Rhian Teasdale gives a carried performance of the intimate ‘Obvious’, an audience favorite during concerts, now recorded for the first time. The contribution of the American Big Thief combines pained vocals with mysterious background noise.
It was thanks Help 2 that Arctic Monkeys interrupted their now four-year hibernation. Their eager-sounding ‘Opening Night’ is a renewed introduction and the enthusiastic prelude to a versatile album.
Hester Carvalho
Constant alternation of past joy and present sorrow
Human history is a chain of lost kingdoms. And Bohemia is one of them. The region covers about two-thirds of the Czech Republic, including the capital Prague, where Bohemian princes were crowned. The area also lent its name to the bohemian, that social freebooter.
But the fact that Bohemia still has a place in the collective memory is mainly due to the music. There was the cradle of famous composers such as Bedrich Smetana, Antonin Dvořák and Gustav Mahler. Their birthplace was also immortalized in the pop song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by the British band Queen, a song surrounded by riddles about the meaning of content and title. One story goes that when the idea for this germinated from writer Freddy Mercury, the LP was created Bohemian Rhapsody came onto the market with music by Smetana and Dvořák.
And the Queen hit alliterates – coincidence? – also nice with the title of the new album Bohemian Legacyon which the Dutch Trio plays 258 pieces by three Bohemians Smetana, Dvořák and Josef Suk. They often turned to folk melodies from their native land, with which they became a symbol of Czech nationalism from the second half of the 19th century. During that period, the country wanted to break free from the grip of German-speaking Austria-Hungary.
But it is not the love for Bohemia that predominates in Smetana and Dvořák Bohemian Legacy. The two works deal with a more personal grief. Smetana wrote the music shortly after the death of his four-year-old daughter, and Dvořák commemorated it in Third Piano Trio his recently deceased mother. Trio 258 beautifully highlights the dramatic character and dark tones of these pieces. As a ‘solo voice’, the expressive playing of violinist Eduardo Paredes Crespo is particularly striking, he seems to embody the double-edged sword of sadness: the fierce stab of anger – in the now – but also the beautifully long lines, the pain of loss from which you do not want to say goodbye, because they make you feel how much you still love the dead person. And you still want to continue to embrace that love.
Here and there you also hear the lightness of how beautiful and cheerful life together once was. The fast first notes from the final movement of Smetana’s Piano trio reminiscent of the playful running or dancing of children’s feet, until after about a minute and a half a few hammering bass notes in the piano change the mood and cellist Leonard Besseling starts a nostalgic melody, soon joined by violinist Paredes Crespo and pianist Lestari Scholtes, which determines the irresistible heartbeat of the music. And in this constant alternation of past joy and present sadness – also in Dvořák – the musicians show how much they understand the hermaphroditic nature of mourning.
Joost Galema
“What went wrong?” Morrissey repeats these words a few times on ‘Kerching Kerching’, a song on his fourteenth solo album. Followers of the British singer, frontman of the iconic band The Smiths in the 1980s, will also have often asked this question. Over the past decade, Morrissey has mainly been in the news due to controversial statements, canceled performances and arguments. But after much delay, there is now actually a record. Lyrically and musically speaking Makeup Is a Lie nowhere near his best work at any point. It gets embarrassing on ‘Notre-Dame’, a song that refers to a conspiracy theory about the fire in Paris in 2019. Some of the old Morrissey magic can be heard on the melancholic-sounding closing track ‘The Monsters Of Pig Alley’. This is where his sensitive, warm voice comes into its own.
Thijs Schrik
The Dutch-Swiss musician Ella van der Woude previously created soundtracks and was therefore asked by the American director Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich1999) for the musical accompaniment to his short film How To Shoot A Ghost. Van der Woude created a soundtrack that is also a whole as an album thanks to the connecting lyrics of a dreamy female voice. Deeply vibrating tenor sax and a thin violin give coherence to Van der Woude’s elegant themes on piano. The edited piano took on a ghostly effect, the sound of the songs a slight noise. It sounds nostalgic and ominous at the same time.
The Dutch premiere of How To Shoot A Ghost is on March 10 in Eye, Amsterdam. With live guidance by Van der Woude.
Hester Carvalho
