WNYC's Soundcheck

New Zealand singer/songwriter Marlon Williams has a voice like butter which can be charming and flirty as in the timeless crooner soon-to-be-classic, “ Vampire Again ,” or which can convey despair and longing, see his duet with Aldous Harding - " Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore ." After his breakup from musician Aldous Harding, complicated torrents of feeling poured out in song, all delivered in a honey-smooth voice that accepts heartbreak and cultivates its beauty. Marlon Williams' 2018 record was called Make Way For Love; he plays some of those songs, in-studio. (From the Archives, 2018.)

For the better part of two decades, the Tuscon-based desert-noir band Calexico has been making Mariachi- and Cumbia-laced expansive Americana. For their 2018 record, The Thread That Keeps Us , they explore the dual nature of anxiety and hope in these volatile times with some romance and gritty dread. The band joins us to play some of these songs in our studio. (From the Archives.)
Their 2022 album, El Mirador, just out this past April, is "a hopeful, kaleidoscopic beacon of rock, bluesy ruminations and Latin American sounds" (YouTube.)

Set List:

The End of the World With You
Voices in the Field
Under the Wheels

African-American string band tradition meets Cajun/Creole and Appalachian music in a collaboration between singer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, actor and MacArthur Fellow Rhiannon Giddens and Dirk Powell, a multi-instrumentalist, singer, arranger, songwriter, and actor himself. Together, with banjos and fiddles, they play each other's original songs, music that takes on the slave condition of pre-Civil War times, and chat about their recent project, songs tied to the Reconstruction era culture of the Wilmington, North Carolina Massacre of 1898. (From the Archives, 2018.)

Set list:

I’m Gonna Write Me A Letter
Say Old Playmate
At the Purchaser’s Option

For the guitarist, vocalist, and bandleader of the London-based Curse of Lono , Felix Bechtolsheimer, these past few years have been steeped with loss: his father, uncle, ex-partner, and his band – whose lineup was completely overhauled to the pandemic. The band’s name comes from Hunter S. Thompson’s 1983 book of the same name, and their cinematic southern gothic country songs land somewhere between The Rolling Stones, Wilco, Lou Reed, the Doors, Leonard Cohen and Lee Hazelwood. Bechtolsheimer’s baritone guitars and baritone vocals are “a key part of the Lono sound”, which might be good for “a late-night desert drive” (GuitarWorld.com ).

Curse of Lono’s new record, People In Cars – an album named for a 2017 photo book by Mike Mandel – is introspective and at times steeped in memories of darkness and despair, and “is themed around the many roads he’s travelled and those who’ve shared the journey” (folkradio.co.uk ). Curse of Lono performs some of these songs for us remotely. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: In Your Arms, London Rain, Way to Mars

Watch "In Your Arms":

Watch "London Rain":

Watch "Way to Mars":

Dreamy slow-core folk duo Lean Year is Virginia-based singer Emilie Rex and filmmaker/musician Rick Alverson, along with contributions from Chicago musician/engineer Erik Hall and guest artists. Their musical palette is one of soft-spoken but direct vocals, a Telecaster guitar dredging through peaceful waters, baritone saxophone and clarinet parts, Rhodes, tape-warps, and waves of strings. Lean Year joins us in-studio to play some of these cutting and quiet minimalist folk tunes. (From the Archives, 2018.)

Since their inception over a decade ago, the string quintet Sybarite5 has built a global audience , from Lincoln Center to The Cutting Room and the Museum of Sex; from the Apple Store to the Library of Congress, and a music salon-like residency at NYC’s the cell, along with multiple international and national tours, residencies, and festivals.

The five players (Sami Merdinian and Sarah Whitney, violins; Angela Pickett, viola; Laura Metcalf, cello; and Louis Levitt, bass) have made it their quest to champion new music by American composers along with other tunes that excite them: arrangements of Radiohead, Taraf de Haidouks, Led Zeppelin, and Astor Piazzolla. Their 2018 record, OUTLIERS , is a collection of new works composed just for them. The quintet plays some of these tunes in-studio. (Archives, 2018.)

Set List:

Black Bend by Dan Visconti
Yann's Light by Shawn Conley
Getting Home (I must be...) by Jessica Meyer

Pow Wow singer Joe Rainey, of the Ojibwe community in Minneapolis, fuses traditional melodies and “vocables” (Philip Sherburne, Pitchfork ) with the producer Andrew Broder in something of an avant-hip hop partnership, although in addition to beats, there are field recordings, industrial-sounding processed drums, string arrangements, and vocal processing. He describes his music as being on the same river, but a different boat from other pow wow singers and groups.

Rainey’s album Niineta —the title means “Just Me” in Ojibwe, and which he further explains is “my contribution to contemporary indigenous music” – was released on Justin Vernon and the Dessner brothers’ 37d03d label, to which Rainey is signed. The music is rooted in traditional drum and dance music, where for years Rainey always had a hand-held recorder or voice memo rolling, even recording calls from incarcerated family members singing. These field recordings became part of the whole album’s unique woven fabric of voice-as-instrument pieces, combined with samples and sometimes with altered by electronic processing, all layered with Rainey’s own singing, which can celebrate or console, and “conveys a clear message: We’re still here. We were here before you were, and we never left”, (Bandcamp .) Joe Rainey and Andrew Broder perform remotely. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Bezhigo”, “Can Key”, “No Chants”

Watch "Bezhigo":

Watch "Can Key":

Watch "No Chants":

Niineta by Joe Rainey:

Niineta by Joe Rainey

In the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, during the 1960’s and ‘70s, the sounds of American jazz and James Brown-style funk rocketed through the clubs there, combining with Ethiopia’s own exotic scales to produce the golden age of Ethiopian pop. The New York-based 7-piece band Anbessa Orchestra draws from this era and aims to take the listener on a musical journey from Addis Ababa to Brooklyn, with the loping grooves, buoyant brass lines, moody organ, crisp guitars, and solid percussion. Their 2018 album is called Negastat, which means “Kings,” and it is full of Ethiopian-style, horn-heavy funk. And the Anbessa Orchestra is here to play some of it in-studio. (From the Archives, 2018.)

Watch "Gurage":

Watch an Ethiopian scales demo:

Watch "Yeleleu Hager Lidl" (Son of No Country):

As bands go, Anna & Elizabeth have quite the origin story. Anna & Elizabeth began thanks to a broke down car and a shared desire to explore the traditions of Appalachian roots music. The immersive, intimate combination of Elizabeth LaPrelle’s deep mountain voice (from Virginia), Anna Roberts-Gevalt’s modern one (from Vermont), their sweet harmonies, and minimalist arrangements is striking. The duo’s latest record, The Invisible Comes to Us , co-produced by Anna and Benjamin Lazar Davis (avant-pop outfit Cuddle Magic), draws on old-time traditions of home, porch, and kitchen music, and incorporates experimental pedal steel player Susan Alcorn and drummer Jim White (The Dirty Three), along with electronic elements. It brings Anna & Elizabeth to play some of these sparse, haunting ballads, stories, and lullabies for us, in-studio.

Watch "Black Eyed Susan":

Watch "Jeano" :

Watch "Odd Kimball":

Canadian indie-pop band Stars makes almost orchestral pop that has the bonus quality of being danceable. They’ve also got a knack for vividly descriptive storytelling, built around the dueling vocals of singers Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan. Formed in the early 2000’s, Stars has been “remarkably stable” over the years; they enjoy making one another laugh, they've written a play, and even fiction about themselves.

Their ninth studio album, From Capelton Hill , covers pandemic shock, explores memory – perhaps with a sepia tinge, and has a strong sense of place. Stars plays remotely for the Soundcheck Podcast.

Stars plays a Bandcamp Live-streaming set at 5PM on May 27 .

Set list: “Build a Fire”, “Capelton Hill”, "Patterns"

Watch "Build a Fire":

Singer, songwriter, guitarist, and bandleader Jose Conde (of the tropical Latin dance band Ola Fresca) draws on the musical melting pot of Miami for his latest solo effort, Souls Alive in the 305 . With some music inspired by cicadas and frogs, and George Clinton’s “Atomic Dog,” he combines funk, breakbeat, disco rap, rock n roll, Cuban music and salsa into songs that sound like “the Miami musical landscape of my youth.” Jose Conde and his band perform remotely for the Soundcheck Podcast. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Fallen From Eternity”, “Poetry in Motion”

Watch "Fallen From Eternity":

Watch "Poetry In Motion":

Part art-rock, part post-punk, Porridge Radio is a band from Brighton, UK, led by singer and guitarist Dana Margolin. Her earliest songs were full of imagery of the sea and the seaside town where the band resides, and the latest collection of songs are intense, addressing joy, fear, and endlessness - and full of dry wit. Now that they’ve had a restful 2020, Margolin and bandmate Sam Yardley (keyboards, drums) play stripped-down versions of tunes from their new record, Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky. The session was recorded live (with a real audience!) in The Greene Space, in early May.

Set list: “Back to the Radio,” “Trying,” “Birthday Party,” “Jealousy”, “Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky”, "Sweet"

Watch "Back to the Radio":

Watch "Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder to the Sky":

Watch "Sweet":

Watch the entire live set from May 2022 in The Greene Space:

Norwegian band Wardruna creates music born of Nordic history, Norse runes and nature - and is led by multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Einar Selvik, who composed music for the TV series Vikings . (He was formerly the drummer in the black metal band Gorgoroth under stage name Kvitrafn, for those keeping track .)

Hear a captivating combination of old and recreated Norse historical instruments: Tagelharpa (bowed harp-lyre), birchbark lure (a trumpet), goat horns, Kraviklyra , instruments from nature: stones, bones, trees, fire and ice, along with sounds captured in nature, vocal techniques of many kinds, and ancient poetry. The 2018 record, Runaljod – Ragnarok, is the third of a trilogy of musical interpretations of each of the twenty-four old Nordic runes (the word rune can also mean magical song). Wardruna performs some of their unusual, spiritual, ancient sounding-modern ritual music in-studio. (From the Archives, 2018.) -Caryn Havlik

Set list: "Wunjo," "Isa," "Helvegen"

Watch "Helvegen":

Bette Smith was born and raised in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn – but on her debut LP called Jetlagger she draws on the gospel she sang in the church and the soul music she heard on the block on hot summer nights music growing up on the corner of Nostrand and Fulton.

On the 2018 record Jetlagger, the tunes range from originals to covers of Staples Singers and Isaac Hayes classics, showcasing Smith’s deep, confident, and powerful voice. Amidst rugged, muscular arrangements that hearken to the timeless sounds of Mississippi and Memphis soul and funk, Bette Smith barely contains a New York aggressiveness and passion, and piles on the sexy. Smith and her band play some of these songs, in-studio. (From the Archives, 2018.)

The rock band elbow (small "e") hails from greater Manchester and makes subtle, sensitive, anthemic, joyful music, sometimes augmented with the strings of the Hallé Orchestra, (which they did not bring with them.) Guy Garvey’s vocals and wordplay are perched atop a well-orchestrated but never overwrought blend of melodic bass, guitar and piano riffs, and pulsing percussion, all the while squeezing out a wide range of bottled emotions onto expansive life paintings. They’ve referred to themselves as "prog without the solos" (AllMusic). elbow plays music from their 2017 album, "Little Fictions" in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)

The Norwegian band called Barokksolistene is out to give classical music a bad name. They’re trying to drag classical music – and especially Baroque music – down to the level of folk musicians fiddling in back of a pub. We here at WNYC fully support this sort of thing. Led by violinist Bjarte Eike, the band Barokksolistene has created a project they call The Alehouse Sessions , where they merrily blend together the sounds of Baroque music, drinking songs from the British Isles, and folk fiddling from various places in Northern Europe. See if you can figure out which is which. (From the Archives, 2017.)

"Hole In the Wall" (Henry Purcell - Abdelazer)
"Johnny Faa/I Drew My Ship" (Scottish/Irish trad.)
"Travel Set, medley" (Norway/Scotland/Norway/Denmark/Shetland Islands/America)

They also performed live on Facebook for our sister station, WQXR:

Philadelphia's The Districts have opened for Modest Mouse, and been compared to Sharon van Etten and the Killers. On their latest, 2022's Great American Painting , the songs take on the paradox of the state of the country, going from the big, tough ideas about gun violence, police brutality and oppressive structures to contemplating spiritual life in the remote and isolated pure landscapes and scenery in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, (Track by track, Flood Magazine .) The band’s aim is to process the heavy stuff cathartically, and dance forward in spite of fear and darkness.

Songwriter and vocalist Rob Grote also reflects on the remote collaborative process, and admits that being in a room with friends making music can’t be replaced, and emphasizes how much the band lives for playing for rooms with people in them. The Districts play remotely for the Soundcheck Podcast. – Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Revival Psalm” “Long End,” “Cheap Regrets”

Watch "Revival Psalm":

Watch "Long End":

Watch "Cheap Regrets":

Composer, DJ, and techno pioneer Carl Craig joins us with the Carl Craig Synthesizer Ensemble. Lately, Carl Craig has been venturing beyond the usual techno venues through his work with chamber ensembles and orchestras, including the Chineke! Orchestra. Recently, the Carl Craig Synthesizer Ensemble played at Carnegie Hall, as part of its Afrofuturism series. The Carl Craig Synthesizer Ensemble recorded live tracks at Spot Lite in Detroit for today's podcast. Carl Craig - Max Fine

Set List: "At Les," "Desire," "Technology,"

Kae Tempest is a gifted wordsmith and performer; their two previous albums were both nominated for the Mercury Prize. Their 2022 album, The Line is a Curve, addresses struggles with mental health, as well as Kae’s own journey with their non-binary identity, and features collaborations with some of the South London creative community. Tempest offers live performances of music from the record, and spoke with host John Schaefer in London about the new album. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “More Pressure” “Salt Coast”

Listen to the entire New Sounds Show with Kae Tempest, from London:

The four members of Sō Percussion can turn nearly anything into a playable instrument – blocks, bells, drums, and other surfaces (as well as lumber, flower pots, garden tools – don’t set them loose in a hardware store.) Composer and So-founding member Jason Treuting has even turned the numbers 1-9, as in the Japanese puzzle game, sudoku, into an immense pattern-based work called Nine Numbers , which uses interlocking rhythms and melodies, as well as the plosives (some of the hard consonants in English) of speech. Together with strings of the Bergamot Quartet, Sō Percussion plays some of the cyclical and pattern-driven pieces of Treuting's Nine Numbers , live from The Greene Space. - Caryn Havlik

Watch Sō Percussion and Bergamot Quartet: “Nine Numbers VII”:

Watch Sō Percussion and Bergamot Quartet: “Nine Numbers VIII”:

Watch Sō Percussion: “Nine Numbers IV”:

Singer/songwriter / guitarist Lizzy McAlpine processes heartache, dreams, love, and breakups, with striking detail and sharp wit on her latest record, Five Seconds Flat . McAlpine is already a veteran songwriter who sets a tone with some chords on the guitar, and vividly describes vulnerable situations and tender feelings with a clever balance of wit and weirdness. She has lately been working at setting up her ideal balance of silence with big productions, some including guest artists Jacob Collier, Laura Elliot, and the Grammy-winning FINNEAS. McAlpine plays solo, unplugged versions of these new tunes for the Soundcheck Podcast. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “erase me” “firearm” “weird”

Watch "erase me":

Watch "firearm":

Watch "weird":

Gabriel Kahane writes classical music and what he called “deranged pop”; his new 2022 album, Magnificent Bird , was written after spending a year off the internet. The results are deeply personal but also a celebration of his musical community. He plays most of the new album as well as songs from his previous album, Book of Travelers , which documented an 8,980-mile railway journey in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Gabriel Kahane and a special guest string quartet perform in an intimate setting in The Greene Space.

Set list: We Are The Saints, Hazelnut Tree/Chemex/To Be American,
Baedeker/Baltimore/Little Love (this set from Book of Travelers), Linda & Stuart, Sit Shiva

Watch "We Are the Saints":

Watch songs from Magnificent Bird , part 1:

Watch songs from Book of Travelers :

Watch songs from Magnificent Bird , part 2:

Watch 'Sit Shiva":

Anand Wilder has released his debut solo album after the breakup of the band Yeasayer. I Don’t Know My Words (written and recorded throughout lockdown) is full of great, wide-angled pop, which may look to 1970s hippie music and Indian popular cinema. In his quest to go back to songs that were “light on electronics and experimentation,” and “heavy on acoustics and vocals,” Wilder has said he was inspired by The Beatles, Cat Stevens, and Fairport Convention, (interview with NME .)

On the record, I Don’t Know My Words , Wilder plays all instruments, including mountain dulcimer a la Joni Mitchell, twelve-string guitars, plucked cello, bowed acoustic guitars, and tumbling, song-serving drums. For the Soundcheck Podcast, Anand Wilder and his band play some of these songs from his studio, in arrangements including mountain dulcimer and steamy EWI (electronic wind instrument.) – Caryn Havlik

Set List: “Fever Seizure,” “Get More Than My Share,” “Half Brother”

Watch "Fever Seizure":

Watch "Get More Than My Share":

Watch: "Half-Brother":

Theon Cross is a stunning tuba player, a member of Mercury-nominated group Sons Of Kemet, and a central figure on London’s new music scene. He’s also just released a solo album full of inventive ways of processing and extending the tuba’s sound, while drawing on Caribbean music, grime, jazz, and the city’s spoken word scene. He and his quartet offer live, instrumental versions of some of those songs for the Soundcheck Podcast.

On his latest album, Intra I, there are TWO tubists, his teacher Oren Marshall, and himself, along with guest vocalists Remi Graves, Shumba Maasai, Afronaut Zu, Ahnansé, Consensus. Theon Cross speaks to how he pushes his sound with processed tuba, exploiting all the technological tools that he can get his hands on, in addition to beat displacement for more unpredictable rhythms. Also, Cross clears up the marching band’s sousaphone versus the tuba, and how they were developed (yes, he has classical training in his background.) - Caryn Havlik

Set List: “We Go Again,” “Forward Progression II,” “Play To Win”

Watch videos of these songs, as filmed and edited by Nathan Webber:

Watch "We Go Again":

Watch "Forward Progression II":

Watch "Play To Win":

North Carolina-based traditional musician Jake Xerxes Fussell approaches ostensibly antique songs of the American south as a folklorist and as a creative musician, pulling out the relatable bits and going for the unexpected arrangements, including pedal steel, horns, and strings. He’s a lifelong student and researcher of folk and roots and blues music – second generation, actually, since his father was also a folklorist – and can hold forth on murder ballads, disaster songs, Choctaw fiddlers, sea shanties, and blues and gospel songs. He plays some of these elegantly- arranged and composed story-songs from his latest album, Good and Green Again , for the Soundcheck Podcast. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Love Farewell,” “The Golden Willow Tree”

Watch "Love Farewell":

Watch “The Golden Willow Tree”:

The orchestral-folk-rock Minnesota band Cloud Cult is a creative collective who continually celebrates catharsis, change, and comfort through music and multimedia performances. [They’re also hailed as one of the Top 10 Green Bands by Rolling Stone with environmentally-sound packaging, a geothermal-powered studio, and touring with net zero greenhouse gases.] The latest record, Metamorphosis , is “all about inner change... from the kind that's marinated in joy to the kind that hurts like hell but somehow makes room for a better you. Life is a rabbit hole of wonder, mystery, chaos, pain, and love, and these songs are here to help you hum your way through it.” (Cloud Cult’s Facebook) .

From the woods of Wisconsin, on a balmy 30 degree day, Cloud Cult’s founder and main songwriter Craig Minowa plays in the snow with an acoustic guitar, featuring the rest of the band on backing tracks. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Back Into My Arms” “Victor” “Song From Oblivion”

Watch: "Back Into My Arms":

Watch "Victor":

Watch "Song from Oblivion":

The New York-based Haitian singer and songwriter Emeline Michel combines traditional Haitian kompa, rasyn, and twoubadou music with jazz, R & B, and her gospel choir roots. She is a Red Cross Ambassador, and some of her lyrics deal with social issues, especially those affecting women and children. Emeline Michel and her band play moving and joyful tunes, both old and new, for the Soundcheck Podcast.
Emeline Michel plays at Chelsea Table + Stage on Friday, March 18 .

Set list: Pé Leténel, Que Tonne Reigne Vienne, Ban'm La Jwa (Give me joy)

Watch "Pé Leténel":

Watch: "Que Tonne Reigne Vienne":

Watch "Ban'm La Jwa":

Guitarist and songwriter Brad Barr of the Montreal-based indie-folk band The Barr Brothers has just released an unusual solo record of instrumentals, The Winter Mission - “a kaleidoscope of sound” (Schaefer), featuring many different members of the guitar family, loops, and the shruti box (used to provide the drone in Indian classical music.) Over the 12 songs of the album (and perhaps 216 notes), there is “a gorgeous unsettledness that resists the drift into background music," (Missing Piece Group .)

The conversation flows around the fixed numbers of baseball, the numerology of 216, the creative use of loops and delay, and the sounds of the Blues in other traditional music around the world. Brad Barr plays remotely for the Soundcheck Podcast, and there’s even a gong.

Set list: “Ancient Calendars,” “Baseball,” “Your Dad’s Awake”

Watch "Ancient Calendars":

Watch "Baseball":

Watch "Your Dad's Awake":

Finnish composers Tapani Rinne (tenor sax, clarinet) and Juha Maki-Patola (keyboards and electronics) skate between jazz, neo-classical, and ambient music, leaning heavily on improvisation and electronic processing for their collaborative album, Open . These two veteran musicians – saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer Tapani Rinne has been releasing records since the 1980’s while Juha Maki-Patola is a producer, musician, and engineer – connected online via Instagram during the pandemic, and began to share files. They talk about reverb, ice-swimming for health, and share some of the Nordic-seeming, spacious, immersive, and stunning results of their music-making, remotely. – Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Brevity,” “Still”

Watch "Brevity":

Watch "Still":

Open by Tapani Rinne & Juha Mäki-Patola

Bluegrass quintet Yonder Mountain String Band dips into rock, prog, and improvisational music for their latest record, Get Yourself Outside . The band - founding members guitarist Adam Aijala, bassist Ben Kaufmann and banjoist Dave Johnston , plus fiddle player Allie Kral (who joined in 2015) along with new multi-instrumentalist Nick Piccininn - began writing the album remotely during the pandemic, collaborating virtually across time zones. The sound is entirely acoustic (and without drums) with foot-stomping sections of shred and solo-trading. Additionally, all five members sing, trading leads, and the vocal harmonies are rich and varied. Yonder Mountain String Band plays remotely from a permanent installation called Meow Wolf, in Colorado. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “I Just Can’t” “No Leg Left” “Into the Fire”

Watch "I Just Can't:

Watch "No Leg Left":

Watch "Into the Fire":

Guitarist Shane Parish of the avant instrumental jazz-mathpunk band Ahleuchatistas, is also an educator, arranger, composer, and podcaster. Lately, as a solo artist, he has mined the world of folk music – specifically “weird old Americana” and “traditional music filtered through one guitarist’s non-traditional subjectivity,” (Bandcamp )

Shane Parish's most recent musical adventures on a new record called Liverpool are based around spacious, moody, unexpected arrangements of sea shanties for electric guitar and looping station. As he explains, the sea shanties happened to be a tangent of his podcast covering the Liverpudlian band, Echo & the Bunnymen. Now based in Athens, Georgia, Parish treats us to some remote performances of these tunes.

Set List: “Black-Eyed Susan” “Haul Away Joe” “Rio Grande”

Watch "Blackeyed Susan":

Watch "Haul Away Joe":

Watch "Rio Grande":

Watch "Randy Dandy O":

The appealingly danceable music of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, or OMD, as the trailblazing synth-driven electronic band came to be known, has delighted and charmed listeners for decades . They formed in the late 1970's, greatly inspired by Kraftwerk, and with influences ranging from CAN to Barry White. Their string of breakout hits stretched through the 1980's, like "Electricity," "Tesla Girls," & "So In Love," while their song, "If You Leave," written specifically for the John Hughes film, Pretty In Pink, was also a huge hit. The unusual OMD blend is one of melody and melancholia, created with keyboards, synths, sexy saxophone, and drums, while never straying too far from the dance club and pop radio. The band reformed in 2006, and with the 2017 release of their third album , The Punishment of Luxury, Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys - OMD - performed in- studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)

Polymathic composer, producer, and video artist Emily Wells plays new works off her latest album Regards to the End . On it she explores the AIDS crisis, climate change, and her lived experience—as a queer musician from a long line of preachers, watching the world burn—in immaculately layered yet spare songs that impel the listener to be attuned, acting like a magnet on our attention. Wells, a multi-instrumentalist who comes from a classical background in violin, builds the songs by sampling her own vocals, synths, drums, piano, string instruments (violin, cello, bass), and wind instruments (clarinet, flute, French horn).

Set list: "I'm Numbers," "Come On Kiki," "David's Got a Problem," "Two Dogs Tethered Inside"

Watch "I'm Numbers":

Watch "Come On Kiki" & "David's Got a Problem":

Watch "Two Dogs Tethered Inside":

Portland, Oregon-based Pink Martini whisks listeners away on globetrotting musical journeys, singing in Armenian, Portuguese, Arabic, French & Xhosa, among many other languages - and that's just their latest record, Je Dis Oui! . Their founder, pianist Thomas Lauderdale, recently described the group this way: "If the United Nations had a house band in 1962, we aspire to be that band." The 'little orchestra'- some 12-members strong, takes over our studio.

The wonderfully twisted, self-possessed, wry, leather jacket-armored dark humored queen of the downtown night, Shilpa Ray, survived working the door at the Lower East Side / New York City bar Pianos. And she’s turned that harsh reality into an album of cutting commentary.

On the 2017 record Door Girl , Shilpa Ray plays with throwback “girl group” sounds – except she’s got backing guy vocals and crisp production. Her songs are full of acerbic observations on desperate people, some quite personal - "Manhattanoid Creepazoids," "Revelations of a Stamp Monkey," and "Rockaway Blues"; the portraits are far from pretty, and definitely no longer glittering, with a blaze-of-lights-at-closing-time-feel delivered in her singular brassy croon and growl. Shilpa Ray joins us, (sans harmonium), in the studio to play some of these songs. (Archives, 2017.)

The musician, songwriter, and producer, Cate Le Bon, offers new music from her latest album, Pompeii, composed in the “uninterrupted vacuum,” of the current times –global pandemic plus climate emergency’s colliding eco-traumas. Le Bon plays every instrument (except drums and saxophones) on hazy, opulent, and sometimes sonically minimal songs, which are of the moment, playful, satirical, and surreal. Unhinged opulence rests in sonic deconstruction that finds coherence in pop structures, when Cate Le Bon plays these new songs. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: "Moderation", "French Boys", "Pompeii"

Watch "Moderation":

Watch "French Boys":

Watch "Pompeii":

This session was recorded in The Greene Space. Many thanks to their crew, and our Senior Concert Engineer, Ed Haber.

FPA, aka Frances Priya Anczarski, the Minnesotan songwriter, producer, artist, and daydreamer, works with a slow and romantic beauty in her music. She loves the ellipsis of possibility, and on her 2021 release, Princess Wiko, fuses bedroom pop, folk traditions, spoken word, hip hop, and chamber orchestration (aided by producer/musician Andrew Broder, a mainstay of the 37d03d collective) for a melancholic, medieval-era princess on a journey of love and self-discovery. FPA performs a few of these songs remotely. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: "Princess Wiko," "The Loved One"

Watch "Princess Wiko":

Watch "The Loved One":

Shamir is a musician, songwriter, producer, painter, chef, actor, and filmmaker, and on his new album, Heterosexuality , uses the sounds of rock, R&B, and industrial synth - all within a pop framework - to challenge perceptions about gender and to explore his own queer identity. As he croons on his song “Cisgender” that “I don’t want to be a girl / I don’t want to be a man / I’m just existing on this god forsaken land /And you can take it or leave it / Or you can just stay back”, he reaches heights with his self-trained voice that one would expect of Swedish pop star Robyn.

“Having multiple skills and talents in a world of side hustles and late stage capitalism,” Shamir has released a book of mixed media – essays about paintings he has made, But I’m a Painter (from his statement published on Pitchfork ), also runs his own record label, and pursues gluten-free cooking. For this remote session, (recorded while on tour), Shamir performs intimate, stripped-down versions of his intense but catchy music in a live trio setting. - Caryn Havlik

Watch "Nuclear":

Folk collective Spell Songs was born as a musical companion to the two books of meditations on nature by writer Robert MacFarlane and artist and naturalist Jackie Morris. The recordings are tender naturalist-chamber-folk spell-poems of wildness, beauty, loss, and hope, inspired by the creatures, art and language in The Lost Words and The Lost Spells books. Each spell is a summoning of sorts, conjuring an animal, bird, tree or flower - from Barn Owl to Red Fox, Oak to Bramble, Jay to Jackdaw - with which we share our lives and landscapes.

The musicians wrote together on their “open plan” of musical ideas for Spell Songs II: Let The Light In , combining their guitar, harp, cello, keyboard, woodwind, kora, percussion and vocal harmonies. Spoken voice, whispers, accents, dialects, native languages, birdsong, the bark of foxes, the soft sound of a moth’s wing, the sound of a children’s climate strike; all increase the intimacy and power of the musical world conjured by Spell Songs II. Spell Songs performs excerpts from the new album; and Scottish singer Julie Fowlis and Senegalese-born kora virtuoso Seckou Keita chat about the project from London. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: "Heron," "Daisy," "Thrift"

Watch "Heron":

Watch "Daisy":

Watch "Thrift":

"Oak":

"Bramble":

British singer, producer, and composer Anna Meredith is a musical chameleon, fusing contemporary chamber with electronics and dance music on her record, Varmints. Actually, classical, rock, electronica, and minimalism are all part of Anna Meredith’s sonic palette, and in addition to a stint as composer in residence with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, she is also a singer/songwriter who leads her own unusually constructed band - wielding keys, laptop, bells, & clarinet alongside a band of musicians playing tuba, cello, drums and guitar. This creative and unusual band plays in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)

The British singer/songwriter Laura Marling returns with a refined sixth record Semper Femina , whose Latin title implies a more gender-specific note. The album is a gripping collection of poetic takes on womanhood- complete with seductive and ravishing arrangements. Unexpected deployments of strings – all kinds - and electronics create graceful swooping textures to augment her poised and polished songs. Laura Marling and her band play some of these intimate literary musings in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)

The London-based Vermont-born singer/fiddler/banjoist/guitarist and scion of a family of shape-note singers, Sam Amidon, has a reputation for having collected, re-imagined, and performed American traditional tunes or other folk music, in addition to collaborations with Kronos Quartet and composer Nico Muhly. In spring of 2017, Amidon released his first album of original music, which is an experiment in trying out the Appalachian music he loves, as well as "improvisation, beats, Don Cherry, Vermont, London." Sam Amidon joins us live to play songs from that record, The Following Mountain. (From the Archives, 2017.)

Songwriter Aimee Mann left her successful major label band Til Tuesday back in the early 1990's and never looked back. Her stunning recording resume includes classic songs from "Magnolia," include the Oscar-nominated "Save Me", as well as numerous records, released on her own label. Many of her slow, bruising, crafty, and catchy songs may shine with sadness on the outside, but as ever, they bristle with smart observations and intriguing perspectives. Aimee Mann and her trio play songs from her 2017 record, Mental Illness , in- studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)

Beirut-based indie-rock band Mashrou’ Leila tackles taboo topics - political corruption, same-sex love, religion (inter-religious marriage), and Middle Eastern feminism. Their catchy and danceable Arabic pop songs are full of guitars, drum machines, samples, violin and frontman Hamed Sinno’s sensual voice. In the years since they first formed in 2008, they’ve become both enormously popular and enormously controversial, even banned in some countries. Mashrou’ Leila’s 2015 record, Ibn el Leil - means ‘son of the night.’ They play music from it live in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)

The Mexican singer-songwriter and arranger Silvana Estrada offers poeticism and a fresh take on traditional folk music resulting in a deeply heartfelt and lyrical sound which may tug at the heartstrings. A multi-instrumentalist raised in a musical home in the mountain town of Veracruz, she plays the Venezuelan cuatro (a four-stringed guitar) in many of her songs. The tangled roots of her musical influences mix the folk stylings of son jarocho (from the Gulf Coast of Mexico), Portuguese fado, jazz torch songstresses, and the classical influence (she performed baroque choir music in her youth.) Silvana Estrada plays haunting songs of love and loss on the cuatro, as a preview of her new album, Marchita ("withered "), onstage at The Greene Space. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: "Tristeza," "Marchita," "Te Guardo"

Watch "Marchita":

Watch "Tristeza":

Watch "Te Guardo":

Guitarist and singer Margaret Glaspy released her album Emotions and Math in 2016, and promptly found herself on a whole bunch of year-end lists of the best albums of the year, including those of the New York Times and NPR. It’s not hard to hear why – at times Glaspy snarls her way through love’s trials and travails, while her guitar snarls and thunders right along with her. At others, she offers something a little more subdued, even melancholy. Glaspy and her trio join us to play songs from Emotions and Math, in-studio. (From the Archives, 2017.)

John Doe is a musician, actor, and author, and one of the founding fathers of the L.A. punk scene with his band X, which continues to this day. He has co-authored and collected first-hand accounts of L.A. punk experiences in the book, Under the Big Black Sun. John Doe has also done country and folk music with his other band The Knitters, and released ten solo albums. The last is called The Westerner , which came out in 2016, and John Doe returned to play some of his solo songs in-studio in 2017. (Archives.)

The west coast-based sound-maker and experimenter Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith weaves melodic patterns and pulses, using various analogue synthesizers – like the rare EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer, a vintage Buchla modular synthesizer, earning her a fun title as a composer and producer – “synthesist.”

On Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's 2017 album, The Kid , she crafts a playfully strange expression of human awareness via these synthesized sound designs that falls neither in the pop world nor the avant/classical one. Synthesist, producer and composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith joins us in the studio to perform some of her recent creations.

RIYL: the films of Hayao Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli, Suzanne Ciani, Joshua Light Show, Euclidean geometry, Anna Meredith, and s t a r g a z e.

Listen to London’s Afrofuturist jazz masters Sons of Kemet , New York-based poet, composer, and stutterer JJJJJerome Ellis , and the custom baritone guitar of South African Guy Buttery . AND you must see and hear the prepared guitar of Sardinian composer, ethnomusicologist, and instrument builder Paolo Angeli , who filmed a beautiful remote session on the shores of Sardinia. Grammy-winning diva Angélique Kidjo brings a super-charged performance to The Greene Space and puts an exclamation point on 2021. - Caryn Havlik

Set list:
Sons of Kemet – "Hustle"
JJJJJerome Ellis – "Bend Back The Bow and Let the Hymn Fly," excerpt
Paolo Angeli – "Jar'a Suite," excerpt
Guy Buttery – "Kya Baat"
Angelique Kidjo – "Mother Nature"

Watch the Best of 2021 performances for the Soundcheck Podcast:

Hear/Watch some of the 2021 highlights for the Soundcheck Podcast by Amsterdam-based Turkish psych band Altin Gün , London pianist and soundscape artist Neil Cowley , composer/vocalist/pianist Samora Pinderhughes’ art/protest songs , and Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti . Plus, singer and guitarist Torres and her band , live from The Greene Space. - Caryn Havlik

Altin Gün – “Ordunun Dereleri”
Neil Cowley – “String Think”
Samora Pinderhughes – “Stare Straight Ahead”
Mabe Fratti – “Nadie Sabe”
Torres – “Thirstier”

Watch the Best of 2021 performances for the Soundcheck Podcast:

Sam Lee is much more than a musician - he's a storyteller. In "Blackbird ," from his album The Fade In Time, his deep croons and intricate vocals breathe life into forgotten stories, drawing you into a colorful and heart-wrenching world. The album title is appropriate, since he collects traditional English songs and repurposes them for a new place and time.

Not many traditional English folk singers came from North London, studied at Chelsea School of Art and worked as a forager and wilderness expert during the day and burlesque dancer by night. Lee however is not in the majority - his charisma and talents spurred an apprenticeship with the great Scottish Traveller singer Stanley Robertson along with a Mercury Prize nomination. Lee has blazed a trail for burgeoning song collectors and inspired a new generation to tap into the storytelling of present and past minstrels. He performs in-studio in this 2015 session from the Archives.

Setlist

"Over Yonder's Hill"
"Blackbird"
"Lovely Molly"

Lou Reed. Dr. John. Bruce Springsteen. John Cale. Levon Helm. Garland Jeffreys has collaborated with all of them, and his gravelly voice, roots-rock DNA, and trenchant writing has always channeled the best bits of each of them.

A recording artist since the 1960s, Brooklyn native Jeffreys has had more career ups (and downs) than most artists can dream of today, but he's riding yet another wave of creativity and energy. His loose and rollicking 2013 album Truth Serum was lauded by critics and fans. He was a 2015 inductee into the New York Blues Hall of Fame, recognizing just one facet of his kaleidoscopic musical persona. All the late-period vigor and recognition has him revisiting one of his earliest successes, 1977's Ghost Writer . A frothing cauldron of, yes, blues, but also soul, funk, Exile -era Stones rock—and an inspired dose of reggae—Ghost Writer revealed a burgeoning, observant poet of the streets as well as a sharp-eared pop chameleon.

Garland Jeffreys visits the studio to talk to host John Schaefer about the NYC that inspired Ghost Writer , and to play a handful of the album's standout tracks.

London-based dance music artist, classically trained pianist/composer, and Chicago native Kate Simko, along with the London Electronic Orchestra, combine harp, violin, cello & laptop, live in the studio. Layers of clubby electronics and keyboards support delicate harp, violin and cello melodies. Altogether, the result is a buoyant, airy, and uplifting hybrid dance music - something like a film score for a documentary about a days-long party in Ibiza. (From the Archives, 2017.)

Singer, guitarist, songwriter, and label owner, Jennifer O’Connor has gone from acoustic guitar to plugged-in rockenroll band and now to crafting nostalgic-sounding Logic-based songs in her 20-year career. Her latest album is the perhaps misleadingly-titled Born at the Disco , recorded in large part by O’Connor herself at home, upending her usual process by using drum machines and synths to play and create, with touchstones like the Jesus and Mary Chain and maybe the Swedish pop artist, Robyn. Jennifer O'Connor plays her emotional and intimate indie pop songs remotely from her home. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: "Born at the Disco," "Less and Less," "Who Can You Kiss"

Watch "Less and Less":

Watch "Who Can You Kiss":

Since forming back around the turn of this century, the New Pornographers have consistently been one of indie rock’s top attractions - reliable purveyors of big hooks, anthemic choruses, and Technicolor orchestrations. The band is a supergroup of sorts, with a mutable lineup of singers and instrumentalists, but the first among equals has always been vocalist and songwriter Carl Newman. He joins John Schaefer to talk about the band’s 2017 album, called Whiteout Conditions . AND, some of the band plays live in this session from the Archives.

The Reverend Osagyefo Sekou draws from a deep well of American music on his new album, called In Times Like These . Blues and gospel traditions , but specifically also "North Mississippi Hill Country Music, Arkansas Delta Blues, 1960s Rock and Roll, Memphis Soul, Chuck Berry St Louis vibes, and Pentecostal steel guitar ." Now if you’re thinking that those are musical holdovers from another time, the activist, author, documentary filmmaker and theologian Reverend Sekou wants you to know that that music has become powerful and relevant again, in times like these. The album features Luther and Cody Dickinson of the North Mississippi All-Stars, and Rev Sekou toured with them back in 2017. He and The Sealbreakers play some of the tunes, in-studio. (Archives, 2017.)

There’s something about the band name Into It. Over It . that seems perfect for the digital age, when we rush to crown the Next Big Thing one week and abandon it for the new Next Big Thing a week later. But Chicago singer and songwriter Evan Thomas Weiss has managed to keep an even keel through nearly a decade and several full-length albums, keeping Into It. Over It. as both a touring band and as an occasional solo project. The band’s 2016 album was called Standards (no, he doesn’t sing Gershwin or Cole Porter), and Evan Weiss joined us to perform a live solo set.

In film, they call it the "meet cute" - the moment when two strangers lock eyes and ignite a cinematic classic. In music there isn't necessarily a name for a band's formation or meeting, but that instance can inform the group's music just as deeply. For Brooklyn's Sharkmuffin, their "meet cute" occurred July 4, 2012 at a beach house that was later destroyed by Hurricane Sandy - a possible reason why the band's music is visceral, explosive, sharp and a little dangerous. Tarra Thiessen (guitar, vocals, theremin, pocket piano) and Natalie Kirch (bass, vocals, claps) make up the core of the band, with frequently-rotating drummers. [Counting from their album artwork, an illustration of themselves and all of the drummers to have played with the group, they've employed 13.] One of these drummers was Death Valley Girls and Hole's Patty Schemel who recorded on their latest and first full-length LP, Chartreuse .

The album has the punk attitude of the riot grrrl movement and the musicality of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It covers gritty and very real subjects: first dates, favorite colors, violent emotions felt on Mondays and even feminine products. Some songs might provoke laughter just from their titles, like "Tampons Are For Sluts" and "Mermaid Sex Slave," but Sharkmuffin is dead serious. Hear them perform their short slap-in-the-face songs live in-studio.

Setlist

"Chartreuse"
"Mondays"
"First Date"

For longtime indie rock fans, it's kinda hard to believe that Mac McCaughan has been making music for more than 25 years. Soon after leaving Columbia University in 1987, the Durham, North Carolina native both formed Superchunk and co-founded Merge Records - alongside bassist and savvy financial manager Laura Ballance - in 1989. And since then, Superchunk has released ten albums and countless singles -- and several more records with his on-again/off-again project Portastatic. And Merge has grown to become one of the most respected independent labels, with bands like Arcade Fire, Mountain Goats, and Magnetic Fields among the names on its impressive roster.

With 2015's Non-Believers , the songwriter and guitarist eschewed his trademark punk-ed up pop and blistering guitar lines, and debuted an electro-rock and synth-infused sound that's more minimalist than Superchunk, yet more polished than Portistatic. That said, McCaughan's fearless ambition remains intact. His songs are still built around that same boyish-turned-gravelly voice and those same biting, smartly-crafted lyrics. On Non-Believers , McCaughan's music sounds more personal, intimately reflecting on his life as a husband and father. Yet no matter the setting, McCaughan proves he's got a way with hook, and a simple, yet affecting turn of phrase. (From the Archives, 2015.)

Set List:

"Lost Again"
"Come Upstairs"
"Hello Hawk"

Torres, aka singer and guitarist Mackenzie Scott, unleashes the exuberant energy of a post-plague celebration with her latest album, Thirstier. She writes about passion and desire and “bringing my girlfriend lunch so she can keep painting.” Adding to these romantic sentiments are the overt power pop crunch of muscular and hooky guitars, Moog-enhanced melodies and Torres’ expressive voice, which goes from hug to howl. Torres and her band declare their arena rock intentions live in The Greene Space. - Caryn Havlik

Set List: "Don't Go Puttin Wishes In My Head," "Hug from a Dinosaur," "Thirstier"

Watch "Don't Go Puttin Wishes In My Head":

Watch "Hug From a Dinosaur":

Watch "Thirstier":

Little May is an Australian trio whose signature sounds include dark and poetic lyrics, urgent guitar strumming and, above all, beautiful 3-part vocal harmonies. Their 2015 album, For The Company , was produced by The National’s Aaron Dessner and may have a bit of New York in its musical DNA. The band has toured with Mumford and Sons, Alabama Shakes, and others, and in 2015, they stopped by our studio for a live set. (Archives.)

Listen to Little May's 2014 in-studio appearance:

Efterklang is a Danish band consisting of the 3 childhood friends Mads Brauer, Casper Clausen & Rasmus Stolberg, although the band often expands when playing live. For over twenty years, they have been collaborating and experimenting to arrive at a sound that evades easy labeling, so we’ll call it art-rock-indie-folk-chamber-pop.

The ritual of making music together is the most gratifying thing for the band and its core members, whether just amongst the trio, or when they rope in their audience to expand the collaboration, in a hall or via an app, or that one beautiful time when they asked members of the cleaning staff of a concert hall in Hamburg to sing with them onstage.

Their latest album, Windflowers , looks to nature for the hope and change that comes with spring, and was w ritten collaboratively during lockdown, both apart and together. They play these new songs remotely for the Soundcheck Podcast and look forward to playing at the Big Ears Festival in March of 2022. – Caryn Havlik

Set List: “Living Other Lives,” “Alien Arms,” “Hold Me Close When You Can”

Watch "Living Other Lives":

Watch "Alien Arms":

Watch: "Hold Me Close":

Poet, sax player, electronic music producer, storyteller, and composer JJJJJerome Ellis is a stutterer. On his 2021 album The Clearing, he takes speech disfluency and considers how it affects one’s experience of time. He explains “The Clearing” as that sense of unknowing in the moments where he is stuttering. It’s a space, a pause of suspension that opens up unexpectedly – "like when you’re hiking and suddenly you come to a clearing. You see the sun and take it all in, the light conditions, the plants, and how you might lose your path."

The music on The Clearing uses hip hop drum sounds, deep bass, and experimental electronics, setting his 2020 essay, “The Clearing: Music, dysfluency, Blackness and time.” JJJJJerome Ellis’ extraordinary achievement is in using the involuntary nature of The Stutter and then shaping his music to how “The Stutter presents him with a score.”

In conversation, Ellis contrasts this 2021 release, The Clearing, with his series of sound installations, his “Fountains” – where he creates his own alternate time world in which there is a sense of relief, a respite from the interruption of flow. JJJJJerome Ellis offers live performances of works from his new album The Clearing, and shares how to say “I stutter” in Portuguese. – Caryn Havlik

Set List: “Loops of Retreat,” “Bend Back the Bow and Let the Hymn Fly”

Watch "Loops of Retreat":

Watch "Bend Back The Bow & Let The Hymn Fly":

The guitarist, composer, ethnomusicologist, and instrument builder Paolo Angeli is associated with traditional Sardinian music and has co-organized an international arts festival in Palau since 1996. He has collaborated with Pat Metheny (who uses Angeli's guitar in Orchestrion ), Fred Frith, Hamid Drake, Iva Bittova, Zeena Parkins, and Derek Gripper.

Paolo Angeli plays the prepared Sardinian guitar, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument that looks like a guitar crossed with a cello, and has virtually orchestral capabilities. Angeli’s custom creation has been fitted cross-wise and lengthwise with additional strings: cello strings and drone strings, and has numerous other inventions attached to it, including hammers, pedals, and some propellers at variable speed. Then there’s his array of effects, controlled by both his feet and hands. These custom modifications enable him to become a crazy-awesome one-man band, as he draws on Sardinian folk music, jazz, flamenco, Arabic suggestions, post-folk and contemporary classical music in his compositions.

Paolo Angeli strums, bows, and hammers the instrument, and adds traditional Sardinian vocalizing, in a stunning performance of music from his latest, JAR’A, for this remote session, filmed on the island’s northern shore. - Caryn Havlik

Watch Paolo Angeli on the Sardinian shore:

Multiple Grammy-winner and longtime UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Angélique Kidjo pulls together multiple generations, collaborating with global pop stars Burna Boy and Yemi Alade among others, in addition to focusing on our connection to the natural world for her latest album, Mother Nature . Through a signature combination of West African music, jazz, and funk, and using her incredible voice as instrument, Kidjo asks us to honor Mother Nature, and hopes that one lesson that people might learn from the pandemic is how to better care for one another.

As she and host John Schaefer chat, Kidjo gives props to her collaborators, many of them from younger generations, and also speaks to being the vocalist in Philip Glass’ Symphony No. 12, (Lodger) based on David Bowie’s album. Even with no audience, Angélique Kidjo’s larger-than-life stage presence captivates as she talks about having the luxury of living out her passion. She performs live with her band, from The Greene Space in advance of a Mother Nature concert event at Carnegie Hall on Friday, Nov. 5 . - Caryn Havlik

Watch "Africa -One of a Kind”:

Watch "Take It Or Leave It":

Watch "Mother Nature":

Brooklyn trio Upper Wilds features Dan Friel (ex-Parts & Labor) on guitar, vocals, and effects, bassist Jason Binnick, and drummer Jeff Ottenbacher and is really exceptional at making fuzzy-noisy songs with big pop riffs, usually concealed within explosive sonic textures. They’ve now released the third in a series of albums about the planets, Venus , and the band is continuing their way further out as they go, planning to release a seven inch when they get to Pluto.

Friel confides that he’s still learning how to be a singer-songwriter after starting with interesting and possibly noisy textures. He prefers using the open tunings of Glenn Branca, tremolo picking, and effects that can ring and chime forever. Friel says that the lyrics just write themselves, themed around the planet named for the god of love, which also happens to be a “backwards-spinning hellscape that melts every camera we send there…”

Hear through the noise to the melodies as Upper Wilds plays very fast love songs from Venus , remotely from their practice space. - Caryn Havlik

Set List: “Love Song #5,” “Love Song #3,” “Love Song #1”

Watch "Love Song #5":

Watch "Love Song #3":

Watch "Love Song #1":

Guitar innovator and part-time sound technician Guy Buttery discusses the spontaneous recording session with two master musicians, Mohd. Amjad Khan (tabla) & Mudassir Khan (sarangi), called One Morning In Gurgaon . He plays Indian classical music-inspired tunes remotely from South Africa on a custom baritone guitar and improvises on Raag Yaman playing the surbahar (bass sitar).

Watch "Kya Baat":

Watch "Surbahar the Mule":

Austin-based guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist Carl “Buffalo” Nichols wants to remind folks of the value of the blues as a cultural art form. “Listening to this record, I want more Black people to hear themselves in this music that is truly theirs .” The self-described music nerd considers Delta blues, Chicago blues, West African Malian guitar rhythms, and the African ancestry of the clawhammer banjo in his sonic experimentation and ongoing study of chords and riffs.

Nichols, who lived in Milwaukee for most of his life save for his overseas travels, is Fat Possum Records’ first blues signing in nearly 20 years and “is grateful to be part of the label’s legacy of blues music that also includes Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside,” (Austin Monthly ). For his remote performances, Buffalo Nichols wields both a hollow body Fender guitar and a resonator-style guitar, as he plays tunes from his self-titled record. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “These Things”, “How to Love,” “Lost and Lonesome”

“These Things”:

“How to Love”:

“Lost and Lonesome”:

Puerto Rican composer/performer/educator Angélica Negrón, who writes tiny and big sounds for chamber ensembles, orchestras, films, plants, robots and drag queens, joins us for the Soundcheck Podcast. She is also The Greene Space Artist-In-Residence who hosted/curated El Living Room , a funhouse variety show involving plant and robot instruments, comedy, and mixed-media sets.

Angélica takes us into her sensory world, and explains how her overlapping creative adventures feed into each other – say writing for the Dallas Symphony or for drag queens, or for the dreambow band, Balún. She offers a live performance - triggering sounds via plant art, programmed surface poppers, and hidden computers into a sonic dreamscape.

Set list: “Sembrar,” “Pasajero”:

Hang out in the sonic playground of El Living Room, with the first episode out Oct. 14 from The Greene Space:

Musical ghosts haunt the Memphis band Lucero. The late Warren Zevon is evoked in one song, and the spirit of the late Alex Chilton’s groundbreaking Memphis group Big Star can be felt throughout the record. (Their 2015 album title, All A Man Should Do, is a line from a Big Star song.) Songwriter Ben Nichols uses a stirring blend of classic rock and Memphis soul, but maintains a distinctive voice. Lucero plays songs from All A Man Should Do, in-studio. (From the Archives, 2015.)

The Brooklyn-based band Wet first turned heads in 2013 with an EP packed with 90s-style synth-pop goodness. New Yorker magazine critic Sasha Frere Jones referred to their song “Don’t Wanna Be Your Girl” as “completely perfect” and made it one of his songs of the year. In 2016, after a major label bidding war, they released their full-length debut, called Don’t You . Wet (as a trio) joins us to play some of those songs, in-studio. (From the Archives, 2016.)

It's no small thing to command the attention of billions of people with nothing but the sound of your voice and an acoustic guitar. Ask British singer/songwriter Mike Rosenberg, aka Passenger , whose song "Let Her Go " became a legit worldwide phenomenon after its release in 2012. The song snowballed in slow motion, no instant smash, and wormed its way into ears and hearts one play at a time. Rosenberg brings his thoughtful and subtle songwriting to bear, playing songs from his 2016 record, Young As The Morning, Old As The Sea. in-studio.

Pianist Vijay Iyer, bassist Linda May Han Oh, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey, wear their composer and collaborator hats simultaneously in new music by Vijay Iyer, who reminds us that “the most turbulent music may contain stillness, coolness, even wisdom,” (Uneasy liner notes .) They share the joy in hearing each other together in a room creating something collaboratively based on something put on the page.

The members of the trio talk about optimism and hope - in spite of it all, their decades of shared connections, and some of their separate creative projects. Vijay also speaks to his perceived reputation for making art about subjects no one wants to talk about, and believing in the craft of making an album – the shape of it and the journey. Vijay and the trio play music from Vijay Iyer’s 2021 record, Uneasy, for the first in-studio since early 2020, in The Greene Space. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: “Combat Breathing,” “Children of Flint,” “Uneasy”

Watch "Combat Breathing":

Watch "Children of Flint":

Watch "Uneasy":

In Hayden Pedigo’s acoustic guitar playing one might hear the “loneliness and the space” of the Texas panhandle. The musician, composer, and former city-council candidate cites inspiration by guitarists from previous generations like Anthony Phillips (original Genesis guitarist), John Fahey, and Leo Kottke to sound very much like kickass fingerstyle guitarists of now, like Gwenifer Raymond and Toby Hay. Guitar nerds take note: Segovia is invoked, as are variations on multiple non-standard tunings, fingerpicks, and Leo Kottke’s masterful banter stories.

Hayden Pedigo’s latest record, Letting Go, combines ambient electronics, English pastoralism, pedal steel, and fingerstyle guitar on both 6 and 12-strings for really melodic pieces in hard-to-replicate tunings. Pedigo plays remotely from Lubbock, TX. - Caryn Havlik

Set List “Carthage,” “Some Kind of Shepherd” “Letting Go”

Watch "Carthage":

Watch "Some Kind of Shepherd":

Watch "Letting Go":

Singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash curates a program exploring the importance of protest music as part of our shared cultural history. She talks of how the rich oral tradition of roots music embraces migration stories, loss, resistance, and how we are moving to something better, but that it might be painful. And ultimately, protest songs can show us a path to get there. (Originally from Live With Carnegie Hall from June 2020.)

Set list: Rosanne Cash and Leventhal plays Bob Dylan's "License to Kill"
Lizz Wright plays "Blessed the Brave"
Elvis Costello sings both "Big Stars Have Tumbled"
Rosanne Cash and John Paul White sing "We're All In This Together Now"

Watch the entire Live With Carnegie Hall program
Rosanne Cash - Present Perfect: Songs of Protest and Memory :

The Norwegian-born, London-based singer Kari Jahnsen records under the name Farao. Her 2015 debut album is called Till It's All Forgotten , and prompted comparisons with Tune-Yards, countrywoman Jenny Hval, and a few other musical outliers. But Farao’s blend of arty pop and unusual arrangements might actually fool listeners into believing they’re hearing something like conventional pop. They are not. Farao uses stately synthesized strings, big grooves with anxious bursts of drumming, and her own implacable vocals in songs that often take unexpected twists and turns. She and her band play, in-studio. (From the Archives, 2015.)

Some songs you love because they communicate deep thoughts or powerful emotions. And sometimes you just want a ridiculously catchy hook. BRONCHO is certainly capable of the former, but in the case of its song "Class Historian," it wouldn’t matter if the band was singing about filing taxes, you might still be bouncing in our seats with that infectious melody stuck in your head all day.

While the Oklahoma band has been banging out classic fuzzed-out sounds for awhile, the band got a spike of attention when the HBO series Girls used the song "It's On." That song, along with "Class Historian," ended up on BRONCHO's 2014 album, Just Enough Hip To Be Woman , which draws on garage pop and glam rock in exciting ways. BRONCHO plays some these songs in-studio. Apologies in advance if you've still got that tune in your brain the rest of the week. (From the Archives, 2015.)

Set List:

"Stay Loose "
"Stop Tricking "
"Class Historian "

Tennessee-based songwriter Amythyst Kiah loves both roots and alternative music; and her songs often clothe dark subjects - suicide of a loved one, a descent into alcoholism - in bluesy stomps and ecstatic rock. The singer, guitarist, banjo player, and scholar (she holds a degree in Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Country Music Studies), has made records on her own and is a member of the formidable quartet called Our Native Daughters . On her 2021 solo album Wary + Strange, Amythyst Kiah sings of loss, grief, death, and hangovers and dealing with them all; she and her band play some of these tunes remotely. - Caryn Havlik

Set list: "Black Myself," "Firewater," "Hangover Blues"

Watch "Black Myself":

Watch "Firewater":

Watch "Hangover Blues":

In 2020, she also contributed a tribute to the Reverend Gary Davis for the online New York Guitar Festival: