So, what are you listening to these days?

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Apollo5 is an English vocal quintet who do music from across the spectrum, much like their sister group Voces8, about whom I used to post frequently. And that connection is very apparently here as the group is singing an arrangement of the old folk song "Black is the Colour of My True Love's Hair" done by Voces8 tenor Blake Morgan.

 
Icelandic-Chinese jazz-pop singer Laufey's second album was a live album with the Iceland Symphony called A Night At The Symphony. Apparently a sequel was warranted and A Night At The Symphony : Hollywood Bowl is now out with Laufey backed by the L. A. Philharmonic at the famed venue. "Dreamer" is from her latest studio album and she gives a very lively performance of it here.


Laufey's Chinese mother is a professional violinist and her maternal grandfather taught at the Central Conservatory in Beijing, China so her love of working with an orchestra comes honestly. Laufey herself is a cellist among her many musical talents.
 
Wow, a couple nice tracks entered my life this Sunday morning.

First, a new Finnish ensemble with an old Finnish voice. Bearwood is a new band but for their debut single, they enlisted the help of 40+ year music industry veteran Marko Hietala. And it is an amazing piece of hard rock, very much in Marko's wheelhouse and it shows. This would not sound out of place on his upcoming solo album.


And then we have Brazilian alto Violet Orlandi with a somewhat unexpected cover: Billie Holiday classic "Gloomy Sunday". Violet usually hews more to alt-rock and metal but this suggests that she could make one heckuva jazz singer, too, if the mood took her.

 
Christopher Tin is one of my favourite modern composers of traditional orchestral and choral music. And somehow, he manages to maintain a high level of artistic creativity even when composing for ... a computer game. His "Baba Yetu" was the theme for Civilization IV many years ago now and remains a favourite modern choral work of mine. Now he's back for Civilization VII with an arguably even more ambitious work.

"Live Gloriously" ties together texts from four works of literature from around the globe and across history on the theme of living a glorious life and dying having done great things. The texts are from the Iliad (Greek, 7th-8th century BCE), Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon, at least 10th century CE but could be older), the Popul Vuh (Maya, exact age unknown since it was an oral tradition not written down until the Spanish Conquest), and the Ramayana (India, 7th century BCE-3rd century CE).

 
Born in Morocco, raised on the Canadian prairies, and now on Chinese television? Pop singer Faouzia continues to build her career and this year travelled to China where she appeared on the singing competition reality show Singer 2024 and placed fourth. Her powerful low mezzo voice and ability to meld Western pop with Arabic musical themes really set her apart. This is from Singer 2024 and is one of her own compositions (she also did a lot of covers on the show it appears). And, yes, it is partly in Arabic. While she came to Canada at the age of one, Faouzia has really embraced her family's culture.


And one of the covers. She nails this one, IMHO.

 
Mendalla said:
Born in Morocco, raised on the Canadian prairies, and now on Chinese television? Pop singer Faouzia continues to build her career and this year travelled to China where she appeared on the singing competition reality show Singer 2024 and placed fourth. Her powerful low mezzo voice and ability to meld Western pop with Arabic musical themes really set her apart. This is from Singer 2024 and is one of her own compositions (she also did a lot of covers on the show it appears). And, yes, it is partly in Arabic. While she came to Canada at the age of one, Faouzia has really embraced her family's culture.


And one of the covers. She nails this one, IMHO.

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Powerful and captivating for sure!
 
These guys all come from metal, but this song and especially this performance are rather non-metallic. Cemetary Skyline is a new band but the members all have decades of experience in other bands. Their debut album Nordic Gothic is one of my favourite albums of 2024. A lot of the credit goes to vocalist Mikael Stanne who packs a surprisingly smooth baritone singing voice when you consider that he rose to fame growling and screaming melodic death metal. This was his second album in less than a year. His main band, Swedish death metal band Dark Tranquillity, released an album back in the summer and his third band, The Halo Effect, has their next album due early in the new year. And somehow, he's found time to do concerts with them, too.

 
New video from German musician Patty Gurdy's 2024 album Tavern. Here she teams with one of the deans of pirate metal, Christopher Bowes of the Scottish band Alestorm, for a song that is ... kind of in that genre? More like a very silly sea shanty than full-on pirate metal, though.

 
Asia was a supergroup that emerged from the UK prog scene at the beginning of the eighties. While all the original members came prog rock, the band had a tighter, more radio-friendly sound; more melodic hard rock than prog. And they had a few hits from their first couple albums. The band has never really gone away but, like the prog bands that spawned it, has had a revolving door lineup. The only remaining original member on this year's tour is keyboardist Geoff Downes. Sadly, original lead singer John Wetton passed away in 2017 due to cancer so a reunion of the original band is now impossible. However, the current lineup does a terrific job here with the band's 1982 hit "Only Time Will Tell". That opening keyboard riff, almost a fanfare really, is perhaps the band's signature sound.

 
Okay, somehow I missed that film and TV composer Bear McCreary put out a concept album (accompanied by a graphic novel and concert tour) last year with an all star cast of musicians. The track that brought it to my attention features Rufus Wainwright on vocals and it is magnificent. Might actually qualify as Rufus singing metal given the fairly heavy guitars and rhythm section. Other guests include the remarkable Faeroese singer Eivor, Serj Tankian, formerly of the band System of a Down, and guitarist Slash, best known for Guns'n Roses.

 
Mendalla said:
Okay, somehow I missed that film and TV composer Bear McCreary put out a concept album (accompanied by a graphic novel and concert tour) last year with an all star cast of musicians. The track that brought it to my attention features Rufus Wainwright on vocals and it is magnificent. Might actually qualify as Rufus singing metal given the fairly heavy guitars and rhythm section. Other guests include the remarkable Faeroese singer Eivor, Serj Tankian, formerly of the band System of a Down, and guitarist Slash, best known for Guns'n Roses.

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Wow. What an album so far. Had it on for my drive in this morning. Much of it is basically metal. Much heavier than I would expect from someone known for film scores, anyhow. Bit of a family affair, too, with Bear's brother Brendan and his wife Raya Yarbrough joining in. Brendan is also a composer while Raya is a singer-songwriter who has appeared on a number of Bear's soundtracks. Bear and Raya have one daughter named Sonatine (as in the musical form sonatina). Very musical family. Will be interesting to see if Sonatine becomes a musician or composer of some form.

Here's a track from the album featuring Raya on vocals. Weirdly, this is one of two songs from 2024 that I know of dealing with the Antikythera Mechanism, a somewhat enigmatic piece of ancient Greek technology found in a shipwreck. Dating to the 2nd or early 1st century BCE, the device is regarded as a very early analogue computer. I hotlinked to Britannica for more info. The other song, by the way, is the similarly titled "The Antikythera Mechanism" from the album Yesterwynde by Finnish symphonic metal band Nightwish.

 
I noticed that I had an album called Heart Full of Fire by a band called Brother Firetribe on my Spotify library. I had no idea why. So I put them on for driving music coming home from work last night. The band is 80s-esque melodic hard rock and very nice listening and driving music. Somehow, halfway home, it hit me why I had added it to my library. The band is Finnish and their guitarist until 2020 was Emppu Vuorinen of Nightwish. I later found out he was also their producer (he owns a studio in the city where he currently lives). Here's the title track from that album from their 2009 live album Live at Apollo. The female vocalist is Anette Olzon who, at the time this was recorded, was the lead singer of Nightwish. She also sang on the original studio version.

 
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Listening to "This Is Marianne Faithfull" playlist on Spotify. She passed away at 78 while I was away so didn't get around to doing an RIP thread. She was a legend in popular music even if she was not as prominent or productive as many of her peers.

Right now, this is playing. It's Marianne's version of the classic "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan" which I am fond of, having heard many artists do it over the years.


And probably her most famous song is "As Tears Go By" written by Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. She shared a manager with the Stones at the time and Mick was her romantic partner for a time. He spoke at her funeral.

 
My big surprise on the playlist? When it opened with Metallica, I went "huh?" Did I hit play on the right list? Turns out I did. Marianne guested on The Memory Remains from the Metallica album ReLoad. Here she joins them live in 2011 to perform the song. Never expected to hear Marianne on a banger like this.

 
20-year-old Lucy Thomas continues to develop as a singer and her latest couple releases are fantastic. Rosie, the musical she stars in, has yet to debut on stage but the original cast CD is apparently out. First video is her latest pop single, written by Chris Broom who also wrote Rosie. The second is a duet with the show's male lead on a song by pop singer-songwriter Calum Scott.


 
Lucy would make a terrific choice for either Fantine or Eponine in Les Miserables. Her voice is up to it as can be seen below, even if the emotion isn't quite there. Given she's already cast in one musical, I'm guessing that's where her career is headed so hopefully her acting skills will catch up to her voice eventually.

 
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Mendalla said:
20-year-old Lucy Thomas continues to develop as a singer and her latest couple releases are fantastic. Rosie, the musical she stars in, has yet to debut on stage but the original cast CD is apparently out. First video is her latest pop single, written by Chris Broom who also wrote Rosie. The second is a duet with the show's male lead on a song by pop singer-songwriter Calum Scott.


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She has a very beautiful voice , but to be honest, musicals are starting to sound all alike to me. Does she write her own songs? Musicals don't seem to do her voice justice .....but I guess it pays the bills or that's her thing?
Less plastic, more emotion from experience?
 
Waterfall said:
She has a very beautiful voice , but to be honest, musicals are starting to sound all alike to me. Does she write her own songs? Musicals don't seem to do her voice justice .....but I guess it pays the bills or that's her thing?
Less plastic, more emotion from experience?
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She is not a writer so far. Even her pop songs are written by others or are covers. Not every singer has to be a writer. Celine Dion and Whitney Houston, by a longshot two of the best singers of the 80s and 90s voicewise, didn't write. But they are not among my favourites. Why? I do find a singer-songwriter often has more connection (or something like that) to their material. Next best is a singer who works closely with a writer, as you often see in bands.

E.g. Floor Jansen hasn't written a single song for Nightwish (she is a lyricist, just not for them) but the band's writer Tuomas Holopainen has a strong connection with her and at times you would swear the songs were written by her or with input from her. I mean, the line "now there's one who came from me, a child of light, another tale" from their song How's the Heart? really takes on meaning in her hands given she's a mom. Even moreso when she sang it while pregnant in 2023.
 
Mendalla said:
She is not a writer so far. Even her pop songs are written by others or are covers. Not every singer has to be a writer. Celine Dion and Whitney Houston, by a longshot two of the best singers of the 80s and 90s voicewise, didn't write. But they are not among my favourites. Why? I do find a singer-songwriter often has more connection (or something like that) to their material. Next best is a singer who works closely with a writer, as you often see in bands.

E.g. Floor Jansen hasn't written a single song for Nightwish (she is a lyricist, just not for them) but the band's writer Tuomas Holopainen has a strong connection with her and at times you would swear the songs were written by her or with input from her. I mean, the line "now there's one who came from me, a child of light, another tale" from their song How's the Heart? really takes on meaning in her hands given she's a mom. Even moreso when she sang it while pregnant in 2023.
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Eg.Joni Mitchell, Sara McLaughlin, Stevie Nicks come to mind..... she could be more if she was encouraged to step out of her lane.
 
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