Tony Stamp reviews Jonathan Bree's latest faceless pop confection, Brandee Younger's tribute to an iconic jazz harpist, and the debut of local post-punks Ringlets.
Pre-Code Hollywood by Jonathan Bree
Photo: Jonathan Bree
In 2007, a local band called The Brunettes signed to the iconic American label Sub Pop, releasing an album with them called Structure and Cosmetics. It was the only record the group's two members worked on together but spoke to their international appeal.
Co-frontperson Jonathan Bree began a solo career in 2013, and on his third LP Sleepwalking, adopted a mysterious persona: hiding his face in a white mask and surrounding himself with a band and dancers who do the same. He stopped giving interviews altogether.
In doing so, Bree carved out a unique position in the landscape, and there’s more to it than window dressing. On his latest, Bree’s songs have never been stronger, even as he explores new terrain genre-wise.
All of The Brunettes' albums, and all of Bree’s solo ones, have been released on the label he co-founded, Lil Chief.
Over the years, a great number of artists have passed through the label, including Lawrence Arabia and The Ruby Suns, but for the past while they’ve been solely focused on Bree and this year’s Taite Prize winner Princess Chelsea.
In its early days, the roster was often labelled ‘twee’, thanks to a predilection for things like xylophone and duets, something which the artists offset through a generally punk-ish attitude. If anything they leaned into it, and if generating carefully written, somewhat tasteful music seemed naff to certain people in the 2010s, it definitely doesn’t now.
The foundation of classic pop writing hasn’t left Bree’s toolkit, and on his fifth album Pre-Code Hollywood it’s accompanied by disco trappings like large stereo synth bass, and funk guitar licks, on two tracks played by living legend Nile Rogers.
Rogers is known for a long list of things including his band Chic, working with Diana Ross, and perhaps most relevant to this album, producing David Bowie’s Let’s Dance. Apparently, Bree sent him a random email and things went from there.
Bree’s work has always spoken to an excellent taste in music, and the kind of nostalgia that doesn’t feel retrograde. That extends to the title of the album - for those who don’t know, 'Pre-Code Hollywood' refers to the Hays Code, a set of restrictions placed on American films after 1934. Pre-Code films are notable for their relative sense of freedom, so perhaps that’s what he’s alluding to.
Regardless, Bree's faceless persona allows the listener to impose their own meaning, and it's hard not to hear the romanticism in these tracks as somewhat cinematic.
As his solo career has progressed, Bree has seemed to force his voice ever downward into Leonard Cohen territory. This makes it all the more striking when he nails the falsetto on 'City Baby' and in the moments when suddenly jumps an octave, as on the rousing finish of ‘When We Met’.
Songwriting aside, he's always been an excellent producer. I was lucky enough to get an interview with him back when he was giving them, and was impressed with the thought and care he put into that aspect of creation.
The results all these years later are evident - his last record After the Curtains Close was replete with strings, and while they still feature here, as on slightly sinister tracks like ‘Epicurean’, and 'You Are the Man', the focus is on a sparser, more synthesised sound, given cinematic volume by Bree’s skill behind a mixing desk. The album being mastered at London’s Abbey Road Studios probably didn’t hurt either.
At the time of writing, Jonathan Bree and his band are touring Europe. Despite an intentionally low profile and the lack of an international label, his career is quietly flourishing, and Pre-Code Hollywood continues to offer new facets of enjoyment, despite, or perhaps because of, the anonymity of its composer.
Brand New Life by Brandee Younger
Photo: Supplied
In a recent interview with Good Morning America, harpist Brandee Younger talked about growing up listening to hip hop, unaware at the time that the samples she heard in tracks by Pete Rock and CL Smooth were originally performed by Dorothy Ashby.
Ashby was a harpist active from the '50s through to the '80s, hailed by multiple publications as a pioneer of the instrument, embracing improvisation and moving it into the forefront of compositions. Her work has been sampled in many hip-hop tracks over the years, by artists like Drake, The Pharcyde, Jurassic 5… it’s a long list.
It was through Younger's love of hip hop that she discovered Ashby’s music, and realised she was also a Black female harpist. “Finally I had an example”, she told Good Morning America.
Younger's seventh album Brand New Life is an extended tribute to her musical hero.
The songs include covers of existing Dorothy Ashby recordings, new compositions inspired by Ashby and also tracks like ‘You’re a Girl For One Man Only’ (which Ashby wrote for an original musical in 1967) that have never been recorded till now.
In addition to her solo jazz career, Younger has worked with musicians like The Roots, John Legend, Lauren Hill and Moses Sumney. She’s clearly interested in contemporary music, and for this album enlisted Makaya McCraven to construct rhythmic loops and produce.
For the track ‘Livin’ and Lovin’ in My Own Way’, another which has never been recorded till now, DJ and rapper Pete Rock adds some turntablism, bringing things full circle to Younger’s first experience of Ashby’s music.
The record as a whole speaks to Younger’s skill at arrangement and reinterpretation, and the original pieces reveal how good she is at composition. The title track ‘Brand New Life’ - which refers to giving Ashby’s music new life as well as Younger’s - dips into RnB, with vocals from Mumu Fresh, a solid bottom end, and Younger’s fleet-fingered plucking gliding over everything.
‘Dust’ originally appeared on Ashby’s 1970 masterpiece The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby. Here, Younger and her band play up the reggae and dub aspects of the original, with Meshell Ndegeocello providing airy vocals.
As is typical with a lot of jazz music, part of the appeal here is listening to very accomplished players doing what they do best - each drum fill and bass run is a pleasure, and Younger’s playing is consistently ear-catching and blissful.
If you’re anything like me, Brand New Life is a perfect Sunday afternoon soundtrack.
If you care to dig deeper - Younger's piece about the album in The Guardian is a good starting point - you’ll find layers of meaning about the harp, its importance to jazz, and the lineage of Black female performers who've embraced it.
Ringlets by Ringlets
Photo: Supplied
One of my favourite local albums last year came from Laszlo Reynolds, who, on Uralic Songs, presented cover versions of tracks in Eastern Europe language groups and made them strikingly personal.
I knew Reynolds was a guy dabbling in multiple projects, but I was surprised when I listened to his band Ringlets and discovered how far removed they were from his gentle solo work, instead trafficking in spiky, brattish post-punk.
This is music with a certain amount of posturing, courtesy of vocalist Leith Towers. His force of personality is strong, and he’s good at dispensing barbed lyrics, but the whole band makes their presence felt. Reynolds' guitar playing toes the line between abrasive and pleasant, and the blend brings to mind UK greats Wire, or even the early days of one of the bands they influenced, R.E.M.
‘Fever Dream in Broken Swedish’ winds up in more noisy, angular territory, but for its first half it's relatively polite, if somewhat stern. And that title hints at another of the band’s strengths - Towers’ esoteric lyrics. In ‘Snitch Olympics’ there’s the line “Could suck a cherry tomato through the cross-stitch of a tennis racket”.
On another track I’m not sure if he’s saying ‘reasonabled-out’ or ‘reasonable doubt’, or in another line ‘I am putting’, or the title of the song ‘I Am Pudding’.
Reynolds shifts from prickly picking to a staccato chug on that one, with Arlo Grey whipping up an appropriate frenzy on drums, and Arabella Poulsen understanding that the spaces between notes on bass are vitally important. She sings lead on ‘Made of Mist’, a song with more fantastic lines like “You have found yourself as a decorative vase”.
Ringlets released one single in April of 2022, and followed it up a year later with a full album, released on the American label Mutual Skies, seemingly out of nowhere.
Like a lot of things about the band, it’s a bold, confident move, and they have the songs to back it up - literate, provocative, and also lots of fun.
