Nation Beat Explores Rich Musical Areas

“Zeros” Declan McKenna Columbia Records

Declan McKenna’s second album “Zeros” dropped on Sept. 4 as the 21-year-old’s followup to his 2017 critically acclaimed debut, “What Do You Think About The Car?” For “Zeros,” McKenna decamped from his native London to Nashville, wanting to be away from the familiarity and consistency of home. He wrote all the music for the album himself and was backed on it by his long-time band consisting of Isabel Torres (guitarist), Nathan Cox (bassist), William Bishop (keys) and Gabrielle Marie King (drummer). Like Nashville, the album is playful, wonderfully strange and intensely musical, and the themes and McKenna’s concerns are familiar, if evolved. There is the anxiety and disconnection of an entire generation born into a mess they did not create, as well as their alienation from a world where there seem to be multiple realities: social media, fake news, post-truth.

“American Head” The Flaming Lips Warner Records

Multiple Grammy Award-winning American legends The Flaming Lips released their longawaited new studio album, “American Head” on Sept. 11. Produced, as always, by longtime collaborator Dave Fridmann and The Lips, the album is comprised of 13 new cinematic tracks. Among them, “God and the Policeman” featuring backing vocals from country superstar Kacey Musgraves. Wayne Coyne explains his thoughts on “American Head” in a story titled “We’re An American Band”: “The Flaming Lips are from Oklahoma. We never thought of ourselves as an AMERICAN band. I know growing up (when I was like 6 or 7 years old) in Oklahoma I was never influenced by, or was very aware of any musicians from Oklahoma. We mostly listened to the Beatles and my mother loved Tom Jones (this is in the 60’s)… it wasn’t till I was about 10 or 11 that my older brothers would know a few of the local musician dudes. “So… for most of our musical life (as The Flaming Lips starting in 1983) we’ve kind of thought of ourselves as coming from ‘Earth’… not really caring WHERE we were actually from. So for the first time in our musical life we began to think of ourselves as ‘AN AMERICAN BAND’… telling ourselves that it would be our identity for our next creative adventure.”

“The Royal Chase” Nation Beat

The chase has been on for a longtime for drummer/percussionist extraordinaire Scott Kettner. With his collective Nation Beat, he has long explored the folkloric musical traditions of Brazil and Louisiana. That exploration of the shared history and culture of these two incredibly rich musical areas has led to a hybridity, one mixed with his jazz influence, inspiring Kettner and his crew to compose and perform new music that brings all of these influences together. The chase has led Kettner to a royal payoff. “The Royal Chase,” out Sept. 18, is an album that represents a new distinctive sound for Nation Beat. It is the primal sounds of brass instruments mixed with drums and percussion, reinterpreting classics and presenting original songs for curious listeners who thrive on musical pluralism and surprises. The new Nation Beat sound is unplugged and funky. Forró, Funk, Brass ’n’ Sass!

“Safe Passage” Gitkin Wonderwheel

Gitkin’s music exists somewhere between primal, rootsy memory and distant exotic yearning — a dusty bordertown where the familiar blends imperceptibly into the enchantingly foreign. After a long and fruitful run as a bandleader with relentlessly touring party-rockers Pimps Of Joytime and a Grammy-nominated country blues collaboration with Cedric Burnside, multi-instrumentalist Brian J set out to “explore tonalities I’d never messed with,” as he puts it. It was a release from “having to write lyrics or involve my voice,” he notes, and so the (mostly) instrumental sound of Gitkin came into being. The result is “Safe Passage,” out Sept. 18, which showcases a new batch of immediately engaging, repeatedly satisfying cuts, ranging from surf exotica to raunchy roadhouse stompers to dreamy vocal cuts.