The Single Life: Kučka, Duran Duran & More

In the world of the modern pop music, there’s few more overused words than ‘folk’. It’s the fashionable default, covering a multitude of sins. Lately, it’s a term that been hung around the neck of everybody from Americana acts, through Laura Marling, via The Smith Street Band, and – even though they’ve expressly distanced themselves from banjos – Mumford and his accursed offspring. It’s either a very broad church, or a very easy pigeonhole.

But unarguably, Joanna Newsom is somewhere under the banner. Let’s just start with the subject matter of Sapokanikan (Drag City). It’s a shortish cultural lesson of the mostly lost native American history of what is now a corner of Greenwich Village (naturally) that comes with an awkward tip-toeing grace, as a piano tinkles and a brass band plays a couple of blocks away. Newsom’s individual voice builds to an almost Kate Bush warble as she strolls. It’s oddly beautiful, and beautifully odd. 

‘Soul’ is also describing a range of musics too. Not only coming in ‘modern’, but even ‘future’ variants of the style. Kučka embraces the electronic for her take on the form, atmospheric beds of synths cradling the seeming fragility of her vocal in Honey (Inertia). But it’s a voice that bends but never quite breaks, but it’s something in those crystalline tones of hers that draws you in, and inexorably drags you along with it. 

Almost contradicting itself, ‘future soul’ seems more comfortable in embracing some of what is past. New Zealand-now-Sydney chanteuse Wallace namechecks distinctive talents from Sarah Vaughan to Erykah Badu – with a side order of Sinatra, even – but Beauty (Independent) has its nod toward current affectations by including a rap breakout provided by Sampa The Great, which apparently reinforces its ‘female power’ credentials – which it probably really didn’t need to.

Now, perhaps somewhere in the middle of all of the above – at least, as some struggle to just where to place him – Patrick James makes what is hopefully one model of what pop music can be. You have to respect the bravery of him taking on Under The Milky Way for a TV show – but that was Offspring, which means millions heard it, possibly without even realising that that oddly-appealing half-swallowed vocal tone was him. Now his own man and own work, it has an unexpected warmth even as the Bugs (Independent) loiter and scurry across his extremities. Well, that sounds like love.

It’s actually seven years since the idiosyncratic glory of Mercury Rev offered something new. Jonathan Donohue’s often strange panoramic visions remain intact, and he gives the game away a little by even using the word ‘psychedelic’ among lyrics of Are You Ready? (Bella Union). But on a couple of casual listens, it seems that the period of silence has bought his style back toward that of the band he exited before The Flaming Lips became the ramshackle technicolour collective we know and love. The slightly helium-fuelled vocals and bubbling nature of this does have a touch of the Lips about it, albeit a slightly more polished and less self-consciously scruffy version than Oklahoma’s finest can offer.

But while Donohue isn’t inviting the Lips’ Wayne Coyne over for coffee and doughnuts, even if the former maybe is listening to the latter’s records, some others have notables queuing up to guest with them. Somehow, Duran Duran have survived 30 years of lurches in and out of fashion and now find themselves at an point where even their music is somewhat of a reference point for what is going on now. Thus, Paper Gods (Warner) flows smoothly, building as it goes, and showing Simon Le Bon’s voice has held up surprisingly well. The outsider featured is one Mr Hudson, described as an ‘affiliate’ of Jay-Z and Kanye - whatever that means. But other names on their upcoming album might hint at the standing they have somehow retained and/or recaptured: Nile Rodgers, Janelle Monae, and the almost ubiquitous Mark Ronson – now there’s a match made in a well-tailored corner of heaven.

But that may well be music of another time. The days of transporting the band to Sri Lanka, or Switzerland, or even Sydney to construct the music are gone. Winters End call themselves ‘indie electro’. But the Pinto siblings are probably making their buzzy but emotional noise via a laptop on the kitchen table, and Mayfair (Independent) flows with a textured grace. It works as pop, certainly – but is one of that style that may well find an audience elsewhere than its homeland. 

But back to those overlaps in styles. Variously, even according to their own Wikipedia page, Lucero play – and this isn’t even a complete list – ‘country, punk, soul, and heartland rock’, whatever that last one actually means. They leave their native Memphis and Went Looking For Warren Zevon’s Los Angeles (ATO), with the search including singing along to a jukebox as the stories unfold in front of you, and possibly out in the parking lot behind the club. This is American music. That phrase can often be an insult, but not in this case.