In the past few weeks, three New Haven-based musical projects have unleashed three new albums that answer the mentality of the pandemic’s lockdown with a keen sense of freedom.
“Old,” the lead song from Siul Hughes’s latest release, Hughes, starts with samples and a ominous bass stepping out a simple beat. “My old rounds don’t do it for me no more / My old style ain’t cool to me no more / My old work keep coming back around / My life is an old movie to me in slow-mo,” Hughes raps. In a clever bit of production, this sparse beginning sets the stage for something new. An energetic beat kicks in. Musical elements flourish out of the soil Hughes and co-producers Kyle Jamal Alston, Cecil Patrick Tso, and Carlin Harrison have laid down. By the end of the song, Hughes’s rumination on aging is much about renewal and living up to long-held principles as it is about growing out of certain youthful ideas.
Since his first release, Lastname, Hughes, Siul Hughes has had a knack for making every release feel like another turn in his musical development. Hughes is no exception. “Jokes” runs on fleet bars flying over a slow, paranoid groove. “Had It” floats on a miasma of murmuring tones and clicking trap beats while Hughes revisits some of the troubles of his youth. And the closing track, “Stick to Rap, Pt. 5,” feels like a new statement of intent, a reaffirmation of the artistic pursuits Hughes had dedicated himself to — pursuits that have led him from making a string of albums and a half-hour long film that takes him all around New Haven in an enigmatic day to sharing the stage with Ceschi pre- and post-shutdown. Hughes emerges as another step on the path Hughes is traveling, and one as worth following as ever.
Meanwhile, Jennifer Dauphinais (of Ponybird) and Rory Thomas Derwin have teamed up for Wearebison, a project that partakes of goth and hip hop to emerge with a dark, dreamy EP of very strong songs.
The lead song, “Lion’s Jaws,” pulses along on waves of synthesizers and voices that speak of both being trapped and gathering strength to escape. The next song, “Merciless,” features clenched verses that bloom into a scintillating chorus of shimmering vocals. “Relief in Wires” has a series of mesmerizing texture changes, as a nearly anthemic middle section dissolves into chiming bells and drops into a heavy beat that lets Dauphinais chant out lyrics over dank distortions, before the beat suddenly becomes more urgent and the voices rise into the clouds. The final cut, “Kaleidoscopic Light,” feels both menacing and pastoral at the same time. “Love is a place where we go together / I find you and you find me,” Dauphinais sings as sounds swirl around her, before the song becomes a march that then morphs into a waltz that sounds like it’s spiraling off into the sky. The accompanying notes explain that the album “encompasses the chaotic yet melodic nature of the duos’ experiences during the pandemic”; from the sound of things, the duo used the time to dive deep into their imaginations, and came back more than a little transformed.
Finally, the exuberant “yeah!” that starts Soldier Story’s “Exactly What You Need,” from its new album Underbelly, sets the tone for the entire album, a bluesy romp that’s equal parts fun and gritty. Soldier Story is part of the musical persona of Colin Meyer, who sings and plays everything on the album and handles all recording and production as well. By himself, he can kick up as much energy as most live bands can, and Underbelly finds him at his loosest.
“Where You Go” features a breakdown that feels entirely improvised (even though that’s impossible). “Come Out of Your Cave” is an exhortation to get out and unwind; “we’ve all been locked up inside for a long, long time,” he sings. “Vengeance Is Mine,” featuring Molly Venter, sneaks along on a sinister groove that makes a musical haunted house, the kind of place where it’s fun to be scared. “It’s Alright” comes on like a lost rockabilly song played underwater, while in the next song, “Over The Horizon,” the one-man-band emerges from the waves to rock out on the beach.
“Whiskey and a Bottle of Gin” kicks up the velocity as Meyer swings on the lyrics “I got one foot in front of the other / Gas can filled to the brim / You got one foot in front of the other / Hair blowing back in the wind / You say you don’t recognize me / But you don’t know where I’ve been.” That’s followed up the slow jam of “A Dollar and a Dime,” and “Highway,” which is built for cruising fast to the horizon from the title to the lyrics on down. The album’s closer, “Underbelly,” is a propulsive set of ideas that takes more than 10 minutes to unfold as Meyer deploys a glorious kitchen sink full of ideas to keep the party going just a little longer. “Underbelly in the sunlight / Makes the truth shine ever bright / Sunlight, sunlight, sunlight,” Meyer sings, as if let out of captivity at last. It’s a sense of freedom that all three albums share; they may have been made in and inspired by isolation, but all of them found a way to connect more than ever.
Siul Hughes’s Hughes, Wearebison’s eponymous release, and Soldier Story’s Underbelly are all available on Bandcamp.