Neneh Cherry

Sort of pleased about how this came out from a writing standpoint...

Neneh Cherry & The Thing
The Cherry Thing
Smalltown Supersound
At first glance, Neneh Cherry’s latest looks like a style-crossing free-for-all, the R&B/electronic/hip hop/punk/fashion/DJ diva in collaboration with Swedish free-jazzers, The Thing, all of them working out the kinks of a grab bag of songs from The Stooges, MC Doom, Ornette Coleman and Suicide. Yet while The Cherry Thing seems designed to frustrate any attempt at genre-sorting, it is, itself, fairly cohesive, criss-crossed as it is with non-standard, industry-unsanctioned, personal connections.

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Let's see, in other news, I was listening to Fiona Apple's new one this morning on the NPR app and thinking that I could like it, but I would probably never love it...

Also, check out Dusted's Midyear report...I was not in it this year, I think because my favorite is a bit off message (it's Shearwater's Animal Joy, yes I know...totally wrong, but it's the one I like the best.)  But there are some really great records on there, just getting into Duane Pitre and starting on Merchandise and both excellent from what I've heard. 

I might do my mid-year at some point this week.  I've got some juggling to do since the last iteration, and ten is getting to be a very small number again, but that's the fun of it, right?

Neneh Cherry and the Thing

Really interesting fiery yet cerebral collaboration between 1980s unclassifiable experimenter Neneh Cherry and a Scandinavian free-jazz outfit led by Mats Gustaffsson. Neneh is Don Cherry's daughter, so the skronk is, in some ways, her natural habitat. She's also comfortable in R&B, hip hop, punk and indie pop, at least to judge by the covers on this new album Neneh Cherry & the Thing, out mid-June on Smalltown Supersound. There are eight songs, one by Cherry herself, another by her dad, a third by Gustafsson and the rest extremely alternate takes of songs by Suicide, the Stooges, Ornette Coleman, Martina Topley-Bird and Doom. (I really like the Doom...not so crazy about "Dirt." She's been out of the game for a long time though...last thing I remember her on was that truly exceptional Until the End of the World soundtrack...perhaps my favorite soundtrack ever (and accompanying one of my favorite films). Nice to see her back, still pushing the edges...

Here's the soundcloud for "Dream Baby Dream"