New Music From Hailu Mergia, U.S. Girls
Hailu Mergia
Lala Belu
(Awesome Tapes from Africa)
Keyboardist Hailu Mergia was a member of one of Ethiopia’s greatest bands in the ‘70s—the Walias Band—which featured players including the Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke and pianist Girma Beyene; as the hotel band at the Addis Ababa Hilton, Walias Band often started an evening with dinner music for a broad appeal, before moving toward soul and jazz numbers for those who wanted to dance.
In the early ‘80s, the band visited the U.S. for a tour and residency in Washington, D.C., and not wanting to return to Ethiopia’s oppressive Derg government, Mergia made Washington, D.C. his new home, gradually devoting less time to music until taking a break in 1991.
The rejuvenating new album Lala Belu is Mergia’s first in around 30 years, as Mergia is currently enjoying new interest in his work after several reissues on the label Awesome Tapes from Africa and a return to performing in 2013.
While the story of his resurgence alone is remarkable—and many would mention Mergia’s current job as a taxi driver who carries a keyboard in his car to compose and record melodies on his phone while waiting for customers—what’s even more noteworthy is just how good his new material is.
The 10-minute jazzy opener “Tizita” finds Mergia laying down accordion passages over keyboard chords, and his style is immediately recognizable, but not overly showy; it’s perhaps like recognizing a friend simply from their gait, as Mergia nimbly flutters up and down, with natural fade-outs for each sequence.
Four minutes in, the tempo picks up with piano soloing, a double bass backbone from Mike Majkowski and a hi-hat heavy drumming style from Tony Buck, the Australian percussionist best known as a member of the trio The Necks; another song transition shows the rhythm section going into locomotive mode with a more driving approach, as Mergia keeps the momentum going with spirited, soulful electric piano runs.
On “Addis Nat,” Buck lays down a funk-inflected beat as Mergia switches to the melodica for his top-line melodies, atop a two-chord organ bed, and “Gum Gum” has a slithering, spry vibe with—perhaps unexpectedly—a bossa nova rhythm on rim clicks.
The downright cheery title track even include wordless vocals and outbursts of “hey!” and the album concludes with the elegant piano solo “Yefikir Engurguro” with a reflective tone, for a distinctive artist who has decades to reflect upon and plenty of vigor to keep creating more.
U.S. Girls
In a Poem Unlimited
(4AD)
This writer has been following with fascination the career of Meg Remy—the singer/musician behind U.S. Girls—over the last decade, noting her dramatic transformation with the understanding that an artist’s work has its own terms and expectations.
U.S. Girls began with shadowy, mysterious pieces that were often rough, distorted and messy, in the vein of underground D.I.Y. one-person noisy bands, sometimes using loops; however, there was also an obsession with the ‘60s girl-group sound, and Remy often conspicuously sang as if she were trying to channel Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes.
After releases on Siltbreeze and FatCat, U.S. Girls signed with 4AD for 2015’s Half Free, and musically, the new album In a Poem Unlimited continues where the last track of Half Free, “Woman’s Work,” leaves off, with its cleanly recorded electro-disco style.
For those only familiar with the first half of Remy’s career, In a Poem Unlimited will sound practically unrecognizable with its meticulously produced style, and it’s an album with themes of power, sex, religion and violence underneath the glossy, purposeful superficiality of its new/nostalgic set of sonic aesthetics among the bleak and angry narratives.
The soul-funk opener, “Velvet 4 Sale,” starts with the sounds of a few seductive breaths, but an examination of the lyrics reveals a dark story of a woman showing another woman living in fear (of both one specific man and “any man”) how to use a gun and balance the power dynamic in its own potentially explosive way.
Perhaps resembling something by the band Quarterflash (down to the saxophone intro), “Rage of Plastics” is a cover of a Fiver song, about a woman working in refinery whose faith is shaken after chemical exposure apparently makes her infertile; “M.A.H.” is a slick and tight disco number that is perhaps the only disco song ever about President Obama’s controversial drone strikes (with the title standing for “mad as hell”).
The silky soul number “Pearly Gates” sports a monster earworm vibe, with a hard-to-shake riff with backing singers supplying a gospel element; in the song’s power-abuse scenario, the protagonist’s “gates” (in the carnal sense) need to open for the woman to be allowed by St. Peter to enter heaven.
On a musical level, In a Poem Unlimited is the most accessible U.S. Girls album, but on a lyrical level, it is the most outwardly angry and intriguing one.