Posted by exy

https://exystence.net/blog/2026/03/07/henry-grace-things-are-moving-all-around-me-2026/

https://exystence.net/?p=320770

Singer-songwriter Henry Grace is a purveyor of warmth and easy comfort, through music that sorts through a trove of personal experiences, isolating gems of learning and sharing them generously. His second album, Things Are Moving All Around Me, sets out to capture a wide-ranging chapter of his life, a period of time which involved movement and transition. Grace spent some of his formative years in California, performing solo in small city clubs and – perhaps subconsciously – soaking up those times and places. He now finds himself in London again. This movement has resulted in a fascinating blend of ingredients, which Henry adeptly uses in his songs.
Grace’s style as displayed on this album is a kind of London country folk. He has clearly been…

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…influenced by that time spent on the US West Coast, and his writing uses the best of North America’s roots genres and songwriting styles. There is a localised edge to his music, too, perhaps seen most clearly in ‘This is the Place’ where Grace acknowledges his birthplace and his current home, London, pinning down this life-stage with a resolute attitude.

The album begins confidently: ‘Rust’ is a wiry, firm, striking portrait in words and music, a thoroughly American kind of tale, which develops into a fuzzy blast of blues-rock and ends in

a blaze of noise and a satisfying guitar solo. In contrast, ‘Moving On’ is the first of Grace’s slower, wistful ballads, the kind of song which aches with poignancy. The theme of the song is an age-old subject tackled well: the pain and disturbance of moving on mixed with tension of excitement and discovery.

There are plenty more of these smoothly flowing, carefully unwinding pieces of music sprinkled across the album. Title track ‘Things’ is the kind of song you can’t help but listen to with your eyes closed, allowing the soft-strummed chords to envelop and embrace you. Listen for the occasional subtle harmonics from plucked strings, a background crackle of incidental sound, or the way Grace’s voice quivers with emotion. ‘California Rain’ (probably the best tune of the record) is built around a four-note motif; the music is laconic, hazy and earnest, with brushed drums and a lazy, appropriately sparse solo, which makes a good accompaniment for Grace’s memories of that memorable American time.

And ‘Leaving Song’ is a simpler offering but equally evocative. “Loving you, loving is so easy / Leaving you, leaving is so hard…” Here, Grace chooses a straightforward way to express a timeless subject, and here that works much more effectively than a more nuanced or complex approach would.

Grace does well with the pacier numbers also, delivering the kind of songs that come with constantly-strummed guitar and a strong sense of progression. ‘Say Something Mean’ is a toe-tapping, two-stepping shimmer of countrified rock and roll; ‘Passing Through’ again tells of shifting places, journeys, restlessness, using jangly guitars and a pressing rhythm to evoke exactly the right feelings; and ‘Days Like These’, which closes the album, paints the picture of Grace’s shift from memories to reality most clearly.

After some studio chatter, which does well to root the song firmly in present reality, Grace sets out his story. “California was a friend of mine, saw me through the brightest of times,” he sings, and then later, “I made roots so I could stand on my own two feet with lightning in my hand.”

Despite all that movement, what ties this album together is Grace’s skill as a purveyor of musical joy rolled-up with comforting chords. His voice is always present, literally and figuratively, as a kind of guide. What becomes clear is that Grace is guiding himself; this is a journey of self-discovery of which we’ve become fortunate viewers. — clashmusic.com

https://exystence.net/blog/2026/03/07/henry-grace-things-are-moving-all-around-me-2026/

https://exystence.net/?p=320770

Posted by exy

https://exystence.net/blog/2026/03/07/daniel-blumberg-the-testament-of-ann-lee-original-motion-picture-soundtrack-2026/

https://exystence.net/?p=320497

For Mona Fastvold’s film about the Shaker founder, Daniel Blumberg reworked hymns, composed songs, and led a sizable chorus to mimic speaking in tongues. It’s ambitious but ultimately overbearing.
Formed in England in the mid-1600s, the Religious Society of Friends became known for the tremors and convulsions that would overtake its members during prayer. These “quakes” were not, they believed, handed down from on high, but emerged from the inside out — a blasphemy that saw members of the fledgling sect thrown into prison or run out of town.
…In The Testament of Ann Lee, Shakers shake. Mona Fastvold’s film stars Amanda Seyfried as the founder of the religious movement…

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…—an offshoot of Quakerism with a heightened emphasis on self-denial, particularly denial of sex. It’s a tangle of contorting, trembling bodies, eyes and limbs cast skyward in rapture. And nearly omnipresent throughout is the soundtrack by Daniel Blumberg, who brought the rhythms of industrialization and its festering underbelly to 2024’s The Brutalist and won an Oscar for it. For Ann Lee, an arthouse musical that counts among its closest antecedents Robert Eggers’ The Witch and the Björk-starring Dancer in the Dark, Blumberg reworked and retrofitted 10 traditional Shaker hymns, and recorded Seyfried and the other actors live on set. He also led a group of nearly 100 singers to capture vocal performances inspired by the religious practice of speaking in tongues, and composed several original songs for the film. While this labor-intensive approach is thoroughly felt, it also draws the curtains on a film that yearns to let in the light.

Fastvold frames much of Ann Lee in carefully composed, painterly tableaus inspired by Caravaggio, William Hogarth, and the austere craftsmanship of the Shakers themselves. Saddled with much of the dramatic heavy lifting, the score is overbearing partly out of necessity. Pseudo-overture “The Testament of Ann Lee” introduces the Greek chorus of ululations, tuned percussion, and droning chamber strings that won’t still for most of the film’s two-hour runtime. This blend of worship music traditions from both sides of the Atlantic—the tonalities of Gregorian chant rendered in the timbres of Appalachian folk instruments—mirrors Lee’s passage from Manchester to the New World of Niskayuna, New York, but it’s too cluttered, verging on claustrophobic. The jubilant ensemble number “Worship” goes sodden in the muck, while Lewis Pullman’s solo turn on “Bow Down O Zion” gets an overblown arena-rock treatment, guitar solo and all.

For a film that treats the human voice itself as a conduit for divinity, Ann Lee rarely leaves those voices unadorned. Seyfried has been given what should be any actor’s dream—an underresearched historical figure with a bent toward mania—but she never surrenders herself to the role. Her rigorously trained Mancunian accent slips off when she sings; close your eyes, and it may as well be Sophie from Mamma Mia onscreen. Seyfried isn’t helped by Blumberg’s choice to set nearly all of the traditional hymns in minor keys. In their original forms, “O the Beautiful Treasures” and “All Is Summer” vacillate between major and minor, answer and question, faith and doubt. Stripped of that complexity, they sound like primetime TV soundtrack fodder, True Detective: Niskayuna. At the moment of Lee’s revelation, Seyfried sings a version of John S. B. Monsell’s “I Hunger and I Thirst,” but Monsell’s poetry, too (“For still the desert lies/My thirsting soul before/O living waters, rise/Within me evermore”) is radically cut down, leaving behind lines that read more like platitude or promotional copy—#IHungerAndThirst.

Ann Lee most closely approaches rapture when it quiets the noise. In one striking moment, a woman dries dishes in one of the communal houses of the Niskayuna Shaker settlement. She begins to sing to herself, her voice soon joined by another woman’s from the next room, first in the round, then in counterpoint. But then the choral synth pads swell, a bell tolls, and “I Love Mother (Pretty Mother’s Home)” reverts to the film’s baseline clangor. Compared to the reverent yet urgent contemporary hymns of Ethel Cain and Kristin Hayter (formerly of Lingua Ignota), Blumberg and Fastvold’s relationship to the form comes across as combative. In the struggle to signal their respect for tradition while chasing the sort of audacious anachronism that thrills film critics, they seem to have forgotten another core tenet of the Shakers and Quakers alike: Sometimes, silence is golden. — Pitchfork

https://exystence.net/blog/2026/03/07/daniel-blumberg-the-testament-of-ann-lee-original-motion-picture-soundtrack-2026/

https://exystence.net/?p=320497

Posted by exy

https://exystence.net/blog/2026/03/07/josh-rager-hearts-pace-2025/

https://exystence.net/?p=320104

In a late 2023 Ottawa Citizen profile by Peter Hum, jazz pianist Josh Rager declared that he’d moved on from donning styles like different sets of clothes to instead embrace his strengths and fully commit himself to his own gifts and talents.
Such wisdom comes naturally to someone who recently passed the fifty-year mark and is eager to use the time he has left in the most productive way possible. Jazz fans living in the Montreal area have long known of Rager as a figure in the city’s jazz scene, though when not playing the Ottawa native is also a dedicated professor at Concordia University.
Rager’s discography is modest, but the quality level of each release is strong, his latest no exception. The pianist has a soft spot for…

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…the quartet format and specifically one that favours guitar over saxophone or trumpet. Whereas an earlier iteration of the group included bassist Alec Walkington, drummer Andre White, and guitarist Sam Kirmayer (the latter was a student of Rager’s, just as the pianist was once taught by White and Walkington at McGill University), the one featured on Heart’s Pace couples Rager and holdover Walkington with drummer Rich Irwin and the stellar NYC-based Peter Bernstein on guitar.

Recorded at Montreal’s Studio PM on June 16, 2024, the album’s well worth a listen and rewards on multiple levels. On two standards and six originals (while the press release credits Rager as the composer of “Heart’s Pace,” the release package identifies Walkington as the writer), the group plays with authority and segues fluidly between notated material and improvisation. Always marked by intelligence, close listening, and taste, the playing’s very much in the tradition but no less satisfying for that.

At the start, Lerner and Loewe’s “I’ve Grown Accustomed to her Face” rolls in like the warmest of breezes, especially when it’s buoyed by a swinging, samba-fied pulse. Boasting a deliciously smooth tone, Bernstein quickly shows why he’s one of the best things about the release when ideas flow fast and his fingers deftly follow where the imagination leads. Rager steps up thereafter, his solo adroit and, with block chords alternating with crisp melodic statements, soulful too. After the four honour the songwriters with a take that’s faithful without being overly reverential or polite, they dig into Rager’s insistent, bop-influenced “Centered,” the quartet swinging mightily and locking solidly. Written with Bernstein in mind, the tune finds the guitarist following the leader’s opening salvo with brisk runs and funky flourishes, and Irwin also gets into the swing of things with a series of inventive solo interjections that thankfully don’t arrest momentum.

Speaking of soulful, the title track, regardless of who authored it, engages with a relaxed, mid-tempo groove and florid solo statements that don’t undercut the serene mood. The moment Rager’s “Fathers and Sons” sashays in like the slinkiest of cats, you’ll be wishing you could transport yourself to one of Montreal’s cozy jazz clubs to experience the quartet live. A nice unaccompanied intro by Walkington eases the band into the leader’s “Ebb and Flow,” its lively vamp eliciting from Irwin an almost Elvin Jones-like attack. In the penultimate slot, the sultry lilt of “Within Reach” proves suitably intoxicating, after which the quartet luxuriates in Henry Mancini’s “Dreamsville” for a refreshing six minutes. Throughout the disc, the musicians expertly impose themselves on the performances whilst also respectfully supporting one another and not stepping on each others’ toes.

You can never go wrong with the quartet format, something Rager himself acknowledges in recognizing that all involved were familiar with the idiom and, conversant with its language, comfortable operating within it. That shows in the confidence with which the band executes the charts, be they covers or originals. No fool he, the pianist strove for simplicity in the pieces he wrote for the project so that the four could engage as much as possible in serious to-and-fro rather than focus on replicating charts. — Textura

https://exystence.net/blog/2026/03/07/josh-rager-hearts-pace-2025/

https://exystence.net/?p=320104