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Happy New Music Friday - Check out a new song from the fabulous band The Aces and a great jazz release from multi-instrumentalist Julius Rodridguez. Let’s get to it.
Single of the Week:
“Girls Make Me Wanna Die” by The Aces
Just in time for Pride Month, the catchy new single from the all-female rockers from Provo, Utah is just what the doctor ordered as we head into the summer months. The band explain the track as a “nostalgic call back to our adolescence and shared experience of being young, queer, and painfully in love with your best friend.” At just two minutes and change, the sparkling indie-pop jam should be played loud with all the windows rolled down.
Album of the Week:
Let the Sound Tell All by Julius Rodriguez
The debut from multi-instrumentalist Julius Rodriguez (member of the New York City group Onyx Collective) offers up outstanding jazz music melded with other formats including gospel, R&B and classical. A little background - Rodriguez dropped out of Juilliard in his teens to go on tour with rapper A$AP Rocky in 2018. His credits now include jazz-great Wynton Marsalis and R&B with singer/songwriter Cautious Clay.
There is no missing the classical jazz playing Rodriguez has mastered (listen to the track “Elegy (For Cam)”), but it’s the more modern tracks like “Two Way Street” where he mixes in complicated rhythms and melodies that shine. The duet, “In Heaven” with singer Samara Joy (the winner of the 2019 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition) is a perfect combination of vocals and rich gospel chords. The track “Where Grace Abounds” is one of the most beautiful jazz songs I’ve ever heard.
It’s one of the best jazz releases I’ve heard in a couple years and I’m excited to hear more from Rodriguez in the future.
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