New Mix: Sylvan Esso, Ondara, Momma, Nora Brown and more
Top row, left to right: Ondara, Sylvan Esso; bottom row, left to right: Nora Brown, Momma Courtesy of the artists hide caption
I'll begin this week's All Songs Considered with the song Sylvan Esso's Nick Sanborn tells us is his "favorite thing we've made so far as a band." The song is called, "Your Reality." Then I take us to the hills and some mountain music from the learned and talented teenage banjo picker Nora Brown. Nora's version of the Fred Cockerham song "Little Satchel" is from her third album coming in August called, Long Time To Be Gone. If you enjoy the ethereal folk sounds of Joan Shelley, then I am hoping you'll love the album I've had on repeat from Lindsay Clark called Carpe Noctem. The song "Evening Star" from the album also includes the spacious guitar of William Tyler.
I open the second half of the show with the most unlikely of collaborations. The droll sounds of England's Yard Act meet the top-40 pop icon Elton John as they remake Yard Act's song,"100% Endurance." I also play new music from the New York duo Momma and their tale of a crush called, "Motorbike," taken from their just-released album Household Name. And I end this week's show with Ondara, an artist from Kenya who equates his dream of coming to the U.S. and becoming a musician to that of a romance. In the song "An Alien In Minneapolis," from his next album Spanish Villager No. 3, we hear some of the challenges of that romance.