Category: Live Footage

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Black History Month: Sylvester

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Black History Month — and pays tribute to disco legend Sylvester.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Black History Month: Aretha Franklin

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Black History Month — and pays tribute to the legendary Aretha Franklin.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Black History Month: Rick James

JOVM’s WIlliam Ruben Helms celebrates Black History — and pays tribute to Rick James.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Black History Month: Chaka Khan

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Black History Month — and pays tribute to Chaka Khan.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Laufey Performs “Like The Movies” on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

Laufey Lin is a rapidly rising, 21 year-old Chinese-Icelandic singer/songwriter, cellist and pianist, best known as Laufey. Spending much of her childhood in Reykjavik, Lin grew up influenced by classical music and jazz, and by the time she was 15, she performed with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. Interestingly, despite her deep and abiding love of the music that has served as musical foundation, she yearned to express herself by creating music that blended her classical and jazz background with more modern and contemporary influences.

While attending Berklee College of Music, Lin began collaborating with some of her peers and recording her debut single “Street By Street,” a blend of jazz melodies with slow-burning R&B grooves. Making the best of the unexpected downtime as a result of the pandemic, Lin decided to release “Street By Street” through social media. The song, along with a collection of covers and originals quickly went viral. Eventually, “Street By Street” hit #1 on the Icelandic charts — and she began to amass a massive following that includes Billie Eilish, Willow Smith, dodie, and others.

Adding to a breakthrough year, the Reykjavik-born artist landed her own music series on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Sounds. She won Best New Artist at the Icelandic Music Awards. Amazingly, those accomplishments took place before the release her acclaimed debut EP Typical of Me, which has amassed over 10 million streams across all digital streaming platforms.

Last week, the rising, young Icelandic artist made her late night, Stateside TV debut on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where she performed Typical of Me track “Like The Movies.” The old-timey, jazz-standard-inspired song — and it’s gorgeous arrangement — continues a run of classic Hollywood-inspired ballads with modern sentiment: in the case of “Like The Movies,” the song’s narrator recognizes that the old movies she loves has distorted her ideas of what love is and can be. Besides that, the song reveals a songwriter and vocalist, who displays a maturity and sensibility beyond her relative youth.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: JOVM Mainstays Nation of Language Perform “Across That Fine Line” on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”

Rising Brooklyn-based synth pop trio and JOVM mainstays Nation of Language — Ian Richard Devaney (vocals, guitars, percussion), Aidan Noell (synth, vocals) and Michael Sue-Poi (bass) — can trace their origins back to 2016: Devaney and Sue-Poi were members of The Static Joys, a band that became largely inactive after the release of their sophomore album. And as the story goes, Devaney was inspired to start a new project after hearing OMD‘s “Electricity,” a song he had listened to quite a bit while in his father’s car.

What initially started out as Devaney fooling around on a keyboard eventually evolved to Nation of Language with the addition of Noell and Sue-Poi. Between 2016-2019, the Brooklyn-based synth pop trio released a handful of singles that helped to build up a fanbase locally and the outside world.

Nation of Language’s full-length debut, Introduction, Presence was released to critical praise, landing on the Best Albums of 2020 lists for Rough Trade, KEXP, Paste, Stereogum, Under The Radar and PopMatters. The Brooklyn-based pop trio capped off the year with the “A Different Kind of Light”/”Deliver Me From Wondering Why” 7 inch, which featured the A Flock of Seagulls meets Simple Minds-like “Deliver Me From Wondering Why.” 

Late last year, the Brooklyn-based JOVM mainstays released their critically applauded sophomore album A Way Forward, which featured lead album single “Across That Fine Line.” Featuring glistening synth arpeggios, a relentless motorik groove, Devaney’s plaintive vocals and an enormous, rousingly anthemic hook, “Across That Fine Line” continues the band’s remarkable run of decidedly 80s synth pop inspired material. Certainly, as a child of the 80s, the song reminds me of the aforementioned A Flock of Seagulls, as well as Thomas Dolby, Howard Jones and a few others — and much like the sources that inspired it, the song is centered around earnest, lived-in songwriting.

“‘Across That Fine Line’ is a reflection on that moment when a non-romantic relationship flips into something different,” Nation of Language’s Devaney explains in press notes. “When the air in the room suddenly feels like it changes in an undefinable way. It’s a kind of celebration of that certain joyous panic, and the uncertainty that surfaces right after it.  
 
“Sonically, it’s meant to feel like running down a hill, just out of control. I had been listening to a lot of Thee Oh Sees at the time of writing it and admiring the way they supercharge krautrock rhythms and imbue them with a kind of mania, which felt like an appropriate vibe to work with and make our own.”

Recently, the JOVM mainstays made their late night, national TV debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. The band performed “Across That Fine Line” in a segment taped at Baby’s All Right.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 83rd Birthday, Allen Toussaint!

JOVM celebrates Allen Toussaint on what would have been his 83rd birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Genesis Owusu Performs “Gold Chains” on “Late Show with Stephen Colbert”

2017’s  Cardrive EP saw Ghanian-born, Canberra, Australia-based, 20-something artist Genesis Owusu — born Kofi Owusu-Anash — quickly establishing himself as a perpetually restless, genre-blurring chameleon with an ability to conjure powerful and deeply personal storytelling in diverse forms. Cardive EP eventually garnered an ARIA Award nomination for Best R&B/Soul Release and praise from Sir Elton John (!), NME, i-D, mixmag and others. Adding to a growing profile across Australia, Owusu has opened for Dead Prez, Col3trane, Sampa The Great, Cosmo’s Midnight, Noname, Animé, Ruel and others. 

Back in 2020, Owusu-Anash released a handful of highly-celebrated singles including the fiery mosh-pit friendly banger “Whip Cracker” and the ARIA Award-nominated smash hit “Don’t Need You,” which quickly became the #1 most played song on triple J radio — and since then has received airplay in the UK on both BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 6 and here in the States on KCRW, KUTX, The Current and Alt98. Those singles prominently appear on Owusu-Anash’s critically applauded full-length debut Smiling With No Teeth.

“Smiling With No Teeth is performing what the world wants to see, even if you don’t have the capacity to do so honestly,” Owusu explains in press notes. “Slathering honey on your demons to make them palatable to people who only want to know if you’re okay, if the answer is yes. That’s the idea, turned into beautiful, youthful, ugly, timeless and strange music.” Each of the album’s 15 tracks can trace their origins back to studio jam sessions with a backing band that features Kirin J. Callinan, Touch Sensitive’s Michael DiFrancesco, World Champion‘s Julian Sudek and the album’s producer Andrew Klippel. 

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I wrote about three of Smiling With No Teeth‘s singles:

  • “The Other Black Dog,” a mind-bending production that meshed alternative hip-hop, industrial clang, clatter, rattle and stomp, off-kilter stuttering beats and wobbling synth arpeggios that was roomy enough for Owusu-Anash’s breathless, rapid-fire and dense flow. Managing to balance club friendliness with sweaty, mosh pit energy, the song is a full-throttled nosedive into madness that reminds me of the drug and booze fueled chaos of ODB, and the menace of DMX.
  • “Gold Chains,” a brooding yet seamless synthesis of old school soul, G Funk and Massive Attack-like trip hop centered around shimmering and atmospheric synths, stuttering boom bap beats, squiggling blasts of guitar and the rising Ghanian-born, Canberra-based artist’s Mos Def/Yasiin Bey-like delivery, alternating between spitting dense and dexterous bars and crooning with an achingly tender falsetto. “‘Gold Chains’ got me thinking about the flaws of being in a profession where, more and more, you have to be the product, rather than just the provider of the product, and public misconceptions about how luxurious that is,” Owusu-Anash explains in press notes. “Lyrically, it set the tone for the rest of the album.” 
  • “Same Thing,” a jolting and uneasy future funk banger centered around shimmering synth arpeggios, skittering beats, bursts of Nile Rodgers-like guitar, a propulsive bass line and infectious hook serving as a silky bed for Owusu’s alternating dexterous and densely worded bars and soulful crooning. But at its core is an unflinchingly honest — and necessary — view of mental health struggles. 

Owusu-Anash capped off an enormous 2021 with the Missing Molars EP, a five-track accompaniment to his critically applauded full-length debut. Recorded during the Smiling With No Teeth sessions, the Missing Molars EP material didn’t make the album — but further continue the soul-baring narrative of his debut. “Missing Molars is an extension of Smiling With No Teeth,” Owusu-Anash explains. “A small collection of tracks from the SWNT sessions that take the already established world-building groundwork of the album, and expand that universe into new and unexplored places. These are all tracks that I felt were special in their own right and needed to be shared. This is music without boundaries.” 

Recently, Owusu-Anash made his Stateside, late night TV debut on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he performed SWNT standout single “Gold Chains” along with his backing band.