Summertime is almost upon us, and with it comes festival season: Shakori Hills is this weekend, the Freight Train Blues music series starts next week, and Chapel Hill’s gearing up for an all-day event on May 21. (Plus something or other that I hear is happening in June.)
With that, the month of May is already bringing us quite a bit of new music – including new albums from Dissimilar South and Michael Daughtry, just in the first week. But the last couple months have also brought us some pretty good new music as well.
Leading the way for March and April are a pair of artists who are making the most of 2022, with multiple album releases in the first four months alone. Django Haskins dropped the second volume of his “Beforetimes” project, with five more songs written before the pandemic took hold, from a wide variety of angles. (The highlight, “I Pull the Strings,” is written from the perspective of mid-20th century urban planner Robert Moses. Because of course.)
But Haskins isn’t the only prolific performer of 2022: there’s also John Harrison, who’s also already dropped two albums this year under the moniker JPhono1. Harrison’s most recent album, “Arcing Phase to Phase,” is an inventive collaboration with John Crouch, also known as Paling Light. Much like Speed Stick did last year, they began with drum tracks and slowly built their songs around them – led by the trippy, synthy “Spyhunter,” in my opinion, though yours might vary.
Harrison and Haskins have both been putting out great music for decades – but April also gave us “Haven,” the debut EP of emerging young singer-songwriter Emma Geiger. Recorded half in Chapel Hill and half in Asheville, the title track is the standout here, but each of Geiger’s four songs are terrific. “Haven” has a soft, woodsy, Asheville vibe through and through, and I mean that in a good way.
And of course Geiger wasn’t the only artist with dual Triangle/Asheville citizenship to put out a significant record last month. April also gave us “Dust,” the first album in two years from Ryan Gustafson and the Dead Tongues – whose music also has that Asheville vibe, come to think of it. No dust here: Gustafson shakes off the pandemic and delivers an album that picks up right where 2020’s “Transmigration Blues” left off. And I mean that in a good way, too.
Photo of Django Haskins and Aaron Keck, during Django’s April appearance (his second this year!) on “Live & Local.” Tune in to 97.9 The Hill every weeknight at 6 p.m. for an hour of the best in local music, present and past.
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