Keola Beamer is a fifth-generation musician and master of the Hawaiian slack key guitar style. He’s also the composer of “Honolulu City Lights”, one of Hawaii’s biggest-selling songs of all time.
Moe’uhane Kika: Tales from the Dream Guitar was produced by George Winston and distributed by Windham Hill subsidiary Dancing Cat Records, so it might be mistaken for New Age music.
But the album is mostly comprised of tranquil instrumental versions of familiar Hawaiian songs–or songs that would be familiar to Hawaiians.
This isn’t New Age, but it is World Music. It isn’t wimpy, but it is serene. It isn’t steel guitar and ukulele, but it is music with deep Hawaiian roots.
Spanish singer Amaia is walking contradiction. She’s a multi-instrumentalist, easily traipsing between piano, chair flute and — not featured in this Tiny Desk performance — her signature harp. But all of this hardly compares to a voice that dances between ferocity and softness.
Matt Duncan, who calls himself “the Elvis of self-doubt”, is a purveyor of tuneful soft rock that sounds like it ought to be playing from an AM transistor radio.
In a good way.
Though actual 70’s pop spanned a single decade, in the four-plus decades since we’ve been hearing people try to approximate its magic.
And though plenty of contemporary artists catch interest for their retro 70’s musical dialect, seldom does their mere facsimile of sound actually summon the aura of that decade.
Maybe the secret is to not try too hard.
Duncan acknowledges his first LP Beacon lived in the 60’s, and that his sound moved onward one decade for this, his second.
But while he cites Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell among others as influences, his music is never mimicry. Did you hear an Atlanta Rhythm Section groove in “The Keys”? A little Van Morrison in the horns on “Idle Hands”? The influences are hard to pin down because it’s all more evocative than derivative.
Duncan just tastefully employs a variety of elements: soulful violins, sax, scratch guitar, and harmony vocals span the album. He arranges with lots of pauses, breakdowns and tempo changes, ensuring that “mellow” never becomes “dull”. And it’s all done with an impressive overall gloss and sophistication.
Lyrically, Duncan avoids cliche territory completely, and a barbed line here or there is a pleasant surprise.
One might call this lightweight stuff, but so were Hall & Oates after 1980. Not everything has to be “Kashmir”.
Soft Times feels like a pleasant escape back to 1977 and a brief respite from our own hard times.
The title track from Julieta Venegas’ 2022 Tu Historia (“Your Story”) is an exhortation to own your mistakes and carry them forward as part of your life’s journey.
By this time the Latin music icon had moved on a bit from the irresistible Mexican indie pop of her early career to a more measured, mature, reflective style.
Some fans clamored for a return to the early, poppier sound.
This song found the middle ground: sung from a wizened perspective, but a catchy little earworm of a tune too.
Julieta’s real-life friend Maria Yzabal appears in the video with her.
Lyric translation:
You tell me that you don’t feel like thinking about him again His memory hurts so much and how sad it was to lose I tell you: “Friend, wait, breathe, time will do you good You have learned something and you will take it with you, you will see” Let your past be part of you Carry your mistakes with pride
Don’t let the past ever be forgotten, never ignore it Take with you what you were and hold it well Don’t let your story ever be forgotten, tell it again From the first day to the end it’s part of you
There’s nothing wrong with losing, the important thing is to rescue What you’ve learned and you’ll carry it with you until eternity If your uneasiness runs out of a name, you won’t understand You need to know it so you don’t stumble anymore Let your past be part of you Carry your mistakes with pride
Don’t let the past ever be forgotten, never ignore it Take with you what you were and hold it well Don’t let your story ever be forgotten, tell it again From the first day to the end it’s part of you
You tell me you don’t feel like thinking about it again Its memory hurts so much and how sad it was to lose I tell you: “Friend, wait, breathe, time will do you good You have learned something and you will take it with you, you will see” Let your past be part of you Carry your mistakes with pride
Don’t let the past ever be forgotten, never ignore it Take with you what you were and hold it well Don’t let your story ever be forgotten, tell it again From the first day to the end it’s part of you
There’s nothing wrong with losing, the important thing is to rescue What you’ve learned and you’ll carry it with you until eternity If your uneasiness runs out of a name, you won’t understand You need to know it so you don’t stumble anymore Let your past be part of you Carry your mistakes with pride
Don’t let the past ever be forgotten, never ignore it Take with you what you were and hold it well Don’t let your story ever be forgotten, tell it again From the first day to the end it’s part of you
Every Moment Has A Song 