Music Of The Month: November 2021

Sally Anne Morgan Cups

Since I went off on a tangent last month about the Beatles in general, and specifically the new deluxe edition of the Let It Be album, I’m not going to spend a lot of time this month telling you how much I love Peter Jackson’s new Beatles documentary, “Get Back”. Suffice to say that Suzy and I watched the entire 7-hour (8-hour?) series in less than 24 hours, and the first thing Suzy said when we finished was, “I’m going to need to see this again.” Brilliant. It’s streaming on the Disney+ service. If you don’t have that, this is the perfect opportunity to impose on a friend or relative who does.

As far as this month’s record releases go, there were quite a few good ones to pick from. Houndmouth, Curtis Harding, Courtney Barnett, and Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats all brought us some seriously good music this month. I’m especially fond of Snail Mail’s Valentine. And I imagine it would come as no surprise to anyone reading this if I said my pick of the month was the new offering from Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, Raise The Roof. Both these records are excellent, and will no doubt be in steady rotation in our playlist.

 But this month’s honors go to Sally Anne Morgan’s new album, Cups. Exceedingly pared-down, spare arrangements of instrumental music. Identifiable as “folk” primarily by way of the chosen instrumentation, each tune has an almost hypnotic effect (in the best possible sense of the phrase). For me, it conjures echoes of Phillip Glass, Michael Hedges, Harry Manx, and perhaps Laurie Anderson in a power outage. Although Morgan has apparently been around for some time, I’m not familiar with any of her previous work. But this album is definitely a keeper. 

Get some music in your ears, everybody!