Olas
Cada Nueva Ola
self-released
Click to hear: “Mis Amores Han Desaparecido”
If you’d told me 10 years ago that Chriss Sutherland of the avant-garde collective Cerberus Shoal, Tom Kovacevic of the experimental Middle Eastern ensemble Tarpigh, and Leif Sherman Curtis of metal outliers Moneycastasia would be teaming up to cover “Volare,” I’d have taken your acid away. Yet here they are, three-seventh of the contemporary Flamenco ensemble Olas. And damned if this isn’t the best version of “Volare” I’ve ever heard.
Cada Nueva Ola is the new five-song album by the group, which also includes four women (Molly Rose Angie, Lindsey Bourassa, Anna Giamaiou and Megan Keogh), all of whom sing and contribute palmas (percussive hand claps), and two of whom (Bourassa and Keogh) add percussive footwork. The LP is being released on vinyl, in conjunction with three videos.
Curtis’ background as a shredder is apparent on the first track, “Mis Amores Han Desaparecido,” one of two originals he contributed. You expect the electric guitars to come crashing in any second. Instead, the women’s lovely voices come floating through the flurry of strummed strings and Sutherland lets loose with an impassioned vocal.
If there’s a stronger, more expressive male singer than Sutherland in Maine right now, I haven’t heard him in a while. I don’t understand a lick of Spanish, and still I was moved by his words. “Baya Song,” for which he wrote the music, is a breezy, slower number with hints of California folk. On the last track, a version of “La Llorona,” he digs in to deliver a deeply soulful performance.
OK, you can have your acid back now.
— Chris Busby
Olas plays an album-release show on Sat., April 12, at Mayo Street Arts, with The Reverie Machine.
