Christine Anu, 44, is an Australian pop singer and actress. Anu is arguably Australia’s most successful indigenous performer and one of Australia’s most popular recording artiste, backed by an award-winning repertoire spanning across music, theatre, dance, film, television and children’s entertainment. Her illustrious career over two decades boasts of platinum albums, sell-out musicals, Hollywood blockbusters, and high-profiled collaborations with showbiz and musical luminaries such as Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge), Paul Kelly and David Atkins.
Find this tune and her new 2014 Christmas Album: Island Christmas
Now 26, she (Ladan Hussein) was born in Etobicoke, Ontario, to parents from Somalia. Calling herself a “typical moribund teenager,” she took up a guitar at age 15. After relocating to London, where her extended family was dubious about her choice of career, Ms. Hussein was playing as Cold Specks at St. Pancras Old Church when a producer from “Later… with Jools Holland” caught her show and invited her on the BBC program. The other guests on the November 2011 broadcast included Mary J. Blige, Florence + the Machine, My Morning Jacket and the Who’s Pete Townshend. At the conclusion of her a cappella version of “Old Stepstone,” the traditional folk ballad, Mr. Holland cheered, “The power of the single human voice!”
On her two albums, including this year’s “Neuroplasticity” (Mute), Cold Specks delivers contemporary rock that either arrives with the confrontational authority of hardcore punk and free jazz or is as contemplative as folk and mellow soul. In concert here last week at the Echo, she and her four-piece band demonstrated how arresting that complex mix can be. In a conversation before her late-night set, Cold Specks—whose real name is Ladan Hussein, though she is also known as Al Spx—was quiet, perhaps even shy, a contrast to her bold, insistent music. “I’m a listener,” she said, “not a talker.” She added that she doesn’t follow modern music and was enjoying the doo-wop a manager put on in the van as they traveled between gigs.
…“I am who I am,” she said earlier during a conversation, a simple remark that later seemed a promise of much more extraordinary music to come.
alt-J is an English indie rock band formed in 2007 in Leeds, England. The band’s debut album An Awesome Wave was released in September 2012 in the United States, and won the 2012 British Mercury Prize. Their second album, This Is All Yours, was released on 22 September 2014 and went straight to UK number 1.
Liked this? Don’t miss another alt-J tune titled: Left Hand Free.
Fink, aka Fin Greenall, is a singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer and DJ. He was born in 1972 in Cornwall, grew up in Bristol and is currently based in Brighton, UK. His mother worked in the field of classical music and his father was a folk musician. Fin can recall “the one thing of his dad’s that Fin Greenall wasn’t allowed to touch was the old Martin acoustic guitar.” In an interview, Greenall remembers “It was his one possession where he said, ‘everything in this house is owned by everybody – apart from that.'” Their presence had an impact on his future in music. “The great thing about growing up in a house where music is a big factor… was the fact that music being part of your life was a perfectly natural thing.”
Find this tune and his 2014 album on iTunes here: Hard Believer
Here’s a medley of songs from Diana Krall’s new album titled “WallFlower” scheduled to be released in February, 2015. Find details here on iTunes and Amazon.
And if you can’t get enough, check her on a longer Youtube clip of Eagles hit: Desperado.