{"id":891292,"date":"2026-09-11T03:48:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T03:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/891292\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T03:48:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T03:48:19","slug":"new-album-reviews-of-this-is-lorelei-and-zela-margossian-quintet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/891292\/","title":{"rendered":"New album reviews of This Is Lorelei and Zela Margossian Quintet"},"content":{"rendered":"

September 11, 2026 \u2014 5:30am<\/p>\n

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\"NateNate Amos\u2019 earworms are always catchy but rarely too sweet.<\/p>\n

This Is Lorelei, The Singer in My Band<\/p>\n

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By the time his first official, label-anointed album came out in 2024, Nate Amos had done his 10,000 hours. Over the years he\u2019d uploaded scores of releases to Bandcamp under the name This Is Lorelei \u2013 work that, until recently<\/a>, was just a side project to his long-running art-pop outfit Water From Your Eyes. Now, it\u2019s coming into its own.<\/p>\n

The years of compulsive attention to craft have paid dividends: his latest album, The Singer in My Band, is a tight, affecting collection of songs, flitting deftly between power-pop, alt-country and pop-punk.<\/p>\n

There are goofy moments \u2013 like single Billy Came Back, a zippy jangle-pop tale of a local karaoke legend blowing back into town \u2013 but gut punches too, especially in the resonant, open-stringed numbers that fill the album\u2019s second half. The arrangements are always catchy but rarely too sweet: even the earworm hook and cascading harmonies of highlight Oh No Now My are paired with a taut, digitally tortured guitar solo.<\/p>\n

\"ThisThis Is Lorelei\u2019s Nate Amos has taken his one-time side project to centre stage.Eve Alpert<\/p>\n

Though billed as a road album, written and recorded amid a relentless touring schedule, The Singer in My Band was finished at Amos\u2019 family home with cameos from his father and sister, both professional bluegrass musicians.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It feels like a grounding moment in his trajectory \u2013 a return to centre as a solo artist, led by songwriting-first principles. Annie Toller<\/p>\n

\"AA sophisticated sense of mischief fuels the jazz group\u2019s new album.<\/p>\n

Zela Margossian Quintet, Remedy<\/p>\n

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You know that feeling when you revisit a home from your past, to find the furniture changed and walls repainted, so any familiarity or nostalgia are jumbled with an unsettling newness? This third Zela Margossian Quintet album is like that.<\/p>\n

The familiarity of the snaking melodies of Margossian\u2019s Armenian roots, and of her rigorous classical training being entwined with jazz\u2019s open-endedness, are still there, but her compositions are even more sophisticated and varied, with a delightful sense of mischief sometimes creeping in. The band, meanwhile, is joined by guest artists on four pieces, swelling the already expansive palette of colours generated by Margossian\u2019s piano, Stuart Vandegraff\u2019s saxophones, Jacques Emery\u2019s bass, Alexander Inman-Hislop\u2019s drums and Adem Yilmaz\u2019s array of percussion.<\/p>\n

Phil Slater\u2019s trumpet cries gently over a lament called Indifferent World \u2013 a reality with which we\u2019re all familiar. The stateliness of Jenny Eriksson\u2019s viola da gamba features on What If, the title possibly asking what would happen were that instrument added to this already exotic band. The answer? A dreamy timelessness.<\/p>\n

Virna Sanzone applies her plush voice to the Armenian lyrics of How I Wish, and flamenco guitarist Damian Wright makes Kintsugi glisten like sunlight on water. John Shand<\/p>\n

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\"JohnJohn Shand<\/a> has written about music and theatre since 1981 in more than 30 publications, including for Fairfax Media since 1993. He is also a playwright, author, poet, librettist, drummer and winner of the 2017 Walkley Arts Journalism AwardConnect via X<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"September 11, 2026 \u2014 5:30am Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-891292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}