Looking over the overlooked: new music from Rachel Yamagata, Shasta Sheen, and Keren Ann

Our prolific music reviewer shares three albums by new artists, including one San Franciscan. Listen up and expand your horizons, auditorily speaking.
Indie musicians Rachael Yamagata and Keren Ann (Zeidel) have more in common than just being singer/songwriters at the back end of the alphabet. They are both gifted artists who put in time on major labels in the early 2000s and have continued to put out music independently.

If you lived in Chicago (and possibly elsewhere) during the late 1990s, you probably came across the psychedelic funk of Bumpus, a band that featured Yamagata as a member and co-songwriter. The band performed at the LGBTQ street fair known as Northalsted Market Days. Her distinctively smoky vocals gave the band a particular sizzle.

Yamagata released a solo EP in 2003, and followed it with the gorgeous, and severely underrated full-length album, “Happenstance,” in 2004. Four years later, the double-disc “Elephants…Teeth Sinking Into Heart” found Yamagata moving in a more experimental direction, and she released a few other indie records in the 2010s.

“Starlit Alchemy” (Jullian) is Yamagata’s first new studio album in nearly ten years. Citing influences including Joni Mitchell (the intimacy of “Blue Jay”), Tom Waits (the lyrics in “Birds”), Rickie Lee Jones (listen to the piano on “Backwards”), and Hans Zimmer (the cinematic scope of “Heaven Help”), Yamagata puts her talent for creating emotional (read: sad) songs on full display. She then successfully combines all the influences on “Somebody Like Me.”
https://rachaelyamagata.com/

Rachael Yamagata performs on November 3 in San Francisco at The Chapel, 777 Valencia St. $46, 8pm. https://thechapelsf.com/

A multilingual performer currently based in Paris, Keren Ann released three exceptional English-language albums between 2003 and 2007 that never reached the audience they deserved.

She teamed up with Icelandic musician Barði Jóhannsson to become Lady & Bird for the duo’s eponymous in 2006 album, featuring original songs and covers of The Velvet Underground’s “Stephanie Says,” as well as the “M*A*S*H” theme song “Suicide is Painless.” Additionally, six of her songs were included in gay filmmaker Eytan Fox’s extraordinary 2012 movie “Yossi,” a sequel to Fox’s “Yossi & Jagger.”

Her new album, “Paris Amour” (Bring Back Music), is performed almost entirely en français (with the exception of a few lines in English in “Le Musique a Fond”). The good news is that you don’t have to speak the language to enjoy the listening experience.

For example, it doesn’t take a native speaker to hear the affection emanating from the modern pop of the title track. Cinematic numbers such as “Les Désirs Fatigués Des Navires d’Argent” and “L’Expérience Étrange de L’Inégal,” will no doubt conjure images of Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo to many listeners. “Que La Vie Est Belle” and “L’Écho des Tirs” are also standouts.
https://www.kerenann.com/

There’s something risky yet admirable about self-releasing a debut album at a time when streaming services and major labels alike continue to take advantage of artists. However, that’s precisely what Shasta Sheen, a queer, San Francisco-based singer/songwriter has done with “Hideaways.”

Sheen describes the ten songs as “an intimate journey through longing, dissatisfaction, resilience, and hope.” You’ve heard of bedroom pop? “Hideaways,” written, recorded, and produced entirely in Sheen’s home is apartment pop, with ear-pleasing songs in a variety of genres, ranging from rockers (“American Nightmare,” “What’s On Your Mind”), to modern folk (“Where I Have Dreamed”). Enjoy his sonic experimentation in “Epistle (Falling on the Outside), and simply gorgeous tunes, including “Dialogues,” “Dead Awake (I Don’t Know Why),”  and “Pop Philosophy (Wax Acerbic).”
https://shastasheen.com/