“HIS SONGS HIS STORIES HIS STYLE”

Brother Noland (2Tu)

“Brother Noland” Conjugacion hit it big in 1983 with the release of his third album, “Pacific Bad Boy,” and the breakout single “Coconut Girl.” The song was one of the first by a Hawaii resident artist to incorporate Afro-Caribbean rhythms in a song about island life and has been his signature song ever since.

Thirty-three years and 11 albums later, Brother Noland continues to follow his imagination and knit together ideas from diverse genres of contemporary music. He casts a very wide net here.

He opens with “Signs,” a call for human unity delivered in a style reminiscent of Tower of Power or Earth Wind and Fire. Next comes “Us Solution,” which also calls for positivity but is much closer musically to country.

From there the musical smorgasbord includes gentle acoustic love songs, smooth cocktail lounge pop and playful rock ’n’ roll. For something else completely different there’s “Hokule‘a ~ Hikianalia,” a contemporary hapa-haole song honoring the famed voyaging canoe which he co-wrote with Chucky Boy Chock.

Chock is one of many well-known artists sharing their talents here. Among the others are musicians Kata Maduli and Jeff Gerona, who appeared on Noland’s “Pacific Bad Boy” album.

Visit brothernoland.com.

“GUNS, GOD, GOLD”

Champions of Terminal (Tin Idol Productions)

This year’s most prolific local record label is Gerard K. Gonsalves’ hard-rocking Tin Idol Productions, with seven full-length hard-copy albums (CDs) released thus far in 2017. For “Guns, God, Gold,” vocalist Angelo Brio joins Gonsalves (drums, keyboards), Jimmy Caterine (guitars, backing vocals) and Darren Soliven (bass, backing vocals) to create a new group, Champions of Terminal.

Caterine, Gonsalves and Soliven lay down a solid and intense foundation as Brio sings and roars through what amounts to a one-character rock opera. It opens with a song addressed to a fugitive the narrator is pursuing. Others suggest that death may not be the end of the conflict and that the narrator — who mentions in one song that his quarry is “stealing time from me” — is inescapable.

A touch of island slang sneaks into another song in which the hunter brags, “I take lickings for free. What is danger for me?”

Visit reverbnation.com/label/tinidolproductions.