Music Notes

My main music news this week was seeing Neko Case and Margaret Glaspy on Wednesday at the Columbus Theater in Providence. Hearing Neko sing is always a treat. That voice is just so, well, there aren’t really words to describe it. The band was cracker jack as well, which is hardly surprising as she can afford to hire only the best. The only slight caveat I will say about her work is that too many of the songs sound like a Middlebury student who has read too much 19th century British poetry. When she rocks out, it’s great, but there’s not that much rocking out. One thing I loved about The Worse Things Get, which is my favorite of her albums by a good bit, was that she cut out the songs about birds and whatnot and wrote lyrics such as “You never held it at the right angle” and songs such as “Man,” which is a pissed off rocker about masculinity at its worst and which was awesome to see live. Otherwise, I’ve tended to find her work slightly frustrating for all the flightiness in the lyrics with too many mid-tempo songs. To be clear, these are relatively minor critiques of a great artist with one of the finest voices I will ever hear.

And let’s also talk about Margaret Glaspy. Her debut album from 2017, Emotions and Math, was so great. Here was a smart songwriter with a great voice and who could write a great straight-ahead rock and roll song, which is too rare a skill today. She had a little 3-song EP last year which included one really fine song “Before We Were Together,” another sharply written breakup song. She is working up some new material too and mostly it was pretty strong, though one political song that was just about how everything today makes her angry wasn’t too much. I can’t wait for the new album. But I also want to talk about the experience of opening for a big name act. This is always so hard to do. Hardly anyone is there to see you, the sound isn’t as big and booming as for the headliner, people are talking and going in and out, you don’t have a backing band with you, etc. I often hate seeing people I really like as openers because it is so tough to get a really great performance under the circumstances. But Glaspy really nailed it. The theater was completely silent. Some of this is that Neko is really hard core about no pictures or cameras in her shows–which is great! But some of it is that a) some people were really excited to see her and b) she was awesome and just blew everyone way. It is perhaps the only time I’ve been in the bathroom line after the set and tons of people were actually talking about the opening act. So that was pretty cool.

I was supposed to go see Ted Leo last night but was so exhausted that I bailed on it. So that was kind of a bummer. He’s from here so it’s not like it’s impossible to see him and I did see him at a festival about 10 years ago, but I hate situations like that.

In other news, The great free jazz drummer Alvin Fielder died. A critical part of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, Fielder is one of the most important drummers of the last half-century. A titanic loss.

Album Reviews:

Alejandro Escovedo, The Crossing

The Crossing has been seen as something of a comeback by Escovedo, and I suppose it is. He’s had an odd career. He was basically known as the Mexican punk guy in those scenes through the 80s but never had more than moderate success. But in the 90s, he turned more toward a singer-songwriter alt-country guy and released some really great albums, such as Gravity, Bourbonitis Blues, With These Hands, and especially A Man Under the Influence. No Depression named him their artist of the decade. Then he got sick thanks to a horrifically unhealthy lifestyle catching up to him. He didn’t die and he eventually came back, but the quality of the material wasn’t really all that high. There were a few good songs on these albums, but overall, it was pretty meh. I used to go see him frequently in Austin and those were great little shows; really, when I think of my time there, his Tuesday night sets at the Continental Club is what comes to my mind. He had more success during these years too, opening for the Stones, being able to charge a good bit of money for his solo shows, etc. But with the songs not that great, I haven’t seen him on his occasional New England appearances.

The Crossing is a return to one of his best topics–the experience of Mexican migrants. His best albums had some of these songs–“With These Hands,” “Wave” and especially the wonderful “Rosalie.” The theme is about two immigrants, one from Mexico and one from Italy, who meet while working in Texas and share experiences. Recorded with the Italian band Don Antonio and with a ton of first-rate guest musicians, there is some really strong material here. Politically it is great and there are songs that directly take on what is happening in the nation now. But there’s more than a little filler too. I’m not sure a 17 song opus created the tightest album possible.

B

Andy Shauf, The Party

This is a nice 2016 album by this Canadian songwriter. It’s an interesting concept: 10 songs about overhearing conversations at a party. Each song unveils the story of what might sometimes be stock characters–the guy who always shows up too early, the liar, the dancer–but which are pretty nicely told slice of life stories. The music is in that California singer-songwriter genre that I sometimes find a bit lazy or boring, but it works well enough here.

B

Georgia Anne Muldrow, Overload

Muldrow has an outstanding rate of production in the alt-soul genre, broadly speaking. Her first album was in 2006, this is her 17th. That’s a country musician circa 1967 level of production. But she struggled to get any real commercial appeal out of all this music until last year’s release, Overload. I hadn’t heard any of those previous albums, but I am going to have to surf through them and explore her catalog a bit, because Overload is real good work. Evidently, this is a move to slightly poppier sound, but what it sounds like to me is really experimental soul singer who is trying a lot of different things while remaining true to a unique voice and style. Good stuff.

A-

Amanda Shires, To The Sunset

I really didn’t know what to expect from this album. Shires is pretty famous as the wife and violinist of Jason Isbell and had a career before him of course, but at the relative margins of country music, although as well-renowned fiddler going back to her teenage years. One never knows how good an album is really going to be by the partner of someone who is far more famous. As it turns out, this is a quite solid album, with a significantly more pop-oriented theme than I expected, including a good bit of electronics. Several are the songs are very good. Perhaps there is a little lag on the second side of the album, but the closer is really strong. She’s a fine songwriter and of course an excellent musician with a great band on this album (including Isbell on guitar and Dave Cobb on bass). Solid work.

B+

Tomas Fujiwara, Triple Double

This is a pretty fantastic album by the jazz drummer. This band has an interesting concept–it’s 2 drummers, 2 guitarist, and 2 trumpet players. And it works great. The core here are the drummers–Fujiwara and the great Gerald Cleaver provide such an intense rhythmic wall of sound beneath all this noise that it really propels the album forward. The guitarists–Mary Halvorson and Brandon Seabrook (who has the most over the top guitar face I’ve ever seen)–are so outstanding as well. And then Taylor Ho Bynum and Ralph Alessi are just amazing on trumpet. I saw this band live a few years ago, but it was missing Alessi, who was on the jazz musician DL after splitting his lip the day before. It was pretty wonderful to see live but the album might actually be an even more revelatory experience. First rate.

A

As always, this an open thread for all things music and none things politics.