Music Notes
By 
This week’s musical highlight was seeing Waxahatchee play at the Columbus Theatre in Providence. This was my 4th time seeing Waxahatchee. Like with Jason Isbell, who I used to see in small Texas clubs shortly after he left Drive By Truckers, it’s been fun getting on her bandwagon from the time she was barely known and watching her now fill 1,000 seat venues. She’s not necessarily a great showwoman in terms of the raw entertainment value, but she’s such a fantastic songwriter and singer with a strong vision that she sees it through. The show itself pretty much works through playing most of her last album and then 5 or 6 of the older songs pretty rapidly. She also does a few covers, which is great, though I wish she’d actually tell everyone what they were since part of the point of covers is to turn your fans on to other music. She’s been doing Lucinda’s “Fruits of My Labor” off the World Without Tears album and closing her show with Dolly’s “Light of a Clear Blue Morning,” off her 1977 New Harvest album. These choices remind me of one of things I find interesting about Waxahatchee, which is that for years since ran away from being from Alabama; certainly her music shows little influence from southern music. But with the Saint Cloud album she released in 2019 and the songs she’s choosing to cover, she’s now embracing her southern background, at least in themes if not in musical style. In fact, she’s performing at an all-Alabama musical festival I’ll be at in the spring.
Madi Diaz opened the show. She’s a lifer. Now in her mid-30s, she received some buzz back in the mid-00s and got opening acts with big names and then it just didn’t grow from there. She disappeared for several years but now is back, doing the same kind of singer-songwriter stuff Waxahatchee does. I wasn’t real familiar with her work but it was a very good opening act and I look forward to checking out her recent work.
Two gigantic losses to the musical world this week. First, we lost Norma Waterson. Part of the legendary Carthy/Waterson family of the British folk-rock world, she contributed to some of the finest albums that nation has put out in the late twentieth century. She was largely a backing figure in all of this until her 1996 solo debut that went largely contemporary with a bunch of outstanding covers, including the definitive version of Richard Thompson’s “God Loves a Drunk” (RT plays guitar on the album), the Dead’s “Black Muddy River,” and Elvis Costello’s “The Birds Will Still be Singing.” It’s really a first-rate album with powerful vocals.
Second, Betty Davis died. Davis has two big claims to fame. First, in her brief and by all accounts horrible marriage to Miles Davis (Miles was really a very terrible human being), she turned him on to rock and roll, playing him Hendrix and Sly Stone and convincing him to name his landmark album Bitches Brew, which scared a lot of people in the record industry. Then, after their divorce, she went on to make three funk albums that were pure raw sex. Now, she could not sing. In fact, I’d say she was a pretty bad singer. But she could ooze sex and write about it (not to mention perform it on stage; she was a model before marrying Miles). Songs such as “If I’m in Luck I Might Get Picked Up” and “Anti-Love Song” are pure sex-positive songs that have been really influential on future generations of Black women musicians. Unfortunately, she had typical troubles with the record industry because record execs are scumbags, especially back then, and she dropped out of music and was something of a hermit in her last decades before reappearing in the media in the last decade.
Neither Waterson nor Davis were big sellers. But while their music shared absolutely nothing in common, it’s hard to think of two more legendary women from that era who have influenced more musicians while putting out vastly underrated albums.
Probably ought to at least mention the death of Ian McDonald, the saxophonist on the early King Crimson albums before going on to lend his horn to Foreigner. I wouldn’t think you could take your work on Lizard and then go lower, but there you go. I will say his saxophone appearance on Crimson’s Red album is pretty damn good and that is without question the best album he ever appeared on.
I suppose a Top 20 Billie Eilish song list is pretty easy when you have like 20 songs to your recording career.
All respect to Lucy Dacus for playing through her bad back by laying on a couch and singing. But she’s way too young to be having debilitating back problems. You have to wonder about her future ability to tour.
Chances of Bob Marley biopic being good–low.
Album Reviews:
Chime School, Chime School
Super fun indie guitar pop album released back in November. Certainly not groundbreaking, either lyrically or sonically. More than a little nostalgic for the 80s. But exactly what you want here–tap those toes, jangle that head while you listen on the headphones. Hits a sweet spot for this kind of project.
B+
Cimafunk, El Alimento
George Clinton devotee singing in Spanish. Which ain’t bad but not too much else needs to be said. First track even includes a Clinton guest appearance if the homage wasn’t clear enough.
B+
Mary Lattimore, Silver Ladders
Another lovely set of compositions from the harpist, who continues to amaze with her beautiful music and forward thinking mentality of centering the instrument in a modern context through the use of effects and production techniques. In this album, she hid away in Cornwall and so this is heavily influenced by the British landscape. I’m not sure one can really tell this is “British” versus her usual “American” albums, but it also doesn’t really matter.
A-
Steve Earle, J.T.
I wanted to hear this from the moment it was released but I also didn’t because I found the idea of it so sad. What is more sad than a father releasing a tribute cover album of his own son’s music? Ugh. What a wasted talent. But I guess Dad understands how drugs can screw up your life more than about anyone. But not surprisingly, like he did on his Townes Van Zandt tribute album, Earle focuses more on the upside than the downside, showing the vitality of his son’s music by recasting it as a bluegrass-focused album rather than the bluesy vision of his son, though one can still clearly hear the blues in these bluegrass arrangements. He makes the music his own. Can’t imagine how hard this album must have been to make, but it works. The last song, where he says goodbye to his son, is both tremendously sad and also…not a very good song. But hey, that’s OK. This is a better Earle tribute than the Townes album.
B+
Becky Buller, Distance and Time
It’s good for newer bluegrass talent to develop and I appreciate Buller moving away from the standards that has too often dominated recent years fan demands. Mostly though, I’d say this is more OK than great, with some solid cameos from a lot of bluegrass royalty. The songs are fine, the singing is fine, and thus the album is fine. The musicianship is good of course, but also remains pretty strictly within in the too fast bluegrass standard playing. It’s interesting to compare this to the Steve Earle album above. That’s much more about using some chosen bluegrass arrangements than creating a bluegrass album. But the music, while less virtuosic, works better than the amazing playing here does. I so often feel that way about “traditional” bluegrass today, where there are too many solos and they all sound more or less the same. Again, this is fine, but also a place to think about where bluegrass music is at this point.
B
Darius Jones, Raw Demoon Alchemy (A Lone Operation)
As so often with jazz albums, only half this album is available for streaming. So I can only speak to that half, but that’s enough for some initial thoughts I suppose. This is an album mostly of covers on solo saxophone. Jones covers ground ranging from Georgia Anne Muldrow to Sun Ra. This is extremely intense. It’s also a very difficult listen. Not for the faint of heart in the world of experimental jazz. Jones is a monster with his instrument. Some of his recordings are intentionally difficult. This is definitely one of them.
B