Music Notes
By 
I was lucky enough to see Deerhoof for the first time on April 6 at the Columbus Theater in Providence. Seemed a pretty appropriate band to see right after the Big Ears festival as they might be a reasonably straight ahead rock band in some ways, but they also can get pretty out there and recorded an album with Wadada Leo Smith a few years back. The show was fun. You can’t necessarily understand Satomi Matsuzaki’s singing in a live performance. The vocals aren’t super high in the mix anyway, or weren’t that night anyway, but her voice is just part of the noise and if she is singing in English or in Japanese, who really cares. One thing that’s interesting in this band is that the two guitarists are staying way in the background. The big personalities in that band, at least publicly, are Matsuzaki and the drummer, Greg Saunier, who not only can do amazing things on his tiny, almost child-sized, drum kit, but also gives these ridiculously long and convoluted little chats during the show, which I am guessing actually serve to give the band a bit of a rest, but end up being pretty funny, such as a long discussion about how the band completely fails to stick to their nightly setlists. Moreover, since he gives these on Matsuzaki’s microphone and he is very tall and she is tiny, he is basically bent in half giving these “speeches.” In any case, the setlist doesn’t seem to have been placed online and I don’t know their catalog well enough to track that myself, but watching a band rock in interesting ways and Matsuzaki dance around the stage like the characters in Charlie Brown Christmas during the scene when Schroeder is playing the piano is highly amusing. Good show, even if I was still tired from Big Ears.
I don’t think I saw this New Yorker interview with Terry Allen from last year. He truly must be the only person to know both Elvis and Marcel Duchamp. What a life.
So I watched the Jason Isbell documentary. And I…..wasn’t a big fan of it. I do like Isbell of course. The parts about his difficult upbringing, the pretty honest interviews with his parents, Patterson Hood talking about Isbell joining DBT and then drinking himself out of the band, seeing some of the creative process that went into Reunions and the pressure he was under to after the massive success of The Nashville Sound to have a good follow-up, that was all pretty interesting.
But what I am highly uncomfortable with is the extremely public marriage between him and Amanda Shires. As a married person, I have trouble figuring out what on earth would lead you to making these decisions. Unfortunately, this is the real centerpiece of the documentary. The stress Isbell was under in making the album did lead to some martial tensions. Both Isbell and Shires are quite obviously anxiety-ridden, difficult, high-strung people. They would probably both annoy me a lot if I actually knew them. But I mean, musicians are weirdos, news at 11, who cares. And that’s what I can’t get about the marriage at the center of this–I don’t know why I am supposed to care about it? It’s kind of interesting in that she is in his band, helping him work out the details of the lyrics (an amusing conversation about sentence details early in the film reminded me of academia), and so whatever martial tensions they have enter the studio. OK, I get that. But honestly, when you watch what is supposed to have been triggering events between them, at most it is slight snark that they are both taking way too seriously. I mean, I guess I am not in a relationship between two super sensitive people who can’t truly express their feelings except in music or something, but this just seemed like reallllllly low-level stuff taken by the camera and the constant interviews they give about their marriage and turned into something way bigger than it should be.
And all of this gets me to the real point–is Isbell and Shires talking about their marriage all the time publicly part of their act? Is this an active strategy to market themselves? I don’t know the answer. But after seeing that documentary, I will at least seriously entertain such a claim.
It’s a weird little film. As a film itself, it’s OK, nothing really that special. There are far better music docs and far more boring ones out there. It’s worth a viewing if you are a fan. But I’d view it with a jaundiced eye if I were you.
Here’s a nice discussion of Max Roach’s M’Boom project in the 70s and early 80s.
Is the gigantic archive of music available to us killing the music industry? I’m surely not giving up my musical habits developed in this milleu, but there’s a point to be made.
The great historian Robin D.G. Kelley on Monk.
5 minutes to make you love Mary Lou Williams, part of this excellent Times jazz series.
In case you need extra hipster olive oil, you can buy it from Jonny Greenwood’s own farm.
This week’s playlist:
- Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors
- The Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru
- Pharoah Sanders, Summun Bukmun Umyun
- Ray Price, Invitation to the Blues: Live, 1957-1964
- V/A, Dim Lights, Thick Smoke and Hillbilly Music: 1960
- Wayne Hancock, Swing Time
- John Zorn, Bar Kokhba, disc 2
- Peter Gabriel, Passion: Music for the Last Temptation of Christ
- Richard Thompson, Front Parlour Ballads
- The Band, Stage Fright
- Terry Allen, Smokin’ the Dummy
- Bruce Cockburn, High Winds White Sky
- Iron & Wine, Woman King
- Frank Ocean, Channel Orange
- Drive By Truckers, Southern Rock Opera, disc 2
- Miguel, Wildheart
- Quantic and Nidia Gongora, Curao
- Angelica Garcia, Cha Cha Palace
- Miles Davis, Black Beauty, disc 2
- Alice Coltrane, World Galaxy
- David S. Ware, Surrendered
- Julia Jacklin, Pre-Pleasure
- Margaret Glaspy, Emotions and Math
- Eric Dolphy, Out to Lunch
- Dave Alvin, The Great American Music Galaxy
- Jake Blount, The New Faith
- Tom T. Hall, New Train Same Rider
- The Internet, Ego Death
- Empress Of, I’m Your Empress Of
- Al Green, Let’s Stay Together
- Christopher Paul Stelling, Itinerant Arias
- St. Vincent, Masseduction
- Daddy Issues, Fuck Marry Kill
- Tracy Nelson, Mother Earth Presents Tracy Nelson Country
- Deadbeat Beat, How Far
- Ralph Stanley, Classic Stanley, disc 1
- Charles Mingus, New Tijuana Moods
- Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul, Topical Dancer
- Si Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba, Volume 2
- Leyla McCalla, Breaking the Thermometer
- Saba, Care for Me
- Grateful Dead, One from the Vault, disc 1
- Sunflower Bean, Twentytwo in Blue
- Neil Young, Everyone Knows This is Nowhere
- Arcade Fire, The Suburbs
- Ralph Stanley, Classic Stanley, disc 2
- Lydia Loveless, Somewhere Else
- Fairport Convention, Unhalfbricking
- Ginger Baker Trio, Falling Off the Roof
- Parquet Courts, Human Performance
- Franz Liszt, Liszt Hexameron: Un Portrait – Symphonie Fantastique
- Japanese Breakfast, Jubilee
- Richard Buckner, Dents and Shells
- James Brown, Sex Machine
Album Reviews:
The Writhing Squares, Chart for the Solution
Big interesting project here. A double album is a lot for any band, but they can pull it off due to their combination of punk sensibilities, influences ranging from blues to electronica, and great musicians who can rip that sax and drums to some pretty impressive results. For two dudes with a few guests, it’s a big sound. I’d like to say that the 19 minute rocker is self-indulgence, and OK, maybe it is, but damned if they can’t pull it off. Good for everyone from Sun Ra fans to Rush fans, assuming anyone actually admits to the latter in 2023.
A-
Isabella Lovestory, Amor Hardcore
SEX. That’s the Isabella Lovestory way. She sings gloriously about her love for sex and for her own body. While I am never going to love the reggaeton sound, I certainly respect the body positive, sex positive tracks with no apologies, no shame, not giving a fuck if you don’t like it or if you think that hetero sex is the only way. “La vida es más divertida si eres pervertida” pretty much sums her up. Amor Hardcore indeed. Album does include a bit of filler, but at 30 minutes it doesn’t have time to overwhelm. Lot of bands could learn from that.
B+
Robyn Hitchcock. Shufflemania
I haven’t really heard any Hitchcock in a long time, so figured I’d check out his album from last year.
Will it surprise you to know that Hitchcock made yet another album of solid straight ahead rock and roll that also feels slightly weird? No? Well it shouldn’t. It’s a Robyn Hitchock album after all. Even this Pop Matters review was pretty much like, yep, another really good and incredibly consistent Hitchcock album. The interesting thing about artists like this–from Jim Lauderdale to Chuck Prophet to name a couple of other examples–is that it can be hard to really say anything about the releases that haven’t been said about all the other albums. So, it’s a good album with good songs and a good sound and yep.
B+
Packs, Take the Cake
I liked this 2021 album by Madeline Link and her band, out of Toronto. It’s Waxahatchee-esque, though with a deeper timbre in the voice and more rooted in both 90s shoegaze and early 70s folk. Mostly these songs are about shitty guys (what’s new), shitty days at work, and the shitty era of Covid isolation. I hear you Madeline. I hear you. Those days did suck. So it’s not so much that the subject matter is completely new so much as it is that she has a combination of a nice lower alto to express this, and has the right kind of band for her vision that includes some really nice guitar pieces by Dexter Nash. It’s pretty nice introspective stuff that can rock at times. Good stuff.
A-
AMAN!!!, #2
This is a project from two contemporary masters of Greek music, Tasos Stamou on the Greek bouzouki, tzouras, bglama saz; and Thodoris Ziarkas on the parlor & gypsy guitar. I don’t even really know the specifics of these instruments other than their stringed nature. But this 2019 project, the second they had recorded together, is pretty cool. Greek music translates very well to people interested in new sounds, but not much of it actually gets out, with a lot more attention paid these days to sounds coming out of Latin America and Africa, or if out of Europe, some of the Balkan folk traditions. Don’t even get me started on the ignoring of the amazing musical traditions out of southeast Asia. In any case, this is two masters jamming together and why would you not listen to this?
A-
I couldn’t find anything from this album on YouTube, but here’s a video of the two of them with two other musicians.
Hollie Kenniff, We All Have Places That We Miss
Ambient music really isn’t my thing. For me, I want music front and center in my consciousness so the precepts of ambient music do little for me. This, however, is at the very least a quite nice album. I actually listened to this at the same time I was reading a dissertation for a defense this week and somehow, it served that function extremely well.
B
Zella Day, Sunday in Heaven
This is country-infused pop music for and by people who don’t like bullshit country, but want to take the smart side of that and combine it with smart pop. “Dance for Love” is a very good song. There’s a few other real quality tunes here too. It’s danceable and the lyrics are often quite intelligent. I don’t know if the whole thing really holds together. But is this a worthy project that represents some of the interesting approaches coming out of Nashville today? Yeah.
B
The Joy Formidable, Into the Blue
I kinda forgot how much this band rocks. I’m not saying their sound is quite among the greatest rock bands of the last two decades (DBT, Wussy, Sleater-Kinney, Old 97s, etc), but I am saying that they are only one step behind these bands. At its best, this album adds to that legacy. Now, not the whole album is that band at its best. There are some duller tracks on the second half. But this is a good reminder to revisit the whole catalog. Maybe reducing this from 50 to 40 minutes would have cut some of the filler. Still, a good album.
B
The Bats, Foothills
Speaking of venerable rock bands, The Bats have been around for 41 years now. That’s a long time! This is their 2020 album, which they released to the world during the pandemic, because really what else were you going to do? They are just a solid band. I don’t necessarily think this is their best release, but for a band that’s been around this long, I’d say it is pretty damn good.
B+
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.