Music Notes
By 
I saw two shows in the last two weeks. The first was our old LGM friend Jason Isbell, doing a solo show at the Providence Performing Arts Center. Little known fact, King Crimson’s “Providence,” off of Red is titled that because it was recorded during a show in that building, although it was not known as PPAC at that time. Rock and Roll History! Anyway, there were no David Cross violin dissonance solos this night, but there were a bunch of very powerful songs from Isbell. I understand that his to-be-released album is divisive among the fan community (Farley keeps me up to date on these things) because it is different. The songs seem very lyrically simple and straight forward (they sounded pretty much fine to me live but I haven’t heard the recorded versions yet). Well, my view is that fan groups are inherently reactionary, people whose favorite album by any artist is the next to last album they recorded because the new one is different and thus inherently bad until the following album is released. In short, fan groups are people who were outraged when Dylan went electric.
So regardless of the new album–and at the very least, I am glad he is doing something different–Isbell can absolutely hold an audience with just him and his guitar. It was about half the new album, the very tired “Cover Me Up” that the fans demand, the must better song that fans demand, “If We Were Vampires,” and a bunch of songs from across his career, going back no earlier than “Alabama Pines.” In addition to not playing anything off his early albums, he’s mostly transitioned all his Drive By Truckers album out now, which is interesting only in that if he’s going to play “Cover Me Up” every time, I’m surprised he doesn’t also feel the need to play “Outfit.” Anyway, here’s the setlist.Also, his is charismatic enough to be along on a quite big stage with just an acoustic and tell a few stories and have a very well behaved audience in his hands. Long way from me seeing him drunk and fat back in 07 rocking the fuck out on Texas bar stages. Incidentally, this was my 12th Isbell show, which I think ties him with James McMurtry for 2nd most I’ve ever seen.
The other thing about this Isbell show is that the governor of Rhode Island was seated three rows in front of us and no one cared at all because he’s such an irrelevancy.
The other show I saw was the Marc Ribot Quartet in Somerville, Massachusetts. This isn’t just your regular quartet though. See, we all know Ribot is one of the all-time great guitarists. But what if he decided his quartet needed a second guitar? And what if he asked the queen of shredding, Ava Mendoza, to be that second guitarist? And what if he decided Chad Taylor should be the drummer and Sebastian Steinberg should be the bassist? That makes for one hell of a raucous jazz quartet. This was completely 100% glorious. I’d see this again in a heartbeat. This was the 5th time I’ve seen Ribot, 2nd time I’ve seen Mendoza, 3rd time I’ve seen Taylor, and 1st time for Steinberg.
Other Notes:
Obviously the death of David Johansen today needs to be mentioned. I do not love the New York Dolls like some other people love the New York Dolls but I most certainly recognize the critical importance of this band to rock and roll history and Johansen was arguably the most important member of it, which is to say nothing against Jerry Nolan or Johnny Thunders except for the fact that everyone in the band did the best they could to die as young as possible from copious drugs. I do know a lot of people thought he was the worst member of the band though and I am not going to litigate that! As a performer extraordinaire, he, as you probably know, transitioned to be Buster Poindexter in the 80s and had a complete second act. In fact, every major member of this band is now dead and Johansen was only 75.
I was also unaware that Ed Askew died back in January. Askew’s Ask the Unicorn is a freak folk progenitor masterpiece, or near so. A queer songwriter and singer, he never sought the spotlight too much and mostly remained underground. I had the chance to see him once in Providence, but I couldn’t go that night or was out of town or something. Bummer.
Buck White, patriarch of The Whites, a long-time country family band with endless appearances on the Grand Ole Opry, also died, at the age of 94.
There’s a new album of songs Jeff Bridges recorded in the 70s. Huh.
The 25th anniversary of Yo La Tengo’s And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out, with some discussion of YLT album titles.
Hanif Abdurraqib is always worth reading and especially so when writing about Roberta Flack.
A guide to brass and marching band music on Bandcamp
Playlist for the last two weeks:
- Rosalia, El Mal Querer
- Ondatropica, Baile Bucanero
- Vampire Weekend, self-titled
- Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, Nightroamer
- Morgan Wade, Reckless
- Margo Cliker, Pohorylle
- The Hold Steady, The Price of Progress
- Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, Revelations
- Hurray for the Riff Raff, Life on Earth
- Mitski, The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We
- Meridian Brothers, Mi Latinoamerica Sufre
- Tom Russell, Blood and Candle Smoke
- Neil Young, On the Beach
- Funkadelic, Live: Meadowbrook, Rochester, Michigan – 12th September 1971
- Fabiano do Nascimento, Tempo dos Mestres
- George Jones, The Essential, disc 2
- The Band, self-titled
- Merle Haggard, The Legend of Bonnie & Clyde
- Ray Price, She Wears My Ring
- The Gourds, Cow Fish Fowl or Pig
- James McMurtry, The Horses and the Hounds
- Janelle Monae, The Electric Lady
- Tom Zé, Vira Lata na Via Lactea
- Jenny Lewis, Acid Tongue
- Townes Van Zandt, Live at the Old Quarter, disc 2
- Bill Frisell, This Land
- Van Morrison, Hymns to the Silence, disc 1
- Joanna Gruesome, Peanut Butter
- David S. Ware, Go See the World
- Elizabeth Cook, Aftermath
- Screaming Females, Ugly
- Sons of Kemet, Black to the Future
- Pharoah Sanders, Summum Bukman Umyum
- Gil Scott-Heron, Pieces of a Man
- Herbie Hancock, Live Boston, MA March 22, 1973
- Old Crow Medicine Show, Tennessee Pusher
- Old 97s, Fight Songs
- ionnalee, Remember the Future
- Lone Justice, The Western Tapes
- Norman Blake, Green Light on the Southern
- New Orleans Funk Vol. 3: The Original Sound of Funk: Two-Way-Pocky-Way, Gumbo Ya Ya and the Mardi Gras Mambo
- Jane Weaver, Modern Kosmology
- Peter Brotzmann/Heather Leigh/Fred Lonberg-Holm, Naked Nudes
- Bonnie Prince Billy, Best Troubador
- Elvis Costello, Armed Forces
- Miles Davis, Steamin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet
- George Jones, Live in Texas 1965
- Willie Nelson, Country Willie Sings His Own Songs
- Allison Russell, Outside Child
- Lucinda Williams, Happy Woman Blues
- Yo La Tengo, I Can Hear the Heart Beat as One
- Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
- Townes Van Zandt, Delta Momma Blues
- Beyoncé, Cowboy Carter
- Billy Joe Shaver, Old Five and Dimers Like Me
- Sleater-Kinney, One Beat
- Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Re-Facto
- Ramones, Road to Ruin
- Marissa Nadler, For My Crimes
- Joe Ely, Live at the Liberty Lunch
- The Allman Brothers, Live at Syria Mosque
- John Moreland, High on Tulsa Heat
- Terry Allen, Smokin’ the Dummy
- Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, self-titled
- Bonnie Prince Billy, The Purple Bird
- Steep Canyon Rangers, self-titled
- The Freight Hoppers, Where’d You Come From, Where’d You Go
- Miles Davis, At Fillmore, disc 2
- Wayne Horvitz Gravitas Quartet, One Dance Alone
- Vassar Clements, self-titled
- Rusty & Doug Kershaw, Louisiana Man
- Fontaines D.C., Dogrel
- Richard Thompson, Mirror Blue
- Juliana Hatfield, Pussycat
- Alejandro Escovedo, A Man Under the Influence
- Idles, Crawler
- The Paranoid Style, For Executive Meeting
- Sun Ra, Purple Night
- Daniel Romano, If I’ve Only One Time Asking
- Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerard, Pioneering Women of Bluegrass
- Curtis Mayfield, Superfly
- Johnny Cash, American Recordings
- Tal National, Kaani
- Kim Gordon, No Home Record
- Chris Stapleton, From a Room, Volume 2
- U2, Achtung Baby
- Virginia Wing, Private Life
- Elodie Lauten, Orchestre Modern
- High Lonesome: The Story of Bluegrass Music Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
- Willis Alan Ramsey, self-titled
- Tom T. Hall, I Wrote a Song About It
This week’s album reviews:
Kirk Knuffke/Joe McPhee Quartet +1, Keep the Dream Up
Only about 2/3 of this is streaming available, but that’s better than some jazz albums. I’m not completely sure who the +1 is here, but the band is the all-time legend McPhee on tenor sax, Knuffke on cornet, Christopher Knoche on bass clarinet, the always welcome Michael Bisio on bass, and Jay Rosen on drums. What this really does is combination players from both Knuffke’s and McPhee’s frequent bands and they merge pretty dang well together. McPhee does some wonderful reciting here too, of his own work but also a Carl Sandburg poem, which works pretty well with the music underneath. They just all sound really great together. Nothing from this album is on YouTube, so here’s McPhee on another album.
A-
Mary Halvorson, Cloudward
The second album from Halvorson’s Amaryllis band, this seems to be her go-to now and that’s just fine. It’s another fantastic release of Halvorson on guitar, Tomas Fujiwara on drums, Jacob Garchik on trombone, Patricia Brennan on vibraphone, and Adam O’Farrill on trumpet, with Laurie Anderson appearing with her violin on one song too. I maintain that Brennan is the real breakout star of this group, with her astounding hand technique on those vibes. This is first rate modern jazz that everyone who even vaguely claims to like jazz must listen to, whether they are more a 1960s person or a big band person or a free jazz person. It’s all here. First rate group, first rate album.
A
Ricardo Dias Gomes, Muito Sol
Deeply listenable 2023 album of modern Brazilian music, where the traditions of bossa nova and such are very strong, but new electronic sounds and the atmosphere on contemporary production make for an almost ethereal experience. Gomes is such a good vocalist too. He got his start playing bass for Caetono Veloso and learned from that master but is far from a copy. He really moves the music forward, at least on this album.
A
Jack Harlow, Jackman.
Not common for a rapper to just use his given name. Maybe it’s more acceptable for white rappers? I don’t know, just noting it. In any case, I like this guy OK, as far as it goes. He does have the frequent problem of whining about critics, which is something I really hate. It never looks well for the artist, even if you feel you are justified or righteous or whatever. But he’s a good straightforward rapper. What I don’t understand is why he’s done so well commercially and evidently has become something of a cultural touchstone about authenticity in hip hop. This album is a couple of years old now so those debates don’t matter much at this point perhaps. Taken as it is, it’s a basically fine hip hop album. About the larger debates, I am not engaging.
B-
Maya Jane Coles, Night Creature
Reasonably OK production-heavy songs from this British DJ. Pretty fine for club music, more interesting than some. Hard to see why I’d listen to this again, but if this kind of thing is your bag, you might like it.
B-
Raw Poetic, Space Beyond the Solar System
Raw Poetic is great and here, as he usually does, he brings in his collaborator Damu the Fudgemunk and his uncle, the one and only Archie Shepp. This one thing about this project though is a lack of discipline in shaping an album. It’s really just a bunch of stuff and it goes on for a very long time. It goes on pretty effectively for that eternity because he’s really good at merging hip hop with jazz. But it is very very very long and I see no reason why reducing this to an hour and saving some of the other material for a different release wouldn’t improve the final product.
B
Let’s Eat Grandma, Two Ribbons
Granted, it’s hard to take a band with this name seriously, and I’m a guy who likes bands with horrible names like Drive By Truckers and Wussy. But really, this is just pretty decent British electro-pop, like a less interesting version of Ladytron. Completely fine, with some decent lyrics on several songs.
B
Peter Brotzmann/Toshinori Kondo/Sabu Toyozumi, Complete Link
Recorded live in Tokyo, the great German saxophonist played this evening with Kondo on trumpet and electronics and Toyozumi on drums. It’s a very nice introduction to the intersection between the European and Japanese free jazz scenes, which quite often overlap better than the American scene does with either. I personally think the reason for this is the centrality of the Black experience to American jazz, which neither Europeans nor Japanese can readily access, though the rise of the African diaspora jazz scene in London most certainly shows it can when that experience is transferred into a new space. Anyway, it’s a noise fest and one that might not really surprise any fan of Brotzmann (I mean what are you listening for if not noisy saxophone) but what might surprise is the effective electronics of Kondo, who I didn’t know before this. Nothing from this is on YouTube, so here’s a previous performance of just Brotzmann and Toyozumi
B+
Cola, The Gloss
Another terrible band name here. Perfectly acceptable Canadian post-punkish indie rock. I feel like I’ve basically heard this band a million times before by other names and in other years. But that’s fine–plenty of Gang of Four here, plenty of Pavement, plenty of The Strokes, plenty of Silver Jews, plenty of other bands you can namecheck. It’s entirely listenable. The problem is the problem of rock and roll these days–the struggles bands have to move beyond their influences and do something a little different. It happens–bands from The Paranoid Style to The Tubs manage to turn this trick. But I wish perfectly competent bands such as Cola were just a little more creative.
B-
Wild Nothing, Hold
This is kind of a funny album, because musically it is sprightly electropop and lyrically, it’s really kinda dark. As the guy behind this project says about the first track, which is full on club danceathon, “It’s a fun song, but lyrically, it’s about my wife and I going through one of the worst times in our relationship.” I guess you process that stuff however you process it! The fact that this is more interesting than the Cola album above clashes with the fact that musically, I like the Cola album a lot better. But this is the more challenging piece of work and it held my attention enough in a genre of music that I am relatively indifferent toward that I respect it more.
B
Amigo the Devil, Yours Until the War is Over
I’ve heard about this guy for a long time and decided to check him out. He does a lot of different things with his voice, some more useful than others. I guess it’s OK to imitate Tom Waits, but the problem is that you really sound like you are imitating Tom Waits when you do so and it’s distracting because you are like, why is this guy doing a Tom Waits impersonation? OTOH, “Garden of Leaving,” about parents whose baby died shortly after birth, is a powerful song of mourning. I hope it wasn’t his kid. He can also be a pretty funny guy though in other songs, such as “Once Upon a Time at a Texaco,” which you know isn’t going well. Certainly an interesting figure at the very least.
B+
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and absolutely nothing to do with politics.