Music Notes

Wow, Big Ears. Just….wow,

I saw 31 sets of music in 4 days. I am pretty proud of that. Almost all of these were either full sets or close to full sets. Probably the reason I was able to do this so effectively was, frankly, that I’ve reduced by drinking by about 80% since last year, which means even on days I do have a drink, I am having 1 or 2. So it’s a lot easier to punish your body walking around so much and seeing that much music when you are also sleeping well, Turns out taking care of your body helps. And some of the venues having Athletic N/A beers to buy didn’t hurt either, though not all of them did. Hopefully next year they do, because I do enjoy a decent beer, with or without alcohol. In fact, one thing I’ve learned, which I always actually knew, is that I like beer more than I like alcohol.

Anyway, there are so many ways to see Big Ears. You could easily curate an astounding festival just based on the acts I did not see. Nate Chinen makes this point as well here. Tyshawn Sorey was all over this festival, and yet I never saw him play and still have never seen him play. It wasn’t intentional. In fact, I really wanted to. But it never worked out with the schedule; when there were gaps in what I wanted to see, he wasn’t playing and when he was playing, there were acts I wanted to see more. Plus I was with friends and seeing some stuff with them. Plus, you know, you have to force yourself to take time to eat. In addition, there are all the what I am sure are great talks. Not only were great music critics such as Nate Chinen and Ann Powers doing interviews left and right, but the producer Joe Boyd was doing a bunch of talks too and I wanted to hear him talk about Fairport Convention among other things. Then there’s the movies, the printmaking stuff, and all sorts of other activities. I did none of it. When was I going to do it?

I don’t want to make this too long, so here’s the quickest rundown of what I saw I can give.

THURSDAY:

1. Marissa Nadler. I started with the lovely Marissa Nadler Thursday evening. This slightly gothic songwriter has such lovely songs and such a great voice and I could just float away on that voice. It was a very cool set. She noted how weird it was to play in the daylight and she really does fit best at midnight in some slightly sketchy but also cool bar.
2. Joel Harrison’s Alternative Guitar Summit. I really didn’t know much about Harrison, but I knew some of the guys he was playing with. So here’s what this was–Harrison and a bunch of absolute badasses revisiting Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way in very much their own ways and in the smallest venue of the festival, the one you really have to get to early if you want to get in. I was one of the last people in. And…holy shit. This was amazing. I mean, not only are all these musicians great, but they know this music so well and can do so much of their own thing with it and they would go off in all sorts of directions, with Harrison both playing and serving as MC and every now and then, he’d slow it down for some of that sweet keyboard that defined that album, My god. Band included, though there was at least one other person I am not sure who it was: Harrison, guitar, Brandon Seabrook, guitar, Jerome Harris, bass, Micah Thomas, piano, Chad Taylor, drums, Nate Mercereau, guitar. Oh, that’s all?
3. Shelly Hirsch. OK, this was weird even for me. Hirsch was part of the loft scene of the 80s. I’m not a fan of jazz vocals period and alternative improvised cabaret stuff is not my thing even more but it was the weakest point in the schedule for me during the entire weekend and so I figured, why not. The first part was just her with some soundscape stuff and…it was tough even for me. That she was in this giant venue with 25 people in the audience did not help. Then it got better when Ken Filiano came out on bass and Hans Tammen on guitar. Those guys are both great and it definitely helped the proceedings. Not my thing really, but at least I saw her and I mean it was something to see in a sense, no doubt about that.
4. Axiom 5. Barry Altschul’s outfit isn’t maybe my favorite group of all time but it was more than enough to satisfy my late night live jazz needs. I had not seen him before anyway and he’s a legendary drummer. The rest of the band included Jon Irabagon on sax, Uri Caine on piano, and Mark Helias on bass. A friend of mine who likes jazz but doesn’t really know the modern scene as well said he’d pay to see that at the Blue Note. Alas, if only they could get booked there.

FRIDAY

1. Immanuel Wilkins’ Blues Blood. Now this was a hell of a thing to start a day with. Not only is Wilkins perhaps the best young saxophonist out there (though Anna Webber and James Brandon Lewis would have plenty to say about that claim), but he had a great band with him. He also had….a dude cooking on stage. Literally. And he was just part of the band. Like, when Wilkins introduced the rest of the band, he said whatever the guy’s name was and “cooking.” Was the smell supposed to inspire the musicians? I’m not sure! What was he cooking? I have no idea!!! Lotta seasoning though! It was a hell of a thing to witness. The rest of the band included three wonderful vocalists in June McDoom, Ganavya, and Yaw Agyeman, as well as Micah Thomas on piano, Rick Rosato on bass, and Kweku Sumbry on drums. So soulful, so weird with the cooking thing.
2. Adam Rudolph’s Hu Vibrational. Been a big Rudolph fan since I somewhat randomly ended up at a show of his in New York a decade ago or so and I was astounded by both his percussion work and his integration of global musical traditions. I saw him twice at this festival. This band was just so awesome and chill and there was so much percussion and it kicked so much ass. The rest of the band included Jerome Harris on bass and vocals, Alexis Marcelo on keys, Neel Murgai on sitar and vocals, Harris Eisenstadt on various percussion, Tim Keiper on even more percussion, and Tripp Dudley on yet more percussion.
3. Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti and Frank Rosaly. I had not heard this act before but it came recommended from a from I trust and oh my….Ferragutti is a Bolivian singer and Rosaly is her American husband and drummer. Not sure who the rest of the band was. But that’s a cool act. She has a kind of witch thing going on, framed by very low cut bangs and her seemingly possessed way of singing. It’s a great act. Funky and jazzy and just completely odd. I was wondering–what do their neighbors think when they hear them play this stuff? Loved it especially the crazier parts of it.
4. Sun Ra Arkestra and Yo La Tengo. Oh. My. God. Really, it’s an Arkestra show with some occasional Yo La Tengo songs and a lot of Ira guitar stuff. Which is more than enough for me. Fun to finally see them play together.
5. Esperanza Spalding. I went to this in part because another show just had way too long a line for me to get in (Swamp Dogg I think, bummer) and I had friends going. It was OK. She’s a good bassist and a good singer, but it’s hard to compete with everything else going on at this festival and her music just isn’t as interesting as most of it. Glad I saw her but it underwhelmed in comparison. Some cool dancers though.
6. Steve Coleman and Five Elements. I feel like Coleman doesn’t get enough attention for being the awesome sax player he is. His Synovial Joints album from several years ago went kind of a big for that kind of music, but generally he doesn’t receive appropriate publicity for his awesomeness. Well, he’s good and also fun to see live as he has a good stage presence and likes to chat with the audience some. When your band is Jonathan Finalyson on trumpet, Anthony Tidd on bass, and Sean Rickman on drums, it doesn’t hurt.
7. 101 Audio Odyssey. Well now….. There were a few cancellations right before the festival for various reasons. The one that sucked for me was the Julien Baker/Torres tour, which was postponed due to someone getting a concussion. Yucky, though they are playing Newport Folk and I will be there for that too. So those cancellations opened a few slots. The festival asked the legendary bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma to put together an impromptu band at the last minute. Tacuma came out of Ornette’s Prime Time band in the 70s and has been a stalwart of the Philly scene for 40 years but I didn’t know his work that well. But this band….let’s have Tacuma on his very funky bass. Then we will add Nels Cline on guitar, Immanuel Wilkins on sax, King Noli on drums, and a young kid named Braxton Bateman on trumpet, who is a dude to watch. Um…..OK, first while I knew Cline was a great guitarist, I didn’t really know his jazz history and holy shit. I mean, in the world of pure shredding, the two times I saw Cline at this festival put him up there with anyone ever. Second, Tacuma was bringing so much joy. He was so happy to be there. He was hyping these guys and loving them and the band absolutely tore up the night. I mention some of this because his big show the next night had a different and odd feel. But this? One of the best shows of the year I will see.
8. Ahmed. Caught less of this than I had hoped, but this band that honors the music and ideas of Ahmed Abdul-Malik is pretty excellent and sounded great. Just wish I had caught more than the last 7 or so minutes of the show. But it’s enough to count as seeing them, limited as it was. This has Pat Thomas on piano, Seymour Wright on alto sax, Joel Grip on bass, and Antonin Gerbal on drums.
9. Antipop Consortium. The last show of this long day was the classic hip hop group of the late 90s and early 00s, who helped pioneer using live instruments in hip hop and who made some fantastic collaborations with jazz musicians such as Matthew Shipp. It was cool, but would have been cooler if they hadn’t spent so much time futzing around with their electronics and if the acoustics of this particularly venue was better for hip hop, which made most of the lyrics incomprehensible.

SATURDAY

1. Kokayi. I wanted to see the Kris Davis Trio, but they put her in a small venue and she has blown up in the last few months and it was just too packed. Plus I am not good at getting up and to a show early. So we had to improvise and this Kokayi dude looked cool enough so we went to check it out pretty blind. I gotta say, it was super fun R&B/hip hop. This guy is hilarious–songs about how fat he is, how he learned to look in the mirror and say “I Love You,” plus his various imitations of different cities’ hip hop styles made this very entertaining. Also, his p-b-d band was tiggggghhhht. They sounded great. He’s a DC guy so if you are in the area, this is a very worthy show. Don”t know about the albums, but live it was very cool. He also has a memoir titled You Are Ketchup, which is a provocative title if you are me! It’s supposed to be interesting though.
2. Adam Rudolph’s Sunrise Quartet. My second Rudolph show was the one jazz act I’d seen before. It just fit the timing to see it again. The thing about Rudolph is that he’s not well known enough to get huge crowds and his percussion thing is so chill that you can just sit down and listen to these geniuses go. This band has a Japanese percussion and winds guy so you have that influence on all this groovy percussion brilliance. It’s Rudolph of course on percussion, Alexis Marcelo on keys and percussion, Kaoru Watanabe on all the Japanese percussion and flutes, and Stephen Haynes on trumpet and cornet and sometimes yet more percussion.
3. Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith. Wadada was all over this festival and I love Wadada. But the thing about seeing Wadada is that you are very much seeing High Art. That means in this case slowly paced difficult music, even in comparison to everything else at a festival like this. So the question at a festival such as this is how much of this do you want to consume versus more uptempo stuff, especially given all the choices. So I figured if I was going to see Wadada once, it would be with the great Vijay Iyer. This was my 3rd time seeing both of these guys, but the first time together and they play so beautifully with each other. Two absolute geniuses of jazz working with each other. I haven’t heard the new album yet, but their first is a pretty regular listen for me, more than any other album by either of them. So I was very happy to see this set and it hit perfect at that moment in the day.
4. Julia Holter. I’ve listened to Holter for quite awhile, plus seeing a singer-songwriter was a good segue from the last two jazz shows. I don’t know if this set totally changed my life, but she’s a very fine songwriter and has a good band around her and I’d absolutely pay to see a solo show.
5. Joe Lovano’s Paramount Quartet. Lovano has never been my favorite saxophonist and sometimes I find his recordings rather sedate. But, I knew that Lovano is very good live, having seen him here a couple of years ago. Plus he had Julian Lage on guitar and Will Calhoun from Living Colour on drums. And it fit just where you think this would go. A pretty straightforward jazz set with plenty of solo time for Lovano, Lage, and bassist Asante Santi Debriano, all of which can rip off a good one. Not for Calhoun though, who just kept the time going and provided plenty great drums. I would have liked to see Calhoun do his thing more, especially since I hadn’t seen him before, but he was still fun to hear live. A perfectly acceptable show that would be a great show if it wasn’t in comparison to all this other stuff.
6. Michael Rohter: The Music of Neu and Harmonia. Now, I was thinking about seeing some other things, but I was also interested in seeing this krautrock legend live. I mean, when else was that going to happen? My friends wanted to see him and I said, OK, even though on my own, I might have gone to the Sylvie Courvoisier set. Well, I love her, but I’ve also seen her before and this was fucking great. I had so much fun! I guess I didn’t realize how awesome this music would be live. He had one of the drummers for those bands from the 70s with him and a couple of younger folks and the electronics and the guitars were beautiful and it was a full on dance show with a packed house filled with extremely appreciative listeners. Just absolutely fucking great. Fun beyond fun. Made me want to be in West Berlin or Hamburg in 1975.
7. Helado Negro. I kind of needed something a little chill after Rohter and Roberto Lange’s project did that very well, because he’s so groovy without ever being boring. So many Latin American and electronic influences that remain pretty interesting and fun and cosmic. I enjoyed the heck out of it.
8. DakhaBrakha. This is a Ukrainian band that everyone said I had to see. It was fine. I suspected and it was confirmed that part of the reason for this was a sense of solidarity with Ukraine and the need to express that. Certainly these people were playing that up, as they should. But I really only care about the music when it comes to personal consumption. I’d probably go see Zelesnky speak if he came around, but I don’t know that I’d see this band again. But to be fair, they were completely fine, more than capable, and had some fun interplay between the various musicians.
9. Waxahatchee. I’ve seen her seven times now, starting pretty early, when she was playing for 25 people in small spaces in Providence, so it’s been fun to see someone I got on board with early hit it big. Heck, I remember the second time I saw her, when she was opening for New Pornographers, that I had to cajole my friends to hurry up with dinner so we could catch part of the show and they were indifferent since they didn’t know who she was. Well that sure wouldn’t happen now. Playing just with a guitarist/banjoist, she kept this show very simple. As a friend pointed out, she is never really going to be comfortable on stage, though she’s advanced to at least being able to talk to the audience a little bit. She just gets up there and plays song after song and since I want to hear those songs over and over again, it was pretty super.
10. Free Form Funky Freqs. I was very excited about this show but it was kind of disappointing. Maybe it didn’t help that it was scheduled to start at 11:30 PM and they were late and I was really tired by my 10th set of the day! But it was Jamaaladeen Tacuma again on bass, his Prime Time partner Calvin Weston on drums, and the great Vernon Reid on guitar. I mean, VERNON REID! And look, these guys can all shred. Reid is indeed amazing and if you are wondering what he is doing with his time these days other than playing guitar, it’s spending a lot of time and money at the gym. And Weston had one of the best drum solos I’ve ever seen live. These guys play the deepest instrumental funk imaginable, with Tacuma’s electric bass at its core. But the energy between then was really weird. Rather than the joyful Tacuma of Friday, he just stated “we don’t talk we just play,” which OK, maybe is just an act for this show, but Reid and Weston seemed really off from each other at the start of the show and my friends speculated that maybe they were late because of an argument or something, since the energy just felt that way. And in fact, a number of last shows of days at this festival ended up being kind of weird like this. Whatever, who knows. At least I can say that I saw all these guys play.

SUNDAY

1. Phantom Orchard. This is Ikue Mori on electronics and Zeena Parkins on harp. They released an album 20 years ago that I enjoy sometimes and these very experimental musicians were fun to see live. It’s not just the electronics and harp to see and hear, though that’s cool enough. But it’s the other noises–they had a table set up and they would go up and hit things. Or tear up paper in tandem. Or whatever else just to make noise. It was trippy to see this in person. And only at Big Ears could you get 700 or so people to watch this together.
2. Tindersticks. This band is known to me for scoring Claire Denis films and they most certainly sound like a soundtrack band. There were people absolutely fucking pumped to see these guys. Meh. They reminded me of Calexico, another band that I recognize is technically good but that I find pretty boring both with recordings and live, unless they are someone’s backing band, in which they are perfect. I’d probably hire these guys to score my film though.
3. Mary Lattimore. It was a harp day! Parkins and then Lattimore might have doubled my all time live harp consumption. I’ve been a big fan of Lattimore’s harp with processing for a long time. And her music is so, so beautiful. She’s also a funny, interesting person. She described one song she was about to play as being about an astronaut who was returning to earth from the International Space Station after a long time and what an alien experience that would be at the same time that she had just fallen and broken her jaw and it was wired shut and she felt like an alien too. She then sent it to NASA who sent it to the astronaut who liked it. So I mean, this is a cool person, right. But regardless of the enjoyable atmosphere she provides herself, that harp and the creative way she works those sounds is just wonderful.
4. Mabe Fratti. This young Guatemalan cellist has gotten pretty big and there were a lot of excited fans at this show. It’s almost a rock show at time and she can use that cello in some fascinating ways, or just to make a lot of punkish noise. It was a fun first experience with her. I’d see her again. Like a lot at this festival, it’s really like nothing else I’ve ever heard live.
5. Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino. Cool Italian band that does a lot of older style Italian music that includes a lot of accordion and drums and such, with an occasional song broken up by a woman in a brilliantly red dress coming out and dancing. This was cool to see live. One thing I wonder about bands like this is whether they are popular at home or are really an international act reaching into a “global music” market. I wonder here. Evidently, the Ukrainian band I saw the day before is in fact popular at home, which is good. Anyway, fun show.
6. Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble. This was a real priority. I love El’Zabar’s work, including his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, which he started in 1973 and has included a lot of different musicians over the years, but always with two horns and no piano or bass. El’Zabar is a super drummer and funny older guy telling stories about his family’s response to his music when he told his parents what he was going to do with his life. The band loves and respects him, that much is obvious. And they make a lot of noise for four dudes. El’Zabar on drums, Corey Wilkins on trumpet, Alex Harding on tenor sax (on the album he is credited as playing baritone but it was a tenor here and he was announced that way; maybe it’s just easier to travel with the smaller instrument), and Ishmael Ali on cello.
7. Nels Cline Consentrik Quartet. Again, Cline was astounding to see this way. Here, he was playing with three long-time jazz veterans, all of whom I have seen multiple times–Chris Lightcap on bass, Ingrid Laubrock on sax, and Tom Rainey on drums. They played so brilliantly together. There was some other jazz musician, a young woman, sitting next to me watching it who a lot of people recognized, but I didn’t know who she was (which bothered me a little!) but I guess the point is that when you see the other musicians and who they are checking out, you know you are on the right path. I saw Chad Taylor at some shows too and you know you have good taste if you are hanging out with that bad ass of las baterías. One guy I know some ran into his friend of his from Animal Collective there and they weren’t playing. It’s just where musicians go to see festivals themselves. Anyway, the compositions here were great and I need more live Cline if he’s going to play like that. Dang.
8. Yaya Bey. I was a big fan of Bey’s last album and her R&B songwriting was more than welcome at this festival. But this was a weird last show to see because she obviously did not want to be there. In fact, she told the audience this. She was tired and didn’t feel like working. Now, I know that people get tired and feel this way. As she said, you don’t want to work sometimes too. And that’s true! On the other hand, since I don’t have a lot of patience for tenured professors complaining about how hard they work after watching my dad come home from the plywood mill my whole childhood, I don’t have a lot of patience for complaining musicians closing festivals either. And if she hadn’t talked about that, I would have really enjoyed the set. I still did enjoy it in fact, but it was weird.

One last fun thing here–other than Waxahatchee and just a couple of the backing musicians, I had seen no one on this list more than twice before. So that was really special–so many legends I got to see, many who don’t tour much and some I never thought I’d see ever. It’s just so special. It’s not only the best music festival in America, it’s my favorite weekend of the year. My friends and I get a house, see a ton of music, hang out on the deck at the house in a spring much warmer than that of Rhode Island, it’s just the very best thing in the world. I will be back next year barring death or whatever Trump does to fuck up the world too much for it to happen.

A few other links:

One big loss this week bridges Big Ears and the rest of this post. That’s the death of Michael Hurley, shortly after returning home from the festival. Now, I’m not a Hurley fan just like I’m not a fan of Daniel Johnston or Jonathan Richman. I don’t enjoy childish songwriters. I’m not a whimsy guy, to say the least. But there’s no question that Hurley was a legend to a lot of people. The bridge is through one of my friends, who has a family member who is a music insider in Asheville and who joined us for a couple of days and was then asked to drive Hurley to Asheville, where he would play his last ever show as it turned out. So I got to hear stories that day from his texts to my friend about trying to teach Hurley to use a vending machine and the weird hobbies of the man and stuff like that. And then two days later, he was dead.

Here’s a weird 10 year retrospective of Courtney Barnett’s Sometimes I Sit and Think and Sometimes I Just Sit which attempts to deal with the reviewer’s opinion that the two best songs on the album–two of the best songs ever imo–“Pedestrian at Best” and “Depreston” are overrated. This is a ridiculous claim and moreover he doesn’t really make the case for the album outside of that, simply saying he kind of her prefers the rest of her career. That is in itself an odd assertion because the rest of Barnett’s career is pretty mediocre and, at best, subsequent releases have been OK. The whole reviewer was like a weird 90s thing where you are too cool to say the awesome songs are awesome and also that the mediocrity of the rest makes it all better. Strange work.

A fun conversation with Robbie Fulks, where he creates his own best of from his own work. Not too surprisingly, that list skewers a bit more recent than it would for most of his fans, many of whom like his early novelty songs more. But I agree with him that his songwriting has really advanced over the years.

Playlist for the last two weeks:

1. Peter Rowan and Don Edwards, High Lonesome Cowboy
2. Red Sovine, Phantom 309
3. Talking Heads, Little Creatures
4. Johnny Paycheck, Someone to Give My Love To
5. Will Johnson, Hatteras Night, a Good Luck Charm
6. Peter Rowan, Texican Badman
7. Gary Stewart, The Essential
8. Dilly Dally, Sore
9. Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
10. Red Sovine, The Country Way
11. The Meat Purveyors, Pain by Numbers
12. Gang of Four, Entertainment
13. Richard Thompson, You? Me? Us? disc 1
14. Guy Clark, Keepers
15. Dim Lights, Thick Smoke And Hillbilly Music Country & Western Hit Parade, 1956
16. Craig Taborn Trio, Among the Ghosts
17. The Go Team, The Scene Between
18. Shamir, Ratchet
19. Silver Jews, Tanglewood Numbers
20. Screaming Females, Desire Pathway
21. Janelle Monae, The Electric Lady
22. Jake Xerxes Fussell, When I’m Called
23. William Elliott Whitmore, Silently the Mind Breaks
24. Courtney Barnett, The Double EP
25. The Replacements, Tim
26. Mount Moriah, How to Dance
27. Drive By Truckers, Go Go Boots
28. Johnny Cash, American II: Unchained
29. Bonnie Prince Billy, The Purple Bird
30. Mitski, Be the Cowboy
31. Anteloper, Kudu
32. Bomba Estereo, Deja
33. The Rolling Stones, Hot Rocks
34. Ashley McBryde, Never Will
35. Mourn, Self Worth
36. Peter Oren, The Greener Pasture
37. Olivia Chaney, The Longest River
38. SOB x RBE, Gangin‘
39. Chris Stapleton, Starting Over
40. Missy Elliott, Supa Dupa Fly
41. Taraf de Haidouks, Of Lovers, Gamblers, and Parachute Skirts
42. Kenny Wollesen, Rasa Rasa
43. Fred Frith Trio, Another Day in Fucking Paradise
44. The Beths, Jump Rope Gazers
45. Brennen Leigh, Ain’t Through Honky Tonkin’ Yet
46. Brandy Clark, self-titled
47. Waxahatchee, Ivy Tripp
48. The Go Team, Get Up Sequences, Part 2
49. William Parker and Hamid Drake, Vol. 2: Summer Snow
50. DJ Spooky & Kronos Quartet, Rebirth of a Nation
51. Carrie Rodriguez, Lola
52. Ikue Mori & Zeena Parkins, Phantom Orchard
53. Wolf Alice, My Love is Cool
54. Smog, Dongs of Sevotion
55. Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
56. Waxahatchee, Tigers Blood
57. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, self-titled
58. Riddy Arman, self-titled
59. Willi Carlisle, Peculiar, Missouri
60. William Parker, Corn Meal Dance
61. A Loud Minority : Deep Spiritual Jazz From Mainstream Records
62. Illegal Crowns, self-titled
63. Robbie Fulks, Upland Stories
64. Laura Veirs, My Echo
65. REM, Murmur
66. Bobby Bare, Cowboys and Daddys
67. Torres, Sprinter
68. The Grateful Dead, August 6, 1971, Hollywood, CA
69. Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon, Prairie Home Invasion
70. Screaming Females, Baby Teeth
71. Conjunto!: Texas-Mexican Border Music, Volume 6
72. Maria Schneider Orchestra, Data Lords, disc 1
73. Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Renaissance Man
74. Miles Davis & John Coltrane, Immortal Concerts: Konserthuset, Stockholm, March 22, 1960
75. Ariana Grande, Sweetener
76. Algiers, There is No Year
77. Bruce Cockburn, Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws
78. Butch Hancock, Eats Away the Night
79. Cari Lee and the Saddle-Ites, Red Barn Baby
80. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Kerouac’s Last Dream
81. Bill Callahan, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle
82. D’Angelo, Black Messiah
83. Allen Toussaint, Life, Love, and Faith
84. Mary Lattimore, Goodbye, Hotel Arkada
85. Ty Segall, Emotional Mugger
86. Sunflower Bean, Twentytwo in Blue
87. Joanna Gruesome, Peanut Butter
88. Laura Gibson, Empire Builder
89. Southern Journey, Vol. 5: Bad Man Ballads – Songs Of Outlaws And Desperadoes
90. St. Vincent, Masseduction

Album Reviews:

Mark Dresser, Times of Change

Dresser is a fantastic jazz bassist, one of the best of the last three decades. But the question here is this–do you need an hour of solo bass recordings? The answer is almost always no. This is beautiful, in its way. Dresser is amazing. I have trouble imagining an hour of solo bass I’d rather hear. But it’s still an hour of solo bass.

B

The Weather Station, Humanhood

I haven’t heard all of Tamara Lindeman’s albums under The Weather Station moniker, but I think this is the best one I’ve heard. There’s some really touching and meaningful songwriting on this album, both about friendship/heartbreak/personal relations and the collapse of the environment, which to be fair will probably cause human extinction at some point in the next couple of centuries so there’s a good reason to be worried about it and write about it. But really, Lindeman’s lovely voice is what counts here and between that, the songs, and the production, it’s a good solid release that I might buy.

B+

Lightning in a Twilight Hour, Overwintering

I never much get into this low-fi minimalist pop stuff. Like so many of these projects, the vocals are quite nice and the musicianship competent enough. The songs are fine. But the atmosphere is boring. This stuff is like taking all the slowest Yo La Tengo songs and making them less interesting. Listenable, but strictly as background music.

C

Ivan Llanes, La Vida Misma

Very solid modern Cuban jazz, with both the upside and downside that it sounds like it could have come straight from the Latin jazz scene of the 70s. Dude is one hell of a percussionist, that’s for sure.

B

Thus Love, All Pleasure

Some decent rock and roll from Brattleboro, Vermont, of all places. This isn’t breaking new ground, but it is solid work. Pretty intense vocals with big gritty riffs on the tracks, such as “Lost in Translation” and some great post-punk work on “House on a Hill.”

B+

Chris Acker, Famous Lunch

Very laid back 70s country rock vibe going on here, and one that Acker can pull off well. “Shit Surprise” is a super opener. A bit of Big Thief going on here, that laid back but confessional singer songwriter thing that moves ahead because of the shuffle at the core of the music. Also a bit of Willis Alan Ramsey, with those dissolute songs that you wish he had written more. It’s so hard for me to really get into a singer-songwriter type at this point because so often it’s all the same–same tempos, same influences, same nostalgia. So when you hear a voice that really feels new to you, it becomes a genuinely exciting experience and that’s I feel here, like when I first heard Willi Carlisle a couple of years ago, where have you been all my life?

Plus there’s a very, very catchy song about Bill Buckner and the 86 playoffs.

A

AJ Tracey, Flu Game

Pretty good British hip hop album. I wonder what it is about British hip hop that I generally find more enjoyable than a lot of American hip hop. Maybe I find the politics more convincing, I don’t know. Or maybe I am just a sucker for an accent. In any case, this is a super well executed example of the genre, maybe not something that will transform your existence and make you see the world in a whole new way, but something that will make you glad to be still be living and listening to new music. And an album centered around hoops, not bad with the NBA playoffs about to start. I don’t care for all the Michael Jordan love though, largely based on old personal vendettas as a Blazers fan. I can kind of get behind a song about Toni Kukoc though, Jordan and Pippen were such assholes to that poor guy.

A-

Shamir, Homo Anxietatem

Shamir’s weird career continues. He had such a huge first album with Ratchet and then revolted against being pigeonholed as a young artist in any way. So he’s gone down all sorts of rabbit holes in the decade since. Somewhat unfortunately, he managed to alienate nearly everyone and is now pretty obscure, as the Spotify numbers for Homoanxietatem demonstrate. I mean, we are talking about less than 10,000 streams for some songs, which is like jazz level. This album is a return to a more populist approach, though with mixed effectiveness. Some of it feels pretty cliched. I like it more than a lot of his other work, but some of what I like about it is that it is pretty easy to approach because I’m not being challenged much.

B-

Lalalar, En Kotu Iyi Olur

Psychedelic rock from Istanbul? Yes please. These guys absolutely completely rock. Why isn’t this at Big Ears? I would pay serious cash to see this live. Dance music from the edge of Asia and Europe.

A

Darien Brockington, Where Loves Grows

Presumably no relation to our colleague here at LGM, this R&B EP was released last year. Smooth. The hip hop guests are useful on “Wonderluv,” probably my favorite song on the album. But while Brockington has a fantastic voice, the smoothness of the whole enterprise means that the special guests are more necessary than a nice change, which makes me think more about Brockington’s own limitations.

B–

Emilio Teubal, Futuro

A lot of Argentine music is kind of spacey in my experience and this piano based album floats through the jazz space it occupies in a similar way to the psychedelic New Agey music I’ve been exposed to from Buenos Aires. As such, it’s a fine enough album and Teubal is a more than competent player, but it works more as background music and is a clear step below releases by the many piano greats working today, not because of skill but because of vision. This sets out to be a competent album and that’s just where it resides.

B

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