Music Notes

My music week was dominated by attending the Long Play Festival in Brooklyn, put on by the new music collective Bang on a Can that has become such an important force in modern music. What I like about this festival is that it is fundamentally a new music festival, with all sorts of fascinating composers, but it also includes some of the best in jazz, plus cool bands that that are just doing things that don’t get a lot of attention but which should. I really committed this year to seeing a wide variety–a few of the jazz shows I really wanted to see, but also making other choices instead of only seeing great jazz, which I mostly could of done. I didn’t love everything I saw, but I don’t regret seeing anything I saw because at least it was interesting. I saw 13 shows in 2+ days (the first show was a Friday opener). Let’s run through them.

1. Kim Gordon, with Kassie Krut and I.U.D. opening. Yes, I finally saw Kim Gordon. And it was great. I mean, it’s Kim Gordon! In a Red Hook art space, which is like her native habitat. I also had to laugh–I had to be the least intentionally dressed person there. It was amazing to watch people. She still sounds great too. Now, her solo music has been pretty icy, even more so than her Sonic Youth songs, so I guess it depends if that works for you. She had a pretty traditional band behind her, which like a lot of the music this weekend included a lot of electronics, but in fact her music really is her talking over those electronics. Me, I like it. She’s such a bad ass. Plus, I appreciated her Gulf of Mexico shirt. I.U.D. was a pretty cool opening band. They sounded exactly like you’d hope a band named I.U.D. would sound like–loud, noisy women with some occasionally screaming and some weird videos in the background. Kassie Krut was more whatever to me–I don’t mind the electronically oriented stuff, but the vocals were almost impossible to hear and the rest of it was fine, but not exceptional. They have a brand new album out there so I look forward to seeing how that compares to the whatever live show.
2. Blackbox Ensemble presents Embodying Eastman: Speculative Listening with Isaac-Jean Francois. Julius Eastman was a difficult composer who worked a lot with everyone from Arthur Russell to Pierre Boulez in the 80s. He was also a difficult guy and ended up homeless before dying, possibly from AIDS, in 1990. Isaac-Jean Francois is a rising star in the musicology world, actually still just a PhD student in African American Studies at Yale. Both were/are involved in the small world of queer Black compositional classical music. So Francois got the Blackbox Ensemble–nearly all white for what it’s worth–to work up a bunch of Eastman compositions. This is pretty far out in the new music world for me and it was fun to see it all come together with various groups of these musicians playing different pieces. Cool stuff, that I can say.
3. Mary Halvorson and Bill Frisell. I wanted to see this just to see these two great guitars play off each other. The project is covering the midcentury cool jazz guitarist Johnny Smith. I don’t really know Smith’s work that well, but the project definitely had some of that cool jazz feel. I didn’t totally love this, despite my strong love for both guitarists. I definitely had more of the “wow, I can’t believe I am seeing these two play together” than the “wow, what astounding music” feeling. Would like to see them compose for each other.
4. The Rhythm Method with Anais Maviel. Long Play is the kind of festival where you can see a feminist punk band named IUD one might and a feminist string quartet called The Rhythm Method the next day. This was cool. The quartet itself is fantastic, really loved the cellist especially. Maviel, who was the leader of this project, is a percussionist and Chinese string instrument player and this all revolves around music for the eight seasonal changes in Taoist cosmology. Don’t ask me about the details and don’t ask me precisely how this was “feminist” either, outside of all the players being feminists. But it was quite touching music and these women most certainly love each other’s playing and gladly expressed it, which also helps.
5. BarTog and Cecilia Lopez. This I did not much care for but it existed on the principle of seeing things I wouldn’t normally see. This is a DJ project from Buenos Aires. Lopez does a lot of electronic stuff, BarTog is the real DJ. It’s interesting to see people make this kind of noise, but the vocal stuff was kind of tough for me. Still, it was something to witness. I was also struck at how old one can be and be a DJ now. BarTog has to be in her 60s, but of course that totally makes sense now. I’ve been doing Duolingo in Spanish recently and one of the things they had me translate was, in English, “My grandfather used to play rap.” That seems absurd, but then I realized it is in fact not absurd at all in 2025. So old. Olde, in fact.
6. Fred Frith. Fred Frith making guitar noises for an hour? Yes please. It was so awesome. Really made late 90s me happy.
7. Underground System. This was described in the program as a merging of punk, disco, and Afrobeat and that’s exactly what it is except that it also merges in the New York salsa scene. This was hardly the kind of venue this music makes sense in, which sometimes happens in festivals. But my god this would be amazing to see in a club. It was amazing to see anyway. The singer is beyond charismatic plus she plays the flute sometimes on top of it.
8. Tomeka Reid Quartet. This is the 3rd time I’ve seen the Reid Quartet together, which includes Mary Halvorson on guitar, Tomas Fujiwara on drums, and Jason Roebke on bass. Sometimes, you see an artist who has all sorts of different bands and projects find one that really hits and it becomes kind of their band. Halvorson has found this with her Amaryllis band, which is touring again in the fall. I figure the Reid Quartet must have a new album coming out here at some point. This really is the most first rate jazz I can suggest.
9. Nicole Mitchell (flute)/Luke Stewart (bass)/Tcheser Holmes (drums). I was really happy to finally see Mitchell, who was one of my top jazz people I hadn’t seen live. Unsurprisingly it was great. I was not familiar with Stewart or Holmes but they played together like they were laying down rhythms for Coltrane in the 60s.
10. Sara Serpa, Recognition: Reinventing Memory Through Sound. I enjoyed this just fine, but this was a case in which I had made a different choice. Serpa is a Portuguese vocalist and artist who not only wrote this music for a documentary about the historical legacy of her nation’s colonialism but who also made the film. I have a major interest in artistic depictions of colonialism, both in movies and literature and so I thought this would be pretty interesting, even though the alternative show was Tomeka Reid again, with the electronic wizard Ikue Mori and the pianist Craig Taborn. But again, I wanted to stretch myself a bit and not see artists I had just seen. Without the film though, the music didn’t have the power to make that the best choice. Don’t get me wrong, it was good music, just not life-changing for music, for me anyway.
11. Ensemble Offspring Plays Iannis Xenakis. I had a bit of time in the schedule and figured I’d see this Australian ensemble play a bunch of Xenakis compositions, plus a few other compositions in a similar vein. It was cool, would have been better if I hadn’t hit to sit on a concrete floor because it was so crowded and I could barely could get up when I had to go to the next show….But really, while again I don’t really have the language to talk about this stuff properly, I
12. Nour Harkati. I could have gone to see a Julia Wolfe composition performed, which I am sure would have been cool and she’s great, but I really needed something that made me want to move. Harkati is a Tunisian guy who lives in New York and whose band is a mix of other North Africans living in the city and some Americans. But it’s really a combination of Tunisian music and life in New York. He has a new album out and it’s about being who you are but being an immigrant and never feeling at home. He was pretty excited about having the album in his hand and kept showing it to the crowd. I appreciated the show and had no regrets about missing what I am sure was a great Wolfe composition.
13. The Narcotix. Another example of the cool band side of this festival. The Narcotix were formed by two high school friends, both daughters of African immigrants but from different countries, who then went to the University of Virginia and formed this band, now based in Brooklyn. It’s a rock band I guess, but it really doesn’t sound like much of anything I’ve heard before. One plays keys and one guitar, backed with a bass player, drums, and I think usually another guitarist who unexpectedly not there (they were a bit nonplussed about that). The bass player is especially fantastic. But the power is the lyrics and influences of these friends, who are largely singing about the art of dying (big stuff for people who might be 30) and are clearly influenced by the music of their families, but less so Afrobeat or any of the other really popular movements of the continent. I’d love to see this band in a club and I am going to check out their album. So yeah, maybe not everything I saw randomly I loved, but I did like this. And that’s especially lucky because while this looked cool, I was going to see a new Tomas Fujiwara/Tomeka Reid/Immanuel Wilkins project, but I took a walk and got back late and it was too packed. Good backup!

Now, one last point here. The last show of the festival was a 90th birthday celebration for Terry Riley, which included a lot of people. I was exhausted and didn’t go and I don’t regret that. But I would have just made it happen if the original lineup had been able to play, which included Pete Townshend. After all the “Riley” in “Baby O’Riley” is in fact named for Terry Riley, a huge influence on Pete. But he couldn’t make it because he is having a knee replaced. STILL HOPE YOU DIE BEFORE YOU GET OLD PETE!?!!?

Oh, by the way, I have a question maybe some of you can help me with. What is this wood instrument the bassist in the Mitchell show is playing here? I’ve seen this a lot in recent shows and I don’t know what it is other than some kind of percussive thing. Adam Rudolph uses this a lot too. I guess you hit stuff on it? But I really just want to know what I am hearing.

Other news and notes:

We lost Johnny Rodriguez, a hugely important pioneer as a Mexican-American country star. This is one of those magic deals. He was playing a show in some Texas club and who should walk in but Tom T. Hall and Bobby Bare, who were like, whoa man, you should move to Nashville and we will help you with our awesome songs. He was pretty big through the 80s, though we should can’t talk about him without mentioning that he killed a dude who he thought was burglar but who was not in the late 90s.

Arkansas State university gave Ashley McBryde an honorary doctorate. Could do worse.

Bandcamp is starting a newsletter geared to your interests, so could be of interest to some of you.

Big Thief is touring this fall. I already bought my ticket.

This week’s playlist:

1. The Band, Stage Fright
2. Edip Akbayram, self-titled, disc 1
3. The Postal Service, Give Up
4. James Brown, Star Time, disc 1
5. Matthew Shipp, The Piano Equation
6. Willie Nelson and Ray Price, San Antonio Rose
7. Iris Dement, Sing the Delta
8. David S. Ware, Surrendered
9. Courtney Barnett, The Double EP
10. Flatt & Scruggs, Live at Vanderbilt University, 1963
11. Eliza Carthy, Angels and Cigarettes
12. Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors
13. Kasey Chambers, The Captain
14. Hank Locklin, Please Help Me I’m Fallin’
15. Steve Earle, Guitar Town
16. Emmylou Harris, Elite Hotel
17. Gillian Welch, The Harrow & the Harvest
18. Dave Dudley, Truckin’ Music
19. Robert Earl Keen, Picnic
20. Alabama Shakes, Sound & Color
21. The Who, Sing My Generation
22. Jake Blount, The New Faith
23. Patricia Brennan, Breaking Stretch
24. McCoy Tyner, The Real McCoy
25. Peter Brotzmann, Medicina
26. PJ Harvey, White Chalk
27. Chris Stapleton, Traveller
28. Big Sandy & the Fly-Rite Boys, Turntable Matinee
29. Wussy, Forever Sounds
30. Sly and the Family Stone, There’s a Riot Goin’ On
31. R.E.M., Automatic for the People
32. The Staples Singers, Best of
33. Irving Fields, Bagels and Bongos
34. Ches Smith, Laugh Ash
35. St. Vincent, Daddy’s Home
36. Gary Stewart, Out of Hand
37. Downtown Boys, Full Communism
38. Jim Lauderdale, My Favorite Place
39. Clifton Chenier/Mance Lipscomb/Lightnin’ Hopkins, Live at the 1966 Berkeley Blues Festival
40. Woody Shaw, Rosewood
41. Amythyst Kiah, Still + Bright
42. Bonnie Prince Billy and the Cairo Gang, The Wonder Show of the World
43. Don Edwards, Songs of the Trail

Album Reviews:

Dudu Tassa & Johnny Greenwood, Jarak Qaribak

Greenwood is the legendary guitarist of Radiohead who has become a super important person in terms of global music. At this point, he might be the most impactful member of Radiohead and that very much includes Thom Yorke. Tassa is an Israeli musician who also mostly plays guitar and produces. Together, the two of them bring together vocalists from around the Middle East to rework the region’s classic love songs of the 60s and 70s. It works super well, a musical attempt to get everyone to realize that people around the Middle East share a lot of the same culture and maybe if they did more of that sharing these days, the politics would be a little less horrible. Good luck with that I suppose, but a heck of a good album.

A

Pure Shit, Reality Check

Modern thrash jazz in the spirit of Painkiller and Naked City. But this is no pastiche of those bands. This is both crazy but also you can hear the music of eastern Europe and electronica in it so clearly. It only runs about 16 minutes so you can get the gist of it in no time. I’m not sure I love it, but I sure as heck respect what they are trying to do here.

B+

Narrow Head, Moments of Clarity

Acceptable power pop, not overly interesting musically or lyrically, but does the trick reasonably well for what they are trying to do. Hard to see choosing this over, say, The New Pornographers though.

C+

False Heads, It’s All There But You’re Dreaming

Pretty fair muscular British hard rock with everything that means–lots of bass, lots of big guitars, lots of masculinist lyrics. These are angry dudes. It works well enough, you aren’t thinking too much about it all. The songs do tend to run together a bit. They are a bit of a one trick pony. If you like that trick, this is gold. I like it well enough but maybe not 40 minutes enough.

B-

Yasmin Williams, Urban Driftwood

Williams has been floating around my world for a long time, including me seeing her play a little bit at Newport Folk Festival once, without me ever really sitting down and listening. So I decided to fix that with her 2021 album. I can see why people love her so much. This is some moving guitar playing, both chill and deep at the same time, evocative of Americana (which can be a cliche among guitar work these days) without becoming trite. The occasional collaborators on cello and djembe add to the overall effect and in fact, I kind of wish there was more of this.

It’s also worth noting here the influence of the video game Guitar Hero. She is not the only artist who found their way to the guitar through this game, though she is perhaps the best. She defeated the expert level of the game when she was 14 and then bought an electric guitar. That’s a fascinating connection that probably deserves a study of some kind, if someone hasn’t already written it.

A-

Band of Horses, Things Are Great

Here’s another band at the edges of my consciousness, even though I know that at this point they are a venerable bunch. So went exploring here too, this time with their album from 2022. And you know, this band just feels like OK 70s rock and roll to me, which is how I thought about this band before. It’s perfectly acceptable music but it is also just so generic. Like, if The War on Drugs was less interesting, they’d be Band of Horses. I can just listen to Jackson Browne after all. And I don’t really choose to do that either.

C+

Honey Dijon, Black Girl Magic

Honey Dijon is a trans woman DJ and of course the identity markers are at least as important as the music in everything ever written or spoken about her, including by herself. Well, those are the times in which we live, I suppose. In any case, this is a good descendant of the disco era and its focus on dancing and love. I could easily see Gloria Gaynor covering some of this stuff in a different era. I am the first to admit that I don’t care a lot for the repetitive beats of club music–though I grant you that it completely works live in my limited experience. On album, less so, at least for me. But this is a good version of that music and I completely respect what she is doing here. I’m as likely to listen to this as any club music. As an album, this would be a lot better at 30 minutes than 80. It’s really long. I guess if you want a dance party in your house, you can have one album as a soundtrack.

B

Whyte Horses, Empty Words

Pretty fair English indie pop with a psychedelic edge. It’s pretty routine within that subgenre, but it’s probably better than average for this kind of thing, with some interesting bits here and there and a variety of guest vocalists. Good, highly listenable, not great.

B

Roscoe Mitchell/David Wessell, Contact

This is from all the way back in 2009, but hey, why not hear it. This is a Mitchell sax show, with Wessell on drums more in the background. While I’m not sure this is among Mitchell’s greatest albums, it’s an excellent introduction into his saxophone style and how he has helped bridge the free jazz of the late 60s with the present. Still working and releasing some good work too. He’s never been my very favorite player, to be honest, but he’s certainly a legend. The combination of his sax with the electronics of Wessell does make for an interesting enough sound.

B+

Fur Trader, Executionland

Ah yes, some of this Laurel Canyon 70s soft rock revival that the kids love. Lot of Beach Boys-esque harmony, plenty of James Taylor, a bit of Sufjan Stevens whisper singing, a little mystical hippie folk, even songs about California’s warm friendly ways. If this is your bag, you’ll probably like this. For me, I mean, it’s alright, but I can’t see the appeal much. It’s so pastiche.

C+

Die Spitz, Teeth

I’ve happened to see this band open for two different shows, once for Amyl and the Sniffers and once for Sleater Kinney, so you know what kind of band you are getting. And they pretty much kicked enormous amounts of ass live too, with the lead singer climbing on top of speakers to sing from perilous positions and other sorts of things that make insurance companies nervous. So it’s well past time that I hear their album from 2023. And yeah, basically this kicks as much ass recorded as it does live. Rock and fucking roll my friends. Rock and fucking roll. They do need a full album at some point though. Presumably that’s coming, but this was two years and is just an EP. Still, they can do whatever they want because they already made this and I want to hear this again and again.

A

Sylvie Courvoisier/Mary Halvorson, Bone Bells

This is an interesting pairing from two people as not quite in the same modern jazz scene. Courvoisier I always think of as right on the classical line, with her generally New Music based sparse piano playing, whereas while Halvorson can do anything, I think of her as playing a lot of notes with her guitar and more squarely toward the jazz tradition. These are silly boundaries of course, to the extent even exist. In any case, this collaboration really does bring the two of them together usefully. Halvorson slows things down a bit and perhaps Courvoisier speeds them up too. The interplay between these two very different musicians is fascinating. By the end, I found myself paying more attention to Courvoisier than Halvorson, which is the opposite of how I usually hear these two.

A-

Brandi and the Alexanders, Reflection

First, kudos on this superb band name. Plus, this is a fun little soul with more than a hint of good ol’ rock and roll EP. Great vocals, great sound. This rides the line between secular and church music, with its spirit really being the former but intellectually the latter. Being only 22 minutes does make you want a bit more.

A-

Hannah Cohen, Earthstar Mountain

Cohen is one of the people playing at Newport Folk this summer so figured I should check her out. This is nice enough folky music. Sunny folk-pop basically, lots of flute, comfortably Laurel Canyonesque, probably will find someone else to see at the festival though. That’s OK, I don’t need to love everything. If you like sunny folk-pop though? This will be your bag.

B

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