Music Notes
By 
I’ve spent the last week doing research at the University of Idaho. Moscow is very much not a live music center, so no shows for me. However, this place has a big piece of musical history. For some reason, Lionel Hampton used to come out here all the time. So the Special Collections at the University of Idaho not only has quite a jazz archive (not what I was looking at), but in fact in the reading room are two of Hampton’s vibraphones! The first one is a standard one and the second one is some sort of Japanese version. So I got sit by them all week! Did I make a few noises with them? I did indeed! How could I not? Lionel Hampton’s vibes! I guess the reason for this is that the school brought Hampton out in 1984 and he was really impressed by its music education program and he kept coming back and here we are. Kinda random, but very cool! Certainly good enough to lead a music post when I have nothing else to talk about!
Ann Powers has a super interesting essay on what music fans can do to support their favorite artists in the internet age. Check it out.
Every Sunday, Pitchfork has an essay on an album they’ve never reviewed. Last Sunday it was Kate and Anna McGarrigle, which is of course a great album (though I prefer Dancer with Bruised Knees) and this discussion of it is also fantastic.
I mentioned the death of Joe Louis Walker last week, but here’s a longer piece on him.
I am no fan of Billy Joel by any means, but it’s sad to see his career likely be over from a brain issue.
Will Smith is getting pretty close to full unionbusting mode in his video productions. What an asshole.
Steve Albini’s heirs are selling his shit every Friday if you want to bid on it.
A guide to Southeast Asian psychedelic music from the Vietnam War era.
Caroline Rose provides musicians tips for touring. Not sure how many musicians are up for the camping part of this….
I’m somewhat familiar with Cola Boyy from previous iterations of these posts. He died and he has a posthumous album.
An intro to West Coast jazz, if you need it.
The New York Knicks and the New York hip-hop scene.
This week’s playlist:
- Jason Isbell, Something More Than Free
- Johnny Paycheck, She’s All I Got
- Die Spitz, Teeth
- Patricia Brennan, Breaking Stretch
- Run the Jewels, RTJ 4
- Natalia Lafourcade, De Todas Las Flores
- Neil Young, Somewhere Under the Rainbow: Live 1973
- Kae Tempest, The Line is a Curve
- Jenny Owen Youngs, Avanlache
- Wussy, Funeral Dress II
- Mount Moriah, How to Dance
- Guided by Voices, Alien Lanes
- Fairport Convention, Liege & Lief
- Leonard Cohen, Songs from a Room
- Jimmy Martin & the Sunny Mountain Boys, Good ‘N Country
- Lori McKenna, The Tree
- Mekons, Fear and Whiskey
- Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin’
- Old 97s, Drag It Up
- Run the Jewels, RTJ 2
- Kate Davis, Fish Bowl
- Buddy Tabor, Meadowlark
- Bill Callahan, Dream River
- Wussy, Cincinnati Ohio
- Sleater-Kinney, All Hands on the Bad One
- Marlena Shaw, The Spice of Life
- LCD Soundystem, This is Happening
- Buck Owens, I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail
- Speedy Ortiz, Foil Deer
- Torres, Sprinter
- Amyl & the Sniffers, Comfort to Me
- Rhianna, Talk That Talk
- Harry Nilsson, Nilsson Schmilsson
- James McMurtry, The Horses and the Hounds
- Eric Dolphy, Quiet Please
- Wussy, Strawberry
- Chuck Prophet, Bobby Fuller Died For Your Sins
- Screaming Females, All at Once
- Jim & Jesse, Y’all Come
- Cory Hanson, Western Cum
- Tropical Fuck Storm, A Laughing Death in Meatspace
- Joanna Gruesome, Peanut Butter
- Ralph Stanley, Cry from the Cross
- Sonic Youth, Goo
- Alejandro Escovedo, A Man Under the Influence
Album Reviews, a week in which I did not choose wisely, with a couple of exceptions:
Tove Lo, Dirt Femme
Absolutely bland mainstream pop, except from a Swede instead of an American. Not terrible, but not interesting at all. I’ll just put on my Ariana Grande albums if I want to listen to some pop. The lead track, “No One Dies for Love,” is a quite good cut though. “Kick in the Head” is solid too. But there’s too many indifferent or banal tracks here.
C+
Los Texmaniacs, Cruzando Brothers
Solid updated version of Tex-Mex border music. If it’s not revelatory, it is welcome. Singing in Spanish and English, these guys try to cover a lot of ground, from corridos to border-region country. Believe it or not, there’s a fair bit of space between these subgenres, if you are used to listening to music from this era. Some good songs about being Mexican in the US and the unfairness of the immigration system. Guest spots from Lyle Lovett and Rick Treviño certainly don’t hurt. Plus a song called “La Chicharronera (The Pork Cracklings Master),” I mean, that’s a master we all need to respect.
B+
Adam O’Farrill, For These Streets
O’Farrill is the son of the legendary Arutro O’Farill and he has really popped yet, working in Mary Halvorson’s Amaryllis band, one of Hiromi’s bands, and with his solo stuff. This is his brand new album with a large band. That includes Halvorson on guitar, Tomas Fujiwara on drums, Patricia Brennan on vibes, David Leon on alto sax and flute, Kevin Sun on tenor sax and clarinet, Kalun Leung on trombone and euphonium, and Tyrone Allen on bass. While I know the first three of those musicians very well, all the rest are new to me and so that was exciting. One thing that stands out here is Brennan’s work. In many parts of the album, the vibes really stand out. I also love all the horns, sometimes working in teams, sometimes playing off each other. In total, this is an album where O’Farrill likes to push envelopes a little, but within bounds that prevent it from being some sort of noise fest. Like a lot of the best jazz today, he seems to combine lessons from across the last century while taking his compositions in new directions. Some of this could be picked up by DJs, some it could be at the Blue Note, some of it would better fit some more experimental spaces. Added together and it’s a pretty approachable way to get into the newest jazz and a very fine album.
Definitely my Album of the Week.
A
Kassa Overall, Animals
I’m so often disappointed by the merging of jazz and hip hop, but this album works pretty well. I still think these tracks would work better on mixtapes than as an album, but Overall is an interesting musician and the guests do solid work and the production is well considered. It’s good, not great. There’s a lot of ideas happening here and they usually work. But sometimes this seems a little bit half-baked and things go off the rails a bit. Certainly this is a thoughtful and fascinating album, but discipline is also a thing that needs to exist when experimenting.
B
Natsuki Tamura/Satoko Fujii, Keshin
What is a husband and wife team of productive Japanese experimental jazz musicians supposed to do in a pandemic? The answer was record a bunch of music at home and keep releasing albums! This is one of them, from the great pianist Fujii and her husband, the trumpeter Tamura. And while they have often left me a bit cold, I did enjoy this recording quite a bit. Say this much, they sure know how to anticipate and play off of each other. Fujii especially is in peak form here.
None of this is on YouTube, but here’s a different Fujii piece, which includes my college roommate on bass.
B+
Joji, Smithereens
A mere 1.5 billion plays on Spotify for the lead track here. Guess I’m not sure why. This is alright plaintive chamber pop I guess. If you like boring music about being sad–a significant subgenre of music–I suppose this is for you. Me? Meh. Also, claiming your 24 minute album is actually a “double album” is just pretentious and annoying. If your position is that Coldplay is a bit too avant-garde for you, this is for you.
C
The Coral, Sea of Mirrors
The Coral has been around since I was in college, but being an English scene band, I missed them entirely. This is OK, basically friendly dad rock at this point, whatever they were 30 years ago. But it really isn’t than that. This is a veteran band doing veteran band things, which undoubtedly appeals to existing fans and leaves new listeners just being whatever.
B-
Jane Remover, Census Designated
An OK, production heavy, all atmosphere shoegaze album that is pretty good if you are really into shoegaze and indifferent if you are not. As I am on the fence about this kind of thing, I am on the fence about this album. It’s fine enough, as far as it goes. It is however way too long and some of the songs go on forever and ever.
C+
Bremer/McCoy, Natten
This is a piano/bass jazz album made for the late nights at a smoky bar. It really has that effect, pretty, atmospheric, but very background ambience. That’s alright. They are very fine musicians and there’s some neat runs on the key throughout this album. On the other hand, it veers a bit more toward the New Age than I am ever comfortable with. Even outside of that problem, the limited sonic nature of this album, as intentional as those limitations are, makes it not very interesting to me. But for a certain type of jazz fan, who prefers the music in a different context than I do, you might really like this more than the jazz I usually recommend. And that’s OK.
B-
Dummy, Free Energy
This is an LA rock band and this album came out last fall. It’s pretty strong material. Rocks a good bit, also dance-ish in the way that Parquet Courts is dance-ish. I like Emma Maatman’s vocals pretty well. They are a bit too enamored of atmospheric instrumental pieces that don’t really do as much as they’d like. It’s not the best contemporary rock album I’ve ever heard, but it’s a solid, worthy release.
B
RZA, A Ballet Through Mud
Wait….RZA from Wu-Tang did a classical album? With the Colorado Symphony? Uh….ok? I guess if Andre 3000 can get people to pretend his terrible flute project is good, why not. Well, hell, let’s at least put it on…..He claims to have been listening to a lot of Debussy and it really shows! Some of it feels very Gershwin. I will say this though…it’s not what you expect. It’s basically a serious album of classical music with a pops sheen (as opposed to pop). He’s not breaking new compositional ground here, but hell, why not. It’s interesting enough and unlike Andre 3000, he at least knows what he’s doing here.
B
Maren Morris, Dreamsicle
As a general rule, I’ve thought Morris’ albums were solid but not my favorite country music. But she’s playing Newport this year, so I wanted to make sure I heard the new one. Divorce album, so it’s rightfully pissy. At this point, there’s basically not much difference between Rhianna and the better women of country music and I don’t mean that negatively–the attitude is pretty close and the music isn’t too different. Less overt sex still in country music and a bit less saying “fuck,” though “shit” is part for the course now in country music. But the production isn’t so different either. My problem here isn’t with the production or certainly not the attitude. It’s not even with the fact that I don’t know how this is actually country music, which is a meaningless question in 2025 anyway. It’s more that the choices made here seem a bit anodyne and safe and thus just aren’t as interesting as a lot of the other folks taking modern country and borrowing heavily from pop and R&B. It’d be nice if her divorce really just led her to say fuck it and let it all out. But other than a little swearing and complaining about the men, it’s kinda normal.
So I will see Morris at Newport? Maybe, depends on who else is playing. I’d like her to really grab me one of these days with her music, but it really hasn’t happened. It surely doesn’t suck. It just doesn’t move me much either. But sure, put it on when I’m at your house, I’m cool with that.
B-
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.