Music Notes
By 
I don’t have a ton of super interesting music stuff right now–in a concert drought and I didn’t read anything I thought that amazing this week about music. But there are a few deaths in the music world that need discussion.
The first is the astonishing kora player Foday Musa Suso. Suso was from Gambia but ended up in the United States, where he got together with Bill Laswell and was on some of his projects merging jazz, funk, and African music in the 90s. I’d particularly recommend the super great Material, Live in Japan release. That’s hot stuff. You have Laswell on bass, Ginger Baker on drums, Bernie Worrell on keys, Suso on kora, Aiyb Dieng on percussion, and Nicky Skopelitis on guitar. This is hot stuff, but of all the legendary greats on this album, it’s Suso’s album first and foremost, partly also because he handles the vocals. It’s a great fucking album. Interestingly, All Music totally slagged on this album at the time. Hard disagree. Anyway, Suso was 75 and I hadn’t heard much from him in recent years, though that might just be me.
Then we lost Al Foster, best known as Miles Davis’ drummer at the end of his hard funk period in the early 70s and then during his 80s comeback, which was less artistically successful than the rest of his career but he at least he moved toward semi-functional human. Anyway, Foster could do just about anything behind the drums so he was perfect no matter what Miles was up to. He also played with Joe Henderson, Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, and lots of other people. Of course, since Rollins is still alive and has a 100% mind at his age, he provides some choice quotes here about what playing with Foster was like. Interestingly, Foster himself later said he didn’t actually like the Miles 70s era, which I get I suppose as a jazz drummer fundamentally, but I’ll be good and goddamned if Agharta and Pangaea aren’t going to the desert island with me.
Third is a real personal favorite of mine, the accordionist Guy Klucevsek. He was not the most accessible of musicians for sure, but brought the accordion into the experimental jazz world. He could play polkas and he could play with John Zorn and he could play his own odd compositions. It’s funny, he credited Zorn with getting him back into polkas after he rejected the sometimes hokey music he grew up with. Turns out Zorn is a huge polka guy! My grandfather was a huge polka guy too (grew up in rural Nebraska) but I don’t see him and Zorn hanging out much….Oh, he also appeared with his according on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood once. That’s awesome.
Hell, Suso, Foster, and Klucevsek could have made a hell of a recording as a trio! Bad week for jazz though, that’s for sure.
Finally, I suppose one has to mention Rick Derringer. No question about one thing–we all probably can sign the chorus from “Hang On Sloopy” even if we haven’t heard it in 20 years. Unfortunately, he turned into a hard core Trumper.
Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay had an enormous collection of famous instruments and other music memorabilia. Now that he’s dead, there’s a website about all the stuff he has. It’s a lot of stuff. The sax Coltrane used on Live in Japan!
The horrors of AI music and all the fraud involved make me sick.
The gigantic festival bubble is bursting. I’m not too surprised. Costs are high and so are tickets and it’s just a lot. One way to solve that is to go corporate, but no one really likes that and it ends up undermining festival quality in the end. Or you can stay real small, but that undermines the profit motive. Newport is just fine, for example, because it stays small and has no corporate support at all. In fact, it’s almost impossible to get tickets to Newport Folk (I go because I inherited a ticket from a friend’s divorce; I still need to thank his ex-wife for cheating on him if I ever run into her). Newport Jazz sells out fairly quickly too. Big Ears is a specialty festival. But these enormous festivals with gigantic pop acts that want tens of thousands of people? It’s tough.
A musical journey through County Clare in Ireland. My wife’s family’s town is in County Kerry and it’s interesting because you can really tell the differences between the bars that are real music bars and the music in the tourist bars. Also, one thing about the Irish that I did not expect is that they have a detailed knowledge of American country music, mostly the good stuff.
This week’s playlist:
- Shovels & Rope, Little Seeds
- Tacocat, Lost Time
- Doc Watson, Southbound
- Mitski, Laurel Hell
- Kate Bush, Hounds of Love
- Sons of Kemet, Black to the Future
- Matthew Shipp/Whit Dickey, Reels
- Chad Taylor Trio, The Daily Biological
- Iron & Wine, Kiss Each Other Clean
- U.S. Girls, In a Poem Unlimited
- The Paranoid Style, Rock and Roll Just Can’t Recall
- Jerry Joseph, The Beautiful Madness
- Johnny Paycheck, Someone To Give My Love To
- Empress Of, Me
- Natalie Hemby, Pins and Needles
- Agalisiga, Nasgino Inage Nidayulenvi
- Wyndham Baird, After the Morning
- Amanda Shires, Take It Like a Man
- Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings, Woodland
- Leyla McCalla, Breaking the Therometer
- Laura Veirs, My Echo
- Speedy Ortiz, Major Arcana
- Aya, Im Hole
- Dim Lights, Thick Smoke and Hillbilly Music: 1960
- Willie Nelson, Phases and Stages
- Laura Gibson, Empire Builder
- Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Dancer with Bruised Knees
- Sleater-Kinney, Call the Doctor
- Matana Roberts, Coin Coin Chapter Four: Memphis
- Bonnie Prince Billy, The Purple Bird
- J. Pavone String Ensemble, Lost and Found
- Mekons, Horror
- Marika Hackman, Any Human Friend
- Robbie Fulks, South Mouth
- Gillian Welch, Revival
- Smog, A River Ain’t Too Much to Love
- Riddy Arman, self-titled
- Mary Halvorson, Amaryllis
- Lee Morgan, Search for the New Land
- Laura Gibson, La Grande
- Neil Young, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
- Peter Gabriel, Security
- Taraf de Haidouks, Of Lovers, Gamblers, and Parachute Skirts
- Ralph Stanely, Cry from the Cross
- Myra Melford/Zeena Parkins/Miya Miyasoka, MZM
- Mekons, Horror
- Charles Lloyd & Billy Higgins, Which Way is East
- Charlie Haden, Liberation Music Orchestra
- Kris Davis Trio, Run the Gauntlet
- Bobby Hutcherson, Medina and Spiral
- Sonny Rollins, Alfie
- The Coathangers, The Devil You Know
- Sunny War, Armageddon in a Summer Dress
- Algiers, There is No Year
- The Handsome Family, Wilderness
- Laura Veirs, Found Light
Album Reviews:
Kelela, Raven
I really love Kelela’s chill, understated R&B style. The increasingly embrace of queerness in R&B comes through here too, like an Internet album or Frank Ocean back when he actually delivered new music, she’s simply perfectly open with her sexuality. She has a new album out, but this is her 2023 release and it’s pretty super. There’s also more interesting electronics uses here than you might expect. Like everything else, it’s done very tastefully, so this isn’t Rick Wakeman fucking around on his Moog in 1974. It’s just a nice album filled with good choices.
A-
Desire Marea, On the Romance of Being
Interesting art-jazz project here from South Africa. Good title too. This is some interesting soul jazz, through a very different perspective and musical tradition. I loved the big noisy crazy ending a lot. Reading about this guy and he’s had quite a journey, starting some years in ago in a queer, fashion-forward South African hip hop collective and ending up doing fascinating work bringing together so many different elements here, with not much hip hop either, though that’s neither a good nor bad thing, just an observation. Worth a listen, at least.
A-
Soul Glo, Diaspora Problems
Screamy punk from a band whose name one would not associate with punk. I can’t say I care for these vocals though, largely because the guy just doesn’t sing well even in screamy. It’s certainly angry enough for hardcore punk. And I like the politics. But I just hate, hate, hate these vocals and that’s where it stands.
C-
Meth Math, Chupetones
This is a project out of Hermosillo, Sonora. That’s Mexico for those of you scared to cross the border. I don’t mind the production here on this vocalist/producer duo. In fact, I like it a good bit, sometimes at least. I do mind that the vocalist sounds like she was a member of Alvin and the Chipmunks. I’m not sure if this is intentional or if this is just her natural voice. I think it’s mostly intentional, as the Autotune here reinforces that. It does make it hard to listen to.
C
Lucy Dacus, Forever is a Feeling
While in the past, I liked Dacus’ songs more than I loved her songs, she certainly helped bring out the best in everyone with Boygenius, in my view truly a scenario in which all three singers were better with each other than their solo work. This is a pretty strong album though in the genre of emotional young women singer-songwriter work, of which there’s a lot these days. She really is a strong songwriter, if consistently around the love and loss themes at the core of this subgenre of writing. At its best, it’s quite catchy and rocks a bit. Even at less than its best, it’s still smart enough lyrically to not only hold your attention but to really make you respect Dacus’ perspective on the world.
B+
Kamasi Washington, Fearless Movement
OK, look, Washington is pretty overrated by the general public. He’s popular largely because Kendrick is a big fan and so a lot of people heard Washington who would never have heard him otherwise. And you know? Good for him! He’s obviously a skilled saxophonist. He does need an editor though and that’s a struggle for him throughout his career, with releases that are just so dang long without any good reason for it. But still, he’s worth hearing and so I figured I’d check out his album from last year. For the most part, it’s better than fine. He still sounds like he’s channeling Pharoah Sanders, for better or, well, not so better. But Pharoah’s albums were a good 42 minutes and this is 86. I could also use fewer of the somewhat cheesy vocals on several of the songs. In fact, the vocals really take away from the overall quality of the music, like his other inspiration here is how so many of those fusion guys went into the pure cheese by the mid 70s. So in the end, sure, this is alright I guess, but I still feel like there are a quite a few folks Washington listeners would like more than they like him if they heard them. But I’m not going to begrudge someone making an actual successful living playing jazz that does not sound like it was from 1960.
C+
Anna Webber, Simpletrio2000
This is one of those jazz albums where only a small bit is streaming, so I have to discuss this work from last year with Webber on sax, Matt Mitchell on piano, and John Hollenbeck on drums from only 3 of the 10 songs. But it’s a pretty fantastic trio at the very least, which is hardly surprising given the personnel. All three can be challenging players of course, which works or doesn’t work depending on what you are looking for. The construction of the music here is dense and sophisticated. But at least on these tracks, it also flows and moves and even kind of rocks. Plenty of solos for everyone too if that’s your jam.
A-
As always, this is an open thread on all things music and art and none things politics.
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Do the right thing. And then listen to some Foday Musa Suso.