Music Notes

Time to talk some tunes.

I’ve seen two shows in the last two weeks.

One was Natalia Lafourcade, the Mexican cancion singer, at the Shubert Theater in Boston. I really enjoy older styles of Mexican music and Lafourcade is still pretty young but might the master of this type of music at this time. She’s a truly wonderful singer, enormously expressive and with a great voice. Fundamentally she’s a ballad singer, as this kind of music tends to be, but she can more or less do it all. My wife is a big fan too and we don’t have a ton of overlap so it’s night to be able to see a show with someone! The crowd was interesting in that it combined older whites like myself (let’s be honest here) and probably ever Latin American with a graduate degree in the greater Boston area, which means it skewed pretty white but whatever. My wife’s thoughts on this was it was mostly southern cone folks. Anyway, it’s a very nice and entertaining show. My single caveat is that there is a lot of over the top theatrics involved that might do something for a lot of people, but didn’t do much for my wife or I. Like talking in really dramatic ways to a flower or having a bit of sitting in the chair like a worker after getting off the shift and doing songs around that, or whatnot. I guess we are both kind of “shut up and play” people. Anyway, I’m not totally sure I would pony up at a not insignificant cost to see this again, but I am glad I saw her once.

I also saw Leyla McCalla at the Armory in Somerville, Massachusetts. This was the second time I’ve seen McCalla. But the first was not my finest moment, for last year when I got to New Orleans, I came down with a horrific cold. I wouldn’t have even gone to that show was it not an outdoor venue where I could stand in the back, far away from others. So I was glad to see her in better health. McCalla was in Carolina Chocolate Drops with Rhiannon Giddens and Our Native Daughters, with Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, and Allison Russell. That band was four Black women banjo players, but McCalla doesn’t really play a lot of banjo in her live shows, mostly going with guitar and cello. She’s a classically trained cellist and the daughter of Haitian immigrants who decided she wanted to be a folklorist. So her music is a combination of all those things. She does wonderful versions of Haitian folk songs and older American songs from the Black tradition. She also writes. Her songwriting is more fine than great–she’s good at capturing broad based human emotions, but she’s not a storyteller. But then songwriting is hard. Anyway, she’s a super talented human and you should see her if you can.

Other News:

For sure, the biggest loss in the music world over the last two weeks is Lalo Schifrin, who composed the famous theme for Mission Impossible, but who did work across almost every existing genre of music during his long and incredibly productive life.

I’ve never cared much about The Beatles one way or another and I most certainly do not understand the enduring appeal of Beatlesmania, but Ringo lives and is 85 now and I am sure that some of you will have read his interview in the Times and want to talk about it, so go for it.

Debbie Harry on why Blondie fell apart.

Chely Wright on quitting country music after she came out.

Ozzy and Black Sabbath are taking the stage together for the last time. Supposedly.

Bob Vylan proves himself a real punk. Hardly anyone, including in punk, takes actual risks in the 21st century. Vylan sure did.

White country musicians are still bitching about Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter as not being real country music. Oh yeah, as opposed to your 70s AOR bullshit with cowboy hats, sure thing bro.

A playlist from the Ukrainian punk scene.

Sean Combs sure is a piece of shit, regardless of what charges he was found guilty of. Surprising no one.

For those of you who have the Criterion Channel in your subscriptions, there’s a good collection of Rolling Stones films this month, including some rarities that I haven’t seen and of course some quite famous films. Need to check some of these out.

Finally, I wanted to point out the great work our commenter Burning Ambulance is doing on his label when it comes to rereleasing out of print jazz albums. 14 more Ivo Perelman albums is the latest reason to celebrate!

Playlist for the last two weeks:

1. Margo Cilker, Pohorylle
2. Bomba Estereo, Amanecer
3. Centro-Matic, Navigational
4. James Brandon Lewis, Jesup Wagon
5. Angel Olsen, Big Time
6. Nina Nastassia, Riderless Horse
7. Morgan Wade, Reckless
8. Chuck Prophet, Bobby Fuller Died for Your Sins
9. Randy Sharp/Jack Wesley Routh/Maia Sharp/Sharon Bays, Dreams of the San Joaquin
10. Chris Stapleton, From a Room, Vol. 2
11. Sierra Farrell, Trail of Flowers
12. Ray Price, The Other Woman
13. Drive By Truckers, Go Go Boots
14. Priests, Bodies and Control and Money and Power
15. Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, De Facto
16. Charlotte Adigery & Bolis Pupul, Topical Dancer
17. Lilly Hiatt, Trinity Lane
18. Jerry Joseph, By the Time Your Rocket Gets to Mars
19. Wussy, What Heaven is Like
20. Wilco, Star Wars
21. U.S. Girls, Half Free
22. James McMurtry, The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy
23. Drive By Truckers, Live at Plan 9, 2006
24. Rhiannon Giddens, Freedom Highway
25. Jim Lauderdale, Time Flies
26. Jerry Joseph, Baby You’re the Man Who Would Be King
27. Federico Aubele, Gran Hotel Buenos Aires
28. The Paranoid Style, The Purposes of Music in General
29. Loretta Lynn, The Definitive Collection
30. Bill Callahan, Reality
31. Drive By Truckers, Welcome to Club XIII
32. The Freight Hoppers, Where’d You Come From, Where’d You Go
33. Allison Russell, Outside Child
34. Wussy, Funeral Dress II
35. Tracy Nelson, Mother Earth Presents Tracy Nelson
36. Ilhan Ershain/Dave Harrington/Kenny Wollesen, Invite Your Eye
37. Thomas Dollbaum, Wellswood
38. Old & In the Way
39. Doug Sahm and Band
40. Jimmie Dale Gilmore and the Flatlanders
41. Townes Van Zandt
42. Merle Haggard, Live Austin ’78
43. Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, What Now My Love
44. Illegal Crowns, Unclosing
45. Jason Moran, Black Stars
46. Chuck Prophet, The Land that Time Forgot
47. Guy Clark, Old No. 1
48. Bobbie Gentry, Ode to Billie Joe
49. George Jones, The Essential, disc 1
50. Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires of the City
51. Sleater-Kinney, One Beat
52. Tony Malaby’s Tamarindo, Live
53. Roscoe Mitchell, Nine to Get Ready
54. William Parker, For Those Who Are Still, disc 3
55. Nick Drake, Five Leaves Left
56. The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
57. Linda Thompson, Fashionably Late
58. Tom Waits, Bone Machine
59. Tangerine, Behemoth!
60. Aruan Ortiz Trio, Live in Zurich
61. Eric Revis, Slipknots Through a Looking Glass
62. Adam O’Farrill, For These Streets
63. James Brandon Lewis’s Red Lily Quintet, For Mahalia with Love
64. Cuong Vu 4-Tet, Ballet
65. Tomas Fujiwara, Pith
66. Susan Alcorn Quartet, Pedernal
67. Mary Halvorson, Cloudward
68. Whitmore Sisters, Ghost Stories
69. David Rawlings, Poor David’s Almanack

Album Reviews: I’m mostly going with 2025 albums, catching up on some new releases.

The Mountain Movers, Walking after Dark

I enjoyed this New Haven band’s 2021 album World What World. I did not anticipate they’d go long form here in their 2024 album, with three songs over 10 minutes and one hitting a late Neil Young-esque 19 minutes. It’s low-level jammy, very electric but not very garage, almost drone-based at times in these long pieces. I now understand that it is World What World that was the outlier with its greater emphasis on songs and storytelling. As for this–well, it’s alright. I’m not as a general rule a big rock instrumental guy, largely because most rock musicians are simply not as skilled on their instruments as musicians in many other genres and so they aren’t as interesting or reward multiple listens. These guys are better and certainly more thoughtful than a lot of other rock instrumental bands, but overall, I’d say that hearing this once was plenty for me. I kind of like what these guys are up to and also these songs go on like Texas.

B-

Lambrini Girls, Who Let the Dogs Out

Noise punk band from Brighton and their new album. Unlike Mountain Movers, none of these songs get to 19 minutes. Some of them do get to 3. One even gets to 4. You know more or less what this is–angry young women, leftist politics, kind of speaking/kind of shouting, a lot of guitar. Even some good sort of solos. But then who in punk is really reinventing the wheel anymore? Is it even possible? Within the strictures of punk though, the anger is still real enough, the shouting cathartic enough, and the guitars fun enough. Plus, you can understand the lyrics, which is not necessary really, but does help to get the point across. But I’m underselling this–as it goes on, it just rolls over you in waves of fury.

Also, these women are so acerbic toward England that when they received government funding to help them tour Europe (I can’t believe this is a thing in the UK, can you imagine it here?) far right figures were mad about it, to which they told them to fuck off. So if you’ve pissed off the British right with songs such as “Big Dick Energy” and “Company Culture” and “Cuntology 101”, good! And let’s just say that “Cuntology 101” is way too much of an earworm for this side of the pond.

A

Delivery, Force Majeure

Alright Aussie garage rock. Enjoyable enough, pretty catchy at times, multiple vocalists helps keep this mixed up a bit which is sometimes a problem with garage rock bands. Nothing remarkable, but a perfectly fine rock and roll album.

B

The Gentle Spring, Looking Back at the World

Pop from Paris and an English-French band. Very English twee in its references and clear massive influence from 80s English whiny pop. That was and will never be my thing, as probably clear from the last sentence and this isn’t quite either. It’s not bad music, but unless you like that really emotive English 80s world of music, you aren’t probably going to care a ton for this either.

C+

Ela Minus, DÍA

A very interesting Colombian electronic musician and singer. I don’t often get into super electronic club-based music, but every now and then, I do and it tends to happen with a combination of interesting lyricists and an understanding that this music can be about more than just the beat. Minus is a good example of both.

B+

Damon Locks, List of Demands

Locks is a spoken word guy and electronic musician who I’ve seen before working with Rob Mazuerk, the outstanding trumpeter and bandleader and key to the Chicago jazz scene. This is a political jazz-based spoken word piece that channels the history of Black liberation into a pretty interesting musical project. Mostly it’s just Locks, but there’s a couple of jazz musicians who show up on a few tracks–Ralph Darden on drums, Ben Lamar Gay on cornet, and Macie Stewart on violin. The question here is how much would one want to listen to repeatedly. As an artistic experiment, it’s quite worthy. As a frequent listen, all the sound footage from protests and past organizers such as Angela Davis might not work that well.

B+

Jamaica, Maisha Ya Mtaani

Despite the name, this band is not from that country, but Tanzania. Not being a total expert on east African music, but as someone who does have a passing familarity with its general history, this is interesting because it combines some pretty traditional elements with old cheap Casio keyboards and hip hop influence, which is as big in east Africa as it is anywhere and has spawned some greats such as MC Yallah. So think of this as a path from the streets of Kinshasa to your ears and wonder what else is going on there that is pretty different than anything you’ve ever heard.

B+

Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith, Defiant Life

I saw these two legends play at Big Ears and of course it was wonderful. I also enjoyed their first album together, so figured it was time to listen to the new one. But as an album, this is hard listening. It’s just so quiet and spare. That’s a lot of where Wadada especially is these days and Iyer tends to play this way as well. So it’s two real masters working, but you also have to work hard to really hear it and whether that’s what you want or not is up to you. But you probably aren’t going to want it that frequently.

B

Natalia Lafourcade, Cancionera

Since I saw Lafourcade, figured I’d listen to the new album too, which I had not done before I saw her. It just reiterates what I said in the concert discussion, which is that she has such a lovely voice that presents this kind of classic Mexican music so perfectly. She isn’t breaking new ground here, no. But she does a classic style classically and if you like that style of richly produced Latin music, why would you not like this? At a running time of 76 minutes, it is too long though.

A-

The Waterboys, Life, Death, and Dennis Hopper

How could I not listen to an album with this title? But do we need an hour plus song cycle about Dennis Hopper? I guess for a certain generation, he’s more iconic than he is for me. I mean, sure, he’s DENNIS HOPPER, but mostly I think of him as an insane fuck-up, i.e., his Apocalypse Now character. Or the version that is eating sugar through Thailand in Fishing with John. I know he lived a wild life and that appeals to a lot of people. Anyway, that’s what the Waterboys decided to do with their latest album. And they have all the special guests–Steve Earle! Bruce Springsteen! Fiona Apple! As far as these kinds of projects go, it’s fine. Somewhat interesting, depending on how much you love Hopper, musically varied enough to keep the attention OK. It does a lot of playing up his movie career and all the big stars he knew and the art scene and all of that. But I just do not find Hopper interesting enough to deal with a 25 song album about him. The Fiona Apple cut called “Letter from an Unknown Girlfriend” about what a piece of shit that Hopper was is pretty damn good though. Great vocals from her.

C+

James McMurtry, The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy

McMurtry now only writes songs when he feels it’s time for an album and he won’t release anything that isn’t first rate. What this means is that his albums now range from pretty good to incredible, whereas earlier in his career, they were more in the fine to good range, with the exception of the astounding Where’d You Hide the Body. This is maybe not quite my favorite McMurtry album, but it’s pretty damn good. He bookends it with covers–first of Jon Dee Graham’s “Laredo (Small Dark Something), which he used to play live all the time back 15-20 years ago when I was in Texas, and then with Kristofferson’s “Broken Freedom Song.”

Then there’s the great originals–“Pinocchio in Vegas” has one of the great intros of all time:

Pinocchio’s in Vegas with his eye on the prize
He’s a real boy now, his dick grows when he lies
But his face stays frozen like it’s still made of wood
It displays no emotion as he cleans ’em out good
At that back room table, most any Friday night
He don’t even need the money, he’s just in it out of spite

He’s a real boy now, his dick grows when he lies–OMG.

But “Annie,” now that’s a great song. Let me tell you all something–James McMurtry really, really, really hates George W. Bush. It may be the Trump era now, but as a Texan, McMurtry has not forgotten and will never forgive Bush for his post 9/11 actions and invasion of Iraq. Just Us Kids was like half about this. On his last album, he wrote a song called “Operation Never Mind” about how we’ve all forgotten the Iraq War. With “Annie,” he trains his guns directly on Bush. It’s great. And this acerbic man can definitely fire bullets. Then there’s “South Texas Lawman,” about a suicidal aging violent cop and “Sons of the Second Sons” about the history and reality of white supremacy.

The only thing maybe making this just a tick lower than Just Us Kids or Childish Things or Where’d You Hide the Body is that there’s a couple kind of whatever songs in the middle of the album. But otherwise, this is a pretty great album.

A-

Lucius, self-titled

Here’s a band I have needed to hear forever but I never have. They are playing Newport, so it’s time to see if I want to see them live.

It’s maybe not my favorite thing ever, but the two singers sure do sing well together. It’s exceptionally pleasant listening if nothing else. Is it more than that? Meh, not totally sure. It’s really all about Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig’s harmonies. Harmonies are never going to be enough to get me over the top. I don’t even like the Beach Boys. So it’s more than fine, but to me has a limited ceiling given the fine but not particularly exceptional songwriting.

B

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