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Music Notes

By Erik Loomis

On September 20, 2025

At 7:00 pm

In General

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A few shows in the last eight days–will highlight two today and save one for next week.

The more popular show I saw was Wet Leg, in Boston. They have blown up so big–it was a pretty packed house in a pretty good sized arena. This is totally my fault, but I had only heard the new album a couple of times and so I didn’t know those songs as well. That meant the songs I was more excited to her were off the first album and I got to hear them too. The main takeaway I had from the show is that Rhian Teasdale has really leaned into being a rock star and she is good at it. She does sexy well, she moves maybe not like Jagger but in that world and style, she’s good with the crowd, there’s no hesitation or shyness at all. I did think that probably the new songs worked better overall in a live setting like that because they are band songs with less of the semi-talking that defined the first album. Of course I love those songs, but that doesn’t always work quite as well in a live setting. The crowd was super interesting too–really spanning from 21 year old queer kids to a lot of people in their 50s. And really Wet Leg would have been a perfect 90s band. Just about every music fan I know my age is a big fan and as soon as they heard “Wet Dream” and “Chaise Lounge,” they wondered where that had been their whole life.

I also saw the Darius Jones Trio at the Firehouse 12 in New Haven, that great jazz space. This was the first show in the fall season and maybe that’s why it wasn’t nearly as well attended as it should have been. Jones is among the top 5 saxophonists working today in jazz. He’s so creative and amazing and works in the free jazz tradition so effectively. He had Chris Lightcap (who I have seen so many times in so many different bands) on bass and Jason Nazary on drums, who is also great. The set was fantastic, with Jones talking about a prison song he heard on some John Lomax recording and thinking about that guy and his recording for posterity while he was in prison and received not a dime for it, before playing his version of the song, which does not sound like a prison number, to say the least. Now, sometimes these shows really do sell out, so it’s not impossible. But jazz has never really been popular since the 40s. I mean, if you listen to those live Coltrane albums that are so epic and influential and you listen to the handclapping between songs and you realize there are probably like 25 people in the crowd. Thus it has always been.

Other news:

Here’s an interview with Neko Case, just before the drop of her new album next week. I have not read her memoir; Farley did and said it wasn’t super great. They rarely are, though I do recommend Carrie Brownstein’s book.

I am a huge fan of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s IRM album, but she records so rarely. She has a new track out so maybe there’s an album someday.

40th anniversary of Farm Aid is today.

Rob sent me this article about the roots of the pickup truck culture in country music. I didn’t care for it much because it’s the kind of story that starts with the conclusion and constructs an argument to make it true. But it’s really stretched. Honestly, it’s just a douchebro thing from the 90s forward. I can’t think of a single song in 70s country or before that is about a man and his pickup truck. Long-haul trucking songs? Sure, that was a thing in the 70s and even a little bit before that, but that was when country music was about work and labor, not about being a right wing douchebro hanging with your buds on the lake. The best part is when the guy interviews the great country music historian Bill Malone and other people to provide more context about the earlier period of country.

Brett James, a songwriter of contemporary country who seems to have worked mostly for terrible musicians, died in a plane crash. Of course, that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t be good on his own.

Bobby Hart, who wrote many of the songs for The Monkees, died. Most interesting to me was the death of Nancy King. Now, I’m not much of a jazz vocalist person and she avoided a lot of the biggest kind of publicity. But she’s also from my home town of Springfield, Oregon, not exactly a noted center of music. That made me surprised I hadn’t heard of her.

This week’s playlist:

Gillian Welch, Time (The Revelator)
Yo La Tengo, And Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
Doc Watson, On Stage
Big Thief, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You
Sierra Ferrell, Trail of Flowers
Jenny Owen Youngs, Avalanche
Emiliana Torrini, Me and Armini
Steve Earle, El Corazon
Sonny Rollins, Saxophone Colossus
Bonnie Prince Billy, The Purple Bird
John Zorn/Mary Halvorson Quartet, The Bagatelles, Volume 1
William Elliott Whitmore, Silently the Mind Breaks
Daddy Issues, Can We Still Hang
The Wilburn Brothers, Side by Side
Richard Thompson, Amnesia
Kate Davis, Fish Bowl
Ava Mendoza, New Spells
Screaming Females, Ugly
Chris Acker, Famous Lunch
2 Chainz, The Play Don”t Care Who Makes It
Hanoi Masters: War is a Wound, Peace is a Scar
Old 97s, Most Messed Up
Flatt & Scruggs, Foggy Mountain Banjo
Leon Bridges, Coming Home
H.C. McEntire, Lionheart
Old & In the Way, That High Lonesome Sound
Townes Van Zandt, Flyin’ Shoes
Neil Young, Live Rust
Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, The Tiffany Transcriptions, disc 2
Charlotte Gainsbourg, IRM
TJ Kirk, self-titled
Lucinda Williams, Sweet Old World
Jason Isbell, Something More than Free
Sunny Sweeney, Heartbreakers Hall of Fame
Grateful Dead, One from the Vault, disc 2
Ramblin Jack Elliott, South Coast
Richard and Linda Thompson, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight
Lone Pinon, Trio Nuevomexicano
Chris Dench, Beyond Status Geometry
The Tubs, Dead Meat
Drive By Truckers, American Band
Blood Lemon, self-titled
Lambrini Girls, Who Let the Dogs Out
Wussy, Strawberry
Guy Clark, Texas Cookin
Doc Watson, Portrait
Charley Crockett, $10 Cowboy
Jason Isbell, Sirens of the Ditch
Curtis Mayfield, Superfly
Patsy Montana, Best of
Johnny Paycheck, Slide Off Your Satin Sheets
Tropical Fuck Storm, A Laughing Death in Meatspace

Album Reviews:

Gerald Clayton, Ones & Twos

So this is a very interesting jazz album. Clayton is a pianist who I am not familiar with before this and he and his band plays a pretty mid-60s style of jazz, which is enjoyable but which 60 years later, I don’t always find particularly compelling. But for this project Clayton decided to think of his album as something a DJ would use. He constructed an album where a DJ could play both sides of the album at the same time and it would work for them. Not having heard a DJ play this, I don’t know how successful that part of it is. But I do know that bringing DJ culture into the creation of this album leads to some interesting twists and turns that does something different with his well-played but otherwise not covering a lot of new ground style. Kassa Overall did a lot of post-production here, mixing in some electronics and cutting and splicing and all that stuff, which creates a really compelling listen. The rest of the band is Joel Ross on vibraphone, Kendrick Scott on drums, Elena Pinderhughes on flute, and Marquis Hill on trumpet.

A-

Penny & the Pits, Liquid Compactor

Pretty enjoyable post-punkish math rock, largely spoken rather than really sung feminist anger about asshole men and the threats they cause the world. Which to be fair, is a good thing to be angry about. This must be the first rock band I’ve ever heard from New Brunswick too. Might be something interesting going on in Saint John. A better voice would make this a better project, but she works with what she has and it’s pretty alright. I tended to like the screamy parts a bit more than the talkie parts.

Hiromi, Out There

I keep hearing about Hiromi as an up and coming young pianist, only to discover that she is 46 years old, which probably says too much about the state of jazz these days. Anyway, I finally got around to checking her out, with her new release, from April. Now I see why a certain type of musician really likes her–she basically takes prog rock bullshit and adds it to jazz. I guess if I wanted my pianists to channel Keith Emerson or Rick Wakeman, I’d just listen to Emerson Lake and Palmer or Yes. Look, she can play the living hell out of piano, I grant her that. The rest of the band is great too, including Adam O’Farill on trumpet. But the prog-rock shit is really just that, pointless time changes for the sake of showing off is too much here. It honestly reminds me of overwrought mid 70s fusion, like a lesser Weather Report album and I don’t even like the better Weather Report albums much. Great players, bad songs. I loathed the first two songs. Things got a bit better in the middle with the first three of the four “Out There” songs, where they cut the shit a bit and just played some jazz. That salvaged part of the project at least. But those first tracks are so bad. But then here comes the prog wankery again. And some of it is real wankery. Ugh.

3 Cohens & WDR Big Band, Interactive

The 3 Cohens are a trio of good jazz players who are also siblings–Anat on clarinet, Avishai on trumpet and Yuval on soprano sax. The WDR Big Band is based out of Germany. This is a 2022 release. This is mostly fun if not groundbreaking revival of some big band classics and some original cuts in a style that many will find appealing, with plenty of solos from all three Cohens. Anat is probably the real genius of the family and her clarinet dominates the proceedings more than the others, at least to my ears. As the review at All About Jazz suggests, “So should one find oneself or one’s partner, coworker, union sibling, sports bro or dejected congressperson in need of a party record at any time from this tense point in our overall decline onward, look no further.” Might be a bit of an overstatement, but it is a nice listen. At its best, it reminds me more of Miles Davis working with Gil Evans than a 40s style big band.

B+

Morning A BLKstar, Flowers for the Living

Enjoyable, creative neo-soul album from this Afrofuturist band from Cleveland. This fits into some great traditions from the 70s on the fence between soul and jazz and they deliver the goods. A lot of it is about surviving and thriving when the world is horrible around you, which is a useful message these days. Some of it is more directly political, including a song about a Black Panther killed by the cops. But it’s not primarily a political album. It’s an album about the complexities and emotions of life, which can include politics of course, but is much more than that. Because it’s a big band and they also have lots of friends, all sorts of musical things happen here.

A-

Stephen Gauci/Michael Bisio/Whit Dickey, Live at Scholes Street Studio

Bisio and Dickey have played together as the rhythm section on many Matthew Shipp albums, not to mention their own helmed projects for years. I don’t know Gauci’s work as well, but you are starting with a simply great bass and drums combo. And really, what a fantastic trio album. He’s an intense sax player and really delivers the goods on his work above those masters. Check this out if you like a good blowy jazz album.

Tennis, Face Down in the Garden

As you’d expect from Tennis, just an enjoyable indie rock release, in what is evidently going to be their last album. It’s not going to change your life, but it’s just….well, nice. It hits all its marks as a perfectly acceptable listen for the poppy indie lane it’s run in since the band began in the early 10s.

SKAZZ, Memorial

Post punk is such an incredibly appealing genre to me, with its pretty intense singing but also catchy choruses. It’s like taking most of what is good in rock and roll and distilling it down. So I am not great critic of this because I like it so much. But do I want to hear a band from Georgia–the nation, not the state–play its own version of post-punk? I do! And it’s pretty good. Of course I don’t understand any of the lyrics, which might hurt it some, but then it does just kind of distill the sound down into what I like. So I can’t really evaluate the whole of this, but it definitely works soundwise anyway. It’s also about 20 minutes long, so what’s the downside?

Spoon, Lucifer on the Sofa

Spoon is one of those bands I’ve never really been super into. I like them just fine. If they come on, totally cool. But I never really got the band. I did like this release though more than most. When it starts by covering Smog’s “Held,” I thought it was in a late 90s timewarp. Good cover though. Then it moves ahead with solid rock and roll. Like the Tennis album, this is a band that always hits his marks and even if it’s not always my mark, it’s a pretty good mark.

B+

Wednesday, Bleeds

Rock and fucking roll my friends. The very best kind of music. And this is very best kind of rock and roll. I was worried that when MJ Lenderman became a star on his own that he would leave Wednesday behind, but it turns out that he had one more album with him and a few more live shows, though he has now left the band for good. Meanwhile, Karly Hartzman is a first rate vocalist on everything from the slow songs to the screams–maybe she’s not quite Corin Tucker, but she’s not super far off either. The lyrics continue Wednesday’s exploration of the underside of young people in small southern towns with all that means–a lot of driving around, drinking, smoking weed, fucking up, that sort of thing. If this doesn’t do anything for you, maybe you just aren’t a rock and roll person. Oh and let’s just mix it up and end with a country shuffle. Why not. Great album.

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