Music Notes
By 
It’s been 3 weeks since I got one of these up and there’s been a lot going on. So here’s just a quick rundown. I’ve seen a few shows, but let me just talk about a couple and save the rest for later, since I don’t have another show scheduled for over a month.
First, I should mention that I had to miss a show I really wanted to see, which was The Beths, who were playing in Providence a couple of weeks ago. But I came down with a nasty, nasty cold that basically sidelined me for several days and I was so bummed to miss this show. But what can you do? Ugh.
In better news, I saw Ron Carter! This was at the Regattabar in Cambridge. I had never seen him before and at age 88, it was about time. He still sounds super great. The only compromise he’s made with age is sitting when he plays. I’d say that’s pretty good for 88. He just continues to live his vision of extremely high quality versions of the jazz he came to fame with back in the 60s. What I love about Carter is that he always chose to stay his course. When Miles went fusion and electric bass was the thing, he tried it for about 5 minutes, said nope, I’m an acoustic bass player and this is my music and then went on to be the most prolific sideman in music history, appearing on over 2,000 albums, which is an insane number. That’s basically an album a day for 6 years of your life, and even if you’ve lived nearly 89 years, that’s a lot of days in the studio. Unsurprisingly, Carter gets the best musicians to play with him. Most importantly here is Renee Rosnes on piano. Carter clearly loves Rosnes’ playing. I mean, who doesn’t, right. This is the founder and leader of Artemis, among other projects. She’s a total badass master. The interplay between the two of them was just fantastic. Then there was Jimmy Greene on tenor and Payton Crossley on drums. Greene I don’t really know–he’s in his early 50s and has played around forever but I imagine this is the biggest gig of his life and it is well-deserved, for he is more than qualified for the job. Crossley is an older guy best known for being Ahmad Jamal’s drummer for several years in the 70s and 80s. So that’s just a cool connection to a different legend too. It was fun and wonderful and really, when Ron Carter takes the stage, you are in awe.
In a different vein of jazz, I also saw the saxophonist Anna Webber, one of the really great young sax players around today though there are so many in this wondrous age of jazz, with Dustin Carlson on guitar and Max Goldman on drums, at the Myrtle in East Providence, Rhode Island. I had heard of this space but had never been there. It’s really a very cool hipster bar. The setup might not quite be perfect for a jazz band in terms of acoustics, but we did have a comfy couch to sit on, which is more than you can say for most spaces. I’ve seen Webber several times now, in her own groups and with others, and she’s got such a profound sound. She and Carlson are old friends and roommates. This was the first I had heard of him, but I’d check out his solo work. About half the tracks they played was his, about half were hers, and then they covered a Michael Formanek tune, which is cool in that you don’t see tons of covers of modern jazz artists by other modern jazz artists. Goldman I don’t know either and while I thought he sounded fine, the less than ideal space wasn’t the best here, or at least not where we were sitting. But you deal with the venues you get, I was just super pumped to see a jazz show where I didn’t have to travel to New Haven or Boston.
Other news and notes:
Do we need more music biopics? WE DO NOT, STOP WITH THIS MORONIC BULLSHIT OF JUST FEEDING FANS CHEETOS.
This is an interesting essay about a noise music guy finally getting around to exploring free jazz. It’s interesting to see how people approach this music. In my experience, those who approach through other parts of jazz deal with it differently than those who approach it through noise or metal, with different desires and preferences. Some interesting discussion of Peter Brotzmann here, unsurprising from noise people who I have long found love the German saxophonist. Good discussion of Cecil Taylor too.
Steve Cropper died. It’s worth noting that for as much as people love Booker T & the MGs for the racial mixing as much as the music (which is great no doubt) and see Cropper as something of a hero that he responded very, very poorly to the rise of soul music and the idea that he as a white was not desired anymore on albums fronted by black groups. Charles Hughes explores this in his great book Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South, where things behind the scenes between Booker T. and Cropper were not some rosy post-racial love fest by any sense of the imagination. He would go off quite publicly against the Black musicians who he thought were destroying what he saw was the racial utopia of Stax but which Jones very much did not see. He said some pretty nasty things about the rise of Black musicians wanting Black backing bands. One of the people who was glad that Hughes told this story was Booker T. Jones himself, who is pretty tired of the mythology. In short, I have nothing against Steve Cropper personally and he’s a great guitarist. He was also a southern white man of his generation and couldn’t escape some of that when his liberalism was challenged in the late 60s. That takes nothing away from his great taste, his superb licks, and his general awesomeness. It just makes him a white.
It’s easy to forget that Beto O’Rourke has a long history as a musician before he became one of the Democrats’ only hopes to ever win in Texas. So you might not have thought that you needed Beto on Joe Ely, but in fact, you do. Speaking of Joe, I did not realize he did the Spanish vocals on The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”
On supposedly good AI music. What a failure of humanity to tolerate this shit.
If you care at all about Wussy, this oral history of the making of Funeral Dress 20 years after is release (!!!) is amazing and well worth your time. I didn’t quite realize that Lisa didn’t know how to play guitar really yet. Well, she’s gotten pretty damn good! And in fact, the album doesn’t really sound amateurish at all except for the drums and they notably picked up someone who had never drummed before, as she happily talks about here. It’s a real miracle, as is this entire band.
You might have read a lot of Best of 2025 lists this month, but I bet you didn’t expect a list of the Top 25 Minnesota Albums of 2025.
Dead Kennedys’ Frankenchrist at 40.
Kash Patel’s girlfriend is evidently a musician who gets a big bump in her streamings ever time he’s in the news and given how often he fucks up murder investigations, he’s in the news a lot.
Playlist for the last three weeks, which is too long for a post, but actually is interesting in terms of how few albums are repeated even over that long a span:
- The Bakersfield Sound: Country Music Capital Of The West 1940-1974, disc 2
- Hank Williams, The Unreleased Recordings, disc 1
- Youssou N’Dour, Fatteliku: Live in Athens, 1987
- Waylon Payne, Blue Eyes, the Harlot, the Queer, the Pusher & Me
- Sniffany & The Nits, The Unscratchable Itch
- Wadada Leo Smith/Douglas Ewart/Mike Reed, Sun Beans of Shimmering Light
- Mitski, Bury Me at Makeout Creek
- Jason Isbell, Southeastern
- Nina Nastasia, Riderless Horse
- REM, Automatic for the People
- Courtney Barnett, The Double EP
- Bonnie Prince Billy, I See a Darkness
- Peter Brotzmann, Medicina
- Ken Pomeroy, Cruel Joke (x2)
- Marshall Allen’s Ghost Horizons, Live in Philadelphia
- Sonic Youth, Sonic Nurse
- Craig Taborn, Daylight Ghosts
- Juana Molina, Halo
- Speedy Ortiz, Rabbit Rabbit
- Outkast, Idlewild
- Greg Brown, One Night
- Joseph Kabasele, Le Grand Kallé: His Life, His Music: Joseph Kabasele and the Creation of Modern Congolese Music, Vol. 1
- Kenny Wollesen/Jonathon Haffner/Dalius Naujo, Rasa Rasa
- Norman Blake, Back Home in Sulphur Springs
- St. Vincent, self-titled
- Screaming Females, Rose Mountain
- Neil Young, Somewhere Under the Rainbow, 1973 Live
- Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Corporal
- Sun-Mi Hong, The Fourth Page: Meaning of a Nest
- The Paranoid Style, Rolling Disclosure
- U.S. Girls, Scratch It
- Kurt Vile, Wakin’ on a Pretty Daze
- Indigo de Souza, Any Shape You Take
- Iris Dement, My Life
- Feeble Little Horse, Girl with Fish
- Tropical Fuck Storm, Deep States
- Willi Carlisle, Critterland
- Peter Brotzmann, Medicina
- Sonic Youth, Sonic Nurse
- Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues
- Albert Ayler, Goin’ Home
- Hurray for the Riff Raff, Life on Earth (x2)
- Duke Ellington, The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse
- Buck Owens, The Complete Capitol Sessions, 1967-1970
- Celia Cruz & Johnny Pacheco, Celia & Johnny
- Jason Isbell, Weathervanes
- Matt Sweeney & Bonnie Prince Billy, Superwolves
- Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, Nightroamer
- Conway Twitty, Next in Line
- Robbie Fulks, Gone Away Backwards
- Jaimie Branch, Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war))
- Lilly Hiatt, Trinity Lane
- Richard Thompson, Acoustic Classics
- Bill Callahan, Rough Travel for a Rare Thing
- The Hold Steady, The Price of Progress
- Amanda Shires, Take It Like a Man
- Clyde Moody, A Country Tribute to Fred Rose
- The Highwomen, self-titled
- Drive By Truckers, Southern Rock Opera, disc 1
- Marianne Faithfull, Broken English
- Kate Davis, Fish Bowl
- Mount Moriah, Miracle Temple
- Jeff Lederer, Schoenberg on the Beach
- Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth, Deluxe
- Robert Earl Keen, Gringo Honeymoon
- Merle Haggard, Okie from Muskogee
- Jerry Joseph, Tick
- Torres, Three Futures
- Yo La Tengo, I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
- Tony Malaby’s Tamarindo, Somos Agua
- The Louvin Brothres, When I Stop Dreaming: The Best of the Louvin Brothers
- Townes Van Zandt, Live at the Old Quarter, disc 2
- Johnny Paycheck, Slide Off Your Satin Sheets
- Terry Allen, Lubbock (On Everything)
- Wet Leg, self-titled
- Angelica Garcia, Cha Cha Palace
- Waxahatchee, Cerulean Salt
- Merle Haggard, It’s Not Love (But It’s Not Bad)
- Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, self-titled
- Frank Ocean, Nostalgia, Ultra, Sno-Cheetah
- King Crimson, Red
- Doye O’Dell, Crossroads
- Chuck Prophet, Bobby Fuller Died For Your Sins
- Janelle Monae, The Age of Pleasure
- Wussy, Left for Dead
- The Tony Rice Unit, Manzanita
- Will Oldham, Guarapero: Lost Blues 2
- Richard Thompson, Watching the Dark, disc 2
- Purple Mountains, self-titled
- Angaleena Presley, American Middle Class
- Ivo Perelman & Matthew Shipp, Percussion Bitter Sweet
- Patterson Hood, Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance
- Lee Bains & the Glory Fires, Old Time Folks
- Mitski, The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We
- Christopher Paul Stelling, Gone But Not Forgotten, Part 3
- Die Verlierer, Notausgang
- Waxahatchee, Out in the Storm
- Rosali, Bite Down
- Anderson. Paak, Malibu
- Kae Tempest, The Line is a Curve
- Tomas Fujiwara, Pith
- Johnny Cash, With His Hot and Blue Guitar
- Aretha Franklin, Lady Soul
- James Brandon Lewis, Abstraction is Deliverance
- Wayne Shorter, Adam’s Apple
- Mon Laferte, SEIS
- Angel Olsen, All Mirrors
- Chicago Underground Duo, Hyperglyph
- Adam O’Farrill, For These Streets
- Irving Fields, Bagels and Bongos
- Blake/Taylor/Bush/Robbins/Clements/Holland/Burns
- Tom Russell, Poor Man’s Dream
- Screaming Female, Desire Pathway
- Iron & Wine, The Shepherd’s Dog
- Waxahatchee, Ivy Tripp
- Laura Veirs, Warp & Weft
- James McMurtry, Live in Aught Three
- Ennio Morricone, The Legendary Italian Westerns
- Joe Ely and Joel Guzman, Live Cactus
- Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel….
- James Brandon Lewis, Apple Cores
- Arooj Aftab, Vulture Prince
- Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life, disc 1
- Miles Davis, Milestones
- Sonny Rollins/McCoy Tyner/Ron Carter, Milestone Jazz Stars In Concert
- Wayne Horvitz Gravitas Quartet, One Dance Alone
- Chicago/London Underground, A Night Walking through Mirrors
- Chris Corsano/Bill Orcutt, Brace Up!
- Hamid Drake/Joe McPhee, Emancipation Proclamation
- Northwest Sinfonia/Wayne Horvitz, Joe Hill: 16 Actions for Orchestra, Voices, and Soloist
- Cupcakke, Ephorize
- The Beths, Straight Line Was a Lie
- Ashley Monroe, Like a Rose
- Pavement, Slanted and Enchanted
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Live Like the Sky
- Elizabeth Cook, Welder
- St. Vincent, All Born Screaming
- Algiers, Shook
- Charlie Haden, Liberation Music Orchestra
- Quantic & Alice Russell, Look Around the Corner
- Thus Love, All Pleasure
- The Paranoid Style, The Interrogator
- Justin Townes Earle, The Saint of Lost Causes
- Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, Sidelong
- John Moreland, In the Throes
- Jason Isbell, Foxes in the Snow
- Julia Jacklin, Crushing
- Bill Laswell/Sonny Sharrock/Derek Bailey/Fred Frith/John Zorn/Charles K. Noyes, Improvised Music New York 1981
- Kendrick Lamar, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers
- Sleater-Kinney, The Hot Rock
- Miles Davis, Bitches Brew Live
- Artemis, self-titled
- Drive By Truckers, Brighter than Creation’s Dark
- Ray Price, Night Life
- Joanna Gruesome, Peanut Butter
- Bonnie Prince Billy, Master and Everyone
- Robbie Fulks, Georgia Hard
Album Reviews:
Chicago Underground Duo, Hyperglyph
Oh, yeah, this is my kind of album. Chicago Underground Duo is Chad Taylor on drums and Rob Mazurek on trumpet, making some glorious jazzesque noise. I’ve seen them play together before and that was a hell of a show and this album, their first as a duo in 11 years though they play together on other projects, is a wonder of noise. Mazurek also plays piano and other instruments here, so it sounds like a fuller band than it is. This is a postmodern take on the music world, with everything mixed up together for new ideas. This moves from Afro-Cuban sounds to a prewar New Orleans jazz sound to electronica, all in the minds of these two geniuses. Fantastic work, one of the best albums of the year.
A
Destruxion America, Gritos Norteño
So this was interesting to me. I rarely like hardcore punk. But I did like this and quite a bit. Maybe it’s that the vocals are in Spanish anyway so I don’t care about trying to follow them. Maybe it’s that despite all that, the vocals are actually somewhat comprehensible. Maybe it is that in the punk world, this really isn’t hardcore but more like moderatecore. Either way, this seriously rocks, with excellent guitar hooks. I’d listen again.
A-
Sissy Spacek, Entrance
My first thought here is about the copyright for a band borrowing the name of an actor. That’s especially true in that the real Sissy Spacek actually released a county album back in 1983 that is supposedly passably decent. Well, this isn’t no country album, that’s for sure. It’s an electronic noise project of the type that doesn’t always interest me, though this is pretty interesting as far as these things go. Like a lot of this stuff, it’s more a collage than something that actual people can probably play without computers, which is OK. Its one of those things that is almost post-music. Whether that appeals to you or not, I really don’t know. Worth a taste at least.
B
Ali Shaheed Muhammad/Adrian Younge/Dom Salvador, JID024
The JID series has largely gotten stale, despite its noble goal of recording old jazz legends. But it’s a bit rejuvenated in the last couple of releases by reaching into global music, where there’s lots of guys who are holding on and could use the attention and play music that fits the funk of Muhammad and Younge. One is Dom Salvador, the Brazilian artist from the early 70s. Like the best of these albums, it takes a living legend playing in a now out of date (not that I use that term negatively) style and recasts it for relevance in the present. Their style works well in conversation with Salvador’s samba.
B+
Julien Baker/Torres, Send a Prayer My Way
A solid if not great collaboration between Baker and Torres, both lesbian singer-songwriters. Torres wanted to do a country album and proposed it to Baker and here you go. Now, unlike most people who approached this project, I am a far bigger Torres fan than Baker. The latter is a hell of a guitarist and I like her solo work and the Boygenius project just fine, but she is part of the Very Sad Emoters group of female folk singers these days. Torres is the far more interesting lyricist and sound conceptualist. In any case, this is a pretty good album, but inconsistent in the results, which is hardly surprising for two artists deciding to do a one-off country album. Sometimes, Baker’s Very Sad Emoting tends to dominate a bit much, sometimes the attempts to be funny don’t quite go over. But it’s a totally welcome project and I’m glad they made it, If being an outlaw country artist is taking risks to do whatever you want, two young women from evangelical backgrounds who put up with a lot of shit when they came out to their families and the world have every damn right to the title when they sing about that in a series of country songs.
B
Perfume Genius, Glory
Don’t really get the appeal of Perfume Genius and its sad chamber pop. Like the Baker/Torres album above, it’s an exploration of queer identity, though in a very different type of music. But like a lot of Sufjan Stevens’ music, it rests on pretty more than interesting. Maybe I’m not a big fan of white falsetto voices backed with big arrangements, but this did nothing for me. Will say this–I am glad I listened to it because he’s playing Big Ears and now I will know to see something else. Nothing wrong with that, not everyone has to like everything.
C
Kyshona, Legacy
Very solid modern soul with excellent guitar. The lyrics are overwhelmingly positive and fit into a tradition that reaches back to Pop Staples if not before. This means that Kyshona is not exactly in fashion. I imagine her core audience is older Black folks who don’t listen to a lot of hip hop, but that’s just a description of where her music fits into the larger world more than a knowledgable statement. It’s soulful, funky enough, just a real solid release.
B+
William Parker & Ellen Christi, Cereal Music
William Parker is perhaps my favorite living musician and I respect anything he does. I don’t know that I need an album of spoken word really, though I do appreciate what he has to say. Here he works with Ellen Christi, who is more an experimental vocalist who makes weird noises instead of words, which is a perfectly reasonable use of the vocal instrument but is of course not for everyone. Largely, I was glad to realize that this is who I saw in a Parker show a few years back when I didn’t know who the vocalist was and now I do. There’s real beauty here, but I don’t know that it’s exactly a frequent listen.
B+
The Beths, Straight Line Was a Lie
Other than being devastated to miss that Beths show a couple of weeks ago due to illness, I was excited to hear the new Beths album finally. It’s another example of smart indie rock from New Zealand with wry observations about surviving in this weird world. This album title didn’t quite hit me like Future Me Hates Me and Expert in a Dying Field, two sentiments I understand very well. But most straight lines are lies. It’s a solid rock and roll album from a very good rock and roll band. It’s not a great album though and probably takes a step back in terms of the songwriting. Of course lots of great bands have albums that are merely good rather than great, so there’s no reason to worry here. Sleater-Kinney has The Hot Rock, Drive By Truckers have several albums that are basically fine surrounded by classics, etc.
B+
Linda May Han Oh, Strange Heavens
I know Oh from her work with Vijay Iyer and I was interested in this solo project that includes Tyshawn Sorey on drums and Ambrose Akinmusire on trumpet. It really delivers. Bass-led albums are often a curiosity in jazz that depend on the compositions since the bass is rarely the lead, even on William Parker albums. Mingus was something of an exception of course, but he went for big horn bands that didn’t center his instrument often either. With a trio, the bass is going to have to be pretty central and it is here, with two of the great younger masters of jazz filling out the band. Anyone who thinks jazz isn’t in great hands today simply isn’t listening to new jazz. It’s astounding out there and this album makes its claim to excellency. Stylistically, it is all over the place like so many of the great new albums today, working in influences from throughout jazz history and moving it in new directions too. Covers here include songs from Geri Allen, Joni Mitchell, and Melba Liston, demonstrating Oh’s commitment to marking women’s stories in jazz.
A
Anouar Brahem, After the Last Sky
Brahem has been around forever, but this is the first I’ve heard him. He brings the oud into jazz and that’s an interesting combination. It’s even more interesting when you have Dave Holland play on your album and his bass here is pretty dominant and fantastic. This album is inspired by the genocide against Gaza (I am so uninterested in the way academics define genocide to mean “what Nazis did and not much else”; it’s a political term, not an academic one) and whether it moves you to action seems unlikely, but it is a lovely album. It includes not only Holland, but Django Bates on piano and Anja Lechner, who is excellent on her cello. Lechner has a lot of history bringing Middle Eastern folk music and western classical together and so is a perfect contributor here. There’s even a song named for Edward Said, in case you were still wondering what the political position of the music is. But whether you care about that or not, it’s a really lovely album.
A-
Actress, Grey Interiors
A decent piece of atmospheric electronica, really this is background music and nothing more, but it’s actually pretty good background music. Whatever, but better than whatever whatever. Like a less sarcastic whatever, since it’s good on its own terms.
B
As always, this is an open thread on all things music and art and none things politics (except for where the politics enter the art, which did happen a couple of times in this post).