Music Notes
By 
My first Music Notes of the year, after a bit of a holiday layoff, when I wasn’t listening to a whole lot of new music or seeing shows. Let’s get this off the ground for 2026.
While flying to Asia at the end of December, I watched Becoming Led Zeppelin, the documentary that explores the creation of the band up to the overwhelming reception of Led Zeppelin II. It’s a good, if not great, documentary. Sure, it follows some standard documentary tropes, but because it stops just as they are getting big, you miss a lot of those. Now, some of those might be necessary given that Zep became known for its absurd bloat (The Song Remains the Same-era LZ is horrible and everything about that documentary should be burned, especially the fucking Hobbit-esque scenes where the boys play out their Tolkien fantasies for us–at least Bonham had the dignity to refuse to do that and so they just showed him riding his motorcycle, which was pointless but not embarassing), but it was genuinely interesting to hear Plant, Page, and Jones talk about their backgrounds and how they formed the band. I hadn’t realized Page and Jones were already such major session players before they became full-time rockers. One highlight of the film is the rare uncovered interview with Bonham, which the other guys got to hear for the first time. You definitely see where the bloat is going to come from. When Page starts talking about bringing in avant-garde influences, which definitely works on “Whole Lotta Love” to be fair, you can see where this is going, which is to the ridiculousness that would dominate the band after Houses of the Holy. I’ve never liked the first album much, but II, IV, and Houses of the Holy are all classics to me. III is more alright. What I also did not realize (I’ve never really read much about the history of the band) is how long it took them to get accepted at home, whereas they were already huge in the U.S. Anyway, it was worth 2 hours on the airplane.
I did see one show last week. It combined the jazz shows I had seen at the end of the year. Two of the three last shows I had seen were the saxophonist Anna Webber with a trio and the saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock with a band that included the gayageum player DoYeon Kim. So my first show of this was at the Iron Horse in Northampton, Massachusetts, seeing a new Anna Webber nine-piece band that also includes Laubrock as a second sax player, Kim, and then the legendary Mary Halvorson on guitar, Ches Smith on drums, Yuma Uesaka on all the clarinet styles in the world, Ryan Easter on trumpet, David Virelles on piano, and Chris Tordini on bass. This was the first time I had seen Easter, Tordini, and Uesaka. It was 5 for Webber, 5 for Laubrock, 2 for Virelles, 4 for Smith, and 9 for Halvorson, who is very likely to move into the #2 slot on musicians I’ve most seen (behind Drive By Truckers of course) in the next year or two. And that doesn’t even count multiple festival slots for Halvorson, if they did, it would be more like 15.
In any case, outside of counting stats, when you see a band like this, the question is how are they going to handle so many brilliant musicians on the same stage if it’s not going to just be a bunch of noise. The theme here is that Webber hates capitalism and everything about modern politics (I feel your pain) and so has been doing a lot of reading about alternatives to capitalism and creating music based around her favorite quotes, which is how I heard my first ever jazz song inspired by Frederic Jameson. Well, I don’t quite know how the music itself is overtly leftist (at least Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra used leftist anthems), but that’s fine, I don’t need to. What I was interested in here is how much Halvorson and Smith–the two most famous musicians in the band–basically played supporting roles, with Halvorson mostly playing rhythm or in the background and Smith doing a lot more timekeeping than you’d expect. The real fireworks came with the interplay of the two saxophonists, Uehara and Easter on the other blowing instruments, and occasionally some runs from Virelles and Tordini. Of course, there’s nothing at all wrong with that–I enjoyed the show thoroughly. It’s just interesting to see how these choices are made and the unselfishness of musicians who want to be in bands with their friends making amazing music. Definitely look forward to this album.
A few other things:
I know nothing about the band Oregon except that I was from Oregon and never talked to a single person who ever mentioned the band. But when its guitarist Ralph Towner died, there was quite a bit of remembrance going on from a lot of great musicians. Certainly Towner worked with a lot of greats and it reminds me how much music I don’t know, despite a lifetime of trying.
There’s some outrage in the music world because Pitchfork put up a paywall. I don’t really have a problem with it. I’m not going to pay for it though. Not enough album reviews for that. Old talk about the hipster than thou nature of the site are pretty outdated. These days, it’s a writing home for our own Elizabeth Nelson, among many other fine writers. And a site has to make money. As we do with our annual fundraisers, they have to make readers realize that people need to get paid and the site has costs to operate. This causes people to grumble because they are freeloaders. I get it. But it does cost money. However, going to a paywall model also forces to people to reckon with how important a site is in their life. Maybe if Pitchfork reviewed a broader swath of albums in more genres I care about, this would be worth it, for the good reviews are well considered and written. But they don’t so it’s not worth it to me.
Nice story on Candi Staton, who has one of the iconic R&B covers of a country song with her version of “Stand By Your Man” that I got to hear a couple of years ago at Jason Isbell’s festival in Alabama, where he invited her. She doesn’t get that much attention, despite being a living legend, so this is good to see.
Among the many things that Donald Trump has completely ruined is foreign artists touring in the United States. So many are affected and that includes the entire scene of the west African desert blues bands, since they are all from nations such as Mali and Niger and thus flat out can’t get visas. Other foreign artists are basically telling the U.S. to fuck off and that the nation isn’t worth it. I don’t blame them. Bad for me to not get to see Tinariwen again though. Fuck you Donald Trump.
Something of a playlist, certainly not everything I heard in the last month or whatever, but does cover most of the past couple of weeks.
- Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith, A Cosmic Rhythm with Each Stroke
- Tom Ze, Lingua Brasiliera
- Albert King, Live Wire/Blues Power
- Tropical Fuck Storm, Fairyland Codex
- V/A, My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall
- The Coathangers, Nosebleed Weekend
- Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, Years
- Herbie Hancock, Headhunters
- Elizabeth Cook, Welder
- Spider John Koerner, Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Been
- Bonnie Prince Billy, Pond Scum
- Doug Sahm & Band, self-titled
- Richard Buckner, Our Blood
- Trio of Bloom, self-titled
- Matthew Shipp, Pastoral Composure (x2)
- Mary Halvorson Septet, Illusionary Sea
- Frank Zappa, Hot Rats
- Jason Isbell, Sirens of the Ditch
- Bruce Cockburn, High Winds White Sky
- Guy Clark, Texas Cookin’
- Drive By Truckers, The Dirty South
- Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Datura
- Torres, self-titled
- Wednesday, Rat Saw God
- Bill Callahan, Dream River
- Tom Russell, The Man from God Knows Where
- Del McCoury Band & Steve Earle, The Mountain
- The Flying Burrito Brothers, Gilded Palace of Sin
- Waylon Jennings, Honky Tonk Heroes
- John McLaughlin, Devotion
- Angel Olsen, All Mirrors
- Speedy Ortiz, Foil Deer
- Sun Ra, Purple Night
- Drive By Truckers, The Unraveling
- Emmylou Harris, Blue Kentucky Girl
- Townes Van Zandt, The Late Great Townes Van Zandt
- Case/lang/Veirs, self-titled
- Bob Dylan, Time Out of Mind
- Noname, Room 25
- Jane Weaver, Flock
- Jerry Joseph, The Beautiful Madness
- Rilo Kiley, More Adventurous
- John Moreland, Big Bad Luv
- Sonny Sharrock, Ask the Ages
- Wussy, Funeral Dress
- Warren Zevon, Excitable Boy
- The Decemberists, The Crane Wife
- Miles Davis, Workin’ with the Miles Davis Quartet
- Nick Drake, Pink Moon
- Hayes Carll, You Get It All
- Margo Price, That’s How Rumors Get Started
- Wussy, Forever Sounds
- James Brandon Lewis Trio, Apple Cores
- Jaimie Branch, Fly or Die II: Bird Dogs of Paradise
- Mary Halvorson, Belladonna
- Virginia Wing, Private Life
- Julien Baker & Torres, Send a Prayer My Way
- Ron Pope, American Man, American Music
- Jesse Winchester, Love Filling Station
- Sleater-Kinney, The Hot Rock
- St. Vincent, Actor
- Paul Dunmall/Matthew Shipp/Joe Morris/Gerald Cleaver, The Bright Awakening
- Mulatu Astatke, Afro-Latin Soul, Vol 1 & 2
- The Clash, London Calling
- Festival in the Desert
- Merle Haggard, Down Every Road, disc 2
- The Coathangers, Suck My Shirt
- Billy Joe Shaver, I’m Just an Old Chunk of Coal
- Nubya Garcia, Source
- Adam Lane, Four Beings
- Maiya Blaney, A Room with a Door
- Chvrches, Every Open Eye
- James Brandon Lewis Quartet, Code of Being
- Sharon Van Etten and the Attachment Theory, self-titled
- Kae Tempest, Let Them Eat Chaos
- S.G. Goodman, Teeth Marks
- Bonnie Prince Billy & Matt Sweeney, Superwolf
- Sonny Sharrock, Seize the Rainbow
- William Onyeabor, Atomic Bomb
- Sudan Archives, Natural Brown Prom Queen
- Sonic Youth, Goo
- Sleater-Kinney, All Hands on the Bad One
- Nels Cline, Consentrik Quartet
- Miles Davis, Black Beauty, disc 1
- Jim Lauderdale & Ralph Stanley, Lost in the Lonesome Pines
- Robbie Fulks, Bluegrass Vacation
Album Reviews:
Cold Specks, Light for the Midnight
Cold Specks is the stage name for the Canadian pianist and singer Ladan Hussein. She’s an expressive and depressive singer, which probably appeals to some a bit more than it does to me. It’s basically a woman and her piano with some strings in the background, a drum on some songs. She can definitely belt it out. The super depressive lyrics are fine enough, but don’t blow my mind. She was hospitalized for schizophrenia a few years ago and took a break from music and now is back after eight years since her previous release. This is high-production, completely acceptable music, but it also feels a bit generic to me, even with the lyrics. Perfectly acceptable music though.
B
James Brandon Lewis Quartet, Code of Being
Exploring Lewis’ back catalog is like a new batch of joy with each album. The new king of soulful sax, Lewis not only has an amazing sound but surrounds himself with astounding musicians who he then spurs on to greater heights. His quartet for his 2022 album here is Aruan Ortiz on piano, Brad Jones on bass, and Chad Taylor on drums. Taylor is everywhere these days (he’s one of the musicians who is not only playing at Big Ears every year but you see him all the time in the audience at other people’s shows too, which is a cool thing about that festival), Ortiz is well established as one of the best pianists around, though I’ve never had a chance to see him. Then there’s Jones, the tremendous bassist who I know from the Jazz Passengers but who I rarely see pop up elsewhere, so it’s good to see him here. This is the kind of album that is both conceptually interesting but also visceral to hear and it’s the latter that is most appealing to me. Lewis is such a force of nature on that saxophone.
A
Trio of Bloom, self-titled
Trio of Bloom is Craig Taborn (recently named a MacArthur genius!) on piano, Nels Cline on guitar, and Marcus Gilmore on drums. Three badasses. This is just fantastic. Each song feels like something from a different project and yet it all works together quite well. Inspired by the mostly forgotten 1987 jazz project Power Tools, which brought together Bill Frisell with Melvin Gibbs and Ronald Shannon Jackson as an electric jazz supergroup (I think I’ve heard of this, but I have never in fact heard it), Cline/Taborn/Gilmore decided that they could do a supergroup that like Power Tools would sound different than anything else they had ever done. And that it does! This is basically a rock and roll album in a jazz shell and as such, a lot of it is pretty fucking great. Really a fantastic album.
A
Rhett Miller, A Lifetime of Riding By Night
Good album title for the Old 97s’ frontman’s latest solo album. His longtime running partner Murry Hammond produced it, so I’m not sure why this isn’t just an Old 97s album. But whatever. Then I heard it. This really did need to be a solo album. Miller has to deal with the reality of getting old. Specifically, he had to undergo voice surgery and while I think he got it fixed, there was a chance he wouldn’t and what would freak a singer out more than that? So this is a more elegiac and introspective album than the man who wrote “Time Bomb” and “Barrier Reef” would probably have thought he had in him. As such, it’s strong. Still, this kind of material doesn’t quite serve Miller’s songwriting strengths, which, well, are songs like “Time Bomb” and “Barrier Reef,” rocking post-college love and sex songs. Of course, he’s 55 years old now, so that’s a bit harder to pull off than it was in 2000. But it is a smart and meaningful album, if not a great one. A worthy addition to his catalog, at the very least.
B+
Underground System, Looking In
I saw this combo electronic-Afrobeat-R&B band at a festival and thought they were fantastic. This is an EP of there’s from a few years ago. It shows their strengths in the first three songs. The last songs are club remixes of two of the songs already on there, which somewhat dims this as a release, but totally shows how this band works in the dance scene.
B
Nick Shoulders, All Bad
Retro hipster country done in ironic 50s crooning style isn’t necessarily checking every box for me, but this guy can sing in his way (I would not call him a good singer, but he has his voice and he owns it and carries a tune within it alright) and his songs sometimes hit the mark to say something about society. It’s OK, with an appeal more to those who like dressing up like they were going to a country show in 1954 while actually going to their local dive bar with people who also have similar bold tattoo choices. So OK but not without its problems musically and kind of annoying on top of it. Yet, I like pre-douche country so much that I find this at least listenable. Seems like a good dude personally as well, though good politics does not mean good music, or vice versa.
C+
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.