Music Notes
By 
I saw Sudan Archives last week in Boston. I was curious what this would be like live. I am a big fan of her 2022 album Natural Brown Prom Queen, though I haven’t heard her new album. She brings a unique palette to pop/electronic/R&B because she is also a violinist and plays that during her sets. She’s such a smart songwriter too. But live? This wasn’t great. The problem is both understandable and frustrating, which is that she plays as a solo act with tons of prerecorded beats and even backing vocals. I get this on one level–she doesn’t have to share the tour money with anyone else (outside of staff, which I assume there are at least a couple). But it means that there is zero spontaneity in the show. Everything is practiced down to the second because it has to be in order for the prerecorded material to work. It also requires her to be on at all moments. There’s nothing else to look at. She’s pretty good at it, but you know, it’s hard to pay attention to one person between songs and with every little change in song and all that. There’s also not a ton of violin in the live show–it’s there, but she pulls it out for 10 or 15 seconds and it isn’t as prominent in the mix as it could be. She does hold the bow in a quiver like Athena out hunting and that works for effect. But this is not a super great live show. Still love that album, probably would not pay to see her again.
A few deaths in the music world this week. Chuck Hegron of Three Dog Night died at 83, which is pretty good considering all the heroin. Television bassist Fred Smith died at 77. I realize no one listens to Television for the bass, but still, great band, big loss. More shocking was John Forté, who had really pulled his life together after some rough years, but did not get past 50. Seems to have been natural too. Dang. Billy Bass Nelson of Funkadelic also died, speaking of 70s bass players. Finally, we lost Sly Dunbar, the reggae drummer. That’s a lot for a week.
Interview with jazz living legend Andrew Cyrille, definitely recommended.
I know everyone is excited to see Moral Leader Kid Rock instead of Bad Bunny during Super Bowl halftime tomorrow. I can’t think of someone better designed to lead Trump era conservatism than the singer of “Balls in Your Mouth.” Speaking of Kid Rock, his stupid Trumpest country festival planned for this summer is falling apart as acts bail faster than Ted Cruz from Texas when it gets below freezing.
I was catching on recent New Yorker issues (I rarely read the thing, but my wife likes it) and found this profile of David Byrne interesting, although it also reinforces why I don’t really have that much interest in seeing his solo act, which both borrows heavily from Talking Heads without having anything like the energy. That’s fine of course, he’s in his 70s and who has the energy they had 40 years earlier. But having seen the Spike Lee concert film and comparing it to the Jonathan Demme version, it’s B-level material.
Get drunk, play classical music. Maybe anyone under the age of 80 would listen to it if this was something that happened more often.
This week’s playlist. Pretty short since I spent most of the week listening to stuff on shuffle, plus the new albums for the album reviews below.
- Jessica Pavone, Lull
- Bruce Cockburn, World of Wonders
- Sy Smith, Until We Meet Again
- Kurt Vile, B’lieve I’m Goin’ Down
- Fontaines D.C., Dogrel
- Bomba Estereo, Ayo
- Bill Callahan, Gold Record
- Turnpike Troubadours, A Cat in the Rain
- Buddy Miller, Universal United House of Prayer
- Paul Simon, Graceland
- Yo La Tengo, Stuff Like That There
- High Lonesome: The Story of Bluegrass Music Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
- Ches Smith & We All Break, Path of Seven Colors
- Merle Haggard, Down Every Road, disc 1
- Palace Music, Lost Blues and Other Songs
- George Jones, The Essential, disc 1
- Jenny Scheinman and Allison Miller, Parlour Game
- Jenny Don’t & the Spurs, Broken Hearted Blue
- Laura Veirs, Warp & Weft
- Willie Nelson, Phases and Stages
- Drive By Truckers, Brighter than Creation’s Dark
- Patterson Hood, Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance
- Drive By Truckers, American Band
- Frank Ocean, Nostalgia, Ultra, Sno-Cheetah
Album Reviews:
The Long Ryders, Native Sons (Expanded)
Going into the archives to hear something I should heard a long time ago. The Long Ryders were a pioneering alt-country band, coming out of LA in the early 80s, where a lot of this stuff started–X, Los Lobos, Dave and Phil Alvin, Concrete Blonde, Dwight Yoakam, Lone Justice, there was a lot going on down there back then that laid the groundwork for a whole movement of bands to come. The Long Ryders had a very Beatles/Beach Boys kind of vibe to their country-rock sound, which included Mel Tillis covers like “Mental Revenge.” It’s a very 80s sound and so only occasionally country, with a strong emphasis on melody. I don’t love it, but I absolutely respect it and can see why so many bands in the 90s would look back and see Long Ryders as an influence. This is basically a double album with all the bonus tracks and holds up pretty well, but is really too long, as most of this kind of thing is. Who needs 24 tracks of anything? So the bonus tracks probably hurt this as an actual listening experience, though they are by and large fine on their own and the cover of “Masters of War” is excellent, complete with violin freakout and very droning guitar.
B+
Ivo Perelman’s Sao Paulo Creative 4, Supernova
Saxophone quartets are almost by nature challenging. It’s a big instrument better for bleating and solos than rhythm. Put four of them together and it’s a lot of noise. One of the first jazz shows I ever saw, the first time I ever visited New York, was an Anthony Braxton all-saxophone quintet, which was a hell of a way to be introduced to a type of music live. The World Saxophone Quartet may not have invented the sax quartet, but they defined it for a long time and it was never for the George Benson listeners out there. Anything coming from Brazilian sax genius Ivo Perelman is by definition going to push the boundaries. Here, for his sax quartet, he adds three people I didn’t know before this–Livio Tragtenberg, Rogerio Costa, and Many Fallerios, all of whom I assume are part of the Brazilian scene. Perelman handles all the tenor duties, Tragtenberg handles the alto, as well as the bass clarinet, Costa is on soprano and alto, and Fallerios is on soprano and baritone. Guess what? It’s a lot of noise! But it’s a really beautiful noise in many parts. Do I want to listen to this every day? OK, no. Is this a worthy positive project of four excellent players working together in fascinating ways? Yes it is.
B+
Mon Laferte, Femme Fatale
Laferte is one of the top musicians in Latin America these days, a Chilean artist who fell in love with Mexican music and basically provides a hipster yet not really that ironic vision of those great Mexican traditions, combined with bits of Chilean folk and modern electronics. But mostly, she’s just a fantastic singer and her album from late last year once again demonstrates her great command over her powerful tool. This is exactly what you want it to be–something that sounds like it’s from 1955 but is in fact very much of 2025.
A-
Sam Wilkes, Iiyo Iiyo Iiyo
Wilkes is a well-respected bassist who is frequently at Big Ears, including a band this year. I hadn’t actually heard him before, I don’t think. This didn’t do much for me though. It’s mostly a smooth jazz kind of feel, only very occasionally getting interesting–part of one track felt a bit like the north African desert blues had been imbibed a bit. But it is a groove-oriented background thing that has limited appeal to me.
C+
Sleaford Mods, English Tapas
I always appreciate the electronic-based ranting of Jason Williamson. I haven’t heard the brand new album yet, but I also hadn’t heard this 2017 release and it seemed like time to tick that one off. The thing about this band is it really shouldn’t work this well. It’s just Williamson ranting and the other guy pushing a few buttons on his computer and then dancing around (it’s funny live). They’ve started using more guests recently, which probably makes sense, but at this point, it was still just Williamson going off about everyone he doesn’t like, which is most people, capitalism, patriotism, assholes, poseurs, everyone in power in England, and modern life. OK, it isn’t surprising I’d like this. But let’s face it, sonically, this should get old. It’s a very limited range of music they are doing here. And yet, at least for me it totally works musically as well as lyrically. I guess the electronics combined with being usually amused by Williamson, plus the propulsive beats always comes together for me. So yeah, this is great.
A-
Julia Sabra, Natural History Museum
This is nice but the kind of very quiet folk music that really blends in with so, so many other singers and especially women. Women in folk don’t have to sing sad songs with no accompaniment than acoustic guitar or piano, but it’s a thing and that’s fine except that it really really relies on the texture of the voice and songs to pull it off and this doesn’t quite do it. Everything about this is perfectly fine. The songs are more than acceptable lyrically. Sabra has a lovely voice. A lot of this album processes her vocals a bit so it sounds like it’s being recorded in an airplane hanger, making her feel farther away and providing some additional texture. This was intentional, these are just songs recorded to tape and that’s it to provide a particularly kind of raw effect. It mostly works fine. But there’s just a sameness to the album that makes it hard to stand out too much.
B
Tomeka Reid/Craig Taborn/Ches Smith, Dream Archive
It amazes me about ECM in that every album for that label can slow things down considerably. Do they have a house production standard here? It’s not that these three total greats–cello, piano, drums respectively–have to make a ton of noise on every outing, though they certainly can. It’s just that every ECM album sounds a bit like this, as if anything over midtempo is a crime against music. I do have a lot of ECM albums and I enjoy them, but I can’t think of a single ECM album that is among my favorites. That said, this approach works well here because there is so much going on in these relatively spare arrangements. They really allow you to hear Smith’s taps and brush work and other small noises that might get lost in another recording. Reid completely holds down the strings, sounding much larger than a single instrument. Taborn, the nominal leader here, is front and center and without playing too. many notes, provides a pretty compelling tapestry of sound. Also, this is the first 2026 album I’ve heard, always a delight to head into a new year’s worth of releases.
A-
Remember Sports, Like a Stone
Remember Sports is a college band that formed at Kenyon nearly 15 years ago that just never broke up. Rock and roll is their mantra and they play a pretty good version of it. They used to be a punk band more than anything, but by this 2021 release, they were more a band that might remind one of Wednesday or Drive By Truckers, which of course in my world are high comparisons indeed, though without the shittiness of white life in the South to ground them in the same way as those bands. But big ass guitar riffs, songs about bad relationships, internal turmoil, and the good subjects of rock and roll dominate. They developed originally as a pop-punk outfit and some of this is still here, but they’ve moved beyond its limitations. Hell, they even close this album with a country song. This is a good band and I will have to hear more of them.
A-
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.