Music Notes
By 
I saw Jason Isbell at the Wang Theater in Boston last week–fancy! This was my 13th Isbell show, briefly putting him alone in 2nd for the most times I’ve seen an artist (but the other who is at 12, James McMurtry, I will be going to see next month). Since I see him about once a year now, I am sure I’ve expressed before how wild it is to me to first see him playing shows in Texas bars with maybe 75 or 100 people to playing theaters that can fit 3,500 like the Wang, though it was not quite sold out. Of course that has also meant going from paying $10 to $125 per ticket, which is tough for me. I am not a big stadium show guy and I would rather see two shows at $50 than one at $100. The idea of paying Springsteen prices is something I would never even consider, though I would like to see Springsteen. I mean, it’s just a fucking band and in a giant stadium not even the best band can actually be that compelling to see. But my wife is a huge fan and she doesn’t often go to shows so when she wants to go, I’ll buy the tickets.
Anyway, two things about the show, neither of which is particularly revelatory. The first is you are reminded what an incredible songwriter Isbell is. This show alone included songs such as “Outfit,” “Elephant,” “Decoration Day,” “Cast Iron Skillet,” “King of Oklahoma,” and “Dress Blues,” all of which are beyond first rate material. Good to see “Dress Blues” return to his playlists as well. You are just like, how does one write songs like this, not to mention so many of them. Now, I don’t think too many Isbell albums are perfect–he does have a filler tendency that can be a greater issue on some albums than others. But the best songs are some of the best songs ever written.
The second thing I’d note is the quality of his band, the 400 Unit. Only the keyboardist remains the same from the early days. He replaced the drummer a long time ago and I guess that’s guy’s fine. But additions over the past decade have really transformed the band. Bringing in Sadler Vaden from Drivin n Cryin to play lead guitar–as if Isbell isn’t a great enough guitarist–not only frees up Isbell to not have carry the guitar load, but also Vaden can really shred. Vaden also discovered Morgan Wade when she was just working bars and produced that excellent debut album of hers. Then he moved on from his original bassist, Jimbo Hart. People liked Jimbo. He seemed like a nice Alabama boy. But he wasn’t some musical genius. Replacing him with Anna Butters, the Australian bassist who is also a pretty big name in her own right in the more experimental world really transformed that band. It’s not just that she lays down the right rhythms, it’s that she is not only playing a stand up bass in a rock and roll show but that stand up bass is front and center in the sound. Then Isbell hired the great Will Johnson, former lead singer of Centro-Matic, to be his all hands on deck guy, adding more drums to some songs and guitar to others and just generally being a next level musical veteran, someone who mentored Isbell back in the DBT days, to do it all. That’s simply a first rate rock and roll band and it was a show that is worth the money, if any show is really worth three figures.
I watched the new Sun Ra documentary on American Masters, the PBS show. It was pretty good. It’s hard to sum up all parts of Sun Ra in a documentary, he was a complicated guy with a lot going on. One of the hinted things here that I had never considered is that he was probably gay, though what sex he had is unknown, not like he was spending a lot of time on things other than his music. Rightfully of course the music takes center stage, but he’s so fascinating as a person, including being a conscientious objector during World War II, leading to his family disowning him and him moving to Chicago, where he became SUN RA. And I mean, let’s face, the Arkestra was a religious cult as much as it was a band. Not everyone in the band really bought into it all, but John Gilmore and Pat Patrick and Marshall Allen (amazingly still alive and he will be 102 in May) sure did. Boy was Ra well-placed for the era of Black Power, this preexisting senior figure who basically invented Afrofuturism who was fully developed at just the moment that a lot of people wanted to hear this and hear his wild music. Sure, his audiences were whiter than the band, but whatever, how is that any different than Public Enemy? Even if you aren’t a fan of someone making freak out noises on a synthesizer, you might be very interested in hearing how Ra conceptualized the synthesizer, including a story of him freaking out Bob Moog when they met by the noises he was making on the early Moogs–and Bob Moog was not a man scared of weird noises.
After watching that, I was flipping through what was available for streaming on the PBS site and I saw another American Masters episode from a few years on Max Roach. I thought this was even better than the Ra one, possibly because I really knew less about Roach. I mean, sure I know some of this great albums, but there was a lot I didn’t know. I didn’t really know that much of the detail about his band with Clifford Brown or about the horrible car crash that killed Brown, far too young. I knew of course about his great We Insist! album he did with Abbey Lincoln, but I didn’t know a heck of a lot about their relationship or just how critical they were to providing the artistic intellectual milieu for the entire Black Power movement. I didn’t know either about Roach’s later drum exercises and the amazing percussion bands he put together. Roach was a difficult guy, to say the least. The show doesn’t really excuse it, though his kids try to contextualize who their father was. But what a brilliant musician and political visionary.
On another note, quite a bit of the PBS streaming material is available only for donors. Completely understandable. What I don’t understand–and what gets in the way of me donating for this–is how little of the historical library is available. I’d love to have access to 37 seasons or whatever of American Experience, but even for donors only an episode or two from a season here or there is available. I don’t get that. Presumably, PBS has the rights to PBS material. Maybe someone has an explanation here. But I wish more of this material was available. Think of the music archives, just to start!
John Hammond died at the age of 83. Somehow, I feel he should have been older, he feels like a man from such a very different time in music, one of those Dylan left in the dust. Still, a great blues interpreter and here’s another quality remembrance. I should explore his catalog a bit more. The hip-hop sample master and producer Bob Power died as well, the man who did so much to make so many of the great hip-hop albums of the early 90s. Interesting that an old guy (compared to who he was producing and where they came from) would be who these artists who turn to make great albums.
Billy Corgan turns out to be a bit of conspiracy theorist on why rock and roll isn’t as culturally prominent as it was in the 90s. He could be right though.
This week’s playlist:
- Dave Rawlings, Poor David’s Almanack
- Mary Halvorson, Belladonna
- Lambrini Girls, Who Let the Dogs Out
- Sonny Sharrock, Seize the Rainbow
- Townes Van Zandt, Live at the Old Quarter, disc 1
- Bob Dylan, Desire
- Elizabeth Cook, Aftermath
- Red Sovine, The Best Years of Your Life
- Willie Nelson, Country Willie Sings His Own Songs
- Talking Heads, Remain in Light
- Spider John Koerner, Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Been
- Lucinda Williams, Sweet Old World
- Robbie Fulks, Bluegrass Vacation
- Fairport Convention, Unhalfbricking
- Flatt & Scruggs, Live at Vanderbilt University
- Jose Gonzalez, Veneer
- Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Impulse!
- Tammy Wynette, 20 Greatest Hits
- The Gourds, Shinebox
- Kim Gordon, No Home Record
- Wet Leg, Moisturizer
- The New Pornographers, Whiteout Conditions
- Jimmy Martin, County Music Time
- Tyler Childers, Country Squire
- Kevin Morby, This is a Photograph
- Miles Davis, Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet
- Ray Price, For the Good Times
- Adrianne Lenker, Bright Future
- Jenny Don’t and the Spurs, Broken Hearted Blue
- Fontaines D.C., Skinty Fia
- Willi Carlisle, Peculiar, Missouri
- Miles Davis, In a Silent Way
- Ambrose Akinmusire, Honey from a Winter Stone
- Elizabeth Cook, Welder
- Merle Haggard, Down Every Road, disc 3
- Will Oldham, Guarapero: Lost Blues 2
- Grateful Dead, Workingman’s Dead
- George Jones, The Essential, disc 1
- Wussy, Funeral Dress
- Amaia Miranda, Mientra Vivas Brilla
- Joe Ely, Live Shots
- Susan Alcorn Quartet, Pedernal
- Marianne Faithful, Broken English
- Linda May Han Oh, Strange Heavens
- Deerhoof, Actually You Can
- Patsy Cline, Showcase
- Del McCoury Band, Del and Woody
- Empress Of, I’m Your Empress Of
- Aya, im hole
- Waxahatchee, Ivy Tripp
- Melissa Laveaux, Radyo Siwel
- James McMurtry, The Horses and the Hounds
- Mon Laferte, Femme Fatale
- Hazel Dickens, By the Sweat of My Brow
- Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Dancer with Bruised Knees
- Quantic & Nidia Gongora, Curao
- The Grateful Dead, Europe 72, disc 2
- Bobby Kapp & Matthew Shipp, Cactus
- Meridian Brothers, Salvadora Robot
- Ashley McBryde, Presents Lindeville
- Ennio Morricone, The Legendary Italian Westerns
- The Grateful Dead, One from the Vault, disc 2
- Bill Frisell, The Willies
- Kate Davis, Fish Bowl
- Julia Jacklin, Crushing
- Wussy, Wussy Duo
Album Reviews:
Sprints, All That Is Over
This is an Irish big riff punk band that goes from kinda almost soft spoken sludge to pretty close to screaming, with exactly the kind of attitude you’d want from a Dublin women who has no time for your shit. This is pretty fantastic, with a bit of the anthemic pub rock of England and Ireland in there making you want to shout along. As one review stated, if you like Amyl and the Sniffers or Lambrini Girls–and both of those bands are fukcing awesome–you’d like this, though Sprints runs at a bit lower register of speed and scream than those bands. This has a bit more roots in other forms of rock than those more purely punk bands. I can go either way, since I like that kind of punk and I like anthemic rock, but either way, I liked this a good bit, if probably not quite as profoundly as those other bands. But it really grabs you and shoves you in your seat for a half hour and what more do you want?
A-
Sleaford Mods, The Demise of Planet X
I suppose by now you can argue that the rantings of Sleaford Mods over electronics has worn out some of its welcome, and possibly around the edges that’s true. But…they have brought in more guests on recent albums, the beats and electronics have gotten more interesting, and the hating on everyone still amuses the hell out of me, especially since so much of the hate is about economic austerity, people treating each other like shit, and poseurs. It’s a very British term but “MAGA’s off its tits” should be a term we use more often.
B+
Dave Douglas, Four Freedoms
Douglas is such a great trumpeter and everyone who loves jazz knows him and yet….I think he’s actually underrated. He seems to have been surpassed in the public eye by people such as Ambrose Akinmusire or Jaimie Branch before her early death (fuck heroin). And yet, he just continues to put out the kind of jazz that a lot more people should and could hear–the type that splits the difference between the hard bop of the 60s and the more experimental stuff of the avant-garde scene, making his albums a good intro to modern jazz. Or maybe it’s just me. Anyway, he’s playing at Big Ears this year (this month!!!!) and I am excited to see him again, after at least 10 years. This album is inspired by FDR’s Four Freedoms. It’s not the whole album, but it’s the centerpiece of the liner notes (or Bandcamp notes in today’s way of ingesting music). Here, he plays with Marta Warelis on piano, Nick Dunston on bass, and Joey Baron on drums (speaking of people who were everywhere 25 years ago and you hardly ever see today, though I guess he lives in Europe now so maybe that’s why). I don’t know Warelis at all, but she sounds great, and Dunston I do know from Mary Halvorson’s Amaryllis band.
This is a great example of how one could explore a bit of modern jazz in an accessible way. Warelis is a bit outre on piano and that can be a dominant instrument, but Douglas sounds just so great here and the rhythm section is so first rate and also combine interesting with something that everyone is going to recognize as jazz. As with the best modern jazz albums, these people play so beautifully together and just when it seems that things might go off the rails, it all seamlessly moves back into a solid rhythm. Really a lovely release.
A
Muireann Bradley, I Kept These Old Blues
What you don’t see a lot these days is young people doing old blues songs like it was 1962. And Bradley is just a teenager, 17 when this was released, 19 now. If this was the early 60s, she’d be considered the next big folkie star, even if she was Irish (or maybe because of that, but it would have been harder for her to get noticed). I guess it was good to hear her the same week that John Hammond died. This is as simple as it get–acoustic guitar, blues standards. And by standards I mean “Candyman,” “Shake Sugaree,” “Stag o Lee,” “When the Levee Breaks,” stuff like that. I’ve always appreciated song interpreters. The songwriting fetish of rock and roll often leads to a lot of bad songs, when a good cover would do just fine. Folk music certainly turned into songwriting fetish home after Dylan, but there’s always been more room for cover albums and full-on cover artists here than other genres. I guess there’s a bigger question of what Bradley is doing ten years from now. Does she write more? Does she build up the sound? Who knows. But I can say that the simplicity of this project, her lovely voice, and her quite advanced guitar picking definitely make this a worthwhile alum, at the very least. It’s downright refreshing to hear someone young revisit these old songs that were so huge in the 60s folk scene but are often not as influential today.
B+
Welcome Strawberry, Desperate Flower
I’ve never really gotten into bands that wish it was the whiny indie Brit rock bands of the 80s, with the whispered vocals and heavy production and general overall whining about life. I’m just not a shoegaze guy, basically. I guess this band is alright for what it is, but what it is is not what it should be. Still, if you like this kind of thing, it’s a decent enough version of it.
C+
James Ellis, The Party Might Be Over
Australian has a vast country music scene. Keith Urban made it big in Nashville, though that kind of douche country I avoid like the plague. Kasey Chambers had a couple of huge hits in the late 90s and has been around ever since. But it’s so much deeper. One of the younger country musicians from Down Under is James Ellis. Recording this album with Nashville session legends such as Chris Scruggs and Fats Kaplin, Ellis produces the kind of old country that Australians do so well, as if much of Nashville shit never reached there and instead Jimmie Rodgers still matters as a real influence on people instead of just a historical name to drop. This is just super solid, very well performed country music. Also, if you’re looking for the platonic ideal of a country music song title, how about “Don’t Drink All By Yourself (If You Can’t Be Drunk Alone”? You aren’t going to do better.
A-
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.