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Music Notes

On May 16, 2026

At 7:00 pm

In General

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Ok…………..I haven’t done this (or really any blogging except grave/labor history posts) in five weeks because life has so gotten in the way with my brother’s illness, which is still not great, but mercifully he is out of the ICU and that’s been a huge step. Of course, this all affected my show schedule, which is not the most important part of my life right now, to say the least. But I will still note it. I had to not go to two shows that I had tickets for. I was supposed to see the Del McCoury Band for the first time since maybe 2000, back when I lived in Knoxville. Del is in his mid 80s now, but is still touring a bit. That was probably my last chance to see him. It is what it is. Here’s a fun bluegrass concert on New Jersey public television from 1975. Del in a leisure suit!

I was also supposed to see Kronos Quartet do a really fun looking set of new music. I have never seen them. I will probably have other chances. But bummer.

On the other hand, when your brother is unconscious and there’s nothing to do, you might as well look around to see who is playing. As it turned out, La Santa Cecilia was playing at Tulips in Fort Worth. I like this band and thought, well, why not enjoy life when you can. It was a great time. La Santa Cecilia is an LA band that is really a band of the border, playing mostly in the southwest and in Mexico, so I’ve never had a chance to see them in the northeast, which doesn’t have a big Mexican population by and large. It was a lot of fun. Marisol Hernandez is a great and charismatic vocalist in the Mexican romantic style, the band is great, and the crowd was pumped. Being a Mexican show, I felt like Bill Walton at a Dead show, a foot taller than most anyone else. I tried to stay in the back. Cool club too. I had to stick around for over an hour after the show since the thunderstorm from Hell hit as the show got close to ending and I had a good talk with a bartender about the Texas beer scene and how it had changed since I lived there from 2007-10. It was a real fun time. Chavela opened, a soul singer from San Antonio, who I would check out more.

I also saw The Hold Steady on their 20th anniversary tour for Boys and Girls in America, at the Sinclair in Cambridge, which among other things is my favorite club in the Boston area. I saw the last show of their residency there, which was the “storytellers set.” This meant a lot of stories about the songs, about how songs get titles, about various people Craig Finn knows who influenced this and that, why certain places are in their so often, how outside musical projects from various band members end up influencing later songs, stuff like that. So pretty interesting. Probably I’d enjoy the full rock and roll effect more than this, but that’s only because it is only the second time I’ve seen them and so I don’t know the catalog as well as I’d like. I wish I had gotten into this band 20 years ago instead of 3 or 4. If I had, I would have loved this a lot. It was still pretty great and just super interesting to see.

A few bits of the great bit of music news that is going to happen over a month. To start with, the New York Times had their 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters list. One can certainly complain about it, but it’s not bad as far as these things go. Sure, any list without James McMurtry is by no means complete and I’d argue the same about Jason Isbell and Patterson Hood. But look, this isn’t about my favorite bands. What they do a great job at is getting at the pretty full spectrum of popular music–a good bit of hip hop, some of the country songwriting teams, some mainstream pop, living songwriters from the great R&B/soul days, plus a series of legends. I will say this–I don’t think Dolly Parton’s songwriting is that great, or more accurately, it hasn’t been for a very long time. She gets a pass because DOLLY but the actual work is largely not very good for a half-century now. I personally think Taylor Swift is overrated, but she is the most popular songwriter in the world, so OK. Lionel Richie certainly surprised me, but then he also wrote a lot of country songs as well that you might not even know he wrote. Lana Del Rey I really don’t get. On the other hand, they have Brandy Clark, who among other things is among the 1 greatest lesbian country singers from southwestern Washington and who writes about that very topic, which I naturally like very much. So there’s some very fine deeper cuts here.

A lot of deaths of course. Clarence Carter died the other day, one of the living masters of ribald blues/rock/country/soul and of course the writer of “Patches,” a total favorite of mine. Nedra Ross of The Ronettes died. Wayne Moss, the country session guitarist who played on approximately 20% of the songs you and anyone else knows, is no more. I don’t personally have a lot of say about Michael Tilson Thomas, but he was probably the most famous American conductor of the last 25 years.

Then there’s David Allan Coe, a complete lunatic of a human being, someone who was brought up very hard, had a lot of success, but could not overcome his demons at all. Somehow, he lived to be 86, despite really trying not to. It’s easy to dismiss Coe–his racism and his misogyny were front and center. But his career is also incredibly varied and few American white singers could easily pass as a singer in the black gospel tradition than Coe. He was really an astounding guy in some ways. I don’t blame anyone for not exploring his catalog, you have to put a lot of work in to find the good stuff. But there is good stuff.

Hangin’ with Kurt Vile.

I’ve never been a Beach Boys guy–I basically don’t care about harmony like that and find the music boring. But whatever, to each their own. I will say this–that band was made up of the worst people in the world who then seemed to engage in a never ending competition over who could be even more awful.

Do we need lessons in loving Ron Carter? Who doesn’t love Ron Carter already? But hey, why not.

Even loading this page is a pain in the ass because of the video, but Pitchfork asking a couple of hundred musicians about their favorite album leads to some pretty interesting responses–some you would expect, some you very much would not. The actual objectively correct answer is, for the record, Sonny Sharrock’s Ask the Ages. But major shoutout to Lucy Dacus for picking Ann Peebles’ I Can’t Stand the Rain, which is both a very deep cut and a highly defensible choice, since the title track has a claim for the best song ever written. And if Richard Dawson, who is an English pastoralist folk singer dude, gets anyone to buy an album by the experimental jazz accordionist Guy Klucevsek, then God bless this entire project.

The playlist for the last five weeks. Why bother? Because people used to accuse me of just listening to the same bands or the same kind of music. I got sick of those conversations, so I decided to show my work. Note: in over a month, I have listened to exactly 6 albums on more than one occasion and none more than twice. Which is not a good or bad thing, but is a thing.

Lambchop, The Bible
Virginia Wing, Private Life
Jason Isbell, Weathervanes
Steve Earle, The Revolution Starts Now
Tom T. Hall, I Wrote a Song About It
Terry Allen, Bottom of the World
Jason Isbell, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Bill Frisell, This Land
Woody Guthrie, Hard Travelin: The Asch Recordings, Vol. 3
Waxahatchee, Saint Cloud (x2)
Ray Price, The Other Woman (x2)
Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Spinning Around the Sun
Bobby Bare, Cowboys and Daddys
Norman Blake, Fields of November
Chris Knight, The Trailer Tapes
Edgar Varese, The Complete Works, disc 2
Newport Folk Festival Best of the Blues 1959-68, disc 1
Mitski, The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We
Old & In the Way, That High Lonesome Sound
Sleater-Kinney, One Beat (x2)
Kris Kristofferson, A Moment of Forever
Neil Young, Harvest
Tom T. Hall, In Search of a Song
Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, The Tiffany Transcriptions, Vol. 3
Larry Sparks, Ramblin’ Bluegrass
Ray Price, The Essential
Sun Kil Moon, Benji
Ka’hil El’ Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, America the Beautiful
Sonny Rollins, G-Man
Fred Thomas, All Are Saved
Kings Go Forth, The Outsiders Are Back
Allen Toussaint, Life, Love, and Faith
Lucinda Williams, self-titled (x2)
Will Johnson, Hatteras Night, A Good Luck Charm
Buck Owens, The Complete Capitol Singles, 1967-1970
Cable Ties, All Her Plans
Justin Townes Earle, Harlem River Blues
Ibeyi, self-titled
Miguel, Kaleidoscope Dreams
Mdou Moctar, Ilana (The Creator)
Run The Jewels, RTJ4
Laura Gibson, Goners
Mary Chapin Carpenter, Stones in the Road
Whitney Rose, Rosie
Greg Brown, Dream Cafe
Empress Of, I’m Your Empress Of
Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, Re-Factro
Marty Robbins, El Paso City
U.S. Girls, Heavy Light
Darius Jones, Le Bebe de Bridgette
Jeffrey Hayden Shurdut, Everybody’s Music Orchestra
Kae Tempest, The Line is a Curve
The Grateful Dead, To Terrapin: May 28, 1977, Hartford, CT
Waxahatchee, Tigers Blood
Sharon Van Etter, Are We There?
Sault, Untitled (Black Is)
Domenico Lancellotti, The Good is a Big God
Yola, Walk Through Fire
Sleaford Mods, The Demise of Planet X
Janelle Monae, The Archandroid
Cardi B, Invasion of Privacy
İlhan Erşahin, Dave Harrington & Kenny Wollesen, Invite Your Eye
Hurray for the Riff Raff, Life of Earth
Sy Smith, Until We Meet Again
Frank Ocean, Blonde
The Beths, Future Me Hates Me
Marianne Faithfull, Broken English
Courtney Barnett, The Double EP
Jamie Saft, Joe Morris & Charles Downs, Mountains
Chuck Cleaver, Send Aid
Dinosaur Jr., Sweep It Into Space
Jerry Joseph, Istanbul
Peter Oren, The Greener Pasture
Daniel Carter/William Parker/Gerald Cleaver/Matthew Shipp, Welcome Adventure, Vol. 2
Nick Cave, The Skeleton Tree
Bob Mould, Blue Hearts
Julien Baker, Turn Out the Lights
Lori McKenna, The Bird and the Rifle
Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life, disc 1
Gram Parsons, Grievous Angel (x2)
Panama! Latin, Calypso & Funk On The Isthmus 1965-75
Tony Rice, Manzanita
King Crimson, The Great Deceiver, disc 2
Patsy Montana, The Best of
Duke Ellington, The Far East Suite
Neil Young, Harvest Moon
Case lang Veirs, self-titled
Frank Ocean, Channel Orange
Los Lobos, Just Another Band Out of East L.A. disc 2
Carolina Chocolate Drops, Dona Got a Ramblin Mind
Emmylou Harris, Pieces of the Sky
Lydia Loveless, Somewhere Else
Iron & Wine, Our Endless Numbered Days
Anthony Coleman, Selfhaters
Parquet Courts, Light Up Gold
Drive By Truckers, Southern Rock Opera, disc 2
James McMurtry, Just Us Kids
Ashley Monroe, Like a Rose
Adia Victoria, Silences
Jim Lauderdale, My Favorite Place
Pavement, Crooked Rain, Crooked Raion
Nels Cline, Consentrik Quartet
Lone Justice, The Western Tapes
Olivia Chaney, The Longest River
Loretta Lynn, Coal Miner’s Daughter
Poppy Ackroyd, Resolve
Daddy Issues, Fuck Marry Kill
Margaret Glaspy, Emotions and Math (x2)
James McMurtry, The Horses and the Hounds
Balsam Range, Papertown
Guy Clark, Cold Dog Soup
Algiers, Shook
Tyler Childers, Country Squire
Wayne Shorter, Emanon
Jane Weaver, Love in Constant Spectacle
Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, Years
Wild Billy Childish & CTMF, Failure Not Success
Screaming Females, Rose Mountain
Charles Gayle, Time Zones
John Hartford, Mark Twang
St. Vincent, Strange Mercy
Natalia Lafourcade, De Todas Las Flores
Rae Morris, Someone Out There
Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Brooklyn Babylon
Indigo de Souza, All of This Will End
Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Dancer with Bruised Knees
Drive By Truckers, Go Go Boots
Tracy Nelson, Mother Earth Presents Tracy Nelson Country
The Paranoid Style, The Interrogator
Drive By Truckers, The Definitive Decoration Day, live tracks
The Weather Station, Ignorance
Duke Ellington, The Essential
Mdou Moctar, Afrique Victime
Hanoi Masters: War is a Wound, Peace is a Scar
Jimmie Dale Gilmore and the Flatlanders, self-titled
The Roots Of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias from Peru
Brittany Davis, Black Thunder
Miles Davis, Steamin’ with the Miles Davis Quartet
Sarah Jarosz, Woman on the Ground
Yo La Tengo, Stuff Like That There
Meridian Brothers, Salvadora Robot
The Regrettes, How Do You Love?
PJ Harvey, Let England Shake
Christy McWilson, Bed of Roses
Laura Veirs, The Lookout
Rodney Crowell, The Houston Kid
Serge Gainsbourg, Histoire de Melody Nelson
Merle Haggard, It’s Not Love (But It’s Not Bad)
Mabe Fratti, Se Ve Desde Aqui
Waxahatchee, Great Thunder
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, The Noopiming Sessions
Wussy, Wussy Duo
James McMurtry, Complicated Game
Marissa Nadler, The Path of the Clouds
Guy Clark, The South Coast of Texas
Old Crow Medicine Show, Live at the Ryman
Asleep at the Wheel, self-titled
Tom T. Hall, I Witness Life
Iron & Wine, Kiss Each Other Clean
The Go! Team, The Scene Between
Townes Van Zandt, Delta Momma Blues
Emmylou Harris, Luxury Liner
Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny
Mon Laferte, Femme Fatale
Randy Sharp/Jack Wesley Routh/Sharon Bays/Maia Sharp, Dreams of the San Joaquin
Cracker, From Berkeley to Bakersfield
The Pistol Annies, Interstate Gospel
King Crimson, Red
Father John Misty, God’s Favorite Customer
Bill Monroe, Live at the Opry
Sufjan Stevens, The Avalanche
Calexico, Carried to Dust
Smog, Supper
Loudon Wainwright III, Album III
Neil Young, Live Rust
Charles Lloyd & Billy Higgins, Which Way is East
The Bakersfield Sound: Country Music Capital Of The West 1940-1974, disc 3
Willie Nelson, Red Headed Stranger
Chuck Prophet, The Land That Time Forgot
Alejandro Escovedo, Gravity
Daniel Carter / Roy Campbell / Matthew Shipp / William Parker / Rashid Bakr, Time Is of the Essence Is Beyond Time

Album Reviews:

Allo Darlin’ Bright Nights

I didn’t know this British art-pop before hearing this, their first album in a decade. But I wish I had because this band is fantastic. A lot of Camera Obscura here, but a bit less twee and a little more country. This is just catchy, smart enough music that I’d revisit. Memory is a big theme here. Isn’t it for all of us these days.

B+

Aoife O’Donovan, Age of Apathy

O’Donovan is someone who I have known about forever, but have never listened to, for some reason. So this is her 2022 album. I certainly like the album title. The album itself is kind of what I’d expect from a modern folkie, nice voice, nice songwriting, kinda dull though. Bigger production than you might expect, which I actually like, but I wish there were more changes in tone and sound than exist here.

B-

Foley, Crowd Pleaser

Bog standard mainstream pop, crafted, acceptable and capable in the way such music always is, but not more than that. Just listen to Beyoncé.

B-

Artificial Go, Musical Chairs

Cincinnati is the home of Wussy and Afghan Whigs, so something is the water there. But this? I did not like this. It is the kind of art-pop that is intentionally arch, like if Laurie Anderson was less interesting. It’s also intentionally very British, which is not very Cincinnati. Catchy enough, in a sense, but also twee as fuck. It would help if the lyrics that try to be funny went beyond mildly amusing to saying something useful or interesting, like the Charlotte Adigery/Bolis Pupul project. I found it very annoying.

C-

Annie Hart, The Weight of a Wave

Another kinda OK but also fairly bland indie pop album. There’s some seriousness in the lyrics in the sense that she’s depressed and that’s fine, but they aren’t profound enough to break through the standards of the genre. If you like indie pop and just want something pleasant enough in the background with a lyric here and there that might get your attention for a sec, I guess this could do. That’s about all I have to offer here.

B-

Adam O’Farrill, Elephant

O’Farrill, son of Arturo even if it’s not fair to identify him this way, is a rapidly rising figure in the jazz world, part of Mary Halvorson’s fantastic Amaryllis group, Hiromi’s (who I very much do not like) band Sonicwonder, and now a lot of other projects. He’s been releasing solid to excellent work as well. This is his new quartet, with him on trumpet and electronics, Yvonne Rogers on piano, Walter Stinson on bass, and Russell Holzmann on drums, none of which I know. This pops pretty hard, with all the jazzy nervousness one might expect of this sort of thing, but also with clear hip-hop influences, more than a bit of minimalism, and plenty of excellent improvisation from this group of rising musicians. Once again, much of the best jazz ever made is being made right now, you just aren’t paying attention to it.

A-

Cardi B, Am I the Drama?

Is this what they call a rhetorical question???? In any case, this album received wildly varying reviews, from great to terrible. I think some of it is that the hype was so big–it had been 7 years since Cardi had taken the world by storm with her debut album. But this works pretty well for me–she brags all the time and she’s a diva among divas. Does it absolutely change your life? No, I guess not. Does it do what you should expect from Cardi B? Yes. Does it matter than it took awhile to come out? I have no idea what difference it makes unless we are talking about fashion and not music. Of course she’s a lunatic, at least in her lyrics, who would want anything else?

B+

Reid/Edwards/Coudoux, self-titled

Do you need a cello trio in your life? I think you might. This is Tomeka Reid, Isidora Edwards, and Elisabeth Courdoux. This came out in 2024, but is a live recording from 2021. You’d think three cellos would lead to a samey sounding album, but that undersells the cello, truly one of the most versatile and wonderful instruments in existence.

Sofia Kourtesis, Madres

Let’s go to the club with something that look like actual songs instead of only beats. But mostly just the beats. She’s Peruvian, but based in Berlin. Because of course she’s based in the global city of club music. I don’t know how to even evaluate this it all sounds like variations on a theme to me and if it’s not a theme I particularly like, then I don’t know. The lyrics would have to carry it and the lyrics at least are here, but they don’t do a lot. She does bring in a field recording of a Peruvian protest against homophobia, so she seems like a good person working to create a better world through her music, which is a noble sentiment at least. For me, this at best passes the time while I do work, which I guess has something to it.

C+

Elana Sasson, In Between

I’m not as a general rule a big jazz vocals guy, but this I found charming, probably because Sasson is Persian and Kurdish and sings those songs and in those styles, but also of course in the jazz tradition. Should I be a sucker for just mixing in some new sounds to an older genre? Maybe not, but I like it anyway. Besides, adding Middle Eastern influences to most western music only enriches both sides of that equation, at least for me.

A-

The Bad Plus, self-titled (2022)

I don’t know what The Bad Plus is hanging it up. My God, they can actually make money. Why this band and not some other had popular success is an interesting question. That says nothing against them, not at all, but they can be pretty challenging too, so it’s not like they are creating a particularly accessible, watered down version of free jazz. Well, whatever, I hope they are rich enough to not play together anymore. But I will miss them and this 2022 album is a good reason why. This is when Reid Anderson and Dave King had added Chris Speed on tenor and Ben Monder on guitar and so the sound was pretty full. King and Anderson still sound astounding together and the noise from the guitar and sax, both of whom replaced the usual trio filled out with a piano, adds so much. The songs move from sorta ballads to pretty intense interplays. Excellent release.

In the Sun, Dawn

I don’t listen to much industrial music and I don’t like much of what I do listen to. On the other hand, I will listen to anything released on Chinabot, the Asian electronic label that brings fascinating persepctives to modern electronic music from artists across that continent. This 2024 album is a good reason why. It takes industrial music and puts it in conversation with traditional Japanese music, particularly in the drumming and with the saxophones as well, which themselves are not traditionally Japanese but are used in ways that also bring in Japanese folk stories and idioms. In the Sun is a project that is part old Japan, part Can, part Sakamoto, part contemporary club music. At the very least, it’s worth a listen.

B+

Chelsea Wolfe, Pain is Beauty

Wolfe’s gothic folk can sometimes be a bit eyerolling for me with the performative horror side of it, but she’s also a powerful songwriter and performer at her best. So I decided to go back and check out this 2013 album. From what I’ve heard, this is kind of midlevel album by comparison with what else I’ve heard. The atmosphere is certainly there, but seems less developed on both the metal and the folk sides than some later work would be. Which still makes it perfectly acceptable and unusual enough to gain attention, which she most definitely deserves. I just don’t know that in 2026, this would be the Wolfe album I’d grab off the shelf.

Sun O))), self-titled

Metal fans are so excited about this album. It’s 80 minutes of guitar drones. Why? If I wanted to listen to Metal Machine Music, I would. But I don’t. I listened to this whole fucking thing to try to get it. What an 80 minutes of my life I won’t get back. I guess it gets your attention. And yeah, so does Metal Machine Music.

Enumclaw, Home in Another Life

Built to Spill meets The Hold Steady with some kinda dumb slacker rock lyrics. Meh.

B-

Astrel K, The Foreign Department

Kinda bland pretty indie music that I found completely listenable and eminently forgettable. Guy’s not a great singer either, which doesn’t help.

B-

Jason Moran, Plays Duke Ellington

I saw Moran play this live and so I am biased about this astounding project that might be the best album of 2026. Take a master. Have a master reinterpret it. Do it all by himself. Challenge listeners while also keeping them engaged. Do long bits at the very edges of the piano for the highest possible notes. Also keep the tunes recognizable. What a great album. Here’s an interview with Moran from last year about the project.

Run the Jewels, RTJ4 Cua4tro

An interesting if not completely successful project, where Run the Jewels worked with a variety artists from Latin America, including Bomba Estereo and Lido Pimienta, to remix their RTJ album with Latin vibes. Some songs work better than others, the whole production gets a little busy, but it’s cool that they even did this. It holds its own up to a point and it gave a lot of attention to artists RTJ fans might should know.

Joe Pernice, Sunny, I Was Wrong

Those sweet, sweet Laurel Canyon vibes have an endless appeal to a broad swathe of whites. So many drugs, so much fashion, so much music, such an ability to pay attention to nothing but yourself. But not really me. This is fine enough folk-pop; like everything else to do with the Pernice Brothers, outside of recognizing the ability to get this kind of thing across, it bores me.

B-

Fenella, The Metallic Index

This is a 2022 side project led by the great British art-pop singer Jane Weaver, a song cycle about a nurse in 1920s London that supposedly had psychic powers (evidently based on a real person). The real story here is not so much that actual story (there’s singing but it’s more spectral than words) but the sound story–this project is a lot of built sounds through various electronics to create a pretty interesting soundscape. How much you like this depends on what you think of pop soundscapes. I appreciate the craft, but I can’t see buying this.

B-

Snapped Ankles, Hard Times Furious Dancing

While I’m not always a huge fan of dance music, the reason is because I find it boring without lyrics. I get the need to dance, even if it is not something I do much of myself–and most certainly not something I do where I want anyone to see me jerk my body around in disturbingly pathetic ways. I grew up Lutheran after all. But where there are lyrics and they are part of the sound because the sound and the lyrics come together to set a mood or tell a story, I can like it a good deal, as I like LCD Soundsystem. I liked this 2025 album from Snapping Ankles in much the same way, especially since their songs tend to really take on corporate power. The first songs are titled “Pay the Rent” and “Personal Responsibility,” in case you need a taste of what this is going to look like. That doesn’t make the lyrics always particularly profound, but boy do they go well with the music to describe this garbage world where we live. That’s why this is one of the best album titles I’ve seen in a long time.

B+

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

la santa cecilia, music notes, the hold steady