Music Notes
By 
Being in Chile (will be back in the U.S. in a few days, having missed Trump’s Fascist July 4, the hottest first half of the summer in Rhode Island history, and the terrible smoke; really, I’m never sad about not being in my terrible country), I haven’t had time to write much, so these posts haven’t happened in a long time. But I do have a couple of shows I have not discussed yet and I will use one of them now and one for the next Notes and that is that I saw Robert Earl Keen at the astoundingly gorgeous Groton Hill Music Center in Groton, Massachusetts back at the end of May. Groton is way northwest of Boston, getting close to the New Hampshire border but still within commuting distance if you love a long drive in traffic, I guess. This space is…..amazing. I was supposed to see Kronos Quartet here when my brother got sick and I couldn’t go (he’s doing better!) and I can see why they’d play there. It’s a hall designed for classical and the required acoustics but with modern internal design. A lot of money went into that building, I can say that.
This was my 4th Robert Earl Keen show. In fact, my 3rd was earlier this year, with him opening for Turnpike Troubadours. But seeing him headline was pretty great. As I said then, he’s older than he looks. I think that’s because he is stooping, so perhaps he has some bone issue, because he’s only 70. But he’s still a good storyteller and he still sounds great. His stories of touring with Peter Rowan and ol’Pete wearing really short kimonos in the morning with no underwear were pretty funny. His current tour is to celebrate anniversaries for his albums Ready for Confetti and Gravitational Forces, neither of which are exactly my favorites, but he didn’t overkill the songs there and played pretty broadly through his catalog. He played some of his little song snippets he’s been writing for amusement’s sake, including one called “Pre-Tesla Austin” that’s exactly as funny as you’d hope from the title. Of course, he played “The Road Goes On Forever” and it would be impossible for me to hear that enough. He covered “Walls of Time,” which is Rowan’s song with Bill Monroe and which led to said story above. He also said that when Ricky Skaggs covered “Walls of Time,” he did not give Rowan songwriting credit, probably because Rowan is a hippie and it reminded me yet again that Skaggs is a huge asshole, and not only for his politics, which are indeed very bad. He played “Dreadful Selfish Crime,” which is one I didn’t necessarily expect. And when he closed with “Feelin’ Good Again” and “Gringo Honeymoon,” well, I was a very happy boy. Interestingly, he played very few songs he had played when I saw him earlier in the year and I always love artists who don’t just do the same damn thing every night, even though it’s the easiest thing to do. Anyway, go see Robert Earl if you get a chance, he doesn’t tour a ton these days, though it’s increased again after several years off the road.
News and Notes:
Without question, the biggest loss in music in the last few weeks is the legendary South African jazzman and civil rights activist Abdullah Ibrahim. With Sonny Rollins recently gone, Ibrahim should have been in the conversation for greatest living jazz musician, even if only for a couple of weeks. Sean Jacobs has a great piece in the New York Review of Books remembering him:
Ibrahim’s genius—documented in the nearly one hundred albums, including rereleases, that he issued as a bandleader or solo performer between 1960 and the first half of the 2020s—has been to imbibe the musical cultures of South Africa in general and his home city in particular, give them a cutting-edge form, and translate them to the broader world. He built his own, lasting sound out of the church music of his grandmother, the film music his mother played, the music he heard in the city’s shebeens, the songs of dance bands and carnival troupes, the pieces he learned from schoolteachers, and the techniques he learned by collaborating with leading American jazz musicians. The cornerstone of his style is his delicate, lyrical touch at the piano. The critic Kevin Whitehead once observed that Ibrahim’s left hand often seems hypnotized, freeing his right hand to move independently, “as if two pianos shared one keyboard.”
His playing rarely relies on force; instead it creates soundscapes of reflection. Both on record and in his marathon solo live performances, he sequences his songs into a single extended meditation, punctuated by murmured phrases or the occasional grunt for emphasis. Now and then he interjects a surprising burst of swing or rumbling bass when the mood strikes him, but for the most part his playing is understated. The overall effect is one of intimacy and reverence. Steve Ellman, a veteran jazz broadcaster, likens it to a “warm bath of sound.”
Ibrahim’s music spans several periods in South Africa’s history. He came of age during segregation and apartheid, as the black majority suffered forced removals, censorship, political repression, and exile but also engaged in continuous political struggle. Later decades brought the transition to democracy, followed by the uneven realities of freedom. His compositions are themselves documents of this arc, not just in their abiding spirit of resistance and optimism but in their specific points of reference. The American influence is noticeable, particularly that of Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. And yet Ibrahim’s work also carries the echoes of church hymns, Islamic devotional chants, and township dance rhythms: goema, marabi, kwela.
Well, actually, there were two unspeakable losses because James Blood Ulmer also died. I was lucky enough to see Ulmer at Big Ears in 2023, my first time attending. I had a few thoughts about this, which included “Oh my God, that’s James Blood Ulmer!,” “I need to come back to this festival if this is what happens here,” and “He still sounds great!” That is a man who knew his way around a guitar and around basically every form of contemporary music that he made sound just like a James Blood Ulmer song should sound.
Other deaths in the music world include Commodores bassist Ronald LaPread and the electronic musician Oliver Tree. Legendary producer Clive Davis also died and he’s responsible for a lot of pop and rock music over the past six decades.
If you need a searchable engine of the music used to train AI for the slop that 21st century humans evidently crave, it exists.
I’m not a fan of Shooter Jennings the musician, but he is an important producer and he is also putting out some of his dad’s unreleased material, which I’m glad is going to see the light of day for archival purposes if nothing else.
I’ve never even heard of The 2nd Coming, but here’s a claim this band invented southern rock.
In case there are too many notes in your music, here’s an introductory guide to the music of Morton Feldman.
I was in Albuquerque about 10 years ago and there was a band named Lone Piñon playing, a revival band of traditional New Mexican music, albeit played by non-New Mexicans for the most part. It was great, a total lovefest to this place and its culture. I listen to the album sometimes still. Turns out the band and project is still around! This isn’t any different than white people playing old blues songs or the Appalachian or Cajun revivals, just more obscure.
Let’s think about the legacy of Roger Miller for a minute.
Next weekend is Newport Folk Festival. Who should I see? I have thoughts of course but there are a lot of acts I don’t know this year and few that I truly love, so I am open to ideas.
Playlist–which given we are talking about a month here is mighty short for me. But I’ve been traveling and very busy and without my speaker system and it’s good to take some time off anyway. Here’s a few of the things I’ve heard. Definitely not all, but who really cares anyway.
- Torres, self-titled
- Wussy, What Heaven is Like
- Bradley Lubman: Steve Reich Ensemble, Reich: Proverb, Nagoya Marimbas, City Life
- Sonny Sharrock, Ask the Ages
- Gillian Welch, Hell Among the Yearlings
- Billy Joe Shaver, Old Five and Dimers Like Me
- Richard Thompson, Rumor & Sigh
- Jason Isbell, Weathervanes (x2)
- Townes Van Zandt, Our Mother the Mountain
- Camera Obscura, My Maudlin Career
- Butch Hancock, West Texas Waltzes and Dust Blown Tractor Tunes
- Merle Haggard, I’m a Lonesome Fugitive
- Buddy Tabor, Hope: The First Step Toward Disillusionment
- Willie Nelson, Red Headed Stranger
- Richard & Linda Thompson, Shoot Out the Lights
- Doug Sahm and Band, self-titled
- Townes Van Zandt, self-titled
- Ennio Morricone, The Legendary Italian Westerns
- Ken Pomeroy, Cruel Joke
- Will Oldham, Guarapero: Lost Blues 2
- William Parker, Raining on the Moon
- Frank Zappa, Piquantique – Stockholm 1973
- Christy McWilson, Bed of Roses
- Hank Thompson, Seven Decades
- Big Thief, Masterpiece
- Neko Case, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
- Turnpike Troubadours, The Price of Admission
- Merle Haggard, Down Every Road, disc 3
- Mourn, Sorpresa Familia
- Waylon Jennings, Dreaming My Dreams
- Buddy Tabor, Earth & the Sky
- Frank Sinatra, Songs for Swingin’ Lovers
- Jimmie Dale Gilmore & the Flatlanders, self-titled
- Waylon Jennings, The Ramblin’ Man
- Floating Points & Pharoah Sanders, featuring the London Symphony Orchestra, Promises
- The Bakersfield Sound: Country Music Capital of the West 1940-1974 disc 1
- Chris Gaffney, Loser’s Paradise
- Sufjan Stevens, Illinois
- Fauxe, Ikhlas
- The Dave Brubeck Quartet, Time Out
- V/A, Rough Guide To Cumbia
- Margaret Glaspy, The Golden Heart Protector
- Lilly Hiatt, Walking Proof
- David Olney, Live at Norm’s River Roadhouse, Vol. 1
- Adam O’Farrill, Elephant
- Kendrick Lamar, DAMN
- Rose City Band, Garden Party
- Lee Bains & His Glory Fires, Old Time Folks
- Wilco, Star Wars
- Irving Fields Trio, Bagels and Bongos
- Damu the Fudgemunk/Raw Poetic/Archie Shepp, Ocean Bridges
- Loretta Lynn, Love is the Founation
- Matt Ulery, Delicate Charms: LIve at the Green Mill
- Jason Moran, Marcus Gilmore, BlankFor.ms, Refract
- Taraf de Haidouks, Of Lovers, Gamblers, and Parachute Skirts
- Parquet Courts, Human Performance
- Conjunto! Texas-Mexican Border Music, Vol. 5
- James Brandon Lewis, Eye of Eye
- Leonard Cohen, You Want It Darker
- REM, Life’s Rich Pageant
- Jamie Branch, Fly or Die World War
- Marshall Allen’s Ghost Horizons, Live in Philadephia
- Gerald Cleaver & Violet Hour, Live at Firehouse 12
- Courtney Marie Andrews, Valentine
- William Tyler, Modern Country
Album Reviews:
The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, Deface the Currency
This is a fantastic band to see live, as I pointed out last time I did one of these columns, a collaboration between the rhythm section of Fugazi, the guitar whiz Anthony Pirog, and the amazing saxophonist James Brandon Lewis. As an album though, it is more on the OK/Just Fine scale than what you get live. The energy is there, but not like the live performance of course, and the compositions aren’t that compelling. That’s fine, see them live.
B
Tyshawn Sorey, Members…..Don’t
Here, the astoundingly great contemporary drummer reinterprets Max Roach’s classic Members Don’t Get Weary for the modern political struggle. As is so often the case with modern jazz, only some of this is available streaming, so I can only evaluate that right now. With Adam O’Farrill on trumpet, Mark Shim on tenor, Lex Korten on piano, and Tyrone Allen II on bass. What I can say about what I heard is that it is absolutely beautiful, masterful, powerful music. I’m not per se saying it is better than the Roach album, which is an all time classic. I am saying that it is a very worthy reinterpretation of it. Very, very worthy.
A
Margo Price, Hard Headed Woman
When Midwest Farmer’s Daughter came out in 2016, it was a huge sensation. Here was a new, feminist country music voice who made powerful music about her own life mistakes, being a woman in Nashville, drinking, and other good country music topics. But she didn’t really want to be the next Loretta Lynn. She wanted to be Stevie Nicks, like so many other modern singers. That’s far less interesting and the quality of the albums really started to fall off. Strays, a pop-ish album written under a week-long psilocybin binge, well, it was about as interesting as drug trips are to those not on them. This move also didn’t sell. So last year, she returned with a new country music album, which made sense for both artistic and commercial reasons. The best songs here are really good–“Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down” has become the signature song off this album for a very good reason. “Red Eye Flight” is a real solid track and so is “Love Me Like You Used To.” But there’s a lot of whatever filler here. There’s an OK cover of George Jones’ “I Just Don’t Give a Damn” but Price cannot convey George’s emotion too effectively. It’s a song of defiance here, not of desperation and it’s presented with Memphis-style horns, which I guess works alright.
In the end, Price remains a pretty fun live act and I’d definitely recommend seeing her. But the albums continue to be a mixed bag at best.
B-
Melenas, Ahoras
Spanish garage rock, but with synths instead of guitars, or at least not much guitar. It works pretty well! There’s plenty of swirling noise that reminds me of some combination of Wussy’s synth sounds made through guitars and the Mexican band Lorelle Meets the Obsolete. But this is poppier than either of those bands. It’s jangly pop at the core of the garage rock and, sure, it’s basically OK. But hey, isn’t that actually more interesting than most garage rock bands who are really just doing the same thing in their male fantasies? I’d rather listen to this than, say, another Ty Segall or even another Guided by Voices album.
B
Bjork, Fossora
I’ve always appreciated Bjork more than really enjoyed her. Like, I’m glad she exists. But I just don’t enjoy her music, which is so slow and ponderous with its chopped up beats and almost operatic voice delivery. Is it alright not to care about Bjork and think her music not worth the time? Yes, I think so. I’m not saying she is terrible, but I am saying that I get absolutely zero joy from listening to her music. And I can be OK with that.
C
Makaya McCraven, Deciphering the Message
I’ve tended to like McCraven’s jazz more than love it. He’s a good drummer and an interesting guy. Here, well, I’m not sure what I think. See, he takes old jazz recordings recorded at the Blue Note and he remixes them for modern sounds and puts modern musicians on them too (Jeff Parker, among others). And Hank Mobley and Kenny Dorham and Horace Silver deserve to be remembered today. Taking a few minutes of a track and reworking it for another Blue Note record is a project done in respect of the originals. I get that. That said, I’m not completely comfortable with this as an artistic advance for McCraven. In the end, it feels a bit necrophiliac to me. And when you compare it to Sorey’s reworking of Max Roach that I discussed above, it’s just an entirely different category of music. It sometimes feels to me that Blue Note and a lot of its artists really just want it to be 1958 again.
B-
Courtney Marie Andrews, Valentine
I’ve gotten into Andrews more in the last couple of years, after seeing her open for Jason Isbell (never the easiest gig since most people aren’t there to see you and you are solo and it’s a big stage) and enjoying her Loose Future album a good bit and which I bought. This is also a solid piece of songwriting. Sure it’s “nice,” which is how a lot of women doing solo albums get described, but it’s really emotionally honest, the kind of album one might listen to alone at night when they are contemplative. Perhaps it can move into the background a little too easily on the second side, though you can say that of a lot of albums.
B+
Either/Orchestra, Nalbandian the Ethiopian
Just about all music fans who have heard them love the Ethiopiques series, the archival recordings of the astounding Addis Ababa jazz scene before the communists took power in 1974. A few of those guys are still alive, though not many. Mulatu Astatke relocated to Washington (home of a large Ethiopian community) and started playing there again some, though I guess he’s finally hanging up his mallets. So its seems exciting that Either/Orchestra (speaking of bands I hadn’t heard about in a long time) decided to record a new album, on the Ethiopiques series. I had a chance to see this project at Big Ears, but there was something else and also it was a packed house, which is rarely a big deal to me because there’s always 7 other great shows going on at the same time. So I was sure to check out the album. But you know, it’s really just alright. Like, it’s good music, sure. But as a homage to the greatest of Ethiopian music it comes up a little short and compared to some of those collections, it’s not really that close. It’s worthy, I will say that. It is cool that they recorded it live in Addis Ababa.
B+
TAAHILIAH, Gramarye
OK techno/dance tunes but with background arrangements influenced by the cheeisest of 90s pop. Lot of guest artists though, including Dev Hynes, who as Blood Orange I respect a ton. There were some songs I liked pretty well (the last for example) and others I thought were lame. So maybe just isn’t for me.
B-
Joy Oladokun, In Defense of My Own Happiness
I have meaning to engage with Oladokun’s music for a long time now, but it just hadn’t happened. So here’s her 2021 album, which did pretty well commercially. It’s totally fine, but feels to be very broad “Americana,” both musically and topically in the current meaning of this genreesque phrasing, which for today’s audience skews very left politically and is thankfully much much more welcoming of a black woman than it was 30 years ago, but still really falls for a song like “i see america,” which despite its annoying 21st century disdain for capitalization is feeding people exactly what they want to hear about a multicultural America, without any lyrical subtlety at all. And hey, maybe we just need singalong anthems about the need for America to be what we want it to be. Maybe my Gen X cynicism is the problem here. Anyway, it’s nice enough but also more than a bit generic.
B-
Tortoise, Touch
Never have much cared for Tortoise and while I’ve seen some of Jeff Parker’s solo work at Big Ears, I wasn’t a huge fan either. Basically, I think post-rock is boring music. But I thought I owed it to the band to hear their album from last year, since so many people do love them and maybe I’d hear something different. Nope, still boring. Not boring terrible. Just boring. I never figured out why I would listen to this instead of a jazz album. Still haven’t. Fine enough for background music I guess. Someone explain Tortoise to me, please.
B-
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.