Music Notes
By 
I am finally going to end my show drought tomorrow and I’ll talk about that next week. I don’t have a real great topic for this week. So how about this? What is your favorite album so far released in 2026? A lot of mine are jazz albums. I’ve been somewhat disappointed by some favorite singers of mine that have released albums this year, though that changed this week. But I don’t want to include an album I’ve only listened to once or twice on such a list. Some of the best I’ve heard are James Brandon Lewis Quartet’s OMNI, Immanuel Wilkins Quartet’s Live at the Village Vanguard Volume 1, Tyshawn Sorey’s Members Don’t, and Jason Moran’s Plays Ellington. There’s been some nice singer-songwriter stuff too by Emily Scott Robinson, Courtney Marie Andrews, and a few others. And some fun hipster indie Latin music with the Mexican Institute of Sound/Meridian Brothers collaboration. I suspect that there’s a lot I’m going to hear in these last few months that is going to push these albums, esepecially since I tend to listen to a lot more of a year’s albums in the last few months of said year.
Also if you haven’t listened to any new music this year, you really need to immerse yourself in the beauty of contemporary musical art. It’s amazing.
Other news:
We can still use more Dolly analysis. David Cantwell has a good piece with a huge set of other Dolly links at the end. Also, we can all fully support Nashville renaming its airport for Dolly.
Who needs a discussion of music from Greenland?
A nice feature and interview with Kristin Hersh.
Nate Chinen on Kasey Musgraves’ tour.
Burning Ambulance interviews the great Henry Threadgill.
I suppose I ought to pay attention to Geese at some point
I’m curious as to what makes one of Tupac’s killers decide to go public with it after all these years and then gets himself convicted. Were you bored?
We haven’t lost any musical figures I know of, but the early Billy Joel collaborator Jon Small and the briefly big star of R&B in the mid 70s Latimore died as well.
Album Reviews:
Joel Harrison, In a Silent Way Reimagined
I was excited for this in part because I this was a live Big Ears performance that I was at and it was absolutely fantastic to see, a well-described album title since that’s what it was. It was a cover of one of the great albums ever but really a rethinking of it all bound by some of the classic breaks in it that kept it somewhat familiar. Harrison isn’t that well known, but he’s a guitarist who is particularly passionate about guitar duos. That’s not this, but this is just fantastic. At the end, the loudest clapper is probably me. The band includes such modern greats as Chad Taylor, Jerome Harris, Micah Thomas, Sam Sadigursky, Brandon Seabrook, and Tim Kepier. It’s super. You should buy a copy.
A
Mickey Diamond, Black Sheep
While I grant I am no hip-hop expert, I found this release from this Detroit rapper pretty compelling. He’s incredibly prolific–this is his 18th album. He’s got kind of slow but powerful cadence and an almost ridiculous amount of pop culture references weaved into it all. It’s a classic era hip hop work that stands up pretty well, at least to me.
A-
Elizabeth Cook, Great Television
Cook’s Aftermath is one of my favorite albums of the 21st century. It’s country and it’s rock but mostly it’s incredible song after incredible song, the kind of writing that is rare. She doesn’t release a lot of albums and I’m guessing that’s because her standards are very, very high for what makes it. Here you’ve got a great song about the women who worked on the atomic reservation at Oak Ridge (not exactly your normal country topic!) and another song about a workplace explosion in the 70s in Georgia that killed over 20 workers, all black women. You have a really good collab with Evan Felker and a really good collab with Wynonna about “difficult women singers,” which includes both of them by those who complain about women who don’t say yes to everything. You also have a fantastic cover of “19th Nervous Breakdown” that takes one of the Stones’ misogynist classics and turns it back to be about her singing about her own 19th Nervous Breakdown. Excellent work.
A
Guided by Voices, Crystal Nuns Cathedral
Oh hey, another GBV album. And not a bad one, not at all. It rocks pretty well, the songs are structured to actually be 3 and 4 minutes long, and otherwise it’s like every other GBV album. Which is just fine.
B+
No Peeling, self-titled
Somehow British punk has moved from being a supposed threat to all of society and civilization to songs asking about petting your dog. Pretty catchy, kinda sweet, kinda silly, sorta punk in an early 80s way, sorta enjoyable, extremely brief. Hard to take it super seriously, but it’s fun.
B-
Lido Pimienta, Caribenya
I really enjoyed Lido Pimienta’s 2020 album Miss Colombia and enjoyed her live show too but then kind of lost track of her releases. So I was glad to hear of her new release from this summer. I wouldn’t call this a great release, but it’s a solid one. It’s super atmospheric, though sometimes I wish it would grab a hold of something a little more. It’s danceable like any cumbia though and has solid politics, as one might expect from a Colombian artist who has migrated to Canada. There was a big Times feature on it that I missed at the time. I’d listen to it again.
B
Dorothy Carter, Waillee Waillee
This is a reissue of an unusual 1978 album that was forgotten for decades and reissued in 2023. It’s pretty fascinating. She was a weird woman who was a kind of wandering alternative figure who got almost a little famous when she went to Europe late in life and started making albums of medieval music with some other women that got John Cale to produce one of their albums. But a quarter-century before, she was really into the dulcimer and made this album of her takes on old folk songs with it, along with her singing on some tracks. She was quite a good singer. It sounds like a proto-Joanna Newsom more than anything else. Or the kind of thing that made Will Oldham become Bonnie Prince Billy as much as any Jimmie Rodgers track or whoever. It’s odd as hell. It’s also really quite compelling. The reissuing of a unique voice is something worth celebrating in any case.
A-
Miles Kane, Sunlight in the Shadows
I was a little skeptical when I read about this–British male rocker with a big voice can often be the ticket to overwrought stylings. But I thought this release from last year was pretty alright. It definitely has that theatrical T-Rex/Queen element that I sometimes bristle at but I liked the guitars and the lyrical work was good enough. It’s pastiche, basically, but decent pastiche.
B+
Sad13, 1331
Sadie Dupuis creates an album of thoughts more than songs. All of the songs are under 2 minutes, but all are quick shots of political protest and surviving being hit by a car on her bike. It’s not her greatest release for the obvious reason that some of this could be worked up more, but it does exactly what she wanted it to do and what is a successful artistic project if not that?
B+
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics. Or for that matter, the pathetic Oregon Ducks football team.