Music Notes

I was very happy to see Big Thief at the MGM at Fenway in Boston this week. I had seen Adrienne Lenker twice before solo, once totally by herself at Big Ears in one of my favorite performances I’ve ever seen (she had the entire crowd of about 2,000 completely in rapture–you could hear a pin drop and I was thinking, this must be like see Dylan in 63) and once with her bandmate Buck Meek on a few songs at Newport Folk, where they did a bunch of the songs I think are on the new Big Thief album. The band rocked a bit more than I thought live. I actually really hate Meek’s singing, but his guitar work is very good. Their long time bass player left the band and they did the thing that bands do when someone leaves like this, which is hiring an actual great bassist to replace the not so great friend that was originally in the band. Given the, uh, limitations of what passes for the drums in this band, it doesn’t hurt musically to have a kick ass bassist. The songs were of course outstanding. Lenker writes constantly and there were some new cuts played, including an amazing song called “Beautiful World” that I hope they record soon and which led off the show, plus a bunch off the new album, plus some great cuts of Dragon New Warm Mountain and some older tracks too. They closed with “Spud Infinity,” which was of course awesome. Setlist is here. The crowd was interesting as well. Lots and lots of young people of course, but also a ton of older people. It’s the kind of show the whole family can attend with pleasure. I went with my wife and her niece (my niece? Never sure how those things work with in-laws), her friend’s roommate was going with her entire family and her boyfriend’s entire family. And this really sums up Big Thief’s appeal. It’s not easy listening in any way that term has meaning, but it is totally accessible, special, beautiful rock and roll that takes you into Lenker’s little worlds that are so lovingly drawn. Love this band, glad I saw them as a whole unit for the first time.

Dave Ball from Soft Cell died, at the age of 66. I’m not sure I actually remember that band. Sam Rivers, the bassist for Limp Bizkit, also died, only 48 years old. The main thing I know about that band is that it sucks and that Fred Durst is a douchebag. Can’t say I ever considered the bassist.

Big podcast/profile of Erykha Badu at the Times.

I find all almost musician biopics to be painful, with just a few exceptions. I mean, Walk the Line is a bad movie, though not outright terrible. So choosing the worst 15 seems quite a challenge, but these are pretty bad or they sounded pretty bad to begin with that I refused to watch them.

Miguel is pretty great, so glad to see a USA Today piece on him.

Bandcamp essay on Yusef Lateef.

I really gotta visit the John Coltrane house one of these times I’m in Philadelphia

A Beginners Guide to Soundwalks

American Aquarium has been around for 20 years, which is a lot longer than I would have guessed. I saw them open for an Old 97s/Drive By Truckers split bill once and really enjoyed them and I should check out more of their work.

This week’s playlist:

1. Mdou Moctor, Ilana (The Creator)
2. Kristi Stassinopoulou and Stathis Kalyviotis, NYN
3. Natalia Clavier, Nectar
4. Lorelle Meets the Obsolete, De Facto
5. Patterson Hood, Heat Lightning Rumbling in the Distance
6. Imarhan, Temet
7. Lydia Loveless, Nothing’s Gonna Stand In My Way Again
8. Liew Niyomkarn, I Think of Another Time When You Heard It
9. Lucinda Williams, self-titled
10. Quantic & Alice Russell, Look Around the Corner
11. Neil Young, Everyone Knows This is Nowhere
12. Girlpool, Powerplant
13. Palace Music, Viva Last Blues
14. The Darjeeling Limited Soundtrack
15. The Alan Lomax Collection, Southern Journey: Voices from the American South, Vol. 1
16. Willie Nelson, Teatro
17. Bill Callahan, Apocalypse
18. Christopher Paul Stelling, Itinerant Arias
19. Van Morrison, Saint Dominic’s Preview
20. Wussy, self-titled (x2)
21. Margaret Glaspy, The Golden Heart Protector
22. Father John Misty, Chloe and the Next 20th Century
23. Big Thief, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You
24. John Moreland, High on Tulsa Heat
25. Neko Case, The Worse Things Get….
26. Sarah Jarosz, World on the Ground
27. George Jones & Melba Montgomery, Singing What’s In Our Hearts
28. Sun Kil Moon, April
29. Laura Gibson, Goners
30. The Lowest Pair, Fern Girl and Ice Man
31. Craig Finn, A Legacy of Rentals
32. Midnight Oil, Blue Sky Mining
33. Yo Yo Ma/Silk Road Ensemble, Silk Road Journeys
34. Old 97s, Too Far to Care
35. Gary Stewart, Out of Hand
36. Hurray for the Riff Raff, The Past is Still Alive
37. The Beatles, Revolver
38. Silver Jews, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea
39. Wednesday, Rat Saw God
40. Wussy, Public Domain, Vol. 1
41. Warren Zevon, Excitable Boy
42. The Dillards, Back Porch Bluegrass
43. Townes Van Zandt, Delta Momma Blues
44. Wussy, Cincinnati Ohio
45. Merle Haggard, Down Every Road, disc 1
46. Dwight Yoakam, Second Hand Heart
47. Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Braver Newer World
48. Ray Price, Burning Memories
49. Tropical Fuck Storm, A Laughing Death in Meatspace
50. Greg Brown, The Poet Game
51. Frank Ocean, Channel Orange
52. James Brandon Lewis, Jesup Wagon
53. S.G. Goodman, Planting by the Signs
54. Shamir, Ratchet
55. The Paranoid Style, The Interrogator

Album Reviews:

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Ghosteen

I’ve never really explored Nick Cave’s catalog to the extent I should. This 2019 album was on my list to hear since, well, 2019. So now’s the time. The problem for me comes quickly though–the morose, theatrical way Cave operates these days at least doesn’t do a lot for me. I recognize he’s an interesting artist and there’s a lot of pretty intense stuff going on underneath the vocals. But the style does absolutely nothing for me.

C+

Loose Cattle, Someone’s Monster

This is a pretty cool country album that reminds me of an updated version of the early 80s band Lone Justice. Special appearances from Lucinda Williams and Patterson Hood from Drive By Truckers. I like just about everything about this–the interplay between the two singers, the melodies, the fiddles, the cover of Lucinda’s “Crescent City” (which is not the song she appears on, which is in fact a countrified cover of Lady Gaga’s “Joanne”), the half-cover of REM’s “So. Central Rain” that is mixed into a chorus. It’s country-rock, but what is really reminds me of is the great early grassroots alt-country albums of people who just love the music and that love comes out in every note, which includes Lone Justice, but in my mind also the Flatlanders first album, the early Rusty & Doug Kershaw albums, Lucinda’s Happy Woman Blues, stuff like that. It’s just fun work, which is somewhat ironic because most of the lyrics are downers.

A-

Bodega, Our Brand Could Be Yr Life

I enjoyed Bodega’s Endless Scroll album, so I thought I’d explore another, their release from last year. This is just pretty decent rock and roll, maybe not quite at the same level of Endless Scroll for me, but good solid rock. As I think I said earlier when discussing this band, it’s kind of a lesser and slightly poppier Parquet Courts, which is enjoyable in that propulsive way, if in the end relatively minor. I like it well enough though.

B

Anytime Cowboy, Voice in the Clouds

I guess this is kind of pop and kind of post-punk in the sense that the songs are slightly catchy but are almost spoken rather than sung, which isn’t so uncommon these days. You know, it’s alright in what it is, but I can’t see why I would listen to this over 100 other bands who cover this or that part of similar territory. Again, it’s sort of a Parquet Courts thing (evidently that band is pretty influential) but less interesting. It’s short though, which is probably a good thing.

B-

Mdou Moctar, Tears of Injustice

Moctar decided to re-record his latest album Funeral for Justice acoustically. For a guy who is such a wizard on the electric guitar, the bridge between the Saharan blues band and American audiences because he transcends the former and brings rock and roll influences to it, going acoustic is at the very least an interesting experiment. The question with an album like this is what does it tell us about the artist and the songs that we didn’t already know. I’m not sure it does tell us that much except that Moctar is one hell of a guitarist on an acoustic guitar too and an underrated vocalist that might normally get somewhat downplayed given the pyrotechnics of his electric playing. But it’s a more than worthy experiment.

B+

Turnpike Troubadours, The Price of Admission

The Troubadours are always friendly and this is their new, equally friendly, album. And this is one of their better releases I think, definitely better than the one I reviewed a couple weeks ago. It’s great that Evan Felker is sober and functional and now singing about his drinking in that classic way of the now sober artist who doesn’t totally regret his past, but the past is the past and it can’t be the present. This is a big album with populist overtones, not the bullshit arena rock of Nashville douchebags, but a broad musical appeal that a lot of people would like if they heard it. Of course, Turnpike is hardly an underground band, but they are more like Drive By Truckers in their appeal than the superstars they should be. This album suggests why they really do deserve taking that step forward.

A-

Guided by Voices, Tremblers & Goggles By Rank

We all know that GBV albums aren’t really that different than one another. However, this 2022 release stretches the songs a bit more than normal. One’s even over 6 minutes and another surpasses 5. And it works pretty well too–the songs have life, they can jam more than they usually do, and you don’t get overwhelmed by the short bursts of noise and lyrics that the albums with 30 songs give you. I don’t mind those albums either, but this is a useful shift. If you like GBV, this is a must-hear.

B+

Adrian Younge/Ali Shaheed Muhammad/Ebo Taylor, Jazz is Dead 022

The latest from Younge and Muhammad, those legends who have dedicated the last many years to finding aging and underrated legends to record with. They’ve moved beyond traditional conceptions of jazz recently to more global music and that’s fine, it’s all good. Especially when they find Ebo Taylor, the critically important Ghanaian musician who did so much to push forward highlife and Afrobeat. This combo works, better than some of the others. Like most of the albums in this series, it’s quite short, under 30 minutes, for reasons I don’t quite get. Of course Taylor is 89 years old, so maybe that’s a big part of it, which would make sense. But it’s a pretty damn hopping 27 minutes here. This album really channels the heart of the great African music of the 70s, with Muhammad especially bringing in what a legendary DJ can add to move this music forward.

B+

As always, this is an open thread for all things art and music and not a goddamn thing about politics.