Music Notes
By 
I’ve seen quite a bit of music this month. Some I will talk about this week, some in the next couple of these posts.
The biggest thing I did was go down to Athens, Georgia to see the Drive By Truckers annual homecoming shows. This was my 34th and 35th DBT shows, which is by far the most of any artist. And while sometimes people get snarky about this in comments, when you see as much music as I do, it’s fine to have a band you like to see all the time. And, believe it or not, I still saw a song I had never seen them play before with “Margo and Harold.” Not a particular favorite, but hey, for a completist, it’s fun. They played other songs I’d hadn’t seen in the two shows I did not see, but you do what you can. The 40 Watt is a great club in Athens and would be a fun place to see any band, not to mention a sold out set of shows where everyone is so very happy to see them. They still sound great. They are touring much less than in the past, mostly not touring at all this year. I think Cooley is basically done with the road, at least for now, and they aren’t getting any younger. I wish Patterson Hood would play his newer songs. For all the great political songs he’s written in the last 12 or so years, he played all of one of them, “The New OK.” In fact, he basically doesn’t play anything he’s written since 2010 and I don’t understand that at all. His call of course, but I don’t get it. I like the older songs too, but I wouldn’t say that they are on average that much better than his newer songs. He’s probably more consistent now. The highs maybe aren’t quite as high but there were some songwriting duds on the early albums too that he doesn’t have today.
Well, whatever. It’s still fun as hell to see them. Good opening acts too. For the Thursday show, it was T. Hardy Morris, an Athens stable who does very solid indie rock. For Friday, it was The Lanes, which was a lot of fun. First, Matt Lane was the original DBT drummer and was on the pre-Southern Rock Opera albums. Second, the brothers at the core of this band were core members of the Athens scene in the 80s and 90s. If they didn’t get as big as REM or B-52s or some of the other bands, it hardly means they weren’t important people back when cities actually had music scenes unique to them.
I also saw Turnpike Troubadours and Robert Earl Keen in Boston. That was fun. It was my 3rd time seeing both. Turnpike getting super popular kind of came out of nowhere to me. The first time I saw them, it was at a little bar in Denton, Texas with like 100 people there. That was in the late 2000s. I was only kind of aware of them for years, but a couple of years, they played one of the prime spots at Newport Folk Festival and people were pumped and I was like, I guess I missed some steps here. They were surely beloved at that show, including my people who embody Robbie Fulks’ great song “Countrier than Thou” which includes the great line “You went to Andover/What’s the banjo fer?” There was a lot of cosplaying with the big hats and all that shit that you know damn well these people aren’t wearing in real life. The weird about this to me is that Turnpike isn’t some douche band. Evan Felker does wear cowboy gear as the lead, but no one else really does. And the music is so solid, not the douche country of country radio. But hey, good for them, I’m really happy for them that they are doing well.
I was personally more excited to see the great Robert Earl Keen. Now, Robert Earl announced several years ago that he was retiring from the road. But I guess he’s getting bored so playing some select shows, including opening for Turnkpike. Felker gave him the ultimate tribute, saying that Robert Earl meant more to him than Willie Nelson and what more is there to say than that. Robert Earl still sounds good, but he’s 70 going on 85. I’m not sure what’s up, but he looks and acts very very old. I never got the sense he lived crazy hard, but what do I know. In any case, if he plays around you, see him because I don’t see him playing in 5 or 10 years. But that set was a lot of fun and I was so happy.
Other news:
Salsa legend Willie Colon died, at the age of 75. Definitely one of the legends of Latin music. Billy Steinberg died at the same age. The man basically wrote the soundtrack of the 1980s, I was amazed at just how many huge hits he was involved with. Nashville session legend Jerry Kennedy died as well. He was 85. But the biggest loss was Ebo Taylor, the king of highlife. Taylor toured the U.S. last year and I wanted to go see him in Boston but it just didn’t work out. I guess I didn’t realize he was 90 or maybe I would have made it work no matter what. But you can only see so many shows and sometimes, you just aren’t going to see a legend.
What’s Steve Shelley up to? Turns out, quite a lot.
Lot of protest music around these days, at least according to this article.
Interview with the legendary jazz drummer Andrew Cyrille.
Speaking of jazz drumming legends, there’s a new biography of Philly Joe Jones. Here’s a review.
Consequence of Sound is doing a big 25 year review of the music of 2001. Here’s the best album list. This should lead to some debates. I’m surprised how many of these albums I’ve never heard, though I wasn’t listening to a ton of new rock and roll at that point in my life.
The past, present, and future of DC’s dance scene.
Playlist from the last two weeks:
- Algiers, The Underside of Power
- Hanoi Masters: War is a Wound, Peace is a Scar
- The Bakersfield Sound: Country Music Capital Of The West 1940-1974, Disc 9
- The Tubs, Cotton Crown
- Patterson Hood, Heat Lightning Rumbles in the Distance
- Mary Lattimore, Collected Pieces
- Parquet Courts, Human Performance
- Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited
- Wednesday, Rat Saw God
- Drive By Truckers, Decoration Day
- Waylon Jennings, Waylon Live, disc 2
- Pink Floyd, Meddle
- Tom T. Hall, Ballad of Forty Dollars
- Ray Price, Sings Heart Songs
- Ensemble Modern/Frank Zappa, The Yellow Shark
- Nicole Mitchell, Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds
- Billy Martin, Starlings
- Blue Mitchell, The Thing To Do
- Grey DeLisle, The Graceful Ghost
- Harry Nilisson, Nilisson Schmilsson
- Waylon Jennings, Waylon Live, disc 1
- Sunny War, Armageddon in a Summer Dress
- Bill Callahan, Dream River
- The Gourds, Cow Fish Fowl or Pig
- Sturgill Simpson, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
- The Handsome Family, Wilderness
- Tom Waits, Bone Machine
- Carmelo Torres & Los Toscos, self-titled
- William Elliott Whitmore, Silently the Mind Breaks
- Illegal Crowns, self-titled
- Merle Haggard, Down Every Road, disc 2
- Priests, The Seduction of Kansas
- Talking Heads, More Songs about Buildings and Food
- Greg Brown, The Poet Game
- Iron & Wine, Kiss Each Other Clean
- Jaimie Branch, Fly or Die (World War)
- Lucy Dacus, Home Video
- 2 Chainz, The Play Don’t Care Who Makes It
- William Parker, Friday Afternoon
- Janelle Monae, Dirty Computer
- Clifton Chenier/Lightin’ Hopkins/Mance Lipscomb, Live from the 1966 Berkeley Blues Festival
- Courtney Marie Andrews, Loose Future
- Ivo Perelman/Matthew Shipp String Quartet, Armageddon Flower
- Sarah Shook & the Disarmers, Revelations
- Leon Bridges, Coming Home
- Chris Stapleton, Traveller
- Remember Sports, Like a Stone
- Parquet Courts, Sympathy for Life
- Sweet as Broken Dates: Lost Somali Tapes from the Horn of Africa
- Fabiano do Nascimiento, Tempo dos Mestres
- John Moreland, LP5
- Ashley Ray, Pauline
- Chris Knight, self-titled
- Richard Thompson, Celtschmerz: Live UK 98
- Neko Case/k.d. lang/Laura Veirs, Case/lang/Veirs
- Parquet Courts, Light Up Gold
- Sarah Jarosz, Polaroid Lovers
- Drive By Truckers, American Band
- Fretland, Could Have Loved You
- Matthew Shipp Trio, The Conduct of Jazz
- Whitney Rose, We Still Go to Rodeos
- The Mountain Goats, Beat the Champ
- The Julie Ruin, Hit Reset
- Mary Lattimore, Collected Pieces
- Thelonious Monk, Monk’s Dream
- Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run
- Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Jack Sings Woody
- Rosalia, Lux
- Jeff Lederer, Schoenberg on the Beach
- Kris Kristofferson, The Essential, disc 1
- Alejandro Escovedo, More Miles than Money
- Gene Clark, No Other
- Bonnie Prince Billy, I See a Darkness
- Nick Drake, Five Leaves Left
- Leon Bridges, Good Thing
- Brittany Davis, Black Thunder
- Kenny Wollesen/Jonathon Haffner/Dalius Naujo, Rasa Rasa
Album Reviews:
Julianna Barwick/Mary Lattimore, Tragic Magic
Lattimore’s lovely harp is always something I want to hear, especially since she also uses processing to mix up the sounds (it’s interesting to see her handle this live since the harp is kind of a full-on instrument and you have to also use your hands to change the electronic stuff), but it’s also nice to hear her work with others, again to change up the sound palette some. Barwick is an ambient musician who sings and uses synths and it fits quite nicely into what Lattimore is doing and the overall effect is pretty lovely. Ambient is a category that I find, well, frustrating, but this transcends that because there’s really a lot going on and boring is never a word I would use to talk about this album. It’s really worthy of multiple listens, as are most of Lattimore’s albums.
A-
Emily Scott Robinson, Appalachia
This striking album reminds of something about the vast number of folky women singers using spare arrangements in their recordings, which is that they can be interesting and fantastic and stand out. What it requires is the voice and songwriting ability of Emily Scott Robinson. The opener, “Hymn for the Unholy” is just a beautiful track. And having seen my mother-in-law go through dementia and horrible that was, “Time Traveler” is a wonderful song about the narrator thinking that maybe the dementia of her grandmother is a natural way to stop thinking about the horrors of your life in your last years. “Dirtbag Saloon” is about your local townie bar being driven out of business by rich scum moving into little town and gentrifying it for “their 10,000 square foot second homes but who’s going to serve them their champagne and snow?” Perhaps at times, she could turn it up a bit more too and mix things up on the sound, but this is a pretty damn fine set of songs by someone who knows how to sing them.
A-
Bug Club, Very Human Features
Silly lyrics and bouncy garage rock from this Welsh bands. The lyrics aren’t quite nonsense, but they kind of a twee dreamscape of words, wry observations by people who definitely don’t take themselves too seriously. It works well enough, but it’s the consistently upbeat sounds that really drives this forward and I use those terms intentionally because it sounds like you are being moved ahead with a constant grungy riff and good beat that makes you not care too much about how much these lyrics mean. Not bad, maybe not the kind of thing I need a lot of, but if I can listen to the nonsensical lyrics of Guided by Voices, why not these people?
B
Baby Rose, Through and Through
This Atlanta-based R&B singer is firmly within her tradition without being repetitive or boring. The production really works here, with good beats and just the right amount of reverb in those smoky vocals. She doesn’t have a classical kind of voice and, well, good. There’s a lot of lived texture in her voice and these songs. Some have compared her to Nina Simone and ok let’s not get crazy here. But she’s a fine songwriter and a good singer. Solid work.
B+
Boldy James & V Don, Alphabet Highway
I’m hardly an expert on hip hop and I make no claims to be such a thing, but I do always like what I hear from Boldy James and that includes this pretty solid album. It’s not anything that special, but it’s just very solid hip hop from good artists. The production is chill and the lyrics are like a crime novel. Boldy is in the game, but he’s smart enough to analyze the game too and understand his place in this world. I guess a lot of longtime fans who really know his catalog well thought this lacked the edge of previous works. Maybe that’s true. For me, it’s not a great album, but it’s good enough to throw on again.
B
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics. And who knows, maybe some of us will survive the apocalyptic blizzard and can do this again next week.