Music Notes

We are having another Dolly Parton moment. That’s a good thing and she deserves all the love she gets. But here’s the thing. Much of her music is terrible. Now, before you all try to murder me, hear me out. Dolly is a wonderful talent. Some of her music is outstanding. You aren’t ever going to hear a better song than “Jolene.” That said, she has even more bad albums than most country stars. To her credit, this is for a better reason than Waylon’s coked up and bad 80s albums, for example. It’s that she has so aggressively attempted to stay relevant to the current pop sounds. That has certainly helped her sell so many records and remain the queen of country music. It has also meant the cheesiest late 70s and 80s and 90s pop arrangements possible to much of her music, to the point that many of her albums from this era are utterly unlistenable. When the popular sounds shifted to more traditional arrangements, she switched too, which is why The Grass is Blue, taking advantage of the Americana moment at the end of the last century, is so great. The talent is undeniable. But these horrific arrangements and production are also part of her legacy. Please don’t hate me for this.

A lot of material out there on the death of Charley Pride. First question–did the Country Music Awards kill the most famous Black performer in the genre’s history? His last public appearance was at the CMAs last month. Do you think everyone was wearing masks? Ha ha ha ha, this is country music you wimpy libs! To say the least, the response from the CMAs is what is actually wimpy. Of course, Pride himself chose to be there.

Pride was a baseball player before a country musician and this is a good article on it and his lifelong love of the game. Here’s a David Cantwell article in the New Yorker about what country music owes to Pride.But can you imagine what Pride had to go through as a Black man in Nashville? That culture was (and maybe still is in part though it’s changing) so repressive and so ground in the white South. So every day Charley Pride was around was a day where he had to deal with the most obnoxious and awful parts of white southern culture. Which brings us to George Jones. Now George, he really wasn’t a great guy. And well….

Mr. Pride often endured cruel jokes and taunts from fellow entertainers. George Jones once drunkenly painted “KKK” on Mr. Pride’s car. (Mr. Pride had passed out at a party while trying to match Jones, an alcoholic, drink for drink.)

OK, first of all DO NOT DRINK WITH THE POSSUM! But far more importantly, I mean Jesus Christ George! That’s so bad! Of course, according to a subset of LGM commenters, the fact that George Jones was a racist drunken jerk who beat up women means that by listening to him I am giving him a pass and should evaluate art based on whether the artist has my precise political values.

The latest COVID death in the music world is the composer Harold Budd, who worked closely with Brian Eno and The Cocteau Twins. Not really my thing, but worth noting.

This oral history of Johnny Cash’s At Folsom Prison album is older, but I had never read it before and found it highly worthwhile. Same goes for this discussion of Otis Redding’s “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.”

I think Sleater-Kinney is one of the greatest rock bands in history and I like Heart just fine, but I see nothing good coming of Carrie Brownstein writing and directing a biopic of the legendary 70s band. See also.

If you subscribe to Christgau’s site, you get his always good writing. He notes that our new Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, has a rock critic history of his own.

On the community that has developed around online shows.

Cool article on the Chicano soul scene out of San Antonio in the 60s.

Sadly, the long-feared shuttering of clubs due to COVID-19 is happening. The Jazz Standard in New York is a huge loss. In Denver, El Chapultepec, the city’s major jazz club, has also closed. This is infuriating because it would just take some basic government support. But of course not, because we live in a terrible country. The one thing I am hoping is that since spaces are already set up for clubs and in about 6-9 months there is going to be huge pent up demand to see live music, that they will reopen, if in a different guise or under different ownership. Possibly this is wishful thinking on my part.

The great composer John Luther Adams on how the sounds of the Arctic influence his work.

Kacey Musgraves is now in the candle designing business.

Album Reviews:

The Cribs, Night Network

This is solid indie rock from this Brighton-based group on the eighth album. What it is not however is exceptional indie rock. I guess they were in serious legal limbo with their management team. They are free of that now and put out an album that is sure to serve their fans. But I don’t see enough that’s original here for me to think much more about it.

B-

No Thank You, Embroidered Foliage

Liked this punk album from this Philadelphia band very much. This is a cathartic, pretty awesome album from the trio led by Kaytee Della Monica, a super skilled rock singer. It’s an angry album; someone hurt her very much and she is pissed off. This is way modern punk should be; not nostalgia, but a raw expression of real emotion using the glorious noise of guitar, bass, and drums over words to take that anger and sadness and hurt and confusion out of the inner consciousness and into the joyful noise that is the world.

A

Roscoe Mitchell, Splatter

Mitchell is of course a legend, one of the key figures of the free jazz era. At the age of 80, he has lost none of his creative spirit and boundary pushing principles. He has worked a lot with orchestras in recent years and his new album is the latest example of this. Working with the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Mitchell gives us three brilliant works. The first is a 5 minute composition that is just for the orchestra that sounds like Mitchell is actually Charles Wuornien, perhaps. The second is a 19 minute piece featuring Mitchell on soprano and with the orchestra along with wordless vocals. The third is a 48 minute duo between Mitchell switching instruments and an organist, recorded in an old Italian church. Each piece is quite different and each is amazing. This is absolutely brilliant work. Astounding.

A

Peter Brotzmann/Maalem Moukthar Gania/Hamid Drake, The Catch of a Ghost

If you aren’t familiar with Peter Brotzmann, he’s been at the forefront of the European free jazz scene for nearly a half-century now. I saw him once about 11 or 12 years ago and it was an astounding experience. In 1997, he did an album with the great drummer Hamid Drake and the Guinean guembri master Maleem Mahmoud Ghania. This is the follow up, except that Ghania Sr has passed on and his son takes over the guembri and voice duties. The combination of Euro-American free jazz with the ecstatic rhythms and drone of North and West African music is incredibly appealing; I’ve seen Drake play with African musicians before and it’s a hell of a thing. I haven’t heard the 1997 album, but this is a pretty good work.

A-

Dungen, Häxan

This is a cool instrumental album by this Swedish band. A score to the 1926 animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed, (which is actually confusing since Haxan is a legendary Swedish film from 1922 and I have no idea why they titled it this), it’s a really interesting exploration of both film music and psychedelic rock. There’s the expected Morricone references of course and that’s fine, but there’s a lot more here too, with big guitar freak outs and cinematic flourishes.

A-

Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble, Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds

From Sun Ra to Octavia Butler to Janelle Monae, there’s a long tradition of Afrofutruism in Black art at this point. The great flutist Nicole Mitchell makes a serious contribution to this tradition with her epic 2017 album that’s a somewhat ridiculous story. Here’s a description:

It is then that we are introduced in this music of Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble, to Mandorla Awakening II – Emerging Worlds, and, in the flagging spirit of the music’s “Adam” and “Eve” we too are drawn as if by Die Zauberflöte played by Mitchell, led Pied-Piper of Hamelin-like, in the aftermath of the “Egoes War” to the gates of Eden – in other words, to “Mandorla – the Emerging World”, which we are now sure is back from whence we came: Africa, though now fertile, restored to its epic beauty before it was raped by the long-dead European colonists and now inhabited by future/now selves of the enlightened ones. Now a war of a different sort is being waged – the war of the inner spirit, which yearns for the decadence of the old world order. But there is nothing but death there, if we return. So we must become transcendent beings, Mandorlian, or die.

Uh, OK. But the spirit is more important than the story and this is a pretty great album that combines its politics and narrative with just amazing music. The band includes Tomeka Reid on cello, Kojiro Umezaki on shakuhachi, and Alex Wing on electric guitar and oud, in addition to others. But let’s not sleep on Mitchell, probably the greatest living jazz flutist and who is in quite the form here. alex r young is the vocalist and he takes over the second half of the album. If nothing else, you will find this interesting, even if you aren’t generally a fan of envelope-pushing jazz.

A-

Lera Lynn, Plays Well With Others

This is a solid set of duets by the Nashville songwriter, which people such as Rodney Crowell and John Paul White. I wouldn’t say any of these songs are really lifechanging, but Lynn is a nice songwriter and it’s an enjoyable collection.

B

Joe McPhee/Damon Smith/Alvin Fielder, Six Situations

This 1983 album by these three legends was reissued a couple of years ago and I had never heard it. But it’s honestly more alright than really great. Particularly in the 24 minute “Red and Green Alternatives,” the proceedings do drag a little bit with solos that are a bit too long.

B

Lana Del Rey, Norman Fucking Rockwell

If Pitchfork is going to say Del Rey is the next Leonard Cohen, I suppose I’d better get around to listening to her most landmark work. It’s a nice album, although I see no valuable comparisons to Cohen at all here. She does the torch singing thing very well, combining it with a newer and more lyrically explicit vibe. The album is significantly too long however, at least for the limited musical variation it offers.

B

Chip Wickham, Blue to Red

Wickham is a flutist who created an album to channel the late 60s-early 70s sound of Yusef Lateef. It has an easy listening groovy vibe combining big harp flourishes, lots of Fender Rhodes, and plenty of flute. The problem here is that it moves no conversations forward at all. It also tends to devolve a bit from fun tribute to cheesy soft jazz.

C+

Artemis, Artemis

This is a great supergroup of jazz women. Given the long marginalization of women in jazz, outside of vocals, this is beyond necessary. Renee Rosnes is the musical director of this and also plays piano. The astounding Alison Miller is on drums. Noriko Ueda on bass, Ingrid Jensen on trumpet, Anat Cohen on clarinet, and Melissa Adana on tenor sax. On some songs, Cecile McLorin Savant sings. It’s a pretty fantastic group. The bigger thing is that it shouldn’t really matter if this is a work made only by women, even though of course every single review mentioned it, including myself. Instead, it’s just a very fine jazz album that is experimental and also accessible. I don’t know if it’s my very favorite jazz album of the year, but this is a quite fine album.

A-

Youssou N’Dour, History

This isn’t my favorite N’Dour album. He’s of course an amazing master. I personally find his more traditional work a bit more satifsying than his international pop stylings. This album is more in the second category. He works up some of his old songs with new arrangements. It’s a perfectly fine album, just not my favorite.

B

Skyway Man, The World Only Ends When You Die

I hear a lot of Nillson here, some hear a lot of Randy Newman. But it’s this kind of lyrical music with a big pop sound of that type. There’s a sort of sci-fi thing going on here and a cosmic country thing going on here. It’s an interesting enough album, not sure if it’s something I really to hear again.

B+

Yves Tumor, Safe in the Hands of Love

I always find with Yves Tumor that I hear the work, at first kind of find it a little bit boring, but then I always find it pretty interesting by the end of the album. This is a pretty strong 2018 album. There’s a kind of quiet noise here, but also with a lot of R&B and pop notes. Tumor is a very fine vocalist as well who certainly could benefit, in my opinion, from a bit more force and a bit less of the modern indie quietness that I don’t find always work. But this is a worthy enough album.

B+

Red River Dialect, Broken Stay Open Sky

This British band is a bit of Fairport Convention, a bit of The Tallest Man on Earth, a bit of Iron & Wine. In other words, it’s a pastoral folk-rock album with lyrical themes of people coming together and making a better world out of it. Really a quite interesting piece of work from 2018.

A-

Thurston Moore, Rock N Roll Consciousness

Very solid Moore solo album. Like other Moore albums, it needs Kim Gordon and Lee Ranaldo. Fun listen, still no Sonic Youth. If you want to say that’s unfair, well, he shouldn’t have cheated on Kim.

B+

Happy Rhodes, Ectotrophia

Rhodes was a founder of the dream pop movement, a sort of off brand Kate Bush. That sounds a bit dismissive, but during her career, that was always the comparison. And she does sound a lot like Bush. This is a retrospective of her work from the mid-80s. It’s fun. If you like Bush, you will like Rhodes.

B

Konono No. 1, Konono No. 1 Meets Batida

Fantastic combination here from 2016. Konono No. 1 is a Congolese duo. Batida is a Portuguese-Angolan producer. This is a well-done pairing, taking Konono No. 1’s great jams and adding the excellent bits that a quality producer can add with a lot of contributions from the Lisbon-based African scene. These are all different cultures and different sounds melding together here in a globalized world with all the beauty that can create.

A

Danny Brown, Atrocity Exhibition

Fantastic hip-hop album from 2016. Brown, who no doubt many of you more fluent with the recent history of the genre than myself know well provides just cutting attacks on…himself. He’s a desperate guy, hardly the only hip-hop artist to be rapping folk music of the streets. And he’s an old-school dude, being in his mid-30s when he recorded this. But the writing is so sharp here, challenging yet catchy enough, with excellent production.

A-

Shovels & Rope, Little Seeds

I’ve been hearing about this duo for approximately forever and I can’t say why I haven’t heard them before this. As an Americana group, it’s seemingly up my alley, or at least was for me 10 years ago or so, if a bit less now. So I finally checked out this 2016 album. And it’s pretty nice. The upbeat tunes are more interesting than the slower numbers and there’s probably one too many of those. Most reviews talk about how the two are married and maybe that connection does matter to the music and maybe it doesn’t. But they can rock pretty well in that Americana context that sometimes downplays the glory of a loud guitar. On the slower songs, I particularly liked “Missionary Ridge,” a worthy addition into the Civil War songs genre.

B+

Kristi Stassinopoulou and Stathis Kalvyiotis, NYN

This is a pretty interesting 2016 album by this Greek duo. In many ways, this is based in Greek folk music. But it’s also laced with electronica, with punk, with psychedelia. While I obviously don’t speak Greek, evidently the lyrics are somewhat political, as someone might expect from Greek artists in the last decade, but mostly personal and largely a love affair with the Mediterranean. Who can blame them for that? In any case, the music and vocals themselves are quite nice.

B

Fonatines D.C., Dogrel

After Elizabeth so raved about Fontaines D.C. new album and then I liked it, I decided to check out their album from last year. To me, it’s just very solid guitar rock and roll. I don’t think this is my favorite band in the world, but I bet they are a really fun live band. My favorite song on here is “Hurricane Laughter,” which is really first rate. We need more bands like this in the world.

B+

In any case, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics or disease.