Music Notes
By 
I saw The Regrettes on Thursday night at Sessions in Eugene, Oregon. It’s the rare time that I am at a conference and there’s a club across the street from the conference hotel with a band I want to see! I was a big fan of The Regrettes’ How Do You Love album when it was released a couple of years ago. Catchy indie punk with pop overtones from a bunch of fierce young women just ticks a lot of boxes for me. When they have such good rhymes that stick in your head, it definitely doesn’t hurt that “I used to think that Romeo was full of shit/And The Notebook was just my favorite chick flick” is real earworm. So I was interested to see what this would be like live.
The answer is that it was pretty damn good. What struck me is what a great performer lead singer Lydia Night is. Like, she really knows how to carry herself on the stage, how to interact with an audience, when to rock and when to dance around and when to croon. This is a skill well beyond her now 21 years. Well, it makes sense with some research. Her father is some LA music insider so she grew up around this her whole life. The core of this band started playing together in high school….and was signed to Warner before they even graduated. So OK, they know how to play live. They played a few songs of their upcoming album too, so I’m looking forward to hearing that album. If there is any critique is that the vocals could have been turned up at times, especially with a band that really centers the bass player in their live show. But whatever, cool show.
A word on the death of the trumpet and cornet player Ron Miles. I was surprised that this hit me so hard. Some of it is that he was only 58, which is way young. I don’t really understand how blood disorders work, but they ain’t good. I have a couple of early Miles solo albums–Woman’s Day and My Cruel Heart. They are just OK. But here’s the thing–the reason I got into him is that he was such a brilliant side man and that’s where I think his real value always was. I first ran into Miles’ work on the astounding awesome Bill Frisell Quartet album, which features Frisell on guitar, Curtis Fowlkes on trombone, Eyvind Kang on violin, and Miles on trumpet. This an A+ album that also includes versions of the songs Frisell wrote for his friend Gary Larson’s long-forgotten Far Side TV special from 94 or so. How do you create rhythm in a quartet format with no traditional rhythm instruments. It’s an interesting experiment and probably the best album of Frisell’s career, along with This Land. Miles is critical to this. And this was Ron Miles’ career to me. He showed up all the time. I have probably seen Miles more often than any other jazz musician. That’s because everyone wanted this brilliant musician as their sideman. The last time I saw him was not too long before the pandemic, in a trio with Jason Moran on piano and Mary Halvorson on guitar. While Moran was the putative leader of this group, Miles seemed to lead the proceedings, playing his cool cornet to its beautiful max. That’s the other thing about Miles–he existed in that space between classic mid-60s jazz and the world of free jazz that came after. There’s a number of brilliant musicians in the last 25 years or so that have ridden this wave–Dave Douglas, Frisell, Joe Lovano. Miles is among them. He could do anything. So while I never heard a solo album by him I thought was great, like Ron Carter, if he was on someone’s else’s album, you knew it was going to be a good one. Maybe there are albums with Miles as bandleader I am missing. Completely possible. But this is my experience with him. Life denying us another 20 years or so of his work is just not fair. RIP.
I guess I should mention the death of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, which seems to mostly be making Gen X realize we are going to die too. I’ve always found this band tremendously boring, but people liked the man and there is certainly far, far worse music out there.
Saving the home of Buddy Bolden is outright good stuff.
David Berman’s last album, as Purple Mountains, was a powerful statement by a man who….pretty clearly was going to commit suicide soon after. It’s one of the most depressing albums I’ve ever heard and yet a profound statement about it. One of the many powerful songs on it is “Nights That Won’t Happen.” Here’s a mediation about it by a guy who nearly died not long after it came out.
Well, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced its finalists for this year and it already turned into controversy when Dolly Parton decided she wanted no part of it and declined the honor, saying she would rather other people be voted in. Well, that’s nice of Dolly but not only is she awesome, she also absolutely should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Talk about a vast influencer on the history of rock. Without her, it’s kind of a meh class, still lacking the great influencer bands like Sonic Youth or The Replacements that should be in there and instead promoting a lot of popular acts that really aren’t that amazing. There’s no horribly offensive choices here. It’s just kind of meh. I think I’d go with the one obvious choice–Fela Kuti–then the New York Dolls, Eminem, Carly Simon, and Pat Benatar. But if you wanted to choose Tribe Called Quest or even Lionel Richie, I couldn’t blame you. Though the Rock Hall is like, forget it Dolly, we know you rule but we are keeping you on the ballot. So I’d vote for Dolly anyway.
I’m not sure how experimental or groundbreaking the North Carolina folk scene really is, but there are a bunch of artists working there that are interesting. I’ll say that at least.
What a digitally remastered album can do, in this case for the great Cecil Taylor.
Album Reviews, in which I evidently don’t really like anything much any more:
Mac McCaughan, The Sound of Yourself
I admit to not being sure what is going on here, even after hearing this on a close listening. Mostly, this feels like an amalgam of ideas that Mac had and threw on an album, from the long contemplative instrumental piece featuring Mary Lattimore that opens the album to some electropop to the straight ahead rock and roll that you would normally associate with him. It’s not bad as such. It just lacks much cohesion and by the time you get to end, it still makes no sense as an album.
C+
Quickly, Quickly, The Long and Short of It
Pretty whatever about this project by a Portland DIY kid who combines pop and beats into a little bedroom project that the hipster kids seem to love but just leaves me wondering why he couldn’t use a real producer.
B-
Lost Horizons, In Quiet Moments
Another album that left me pretty indifferent, from a project that combines Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins and Richard Thomas of Dif Jus. There are some real nice songs here, though the album is too long with quite a bit of instrumental stuff that doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s certainly a reasonably pleasant, listenable, intermittently pretty interesting album that needs an editor. So there’s worse things than that.
B
Diet Cig, Do You Wonder About Me?
Diet Cig is the epitome of the OK indie band that probably gets too much attention, both positive and negative. Their first album became notorious after a Pitchfork reviewer wrote a super sexist review of it. This kind of divisiveness isn’t fair to the band or its listeners. As for this music itself, at least on their 2020 album, the question is whether this rises above pretty standard indie rock and it’s hard to argue that it really does. It’s by no means a bad album. I can absolutely see why this would be popular with people in their 20s. But then I can see that for lots of bands that are more interesting than this.
B-
Adele, 30
Well, I’ve never actually listened to Adele before. So I guess I ought to see what the fuss is about…..
[Listens to the recent album]
So she’s basically a white torch singer. That’s a long tradition although one that has rarely moved me. I don’t even much care for Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald, at least in terms of wanting to listen to them much. For that matter, the tradition of white soul music goes back nearly as far as when white people first started hearing Black women sing. Obviously she can sing well. And she doesn’t go down the black hole of overdramatizing her singing like some would. But I can’t say this is something I would ever need to hear again. It’s basically background music. I know this is a pretty personal breakup album. I have to say that “My Little Love” is pretty hard to listen to given Adele is actually crying through it. That’s not really a negative critique, just a note. Whether such a track is brave or gratuitous I suppose depends on the listener. I’m torn on this. And I wonder how her son will feel about this in a decade.
I will say this–Adele can sing. Why is she considered a sort of voice of the generation, I have no idea. I do however like the idea of naming her albums after her age when she releases them.
B-
Snail Mail, Valentine
Second albums from first album phenoms are so tough. Sometimes, you have someone you think is going to be awesome and it just fizzles. Courtney Barnett and Margaret Glaspy are examples of people releasing outstanding debut albums and then…..eh, not so great. Dilly Dally is another example of this. Follow up albums are hard and lots of people aren’t ready for the pressure that comes with success, even if it is just critical versus financial. Torres and Wussy are examples of artists who just nail it time and time again and you realize pretty quick you have a major artist here. So I am very happy to say that the second Snail Mail kicks a good bit of ass. The first was so good, but there’s a long history of inwardly-looking teenage girls who make a bit of a splash and then disappear. It took a long time for the second album to appear as well. What’s great about this is that even though she mines the same kind of lovelorn depressed young woman material that was on the first album, her sonic palette has exploded and it’s simply a very interesting album. I guess another comparison here would be Lydia Loveless, who built on her first album by not only writing great songs but amping up the rock and roll and has been killer ever since. Maybe I should just be talking about this album more, but you should just go listen to it.
A
Mark Feldman, Sounding Points
While I am always a bit hesitant on solo jazz albums that just feature an hour of listening to a single instrument, when the project is good enough and the musical vision clear enough, it can definitely work. Some of it isn’t even the quality of the musician. Robert Glasper is a hell of a pianist for instance, but Matthew Shipp has the clearer vision of how to make a solo album. I like Keith Jarrett’s work just fine and it’s some of the best selling in jazz history, but give me Cecil Taylor solo any day. So it’s about personal taste, obviously. In any case, Feldman’s solo violin album is one of those that works really well. At this point, it’s hard to even call Feldman jazz. This is a solo recital of contemporary chamber music. The long-time veteran of so many great albums, including many with John Zorn, that I can’t even claim to have come close to hearing them really did have the vision to pull this off. Definitely worth a listen for all. And because it is solo violin in the chamber music tradition, it may well appeal to those for whom free jazz is a turn off.
A side note…I still can’t totally wrap my head around Feldman having once been the fiddle player for Ray Price’s Cherokee Cowboys. I guess we all have to work, but I’ve sure never heard any interest in country music in his material he’s released in the 25 years or so that I’ve been listening to him. Always wondered about this.
Typically, there’s nothing from this album on YouTube, so here’s some other Feldman solo stuff.
A-
Dolly Parton, Run Rose Run
Hey, listening to my first 2022 release! And it’s only the end of March! Figured I’d go with the new Dolly. It’s…..alright. A fairly tepid release consisting of some good song and some very forgettable songs, like most of her releases in the last [checks notes] 40 years. She has some nice duets here with various male singers that I like. She also has a very poor entry into the genre of doomed lovers who die. There’s some songs with good sound and some that are just too slick. In conclusion, another Dolly album.
I might also remind you that the love of Dolly Parton is largely disconnected with her actual music, again, especially in the last 40 years.
B-
Satomimagae, Hanazono
A quiet, decent project by the Tokyo-based Satomimagae. This reminds me a lot of the Mi & L’au project that came out about 15 years ago, a sort of whispered international folk project pretty disconnected from any sort of traditional folk music, American or otherwise (and let’s face it, in terms of folk music in a lot of the international scene American and British still kind of dominate because of their ubiquity in rock and roll since the mid 60s). Since I’m not a huge fan of ambient music, this doesn’t move me in any particular way, but it’s a completely respectable release that you might like.
B
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics or disease.