Music Notes

So….Big Ears…….

Yeah, man, that was a lot. Like, it was the greatest music weekend of my entire life, just an amazing celebration of sounds in one of my favorite towns. I still have not figured out how the hell this happened in Knoxville, but as I lived there for three years between 1997 and 2000, I’ve always enjoyed the place and I enjoy it even more now. You also have to love a giant music festival in a city where the entirety of my parking fees for the four days was $1 and that only because I forgot that if you park in the garages downtown and leave after 6, there is no charge for the day.

Just to give you a sense of how great Big Ears is, among the bands I did not see was Sun Ra Arkestra (one of my friends decided to bring his bike and got knocked off of it during the giant Saturday wind storm and broke his collarbone and so I had to help out on this, fate I guess), the Andrew Cyrille/Reggie Workman show, Vijay Iyer, Lonnie Holley, Bill Frisell, The Mountain Goats, Wendy Eisenberg, Calexico, Tyshawn Sorey Trio, Iron & Wine, Moor Mother, Margaret Glaspy with Julian Lage Trio, Makaya McCraven, The Bad Plus, Tarbaby with David Murray, Adia Victoria, Christian McBride’s New Jawn, Lee Ranaldo, Charles Lloyd Chapel Trio, Ibeyi, Devendra Barnhart, Sierra Ferrell, Vinicius Cantuaria, Bela Fleck’s My Bluegrass Heart, Lucius, or Oneohtrix Point Never. Any of these shows I would have loved to see. But these are the choices you are forced to make at this festival. It’s total lunacy and it is an interesting exercise in being like, OK, what do I really really really value between these two or three or four awesome bands all playing at the same time. To put it in perspective, if you read Nate Chinen’s overview of the festival, I only say about 1/3 of the same shows he did and yet my experience was basically exactly the same as his.

Well, I saw a mere 28 sets of music in 4 days. I define this by catching at least one half of a set, which is common at a festival when you are jetting around to check out this act and then that act and they overlap. I caught a couple of minutes of a couple of other sets too, which I will note below. I am not going to write in depth about 28 sets of music, but I will note a few sentences on each and that of these sets, I thought 26 were between good and life-changing, 1 was meh, and 1 was not very good in my opinion. That’s a very solid rate! So let’s go to it:

Thursday:

Alison Russell and The Rainbow Coalition–outstanding set to start the festival, such energy, great politics, so many songs of peace and nonviolence from a woman up front about being a heavily abused child from a racist stepfather. Her band is hot, her clarinet is even hotter. 2nd time I’ve seen her.

Terry Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band. This festival does not do much country, which given that Knoxville is a country music home is an odd choice, but if you live in Knoxville, fine since you can see that music all the time. But Terry Allen, one of the weirdest country figures ever, was there and he put on a fun set, which he usually does when he is backed by an electric band. Will never complain about seeing “Wolfman of Del Rio” or “Amarillo Highway,” Plus David Byrne (!!!!!!!!!!!) showed up to do the song “Buck Naked” that they wrote together. Yep, this is the kind of festival where David Byrne just shows up and hangs out without any scheduled performances. 3rd Allen show, first since about 2010.

Joe Lovano’s Trio Tapestry. Lovano on sax, Marilyn Crispell on piano, Carmen Castaldi on drums. Never seen any of them before. Traditionally have respected more than loved Lovano but I did like this album a lot when I reviewed it here. So checking out this live—wow man, it was great. Lovano just killed it and I have loved Crispell for 20 years. That was maybe not my favorite show of the festival but it is one that moved me a lot.

Los Lobos–Meh. I really don’t get the love for Los Lobos as a live band. They are a good band. This is the 3rd time I’ve seen them. They were fine. And that’s what it was. Fine. They play the same songs they have played forever, in the same way. For them, it was just another show. It wasn’t a bad show. It was a whatever show. I always like the Spanish songs. But as far as comparing to the rest of the festival? It was definitely the 27th best set of the 28.

Exploding Star Orchestra. Here was the first gut check. Do I see Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra with Mary Halvorson, Craig Taborn, Gerald Cleaver, Tomeka Reid, and other awesome people who I love or do I see the Vijay Iyer Trio? I had seen the Iyer Trio at Newport last summer so I went in this direction and……man, this project fucking rules. This is these brilliant people just hitting a groove and rolling with it. The other people on it were Damon Locks (doing some cool voice stuff), Angelica Sanchez, and Chad Taylor. I had seen Halvorson (4 times?), Taborn, Cleaver, and Reid before too, but not the others. Their album just came out too.

FRIDAY:

Despite a slow start and meeting an old friend for lunch, still got in 5 sets.

Mary Halvorson’s Amaryllis. This was the best of the two albums Halvorson did last year that were paired together. She performed the Belladonna project after this, but I wanted to mix things up. This was an outstanding set that had Halvorson on guitar, Adam O’Farrill on trumpet, Tomas Fujiwara on drums, Nick Dunston on bass, Jacob Garchik on trombone, and Patricia Brennan on vibraphone. That album was fantastic and so was this set, especially Brennan’s vibes. Watching her perform was jaw-dropping. They just got out of the studio for a second album to be released next year and that’s a lot of what they played. Let’s just say you are going to want this album.

Xylouris White. Not having strong feelings about what to see in the late afternoon, I followed my friend to this collaboration between the Greek lutist George Xylouris and the legendary indie rock drummer Jim White, who was in The Dirty Three among other bands. They’ve played together on and off for years, but I wasn’t expecting to love this as much as I did. Xylouris is a great musician but it was watching White just have complete mastery over his hands as he was drumming; the way he would toss something aside with his drumstick and then later reach down and pick it back up with it without missing a beat. It was just jaw-dropping to see these two maestros work together. Plus I was right at the stage for this one.

Ava Mendoza + SUE-C. I was excited to see this shredding jazz/rock guitarist who I knew from William Parker’s Guitar Trio. As it turns out (see below), I don’t really care for all of Mendoza’s other work. She can tend to work in parts of the rock world that I don’t care for much. But by God she can shred. And actually, it is valuable to have young female role models for the young female guitarists out there. Both Mendoza and Halvorson are great models for young girls. This was a solo performance with a visual artist behind her who was mostly doing weird light things with Viewmaster slides. It was a good show, but not a favorite. However, I won’t ever pass up an hour of bad ass solo guitar.

William Parker. So this was supposed to be the In Order to Survive group, which I was very excited to see. But that didn’t work out and he brought a whole different band. It was still cool–Rob Brown on sax, Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet, Gerald Cleaver on drums, his wife Patricia Nicholson on vocals and dance, and then some other female vocalist who was doing some wild shit with her voice. Didn’t catch her name. This set was seriously far out, avant-garde jazz at its most avant-garde. Parker is such a master. He’s the most important bassist in jazz since Charles Mingus (and yes, I am including Ron Carter and Christian McBride in that) and arguably is the greatest living jazz musician, or at least second to Sonny Rollins. That’s how I strongly I feel about Parker. It was just one of those shows where you realize you are seeing something from another dimension. Fourth Parker show I’ve seen over the years, never disappoints.

Son Lux. This show was the bad one. The only reason I was there is that the line to get into see the Ned Rothenberg Crossings Quartet was insanely long (only at Big Ears!) and my friends wanted to see this band who had just won the Academy Award for Best Song that they had done with David Byrne for Everything Everywhere All at Once. Well, Byrne was at the show, drinking a Sierra Hazy IPA (the best choice at the festival; honestly, the beer selection could be stronger), and talking to people. I dunno, maybe Byrne is a weird dude like usually discussed, but he seemed like a pretty normal guy watching him chat with people. Anyway, he did not come up and do the song and I just flat out don’t get the appeal of this band. There were some kinda interesting beats I guess? This was the show I did not like and not even a Bill Frisell guest appearance could save it.

SATURDAY

Yeah, this was a 10 set day.

Bassekou Koyate & Ngoni Ba. To START a day with one of the masters of modern African music is a hell of a thing. It was noon but he was rocking like it was midnight. The band is so outstanding and he is just an utter master of the ngoni. This was awesome. First time I saw him too.

Anthony Coleman. Only at Big Ears do you leave a Koyate show, walk down the street, and see the avant-garde pianist Anthony Coleman do a solo piano show that was both difficult music and incredibly moving. Having listened to him for years and figuring I’d never get to see him, this was an honor.

Kevin Morby. Not a ton of indie rock at the show and most of those sets I didn’t bother with. But I thought Morby’s last album was outstanding and it was a lot closer than the Christian McBride set so I stuck around to limit my walking (I hurt my knee on a treadmill a couple of weeks ago and it was barking during the festival after all the standing). It kicked ass. He has a great band and puts on a fine show. It was my 2nd time seeing him and I intend to increase that number whenever possible.

Bill Orcutt & Chris Corsano. Orcutt is a master of the noise guitar and Corsano an epic drummer. Their two releases–Made out of Sound and Brace Up! are well-titled. This was pure improvised noise of the best kind, just beautiful creations of riveting sound. Loved it.

William Parker’s Mayan Space Station. This kicked enormous amounts of ass. This project, with Ava Mendoza and Gerald Cleaver, is one of his very best albums and the first guitar-centric album I think Parker has ever done. Moreover, since Mendoza is a rock guitarist more than a traditional jazz guitarist, it’s an even more interesting project. Extremely appealing music and a great intro to Parker’s mastery on the bass. This was FUN.

John Zorn: Bagatelles, Part 2. The centerpiece of this year’s festival was John Zorn getting two full days of shows at the Tennessee Theater, which is not only the largest non-stadium venue in Knoxville but one of the most ornate venues I have ever attended shows at. In fact, when I was there in the late 90s, I saw the last show Chet Atkins ever played. I saw John Prine, Merle Haggard, Doc Watson and David Grisman, Charlie Louvin, Dr. Ralph Stanley, Tony Rice, so many masters. So I was thinking about all that. What I had not seen there was jazz. And yeah, that worked. For his Bagatelles sets, Zorn was splitting it up so that two different bands would each play for about 25 minutes. In this, the first was the Mary Halvorson Quartet,with Miles Okazaki also on guitar, Jorge Roeder on bass, and Tomas Fujiwara on drums. Trigger got the second set, an insane band with Will Greene on guitar, Simon Hanes on bass, and Aarond Edgecomb on drums. The Halvorson Quartet played beautifully. I can’t see her and her various bands often enough. But it was Trigger—Jesus! This was classic Zorn. Hanes is the leader of this band and he’s the kind of guy who plays thrash jazz that includes beating the bass against various things and hitting himself in the head during the show. My god.

James Blood Ulmer. I had never seen Ulmer before and it was time for a legend. OK, he doesn’t sing that well anymore. But he can still shred that guitar. But the reason this worked so well is that his band is TIGHT. Jeremiah Hosea on bass and Grant Calvin Weston on drums, these are young cats who can keep that funk going. Maybe not the greatest show I’ve seen but a very fun one. I’d pay just for that rhythm section.

Meridian Brothers. I had heard about this hipster Colombian salsa/cumbia band but hadn’t actually heard them. Yeah, they ruled. Super awesome fun alternatives on these classic genres. Very popular with not only the younger crowd but also quite a few of the musicians. In fact, Anthony Coleman, coming out of his avant-garde solo show, was grooving to this and so was Kevin Morby and his partner Katie Crutchfield, who you know as Waxahatchee. She wasn’t performing either, just hanging out at the festival. And the great thing was, no one was going up to bother them. Anyway, this grooved out and was a real great show.

Cécile McLorin Savant. OK, I am not generally a big fan of the old-school jazz vocalist. Even Holiday and Fitzgerald I don’t really listen to much at all. But it wasn’t hard for my friend to convince me to go and I am glad I did. What an epic talent. What a throwback to an older day while also very much having her head in the future. She did old songs, classics, and her songs in Creole French, the near extinct French dialect of the white part of her family, and the African language of that part of her family (not sure which one, I couldn’t hear exactly what she said when she introduced it). A true master at work. Great band too. Covered the old-timey song “Little Omie Wise” and I will never forget that.

Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul. It was midnight, I was totally exhausted, but I’d be good and goddamned if I was going to miss this. I reviewed this album by this Belgian art-club duo a few weeks ago and loved their combination of club music, feminist lyrics, and general art project mentality. It was like if Laurie Anderson did danceable club music and was more overtly political and funny. Oh yeah, this did not disappoint. The song about realizing she was being ogled for the first time and trying to figure out what the hell is going on is an absolute classic in feminist music and you are just going crazy with the energy from both the performers and the crowd. This might have been my favorite show of the whole festival. Complete, absolute, 100% joy.

SUNDAY:

I was tired, both physically and in terms of needing sleep. But fuck it. I had bands to see and hammered out another seven sets on the last day!

Wadada Leo Smith. Never miss the master. Especially when he is in his 80s. He is just killing it these last 15 years. He can’t be easy to work for though. He gets cranky with his band, though everyone seems fine with it. He wants very specific things at very specific times and good luck figuring out what is going on in his head. Erika Dohl on piano, Ashley Walters on cello, the great Pheeroan akLaff on drums. Cranky he may be, but he astounding to watch and hear.

John Zorn, Bagatelles Part 3. For this show, Zorn had the Brian Marsella Trio play the first part, with Marsella on piano, Trevor Dunn on bass, and Kenny Wollesen on drums. For the second, it was the John Medeski Trio, with Medeski on electric organ, David Fiuczynski on guitar, and Grant Calvin Weston on drums. Of course, I had just seen Weston with Ulmer the night before. And Medeski is a long time favorite. So I guess liked that set the best but they were both excellent.

James Brandon Lewis Trio. I knew of Lewis but really hadn’t heard him much. So I’m very glad I went to this. What a soulful sax player! I mean, he can really move you with that horn, old-school style. He has one foot firmly in the avant-garde, but the other is firmly in the warm sax masters of the past. He really delivered on that too. And he was obviously happy to be playing in front of so many people. Chad Taylor was on drums and Josh Warner on bass. Taylor is real great and I am glad I got to see him twice this weekend, but Warner, man, that guy was a real star on the bass. Fun.

Bela Fleck and Bassekou Koyate. I am not usually a big fan of the “secret show” part of festivals. I mean, whatever, right. But if the goal is to find spaces to just throw some people together, well you weren’t going to do better than this. I am actually not a fan of Bela Fleck’s music, but what I do love about him is his commitment to the history of the banjo and his willingness to bring it back into conversation with African masters of other string instruments. So to see him and Koyate just jam in a beautiful church, I mean, how could I do not rush over to see that! It was crowded too, I was literally the last person in the door before they closed it off until some people left. So I saw the whole show and it was amazing. I mean, when the hell am I going to get this kind of chance again? Next year at Big Ears I suppose!

John Zorn/Trevor Dunn/Dave Lombardo. So this was supposed to be the return of Zorn’s legendary thrash jazz project Painkiller, with Bill Laswell. But it seems that Laswell’s health is bad. So he was initially to be replaced with Christian McBride. Now, I know that McBride is a master of his instrument, but he’s mostly a straight ahead jazz player. So I was super interested in what he was going to do here. Unfortunately, he came down with the flu Saturday night. So Zorn had to adjust again and Trevor Dunn, the Mr. Bungle bass player, was around with other bands and he was more than ready to take over. This was cool. I am not a Slayer fan, but Dave Lombardo…….man that motherfucker is the most powerful drummer I have ever seen. I mean, he is just beating the shit out of those drums. It was perfect for that setting. Unbelievable. Lombardo was also having the time of his life.

Algiers. I love this band so much. They are kind of the best band. Anthemic political electronic rock with lots of noise? Yes please. Second time I’ve seen them and it was great, one of the most fun shows ever. Awesome video work behind them too, really drives home the politics while you are immersed in the joyful noise and the sheer power of having so many people around you so into a band.

Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos. This is a Ribot project going back to the late 90s. Was glad he pulled it out here. This was my 2nd Ribot show and am always glad to see this great, great guitarist. I love Ribot–he can play the gamut from weird Zorn compositions with balloons to funk to free jazz to being Tom Waits’ guitarist. He really can do it all. This is one of his most fun projects. Coming out in wigs and pearls as a quiet protest against Tennessee’s terrible Republicans, they proceeded to spend the next hour just being awesome. I’m not sure who the whole band was that night, but Anthony Coleman was there grooving out on organ (again, quite different than his solo show!) and Horacio Hernandez was on drums. Super fun.

John Zorn, Cobra. Whoa man. A cobra. This was Zorn’s improv game from the 80s that includes cards, hats, headbands, musicians raising their hands to get picked, and who knows what else. He has hardly done this in decades, but he pulled it out for this show. It was a real throwback to the 80s improv scene, where bursts of short noise were in vogue, in part because Zorn and friends put it there. No one knows the rules, arguably not even the musicians themselves. But it was a wild thing to see and a fitting way to close a remarkable weekend. The players? John Zorn was conducting, Mary Halvorson, Wendy Eisenberg, and Will Greene on guitar; Brian Marsella on piano, John Medeski on organ, Mike Nicolas on cello, Trevor Dunn on acoustic bass, Simon Hanes on electric bass, Sae Hashimoto on vibes, Ches Smith, Aaron Edgecomb, Kenny Wollesen, and Dave Lombardo on drums.

The two sets I saw a few minutes of was the last 3 minutes of the Zorn pop-up show at midnight with the New Masada Quartet, but it turns out that was only a 20 minute set and the Etran de l’Air set, the fantastic band from Mali. They both seemed cool as hell but I can’t say that I really saw those sets.

Whew, that was a lot. Lot of words too!

Just a couple of other notes and observations.

Why does John Zorn almost never play with Black musicians? This is jazz for god’s sake. But this has been an issue going back to the 80s. It’s not that he never does, but it’s fairly rare. Some of this is his explicitly Jewish jazz vibe, which OK. But that’s far from all of it. Why is it that the Cobra was like 14 whites and 1 Asian? This really needs to be discussed more broadly.

It was interesting to me how few horns there were in the shows. When the leader was a horn player–say Zorn or Mazurek, there were no other horns in the bands, even though these were large bands. We really are in a guitar/bass/drums/keys era I guess.

The only downside to the festival I think is that the rock acts tend to be a lot less experimental than everything else. Los Lobos, Calexico, Iron & Wine, Bonny Light Horseman, etc., are all fine enough acts, but they are really very Gen X listener mainstream rock acts, especially when compared to everything else there.

I certainly worry that Big Ears is going to get too big and become more mainstream and basically turn into South by Southwest for southern Appalachia. But for now, it’s THE festival to catch. There’s also no good reason other midsized cities or towns with good musical cultures could not pull something like this off. There is clearly a market for it. Richmond, Charlotte, heck even Denton, could absolutely do this. I hope other cities are learning that this might not quite be your normal Chamber of Commerce plan to bring more tourists into town, but it sure can work.

See you all in Knoxvegas next spring!

In other news:

The new Jason Isbell doc sounds like it’s going to be kind of an intense experience.

Also, why do sportswriters like Isbell so much? It’s for the same reason that college professors like him. Right age, right guitar, right songwriter, right audience. He just ticks all the boxes.

Coltrane’s hand written outline for A Love Supreme.

The scalping culture run by Ticketmaster is real bad and a lot of artists (cough, Bruce, cough) are complicit about it. But y’all could also just find new bands to hear……

Need a note for the passing of the great composer and film scorer Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Playlist for the last two weeks, much shorter than normal due to my four days of live music. I guess I’ll live:

1. Raul Malo, Pat Flynn, Rob Ickes, The Nashville Acoustic Sessions
2. Emmylou Harris, Luxury Liner
3. Jessi Colter, A Country Star is Born
4. Merle Haggard, Someday We’ll Look Back
5. Townes Van Zandt, self-titled
6. Elizabeth Cook, Aftermath
7. Mitski, Be the Cowboy
8. Julia Jacklin, Crushing
9. Taylor Ho Bynum, Enter the Plustet
10. Andrew Hill, Mosaic Select 16, disc 3
11. Buddy Tabor, Hope: The First Step Toward Disillusionment
12. Ikhlas, Fauxe
13. Townes Van Zandt, Rear View Mirror
14. Merle Haggard, Down Every Road, disc 2
15. Dengue Fever Presents Electric Cambodia
16. Balsam Range, Papertown
17. Screaming Females, All at Once
18. The Coathangers, Suck My Shirt
19. Joey Purp, Quarterthing
20. Greg Brown, One More Goodnight Kiss
21. Eliza Carthy, Restitude
22. Sleater-Kinney, One Beat
23. Drive By Truckers, English Oceans
24. The Beths, Future Me Hates Me
25. Wussy, Funeral Dress
26. Anderson Paak, Malibu
27. The Flaming Lips, American Head
28. Amyl and the Sniffers, Comfort to Me
29. Will Johnson, Hatteras Night, A Good Luck Charm
30. Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders with the London Symphony Orchestra, Promises
31. Old 97s, Twelfth
32. Parquet Courts, Wide Awake!
33. Dilly Dally, Heaven
34. Jason Isbell, The Nashville Sound
35. Ches Smith and We All Break, Path of Seven Colors
36. Don Edwards, Songs of the Trail
37. New Pornographers, Whiteout Conditions
38. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Theory of Ice
39. Drive By Truckers, It’s Great to Be Alive
40. Alison Russell, Outside Child
41. Purple Mountains, self-titled
42. Tom T. Hall, Ballad of Forty Dollars
43. Jim Lauderdale, Ralph Stanley, and the Clinch Mountain Boys, Lost in the Lonesome Pines
44. Natalia Clavier, Nectar
45. Neil Young, Tonight’s the Night
46. U.S. Girls, In a Poem Unlimited
47. Angela Easterling, Common Law Wife
48. Soccer Mommy, Sometimes Forever
49. Gerald Cleaver & Violet Hour, Live at Firehouse 12
50. George Jones, Blue & Lonesome
51. Bonnie Prince Billy, I See a Darkness
52. Gary Stewart, Out of Hand
53. Lucinda Williams, Sweet Old World
54. Parquet Courts, Content Nausea
55. Velvet Underground, White Light/White Heat
56. Willie Nelson, Shotgun Willie
57. The Band, Music from Big Pink
58. Eugene Chadbourne/Camper Van Beethoven, Camper Van Chadbourne
59. Modern Lovers, self-titled
60. Adia Victoria, Beyond the Bloodhounds
61. Old 97s, Satellite Rides
62. Julien Baker, Turn Out the Lights
63. Rhiannon Giddens, Tomorrow is My Turn
64. Drive By Truckers, The Dirty South
65. Bill Callahan, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle
66. Duke Ellington, The Far East Suite
67. Jaimie Branch, Fly or Die II: Bird Dogs of Paradise

Album Reviews:

Florist, Florist

Liked this very quiet but sonically interesting album more than I thought I would. Sometimes, I get frustrated with the kind of band that uses whispered vocals, quiet guitars, maybe a few bird tweet sounds and the like. Because it can all sound the same unless you listen hard. And maybe I was listening a little harder here that normal, who knows. It’s all about your own self at the time of hearing an album. But whatever the reason, I like this. The instrumental pieces are really well-constructed little bits of music and the songs of Emily Sprague are nice little love or family or relationship songs. Heck, even the bird tweet sounds work here, as part of the point of the album is to put listeners into the nature of the Hudson Valley, where it was recorded. I don’t think there’s the awe inspiring song that really takes this to the point of being great, but it is very good and somewhat surprisingly so.

A-

Czarface/Ghostface Killah, Czarface Meets Ghostface Killah

Kicking it a bit old school and checking out the 2019 collaboration between Ghostface Killah from the legendary Wu Tang Clan and the group Czarface, which also includes WTC member Inspectah Deck. As one would expect, there’s an emphasis on the martial arts and wrestling that helped create the cultural moment around Wu Tang. And it’s basically fine. This isn’t new ground being developed here, but the production is fun and the work is solid enough.

B

Ivo Perelman Quartet, Magic Dust

When you have a 4-track, 80 minute album and you only stream one song of ten minutes, it’s hard to say too much, but given the fear jazz labels still have of streaming, I will review this one available track.

This track is pretty awesome! Perelman is on his tenor sax and William Parker is on bass on most of the album, but every now and then, the great bassist (and arguably the greatest living jazz musician) will throw out some wind instrument action and so he picks up a shakuhachi, which is a Chinese flute, and jams with Perelman while Christopher Parker on piano and Chad Anderson on drums provide that dissonant base for them to work. It’s fantastic stuff. Can’t wait to hear the whole album when I buy it.

And yes, you should buy albums. One a week if you like music and can afford that whole $10.

….Turns out you can get the album on YouTube, so I did and the whole thing remains great.

A

Ava Mendoza’s Unnatural Ways, The Paranoia Party

I love Mendoza, but not this project. It’s jazz people making kick ass noisy rock and roll. Mendoza is an awesome guitarist and the instrumental parts of this are amazing. But my God, the lyrics are stupid. She can’t sing. The lyrics sound like something left over the dumbass Prog days of the early 70s. So that’s really frustrating. Actually, the music has more than a little of that too, but these people are so good that I can live with it. But the lyrics are bad enough to make this something I don’t want to hear. Still, I’d buy the individual instrumental tracks. Hard album to give a grade to since the music and lyrics are so different in quality. Though even the guitar gets a bit tiresome after awhile. Good for Dream Theater fans who want to hear something slightly different from their usual dross.

C+

H.C. McEntire, Every Acre

Every time a new McEntire album comes out, the first thing one has to do is be amazed by the Dolly-esque voice. Just the voice itself, my God. This is the kind of thing that comes out of the southern church, in this case the Appalachian white church, and it is a beautiful instrument. Then one focuses on the songs, which often revolve her love for women, and you realize that we have moved along from the church a bit here. This is another real solid set of contemplative queer country. If she never writes another song as amazing as “Baby Blue” from her Mount Moriah days, well, that’s OK. She’s just writes solid album after solid album. Ain’t nothing wrong with that. And if Brandi Carlisle fans (not to mention Indigo Girls fans; Amy Ray shows up on a song here) aren’t checking H.C. McEntire out, they are really missing out on someone they would love.

B+

Sam Prekop/John McEntire, Sons Of

Marginally interesting electronic music with a heavy beat and some fucking around over the top of it. If that sounds kind of dismissive, well, it does feel like fucking around with knobs. Listenable enough within the world of electronic music, but the genre remains fundamentally uninteresting to me and this doesn’t change my mind. The 23 minute track especially doesn’t change my mind. As background music to reading or doing work, yeah, I guess it works OK. But as something I want to pay attention to, it does not.

B-

V/A, Sad About the Times

A fun compilation of forgotten 70s songs. Most are by almosts or never weres. But there’s some nice work in here. One of the songs, “Deep Blue Sea” by Art Lown, has even become something of a minor hit, with over 2.6 million Spotify listens (most of the songs are in the tens of thousands though a couple of others are around 1 million). OK, sure, some of the songs are lamer than others. But if you like 70s folk pop with all that means, there’s plenty here for you to chew on. One I liked a lot is Antonia Lamb’s “Wolf,” about a cocaine smuggler. She’s not a great singer (sounds a bit like Kath Bloom) but the song is so 70s that you have to laugh and it works as a little folk ballad. This is great for everyone from those who think Jackson Browne is the peak of recorded music to those who dream of being in Laurel Canyon in 1973. Granted, these might be the same people.

B

João Donato/Ali Shaheed Muhammad/Adrian Younge, João Doanto JID 007

Interesting edition of the Jazz is Dead series, where Muhammad and Younge record the great Brazilian guitarist João Donato. I don’t as a general rule think of Donato as jazz, but whatever, who cares. The point is whether it is a worthy project and funking Donato up a bit on a modern recording (from 2021) works pretty well to me. He still sings with a falsetto and it still works. Applying the JID model to Brazilian music just generally has a tremendous appeal. Let’s get these old men in the studio and provide them with modern tracks and styles. Yep. Maybe this won’t change your life, but maybe it won’t not change it either. Do kind of wish it was longer than 26 minutes though.

B+

The Mountain Goats, Bleed Out

Another day, another Mountain Goats release. The most prolific songwriter this side of Robert Pollard (though unlike Guided by Voices, these are actually real songs) John Darnielle continues to be a force of nature, if being a nice guy really can exist that way. I don’t think I will ever LOVE this band, but I respect the hell out of them. Maybe I just don’t like Darnielle’s voice enough to reach that level. But that said, this is a very good album. It’s also very much a band album rather than just feeling like a solo effort. I like that. Sound is fuller, feels more collaborative. I’m also amused by the concept of this album. During the pandemic, Darnielle sat at home and watched a shit ton of action films (yep that sounds right). And so he decided to make an album out them. Glad he did.

A-

Michael Bisio Quartet, MBefore

Very strong set from Bisio on bass, Kurt Berger on vibes, Mat Maneri on viola, and Whit Dickey on drums. May not be the greatest albums in any of their careers, but it certainly is a quite strong one, especially from Maneri’s viola. It’s also worth noting that Bisio himself made six albums during the pandemic. We all responded to the pandemic differently and I wish I had worked that hard during it. That doesn’t say anything about the quality of this or any of the other albums of course, but I think we can be glad he was still pursuing his creative side during a time when it was all too easy to not. Nice and actually pretty fresh cover of the often overplayed “I Fall In Love Too Easily” too.

Don’t seen anything from this album on YouTube, so here’s a different Bisio live performance.

A-

Plains, I Walked With You A Ways

OK, wow this rules. Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) long ran from her southern roots. Then, a few years ago, she started to embrace her Alabama heritage and the country music she grew up with. So she and her friend Jess Williamson decided to form a side project and make a straight ahead country album. That its roots are in the pop country of the 90s somehow works here, largely because I think of the sensibilities of these two great artists, having no patience to the bad production or bullshit concepts of that era of country music. Instead, these are just two very fine singers who understand what country music is and very much know how to make a good album. They played together in Boston last fall and I really wish I had gone to that show now. And if this moves some Waxahatchee fans into exploring more country music, well God bless both Crutchfield and Williamson for that. Moreover, what makes this work is that these two people like each other so much and just flat out enjoy singing together. Joy projects are the best because that joy comes straight into the listener’s heart. Or at least mine.

A

Big Thief, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You

This was highly reviewed last year and I can see why. It’s a beautiful, ambitious, wonderful album. Big Thief is absolutely one of the best 10 bands around today. Everything is their oyster. Adrianne Lenker is an astounding songwriter, someone with both an incredible level of emotional honesty and someone who never resorts to a cliche. Song after song just touches your heart but without sentimentality or anything cheap. Buck Meek is an excellent guitarist and this band avoids the boring lazy strumming of folk music for modern arrangements that include a little electronics, a little fancy guitar, some nice effects, occasional fiddles, good drumming. At 20 songs and 80 minutes, one might worry that this is a project with a bit too much self-indulgence, but nope, this 100% holds up and how many 80 minute lyrical albums in the entire history of rock and roll can we say this about?

Just a great fucking album. This band, it’s just one of the iconic bands of this era.

A

Deerhoof, Miracle-Level

The venerable San Francisco rock band, back when young people could live in San Francisco and form bands, come out with their 19th album and the first in which all the lyrics are in Japanese, the native language of singer and bassist Satomi Matsuzaki. But it’s not as if the lyrics have been very important to this band ever anyway. They are just part of the general fascinating experimental rock sound they have perfected over thirty years together. This is not a great album really, but it is a more than worthy addition to their creative approach to rock and roll. I will have more about this next week as I saw them play a few days ago, but I have enough about Big Ears and don’t want to overwhelm my discussion of that show.

B+

Ibibio Sound Machine, Electricity

Love this band. The combination of Nigerian music with English beats just works, especially when the singer is Nigerian-British herself and also has political things to say to the Nigerian community, often in Ibibio itself. This band combines traditional African instruments with electronic dance music, which is a very London circa 2023 kind of project. They bring in Hot Chip to add some more magic to this project. This is modern African-European pop music in the best possible way. Incredibly danceable, incredibly important.

A

Brian Jackson, This is Brian Jackson

Gil Scott-Heron’s legendary collaborator released his first album in over twenty years in 2022. It’s alright. I’m glad to hear him again. I’m interested in how 80s this production sounds. His voice isn’t what it used to be, but nothing to be done about the natural aging process. But mostly, this is a pretty funky and smart album that holds up surprisingly well. In the world of comeback albums for long-forgotten artists, it’s top shelf work. He still has it, basically.

B+

Tujiko Noriko, Crépuscule I&II

Nearly two hours of tone compositions. Useful for background music I suppose, but not a very interesting listen otherwise, at least not to these ears. Maybe not so big after all. It’s just so much of the same thing. If you dig down and really are into this, sure you can hear the layered samples and the construction of the compositions. But that’s a lot of work for a limited payoff. I did listen to the whole thing though and I wasn’t really compelled to stop listening. So that’s something.

B-

Badlands, Call to Love

Interesting shoegazey beat oriented project here by this project of the Swedish composer Catharina Jaunviksna. Like a lot of stuff these days, she chooses to create a moniker for herself rather than use he real name, though to be fair, that’s a tough last name for us non-Swedes. Anyway, she’s fundamentally an electronic musician and this is very much here, but it’s also a trip hop thing and a shoegaze thing that throws in some cello. Interesting lyrics, some with someone opaque meanings, but a mystery that sticks with you. Pretty good.

B

John Edwards/Binker Golding/Steve Noble, Moon Day

I hadn’t heard of any of these guys from the British jazz scene and running at over an hour is a biggish risk to take, but this paid off. Golding is a pretty young British sax player, while Edwards and Noble are long time vets, on the bass and drums respectively. The older guys let Golding lead the way here and he does so, taking his sax to all sorts of places that they are more than capable of grounding in their rhythms. And on the longer pieces, the complexity really goes to the next level. It’s really a quite impressive release. I obviously need to pay more attention to the British jazz scene.

A-

My Dying Bride, The Ghost of Orion

Well, I’ve been taking a bunch of chances this week on albums, so I figured I might as well do my occasional toe-dipping into metal, see if there’s anything I can ever get out of it. This, I understand, is one of the foundational bands of metal over the last few decades. I guess it’s not terrible. I still find the style of singing ridiculously overwrought and self-serious, even when it is not the Voice of Satan absurdity that these metal singers like to pull off. But I would never listen to this again, even though it is certainly better than some metal albums I’ve heard. I guess I am never going to get metal. But at least I keep trying, sorta.

C

Alvvays, Blue Rev

Decent indie pop released last year from this veteran band. Their third release, it took them five years to get the album together. It mostly pays off. This doesn’t break a lot of new ground. It’s pleasant enough. Certainly tuneful, melodic, occasionally witty songs. Small pop music. I don’t love it as much as a lot of the reviewers who just raved about it. But yeah, it’s a nice enough piece of poppy rock.

B

As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.