Music Notes

This is the week that the last two major figures of the great generation of bluegrass musicians that started in the 1950s died. Probably the most important of the two was Bobby Osborne of The Osborne Brothers, one of the many brother acts of this genre and time. What made the Osbornes so critical to our musical history is that they are the bridge between the more traditional bluegrass played by Bill Monroe and the like (though this is extremely modern music; there is really nothing traditional about a musical style effectively invented in the late 30s and early 40s by Monroe combining old-time Appalachian, white gospel, country, western [two distinct genres then; keep your tired Blues Brothers references to yourself], and jazz) to the hippie bluegrass pioneered by David Grisman, John Hartford, and others in the 1970s. Unlike many bluegrass acts of the 50s and 60s, the Osborners were always interested in innovation. They brought drums and steel guitar into their act, they had no problem using electric instruments, they used electric pickups. Some traditionalists hated this. Many more people loved it. They also recorded “Rocky Top,” which is by far the best selling bluegrass song of all time since it became the song of the University of Tennessee sports team, making it also the most hated bluegrass song of all time by anyone rooting for any other SEC team.

But don’t sleep on Jesse McReynolds. Part of another key brother act, Jim and Jesse, McReynolds sang some of the sweetest bluegrass and played some of the best mandolin you will ever hear. They were a pretty modern act too, particularly in the singing, which was a precursor to the move away from the old-time influences of the early bluegrass musicians and toward a more pop orientation. McReynolds was also a mandolin innovator, adopting some of what Earl Scruggs brought to the banjo for his instrument. Later, he even did an album of Dead covers.

There probably are some living sidemen from this classic era of bluegrass, but to my knowledge, all the frontmen are now gone. Del McCoury is almost without question now the greatest living bluegrass player, but while he certainly represented some of the same stylings as Osborne and McReynolds, keeping things more on the “traditional” side compared to the hippies who rose into the music just after he did, he’s a full decade younger than they and really represents a different generation of the music.

We must also note the passing of Robert Black, bassist for the avant-garde group Bang on a Can All-Stars.

Burning Ambulance has a full discussion of the legacy of Peter Brotzmann, which includes the bizarre note that Bill Clinton said Brotzmann was his favorite saxophonist. I struggle to see Clinton listening to Last Exit albums while considering how to triangulate into another term, but you don’t just drop Brotzmann’s name without knowing who he is. Plenty of album recommendations in here too.

Queer reggaeton in Puerto Rico.

Boygenius in drag to defy the government of Tennessee.

Stevie Nicks as the White Witch

Turn your voice into the voice of the artist you are singing on karaoke thanks to AI. What a joy…..

Say what you will about douche country, but people still buy that shit.

Country Music Hall of Fame opening a new exhibit on Patty Loveless. Should be interesting. Unlike the garbage Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Country Music HOF is actually worth visiting, due in part to having a building actually designed for visitors.

This week’s playlist:

1. The Julie Ruin, Hit Reset
2. Merle Haggard and Bonnie Owens, Just Between the Two of Us
3. Purple Mountains, self-titled
4. Butch Hancock, Eats Away the Night
5. Townes Van Zandt, Live at the Old Quarter, disc 2
6. Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Impulse!
7. The Julie Ruin, Hit Reset
8. Sleaford Mods, Spare Ribs
9. Mdou Moctar, Afrique Victime
10. Kurt Vile, Wakin’ on a Pretty Daze
11. The Tallest Man on Earth, Dark Bird is Home
12. Jason Isbell, Weathervanes
13. Jim Lauderdale, Game Changer
14. Yo La Tengo, Stuff Like That There
15. Steve Earle, El Corazon
16. Snakefarm, Songs from My Funeral
17. Ralph Stanley, Classic Stanley, disc 1
18. Jon Dee Graham, Full
19. Boygenius, The Record
20. Mitski, Be the Cowboy
21. Thievery Corporation, Radio Retaliation
22. Leanne Betasamoke Simpson, Theory of Ice
23. Neil Young, Tonight’s the Night
24. Aruán Ortiz Trio, Live in Zurich
25. Van Morrison, Saint Dominic’s Preview
26. Amanda Shires, Down Fell the Doves
27. Sleaford Mods, UK Grim
28. Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse, Dark Night of the Soul
29. Ray Wylie Hubbard, Tell the Devil I’m Getting There as Fast as I Can
30. Billy Joe Shaver, Old Five and Dimers Like Me
31. Lucinda Williams, self-titled
32. Mitski, Bury Me at Makeout Creek
33. Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Kick Your Ass
34. Kasey Chambers, Dragonfly
35. Alabama Shakes, Sound & Color
36. Rhiannon Giddens, They’re Calling Me Home
37. Esperanza Spalding, Emily’s D+ Revolution
38. Tom Waits, Bad as Me
39. Juliana Hatfield, Weird

This week’s album reviews:

Dr. Lonnie Smith, Breathe

Released shortly before the death of the legendary jazz organist in 2021, this is a solid though not great release that relies quite a bit on some interesting collaborators to put it over. Iggy Pop as soul singer….kinda works? It’s fun, I grant you. Can he really pull it off at this point in his life? Not really, doesn’t have the range. But hey, I guess Smith and Iggy became friends, so why not? But both were still willing to try new things, admirable in its own right for a couple of legends. The rest of album moves forward in a solid jazz-funk, with some good covers, some relatively expected, some quite unexpected.

B

Nina Nastasia, Riderless Horse

An intense though beautiful and moving album. I didn’t really known Nastasia’s work before this, but the short version here is that she, working with her life and musical partner, had much a bunch of albums back in the 2000s. She disappeared in the 2010s, struggling with mental illness and the increasing dysfunction of their relationship. When she finally broke off the relationship, her partner committed suicide the next day. This album is her dealing with all of that. Again, intense stuff. It works though because she came out of all of that determined not to let it destroy it. She would rise about the horror, revive herself, and live her life the best she could. So it’s an album of grief and hope in equal measure, beautifully rendered with her wonderful voice. While I can’t see listening to this too often just because of where this material might take me mentally, I will definitely buy it. It’s really quite remarkable.

A

The Garifuna Collective, Aban

The Garifuna are African diasporan peoples of the Caribbean coast of Central America, some of who were in maroon communities after escaping slaves, some who came over from the islands to work on the banana plantations. They are often minority communities within the larger Spanish/indigenous nations of the region. The Garifuna Collective is a group from Belize that takes the musical traditions of the Garifuna and turns them into modern music. These guys have been playing together forever and survived the death of their frontman back in 2008, though they don’t release much anymore. This album, from 2019, was their first since 2013 and I am glad I heard it. This has the complex percussion that you’d expect, but also plenty of nods toward modern music, including incorporating electric guitar and influences from reggae and other modern musical forms of the Caribbean. It’s a band after all, not a folkloric combo. It’s pretty funky and pretty fun.

A-

Father John Misty, Chloë and the Next 20th Century

I’ve always struggled with Misty a little bit, even though I own most of his albums and they get played on occasion. He’s such a brilliant guy and he really has a vision. It’s just that the vision is being louche asshole and that’s hard to take sometimes. He’s funny, but he’s also kind of worthless. The character–how ever much it reflects him or not–is little more than a liberal arts college graduate gone to the city to be an artistic hipster but never really does get out of the drugs and cheap sex routine of his 20s. Except that he’s in his 40s.

So if you can stand that–and I can only stand it intermittently–it’s awfully hard to deny the talent. No two albums are even close to the same. In this case, for his last album, he integrates showtune themes and jazz standards into the act. And you being to realize–and I am far from the first person to make this point–that’s he becoming Randy Newman. Now, I know Greil Marcus thought Newman was a God and I have never quite thought that, though seeing Newman play at Newport Folk a couple years ago was pretty amazing. Misty is not God either. But what they both have in common is that tongue in cheek humor that is more than willing to go maybe a bit too far in putting the joke over, to the point that one has to wonder if it is a joke. For both of them, it usually works, though with Misty, the borderline misogyny can cross the border. Moreover, for Misty at least, his politics are pretty worthless, one of those guys who knows the world is messed up but hardly sees the point of trying to do anything about it.

So even though I actually kind of want to dislike Misty, I just can’t. First, he may be politically worthless, but anyone who values art based on the politics of the maker is in a black hole that leads to aesthetic Stalinism and creating your own erotic fan fiction about your favorite corporate owned property so that you can have your perfect relationship with art that reinforces your personal political and sexual predilections. So you have to ignore that part of him, even if you roll your eyes sometimes. But even beyond that, he’s just so damn talented! This is just a flat out good record, made even better for moving beyond a period of writing mostly depressing songs on the previous couple of releases. It is just such well-crafted, smart music, but instrumentally and lyrically. So yeah, he’s pretty good.

A-

Earl Sweatshirt, Sick!

Not Sweatshirt’s greatest release, but certainly a solid addition to the career of one of my favorite hip hop artists. I happened to like his slightly more difficult works like Some Rap Songs, even as he was burying the vocals in the mix to an extent. This is more clear on the vocals, though I kind of miss some of the mixes. It’s also a pandemic album, with tons of references to Covid. Not sure if there is a rap album so directly Covid-based than this, though I am not the most fluent listener to the genre. Certainly he’s in a more positive place than usual.

B+

Club d’Elf, You Never Know

Even though I had never heard this band before, they sounded pretty interesting. I was supposed to go to a show last year, but I think one of them had Covid. In any case, it was cancelled. Too bad because this is pretty cool. This is more a collective than a band with whoever shows up at a given time being the performers. But as a general rule, they do a fascinating combination of North African music with fusion jazz, as much late 60s Miles (there’s a cover of “In a Silent Way/It’s About That Time” here in fact) as Moroccan gnawa. Plus John Medeski on organ and some pretty aggressive turntable use, like you’d see in late 80s and early 90s avant-garde music that was first taking influence from hip hop. The first half of this is covers of their heroes, thus the Miles. The second is of meditations by the band’s leader, Mike Rivard, after he nearly died while in the jungles of Peru. This is what people attempting to create “world music” need to be doing, taking the best of a lot of stuff and mashing it together in inventive ways, as opposed to what it often means, which is dumbing down the different styles into something that becomes the boring background music at faculty dinner parties.

A-

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