Music Notes

I don’t have any huge lead here. I haven’t seen any live shows lately. No one has died of note. No big news. So let’s take this opportunity for a listing of my 10 favorite Jason Isbell songs at a time that is probably around his career midpoint. I am leaving out anything off the generally excellent new album Weathervanes, just because I need a lot more time with it to get to the point of being able to rank songs. This is a pretty vague ranking, I grant you, but it represents one I will defend on this day.

1. “Outfit,” Decoration Day (Drive By Truckers)

Isbell is realistically never going to write a better song than this because it is impossible to write a better song. That it and “Decoration Day” were the first two songs of his that appeared on an album was the announcement of a stunning next level talent. And while the songwriting has not always held to this level, it has often enough. The perfect cut–a soulful but rocking ballad about a father giving his son advice as he enters a music career, it is filled with great one-liners, hope for the future, and regret for the past. You ain’t going to beat it. Not ever. One of the best songs ever written.

2. “Codeine,” Here We Rest

This is Isbell’s worst album and it’s not even close. He was drunk and falling apart. There are a couple of good cuts here, a bunch of very forgettable tracks (the entire second side except for the closer), and then this genius song. The first time we hear Amanda play her fiddle one of his songs, that instrument probably plays a more important role in a song than anything else he has ever recorded. The story doesn’t do the song justice–a couple are in trouble. She is a bartender. He shows up at the bar and she doesn’t quite know what to do. But there are all sorts of asides–terrible bar bands, the horrors of dating–that help out a song that is probably closer to confessional than not, but one that has a tremendous humor to it, plus the great chorus “One of my friends has taken her in and given her codeine,” which might be the best thing for the night until they can probably not figure it out tomorrow.

3. “Elephant,” Southeastern

To pull off a song about cancer is no easy feat. There aren’t that many of them. But this gets at the incredible humanism of Isbell’s best work. This song, about a woman he has known forever and partied with forever who is dying of cancer, is filled with the deep emotion that comes when the first of your friends is dying. The line “If I’d fucked her before she got sick, I’d never hear the end of it” says a whole world about the ways groups of friends deal with tragedy. Just a great song.

4. “The Day John Henry Died,” The Dirty South (DBT)

The Dirty South is really DBT’s Isbell album. This epic work has four Isbell songs, each between excellent and amazing. There are good songs from Hood and Cooley here too of course, but Isbell owns this album and nowhere more than the raving rocker about work and fame and rock and roll. John Henry here is not too connected to the young Black ex-soldier who died after being taken prisoner and contracted out to a railroad. It’s John Henry as metaphor, trying to stay ahead of the game that wants to chew you up and spit you out and now it’s time to fly to LA for another show and you’d better get some sleep if you don’t want to be the next John Henry. Pure, unfiltered rock and roll. Wish he still played this song live but he does not.

5. “White Man’s World,” The Nashville Sound

As a whole album, The Nashville Sound is in my view Isbell’s best. There’s no weak cuts and you can’t say that about any of his other work. This song–an honest look at a liberal white man trying to deal with the election of Trump and everything that meant–handled this issue better than any other song I know. Isbell has long ago proved his political bona fides (in this year’s Ryman residency for example, he is playing eight shows. His wife Amanda Shires is opening in one show. Trans and non-binary artists are opening in the other seven; he also gives all the royalties from the racist scumbag Morgan Wallen’s financially successful cover of his hit “Cover Me Up” to the Tennessee chapter of the NAACP), but like everyone who thinks about these things, he realizes he has a long way to go, what with all the different privileges that a white man has. Great song.

6. “If We Were Vampires,” The Nashville Sound

One thing you will notice here is that “Cover Me Up” is not on this list. In fact, I actively dislike this song. It’s too sappy, which is of course why it is a huge hit. Isbell is best when working the ambivalence and the reality. And “If We Were Vampires” is one of the best true love songs I’ve ever heard that does this since it is fundamentally a song about being in love but also being in middle age and knowing that one of you is going to go and perhaps sooner than later. But what are you going to do? Keep loving each other. Not much other choice.

7. “24 Frames, ” Something More than Free

“You thought God was an architect, now you know
He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow
And everything you built it’s all for show, goes up in flames
In 24 frames”

Good luck finding a chorus better than that.

8. “Danko/Maunel,” The Dirty South

“They say Danko would have sounded just like me
“Is that the man I wanna be?”

NO!!!! THAT IS NOT THE MAN YOU WANT TO BE!!

Considering the two tragic figures of The Band at a moment Isbell was getting the same accolades they did and dealing with fame about as well as those guys did, which was very badly, is a remarkable moment of self-awareness at a moment when things were going real south for him personally. Really, it’s almost next level self-awareness for a kid going through that experience. Who the hell writes a song like that? Amazing.

9. “Hudson Commodore,” Something More than Free

Going very deep cut here. But I love this song. Isbell’s less successful work in his post-sobriety career generally happens because he is too internal looking and you can really only mine the sobriety angle for so long (you may have noted that there are no songs from Reunions on this list). Here, he remembered what a good storyteller he can be. For someone who has so openly embraced Tom T. Hall as a favorite, he might do well with more stories like this. This Hall-esque story is of a wealthy southern woman in the 1930s (or so) who is determined to be independent no matter what men, from her father to “a doctor, then a lawyer, then a Roosevelt” think about it. It’s a perfect song about a woman being whatever a woman wants to be and from a man, you don’t get enough songs that even try to tell this story. Could listen to this cut on repeat forever.

10. “Traveling Alone,” Southeastern

As I just said, I find the sobriety songs somewhat limited. But it’s hard to find a better expression of this mentality than this plaintive plea to Amanda as he is trying to get his shit together, needs her help, and sees the future ahead of him. And ten years later, they are still married and evidently going strong after a rough patch during the making of Reunions.

If I was to give you five more songs, they would be “Decoration Day,” off Decoration Day; “Goddamn Lonely Love,” off The Dirty South; “It Gets Easier,” off Reunions; “Songs That She Sang in the Shower,” off Southeastern; and “Dress Blues,” off Sirens of the Ditch.

Feel free to disagree!

The Times continues its “5 minutes of jazz” series with 5 minutes that will supposedly make you love avant-garde jazz. The people interviewed here make some choices I find odd, either because I don’t agree with the choices (Sonny Sharrock’s work on Ask the Ages or the Last Exit albums is vastly superior to his work on Black Woman) or because it expands the definition of avant-garde to some stuff that at least in 2023 seems pretty mainstream (Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln’s Freedom Now! is a wonderful album, but it’s not like it’s outre, even by 1964 standards, except for politically of course). But whatever, glad to see the topic covered!

New building for the Louis Armstrong archive

I’m not sure the history of indie rock being pretty gay is exactly a secret, but this is a good overview of the topic.

Oh hey, PJ Harvey has a new album just out and she does a long interview at NPR about it and other things.

This week’s playlist:

1. Kae Tempest, Everybody Down
2. Sleaford Mods, UK Grim
3. Jazmine Sullivan, Heaux Tales
4. Riddy Arman, self-titled
5. The Rough Guide to African Music You’ve Never Heard
6. Eric Dolphy, Out to Lunch
7. The Music of Islam, Volume 10: Qur’an Recitation, Istanbul, Turkey
8. The Darjeeling Limited Soundtrack
9. Chris Corsano and Bill Orcutt, Made Out of Sound
10. U.S. Girls, Bless this Mess
11. Mestre Cupijó e Seu Ritmo, Siriá
12. Vince Staples, Summertime 06
13. Empress Of, I’m Your Empress Of
14. Hüsker Dü, New Day Rising
15. Kendrick Lamar, Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers
16. Greg Brown, The Poet Game
17. Korner, Ray, & Glover, Blues, Rags, & Hollers
18. Drive By Truckers, The Unraveling
19. Fiona Apple, Fetch the Bolt Cutters
20. Neil Young, After the Gold Rush
21. Townes Van Zandt, The Late Great Townes Van Zandt
22. The Beths, Future Me Hates Me
23. Elizabeth Cook, Welder
24. Kim Gordon, No Home Record
25. Alejandro Escovedo, A Man Under the Influence
26. Jane Weaver, The Silver Globe
27. Jose Gonzalez, Veneer
28. Hank Thompson, Seven Decades
29. Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time, Songs from the Workbench
30. Noname, Room 25
31. Mitski, Bury Me at Makeout Creek
32. Wussy, Strawberry
33. Tom Russell, Borderland
34. Marianne Faithful, Broken English
35. Run the Jewels, RTJ4
36. Steve Earle, Ghosts of West Virginia
37. Bill Callahan, Dream River
38. Chicago/London Underground, A Night Walking through Mirrors
39. Merle Haggard, Down Every Road, disc 3
40. Art Ensemble of Chicago, Tutankhamen
41. William Parker, Double Sunrise over Neptune
42. Robbie Fulks, Georgia Hard
43. Chris Knight, self-titled
44. Soul Sok Séga: Séga Sounds from Mauritius, 1973-1979
45. Mount Moriah, How to Dance
46. Kae Tempest, Let There Be Chaos
47. George Jones, The Essential George Jones, disc 1

This week’s album reviews:

Witch Fever, Congregation

From the depths of Hell, or perhaps just their Manchester home, come Witch Fever, one angry, heavy band of women. This reminds me of a modern L7 with British accents. Big rock riffs that we all fell in love with from that LA band. This is pissed off feminist punk that remains as relevant in 2023 as it did in 1993. Truthfully, like another great feminist punk band Screaming Females, this is more hard rock than actual punk. It’s just that no one really uses the term “hard rock” anymore because it is too reminiscent of shitty boomer blues rock bands. But those guitars, those lovely hard guitars. And those angry lyrics, ripping the stupidity of religion, more about the evils of religion (these women do not like religion!), and the evils of the patriarchy.

Rock. And. Roll.

A

Bad Bunny, Un Verano Sin Ti

Not being a reggaetón guy, I had never actually listened to Bad Bunny, one of the most famous musicians working together. So I figured I would. And despite being way too long, it’s pretty good! I don’t care about most of the conventions of reggaetón, I hate dancing, and my Spanish sucks, so I am not exactly the core audience here. But if I did want to dance, this is the album I’d probably want to dance to! So for an old white man listening to something very much not made for him, all I can say is that the talent is very much there and it is easy to see why he is a huge star. Still, a 50 minute record wouldn’t hurt here.

B+

JID, The Forever Story

Big hit hip hop album from last year. Also just a big album. Long. Dense. Maybe a bit too long. No shortage of ambition here. It combines the rap as folk music of the streets discussion of growing up hard with the rap as men who want to be the best discussion of what a bad ass he is compared to everyone else. The former is more interesting than the latter, as always. What puts it over is the self-conscious discussion of his life as part of the larger Black experience in this nation. He’s a very skilled rapper and if his ambition sometimes get the most of him, well, there are worse sins in music. At the very least, it will be very interesting to see what JID does next.

A-

Al Green, Full of Fire

Let’s go old school and listen to an Al Green album I’ve never heard before from 1976. This is the Reverend right before he went fully into religious music. Not every song is brilliant and his heart clearly seems more in some songs than others. He provides an interesting cover of Buck Owens’ “Together Again,” part of that great cross-fertilization between country and soul that we saw through the 60s and into the 70s. All a not great Al Green album means is that it’s merely a fantastic album instead of one of the great albums of all time. I’d listen to this album any day of the week.

A–

Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, Crooked Tree

Within the significant limits of contemporary bluegrass, which hampers this album from a musical perspective, the songs are very strong. Tuttle is an excellent songwriter and a big star on the bluegrass circuit. She and Billy Strings are probably the brightest young lights and she is the better songwriter by a good bit. But the band, like so many bluegrass bands these days, sound like they have a stick shoved up their ass. The band is good, yes, of course. They can pick with the best of them. But then that’s the problem with modern bluegrass–it so often goes one of two ways. The first is the jam stuff that pointlessly goes on forever. The second is the tightly scripted virtuoso stuff and that’s where this band generally is. If the band worried less about trying to sound like they were ready to do a sped up version of “Wabash Cannonball” like every other bluegrass band and let the music do more atmosphere around these great songs, this would be a better band. But the hardcore bluegrass fans, that’s really not what they want and Tuttle knows her audience. Big talent, pretty good album, but those limitations for me mean it is not a great album.

B

Kit Downes/Peter Eldh/James Maddren, Vermillion

A well played but pretty boring trio set on ECM. These guys are good musicians, but I’m struggling to see what this album is supposed to other than be background music. Jazz does not have to be some avant-garde experimentation. I like that stuff, of course. But jazz can be many, many things. However, the one thing I think jazz does need to do to be good is to move the music forward in some way. You can even fail at that, but at least you are thinking in some new ways. That hardly means that you can’t play standards. There’s all sorts of ways to update those tunes or play with them in various ways. That doesn’t mean you can’t play in older styles either. But I think it does mean that you can’t be a nostalgia act and that’s how I felt here. To me, this is just really wishing it was 1961 and Bill Evans again. I like that music. But a piano trio playing in this way, at least in this case, is music for a corporate Christmas party.

B-

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