Music Notes

My big musical highlight of the last two weeks was seeing Cracker at the Narrows Center in Fall River, Massachusetts. It was a refreshing move for the Narrows to get a band where the people are in their 50s rather than their 70s….Anyway, it was my second Cracker show and my opinion remains the same as it always has been. It’s that Cracker is a fun band and a worthy band and that Camper Van Beethoven is unquestionably the better and more interesting band. And they do a couple CVB songs, including “Take the Skinheads Bowling.” I’ve long felt that David Lowery and Johnny Hickman were an odd pairing. Lowery is, well, Lowery, with his unique sensibilities. Hickman is a flashy and excellent guitarist whose work really fits more in the blues and country/rock worlds than with Lowery. But they’ve had a whole career now of solid to really good albums, so it worked and still works. They haven’t released anything in a good long time now so this is more a greatest hits shows, plus a couple cool covers (Lowery played The Grateful Dead’s “Loser,” but they put that on an early album and have played it forever so it’s almost their song too at this point), including Hickman doing a killer version of Dwight Yoakam’s “Buenas Noches from a Lonely Room,” which he doesn’t play very often. Good show, if not breaking any new ground in 2023. Actually, there’s one exception to that. Lowery started the show with his relatively new solo pandemic song “Disneyland Jail,” which is a great song for parents–about being a fuckup who gets into trouble going to Disneyland and then you have kids and OMG please do not do what I did! So check that one out if you can. Here’s the setlist for the show.

I honestly don’t have much to say about Tony Bennett. His kind of music was never my thing, but as the last of a generation, an icon, and an overall good guy, he certainly deserves to be mentioned here.

Outstanding New Yorker deep dive into the divisive politics of the contemporary Nashville music scene, where you have a deeply racist and misogynist Nashville record industry doubling down on that as Ben Shapiro and others try to make Nashville a right-wing paradise versus the huge alternative country scene there that is rooted by people such as Jason Isbell and Maren Morris and Brandi Carlisle and a lot of others. That scene is increasingly Black and it is increasingly queer. It is openly challenging the politics of a Nashville establishment that hates them. And they aren’t going to win that battle. They know that. One of the points of the story is the refusal of country radio to ever play two songs by a woman in row and that they have told those complaining that they don’t care and shut up feminist bitches. Another key point here is that the single only Nashville star to have stepped up at all in the face of the Tennessee anti-trans ban is Morris, who really truly doesn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks. This group is very upset that two people who have always claimed to be allies have done things–Miranda Lambert and Dolly Parton. This is worth noting about Dolly. Everyone loves her but she does nothing to move any politics forward. And she never has. That’s part of her success. She really challenges no one when it matters. And she never has. She is a capitalist, not an activist. So for all as she’s an icon of the gay community and one of the few country artists liberals like, she has proven utterly worthless on the trans ban.

Speaking of the disaster of mainstream country music politics, here’s the story on douchebro Luke Combs making Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” a #1 hit. In doing so, he is taking a song about the struggles of a Black woman and making it the struggles of a white man, evidently without the slightest inhibitions of ripping off the message. The irony of this is that this makes Chapman the first Black woman to be the sole writer of a #1 country hit. At least she’s making deserved cash.

And then there is Jason Aldean, one of the worst living Americans, who just embraces the fascism. By now you’ve heard about this. He is embarrassing even to the Nashville establishment, who don’t reward him with awards despite his popularity with the aging white suburban women who make up mainstream Nashville’s shrinking market. His latest hit is the worst of all–another list song, but instead of all the things about the country you like, it’s a list of all the things about the cities that are horrible. Of course the list is just complete nonsense, stuff recycled from 1980s crime dramas. But the tone is even worse–threatening. It’s basically a defense of vigilante violence. Now there’s a video and….the choice of a location was the Maury County Courthouse in Tennessee, which so happens to also be the site of a lynching in 1927. For a mainstream publication like Variety, this is an absolute evisceration of Aldean and everything is he is about. In fact, the video is so offensive that CMT has pulled it, though most people will just watch it on YouTube anyway, which is a good site for hate so perfect for this.

So if I am waiting in an airport, I have no idea why I would want a playlist based on flying or being in an airport, but here’s one for you. I dunno, I’d rather be dreaming about being outside.

Last year, 1.1 million people visited Britain as music tourists to see a show. Wish it said where they were coming from. Wonder how many there are in the U.S.

New warrant served on Tupac’s murder, now 27 years old.

Jane Birkin died and while she was more famous as a fashion icon, she was of course a major musical figure as well, if one overshadowed by her husband Serge Gainsbourg. Here’s a playlist to get you started. Incidentally, if you’ve never heard their daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg’s IRM album, it’s a long time favorite of mine.

I know basically nothing about the world of modern performers of classical music, but given that André Watts was one of the first Black Americans to get to the peak of his profession, his death should be noted.

And then there’s Rick Froberg, frontman for Driving Like Jehu, who died at the age of 55. Can’t say I had thought about that band in a long, long, long time. Bad ticker, undiagnosed, you know how that goes.

The great Brazilian pianist João Donato also died, at the age of 88. His album in the Jazz is Dead project is a good recent introduction to his work in an American context.

Here’s a fun reading list of ten books on music that combine the musical analysis with personal narrative about the author. I haven’t read any of these, so I have some work to do.

Considering the importance of Living Colour’s Time’s Up. I always liked Stain more, but you can go with any of the first three albums and not go wrong.

A guide to Elliott Sharp.

Who would you see at Newport Folk, where I will be next weekend? Some tough choices! Aimee Mann vs. Jason Isbell with Angel Olsen’s set crossing into both of there’s? C’mon!

Playlist from the last two weeks:

1. St. Vincent, self-titled
2. The Dillards, Back Porch Bluegrass
3. Ibrahim Ferrer, Tierra Caliente
4. Touch My Heart: A Tribute to Johnny Paycheck
5. Screaming Females, Desire Pathway
6. Leonard Cohen, Songs of Love and Hate
7. Newport Folk Festival Best of Bluegrass 1959-66, disc 3
8. Waylon Jennings, Honky Tonk Heroes
9. Sonic Youth, Sister
10. Soccer Mommy, Sometimes, Forever
11. James Brown, Live at the Apollo
12. Miles Davis Quintet, Live in Europe, 1967, disc 2
13. Jade Jackson, Gilded
14. The Paranoid Style, A Goddamn Impossible Way of Life
15. Iron & Wine, Woman King
16. Sturgill Simpson, A Sailor’s Guide to Earth
17. Eric Taylor, Resurrect
18. Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man
19. Ramones, Leave Home
20. John Coltrane Quintet with Eric Dolphy
21. Duke Ellington, Far East Suite
22. Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
23. REM, Automatic for the People
24. Ashley Monroe, Like a Rose
25. White Stripes, Elephant
26. Tom T. Hall, I Wrote a Song About It
27. Anthony Braxton, 3 Compositions of New Jazz
28. Richard Thompson, Small Town Romance
29. Don Rigsby, The Midnight Call
30. Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerard, Pioneering Women of Bluegrass
31. The Hacienda Brothers, What’s Wrong with Right?
32. Marty Robbins, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs
33. Reggie Workman, Summit Conference
34. Albert Ayler, The Hilversum Session
35. Bomba Estéreo, Deja
36. Archie Sheep, Fire Music
37. Wayne Shorter, Adam’s Apple
38. Richard and Linda Thompson, Pour Down Like Silver
39. Merle Haggard, Down Every Road, disc 1
40. Dale Watson, People I’ve Known, Places I’ve Been
41. Rusty & Doug Kershaw, Louisiana Man
42. Patsy Cline, Showcase
43. Sir Douglas Quintet, Live in Austin, TX
44. Elvis Costello, This Year’s Model
45. PJ Harvey, Let England Shake
46. Leonard Cohen, Various Positions
47. Sam Rivers, Dimensions & Extensions
48. Loretta Lynn, The Definitive
49. Johnny Paycheck, Bars, Booze, & Blondes
50. Lucinda Williams, self-titled
51. Marvin Gaye, What’s Going On (x2)
52. Marika Hackman, I’m Not Your Man
53. Cardi B, Invasion of Privacy
54. Drive By Truckers, Decoration Day
55. Loudon Wainwright III, Album III
56. U.S. Girls, Bless This Mess
57. The Decemberists, Picaresque
58. Toxic (Matthew Shipp, Mat Walerian, William Parker), This is Beautiful Because We Are Beautiful People
59. Freddie Hubbard, Red Clay
60. Tangerine, Behemoth!
61. Wussy, Wussy Duo (x2)
62. Robbie Fulks, Bluegrass Vacation
63. Angel Olsen, Burn Your Fire For No Witness
64. Frank Ocean, Nostalgia, Ultra, Sno-Cheetah
65. Woody Shaw, Rosewood
66. Gregory Alan Isakov, Evening Machines
67. Bassekou Koyate and Ngoni Ba, Ba Power
68. Sons of Kemet, Black to the Future
69. Blood Orange, Angel’s Pulse
70. Drive By Truckers, Go-Go Boots
71. Jeffery Hayden Shurdut, Everybody’s Music Orchestra
72. Natalie Hemby, Pins and Needles
73. H.C. McEntire, Lionheart
74. Massy Ferguson, Great Divides
75. Dua Saleh, Nur
76. LCD Soundsystem, This is Happening
77. Lyrics Born, Now Look What You’ve Done: Greatest Hits
78. Priests, The Seduction of Kansas
79. Shamir, Ratchet
80. The Feelies, Crazy Rhythms
81. Merle Haggard, I’m a Lonesome Fugitive
82. Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys, The Tiffany Transcriptions, Vol. 4
83. Jerry Lee Lewis, Golden Hits
84. George Jones, The Essential George Jones, disc 2
85. Waylon Jennings, Waylon Live, disc 1
86. Big Thief, Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You
87. Johnny Bush, Whiskey River
88. H.C. McEntire, Eno Axis
89. Mitski, Puberty 2
90. Aimee Mann, Mental Illness
91. Smog, Dongs of Sevotion
92. The New Pornographers, Whiteout Conditions

Album reviews from a very jazz oriented couple of weeks:

Melody’s Echo Chamber, Emotional Eternal

A really quite lovely set of songs from the French singer Melody Prochet, who performs as Melody’s Echo Chamber (maybe I should perform my classes as Erik’s Echo Chamber). Singing in both English and French, this is some great dreamy indie pop about taking grief and turning it into something positive in your life. There’s no simple answer. And this is something that is not exactly original, but it’s also something that never gets old as it is so central to the human condition. So as I watch the world burn and the destruction of this beautiful planet, maybe this will help me.

A-

Tenniscoats, Tan-Tan Therapy

This is a 2022 remaster of this Japanese pop group’s 2007 release. It’s the first I heard of it. Some people were really into this release, but I find it really quite boring. It’s slow ambient music with some indie pop sounds. But there really is so little going on here that couldn’t be done better by others.

C

Ikue Mori/Satoko Fujii/Natsuki Tamura, Prickly Pear Cactus

Let’s stay in Japan with three of the greatest Japanese jazz players of our time. Fujii, the pianist, and Tamura, the trumpeter, are a long married powerhouse couple in Japanese free jazz. Mori is a unique figure in jazz, really the greatest musician working mostly with laptops in the genre’s history. None of these are easy artists (I’ve seen Fujii and Tamura twice and it is challenging even for me, though there’s always a strong sense of humor in the music), but this recording has a surprising accessibility to it. This is also one of those pandemic projects where they just sent files to each other and built the project that way, which at least in this case, worked really well. Mori is such an astounding artist with a unique approach to electronic music and Fujii such an arch pianist that you wouldn’t think it would work this well in fact, especially given that Tamura is more of a bleater than a blower. But this is like something you’ve never heard before and will want to hear again.

There’s nothing on YouTube from this album and any live performance is going to be something quite different, but this is as good as I could do.

A-

Danny Kamins/Vinny Golia/Garrett Wingfield, The Ojai Sessions

Recorded in 2018 but just released last year, this is a sax trio. I am most familiar with Golia, one of the most important musicians in the smaller west coast free jazz scene. He plays sopranino, soprano, baritone, and bass sax here (bass sax is a large instrument). Danny Kamins is on alto and baritone sax. Garrett Wingfield handles the tenor, as well as some alto and baritone. You might think would be a total sckroning blowout, but it really isn’t. It begins is a very muted way and mostly stays that way. It’s intense, even if not particularly loud. These are not guys playing Charlie Parker covers. These are guys who pushing envelopes on what the sax can do in conversation with other saxes. The obvious antecedent is World Saxophone Quartet, but the sound and style are totally different here than what those four legends are trying to do. It might seem a bit ridiculous to say that the down side of this is that it is more than a bit hard to listen to, but it is indeed more than a bit hard to listen to, even for a lover of free jazz. It’s a lot. Great art isn’t always easy. And if this is not quite great art, it is certainly worthy art.

B

Steve Dunn, Last Call

Dunn is an almost completely unknown singer songwriter. I saw a review of his album last year in an obscure publication, put it on the list. So I decided to check it out. This is only a little 7 song thing, barely more than an EP. But this guy has very real talent. These are some nice songs in the folk-country style. Not every one rises above the conventions of genre, but for people who like their singer-songwriter music, at the very least, this is someone who you ought to check out.

B

Ches Smith, Interpret It Well

Fantastic, mostly low-key but almost threatening album as such. This takes a frequent Smith trio–himself on drums, Craig Taborn on piano, Mat Maneri on viola–and adds Bill Frisell’s guitar. Now, these days a lot of Frisell’s solo work has moved to pretty and, frankly, boring and my attempts to get friends into him have largely failed in recent years. But it is when he is using that amazing technique on other people’s projects that his power really comes out today and since this is fairly contemplative music to being with, Frisell’s spaces between notes blends well. Smith also plays some vibes here that only adds to the overall feeling. This project comes across as some weird combo of a chamber quartet, some spacey soundscapes, and some angry fury borrowed from musics that have nothing to do with these guys training but probably does in their listening habits.

A

Villano Antillano, La Sustancia X

As a person with highly questionable Spanish speakers, I didn’t necessarily pick up from hearing this that this was an explicitly queer album, but this Puerto Rican rapper delivers the goods even if you don’t know that. In fact, the story is perhaps more interesting than the music, as this is a trans rapper in a world and culture that doesn’t necessarily have a lot of space for that. But, again, even without this knowledge, this is an album that clearly embraces hedonism and freedom while delivering an excellent flow behind Latin hip hop grooves. Not bad.

B

Ron Sexsmith, The Vivian Line

Evidently Canadians also play music? Who knew! As an American, I’ve never heard of such a thing!

Anyway, thought I’d check out the new Ron Sexsmith. Confess I’ve never paid him a ton of attention so I don’t know his catalog well at all. And really, this is just a lovely little album. I am sure everyone who likes Sexsmith already knows this about his work, but it’s really a perfect modern pop album, with pop as an older definition. The melody reigns supreme here and the songwriting is excellent. Mature music for mature people.

A-

Art Ensemble of Chicago, We Are on the Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration

Though a 50th anniversary celebration of this great collective, I didn’t find this to be among the Ensemble’s best albums. The first disc is from the studio and the second is live .The latter is better, a combination of new tunes (many of which are repeated from the first disc, though obviously in somewhat different form) and rethinking some of the band’s older compositions. Too often I found the first disc rather arid though, which has long been a problem I’ve had with Roscoe Mitchell’s work. I like some of it a lot but then some of it leaves me cold. This doesn’t leave me cold exactly and any release from these people has great historical value. But there are better recordings of the band out there.

B

Anat Cohen, Quartetinho

Cohen is a leading modern clarinetist and this is from her quartet that includes Victor Gonçalves on keys and accordion, Tal Mashiach on bass, and James Shipp on vibes and drums. This is a great example of how modern jazz can move in new directions without necessarily being experimental or free jazz. To me, the point of jazz is to move the music forward, not repeat the styles of the past. You can be respectful of the past without just wishing you were playing with Dave Brubeck in 1960. This is not a noisy album. It’s not experimental. What it does is take musical traditions from around the globe and let their rhythms and especially melodies enter into the conversation of post-bop jazz. That Cohen plays the clarinet and brings klezmer influences into the music already makes this somewhat different, but then you have clear Brazilian, Louisiana, and South African influences. You take all of this and put it into an incredibly tight band that know each other so well and you have just an incredibly listenable, repeatable album. Really liked this one, maybe more than I thought I would.

A-

Sharon Van Etten, We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong

This is Van Etten’s release from last year. She’s always been someone I respected more than really loved, part of a larger movement of neo indie folkies that too often can sound a bit too similar to each other, with maybe a bit too much yearning and maybe a bit too little kicking ass or just being angry. And this is mostly how I feel here. It’s a very tuneful album with some lush production and Van Etten’s signature voice. But for me, it doesn’t really rise into the anything very different than what’s come before it or to a new emotional or musical plane. It’s the same songs about toxic relationships and trying to hold it together with the mid-tempo indie rock sound, even if she does expand that palette on a couple of songs. It’s perfectly fine, yes. Good even. Just not, for me, a needed step forward. Her fans no doubt love it though. But she kind of a one-note artist.

B-

Rasmussen/Flahtery/Rowden/Corsano, Crying in Space

I always love a good self-description of a jazz album that is really impossible to describe in a way most people can understand. On Bandcamp, this is described as “A blisteringly sensitive assaultive slow dash concerning the heartbreaking space between and within solids.” Uh, OK. But “blisteringly sensitive assault” I can at least get behind as that’s a good description. This is nice and noisy. The two saxes make approximately as much noise as ol’ Octopus Arms Corsano does on his drums. Good example of the ways that free jazz and rock can intersect, even if the latter is more in attitude than in the style itself.

A-

East Axis, No Subject

A very solid new album from this quartet consisting of Matthew Shipp on piano, Scott Robinson on horns, Gerald Cleaver on drums, and Kevin Ray on bass. I enjoyed their 2021 release (though Allen Lowe was the sax player for that one) a good bit and am glad they are back with a new one. I don’t really know Robinson, at least not before this, but he and Shipp sound incredible together. Robinson is kind of the star for this one, with Shipp and the others often working underneath him. This is a great example of four musicians working together in an atmosphere of both personal and collective freedom, expressing yourself within the collective, one of the most beautiful realizations of jazz one can find.

A-

Slowthai, Tyron

A bit behind on the great British hip hop artist as he has a new album out and this is his 2021 release. But here we are. Maybe I will get to the new one in 2025. Now as for this one, I don’t really know what it means to split a 35 minute album over 2 “discs” when 99% of the people are listening to it are streaming or own an electronic file of it, but whatever, who really cares. After nearly destroying his career with bad behavior at an awards show, slowthai came back with an album that splits the difference between serious introspection and the kind of boasting one knows you are likely to get on a hip hop album. If it’s not his greatest album (and it’s not Nothing Great About Britain, let’s be clear here), it is at least thoughtful. Plus how many hip hop songs do you know that take the greatness of Britain’s National Health Service as its topic?

B+

My Morning Jacket, My Morning Jacket

There are bands you miss and there are bands that you really miss for twenty years knowing that you probably really should check them out. Then there are bands that you miss for twenty years that are headlining one of the nights at Newport Folk Festival next week and you finally just do it. Thus, My Morning Jacket. This is the self-titled album, which actually is their last release, from 2021.

And yeah, I guess it is pretty much fine straight ahead rock and roll? Doesn’t seem overly interesting to me. I am sure this will be fine live. The guitars are good. Does it stand up against most other good bands? Not so sure. Does this stand up against, say, Drive By Truckers? No freaking way. I am sure there are going to be staunch defenders in comments. Would like some explanation of the appeal.

B-

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