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Music Notes

On April 27, 2024

At 7:00 pm

In General

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I’ve had something of a crisis of faith on the Music Notes posts, for two reasons. First, I am a terrible writer about music and so I find them consistently embarrassing. Second, they take a long time to write and I am busy trying to finish writing a couple of books here. On the other hand, they have done wonders in forcing me to not only listen to new music but to at least write a couple of sentences about it that I can have for the future. I will try to do better about getting them done. Key–get out of your own head and plow ahead! Anyway, it’s been a long time so here we go.

It doesn’t make it much easier that I’ve seen a lot of music lately. I am going to run down most of it here and then leave a couple of shows for the next post, which could even be next week if I don’t get inside my own head too much.

First things first, which is one of the coolest things to ever happen to me. I was on stage with the great John Zorn! So here’s the deal. Relevant Tones is a podcast dedicated to contemporary classical music. They do a great job too. Well, they decided, working with the New Press, which is my publisher, to do an episode dedicated to the 50th anniversary of Studs Terkel’s monumental 1974 book Working. Seems like a good time with all that is happening with the labor movement and work in general. So back in January, they ask me if I want to participate and I’m like, sure OK, could be fun, plus a free trip to New York. Even got a few graves out of it. But I didn’t actually pay attention to the whole program until shortly before and…..wait, John Zorn is performing a new piece????????? What the living fuck? I am going to be on stage with John Zorn? Indeed.

Here’s the thing about Zorn. He’s not someone that one really talks to. He showed up, along with his pianist, Brian Marsella who is also great, played his 8 minutes of blowing sax, basically into my ear, and then ran out of the auditorium as fast as he could. Ha ha, that’s fine, he’s a very weird dude! It was still super cool. Black Oak Ensemble, a fantastic Chicago-based string trio, performed all the other new compositions. This was great stuff. They were also super people, we went out for drinks afterward and had a nice chat. Black Oak Ensemble, by the way, topped the classical charts in 2022 for their album Avant l’orage. I mean, that might mean selling 50 copies, but you do what you can these days. The conversation itself was between myself and Anna Tavis, who is a business-side AI person. Interesting person, way way more optimistic about the future of work than I am, and about 2/3 of the way through, you can hear me get really impatient and move from sober conservation Loomis to speaking in front of unionists Loomis and you can guess which the audience preferred. Anyway, the podcast is available here, except for the Zorn piece, since the whole thing ran over and that was less connected to the Terkel anyway. They are going to use it later.

I’ve had a lot of cool things happen in my career and this was top 10, if not top 5. Sharing a stage with John Zorn! Really, really awesome.

I’ve seen a bunch of other shows lately too.

Last month, I was in Oregon visiting my dad. I noticed that Jess Williamson was playing at The Get Down in Portland and so I headed north for a great show. I was really impressed. She was just great. If you know her, it’s probably from Plains, which was her one-off band with Katie Crutchfield, better known as Waxahatchee. But Williamson’s latest album, Time Ain’t Accidental is really good, especially the out of this world title track. Now, if you’ve heard Plains, you shouldn’t be surprised that this show was really a country show, but I kinda was? I guess I expected her to be a bit more general folkie-indie-Americana, but no, this was a full-fledged country show, replete with a really fantastic pedal steel guy who also played dobro some. This show just really hit home with me–a young woman playing country her way without caring much about Nashville or fitting into any scene but just because this is her scene. She did a couple of Plains songs, most of the new album, and a few other cuts, including a Shania cut. I haven’t heard Shania Twain in a million years; maybe I would like it now? Anyway, setlist is here. Erin Rae opened and did a perfectly fine slightly more countryesque Joni Mitchell thing.

I was also in New Orleans two weeks ago for the Organization of American Historians meeting, plus grave visits (thanks for that!). It just so happened that French Quarter Fest was going on at the same time. Oh, well, then….You are saying I could go see music and eat awesome food or I could sit in a conference hotel and listen to historians blab on and eat a terrible salad at some luncheon? Gee, what a choice to make. Moreover, the historian who brought me to Japan in 2022 came over for OAH and he is a huge gigantic fan of traditional American music and how much of that do you really get to see in Tokyo? Also, it was free. So then……..wow.

I saw about a half-dozen sets over the three days. I did have real duties at OAH that got in the way a little bit. But I saw some great stuff and some stuff that was totally fine. The most important person I saw was Irma Thomas, who sings pretty damn well for 84. I had never seen the Queen of New Orleans Soul before and I am super glad I did! Great crowd and we weren’t even that far away. She needs a bit of help getting out to the stage, but once she’s there, she is full on energy and not sitting either. Good for her and good for me for seeing her. The other really notable act I saw was Ìfé, which is this fascinating and very cool band that combines hip-hop and trap with Afrobeat, Cuban, and New Orleans music. Very percussion heavy, extremely inventive and innovative music. Their latest album has been on my album list since its release, but I hadn’t gotten to it yet. That really blew my mind.

Some of the other acts I saw were Chris Thomas King, the Louisiana blues guitarist who is about as old-school blues guitar as you are going to get in the South today and who had a whole book demanding that people realize that Louisiana is the home of the blues, not those bastards from Mississippi. He has songs about this too. It was the greatest interstate musical rivalry I’d experienced since visiting the Tammy Wynette museum in Mississippi and the people there wanted to make damn well sure you knew she was there and not the big city of Red Bay, Alabama, despite what those big city snobs have to say about it. I saw Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band, which is a good zydeco act and my friend was basically totally unfamiliar with zydeco, so while he ate alligator for the first time, I got to explain the washboard and spoons to him. That was fun for both of us. I saw the 79rs Gang too. This I liked a lot. It’s a combination of hip hop and the Mardi Gras Indians and other forms of New Orleans music. It started with two Big Chiefs, from the 7th and 9th Ward decided they wanted a band. Again, a great example of the fertile musical soup of New Orleans. Caught a bit of the Soul Rebels, which was alright. Finally, I saw Papa Gros, who has a kind of Dr. John thing and was fine.

In conclusion, OAH should be in New Orleans during French Quarter Fest every year.

Oh also, I flew into New Orleans slightly early and it just so happened that Leyla McCalla was playing an album release show that night on an outside stage. Glad it was outside because I was coming down with a nasty little cold that completely wiped me out the next day and I could stay away from people and not worry about getting them sick or just missing the show. So I was far from 100% and I didn’t get to stay for the whole thing because I was declining pretty rapidly. If you don’t know McCalla’s solo work, she was part of Our Native Daughters with Rhiannon Giddens, Allison Russell, and Amethyst Kiah, and sings in both English and Creole French. She lives in New Orleans. What surprised me a little bit is that even in New Orleans, this Black artist had a mostly white audience. I guess she’s probably used to that by now. Anyway, she’s great and I am so glad I finally saw her, because I missed her at Big Ears due to whatever awesome show I was at.

Whew, that’s a lot of live music!

A few other notes:

Really fascinating interview with the cellist Tomeka Reid, who did not have the normal background of jazz greats and yet is now an unquestioned jazz great on an instrument with a short history in the genre.

I thought this was a great discussion of the current iteration of Sleater-Kinney, which is basically things are never going to be the same without Janet Weiss. It’s simply not a band at this point. It’s Carrie and Corin and whoever they hire to fill out the tour. What Janet provided was uncontrollable power on the drums, just beating the living shit out of them. S-K without Janet is The Who without Keith. It can go on and you can go to the shows and see some of your favorite songs, but it really is never going to be the same. I haven’t even listened to the new S-K yet, not because I’m not going to but because at this point it is a secondary priority, not what I need to hear right now. Which is also pretty much like the latest release from a band I love but has gone stale (in this case, moldy), the Rolling Stones. Given that these are the two greatest rock bands in the history of the genre (Talking Heads as its peak is right there too), I am quite comfortable comparing them. It simply is what it is at this point. At worst, it’s still a very good band. But it’s not what it was.

I have very little patience for the fashion writing at the New York Times, but I do like St. Vincent, so profiling the fashion-forward Annie Clark on the release of her new album does at least make sense.

A case that Chicago was once the heart of country music. That seems overstated, to say the least, but it is worth noting that there are lots of areas with deeper histories of country. music than you’d think, including the Pacific Northwest. Like Chicago, it’s where a lot of southerners ended up in the mid-20th century. Loretta Lynn got her start in the NW, Buck Owens was up there for awhile, and today, both Brandi Carlisle and Brandy Clark are queer country singers from small Washington towns. A music historian/critic friend of mine suggested I write a real article about this. I admit that I am intrigued by the idea.

On the great Mdou Moctar, who is both very angry at colonialism and the best guitarist I have ever seen in my entire life, possibly because he’s the best guitarist who has ever lived. And I’ve seen a lot of the all-timers on guitar!

A word for Michael Cuscuna, who is responsible for many, many archival jazz releases and who died a few days ago. And another for Bob Heil, creator of gigantic 70s rock sound systems and a man who probably caused more hearing damage than any other human. Sound fucking ruled though. We talked about Dickey Betts here just after his death was reported, but certainly feel free to remember him some more too! And perhaps God or Satan or whatever led Mike Pinder out of life by reciting “Breathe deep, the gathering gloom…..”

Playlist for the last month or so:

Joanna Newsom, Divers
Margaret Glaspy, Emotions and Math (x2)
Stevie Wonder, Signed, Sealed, and Delivered
Emmylou Harris, Pieces of the Sky
Dale Watson, Live in London….England
Thomas Dollbaum, Wellswood
Ana Tijoux, 1977
Harlan Howard, All Time Favorite Country Songwriter
Chris Gaffney, Loser’s Paradise
Rough Guide to the Music of Ethiopia
Mates of State, Mountaintops
The Postal Service, Give Up
Matthew Shipp Trio, Critical Mass
Ennio Morricone, The Legendary Italian Westerns
Miles Davis, In a Silent Way
Gram Parsons, Grievous Angel
Millie Jackson, Still Caught Up
Billy Bang, Outline No. 12
James Brandon Lewis, Eye of I
Rosalía, Motomami
Ariana Grande, Sweetener
Ches Smith & These Arches, Hammered
Kronos Quartet & DJ Spooky, Rebirth of a Nation
Jaimie Branch, Fly or Die
Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Dynamic Maximum Tension
Kenny Wollesen, Rasa Rasa
Jane Weaver, Flock
Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires of the City
The New Pornographers, Whiteout Conditions
Orquesta Akokan, self-titled
Melissa Laveaux, Radyo Siwel
Nubya Garcia, Source
Torres, What an Enormous Room
Greg Brown, One More Goodnight Kiss
REM, Life’s Rich Pageant
Max Roach with Abbey Lincoln, We Insist!
Jade Jackson, Gilded
Mon Laferte, Seis
St. Vincent, Daddy’s Home
Angel Olsen, Forever Means
Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Tell My Sister
Merle Haggard, Live, Austin TX, 1978 (x2)
Margaret Glaspy, Echo the Diamond
Woody Shaw, Rosewood
Daniel Carter/Matthew Shipp/William Parker/Gerald Cleaver, Welcome Adventure, Vol. 2
Kurt Vile, Wakin on a Pretty Daze
Rodney Crowell, Triage
The Bug, Fire
Solange, When I Get Home
Harry Nillsson, Pussy Cats
Soccer Mommy, Color Theory
Iron and Wine & Calexico, In the Reins
Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home
Johnny Bush, Whiskey River
Merle Haggard, If We Make It Through December
George Jones, The Essential, disc 1
George Jones, I’m a People
Johnny Paycheck, On His Way
Wussy, Funeral Dress II
Robbie Fulks, Upland Stories
Amanda Shires, Take It Like a Man
Johnny Paycheck, Someone to Give My Love To
Drive By Truckers, Go Go Boots
Tom T. Hall, Faster Horses
Camera Obscura, Let’s Get Out of This Country
The Beths, Future Me Hates Me
Janelle Monae, iTunes Festival
Sonny Sharrock, Ask the Ages
Tropical Fuck Storm, Deep States
Hurray for the Riff Raff, The Navigator
Sleater-Kinney, One Beat
Sleater-Kinney, The Hot Rock
Torres, Thirstier
Alejandro Escovedo, A Man Under the Influence
Dim Lights, Thick Smoke And Hillbilly Music: Country & Western Hit Parade, 1956
Sleater-Kinney, Dig Me Out
Chris Stapleton, Traveller
Fairport Convention, Liege and Lief
Tom Russell, Road to Bayamon
Natalie Hemby, Puxico
Willie Nelson, Red Headed Stranger
Billy Joe Shaver, Old Five and Dimers
Quantic & Nidia Gongora, Curao
Dewey Redman, Tarik
McCoy Tyner, Sahara
Dilly Dally, Heaven
Sarah Gayle Meech, Tennessee Love Song
Knitting Factory Goes to the Northwest
William Parker, Long Hidden
Superchunk, What a Time to Be Alive
Tom Ze, self-titled
Jim Lauderdale, Time Flies
Emiliana Torrini, Fisherman’s Woman
Richard Thompson, Front Parlour Ballads
The Coathangers, Suck My Shirt
Bomba Estereo, Elegancia Tropical
Boygenius, The EP
Gary Stewart, Out of Hand
Grateful Dead, American Beauty
Drive By Truckers, The New OK
Marty Robbins, Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs
Tom T. Hall, I Wrote a Song About It
Gary Stewart, The Essential
Drive By Truckers, Decoration Day
Bonnie Prince Billy, Beware
Newport Folk Festival Best of Bluegrass 1959-66, disc 3
John Coltrane, Stellar Regions
Jerry Lee Lewis, Country Songs for City Folks
Bill Callahan, Reality
Mike Cooley, The Fool on Every Corner
Webb Pierce, self-titled
Richard Thompson, Watching the Dark, disc 2
Townes Van Zandt, Live at the Old Quarter, disc 2
Cari Lee and the Saddle-Ites, Red Barn Baby
The Coathangers, Nosebleed Weekend
Gran Parsons, G.P.
Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Inner Mounting Flame
James Brown, Live at the Apollo
B.B. King, Best of
Buddy Tabor: Hope: The First Step Toward Disillusionment
John Coltrane, Blue Train
Jeff Lederer, Balls of Simplicity
Wayne Horvitz, Whispers, Hymns, and a Murmur
Reggie Workman, Summit Conference
Sam Rivers, Dimensions & Extensions
Tom T. Hall, For the People in the Last Hard Town
Willie Nelson, Shotgun Willie
Amy Helm, What the Flood Leaves Behind
King Crimson, Islands
Illegal Crowns, Unclosing
Fred Frith Trio, Another Day in Fucking Paradise
Drive By Truckers, English Oceans
Angela Easterling, Common Law Wife
John Hartford, Mark Twang
Eric Taylor, Scuffletown
James McMurtry, Complicated Game
Grey DeLisle, The Graceful Ghost
Dolly Parton, Hello, I’m Dolly
Flying Burrito Brothers, Farther Along: Best of
The Hacienda Brothers, self-titled
The Freighthoppers, Waiting on the Gravy Train
Hand-Picked: The Best of Rounder Bluegrass, disc 2
The Rough Guide to the Music of Spain
Buddy Tabor, Edge of Despair
Willie Nelson, Phases and Stages
Sir Douglas Quintet, Live from Austin, TX
The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs, disc 2
Jamila Woods, Water Made Us
Evan Parker, Matthew Wright, & Trance Map+, Etching the Ether
Hurray for the Riff Raff, The Past is Still Alive
Whitney Rose, We Still Go to Rodeos
Conjunto!, Texas-Mexican Border Music, Vol. 6
Lisa O’Neill, All of This is Chance
Waxahatchee, Great Thunder
Craig Taborn, Daylight Ghosts

Album Reviews, in what is safe to say was not the most successful sets of listening I’ve had. A few good albums, a lot of meh albums, a few shitty ones. What can you do but keep listening! And eventually I got to some good ones since this is a ridiculous 4 weeks worth of listening here. Going to keep these extra short due to their being so many of them.

En Attendant Ana, Principia

Perfectly nice and acceptable indie pop from this French band singing in English. It’s catchy, it’s cute, it’s twee, but you can say this about so, so many bands these days. I guess they have a slight accent that separates them from the pack? It’s fine.

B-

Holy Western Parallels, Holy Western Parallels

This is a tiny little project from a few years ago. 11 songs over 24 minutes of vaguely connected electropop, sometimes with rap or a woman singer over it. Some of it is kind of interesting. The drummer is quite good and some of the electronic arrangements get attention. I like the rap too. But overall, it feels like someone’s mix tape as much as anything else.

B-

Turnstile, Glow On

Turnstile is evidently the hipster’s favorite hardcore band and this album attempts to merge hardcore with some pop elements, at least in my hearing of the lyrics, which you can actually understand. But boy does it just sound like clichéd hard rock to me. Very earnest but also without subtlety in the vocals and also just feels like the kind of dumb shit people thought was great music in high school. This was 34 minutes that felt like 34 hours.

D+

Kelly Hunt, Ozark Symphony

A lovely though sparse little album that benefits from repeated listening. New folk music that probably takes being folk music a little too seriously, but a real talent here worth additional attention.

B+

FBC, O AMOR, O PERDÃO E A TECNOLOGIA IRÃO NOS LEVAR PARA OUTRO PLANETA

This very long Brazilian album might be interesting lyrically if you speak Portuguese, which I do not. But without that, it’s just 105 minutes of a disco beat with some periodically interesting sound vocals over the top of them. If 105 minutes of disco and autotune and heading out to the club for a long night on the floor in São Paulo is your bag, heck might you think this is great.

C+

Logan Ledger, Golden State

Fairly decent 70s style urban smooth country, but from a newish artist who released this last year. Think Don Williams or maybe Mac Davis. Not quite Gary Stewart though. Like Williams and Davis, even at their peak, it’s fine. But that stuff could always move into cheese pretty quickly and Ledger can fall prey to the same choices. To me, like the Laurel Canyon wold of soft rock, the appeal of that era of smooth music is a bit lost on me. But it’s listenable at least, which puts it in the top half of these album choices this week. Nice singer though. “All the Wine in California” is a pretty good song. So is “Court of Love,” this one because it just a good country cut.

Haroula Rose, Catch the Light

Rose is more known for her work in the film world than her music, but this is nicely picked sweet folk music. Fits in the world of Kath Bloom, though perhaps about less ethereal, with musings on life and nature and dreams and such. Plus a Victor Jara cover, which makes sense given that whatever they probably share politically, she definitely shares the martyred Chilean’s approach to music. Floaty.

Altin Gun, Yol

A nice Turkish band based in Amsterdam. This is fine Turkish rock, with no shortage of pop influences and some from that nation’s great psychedelic movement of the past (I doubt Erdogan listens to that kind of Turkish music….). Does it compel as much as other Turkish albums I’ve heard? Not really.

B-

The Boo Radleys, Keep On With Falling

Here’s a band I hadn’t thought about in a looooong time. But they released their first album in 24 years in 2022. If you are really into this, you can get a 2 1/2 deluxe version with all the other takes and such. You’d have to be a real fan for that. I dunno, this is….fine? Actually, it really isn’t. It’s a snoozefest. They put the band back together without their guitarist and songwriter Martin Carr and it shows. It just sounds like some middle aged guys trying to relive their youth without any vision on the lyrics or sound. It doesn’t suck. It’s capable 90s style Britpop. But it’s like a Boo Radleys cover band decided to write some new songs that sound like their favorite band. They don’t add up to much.

Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids, Afro Futuristic Dreams

This afrofuturistic jazz borrows from Sun Ra (obviously) but just as much from a Fela Kuti jam and people such as Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings and Orgone and all sorts of soul/jazz/funk outfits. It’s jazz, but a rather populist jazz ready to get people on the dance floor. There’s certainly nothing wrong with a populist jazz. I just wish everything was a bit sharper here–the politics and the arrangements. Still, it’s good music, just not a really great album.

B+

Erika Wennerstrom, Sweet Unknown

Shortly after this 2018 album came out, I saw Wennerstrom (well-known for her band The Heartless Bastards) do a show, opening for someone or another, probably Drive By Truckers I suppose. She killed it. She had this guitarist who was a fucking beast. This was a tiny little woman and she could shred like hardly anyone I’ve ever seen. I wish I knew the name of that guitarist.

Anyway, 6 years later and I am finally getting around to hearing the record. It’s good. I am going to try and forget finding out that the album was inspired by her doing ayahuasca in the Amazon. Despite that, it’s really good Americana rock. A little jammy at times, but the blues-rock riffs are more well-earned than the vast majority of those who try it. Well-written, wonderfully sung.

And hey, it only took me 11 albums this week to find something I really loved, which is a lot of albums! Always feels good to get that payoff.

A-

Ruston Kelly, The Weakness

An album mostly about getting high to deal with a fallen apart life, which in his case has been a relationship and marriage with Kacey Musgraves that blew up. Well, I guess that’s a good topic. But if we have to compare, he can’t sing anywhere nearly as effectively as his ex-wife. Comparisons to The National or maybe Sufjan Stevens will abound; there’s the same kind of sad sack guy pouring it onto his sleeve. He’s an OK writer and this is a reasonably solid entry into the divorce album genre, but to compare this with Shoot out the Lights or Blood on the Tracks or Sea Change will quickly demonstrate the distance between a great divorce album and an OK one.

Also, to reference a question repeated in one of this album’s songs, if Michael Keaton did kill himself in Multiplicity, would it be genocide?

B-

The Wild Feathers, Greetings from the Neon Frontier

This band of country rockers from Georgia have gotten quite a few accolades, but this just feels like cliché to me. I don’t really mind when bands sound like The Eagles or whatever; for whatever you want to say about The Eagles, the problem wasn’t the sound. But this is just another album of poppy melody-heavy country rock with a lot of guitars singing about the highway. For me, this is a total snoozer. A relatively pleasant one I suppose. But, to use the words of the kids these days, this is mid.

C+

Tyshawn Sorey Trio, Continuing

One of these jazz releases that only allows you to stream one out of the four tracks, so consider this based entirely on the 10 minute opener, titled “Reincarnation Blues.” Very old school work for Sorey, who can work anywhere from post-bop to free jazz and whose most famous gig is probably in the Vijay Iyer Trio (though he was sick the one time I saw the Iyer trio and someone else sat in so I don’t think I’ve actually seen Sorey live). Here’s he working with Aaron Diehl on piano and Matt Brewer on bass. Very nice interplay, very chill song. Maybe not my favorite thing, but the quality of the players cannot be questioned.

Nothing from this album on YouTube, so here’s a piece from a different Sorey Trio release.

B+

Ivo Perelman Trio, Garden of Jewels

<p><p>The prolific Perleman here works with a frequent trio–Matthew Shipp on piano and Whit Dickey on drums. All of these guys are so prolific that almost every Music Notes has at least something from one of them. This 2021 release is an excellent primer into their work together. When Perelman and Shipp are both playing the highest notes on their instruments in tandem in the second track, I thought I might cry from what I was hearing. </p>
Not surprisingly, nothing from this album is on YouTube, so here is a video of Perelman and Matthew Shipp live.</p>

Hurray for the Riff Raff, The Past is Still Alive

Saw Hurray at Big Ears and they were great. Alynda Segarra is such a wonderful songwriter. “Buffalo” is an absolutely great song. This is a little more in the modern folk/rock music that the band did earlier in their career and while I welcomed the turns on the last couple of albums to some different sounds, definitely nothing wrong with going home here. Lots of songs on Segarra’s past drifting around the country on trains and playing in hobo bands and the like too. Great American band, emphasis on American.

Sam Gendel/Fabiano do Nascimento, The Room

A nice pairing between the hot young soprano sax player Gendel and the Brazilian guitarist Nascimento. The interplay between them is nice on a chill out album that is a bit less chill if you listen closely. Still, this can retreat into background music for faculty parties pretty quickly (if faculty were cool enough to hear this album, which the vast majority are not). I would play it in that circumstance. As for a more common listen, I don’t think it would do that much for me, being a bit tepid at times. But they are both quite fine musicians who deserve greater attention.

B+

Jon Batiste, We Are

I do not get the appeal of Batiste, the bandleader for Stephen Colbert and releaser of universally beloved except by me jazz albums that seem to go for a greatest common denominator approach of creating music to make the most people feel good, which means music that is not very interesting. But I figured I’d go back in time to check out his 2021 album and see if that was any different.

And actually I did like this better. More soulful, funkier, great guest appearances. It still feels more than little meh at times, but is overall a solid album that runs only 38 minutes, so boredom doesn’t become a factor, even on the lesser cuts.

Ruthie Foster, Healing Time

Foster is one of those solid blues-soul-gospel singers that can charge a ton of money for old white people to come and watch, or at least she does that in New England. Good for her, she deserves it. Musically, it’s fine. She can sing, of course. The material can be a bit so-so. She’s not taking any risks. She has a market and she knows how to fill it. At this point, why would she take a risk? At the very worst, this is highly listenable. The ceiling is not very high, but neither is the floor low.

Local Natives, Time Will Wait For No One

Do you like Beach Boys-style harmony? Because they lean all-in on that. Me, it has never really touched much. This is completely OK modern indie rock that doesn’t much challenge, but sure loves The Beach Boys. Acceptable, but also boring.

B-

Guided By Voices, Space Gun

Will it shock you that this 2018 GBV album is basically the same as every other GBV album, with loud guitars, near-nonsense lyrics, and overall an attitude of a bunch of aging dudes who do not care if you don’t like it? No, it should not. And yet, the riffs rule. To me, GBV is still the king of the garage bands and that kind of rock and roll should never be understated. I can’t argue that this is a great album. I can argue that it is a good GBV album and that’s just fine.

B+

Primer Regimen, 1983

Colombian hardcore punk. It’s loud and it makes you want to be angry at whatever they are angry about. And even if it is a bit much for you, it’s only about 12 minutes long. And really, who cares about the lyrics, you couldn’t understand them if they were in English either. Not the greatest little punk EP I’ve ever heard, but certainly a worthy one.

B+

Guided by Voices, Welshpool Frillies

Why not more GBV? This is last year’s version. Or one of last year’s version, since there were three album releases in 2023. This is also completely fine, like all the rest. I’d probably put it a tick lower than the last due to fewer earworms, but it barely matters.

Cola Boyy, Prosthetic Boombox

Liked this more than I thought on reading about it. This is a 2021 album from Cola Boyy, a disabled Californian who has overcome a lot. Combining disco with his own unique voice, a produce of the disability and something that he addresses forthrightly in the songs (honestly, his voice is not that unusual), this album provides an inspiring, politicized view of the world from a person who has lived struggles.

B+

Robert Forster, The Candle and the Flame

Sadly not the actor. But still a good album from this veteran Aussie musician and rock critic. “I Don’t Do Drugs I Do Time” is a fantastic song. I really should check out more of this guy’s work.

A-

Bert Jansch, Bert at the BBC

You have to really love Bert Jansch to be super into a 7 1/2 hour collection of live BBC performances. But if you just listen to a disc here and there, it’s pretty great. I did not listen to the whole thing, not even close. So take this for what it is worth. But could I see investing in this and enjoying these performances as they come up on my shuffle for years and years? 100%.

A-

Millie Jackson, On the Soul Country Side

I had missed this 2014 release from the soul legend. Caught Up remains one of my favorite albums of all time. Some of her later work got a bit, well, there’s an album cover of her sitting on the toilet. This is a nice late-career release. There’s such a long and storied history of crossover between country and soul/R&B. Despite the fans often wanting nothing to do with the other, the artists do. This is a solid entry into that that covers a lot of good standards, such as “I Can’t Stop Loving You” while rewriting a couple of songs like Kristofferson’s “If You Don’t Like Hank Williams” to be about how if you don’t like Millie Jackson, you can kiss her ass. Yeah, that sounds like her.

B+

Drew Daniel & John Weise, Continuous Hole

This 2018 project from two electronic musicians is challenging, if nothing else. This is not easy music, that’s for sure. I actually had to turn it down because the electronics were hurting my ears, not in an aesthetically unpleasant way so as in an actual physical way. It actually kind of reminds me of 80s era Henry Kaiser, where the point seemed to me more about how to make a certain weird sound from a guitar much more than creating any kind of real composition. I respect what these guys are doing like I respect what Kaiser was doing back then. The technical aspects of this are quite impressive and, yes, there are plenty of sounds I’ve never heard before. The problem is I don’t need this much signal processing in my life and so I basically don’t in fact want to hear these sounds again.

Duster, Stratosphere

Going deep into history for the 1998 release by Duster, rereleased as a 25th anniversary edition last year. I didn’t really know this band at the time and that doesn’t surprise me, since this kind of dreamscape pop was definitely not my thing then and is only occasionally now. Wish I had stayed not hearing this. I don’t really mind the quieter guitars and quiet singing either–after all, there’s a lot of Yo La Tengo songs like this. As much as I love YLT, they do have some boring early albums. This is like a boring YLT album turned down to extra boring. The lyrics are so quiet as to be mostly inaudible. The drummer is terrible. I like a lot about the droning guitars, but this blends together into a massive snoozefest very quickly. Great for a night with heroin!

Feist, Multitudes

I never really got the Feist blowup of the mid 2000s. There are some good songs, but overall, I found her work too boring for real enjoyment. But I hadn’t paid much attention in years and so revisiting her latest album, 20 years into her career, seemed like a worthy idea. Meh, still pretty boring. Listenable, sure. But not exciting at all.

B-

Medicine, On the Bed

The venerable indie pop band from California provides a solid new addition to the Ty Segall genre of catchy, noisy garage pop, this time mostly through Beatles covers. And then a 10 minute mostly spoken word thing that randomly turns this into an avant-garde thing that wouldn’t be out of place at an experimental music festival. That was an unexpected twist! It’s hard to know what to make of this, largely because the spoken word thing so dominates the album after the covers of “Blue Jay Way” and “She Said She Said” and the like. But it’s certainly something!

The Handsome Family, Hollow

One of my favorite Albuquerque bands, I should probably listen to Handsome Family more than I do. So I decided to check out their release from last year. It’s another solid and slightly odd release with the unique vocals that feel like they are from some alternative religious text or something, especially since half their songs are always about animals anyway. This band isn’t for everyone, but I’ve always found them rewarding.

A-

Cakes de Killa, Svegali

Man, this shit flows. The fact that it is openly queer is important for what it represents and that’s cool, but it’s the incredibly chill flow that seems to never end that really grabbed me. This slaps. He’s very heavily jazz oriented and has talked of this album as influenced by people such as Alice Coltrane and Yusef Lateef. I’m not sure I totally hear either of them, but that he is a jazz fan is obvious. But what really works here is just sitting back and letting the style of these words flow over you. It’s a remarkable experience.

Susan Alcorn Quintet, Pedernal

Alcorn is the master of jazz pedal steel guitar. Here she works with Mark Feldman on violin, Michael Formanek on bass, Mary Halvorson on guitar, and Ryan Sawyer. I don’t know Sawyer, but the others are all complete beasts. Plus you don’t see Feldman as often as you used to, so it was nice to hear him again. Alcorn is all about the atmosphere. In fact, I’m surprised she’s never worked, to my knowledge anyway, with the more standard guitarist who is all about atmosphere, who of course is Bill Frisell. Seems like they would dig each other. Anyway, the only reservation I have here is how floaty this is, but the quality of musicians is so high and you just don’t see that much like this in the jazz world.

A-

Christian McBride’s New Jawn, Prime

It’s taken me awhile to really warm up to McBride’s genius. I mean, obviously he’s a great bassist, I never questioned that. But he seemed rather conservative in his choices to me. But I don’t think that’s right. I think the way he kind of took over for Wynton Marsalis as the recognized most important mainstream jazz musician might have led to me becoming slightly dismissive without reason. Some of my transformation is seeing him for the first time at Big Ears, some of it is just listening to more of his work, some of it is also watching him improve the programming of Newport Jazz, which he more or less runs these days.

In any case, this is a fantastic album that moves between older and newer styles, swings like crazy, booms and gets quiet, and is probably the best album I’ve heard in the last month.

The Fauns, How Lost

In 2013, the Fauns, one of the foundational British shoegaze bands, hung up their instruments. But after a decade, they decided to record a new album and it is a very different kind of thing than their previous work. It’s not that it rejects shoegaze. It’s that it merges it with some serious dance music, Now, I do not listen to a lot of dance music and usually electronic music of most kinds does not rate very highly here. But there are exceptions and a lot of them come from powerful women singers who merge good lyrics into the beats. This is a great example of this.

A-

Tanukichan, Gizmo

Big fan of this crunchy, noisy indie pop album. Actually, no, this is a rock and roll album. She’s a whisper singer, but the voice is high enough in the mix and the music is super around it, so this really works for me. I will totally buy this. Is it 90s throwback? Yep, but good 90s throwback.

Jane Weaver, Love in Constant Spectacle

I didn’t like this as much as the last couple of Weaver albums, largely because she moves a bit away from the next era dance music by and perhaps for middle aged people into a bit more straightforward of work, but this remains a catchy, fun album.

B+

Bill Frisell, Four

Maybe the best Frisell album under his own name in quite some time. Frisell was for so long my favorite musician, but in the last 10 or 15 years ago, he’s gotten so boring. He’s now in his 70s, so it’s hard to see him returning to work as compelling as he did in the mid 90s-through late 00s. But this was nice. Moving away from his somewhat staid work with only bass and drums, his new quartet includes Greg Tardy on sax, Gerald Clayton on piano, and Johnathan Blake on drums. They revisit a few of Frisell’s older compositions and a bunch of new tunes in a fairly interesting session. This isn’t a great album per se, but it’s more than solid and I hope Frisell continues along this path for awhile.

B+

Christopher Paul Stelling, Forgotten But Not Gone and Few and Far Between

Stelling is one of those guys who keeps going in the music business without really ever breaking through. Why he hasn’t hit it bigger, I don’t know. I think he’s an excellent singer-songwriter with an expressive voice for folk music. If you like Gregory Alan Isakov or Iron & Wine, this should be completely up your alley. Listen to it! This is another excellent release from him.

A-

Jazz is Dead 17: Lonnie Liston Smith

Another useful entry into the “what happened to this old guy” series from Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, this time from Lonnie Liston Smith, one of the kings of acid jazz in the 70s. Smith was awesome at his peak and, like a lot of the JID series, I was like, oh wow, this is great to hear. And it is. It’s maybe not at the peak of Smith in the early 70s, but it is most certainly a really worthy release.

B+

Finally, this post is done. Thank god. As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.

79rs gang, black oak ensemble, chris thomas king, ife, irma thomas, jess williamson, john zorn, leyla mccalla, music notes