Music Notes
By So, writing on this website has led to a lot of good things in my life, from providing the material for my books to getting recognition as a labor historian. Sure, there are some negatives sometimes too, but mostly it’s good. But sometimes, something incredibly cool happens. There’s one reader who has access to my Amazon wish list and supplies me with books, which is an astoundingly generous thing to do. Another of these things happened recently. A reader–who I thank very, very, very much–contacted the great Jon Langford, legend from Mekons and Waco Brothers–and commissioned one of his paintings for me. This is now hanging on my wall.
Dude……..amazing! I thank you profoundly for such an awesome piece of art on my walls. Sorry for the bad picture, but anyone who follows the grave posts knows of my skills in that field…….. And boy do those words mean a lot now……
The Bee Gees turned into Spinal Tap with drummers in a week.
Hopefully whatever Andre 3000 is about to release is better than the flute thing. I maintain that if that project was not headed by Andre 3000, it would be dismissed for the mediocrity at best that it is.
Peter Sinfield died. I can’t say I am too torn up over losing the writer of “Ladies of the Road,” perhaps the most sexist song of the late 60s/early 70s, an impressive feat given the competition. And to be honest, I never cared for his writing with King Crimson, which was so ridiculously overwrought. The writer for the Wetton era was better. But what I did not know is that he became a fairly mainstream pop writer, including a big hit for Celine Dion!
Alice Brock, the subject of Arlo Guthrie’s interminable “Alice’s Restaurant” died as well.
This week’s playlist:
- Al Green, Call Me
- Gil Scott-Heron, Pieces of a Man
- Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors
- James McMurtry, Just Us Kids
- Jenny Scheinman and Alison Miller, Parlour Game
- Adam Lane Quartet, Fo(u)r Being(s)
- Shye Ben Tzur, Jonny Greenwood, Rajasthan Express, Junun
- Peter Gabriel, Passion: Music for the Last Temptation of Christ
- Bill Frisell, Nashville
- Art Blakey/ Clifford Brown/ Horace Silver/ Lou Donaldson/ Curley Russell, A Night at Birdland
- Freddie Hubbard, Open Sesame
- Parquet Courts, Content Nausea
- Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time, Songs from the Workbench
- Bob Dylan, John Wesley Harding
- Lucinda Williams, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
- Al Stewart, Between the Wars
- James Brandon Lewis’ Red Lily Quartet, For Mahalia, With Love
- Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band, 21st Century Molam
- Angelica Garcia, Gemelo
- V/A, Havana Lounge
- Rusty and Doug Kershaw, Louisiana Man
- Gillian Welch, The Harrow and the Harvest
- Lydia Loveless, Daughter
- Peter Rowan & Tony Rice, You Were There for Me
- Mount Moriah, Miracle Temple
- Lucinda Williams, self-titled
- Bobby Bare, Cowboys and Daddys
- Gram Parsons, Grievous Angel
- Steve Earle, Ghosts of West Virginia
- Wussy, Cincinnati, Ohio (x2)
- Songs: Ohia, Magnolia Electric Company
Album Reviews:
The Pink Stones, Introducing The Pink Stones
The Pink Stones are a Drive-By Truckers adjacent band, an Athens-based band featured their former steel guitarist John Neff and a bunch of other Athens country-rock veterans. This is their 2021 release. And….well, you know this is fine for a local band. Very much channeling the Son Volt/Whiskeytown era of alt-country, though leaning very heavily onto Neff’s steel, this is an acceptable set of songs but with a lead singer who can’t really deliver the goods. I never much cared for the initial alt-country world anyway. Found it highly Gen X indifference to, well, just about everything. Felt that way here too.
C+
Patricia Brennan, Breaking Stretch
I know Brennan primarily from her vibraphone work with Mary Halvorson’s Amaryllis band, which has two great recordings and which I’ve seen her four times, twice with Halvorson, one with Tomas Fujiwara, and once with Jeff Lederer. But this is the first project of hers I’ve heard and it is unsurprisingly fantastic. First, she’s just a grew vibes player. The strength in her hands and the control she has with those mallets is astounding, perhaps more so because you just don’t see a lot of vibraphone in jazz anymore. Here she plays with Jon Irabagon on alto and sopranino sax, Mark Shim on tenor, Adam O’Farrill on trumpet and electronics, Marcus Gilmore on drums, Mauricio Herrera on percussion, and Kim Cass on bass. It has a strong Latin feel and that’s not surprising given that she was born in Veracruz and so Caribbean rhythms are something she grew up with. Her vibes playing is pretty heavily influenced by salsa and other Latin American musical forms that deploy it a lot. And yet for all the percussion, she gives the horns a lot of breathing room here and at times, you even forget that this is a percussion-dominant work. It also really is a great balance between free jazz explosion and tight group work. Very recommended, one of the best jazz albums I’ve heard in 2024.
A
Marnie Stern, The Comeback Kid
No one can question Stern’s guitar work. One can question whether someone who has spent the last decade (until late 2022) in Jimmy Fallon’s band instead of recording is exactly a comeback kid. I would say this is a little to guitar flashy for my tastes. I am absolutely sure she can play anything and play it damn well, making her great in a talk show band. Her guitar playing has more than a little Eddie Van Halen in it. For me, that is both the strength and slight demerit here, as all the tapping and other pyrotechnics sometime take away from the songs. But it’s a solid enough release and certainly recommended for people who like guitar flash.
B
Chelsea Wolfe, She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She
I don’t like metal but I’ve always liked Wolfe and I think it’s that she really plays more horror-goth than traditional metal and she’s a much better singer that most metal singers (though a lot of that is the metal vocal style, which I really hate and which she doesn’t use). I don’t care very much about her persona I guess, but I do think she’s a tremendously talented vocalist and songwriter. I don’t like every album, but this is a good one. She’s a dark person and this album reflects that. She brings some new industrial music themes into this album and it matches her goth thing pretty well. The last album was a bit more spare and I didn’t think worked as well. Lots of guitar and synth does.
A-
Meridian Brothers, Mi Latinoamerica Sufre
The hipster Columbian cumbia/salsa band is back with another fantastic new release. I always think this band is going to be too hip for its own good, but the focus always remains on the danceability of the tracks. When I saw them at Big Ears, the audience included everyone from Waxahatchee to the experimental pianist Anthony Coleman, to give you a sense of the range of people into this band. There’s some additional highlife and soukous influences in this album, making the mashups even more fun than usual. At the very least, there isn’t another band out there doing this stuff, at least not that I know. Whether you like it or not, well, that’s up to you, but in terms of originality, there’s a lot going on here, especially for genre music.
A-
Richard Thompson, Ship to Shore
I love RT. He’s one of my all time favorite musicians. I am glad he is still a tourhound. But let’s face it, his top songwriting days are behind him. This is OK, like a lot of well produced albums by respectable songwriters of the 70s. But there isn’t anything on here that would equal even the weaker songs of, well not just Rumor and Sigh but even the less sensational You? Me? Us? I just don’t think we are going to get another great song out of him. But if we get the same quality of album as you might get from John Hiatt or Neil Young, well, that’s still well worth releasing and touring behind.
B-
Neil Young, Odeon Budokan
This live release covers some of the music Neil and Crazy Horse played on the Japanese part of their 1976 tour. The first side is acoustic Neil and the second is full on Crazy Horse. I have been getting a bit bored with the endless archival releases, mostly Neil’s work doesn’t change enough over time to justify this many releases. I mean, fine, it isn’t hurting anyone. But really, who other than superfans needs them? But I have to say, this is a good one. Limiting the album to five acoustic and five electric songs allows for the best recordings to make a quite accessible album. From starting with “Old Laughing Lady” to a great version of “Cortez the Killer” and a short but sweet version of “Cowgirl in the Sand,” this is one of the Neil live releases that is for more than just completists.
B+
Wussy, Cincinnati, Ohio
I did not think we’d see another Wussy album. Their first release since 2018 is of a band in deep mourning. Early in the pandemic, their steel guitarist John Erhardt died and that just devastated everyone, especially Chuck Cleaver, who was always susceptible to pretty heavy depression anyway. He and Lisa Walker kind of kept it together during the pandemic by doing Facebook shows where they covered everyone and it was great service at a time when no one could see people or do anything worth living for. It really helped me and a lot of people. But still, I wasn’t sure if we’d ever get a new album. But they eventually started recording and brought in another steel guy for some tracks and decided he was great and let’s keep him in the band. So we finally have an album. It’s not one of the greatest Wussy releases, but it’s a more than solid album. It’s also one of intense mourning, not only because of Erhardt, but just because Chuck is old and lots of people he knows are dying and he knows that his time is not so far away. I hear you man. So it’s a real sober album and that includes Lisa’s album. For a Wussy completist such as myself, perhaps slightly more disappointing is filling the album out with a couple of previously released songs–“Days and Hours,” released on a B-side years ago,, and “The Night We Missed the Horror Show,” which Chuck used on his solo album from a few years ago, which was incidentally less depressing.
So this is a good album and I am very happy to get another Wussy album. It’s just that it’s more good than great.
B+
Ran Cap Duoi, Ngu Ngay Ngay Ngay Tan The
Vietnamese experimental music from 2021. Here’s a scene I’m completely unfamiliar with! And so is just about everyone. Rap Can Duoi is a band that is pretty internet forward and kind of is the only one in that scene. So what they did was invite a bunch of other bands to play with them for 48 hours and then they cut it all up and edited the hell out of it and put it in a new mix that doesn’t necessarily represent obviously the various bands, but which certainly isn’t anything like you’ve heard before. It does fit broadly into the kind of electro-experimental stuff that has some level of global popularity. There’s also not much here I’d say is obviously Vietnamese, whatever that means. It’s not like it is necessary for a Vietnamese band to use some old Vietnamese string instruments or something. This is a globally facing music from a nation not always so globally facing and is at least worth a listen out of curiosity. I mostly liked it.
B+
Elisa Monteiro, Muda
More weird stuff, this time a 2022 release from the Brazilian violist Monteiro. Do you like your music to include some typewriter keys? Well, this is the album for you! Despite my typewriter key snark though, this is difficult but somewhat rewarding processed and messed up solo string music, with various electronics and theoretically a horn player, though you can’t; hear the person because it’s just cut up into the mix. If you are a fan of prepared slow music, you will probably like this. Most of you probably won’t care.
B
Vincent Neal Emerson, The Golden Crystal Kingdom
One subgenre I tend to like is the Texas singer-songwriter. From Townes and Guy to Jimmie Dale/Joe/Butch to Steve Earle and Rodney Crowell and Robert Earl and so many more, the names go on forever. But those guys are all old or dead. Are there new guys? And the answer seems to be yes, at least with Vincent Neil Emerson. I was pretty impressive by his album from last year, which is his 3rd. “The Man from Uvalde” is a powerful song about the shooting there. He does a pretty effective cover of Buffy St. Marie’s “Co’dine” and another of his buddy Charley Crockett’s “Time of the Cottonwood Trees.” Also, to his credit, Emerson, who is Native, came to the defense of St. Marie when the grifting race hustlers trying to decide who is and is not Native starting attacking her. But more to the point, he’s a very fine songwriter. I don’t know if I’d say he’s reached full maturity yet; maybe not ever song is actually first rate. That said, he’s moving in that direction, a real talent to follow.
B+
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.