Music Notes
By 
I saw Bill Frisell play last week at the Narrows Center in Fall River. It was my 7th Frisell show over the last 30 years and one of the best ones. I have detailed my journey with Frisell in the past here. For years, he was my favorite musician. The 90s was just gold. He then went on his increasingly spare journey into Americana, which was interesting if not always my favorite. But he was on a clear path. Then in the late 00s came some more really good albums where he incorporated global musicians and more production. But the 2010s were mostly pretty rough. When he was on other people’s projects, he could sound great, but as some critic noted, his own work was just “Boomer soundscapes.” That hit a nadir to me on his John Lennon cover album. There’s nothing really wrong with it. It’s just boring and he seemed to adapt pretty as a slogan. The last show I saw before the pandemic was him with Petra Haden and some others in a more vocally oriented group. It was a very boring show. Moreover, my friends who kept hearing about Frisell found him just really dull and they were not interested in my explanations about why that wasn’t really true, maybe because I didn’t believe them.
But his last couple of projects have been good and that’s been reflected in the shows. I saw him with his new quartet that includes Greg Tardy on sax last year at Newport and thought that was a very good show. His new project is him again gathering a lot of his old friends together. That includes Thomas Morgan on bass, Rudy Royston on drums, Hank Roberts on cello, Eyvind Kang on viola, and Jenny Scheinman on violin. Having Kang and Scheinman in this group really helps, as both are really boundary pushing artists. The string trio worked so great here too with the traditional rhythm backing. Frisell played some new songs, some of his recognizable older tunes, and then ended with some interesting versions of the Americana tunes he fell in love with, including a great “Hard Times” to end the show. It was a really satisfying experience and reminded me why I thought he was so great for so long to begin with.
Bandcamp sometimes does these fantastic album overviews of obscure musicians and I was super pumped for one on the great bassist Melvin Gibbs, who is traditionally more of a sideman, if a tremendously powerful one. I saw him with Harriet Tubman a few years ago and my god….He’s playing at Big Ears too, so I’m excited for that.
Kendrick Lamar going all in on attacking Drake and then bringing out former Drake girlfriend Serena Williams during the Super Bowl halftime show…..damn…….
So that plane in the Scottsdale that killed a dude is owned by Vince Neil. Somehow this makes sense.
So in the 70s, a bunch of econ PhD students formed a band called Red Shadow and wrote songs about economics. I have to say, other than the very very mid 70s folkie sound, this song about reading Marx makes me laugh. “She said, ‘baby, that’s Kapital, volume 1.” They also have a song about stagflation. I am so happy to know that this exists.
This week’s playlist, quite short due to being busy and mostly being on a shuffle kick at home:
- Thelonious Monk, Monk’s Dream
- John Zorn, The Big Gundown
- John Coltrane, Africa-Brass
- Soul Sok Sega: Sega Sounds from Mauritius, 1973-1979
- Los Lobos, Just Another Band from East LA, disc 1
- Buck Owens, Sings Tommy Collins
- The Replacements, Let It Be
- Johnny Paycheck, Someone to Give My Love To
- Butch Hancock, Own & Own
- Bob Dylan, Live at the Royal Albert Hall, 1966
- James McMurtry, It Had to Happen
- Matthew Shipp, Equilibrium
- The Flying Burrito Brothers, Farther Along
- Tom Zé, Estuando o Pagode
- Amyl and the Sniffers, Comfort to Me
- The Paranoid Style, The Purposes of Music in General
- Mabe Fratti, Sentir Que Los Sabes
- Lori McKenna, The Balladeer
- Bruce Cockburn, High Winds White Sky
- Roky Erickson, The Evil One
Album Reviews:
Band of Horses, Things Are Great
I’ve always thought this band was a completely fine if not particularly interesting rock and roll band. This album is a completely fine if not particularly interested rock and roll record. Like the rest of their career, this album struggles to rise above the general miasma of their feelings, which is fine if those are their feelings, but they probably could use a bit more punk anger in their rock and roll lives.
B-
The Mountain Goats, Jenny from Thebes
I’ve always respected more than loved The Mountain Goats, enjoying their albums just fine but never being a compulsive listener to them. That’s how I feel here too. The story is typical John Darnielle–a woman fleeing a really bad situation and her freedom and the choices we make to be good people or not. I’ve never been totally convinced by his delivery, but the people I know who love the band REALLY love the band and as a DBT guy, I very much get this. To me, this is very much a typical Mountain Goats album. I like it. I might buy it. I’d probably listen to it once a year or so.
B+
Japanese Television, Space Fruit Vineyard
The British band calls themselves “space surf” and that’s exactly what this is. But it’s all it is and nothing more. As such, it’s perfectly fine. Good even. But do you need an entire album of space surf rock jams? It’s too limited to be more than either a novelty or OK background music. A vocalist would really, really help here.
C+
Guided by Voices, It’s Not Them, It Couldn’t Be Them, It’s Them!
So many GBV albums and they are all kinda the same, but some do stand out as better than the others and I thought this 2021 release was one of them. The production is really good, Pollard’s vocals are really highlighted, and this is first rate rock and roll. GBV is the ultimate in B+ bands for me (actually Mountain Goats fit that too) and I’d just say that this is a bit better than the average, which is already completely fine.
A-
The Bad Plus, Complex Emotions
Missed the new Bad Plus album last year, so catching up with it now. Very solid, if not absolutely great set of jazz, which is how I feel about most of their work. I always find it fascinating that they’ve won such a large audience compared to other similar bands. I don’t say this critically–good for them! But the question of “why them” is also interesting. Anyway, I am glad they do have that audience because they remain what they’ve now been for a long time–an entrypoint into the often difficult world of jazz, with music that challenges without overwhelming and always keeps your interest without relying on wishing it was 1963 again.
B+
Duran Duran, Danse Macabre
I was never a Duran Duran fan in the 80s or 90s, but I thought, hell, why not hear this well-reviewed new music by the band? You know, it’s fine. I still don’t care for 80s electropop and I don’t really care for this either, but I can see why people would like it. Sure, this is old dudes doing a version of what they did four decades ago, but you just have to accept that for what it is. As a general rule, I find the electronic noises of the present less annoying than I did when they were hampered with the horrors of 80s production values. So I find this more listenable. Weird cover of Billie Eilish’s “Bury a Friend” but I guess it works. “Paint It Black” is an odder cover. “Psycho Killer,” that’s kind of interesting. “Super Freak” obviously works very well for them. Less thrilled about reworking old tunes, the hallmark of a band who wants to put out product but doesn’t have enough to do it.
C+
Wild Up, Julius Eastman, Vol 1: Femenine
Quality minimalism here from the the LA orchestra doing a pretty energetic version of these Eastman compositions. Eastman was a gay black composer who died of AIDS in 1990 and never got the attention he deserved. I’d argue, at least with Wild Up’s interpretation, that he deserves his place in the pantheon with Glass and Riley and Reich. It’s not easy for me to write about this sort of music, but I would love to see this live, that’s what I will say.
A
Model/Actriz, Dogsbody
This made a big indie splash when it dropped two years ago and I can see why. This does a rare thing–it makes me like music I don’t usually like and then make me like it a lot. What I don’t usually care much for are dance hall/industrial/sleaze rock. Not being a big electronic beats guy, not being super into repetitive noise, not be real louche, why would I like this? The reason is why I like LCD Soundsystem–a super charismatic singer who writes excellent lyrics and with a bunch of people around the singer who add a strong sense of noise rock to the industrial beats. But really, it’s the vocals, which are honestly kinda scary in their intensity.
A-
Igmar Thomas’ Revive Big Band, Like a Tree It Grows
I like it when a big band can actually work. So good for them. This is pretty fun New Orleans-inflected music. I would that it has tendency toward what we might call light rap with the guest vocalists, which certainly helps explain all the Grammy nominations and generally OK sales for something like this, but also which puts some sharp limitations on what this music can do. It’s pleasant enough, but as wispy as a 60 degree April day.
B-
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.