Music Notes

The big personal news for my musical week was seeing Fontaines D.C. at House of Blues in Boston on Thursday night. Those Dublin boys make for one hell of a great live act. I guess this must be what seeing Gang of Four or The Feelies or The Replacements was like. The sheer energy of the band is rock and roll at its purest and very best. Grian Chatten takes the challenge of the vocalist seriously: how can you be a rock frontman without playing guitar. The way to do it–as Plant and Daltrey learned a long time ago–is that you are an energetic, charismatic person. Charisma is not really something easily learned, but energy is something you can learn and Chatten was delivering a ton of that, running around, jumping on the monitors, exhorting the crowd, and delivering his lyrics with intensity. That the lyrics are so enunciated certainly doesn’t hurt in the sing-along part of this band. Even with the accent, which is pretty thick, you can understand him well because of his style. Meanwhile, the g/g/b/d backing kicks ass too, with massive guitars and a heavy bass in the mix that provides the groove anchoring the band.

Maybe this is why the audience was so age diverse. With a bunch of young guys, I figured, well, maybe I would be old at the show. But no, not at all. Sure there were lots of young people there and they loved it. But there were tons of people there in their 50s and 60s too, which made me feel good. I’m not surprised Gen Xers would love this music. It’s the glories of guitar rock that made all the promises to us, even if they were a bunch of lies. It probably didn’t hurt that Boston is such an Irish city and there were plenty of countrymen there.

Songs such as “Televised Mind” and “Jackie Down the Line” and “A Lucid Dream” are just bangers, both on the album and live. This is a great live band. See them.

Of course, the real news this week concerns the death of Loretta Lynn. As she is one of the most important artists ever to come out of the United States, she has received a ton of attention. Here’s another great thought piece about her from Jon Pareles at the Times. But what I really want to point you to is Amanda Marcotte’s piece, which she wrote after reading the horrible comments at LGM about her and who connects Lynn’s life and supposed contradictions to the lives of the conserative women they both grew up with and, in Loretta’s case, was.

As a longtime fan of her music, I was bummed at the news of Loretta Lynn’s death earlier this week. Not because her death was especially tragic — far from it. Her life started hard, but she died rich and successful, at age 90. She lived long enough to see music critics finally value her and other female country artists like Dolly Parton the way they long did male figures like Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson. She even got to record with Jack White, which seems like a great experience for any musician not named Meg White. May we all have a chance to go out like she did. 

No, I was dreading The Discourse. I did not look forward to people calling her a “feminist,” simply because she had a brash sound and tough-girl lyrics — or even because her songs are often about how much men suck. I did not look forward to aesthetic Stalinists shaming anyone for enjoying her music on the grounds that she was a Donald Trump supporter. I didn’t want to hear the pseudo-intellectual assertion that you must “separate the art from the artist” in response, a claim rooted in half-remembered English lit classes. It makes even less sense when you look at someone like Lynn, who wove her personal life — with many warts on display — into her music, both as legitimate artistic expression and as a marketing ploy. 

….

As someone who is not a tourist in the country music world, however, I don’t see Lynn as a contradiction in any way. I personally got out of the red-state lifestyle as soon as I was able, but she reminds me how the Republican women I knew growing up talked about their lives and about men, especially when men weren’t around to whine about it. It’s not that those women don’t think sexism is real. They hate it that men look down at them and treat them like unpaid servants and emotional snot rags. They’re just resigned to it, and profoundly skeptical of feminist claims that change is possible.

For outsiders, that seems hard to square with a song like the 1975 classic “The Pill,” which, as the title suggests, celebrates the liberating breakthrough of birth control medication. Or “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’,” in which the narrator protests being used for sex by her drunken husband who otherwise ignores her. Some critics have even projected feminism onto “Fist City,” a song about beating up another woman who’s trying to steal your man. 

But none of that is feminism. Feminism is the belief that women are equal to men and that we should remake society to reflect that fact. Lynn’s music is the music of resignation. Yes, she said in 2016, “I didn’t write for the men; I wrote for us women.” But she wasn’t writing feminist anthems. Hers are songs of coping — through humor, through violence, or just through emotional venting. The theme that runs through her catalog is: “Yeah, sexism sucks, but nothing can be done about it.” 

…

But at the end of the day, they also don’t want to be called “man-haters,” which is absolutely what’s coming at you if you speak up for feminist values too forcefully. Life is hard enough for women if men like you. The idea of actively courting male disapproval, or male hatred, is frankly terrifying. So those thoughts get pushed aside. A “strong” woman is a woman like the one Loretta Lynn portrays in her music: She accepts male dominance and is proud of herself for surviving it. 

You saw this mentality clearly in the days after the release of Donald Trump’s infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which he can be heard bragging about sexually assaulting women. Republican women weren’t happy about it, but they voted for him anyway, often making familiar excuses: “Well, that’s just how men are.” To them, male chauvinism is like the weather; it can’t be changed and it does no good to challenge it. 

This I think really gets at the heart of the matter. Unfortunately, our evaluation of art based on the politics of the maker has poisoned our society. It’s one thing when the politics is in the art, but even though Loretta was not a feminist, she gave feminists a soundtrack that also was the soundtrack of her own life and the women she knew. If we can’t deal with this kind of complexity in a person, we are in a sad state.

I might also note that some of the examples of my supposed inconsistency mentioned in comments on these earlier threads are nonsense. For example, the problem with Frank Zappa is that his songs are horrible. I’m sure politically I’m far closer to what he was than what Loretta was. He was a smart guy too. Might have been interesting to talk to him about politics, though he would have leaned into the cancel culture freakout like no one’s business. But his songs attempting to express those politics are abysmal. When “Crew Slut” is not even close to the most loathsome wrong you write, there’s a real problem there. The utterly indefensible Thingfish, one of the worst albums ever made is a prime example here. Whatever he was trying to do, he expressed in terrible songs. Which is the problem. Loretta might have been a racist in real life (I have no idea), but her songs didn’t express that racism. Zappa probably wasn’t a racist in real life compared to many others, but he had no problem going there in songs, even if he thought it was satire. Which is worse?

For those of you into albums for causes, here’s a new collection where all proceeds to go fight for abortion.

The Times finally wrote up an obituary on Anton Fier and it’s quite a read–turns out Fier was experimenting with ways to commit suicide for a long time and evidently finally made it happen. Strange guy.

A guide to the music of Mike Patton.

What albums do musicians find to be the best of the 90s?

Even Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kruetzmann have to leave the road eventually and 2023 will be the last Dead & Company tour. Kind of a bummer actually.

This week’s playlist, not so long given a lot of shuffle and a lot of long albums reviewed below:

1. King Crimson, The Great Deceiver: Live 1973-74, Disc 2
2. Wolf Alice, My Love is Cool
3. Jade Jackson, Gilded
4. Sarah Gayle Meech, Tennessee Love Song
5. Dave Rawlings Machine, Nashville Obsolete
6. Mekons, Deserter
7. Chuck Cleaver, Send Aid
8. Tropical Fuck Storm, Laughing Death in Meatspace
9. Case/lang/Veirs, self-titled
10. Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home
11. Jaimie Branch, Fly or Die
12. Buck Owens, Together Again/My Heart Skips a Beat
13. Joe Maneri/Joe Morris/Mat Maneri, Three Men Walking
14. Wayne Horvitz Gravitas Quartet, Way Out East
15. The Paranoid Style, The Purposes of Music in General (x2)
16. Si Para Usted: The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba, Vol. 2
17. The Byrds, Sweetheart of the Rodeo
18. Emmylou Harris, Luxury Liner
19. Dolly Parton, The Grass is Blue
20. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, self-titled
21. Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
22. Quantic and Alice Russell, Look Around the Corner
23. Rashied Ali, New Directions in Modern Music
24. Tal National, Kaani
25. Robbie Fulks, Country Love Songs
26. Chris Stapleton, From a Room Volume 1
27. The Internet, Ego Death
28. Doc Watson, self-titled
29. Don Williams, Portrait
30. The Who, The Who Sing My Generation
31. Bob Dylan, Time Out of Mind
32. Some collection of early tango classics I have from somewhere, but no info on the title
33. Silver Jews, Starlite Walker
34. Bonnie Prince Billy, The Letting Go
35. Conway Twitty, Next in Line
36. Jason Isbell, Southeastern
37. Sleaford Mods, Spare Ribs
38. Fiona Apple, When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts…..
39. John Coltrane, Africa/Brass
40. Sun Records Collection, Volume 2
41. Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Theory of Ice
42. Ray Wylie Hubbard, Off the Wall
43. Townes Van Zandt, For the Sake of the Song
44. Matt Sweeney & Bonnie Prince Billy, Superwolf
45. Drive By Truckers, Decoration Day

Album Reviews in a week where I decided I’d better catch up on some jazz releases from the last few years:

The Rolling Stones, Live at the El Mocambo

1977 was a period of transition for the Stones. They were still pretty young, but most of their great work was behind them and what was in front of them was not always very good. But some of the late 70s stuff holds up pretty well. For the band’s biggest fans, these 77 shows are seen as peak Stones and I can see why I guess. Certainly taking a break from the arenas to sneak into a small club doesn’t hurt. I thought this was fine though. Not great. Fine. I am sure that being at the show would have been really good. Jagger still at least sort of cares. He interacts with the band. He tells a lot of jokes about parties backstage. The band sounds excellent. As an album though, it’s perfectly listenable but I never thought the Stones were a great live band and this doesn’t change my opinion. It’s fine. It’s also much more for really committed Stones fans than the average person who thinks the Stones were a great band but maybe doesn’t need it all.

On the other hand, this is as good as it has gotten for [checks notes] the last 45 years.

B

Chad Taylor Trio, The Daily Biological

This is one of those jazz albums where only four of the nine songs are available for streaming, again reflecting the labels’ fears of streaming in a genre that sells no albums anyway. But it’s enough to get a good sense of the album. This trio from 2020 is led by the drummer Chad Taylor, long a favorite of the new jazz scene. He works with Brian Settles on tenor sax and Neil Podgurski on piano. This is a very solid, pretty straight-ahead jazz trio. For those of you who like interesting jazz but aren’t real sure about the dissonance and weird sounds of some of the more experimental stuff, this is a good start for you. Taylor is especially excellent here. He’s such a fine drummer and there’s so much complexity to his work here. His interactions with Settles are a real highlight. For me, this album isn’t so much a revelation as it is just a real good listen.

A-

Vijay Iyer/Craig Taborn, The Transitory Poems

You don’t see two pianists recording together as a duet very often. And what you really don’t see is two of the five greatest pianists presently working in jazz performing together very often. This comes from a live performance at a 2018 festival in Budapest and it was released in 2019. While this has a little bit of a recital feel, the interplay between the two greats can be incredibly striking at its best and still very good when it dips a bit.

A-

PUP, Morbid Stuff

The kind of anthemic punkish rock that somewhat turns me off in that I feel I’m listening to a combination of a British pub band and riffy 80s metal. Of course there’s something to be said to singing along to angry songs. I am sure their fans can really enjoy this. But for me, it felt a bit lame if certainly earwormy.

B-

Max Richter, Voices

This is a good idea but the execution is a bit iffy. The first of this two album project consists of people reading the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, sometimes in English and sometimes in their own languages, while Richter’s compositions underpin it. But you know, while it’s fun to hear any album that starts with Eleanor Roosevelt speaking, the concept doesn’t work very well as an album. I certainly doubt I’d hear it again. The second album, which is almost all instrumental, is to me the more compelling. I’d say again that just because liberal values underpin music or art does not mean that art is particularly good. The art has to stand on its own. Richter is pretty popular for a composer because he does a lot of film work and so you might really like this. I was whatever about the main part of it. It’s most certainly not bad. I just found it kind of whatever.

B

Georgia Anne Muldrow, Seeds

I’ve slowly worked my way through the material of this prolific experimental soul singer. I find myself mixed on a lot of it, thinking that the ideas tend to work better than the execution at times. So I decided to go even deeper and check out this 2012 album. It’s one of the better ones I’ve heard. “Mine Only” is an outstanding song about oppression and inequality that really bangs. She never rests on any laurels, always moving forward. This can lead to inconsistency, to say the least, but not here. It probably helps here that she didn’t produce the album and so this thing is just a very fine soul album from stem to stern.

A-

Benoit Delbecq, The Weight of Light

I’ve become a pretty big fan of the French jazz pianist thanks to the work he’s done with people such as Mary Halvorson and Taylor Ho Bynum. This is a solo album and while I have a long stated indifference to most jazz solo albums, sometimes the really great players can achieve something special. I wouldn’t put this quite to the level of some of Matthew Shipp’s best solo work, but at its best, this can reach a pretty sublime state. At times, I’m like, is there only one piano here? Because there’s a lot of going on here. Of course, the reality of prepared piano is that you can do all sorts of things with it that you can’t do with just the regular piano, which probably explains this, but it’s still something pretty great to hear. As for the title, his brother is a physicist who works on light and this refers to his reaction to his brother’s work.

A-

Roy Brooks, Understanding

Outstanding archival release. Just great. I don’t know Brooks all that well. I’m familiar with him of course, but really didn’t the material from his own band. That he’s a drummer only makes this more likely since drummers generally lead fewer bands and often are in the background, under the horns and piano. This was recorded live in 1970 at a show in Baltimore. Woody Shaw is the obvious big name here and he’s just killing it on this date. But Brooks is such a heavy drummer for jazz, or at least he was during this period.

The sheer length of these tunes also adds to the greatness of the release. Most of the songs were 20 minutes or so. So when Woody Shaw engages in an 11 minute solo, you not only don’t get sick of it, it also doesn’t even completely dominate the entire song. There’s so much room for exploration in the tunes and the whole band takes advantage.

Sadly, Brooks’ career declined due to mental illness as the 70s went on. This is a “what could have been and thank god for what was on at least one night” kind of recording.

But this is first rate.

A

Saba, Care For Me

This is brilliant but a tough listen due to the very sad subject matter. This is about the death of his cousin, who was also a rapper performing as dinnerwithjohn and who was killed in one of these really awful pointless ways. So this is grief through song. The thing about hip hop is that it’s the folk music of the streets and this is definitely that. One of the most powerful albums I’ve heard in a long time, especially the track I embedded before. Each song is a little masterpiece and the sum is greater than the parts. This is very fine music.

A

Guardian Singles, self-titled

Solid anthemic punk from New Zealand. At first, I thought it was going to lean into the cheesy pop-punk of some British bar band, but it grew on me as the album continued, realized I was listening to something pretty worthwhile by the end. Be curious to see if this band can grow a little more.

B+

Sarah Shook and the Disarmers, Nightroamer

Shook is great and her songwriting and attitude shift a bit here in useful ways. She’s moved on from songs like “Fuck Up,” which are great but the pure outlaw thing has some limitations in that you can only go to that well so often. Now openly queer, the songs on this album embrace the woman problems of country music and they show a bit more grown up attitude. That’s great, but I think is more of a good than an excellent album, with a bit of bogging down on the second half. Still, an important modern country artist who I look forward to seeing again.

B+

As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics (unless of course it’s a continuing of the Loretta conversation and related relevant matters).