Music: Andrew Cyrille Quartet, The Village Vanguard
Drummer Andrew Cyrille, who I first became a fan of with his exciting work with Cecil Taylor, led a mysterious, beautiful Quartet this weekend from the Vanguard.
Cyrille’s supple feel with bass player Ben Street buoyed these songs like an abstracted nature painting. Throughout, the interlocking front line of David Virelles on piano and Bill Frisell spun wildly original and wholly organic melodies and harmonies. Highlights included Cyrille’s shadowy ballad “Special People” turning into crashing waves; Frisell’s tantalizing slow-burn “Worried Woman;” Frisell’s “Drink” with its slinky melody, moves from a leisurely build to a classic 60s saloon groove littered with spikes and a barely sublimated frenzy.
Theater: The Jacksonian by Beth Henley, presented by The New Group
With this New Group production in 2013, Beth Henley proved her sharp, sweltering take on the South is as sharp as her heyday with Crimes of the Heart. As a benefit directed by Robert Falls, reunited most of its cast for a riveting return to the poisonous swamp of the human heart in 1964.
I can’t think of an American actor who does a better downward spiral than Ed Harris and Perch, the disgraced dentist making one last swing at getting his life together in the eponymous hotel, is a remarkable role for him to sink into. Amy Madigan as his estranged wife and Juliet Brett as his neglected, confused daughter are powerhouses. Bill Pullman, riffing on Flanner O’Connor’s Misfit, finds the sadness in a lifetime of malevolence, and Carol Kane (stepping into the shoes of the late, great Glenne Headly) is a vibrant, exciting foil.
The Jacksonian is a classic potboiler with teeth and language that crackles and steams; this reading increased my regret at not catching it on a New York trip that year tenfold.
Music: Goner TV episode 3, featuring Optic Sink
Goner Records looms large in the landscape of music I enjoy. Through their record label and store, their friendships with and promotion of Columbus bands, and their annual festival, they’ve been my gateway to Memphis as a tangible reality I love every bit as much as the mythopoetic Memphis I grew up with as a vision and a dream.
They’ve done spectacular work keeping this international community I’m on the fringes of but love so much connected in these distanced times: teaming with other labels like Slovenly for day-long blowout livestream marathons and, more recently, their every other Friday Goner TV broadcasting from the store and giving us a glimpse into Memphis and what’s coming next on the label.
This week’s was my favorite yet, previewing the debut album from Optic Sink with a live in-store. In NOTS, one of my favorite, most exciting, cerebral without being dry, bands of the last 10 years, Natalie Hoffman’s guitar and vocals lead the band’s cracking, dark narratives and off-kilter, surprising, prickly earworms.
With Optic Sink she moves to keys and the cracked-mirror science fiction vibe from the NOTS mix comes to the fore with longer, slower, murkier songs. But these new tunes still have a dancefloor punch and pop nougat wrapped in their intriguing mystery; based on this evidence, I’m very excited to hear the record.
This Goner TV also featured Hoffman’s Optic Sink bandmate Ben Bauermeister in his solo electronic guise A55 Conducta which was even more what I didn’t expect from Goner – though I know the mutual affections run deep with Bauermeister’s work in bands like Magic Kids and Toxie – but it was a fucking party.
This also featured video from longtime Goner cohorts Quintron and Ms. Pussycat, multidisciplinary Memphis artist Don Lifted, and made me miss the city it’s based in terribly.
Screen of Distance 