Playlist – May 2021

I spent April in an anxiety-ridden state of transition: a dash of survivor’s guilt, a splash of irrational exuberance, a sprinkling of always-remember-it’s-not-over-yet, and a magnum of remembering how my socialization muscles feel when they move.  

May was better, even as my heart went out to friends still suffering – with a particular eye on the Hyderabad team who I work with every day and who have taken some horrific losses. Only time will tell, but I think this month’s selections reflect that. As always, thank you for reading, for commenting, for turning me onto stuff that made this list, and for being part of my life. 

Bandcamp links where available, courtesy of Hype Machine’s Merch Table feature: https://hypem.com/merch-table/53h8NSehhgehtUqPtube5l

Continue reading for notes on each song: 

• Allison Russell, “Persephone” – I was a fan of Russell the first time I heard her band Po’ Girl and that fandom went into overdrive with Birds of Chicago, but it still didn’t prepare me for the gut-wrenching, hanging-off-a-cliff beauty of her solo record, Outside Child. Working through the trauma of the past in an immediately identifiable way that never sugar coats anything but also appreciating the life she’s built. This song, one of my favorites on an album with no dull tracks, features my favorite melody of the year so far. I could drown in that wistful melodica or accordion under the waltzing chorus. 
• Reigning Sound, “You Don’t Know What You’re Missing” – My last out of town show before everything shut down was a reunion of the classic Memphis lineup of Reigning Sound up in Cleveland at the Beachland Ballroom (not coincidentally Anne’s favorite band and it was a summation of everything I love about rock and roll; my first out of town show as we tread gingerly back to something like normal, this week, is Reigning Sound again on their home turf. In the interim, singer-songwriter Greg Cartwright reconvened that group (augmented by Graham Winchester alternating with Greg Roberson on drums and percussion) to make the fantastic A Little More Time With Reigning Sound. One of my favorite singers and writers, Cartwright took this opportunity to make a record about finding peace with yourself and the world with all his poison-tipped powers of observation firmly in place. The unmistakable chemistry of old friends – this is the first time they’ve recorded together since 2003 – provide backing that feels like your favorite leather jacket on a cool spring day. His croon on this song – and bassist Jeremy Scott’s harmony – on that soaring chorus, “Just tell me what you need and, baby, I’ll listen. If you don’t know what you want, then you don’t know what you’re missing,” nudged on by an insistent tambourine, kills me every time. 
• The Alchemist featuring Earl Sweatshirt, “Loose Change” – Hip-hop producer The Alchemist had an insanely productive 2020 and the momentum carries on with his lush new EP This Thing of Ours. The pairing of four tracks with a tight-knit group of vocalists as collaborators alongside the instrumental versions made me smile remembering when it felt like every underground rap act did the same thing back when I was in college, and the music here blew me away. I read lots of comparisons to David Axelrod and this bears them all out, but I also get the sweetness belied by the hard kick drum of those first classic Desco, Daptone, and Soul and Fire records – though that comparison may come from my hearing those around the same time I dove deep into independent hip-hop, and this feels simultaneously very modern and like it would fit right in at a house party back then. 
• Machel Montano, “High Life” – This slab of vibrant, shining soca from one of its finest current practitioners, Trinidadian Machel Montano was exactly what I needed on the sunny day I first heard it. It feels like Montano surfs waves of percussion with that keyboard line dancing over it like sunlight.  
• Mdou Moctar, “Taliat” – Tuareg guitarist-bandleader Mdou Moctar at Ace of Cups was one of my favorite shows of 2019 and this new record takes everything I love about his work, sharpens and brightens it, without glossing it up too much. A wide-screen, technicolor explosion of deep feeling and intense commitment. 
• Rosali, “Pour Over Ice” – I didn’t know anything about singer-songwriter Rosali until a reivew of No Medium piqued my interest and I was immediately blown away. The level of empathy and intensity in the songs reminded me of everything that drew me to this kind of music in the first place, how invigorating it can be to watch someone take the raw material inside their head (biography, imagination, history) and turn it into these towering, messy, dazzling sculptures. Some of the familiarity came from her working with members of the David Nance Group as a backing band, who I really enjoyed at an earlier Gonerfest. She and the band are in full Crazy Horse mode here and it’s been a long time since I’ve heard someone take on those forms and sound this fresh, with fraying, acid-drenched guitars rinsing over snarled lyrics. “Heeded the call, I watched the shadows fall and begged for the pieces of a cruel and callous heart.” 
• Dave Holland, “Grave Walker” – Bassist/composer Dave Holland has been at the heart of many of my most formative musical experiences – on record (I still remember the very first time I heard him on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew and the first time I really got it) but especially live, for years he brought various bands through the Wexner Center under the auspices Chuck Helm, in particular I remember a duo set with tabla player Trilok Gurtu singing my eyebrows off on my birthday before Holland’s Octet took me to church. This finds him in power trio mode, leaning into snaking, roiling grooves with longtime collaborator guitarist Kevin Eubanks and drummer Obed Calvaire, that recall the expansive, exploratory rock Holland grew up around in the ‘60s without being a self-conscious throwback. 
• Sons of Kemet featuring Moor Mother and Angel Bat Dawid, “Pick Up Your Burning Cross” – I talk a lot about saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings and his London scene on here and the new one by his band Sons of Kemet, Black to the Future, knocked me right out of my chair. Hutchings augments the ferocious rhythm machine of Theon Cross’ tuba and the dueling drummers/percussionists Edward Wakili-Hick and Tom Skinner with some well-chosen guests, highlighting the collaborative nature of this music to cross cities and nations, with Angel Bat Dawid and Moor Mother here. The sharp, rumbling darkness of this track blends beautifully with the two vocalists, calling on a wealth of musical and sociopolitical history but sounding like nothing so much as right here and right now. 
• Czarface and MF DOOM featuring Kendra Morris, “Czarwyn’s Theory of People Getting Loose” – Super What?, a reunion record of Czarface (7L & Esoteric and Inspectah Deck) and MF Doom was scheduled to drop before Doom’s untimely death and it’s full of more of the intricate, off-kilter party anthems they brought us with their first collaboration Czarface Meets Metal Face. Stabbing drums through a haze of organ and ornamented with scratches and vocal samples. 
• India Jordan, “Watch Out!” – I’d heard Jordan’s name but wasn’t very familiar with her when this hit my radar. A fresh, modern take on everything I found so intoxicating about house music in my youth – chopped vocals and surging, anthemic synths over sped-up blues piano riffs giving way to a riotous drum pattern. So full of delicious tension and release it could give me a heart attack. 
• Jon Batiste, “Freedom” – Jazz pianist Jon Batiste stretches himself into less and less defined genre territory with every record and he’s pulled his influences and obsessions into one of my favorite unclassifiable party records with this year’s We Are. This track, co-written with Autumn Rowe, is an infectious, organ-drenched dance anthem with a conscience. 
• Sunny Jain, “I’ll Make It Up To You” – I’ve been a crazed fan of Sunny Jain since his psych-bhangra band Red Baraat and I was grateful to get to see his sizzling spaghetti western/funk project Wild Wild East at Winter Jazzfest before 2020 locked down. He took advantage of being grounded from an intense touring schedule to pull together 50+ of his teammates for Phoenix Rise, a wide-ranging tribute to the human spirit and the joys of collaboration. This track fills out a rhythm section of Jain on drums and Yuka Tadano on bass with Darius Christian’s rich trombone and Pete Eide’s surging rhythm guitar to create a backdrop for Kushal Gaya’s impassioned vocal and Adrian Quesada’s searing lead guitar. 
• Jeff Parker and the New Breed featuring Ruby Parker, “Soul Love” – I’m sure it’s no surprise I spent hours upon hours with David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust record in my room as an adolescent. Jeff Parker (one of my favorite guitarists going back to Tortoise and the Chicago Underground Trio) reassembles the band from his astonishing Suite For Max Brown for this gorgeous reinvention of a song I’ve loved as long as any, with a perfect, mysterious vocal from Ruby Parker. 
• Lainey Wilson, “Small Town, Girl” – Lainey Wilson is my favorite of the new crop of mainstream country artists, there’s just a little more Reba in her approach. This song takes on the classic trope of simultaneously celebrating and cursing the place that made you with an infectious, wild howl. 
• Donovan Woods and Aoife O’Donovan, “Iowa” – I fell in love with this immediately, reveling in the pitch of drama these two find in the most mundane of details – the opening line, sung in sotto voce unison, “I’m waiting for this book to get good” pulled me to the edge of my seat like they said someone was murdered. The melody and atmosphere fit together to feel like a spring mist on a street you’ve known your whole life that suddenly feels strange. “I am trying to remember where I gave up, if it was not in Iowa.” 
• Sarah Jarosz, “Painted Blue” – Jarosz’s low-key masterpiece The Blue Heron Suite, is full of songs as good as anyone’s writing these days. The impressionistic lyrics on this one find a perfect match in the low-key finger-picked guitar and subtle lead accents and harmonies around her voice. “All those colors bleeding into one. And all those others looking for the sun to lead them in. To begin.” 
• Hypnotic Brass Ensemble featuring Moses Sumney, “Soon It Will Be Fire” – My first taste of Hypnotic Brass Ensemble – eight sons of the great Phil Cohran – came with 2020’s Winter Jazzfest and after that wild dance party at SOBs, I confess I wasn’t expecting the next dose to be a meditative, slow-burn cover of a Richard Youngs song with Moses Sumney on vocals but it’s beautiful. 
• Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas’ Sound Prints, “Life On Earth” – We move from those two guitar-based meditations into one that’s slightly more expansive. I saw this collaboration between trumpeter Douglas and tenor hero Lovano at the Wexner Center when they were still strictly dedicated to the Wayne Shorter repertoire. Other Worlds is a gorgeous record where this quintet roams through originals and this tune epitomizes the empathy and invention this group deals in. The warm Joey Baron drum intro cracking open to reveal Lawrence Fields’ piano feels like a sunrise; everyone’s voice has place to shine here – those harmonies between Douglas and Lovano that split into lines of their own; the luminous brushstrokes of Linda May Han Oh’s bass. 
• James Brandon Lewis, “Lowlands Of Sorrow” – Another jazz supergroup, for this suite of compositions about George Washington Carver, saxophonist Lewis assembled Kirk Knuffke on cornet, William Parker on bass (and gimbri on two tracks including this one), Chad Taylor on drums, and Chris Hoffman on cello. Hoffman’s pizzicato cello sounds beautiful here building a bridge between Parker’s gimbri and Taylor’s morse code cymbal patterns. And gorgeous, searching melodic work as Knuffke’s solo hands off to Lewis with eye-popping telepathy. 
• Andy Meyerson, “A Natural History of Vacant Lots” – Christopher Cerrone is one of my favorite contemporary classical composers and I think I came to this percussion quartet with electronics through one of Third Coast Percussions streams but I especially love this solo adaptation commissioned and performed by Meyerson. It’s an intriguing landscape that reminds me of nature painting filtered through Olafur Eliasson. 
• Lowell Liebermann, “Nocturne No. 10, Op. 99” – I knew Liebermann as a pianist more than a composer and this sumptuous solo album journeys through Liszt, Busoni, and Schubert, but the piece that stuck in my brain and wouldn’t let me go was this composition of his dedicated to composer-librettist (and partner of Samuel Barber) Gian Carlo Menotti.  
• Bobby Gillespie and Jehnny Beth, “Chase It Down” – Moving from one nocturne into another, I love both singles so far from this collaboration between Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie and Savages’ Jehnny Beth. So rich and dripping with classic ‘60s-pop style strings you could almost wring it out, with a world beating hook. Music for walking into the coolest bar in town, desperate to be remembered. 
• Quantic and Eddie Roberts, “The Clock Won’t Tick” – Taking place in that same sort of hyperdramatic just-barely-too-late urban night as the last couple tunes, this collaboration between Quantic (Will Holland) and the guitarist from London-based soul-jazz/funk crew New Mastersounds is a match made in heaven. A throbbing, infectious horn section over a simmering groove like reflected neon in wet asphalt. Look for this to feature prominently at the next party I throw – and me to be in the middle of the floor if a live version of this collab comes within 1000 miles of me. 
• Jorja Smith, “Burn” – I’ve been a fan of UK R&B singer Smith for a while but this new record Be Right Back is hit after hit after hit for me, as good late at night as it is early morning at the gym. Had a hard time choosing a single track off this but “Burn” felt right between these two tracks, I pictured it as a little later in that same evening (hat tip to Apartment 3-G), heart rate finally receding, looking over the wreckage. One of my favorite hooks so far this year. “You burn like you never burn out – try so hard, you can still fall down. You keep it all in but you don’t let it out. You try so hard… don’t you know you’ve burned out?” 
• Johanna Samuels, “Less of You” – Plowing similar emotional terrain to the last tune but in the hard light of morning. I love Samuels’ record Excelsior! (I was unable to parse a connection to the Wordsworth poem, the Bullwinkle sketch, or Stan Lee, but if you figure it out, drop a line) front to back with a voice that subtly recalls Gillian Welch and big, dusty drumming (I feel like loops but I can’t say for sure) that create a sound world that reminded me of Car Wheels On a Gravel Road. This song merges internal rhyme and alliteration with a knife in my ribs that reminds me a little of one of my poetic inspirations Marilyn Hacker – “She let some guys take her out and they tried to hold her close, but she is not about to let their words turn to dust. She knows the world isn’t just. She says, ‘Send them home, keep yourself safe.’” 
• Colleen, “Hidden in the Current” – Colleen, nom de musique of Cecile Schott, returned after a couple years with a beguiling solo album The Tunnel and the Clearing. This track features a minimal, koan-like lyric and washes of synths that simultaneously soothe me and batter me back and forth. Sometimes it’s like watching crystals grow from the inside out, sometimes it’s a raging storm. 
• Chris Potter, “Sunshine and Joshua Trees” – Chris Potter was one of the saxophone players for people growing up when I did. I once saw a local group do an entire tribute night to his Chris Potter Underground records of the late ‘90s/early ‘00s. Here, he reconvenes Circuits Trio with James Francies on keys and Eric Harland on drums. This slightly uncanny pastoral showcases Potter’s breathtaking tone as he glides and dips through Francies’ textures. Harland, long one of my favorite drummers, adds as much color as he does propulsion. 
• Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen, “Like I Used To” – As much as I’ve been enjoying the Sharon Van Etten covers around the deluxe issue of epic, this new collaboration with Angel Olsen was the tonic I didn’t even realize I needed until it exploded in front of me. Their voices rising together on a soaring recounting of everything the characters used to do and greeting the future with a mixture of steely resolve and well-worn anxiety is the kind of anthem we need for whatever new world we manage to build. 
• Coco Maria, “Me velo volar” – One of the many things I’ve been hipped to by WFMU’s Sophisticated Boom Boom hosted by DJ and compiler Sheila B. One of my favorite party tracks of the last few weeks with swinging percussion and driving brass. Just the crackling trumpet solo in the middle of this track is enough to make me want to jump through windows and dance in the rain of broken glass. 
• Goat Girl, “Sad Cowboy (Nidia Remix)” – I loved the Goat Girl record and all of these remixes added to the song instead of diminishing it but this piece from Portuguese producer and DJ Nidia, turns the song into a sleek, grooving dancefloor monster. 
• Aurelia Dey, “All These Neighbors” – Lots of musical acts claim to put a party on wax but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone come closer to it than the Ghanian-Swedish singer Aurelia Dey. This is an exuberant, dancehall-tinged tribute to having the best time you possibly can, to getting the most out of life and love and people. While not having time for nonsense. 
• Tre. Charles, “Stressin” – This first single from Durham-based indie soul act Tre. Charles hit me in exactly the spot at exactly the time I needed it to. Riding a slinky groove in a way that recalls Frank Ocean and Drake’s mellower moments, that little guitar lick that feels like it’s being submerged in a wine-dark sea and the slurred mumbling that brings to mind Serge Gainsbourg add up to someone I can’t wait to follow. 
• Rachel Musson, “Reeling” – I’m a sucker for an unaccompanied saxophone record, starting with – thanks to Chicago’s John Corbett and his book Extended Play – Peter Brotzman’s 14 Love Poems and Joe McPhee’s Tenor and Fallen Angel (a reissue of Tenor I didn’t realize wasn’t the title) before the more canonical classics of the form. Musson’s marvelous Dreamsing intermingles her phenomenal, gripping tenor playing with intriguing spoken word poetry and with those words I know I’m probably the only person listening to this who’s pumping his fist to this remarkable, unfolding journey but it hits a sweet spot I haven’t indulged in a while. 
• Chimurenga Renaissance featuring King Britt and Nadine Stoddart, “Zimbabwe” – Tendai “Baba” Maraire of Shabazz Palaces and his partner in Chimurenga Renaissance, Hussein Kalonji, pay tribute to their motherland with “Zimbabwe” which samples Maraire’s father, acclaimed mbira player Dumisani Maraire. King Britt’s unmistakable rapping and the smoky vocals of Nadine Stoddart send this travelogue to outer space. 
• Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Matt Sweeney, “My Body Is My Own” – I wasn’t the biggest fan of the earlier Oldham/Sweeney collaboration, Superwolf, so I was happily surprised to find their reunion Superwolves so beautiful. This song, one of Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s periodic forays into the smoother sounds of the ‘70s – notes from that electric piano hanging in the air like the light glinting through raindrops – accentuates the haunting, fragile quality of the vocal delivering one of those lyrics that wraps mournfulness and hope in concrete details that still don’t give anything away. “All my life is writ, decided. My next life will prove to you that I can see what God provided and how to put those things to use. I’ve saved for my next incarnation boxes, bags, and bolts of breath – bales of joy and raw elation to break me through the wall of death.” 
• Blue Cactus, “Stranger Again” – This North Carolina band recalls the alt.country I OD’ed on in my early 20s with two beautifully blended voices – Steph Stewart and Mario Arnez – rising through sepia-toned keys and a slow jangling guitar. On a trend with some other things I’ve mentioned, this filled a craving I didn’t even realize was missing until I heard those first notes. “Don’t it feel like the real thing falling?” 
• Giant Claw featuring NTsKi, “Disworld” – Giant Claw (Keith Rankin) makes some of the most vibrant, intriguing electronic music to come out of Columbus. The collaboration with vocalist NTsKi on this floating, falling journey of a song got my attention on a record I know will take me years to unpack. 
• KAMAUU, “Howie and the Howl” – Brooklyn based rapper and singer KAMAUU – who I learned of when an earlier song was on an episode of Insecure – hits it out of the park with this tortured, yearning head knocker of a song about the way we pass along trauma through generations. What Sekou Sundiata once called “Dance and be still music” because just one response doesn’t do it justice. “They come around every time like cursive – they weigh me down, generational curses. But then I found something that could reverse it: purpose. Most Kings and most Queens get a limit and low dreams and don’t soar, but those things I don’t bring in my image. I owe me to go far.” 
• Robert Finley, “Make Me Feel Alright” – This slab of classic soul-blues from Robert Finley’s second record, produced by Dan Auerbach and a crack cast of players including the great Kenny Brown, ripples with the kind of three-dimensional joy and life too often missing from retro blues records. 
• Ralph Peterson, “Blue Hughes” – We lost the great drummer Ralph Peterson earlier this year, but he left us a classic example of the muscular, straight ahead post-bop that could silence even the loudest drunk jackass in a basement club (trying not to look in the mirror here), Raise Up Off Me. The great Jazzmeia Horn provided soulful vocals on some key tracks but for me the magic comes in these tunes that reminded me of him in a club. This original tune, a tight piano trio comprising Peterson, pianist Zaccai Curtis, and bassist Luques Curtis, augmented by percussionist Eguie Castrillo simmers and catches fire. 
• Curtis Harding, “Hopeful” – Curtis Harding’s Soul Power was my favorite summertime record since King Khan and the Shrines’ first one when it came out and everything he’s done since has gotten better, deeper, and messier in all the best ways, including a show at A&R bar that almost knocked me clean out of the room. This hard grooving, string-kissed first single off his next record made me as happy as anything else on this playlist. Playing it – for maybe the 20^th time – to write about it here has me moving so much I almost kicked my chair away to write this standing up, Jerry Lee-style. 
• Eli “Paperboy” Reed, “To Be Alone With You” – Speaking of singers who even the hope of new music puts a smile on my face, this Bob Dylan cover (in time for Dylan’s 80^th birthday) gets a sizzling soul makeover from one of my favorite voices, Eli “Paperboy” Reed, harkening back to the foot stomping, hip shaking, sweet and hot horns and percussion that made so many of us fall for him years ago. That voice only gets richer and bolder with time.  
• French Ship, “Under The Milky Way” – I believe this was another Sophisticated Boom Boom tip off and I still can’t find much in the way of info about this band (artist?). But that intoxicating torchy vocal and suspended key pattern over booming kick drums and handclaps drives me insane. 
• Lucy Dacus, “VBS” – I knew nothing about Lucy Dacus when I caught her opening for Hamilton Leithauser of the Walkmen at the Newport and that set – in a room not known for sounding great, to an audience full of people not necessarily kind to an opening act – made me an instant fan. I liked the collaborative boygenius stuff as well, but this takes me back to everything I liked about her immediately. “The poetry was so bad it took a lot to not laugh – you said that I showed you the light but all it did, in the end, was make the dark feel darker than before.” 
• Peliculas Geniales featuring AJ Davila, “Alegria” – This buoyant dance-rock song from young Mexican band Peliculas Geniales got my attention with a feature from Puerto Rico’s AJ Davila, formerly of Davila 666 (still maybe the best live band I’ve ever seen). Big falsetto vocals over a slashing guitar riff and a throbbing rhythm. Another tune I’d be an idiot to not inflict on as many party goers and dance partners as I can. 
• Masego, “Mystery Lady (TrapHouseJazz Remix)” – Jamaican-American Masego has been making some noise for a while, but it sailed right past me. After hearing this percussion-heavy track that should be tailor made for a club, I just haven’t been cool enough to know where that right club is for many years, I set about rectifying my error. One of the most exciting takes on that classic toasting delivery with a wholly unique cadence. 
• Alex Chilton and the Hi Rhythm Section, “Hello Josephine” – And we end this month’s selections with a never-heard classic. A 1999 pairing for charity of one of Memphis’ iconic voices with the Cadillac of all backing bands on a set of classic covers. The whole record – Boogie Shoes: Live on Beale Street – is a gas but I have a particular fondness for their stroll through this Dave Bartholomew classic. The horn section’s escalating, fiery solos – Jim Spake’s tenor, then Ronald Kirk Smothers’ bari, into Scott Thompson’s trumpet, are worth the price of admission alone, but you can almost hear the grins all around as Archie “Hubie” Mitchell’s keyboard moves from interesting, idiosyncratic comping then builds a bridge for the vocalist back into the song.