Monthly Playlist – June 2021

As spring rounded its bend toward summer, Anne and I took our first extended vacation since prior to the pandemic and it was a good mix of doing things, seeing both strangers and friends, and chilling the hell out. Saw phenomenal sets of Reigning Sound, Chuck Mead, and The Veldt. I think that influenced this month’s selections – reacquainting myself with the rhythm of airports, planes, favorite roads and coffee shops in beloved cities but also the surprising kind of slowed-down vacation where my usual Friday’s sort through new records was done with coffee on the porch of a beach house I’d never done before. 

Columbus is returning to life and most of what has my number so far has been jazz – Randy Mather leading the Joe Diamond tribute act Rhinestone Quartet getting a packed dancefloor to the hard bop anthem “The Sidewinder” was magic. Brett Burleson leading another quartet with the great Eddie Bayard on tenor moving from one of his slow-burn ballad originals into an eye-of-the hurricane stomping take on Monk’s “Rhythm-a-ning” almost knocked me out of my chair. 

Also, as you can probably tell from the full-to-bulging nature of this list, a bounty of music to love. Continue reading for notes on the songs.

Bandcamp links courtesy of the Hype Machine’s Merch Table feature: https://hypem.com/merch-table/0o869LnrgxOKiD4yyxpvqi

• DMX featuring The LOX and Swizz Beatz, “That’s My Dog” – I was enthralled the second I saw those first two DMX videos – I think I saw “Stop Being Greedy” before the iconic “Get At Me Dog.” That first full-length, It’s Dark And Hell Is Hot came out a few weeks before I graduated High School, and the tape I bought at (RIP) World Record stayed in my ears for long walks around my little suburb and trips to my first temp jobs. I didn’t keep up with X much after the excellent follow-up Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood but it hurt to watch him get ground into a kind of media punchline for his struggles with his demons and it did my heart good to hear stories of brilliant live shows once again and that longtime collaborator Swizz Beatz was shepherding a comeback record with the kind of budget and A&R care an artist of his stature deserves. Exodus is not a brilliant record – the reports of X seeming to haunt these tracks like a ghost instead of roaring through it like a conquering god are true. And I’ve read some snarky reviews about how much Swizz is all over these tracks.  

But I couldn’t get away from it – barely a day would go by between going through the tracks again, and it’s hard not to conclude that DMX gave as much as he had here. This track, reuniting X with The LOX (Styles P, Sheek Louch, and Jadakiss) features a chorus and post-chorus where Swizz Beatz slips into his most X-styled voice, to the point where I had to look up and confirm it wasn’t a cleaner X compared to the final voice. It hurts a little to hear these friends of his – who first appeared a year earlier – still sound so full of fire and life and X almost rising to that level, but this staccato, shadow-drenched track is another chapter in the paeans to complicated male friendship that he never got enough credit for and everyone else’s verse, especially a ferocious one by Jadakiss, are a testament to how hard they wanted to come for him. With every pass through Exodus, more and more I was convinced this final album was a towering act of love. 

• Moor Mother, “Zami” – Moor Mother has shown up on a lot of these playlists, as featured artist and as leader. She’s probably my pick for most exciting new songwriter, singer, and rapper in years. Audre Lorde’s loomed heavily over me since college and I think her autobiography was the first place I came across the Haitian creole term zami. On this crackling, ferocious track that reminded me of a Jack Whitten collage painting, she drapes slow-decaying churchy synths and static over a grinding, churning ocean. Her wrenching vocal starts with the declaration “No more time on the master’s clock – we travel the spaceways” and drifts through an evocative, searching travelogue through ways the speaker tried to live. As a taste of an upcoming record, I can’t think of anything this year that’s gotten me more excited. 
• Tinashe featuring Buddy, “Pasadena” – After that dark, potent one-two punch of an intro, I had to let some lightness in. I still don’t understand why Tinashe isn’t a bigger star and if this classic summertime jam doesn’t break through, well, those of us who know have another example of what we all love about her. Grimy finger snapping beats get shot through with pure sunshine keys and, like all her best work, there’s enough unsettled questioning sliding through the sun and sweat to imply a larger world – when she sings “Now more than ever, life is all what you make it: I got a vision of a perfect night but every day I end up going through the motions. I wasn’t built for the simple life – in Pasadena singing ‘Do do do do do,’” that same chill shoots through me like when I hear “Cold Sweat” or “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg” on a dancefloor. 
• H.E.R, “Bloody Waters” – I’d been anticipating H.E.R’s debut full length through her excellent EPs and I’m happy to report Back of My Mind blew those expectations to shreds, it’s a fucking masterpiece. This song, in particular, is the best contemporary grappling with all the layers – the layered soundworld and the layered emotional landscape – of Marvin Gaye’s later work I’ve ever heard. Short hard-stopped lines full of rich assonance and slant rhyme like “Speculate caution signs / Incriminate people’s minds / War and love don’t combine / Destiny doesn’t roll the dice” slam into my chest, riding on that molten-glass bassline. 
• The Limiñanas and Laurent Garnier, “Saul” – French band Limiñanas captured my heart as soon as I heard them, playing with every trope of Francophone music I loved but not trapping themselves in a mid-century modern prison. When I saw them live at The Summit, they were one of the best bands I’d ever seen, wrapping sparking barbed wire around louche vocals and sensuous rhythms. This collaboration with French house icon Laurent Garnier feels like walking through Pigalle after last call with that cool breeze following you down the cobblestone streets as the lights of the bars and bistros fades behind you, blanketed by that steamy yellow light from the streetlamps – everything is possible before the sunrise. 
• Loraine James, “Self Doubt (Leaving the Club Early)” – An artist I more recently became aware of, with a terrific The Wire profile, with music that sounds exactly like that same wee hour of the morning slice of another city I haven’t spent much time in but love dearly: London. James merges almost somnambulistic synths with a rhythm that makes me want to move and confounds me on how while that mumbled, insidious hook “You are in a hurry – leaving the club early,” sticks like tar to my brain and lungs, the kind of thing you want to shout along to in a booming, cavernous club and simultaneously sink into alone. 
• New Memphis Colorways, “Hangover Funk” – The staggering, sweat-drenched keyboard bass and ramshackle 80s synth tone for this infectious track from Paul Taylor’s, son of songwriter and engineer Pat Taylor, New Memphis Colorways project.  That similarity in palette to the James track brings us back to the sunshine but still a little wobbly, a little shaky. We’ll make it, but at that moment, the way is bleary and blurry. 
• Kasai Allstars, “Olooh, a War Dance for Peace” – I loved that first Kasai Allstars record, around the same time that Congotronics series turned me onto artists like Konono No. 1, but I’m ashamed to say I lost track of this Congolese collective in the ensuing 15 or so years. This new record Black Ants Always Fly Together, One Bangle Makes No Sound, feels a little cleaner, every instrument and voice gets to shine brightly. It’s such a flowing, unified piece that I had a hard time choosing one song from it but I kept coming back to and circling this track, built around “Olooh,” the word for “Our” in the senuofic languages, and a call for coming together that resonates even to someone like me who doesn’t know the language being sung. A majestic, spiritual track. 
• Broken Shadows, “Una Muy Bonita” – One of Ornette Coleman’s most arresting funky groove anthems, originally put into the world on his 1960 Change of the Century album gets a riotous, catchy dance take from this collective of the frontline of game changing free jazz band Bloodcount (Tim Berne and Chris Speed on reeds) and the rhythm section of The Bad Plus (Reid Anderson and Dave King). This track exemplifies the sense of curiosity and play these four musicians bring to everything they touch and the camaraderie they share from so many years in the same trenches. That beautiful melody and deep hip shaking power both get a chance to shine in a song so many people have done over the years, proven to still have enough energy to power a trip into outer space. 
• Alchemy Sound Project, “Dark Blue Residue” – This collective, an offshoot of LA’s Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, hits new levels of synthesis and empathy on their new one Afrika Love. This track, by pianist Sumi Tonooka, bowled me over within a few notes and continues to enchant me and reveal new facets of itself. Chad Taylor’s subtly drumming as a guest star fits like a puzzle piece between Tonooka’s spiky, mysterious piano and David Arend’s bass and the marvelous front line of Salim Washington and Erica Lindsay on reeds flanking Erica Lindsay’s trumpet, especially what sounds like a bass clarinet in the middle section like a dark red section on a painting. 
• Lauren Flax, “You Can Take the Bitch Out of Detroit” – The Wexner Center’s Off The Grid benefit series had some issues with identity – some of which were exacerbated by my shoddy attempts to lead the Advisory Committee one year – but always brought in terrific DJs/producers from the best corners of New York and beyond. One of my favorite years – and one of the years I was on that committee – introduced me to Lauren Flax, at that time still best known as half of the production duo Creep. Her later work continues to stun me and make me wish I still danced more. This is a perfect example of exactly the kind of electronic dance music I’ve found so infectious since my late teens and with an entirely modern imprint. Tweaking, teasing, and taunting her influences, she fuses them into a track no one else could have made; enough interesting twists to keep the deep listeners engaged and let the expert dancers wow us, but expansive and welcoming enough it won’t embarrass even schlubs like me who mostly just have a side-to-side slide. 
• Parks David, “The Exchange” – Parks David (under his birth name David Parks bassist for acts as diverse as Justin Bieber and Sean Kingston) took advantage of quarantine to craft this gorgeous cinematic funk record The Q Tape (named, he’s said in interviews, for both quarantine and the lush ‘70s productions of Quincy Jones). A little David Axelrod, a little Willie Mitchell, a little Raphael Saadiq, it adds up to one of the most satisfying records I’ve heard all year. 
• Khruangbin featuring Quantic, “Pelota (Cut a Rug Mix)” – This advance of Khruangbin’s Mordechai Remixes links them with classic British funk/cumbia/etc producer Quantic for a righteous dancefloor filler.  
• Bloodbags, “Taking Note” – Easily one of Anne’s favorite Gonerfest discoveries of the last five years – her enthusiasm got me to dig deeper – this Auckland, New Zealand band continues to refine their rough-hewn attack. This highlight from a split album with their tour mates (who I also loved at Gonerfest) Brain Bagz stirs some Wire tension into their thudding, heavy freakbeat Motorhead stew. If that breakdown about two minutes into this track doesn’t stir you, I doubt you ever loved rock and roll. 
• Cedric Burnside, “Get Down” – Another hypnotic, raw dance track that felt like a spiritual cousin of the Bloodbags even though the artist here – Cedric Burnside, the son of the great blues innovator RL Burnside – has a more direct line on the tradition. I can’t seem to ever get enough of that circling guitar and alternately shuffling and stomping drum pattern. 
• Tony Joe White, “Bubba Jones” – Another great innovator/popularizer of funky, catchy swamp rock, Tony Joe White was still creating at the highest levels up until his death in 2018. I saw him play CMJ in 2010, in a little West Village bar that usually hosted the lamest rung of cover bands. He got up with a drummer, tore through the excellent new (at the time) album The Shine, ended with “Rainy Night in Georgia” and was out, barely saying “Thank you.” It was electrifying. For this posthumous collection, Dan Auerbach put a crack band around White’s voice and guitar demos and this rich, three-dimensional track is a beautiful presentation of the kind of story song nobody did better.  
• Crypta, “Dark Night of the Soul” – Turning up the heaviness and grind on this little set of rock and roll you can shake to, Brazilian/Dutch metal band Crypta are one of my favorite discoveries lately. It’s rare to hear that kind of blast beat groove the way it does here, courtesy of drummer Luana Dametto whose hookup with bassist/vocalist Fernanda Lira is a rhythm section for the ages and a brilliant platform for dueling guitarists Sonia Anubis and Tainá Bergamaschi’s riffs that make me want to jump from roof to burning roof. 
• Okuté, “Quiere la Rumba” – A different kind of heavy and danceable, this Cuban rumba group masterfully pulls together the African roots of their form and contemporary influences into something so bright and majestic and mysterious I can’t put my finger on it. And I also can’t stop listening. I wanted to live in the interlaced percussions and call and response vocals, and stopped suddenly, trying to catch my breath by the stabbing, almost punk organ solo that turns into a glistening swirl around the halfway point. 
• Ches Smith and We All Break, “Raw Urbane” – Ches Smith has been one of my favorite drummers for years, adding vital color and pumping blood to Tim Berne, Marc Ribot (he’s also on the Ceramic Dog track later on this playlist), Mary Halvorson, and Kris Davis. This new project of his fuses abstract improvisation with one of his long time interests, Haitian vodou drums, in a way that doesn’t dilute either side of the equation. From the tradition, Smith collaborates with dummers Daniel Brevil, Markus Schwartz and Fanfan Jean Guy Rene, and singer Sirene Dantor Rene. Smith fuses these elements with Miguel Zenón on alto saxophone, Matt Mitchell on piano and Nick Dunston on bass. It’s a glorious tapestry, part action painting and part collage. Hearing Zenón build riffs against the drums, slipping between tempos along with them, is a reminder of the power of listening and improvisation. 
• JD Allen, “Queen City” – I think I mentioned last month what a sucker I am for a solo saxophone records. One of my favorite tenor players of the last decade-plus, and an heir apparent to the tone and imagination of Sonny Rollins, Allen pays tribute to Cincinnati, his sometime-home, with this ravishing tone poem. 
• Fellwalker, “Seriously Though” – I talk about the Wexner Center a lot and it’s been important to me since I was 16. One of the absolute best things I ever saw there was Cynthia Hopkins theatrical song-cycle Accidental Nostalgia followed closely by her vital recovery/historical riff Must Don’t Whip ‘Um. Those sent me after after song she’d ever put out, collaborations, her writing, and that interest continues to pay off. This new single from her collaboration with film/TV scorer James Lavino, Fellwalker, mines that vein of not-taking-itself-too-seriously drama, aided by intense, pulsing drums from Dave King (who appears a few other times on this month’s list). 
• Joy Oladokun, “mighty die young” – I’m a little ashamed I didn’t know Oladokun’s music until this year because it’s exactly what originally drew me to singer-songwriters: an abstract directness. She carves haunting images over sparse arrangements. The meditative piano and building strings underscore knife-in-the-heart lines like “They say I’m too old for Hollywood shine and maybe they’re right. I got a wrinkle in my smile and I want to see it grow.” 
• Bill MacKay and Nathan Bowles, “Late For Your Funeral Again” – I’ve been a big fan of guitarist and banjo player Nathan Bowles since his days in beguiling roots-drone band Pelt and got my head turned around by an early Black Twig Pickers set at Terrastock in Louisville in 2007 or 2008. I came to MacKay through his collaborations with Ryley Walker and this melding of the two is every bit as blissful as I’d hoped. This waltzing original feels like the seasons changing, a forced look back, a wistful apology. “The bell was ringing as the crowd shuffled out, summer blinding in its face. And through the tears, I stifled a shout – ‘I’m late for your funeral again.’” 
• Declan O’Rourke, “The Harbor” – I first heard O’Rourke on John Wendland’s excellent KDHX show Memphis to Manchester and immediately loved that voice and the appealing almost Gordon Lightfoot nature of his unspooling storytelling. I had an extremely hard time picking one song off the Paul Weller-produced Arrivals, I loved it front to back, but this song with its subtle narrative of people who seem stuck but find grace in where they are kept speaking to me. “I’m out here in the world, singing my songs from town to town, and giving everything I have to get this thing of mine air bound so maybe someday I can live like that fisherman who stays close to the harbour and only takes enough just for today.” 
• Rachel Baiman, “No Good Time for Dying” – As I slid songs around ordering this playlist, these last three fell together in a natural-seeming triptych.  Cycles, the debut full length from acclaimed accompanist Baiman, was another record I had a hell of a time choosing one song of. The delicate and steely arrangements set up a powerful vocal about what any of this thing called life means in the end. “People that you love, well, they always disappoint you. What you need is not to need at all. There’s no way of asking them to turn and look away, no way to hide their pity when they see you fall.” 
• Marisa Anderson and William Tyler, “Hurricane Light” – This first single from a collaboration of two of my favorite contemporary guitar players got me salivating for the full-length album coming soon. The hazy, brilliantly colored textures Tyler does so well mesh with Anderson’s spiky spiritual landscapes to create a voice where it’s hard to tell where one person ends and the other begins.  
• John Reischman featuring Todd Phillips, Trent Freeman, and Chris Eldridge, “Cascadia” – This gorgeous original from mandolinist Reischman feels connected to the same melancholy sunlight of the previous tracks, it almost gestures toward an aubade. That feeling is amplified by the other members of the quartet: the melodic bass playing of Phillips, best known for his time in the David Grisman Quintet but more recently with Robbie Fulks, Chris Eldridge known for his stellar guitar work with the Punch Brothers, and fiddle player Trent Freeman who was the unknown for me but shines throughout this expansive, warm song flecked with darkness. 
• Aquarian Blood, “Time in the Rain” – Another Gonerfest discovery. Anne and I saw J.B. Horrell’s spiky rock juggernaut Ex-Cult back when they were still called Sex Cult and one of the early sets of Nots, at the time featuring Laurel Horrell, and they easily became two of our favorite bands. A few years later, their collaboration as Aquarian Blood was exactly the progression we hoped for  – a chaotic, powerful rock and roll machine. But by the next year, they’d shed the other players and started digging into the dark folk of the ‘60s and ‘70s to fantastic results – I watched them quiet a particularly boisterous fest room like nobody else I can think of. With their new record, Bending the Golden Hour, they finally synthesized all their influences and made an album as good as the best songs on their earlier releases. I expect to come back to this subtle hymn to the world as it is (again, that thread through the previous few songs) for a good, long time. 
• Gabriella Smith and Gabriel Cabezas, “Bard of the Wasteland” – Another record I had high expectations for because of the people involved only to watch those expectations happily skyrocketed past. This duo of vocalist/composer Smith and cellist Cabezas, exquisitely produced by violist Nadia Sirota establishes a voice and an outlook, the fading beauty of a ravaged landscape and the drive to capture everything we can about this place before it disappears. 
• Chris Thile, “God is Alive, Magic is Afoot” – Thile, one of my favorite voices and mandolin players, makes the most out of the intimacy of a purely solo-in-a-room record. I’ve always loved this Leonard Cohen piece – when I first saw it in print, when I went back and found the Buffy Sainte-Marie setting, and now this luminous, dramatic cry. 
• Tony Monaco featuring Hendrik Meurkens, “You Don’t Know What Love Is” – One of Columbus’s treasures, B-3 maestro Tony Monaco (not coincidentally the first local musician I saw after being vaccinated) teams up here with German-born harmonica virtuoso Meurkens and a gorgeous, subtle rhythm section of Reid Hoyson on drums and Mark Lucas on guitar for this late-afternoon stroll through one of my favorite standards. 
• Mekka Don. “Still Dope” – Another Columbus star of more recent vintage, a great profile in Columbus Alive reminded me of Mekka Don and this track, full of dusky horns and rolling drums was the burst of hard-won hope and optimism I needed. Hell, always need. 
• Ghetto Priest, “Sway” – Ghetto Priest, who I knew from his work in Adrian Sherwood’s African Head Charge collective, took a left turn revisiting the smooth ballads of his parents’ generation. This lovely, string spiced trip through one of my Grandmother’s (and through osmosis, mine) favorite Dean Martin songs has been a perfect companion for these sunny afternoons and deep, warm nights. 
• Emily Wolfe, “No Man” – I got turned onto Emily Wolfe through my pal Crystal Switalski and among other things, she’s a reminder to always default to doing things instead of not – Crystal and her husband Dan were going to see Wolfe not long before everything shut down at a club down the street from my house and I was just exhausted. I was already kicking myself but hearing this new record amplified that regret. A terrific mélange of retro tones without being specifically beholden to those forms with a sticky guitar riff pinning down a ferocious vocal and lyric. 
• Dress The Dead, “1969” – This offshoot of legendary Bay Area thrash metal bands Forbidden (guitarist-songwriter Craig Locerio, drummer Mark Hernandez) drifts into MC5 territory with astonishing vocalist Kayla Dixon. Big, swinging riffs and a crack rhythm section completed by James Walker on bass (from Locerio’s earlier side project Manmade God) that also doesn’t skimp on atmosphere. The kind of thing I never get tired of, done as well as I can think of anybody doing it right now. 
• FACS, “Present Tense” – Another moody riff explosion coming from a different angle, and another style I never get tired of. It took me a while to get on board with FACS because I loved singer-guitarist Brian Carpenter and drummer Noah Leger’s previous band Disappears so much. This new record, their second I think with bassist Alianna Kalaba, shut me up. It’s full of the scorched earth soundscapes I was craving, full of nuance and surprising textures but also a bludgeoning heft. 
• Huntertones featuring Cory Wong, “Pontiac” – Treasured Columbus sons Huntertones return with the kind of killer, infectiously catchy instrumental they made their name with as the Dan Smith Sextet before moving to NYC, bringing along guitarist Cory Wong for the ride. Wong’s guitar fireworks ride a deep pocket nailed down by Jon Lampley’s thick sousaphone playing. 
• MonoNeon featuring retroPmas, “Love Me as You Need” – Memphis-raised bassist MonoNeon (born Dwayne Thomas Jr.) is known for high profile collaborations with artists including Prince and Mac Miller but he’s quietly put out a remarkable catalog of work under his own name. This new single featuring retroPmaS (Sam Porter) is a easy grooving ‘70s slab of late summer, riding a lilting electric piano line and a conversational vocal that feels like ice tumbling into a Tom Collins glass that immediately starts to sweat.  
• Mariah the Scientist, “2 You” – This Atlanta singer uses echo like a force blast, a little bit of distance but also a declaration of purpose. The incandescent melody here, and double-tracked vocals, dance over crisp, staccato drums with the kind of direct, heart-stabbing lyric that seems to hit hardest over the dancefloor. “But look at what we made – sure was beautiful. Now I lay it in the grave and I’m all covered with dirt. And I try to behave. But whenever they play our song, don’t know why I feel ashamed.” 
• Verterah featuring Felinto, “Fogo e Água” – I think I found this through Lars Gotrich’s newsletter and it blew my hair back. Felinto is a producer stirring psychedelia and dub influences into hypermodern samba, creating music that’s inherently shiny but roughed up in all the right ways and Verterah makes the most out of this enthralling, spiraling beat. This feels like dancing too late at Nublu with a cold Dominican beer, slippery from your sweat. 
• Los Pirañas, “Champeta de la corrupcion y la desgana”- This raging, explosive tune from Colombian band Los Pirañas scratched an Antibalas-shaped itch for me, as Ebilis Álvarez (Meridian Brothers), Mario Galeano, and Pedro Ojeda reshape and pay tribute to their country’s traditional music, unafraid to fuck with it, knowing the structure is strong enough to stand up to their fire. 
• Cochemea, “Burning Plain” – I knew Cochemea Gastelum’s work from his front and center scorching reeds work in Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. When I was in New York for APAP early 2020, right before everything shut down, never-steered-me-wrong friend Andrew Patton said, “I have his solo record and you should see that” when I mentioned he was playing Drom and I was on the fence. As usual, Andrew was 100% right – a six or seven piece band that was almost entirely percussion around Cochemea’s array of saxes and flutes transported me to another place and time while also shoving me back down into my body and making the room vibrate. I can’t swear to it but either this song was part of that set list or he teased out this riff in the middle of something he did play because I immediately knew this and my heart swelled to have it back again. A slow, smoky tempo with some wordless chant vocals in the background over an interlocking floor of rhythm that accentuates that aching, vocal horn tone. 
• La Lá, “Morir soñando” – Another spellbinding slow burn, with La Lá’s crystalline vocal weaving through and sliding over a backing that highlights Fil Uno’s cello and Rafael Miranda’s reeds. 
• Amy Helm, “Breathing” – I’ve been a fan of singer-songwriter Amy Helm, daughter of Levon, since that first record with her band Ollabelle but her new record What the Flood Leaves Behind takes that affection to another level. Working with producer Josh Kaufman, whose sonics helped reinvigorate my interest in Craig Finn and who brings the same level of sympathetic camaraderie to this stellar collection of songs. This song – written with JT Nero from Birds of Chicago – rides a burnished, sepia organ line and a surging horn section.  
• AJ Davila, “El Mar” – AJ Davila, frontman of one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen, Davila 666, keeps making these stellar dance-rock solo singles, every one better than the last. This title track from his upcoming album is another instant smash. 
• Richard Bacchus and the Luckiest Girls, “Harsh Mistress” – D Generation guitar slinger Richard Bacchus relocated to Raleigh in the early 2000s and while he’s mostly made his living as a chef, he’s also gifted us with the muscular powerpop of the Luckiest Girls. This, their second record, is a perfect slab of hooky guitar rock with fraying vocals and thick bass lines. It reminds me a lot of King Louie Bankston’s Missing Monuments and I am always in the mood for another band like that. 
• The Mountain Movers, “Final Sunset” – New Haven heavy psych band Mountain Movers’s sprawling new record Way Back to the World might be their finest hour to date. Everything they do well is on display and on fire here – especially Kryssi Batallene’s scorching guitar leads, jousting with Dan Greene’s rhythm through flaming monoliths set up by the rhythm section. 
• Julian Lage, “Familiar Flower” – Another abstracted, heavy-grooving look at nature. Lage has been one of the guitarists to watch for a while and he brings his most focused, intense set of compositions to his Blue Note Records debut Squint. I love this song so much because he leans into the acidic edge of his tone and plunges into interlocking rhythms ably abetted by Jorge Roeder on bass and drummer Dave King (his third appearance on this month’s playlist, who bring colossal power and wield it with an uncommon subtlety. 
• Chris Pattishall, “Gemini” – I had no familiarity with pianist Chris Pattishall before this record but anyone doing a deep dive on the work of one of my favorite composers of the 20^th century, Mary Lou Williams, has my attention. This delving into her Zodiac Suite, Zodiac, is full of the kind of rapturous interplay her work lends itself to, with a crack band featuring Marty Jaffe on bass and one of my favorite current drummers Jamison Ross, alongside Pattishall in the rhythm section alongside Ruben Fox’s sax and Riley Mulherkar’s trumpet. 
• Mereba, “Go(l)d” – I didn’t catch onto singer-songwriter Mereba until the collective Spillage Village’s marvelous, sprawling R&B record Spilligion in 2020. Her features were highlights there in a record bulging with heavy hitters and her new EP AZEB hit me when and where I needed it. An acoustic guitar figure that gets just under your skin and that spiraling hook, “I don’t really know, I don’t really know why I still believe in Gold…” 
• Xenia Rubinos, “Cógelo Suave” – A buoyant block party in song form. Splashy, almost surreal touches distort and blur the edges of waves of percussion and Rubinos’ voice, “I’m doing fine” splits into its assorted sounds and flows together. A wordless gives a mirage-like respite, enough time to open a beer before the fun craziness resumes. 
• Faye Webster, “A Stranger” – Faye Webster’s jaw-dropping I Know I’m Funny haha plants heartbreaking dissections of ennui like this song in classic ‘60s countrypolitan arrangements, pedal steel and woozy strings and even a spoken middle section, and, like the best of those songs shines its light on every facet and nuance of her voice. Also like the best of those songs, it leaves room for laughter and lightness. “Today I got upset over this song I heard. And I guess I was just upset because why didn’t I think of it first?”  
• Mountain Goats, “Arguing With the Ghost of Peter Laughner About His Coney Island Baby Review” – Like a lot of kids my age to ten years older, the first time I learned about Peter Laughner was Lester Bangs’ blistering elegy that quoted the review John Darnielle mentions in the title to this track. Within a couple years, I knew more about what a towering and tragic figure over the music I love – and more about how much he served to create that vital Cleveland to New York connection – Laughner was, and I stand by my view that Rocket From The Tombs’ “Amphetamine,” is the quintessential Ohio rock song. Mountain Goats continue their streak of beautifully crafted, emotionally charged records with ever deeper and more intricate arrangements. This is a lovely, delicate elegy for one of those frustrating friends who didn’t quite deliver on their promise, with one of the most wrenching bridges I’ve heard in a long time from someone known for it: “Hurt too hard and died too young – silver dollar glistening on your tongue.” 
• David Crosby featuring Sarah Jarosz, “For Free” – Also in the middle of an artistic hot streak, David Crosby gives us a gorgeous reading of Joni Mitchell’s “Ladies of the Canyon” classic “For Free.” With just a sparse piano, so much space between the notes you could fall in it, up against a close, aching harmony between Crosby and Jarosz, this early example of Mitchell’s signature take on the core inequities baked into our cultural life gets maybe its definitive take. This is a stunning reminder that someone can come back to a song for fifty years and still find new things or deeper appreciations of what was there all along. 
• Amaro Frietas, “Ayeye” – Brazil’s Amaro Frietas put out a piano trio record for the ages with his new Sankofa. Melodic cells overlap, split apart, and ooze back together in a way that’s simultaneously meditative and rhythmically intense around the gravitational pull of Jean Elton’s upright base, rained on by flurries of fire from Hugo Medeiros’ drums. 
• John Hiatt and Jerry Douglas, “The Music Is Hot” – I hear a similar suspended-in-air quality to the last two songs in this sweet ode to the power of music to suffuse our lives and the way we make peace with our ghosts if we’re lucky enough to figure out how, from John Hiatt’s lovely record with the Jerry Douglas Band, Leftover Feelings. An excellent showcase for where Hiatt’s voice has evolved, and the pure-water vocal tone of Douglas’ dobro surrounded by his always-tight band. I think I could dig into the way Hiatt moans the last “Gone” on this tune like a zen koan and never fully know it, never completely unpack its meaning. 
• Lucy Dacus, “Please Stay” – Speaking of songs I don’t see any end to trying to unpack or any end to the joy from trying, Lucy Dacus’s new record Home Video is full of them. This one in particular hit me like a brick in the chest. The insistent, rolling piano and guitar set up that moment about a third of the way through when, in the chorus, her voice, alone on “You tell me you love me like it’ll be the last time. Like you’re playing out the end of a storyline. I say I love you too, because it’s true,” then swarmed by backing vocals: “What else am I supposed to do?” The comfort of knowing something, even something terrible, is a shared feeling and an underlining of the character’s desperation. Jesus. 
• Raphael Saadiq, “My Path” – I don’t think Raphael Saadiq has ever made a weak record but he’s definitely turned a corner into darker, thornier, uncharted territory, on his last full length Jimmy Lee (and heartbreaking show Anne and I saw in Louisville on the accompanying tour in February 2020). There’s also a special magic when he engages with other art, his soundtrack work frequently creates some of my favorite of his songs. This tune, written for the haunting, infuriating (that it happened at all and the lack of progress we’ve shown since) documentary A Crime on the Bayou, is a polished, low-key synthesis of the dark and the hopeful. The steadfastness in Saadiq’s voice as he moans “Don’t be misled, I won’t let no one destroy my path,” through a haze of sweltering horns, stuck with me since I first heard it. 
• Amythyst Kiah, “Wild Turkey” – Another reminder to – within reason – always go to the show. I wanted to see Yola and Amythyst Kiah not long before the pandemic, but it was at a venue that frequently annoys me and it was a Sunday night and… and this new Amythyst Kiah record Wary + Strange is so good it reminds me what a fucking idiot I was to let any of that get in my way. A sparse arrangement highlights her guitar and blue-flame voice with subtle strings and drones, occasionally accented by enormous drums that accent the pain of the lyric. “When I was seventeen I pretended not to care; stayed numb for years to escape despair. When your soul dies, you just can’t hide it – everyone can tell.” 
• Ceramic Dog, “The Long Goodbye” – Ending this month’s journey through the music that grabbed at corners of my psyche with another cry into the darkness against despairing, against giving up. Comes from the new one, Hope, by my longtime favorite guitar player, Marc Ribot, in the most dynamic and diverse of his running projects, punk-jazz power trio Ceramic Dog. This original instrumental opens with Ribot in his most delicate, spacious mode, barely accented by Ches Smith’s electronics. It grows in power and pain, Smith’s drums and Shazad Ismaily’s bass and keys rising, along with the potent addition of the great alto player Darius Jones into a city in flames.