Stumbled hard a few times this month but righted the ship. Still struggling with some levels of burnout but I see the light, and I’ve started some habits that are showing some positive signs. And had some remarkable feelings of normality, in all the best ways – the first weekend I had to review three shows. First writing for a new outlet run by good friends.
Seeing other friends for the first time in person since before the pandemic and good lord, it’s amazing how much energy I’ve missed from those people it never would have occurred to see every week or anything but who bring something ineffable to my life. First Pink Elephant in 18 months, coupled with returning from Gonerfest and a full week of theater reviews led to this being a little more delayed than I’d like; back to the first week of the month next month.
And this, the year anniversary of these playlists which give me more joy than I expected when I started and I’ve gotten remarkably positive feedback about. Thanks for listening. Thanks for letting me know what you think. Thanks for being here. I love you.
For bandcamp links, courtesy of Hype Machine’s essential Merch Table feature: https://hypem.com/merch-table/4lo8VPqshOImwYp23tpQBD
- Moviola, “Broken Rainbows” – Moviola are among the great exemplars of Columbus music. Not only one of the most unassailable catalogs, all five members writing and singing. Never getting stagnant – evolving and shifting, staying friends and making music because they want to. A constant recommitting to each other and to their passions. Because it gives them joy and they still have something to say. Attentions have ebbed and flowed – hell, I’ve gone through phases where they lost me and a few years later I went back to those records and said, “What kind of a fucking idiot was I?” – and long and short stretches between albums, but these last two (the earlier one Jerry Dannemiller delivered to our lawn on Anne’s birthday in 2020) are as good as any of their work. This title track is warm summer light through the prism that shows up in a cracked bottle. The loping, never quite settled deep groove of the rhythm plays with the B-3 and a rip-my-heart-out pedal steel player from old friend (of mine and the band) Barry Hensley, to set up an abstract lyric with melancholy but not despair, those spiced-honey harmonies lighting it up from the inside. “This time you’ve bit off more than you ever knew, and aimless contrition was never gonna do. The leaves are gone; the birds have flown. And the sky’s in on it too. Broken rainbows with only shades of blue.”
- Gerycz/Powers/Rolin, “June” – Newer entrants but with a definitive place of pride in the “Make me proud to live in Columbus and be around them” hall of fame, Jen Powers and Mathew Rolin, have made more great records this year than I can get my head around and their new collaboration with longtime Cleveland pal Jayson Gerycz (Cloud Nothings), adding subtle, coloristic and propulsive drumming to Powers’ hammered dulcimer and Rolin’s acoustic 12-string, is another masterpiece. This chiming, expansive travelogue through a Kandinsky-colorful landscape has served me while writing, while smoking a cigar on the porch, on long walks just trying to clear my head, and it’s still revealing new secrets, new pleasures.
- Amir ElSaffar and Rivers of Sound, “Transformations” – I first saw Amir ElSaffar at the Wexner Center in 2009 and it’s still a concert burned into my brain. His smoldering trumpet tone, of course, front and center – and I got a closer look at that a few years later when I saw a quartet of his play Le Poisson Rouge on one of my New York trips. His return to our historic Lincoln Theater, presented by the Wex, he brought a few of those players who blew me away – including drummer Nasheet Waits and oud player Zafer Tawil, along with the secret weapon of maqam singer Hamid Al-Saadi, one of ElSaffar’s teachers and it took my breath away. His new record, The Other Shore, expands to a large ensemble (with many of the players I’d seen with him before) and ElSaffar takes over all the vocals (along with trumpet and santur) and it’s one of the finest big band records I’ve ever heard. He shows off an Ellington-like understanding of what each player brings to the table and lets them shine in his rapturous, shifting, but immediate and riveting compositions.
- Becca Stevens and The Secret Trio, “Bring It Back” – Brooklyn-based vocalist-composer Becca Stevens hit my radar on Ambrose Akinmusire’s The Imaginary Savior is Far Easier to Paint and her association with the Snarky Puppy collective, but she fully planted in my consciousness with last year’s gorgeous Wonderbloom. Her new record pairs her with The Secret Trio – oud player Ara Dinkjian, clarinetist Ismail Lumanovski, and karun player Tamer Pınarbaşı. This eponymous collaboration carves out an enthralling middle ground between their sound worlds, colors from klezmer, Balkan folk music, and microtones. The intensity of the few words in this “Bring it back, bring it back again, your secret back to me…” grips me by the throat every time.
- Steven Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra, “High Light” – Another act the Wexner Center brought me, some years ago, that I still love and cherish. Bernstein, in many guises, takes complex, intricate music and makes it undeniable. It’s the jazz band full of avant-gardists you could bring your least-jazz-interested pal to and they’d come out beaming. I’ve seen it happen again and again – I saw it happen at that Wexner Center show where my old friend Jeff lit up like a Christmas tree when he realized that newly harmonized, stretched-out intro was Prince’s “Darling Nikki.” I saw it happen at New York’s Jazz Standard when Anne and I were fighting off the last stretch of ugly colds and getting our heads right for one of my dearest friends’ wedding up in Hudson the next day. I saw it happen at Le Poisson Rouge for Winter JazzFest in 2019. The enthusiasm and the intensity of this band is infectious. And now we finally have a record of new material – only 20 years into the band’s life – Tinctures in Time (Community Music Vol. 1). And it’s phenomenal. This track, “High Light” is a standout. It features a circular, drill-into-your skull guitar part from Matt Munisteri, better known around the traditional jazz circles of NYC like the Ear Regulars jam and Western Swing revivalists Brain Cloud, at that Winter JazzFest show Bernstein recounted their meeting, “They told me ‘You should see this guy who plays trad banjo.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to meet no motherfucker who plays trad banjo!’” Sexy, grimy horn parts from Bernstein and Curtis Fowlkes’ trombone slither around the reed section of Doug Wieselman, Peter Apfelbaum, and Eric Lawrence. The swaggering, late night groove of Ben Allison and Ben Perkowsky. And Charlie Burnham’s funky violin is the spiked cherry on top.
- Adia Victoria, “Mean-Hearted Woman” – A similar dark and sexy groove powers this killer song from Adia Victoria’s stunning third album A Southern Gothic. This was probably the hardest record to choose just one song from, it’s so strong front to back. She draws from a wealth of southern literature, music and, art to build a truly utterly personal way of seeing. Lyrics chiseled for maximum effect pair with melodies you couldn’t shake if you tried and a lacerating guitar solo that stops me every time.
- Someone, “Empathy” – Someone, the nom de pop of Amsterdam-based artist Tessa Rose Jackson, hadn’t hit my radar until this song and, as with many of my favorite moments assembling this, I was just a second away from slapping my head and saying, “I’m an idiot.” The slinky groove with cinematic touches and an understated vocal reminds me of early Goldfrapp but with more contemporary influences. It’s an intoxicating mix and a perfect 3am record. “Lately, I’m losing my empathy. Does the world seem bigger now than we realized?”
- Julia Bardo, “Love Out of Control” – As lush as the Jackson is sparse, this burnished-gold Bardo track, as Anne said, has a strong Bee Gees vibe in the best ways, with a thick groove from Fergus Lysaght on bass and Tara Gabriella Engelhardt on drums, and sizzling lead guitar from Lewis Johnson-Kellett, this Italian-by-way-of-Manchester singer leans into the dazzling, carnival ride aspects of this love that’s gone off the rails.
- Jesse Malin, “Greener Pastures” – I don’t think enough gets said about Jesse Malin’s sweetness. There’s a big-hearted love for everyone and everything he writes about that I find hopelessly endearing – a quality he shares with other writers I’ve OD’ed on, in songs like Guy Clark and Dar Williams and Bill Withers, and poets like Stephen Dunn and Kevin Young and Marilyn Hacker. He makes me want to live in the world he does and know those people. And that goes through to his musical relationships, the same band members and guests show up again and again and they always deliver, it always feels like people are bringing their A game for him. This song – written with longtime collaborator Holly Ramos who he’s been writing with since his teenage band Heart Attack – is one of a load of perfect examples on his new one A Sad and Beautiful World. A keening melody, following a character through an afternoon in Dallas on the verses, with a chorus imploring a friend to keep hanging on – or wishing they had. “Went to see a movie that everybody liked. Made me wish I was a better guy. Waiting on a vision but it hasn’t shown up yet. We all know the river’s gonna rise…Greener pastures always wait for you, tell the story one more time. What you asked for, starry eyed and blue, you can make it if you try.”
- Dori Freeman, “Nobody Nothing” – I will always be a sucker for this kind of honky tonk-suspended-in-time waltz. I’d heard the name Dori Freeman but hadn’t checked the Virginia-based singer out until her perfect-for-late-summer Ten Thousand Roses and it’s one of those records that popped into my life just when I needed it. The loping saloon tempo on this song, courtesy of drummer-producer (and Freeman’s husband) Nicholas Falk, teases textures out of Sam Fribush’s keys and guitars courtesy of Freeman and Eric Robertson, behind a perfectly longing vocal. “You don’t owe nobody nothing – now ring the bell and make a joyful sound.”
- Rachel Eckroth, “The Garden” – The mood and textures in this beautiful Rachel Eckroth (keyboardist for Rufus Wainwright and St Vincent) piece felt like they echoed in dialogue with the Freeman. Produced by Tim Lefebvre and rippling with his unmistakable bass sound in a subtle, telepathic hookup with Christian Euman on drums (the only player I wasn’t familiar with but this added him to my list to check for going forward). Donny McCaslin’s robust, vocal tenor sax tone washes over and casts light on the landscape here, perfectly fitting the insinuating melodies of Eckroth’s composition and her layers of keyboard.
- Nate Smith featuring Joel Ross and Michael Mayo, “Altitude” – I became a fan of drummer Nate Smith with his work in Chris Potter’s massively influential Underground quartet and some Dave Holland records around the same time, and I’ve been a fan ever since. His new album, Kinfolk 2: See The Birds, is a sequel to his wide-ranging and widely acclaimed Kinfolk: Postcards From Everywhere. It pairs a core unit of Fima Ephron on bass, Brad Allen Williams on guitar, Jaleel Shaw on saxophone, and Jon Cowherd on keys, with a variety of guests – on this track, my favorite of the pre-release tunes, vibraphonist Joel Ross who’s been lighting the jazz world up lately, and up-and-coming singer-songwriter Michael Mayo. This simmering slow build of a track works up a gorgeous tension between the keys, vibes, and Smith’s tight, staccato drumming, especially intriguing cymbal patterns. Apropos to the title, it rises higher and higher, with moments of swooping expansiveness.
- Son of Dribble, “Dusty” – One of my favorite more recent Columbus bands, Son of Dribble, fronted by my pal Andy Clager, with Darren Latanick’s stabbing guitar sparking around him and Vickie Mahnke, old friend and one of my favorite drummers, supplying a jittery, deep center of gravity. In the classic tradition of much of the great music of my town, it’s a fuzzy, grooving dance tune with a side of searching and a thick glaze of melancholy, “Fall down and roll around.”
- Sami Yaffa, “Down at St Joe’s” – Sami Yaffa, Hanoi Rocks bass player, who also did notable stints in the latter-day New York Dolls and with Joan Jett, put out his first solo album The Innermost Journey to Your Outermost Mind and it’s a fine slab of swinging, sweet-and-sad Americana. There isn’t anything new about this lilting tune about someone finding themselves stuck in a repeating pattern, always missing something but finding comfort where they can, but I the grain of his vocal against that riff hits a sweet spot for me. “My best ideas come to me when I set the spirits free; my best ideas disappear if I can’t just let it be…but it ain’t easy to understand.”
- Aaron Lee Tasjan, “Traveling After Dark” – Most of Neal Casal’s solo work missed me when it came out but I was a big fan of his guitar work with Todd Snider, Ryan Adams, Tift Merritt, and others. As is too often the case, I dug into it after his death in 2019 and was entranced by the live-stream of his tribute show last year when we were all locked down deeply and trying to find expressions that fit with our own grief. From the upcoming tribute record to Casal, Highway Butterfly, Yaffa’s bandmate in the 2010s New York Dolls for a time, Aaron Lee Tasjan who put out his finest record this year with Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!, delivers a gorgeous, warm-hearted take on this beautiful prayer for us all. “We all want something real and we’re all hoping to find: a closer way to feel; just one thing to remind; just one way to forgive – sometimes we fall too far; just someone to be with. When we’re traveling after dark.”
- Säje featuring Gerald Clayton, “Dusk Baby” – A similar traveling, light melting away mood pervades this intoxicating track from vocal ensemble Säje – Sara Gazarek, Amanda Taylor, Johnaye Kendrick, and Erin Bentlage – with thick, smoke harmonies set against Gerald Clayton’s perfectly matched piano. Clayton’s one of my favorite piano players of my generation and I’ve seen him in a number of modes, including sitting in with the Columbus Jazz Orchestra. I fondly recall a masterclass he did with the CJO’s director Byron Stripling (a longtime friend and collaborator of Clayton’s father, great bassist/composer/bandleader John Clayton) where the two of them spontaneously launched into riffs from Monk, the Oscar Peterson/Clark Terry Duet, and some free improv, having a ball the entire time. That same spirit of easy conversation that holds the whole world pervades the interplay between Clayton and Säje here.
- Craig Taborn, “A Code With Spells – Live at Konzerthaus, Wein” – Another of my favorite jazz pianists, Taborn brings up the energy and interest of any situation he’s in but on solo piano, I can’t think of anyone who’s as consistently wowed me. This live record – with appropriately in-your-face production, sums up everything I love about his playing. Unhurried, swelling, letting drama build in unlikely places and resolve without resorting to cliché or some too-easy catharsis. Gorgeous melodies cracked and formed into new shapes, filtered through shifting light.
- Alexa Rose, “Diamonds” – The remarkable new record Headhunters, by Asheville singer-songwriter Alexa Rose, surrounds her with most of my favorite roots musicians working today, you couldn’t ask for a better band assembled including Will Sexton on guitar, Al Gamble of City Champs on keys, the string section who blew me away on the recent Reigning Sound gigs, Krista and Elen Wroten. Everything is sympathetic and three-dimensional without an ounce of showboating or fat. This song provides a showcase for Gamble’s juicy organ and a magnetic pedal steel through line from Kell Kellum (Jimbo Mathus), but it all sets up a dagger in the heart melody and lyric, with an opening line that stopped me in my tracks the first time I heard it: “I don’t remember what it felt like loving you; it’s just an old bone that I buried in the back of my mind knowing that things are going to go to seed. You should be sowing more than you need.”
- BB Seaton featuring Errol Brown, “Photographs and Souvenirs” – Reggae legend BB Seaton teams up with Hot Chocolate lead singer Errol Brown for this marvelous confection with the kind of smooth soulful vocal nobody does better, over a subtle track like roller skating down a boardwalk as the first brush of autumn’s cold pricks your shoulders and a classic hand clap that’s as hooky as the chorus.
- Nubiyan Twist featuring Ego Ella May, “24-7” – A more contemporary piece of smooth and funky British R&B, guitarist-producer Tom Excell’s ten-piece collective sets up a sticky groove, full of surprising little twists and details that don’t detract from the effect but set up handholds to grip onto, with a righteous sax solo on this track (I couldn’t find more detailed credits) and bubbling hand drums, behind a smoldering vocal from Ego Ella May.
- K Wata, “What Do U Want? (Hard Mix)” – This rising NYC electronic producer reminds me of all the surging potential when I first got into techno, drum and bass, jungle, but he doesn’t trade in any kind of retread or throwback. Layered and chopped voice recordings and beats that don’t easily resolve, they rile up the body and light my brain up.
- PRB Label featuring Morphine, “Shok” – I can’t find anything about this track to add context but I love it. I assume Spotify put it on my Release Radar because I’m such a fan of another act named Morphine but this is, I think middle eastern or north African rap, with a moody keyboard line and stuttering, Timbaland-reminiscent drums under a rapid-fire rap in a language I don’t speak. I want to be in the club night playing this.
- Khaligraph Jonez, “Champez” – Classic boast raps from Kenyan hip-hop star Khaligraph Jones with a chin-set but hip-swaying beat accented by regal horn stabs and pure delight as Jones slips between deliveries and meters like an expert gymnast. “Sipping on the cheap liquor? We only do champagne.”
- Prism Quartet featuring Ravi Coltrane and Chris Potter, “Tones for M” – God help me, I love a saxophone quartet. The World Saxophone Quartet was probably my first exposure – on record and live – but Prism, formed at the University of Michigan and now based in New York, wasn’t far behind. Their new record augments those four strong voices with some of the best tenor players working and it shoots into outer space. This track features a composition by Ravi Coltrane and ferocious, captivating solos from Coltrane and Chris Potter.
- Chet Doxas, “Lodestar (For Lester Young)” – Saxophonist Chet Doxas made one of his finest records with You Can’t Take It With You. He assembled a drum-less trio with Ethan Iverson on piano and Thomas Morgan on bass, partly inspired by the great clarinetist Jimmy Giuffre’s ground-breaking trios and, he’s said, especially by Carla Bley’s compositions for them. I’m as big a Carla Bley nerd as I’ve ever met and these ten pieces do justice to one of the greatest American composers without falling into slavish tribute or plasterboard reconstruction. This piece, a tribute to Lester Young, in case he hadn’t set the bar high enough for himself, encapsulates everything I love about the record. A surprising, lurching rhythm, disrupting the silky melodies Young was known for but giving us just enough of that sweetness to make my eyes grow wide, with Iverson playing like a rain of mirror shards, and Morgan playing a worldly heartbeat.
- Ashley Shadow featuring Bonnie “Prince” Billy, “Don’t Slow Me Down” – Paul Rigby’s haunting pedal steel felt to me like the tonal bridge between the Doxas and the Bryant. Ashley Shadow’s marvelous, mysterious Only The End, with a subtle rhythm section of Ryan Beattie and Joshua Wells, builds cryptic songs that remind me of the best Richard Buckner work, or Dorothea Lasky poems. The only other verbal voice on the record comes on this song, with a stunning duet vocal from Bonnie “Prince” Billy that’s beautifully cryptic enough I can’t tell if it’s another character or a voice inside the first character’s head. Stops me dead every time. “Uncertain tomorrow would be here at all, we outran the darkness and shook off the cold. Taking back feeling from all it controlled.”
- Abby Bryant and The Echoes, “Tried” – One of many songs on here in classic Americana mode featuring a marvelous, ear-worm organ part. This Asheville-based band backed the swaggering, slow-whiskey vocal of Abby Bryant with southern rock royalty courtesy of Jeff Sipe’s signature laid back but never dull drumming, Anthony Dorion’s bass, and John Ginty’s (Robert Randolph) washes of sunlight-and-shadow organ.
- Rod Gator, “Your Goodbye” – Not far stylistically from the last track, the crisp production from Adrian Quesada (of the Black Pumas) and Will Walden uses some neon-bright shadows to keep this tribute to Gator’s (born Rod Melancon) childhood home, For Louisiana, from slipping too far into swampy, southern gothic nostalgia, giving everything just enough unexpected tension to stick while still focusing the spotlight on Gator’s warm, leathery voice and gorgeous songs like this tracing of the hole someone left in his life. “Oh, and we once swore forever but that forever was a lie – them meetings might have kept me clean but they didn’t help with your goodbye.”
- Pat Metheny’s Side-Eye, “Turnaround” – I like the Pat Metheny Group, he’s got a knack for the perfect people to fit his shimmering compositions and create landscapes you can get lost in. But I have a special love for the Metheny who came to throw down, the sense of pure play when you put him in a small group and he just goes for it – whether with Ornette Coleman or Derek Bailey or in the case of his new, technicolor organ trio Side-Eye. This live record Side-Eye VI.IV NYC, captures Metheny with James Francies on keys and the great Marcus Gilmore on drums. The classic New Orleans piano solo midway through this ripping take on a great Ornette Coleman tune. leaning into a flurry of soulful note-bending and a righteous, full-hearted drum break is the kind of thing I live for in music, and the album’s full to bursting with those moments.
- Skepticism, “The Swan and the Raven” – Sometimes I really want my metal to be majestic and I haven’t heard as good an example as Skepticism’s new record Companion in at least a few years. This “funeral doom” band from Finland has been on my radar for a couple of decades but sometimes you need something to hit you at the right time and the blend of sweeping (maybe synthesized?) strings and horns over slow, crashing drumming and a guitar that sounds like a forest fire on a mountain range, just knocked me sideways. Hell, writing this paragraph I had to stop a few times and pump my fists in the air (both of them, like I just ran a marathon, not one like I’m on the Jersey Shore).
- Carcass, “Dance of Ixtab (Psychopomp & Circumstance March No. 1)” – I loved Carcass the second I heard them. I’ve talked about Earache Records death metal being “my” punk rock for a few years and I love it all, but Carcass was my favorite. When Bill Steer and Jeff Walker reunited under the name with a few new players about ten years ago, I was excited but skeptical. The first reunion record Surgical Steel allayed those suspicions, the tour – which I saw at the Newport Music Hall with Gorguts opening – went even further, but their new one Torn Arteries expands on and continues the more rock and roll trajectory of Heartwork and is pure, throw yourself against the wall gleeful catharsis and communion without ever being stupid or easy. The riffs slash and whip, the drums crunch and groove while avoiding the occasional too-triggered style of Surgical Steel (one of my funniest moments ever at a show involved a pal playing “air typewriter” during a particularly egregious drum break). It’s a big, righteous rock record, full stop.
- Amyl and the Sniffers, “Freaks to the Front” – A band of a more recent vintage I loved from the first note I heard, Amy and the Sniffers carry on the proud Melbourne tradition of don’t-give-a-fuck fast, hard rock and roll with a cracking rhythm section and one of the most dynamic frontwomen I’ve ever seen in my life. Anne and I have seen the captivate a packed club at Gonerfest and a make a giant park on a sunny afternoon feel like a basement hardcore show at Burger Boogaloo and I can’t wait to thrash around to this song the next time I get to see them live.
- Turnstile, “Humanoid/Shake It Up” – Turnstile hit my radar like a brick through the window with their new one, Glow On, generating some reviews that make me happy a punk record can still be so polarizing. I’m not sure I love it as much as its many adherents do but I keep coming back to it. I like it a little more each time. And the best of its songs – like this minute-long jolt of adrenaline that spot-welds a classic pop-punk chorus and shredding solo to a big Pantera chugging riff, drops the mic, and moves onto something else.
- Spread Joy, “Music for the Body” – With Gonerfest’s compressed timeline and single location, my standard practice of getting away to take in other sights – and eat as many meals as possible in that town I love so much – meant I missed some things I was looking forward to. Spread Joy is probably the very top of that list. This Chicago band uses a classic, choppy riff as a launching pad for an intoxicating yelping vocal by Briana Hernandez.
- Circuit des Yeux, “Dogma” – In the mid-’00s Haley Fohr’s Circuit des Yeux project came through Columbus often and it was always a good time, it felt like every time she brought a new song that almost made me drop my drink. This tune, off her first record for Matador, -io, paints sharp spaghetti western guitar stabs over a swaggering beat and liquid keys.
- Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul, “Thank You” – This low-key, insidious groove monster from Belgian duo Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul, co-written and produced with Soulwax, fuses a track I can’t resist moving to with a hilarious, biting sarcastic flurry of clap backs to know-nothing opinions. The moment where the track shifts into slightly harder drums and big, squelchy keyboard bass under singing “Enough enough enough” got me dancing even while I was writing this blurb. “You can see my true potential and you discovered me, right?”
- Moor Mother, “Rogue Waves” – I’ve featured Moor Mother on several of these podcasts, she’s one of my favorite artists right now – both recording under this name and as poet Camae Ayewa – and her new record Black Encyclopedia of the Air is a massive leap forward even for someone I already loved. This record takes all her wide-ranging influences and synthesizes them into a finely sharpened masterpiece, a true unity of effect. Every song on here kills me. The subtle, thick rhythm track, planting a creeping bass line in thickets of percussion, and her multi-tracked vocal melting into whispers and bubbling up into unhurried declarations. “Just think – what if you could just blink it all away? Lost my father in ‘16, let them others pray. So much bullshit in the air I had to fall away.”
- Marissa Nadler featuring Mary Lattimore, “If I Could Breathe Underwater” – I got turned onto Marissa Nadler when she was scheduled to play the last Terrastock in Louisville. She ended up canceling but by that time her first two records were in my blood, and she’s never put out something that let me down – maybe the best example of a singer-songwriter bringing in other elements, collaborations (from free improvisers, the doom metal world, and less classifiable artists like harpist Mary Lattimore who lends a magical sheen to this song), without losing that core magic and mystery that captivates me.
- Nadje Noordhuis, “Silverpoint” – One of my favorite brass players, Nadje Noordhuis, adds a unique, enriching flavor to everything she plays on – she first knocked me on my ass as an integral soloist in Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, she provides many of my favorite moments on Arooj Aftab’s Vulture Prince – but she hasn’t recorded much as a leader. This quintet record, Gullfoss, is full of sterling originals that capture a relationship to the natural world. Her front-and-center trumpet and flugelhorn dances around the stabs of Maeve Gilchrist’s harp and Jesse Lewis’s guitar (with a fiery riff in the last half of the piece) and a slowly building, stormy rhythm section of Ike Sturm’s bass and James Shipp’s synths and percussion.
- Elena Setién, “Such a Drag” – Singer-songwriter Elena Setién, based in the Basque country, paints these subtle, layered miniatures that imply whole universes, like Agnes Martin paintings or Morton Feldman compositions. This came to me through a Thrill Jockey promo email, and I fell hard for it within a few notes.
- Low, “All Night” – Jen Powers, mentioned earlier on the list, referred to Low as one of the few rock bands of her youth who are still great and that sent me to check in on a band I also loved but had drifted away from, and damned if she wasn’t right. Their new Hey What is drenched in their magic, this song has a spiritual, revolving hook from Mimi Parker over her subtle percussion and waves of grinding, crashing guitar from Alan Sparhawk. Part admonition, part words of comfort, something I want to wrap myself in and use as a torch to lead me home.
- George Riley featuring Joe Armon-Jones, “Say Yes” – One of my favorite R&B records this year came from London singer George Riley, interest rates, a tape, full of shimmering, luminescent textures and a playful vocal that reminds me a little bit of Monday Michiru. “Today I think I’m gonna say yes – step into my powers, manifest it after hours.”
- Axel Rulay featuring Farruko and El Alfa, “Si Es Trucho Es Trucho” – 21-year-old singer Axel Rulay is having a moment, ignited by this infectious platonic ideal of a party jam. I caught it on the remix with El Alfa, the Dominican superstar I’ve been a fan of for years and Puerto Rican reggaeton singer Farruko who I knew a little about. This is the kind of song I regret not finding in time for it to have been my song of the summer.
- Tems, “Vibe Out” – Nigerian singer-songwriter-producer Tems, Temilade Openiyi, has collected cosigns throughout the international music community, names as big as Wizkid, Adele, and Drake, and she keeps living up to the hype. This tribute to living in the moment plants a spine-shifting beat with enough space to breathe. This is that 1:30 am at the party or club vibe, deceptively low-key but with enough power to shift the room into sweaty, homestretch high gear. “Give me your name – give me something to react. I’m’a vibe out today.”
- Mickey Guyton, “Lay It On Me” – One of our finest singers and songwriters, Guyton’s Remember Her Name is the kind of contemporary country record I forget they can still make. Biting commentary, intense introspection, and big, anthemic love ballads like this one, all done in a way that uses the burnished quality of the production as warmth instead of distance. “I want to show you that you’re worth it – lay it on me tonight.”
- Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Ron Carter and Jack DeJohnette, “Siempre Maria” – Piano trios don’t get much better than this. I saw Rubalcaba with the bassist Charlie Haden at the Wexner Center when I was 21 and it was a dose of pure melody and dialogue I needed more than I thought. I’ve been a fan ever since, and of course the rhythm section of Ron Carter on bass and exemplar of that Chicago sound Jack DeJohnette on drums, fit together like beautifully tuned pieces of a celestial machine. This record Skyline brings together classic compositions from all three players over their careers for a gorgeous retrospective and overview. This Rubalcaba piece, first recorded in 1992 gets a radical, expansive re-visioning that reminded me of my favorite poetry teacher, Kathy Fagan, who reminded me that revision should always be a chance to go back to what the words mean, a chance to see it with new eyes and to connect it with the original inspiration or find something new in the piece.
- Jared Schonig, “Sound Evidence” – Schonig’s one of the go-to drummers for a dazzling array of contexts, from Darcy James Argue’s thoughtful big bands to my current favorite vocal group Duchess, and the two records he released as a leader knocked me sideways, with the slight edge to Two Takes II: Big Band this flowing original comes from. An arrangement by Miho Hazama gets played with gusto, teasing out every texture and adroitly navigating each hairpin turn, with a spiked guitar solo from Nir Felder and one from Marshall Gilkes snarling trombone.
- Nao, “Better Friend” – London R&B singer Nao crafted a great, surging end-of-summer block party of a record with And Then Life Was Beautiful. This song sums up most of what I love about it, a sunshine groove with the utter understanding that gratitude doesn’t just happen, joy is a process and takes work. “I hope they wake up cause you wanted saving – I hope you let go. I hope you come home. I know depression will keep you guessing.”
- Cory Henry, “In My Feelings” – I’ve been a fan of Cory Henry since he was in Snarky Puppy but that fandom went into overdrive when I first saw him live at Woodlands and went nuclear when Anne and I saw him at Paris’ Le Trianon (one of the best shows I’ve ever seen in my life) and locally at Skully’s (would have been a top ten show of any other year) in the same year. This track is a lush instrumental off his new album with a warm Stevie Wonder-meets-David Axelrod vibe that I can’t get enough of.
- Amy Allen, “A Woman’s World” – Amy Allen’s better known as a songwriter for some of the biggest pop names – Halsey, Jason Derulo, Harry Styles – but I’ve played this breath-of-fresh air single under her own name a dozen times since hearing it. The perfect blend of lush, layered, arrangement and production with an acid-tipped dagger lyric. “In my apartment I wrangle the power. I had an idea and it bloomed like a flower. Boys wanna grow up to be like their father and then, on their deathbeds, they call for their mother. It’s not the story that you wanna hold to. Yeah, I guess nobody ever told you.”
- Lara Downes and PUBLIQuartet, “Southern Lullaby” – Classical pianist Lara Downes is crushing it this year, with her series of EPs shining light on too-often neglected black composers, her work with NPR. This gorgeous arrangement she crafted of Harry Burleigh’s “Southern Lullaby” for piano and string quartet is another masterstroke. As soon as I heard it, I knew it needed a place of prominence on this month’s playlist, and within the first edit I knew it was the kind of rich sunset music that had to close it, with enough melancholy and longing but also with some hope for another day. I leave with that hope. And I’ll see you all soon.
Screen of Distance 