Tag: Madison Cunningham

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Playlist record reviews

Playlist – July 2023

Finishing this up as I recover from my fourth round with COVID – right before a new booster is ready – so not a big summation except to say it’s been an excellent summer (even this included). Excellent for seeing people here in my town and in theirs, beautiful culturally and culinarily, and as I’ve got my and Anne’s traditional marking of the end of the summer, Gonerfest, and my first work travel for the new job both in my sights, plus the 13th anniversary of the Pink Elephant, all coming in the next weeks, I’m very grateful. I don’t think this is as dark as June’s churning of emotions – more sunshine grooves and dancefloor bangers; but, as always, I could be full of shit. Thanks for reading and listening – love you all.

https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/c84759f9-3338-415d-b1b3-d242fdd27748

  • Dom Deshawn, “09 Nostalgia” – Columbus rapper-songwriter Dom Deshawn has been on my radar for a while, but I was reminded how much I enjoy his work catching him at the Goodale Park Music Series last week. This benediction and wish for the world is a perfect wave of dancing sunlight that reminds me of Dead Prez’s “Happiness” in the best way. “Built my own lane, don’t care about gatekeeping. You know I’m trying to make it, giving you every reason. Tell me, are you feeling good? Maybe yes, no, I don’t even know.”
  • 79.5, “Club Level” – At the forefront of NYC’s neo-disco scene, 79.5 made one of my favorite summertime albums this year with their self-titled sophomore full-length, produced by retro soul superstar Aaron Frazer. Mike Dillon’s percussion and co-vocalist Kate Mattison’s Rhodes set the sound world of this sticky lead-off track in seconds, and the wild, sexy ride never lets up. Ben Campbell’s thick synth bass, a sizzling horn solo from Izaak Mills, and the union vocals of co-vocalist Aisha Mills send this into outer space. The rest of the album keeps up this pace. “Cruel games. Hot flames. Say you wanna play.”
  • Nubya Garcia, “Lean In” – I’ve written about the great London saxophonist Nubya Garcia many times, and this new single plays with 2-step garage in a really delightful, joyful way that feels like summer in the same way as the previous two tracks but filtered through a different cityscape.
  • Sexmob featuring DJ Olive, “Dominion” – One of jazz’s most indefatigable, questing, and cohesive groups, the quartet Sexmob – trumpeter Steven Bernstein, saxophonist Briggan Krauss, bassist Tony Scherr, and drummer Kenny Wollensen – resume their collaboration with producer Scotty Hard, bringing his contributions of beats, synth bass, and soundscapes to the fore on their invigorating new record The Hard Way. This track adds the great DJ Olive, who helped me down the road of reshaping how I thought about turntables when I was 20 with SYR 5 with Ikue Mori and Kim Gordon. A spiky, shifting mood piece.
  • Gil Scott-Heron and Kek’star, “Whitey On the Moon (Deep Mix)” – South African producer Kek’Star reconfigures one of my favorite Gil Scott-Heron tracks, one I heard on the very first Best Of I bought in early college that sparked the need to have everything he’d touched, including his two novels. Kek’star’s deep house treatment layers an additional throbbing insistence to the coolly reported snapshots of desperation in the original poem that sadly gets more and more relevant. “With all the money I made last year, how come I ain’t got no money here? Hmm, whitey’s on the moon.”
  • BJ The Chicago Kid featuring Freddie Gibbs, “The Liquor Store in the Sky” – Contemporary soul singer BJ The Chicago Kid teams up with fellow Chicago rapper/representative Freddie Gibbs on this gorgeous, honeyed elegy for old friends built around intertwining guitar and organ parts and a loping drum beat. “We was raised blocks from each other; we grew up like brothers. That was my dawg, swear to God, would’ve gave him what I had.”
  • Lucas de Mulder and the New Mastersounds, “Underground Dance” – To my ears, there’s a similar warmth and depth connecting this beautiful collaboration between Spanish jazz guitarist and British funk band The New Mastersounds – hat tip to Andrew Patton for turning me onto them in the first place and nudging a merrry band of us to duck out of Pink Elephant early one month and head down to see them tear the roof off of the Park Street Saloon – also produced by Mastersounds’ guitarist Eddie Roberts. It’s a great track from a remarkably cohesive, empathetic record.
  • Misha Panfilov, “Dr. Juvenal’s Solution” – This Estonian composer based in Portugal flitted around the periphery of my notice for the last few years, but this slab of easy-going instrumental soul is the first time I really sat with one of his releases – I assume he played everything based on the Bandcamp – and it hooked me. Every time I play it, I have a hard time getting that guitar riff out of my head.
  • Dark Colors, “Memories” – I couldn’t find anything about this slice of melodic minimal techno, so I’m guessing this was an algorithm suggestion, but I love it. I love the controlled swoops and the splashes of color seeping through the cracks – the hints of a Bob James/Roy Ayers color palette that vanish almost as quickly as they arise – and it shivers the same parts of my spine as the more direct connections to soul music of the previous two tracks.
  • Annika Socolofsky and Latitude 49, “Loves don’t / go” – Composer-vocalist Annika Socolofsky drills deep into the substrata of her own history and psychology and the whole of the world on her strongest album yet, Don’t say a word, with chamber music sextet Latitude 49. This track sets a Molly Moses poem to riveting, crushing music – the building rumble of the piano and Socolofsky’s voice surfing over it is one of my favorite musical moments of the year.
  • Josh Ritter and Aoife O’Donovan, “Strong Swimmer” – Josh Ritter got my attention with “Golden Age of Radio,” particularly an acoustic version I think I found on AudioGalaxy in 2002, and every time he hits my radar, I think I should delve deeper into his work. This duet with Aoife O’Donovan (who anyone with even a passing glance at this blog knows my love for) is early August morning perfection, fog over the grass, and hints of the oncoming chill threaded through the warmth. “On the night that you were born, your Mama, who had many friends, took you down across the reach to meet the tide come in.”
  • Amanda Shires and Bobbie Nelson, “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” – This collaboration record between violinist-singer-songwriter Shires and longtime keystone of Willie Nelson’s Family (musical and otherwise), pianist Bobbie Nelson, Loving You, is a stunning, intimate thing, with minimal accompaniment from bass and drums, and this reading of long one of my favorites of brother Willie’s songs devastates me every time, letting me hear a song I’ve known my whole life with new eyes. “I patched up your broken wing and hung around for a while, trying to keep your spirits up and your fever down.”
  • Jess Williamson, “God in Everything” – Last year’s collaboration with Waxahatchee as Plains put singer-songwriter Jess Williamson on my radar, and her new album Time Ain’t Accidental knocked the wind out of my lungs. This song gorgeously captures a time and place, putting her acoustic at the forefront, with Dashawn Hickman’s pedal steel almost serving as a Greek Chorus, flowing over and around the minimal backing and subtle, perfect production from Brad Cook. “Did you see or appreciate the wisdom in me? Was I something for you to play with? Did you notice how I serve my tea?”
  • Madison Cunningham, “Inventing the Wheel” – This new song on the deluxe version got me to go back and check out Cunningham’s Revealer record from last year, and it highlighted what a great piece of work and what a fascinating songwriting voice I missed. The surprising twists in the melody and the unsettling, harmonium-driven atmospheres keep me engaged in this fascinating look at the peril inherent in the hunger of trying to both live as much of life as you can and synthesize it into something that lasts. “Waking up to a heavy cup: ambition drinking me. Helpless, as I watch another death lay out on TV. I render it down to size and sound, ’til it comes as no surprise, to sleep all through the night and still wish to open my eyes. Life and all her fragility, the midwife of this urgency: a moment I may never get again.”
  • Javier Nero Jazz Orchestra, “Kemet (The Black Land)” – I knew very little about trombonist-composer Javier Nero before I think I got tipped to the excellent record this is the title track of through, I suspect, Phil Freeman’s always great monthly column. Trumpeter Sean Jones is the main foil for Nero here; check the fiery solo around the four-minute mark, rising out of but without losing touch with the lushness around him, and the rhythm section of drummer Kyle Swan, pianist Josh Richman, and bassist William Ledbetter provide a richly textured landscape for these intertwining, glowing melodies.
  • Killer Mike featuring Andre 3000, Future, Eryn Allen Kane, “Scientists and Engineers” – I love the Run the Jewels stuff, but it’s an utter joy to get to hear Atlanta’s Killer Mike play in a variety of different sound worlds again on his excellent record Michael. This track is overstuffed with ideas – opening with lush orchestrations and Kane’s vocals that reminded me of the previous track, then powering through a series of hairpin turns – and powered by a fire at its heart, a love for the world – or at least his world, his community – that needs to speak the truth (and, as Hotspur reminded us, shame the devil), with all the collaborators here bringing their A game. “It ain’t enough that I hit my opp and his block: we burned down his whole fucking village. Did it with a smile, not a grimace.”
  • Monica Rocha and Malik Malo featuring The Intuitions, “I Love You For All Seasons (Live)” – Picking up the thread of vintage West Coast soul guitar that was part of the mix on the previous track, this instant classic sweet soul duet between California natives Monica Rocha and Malik Malo, is quintessential wandering through sunny streets or driving slow music, with the rich harmonies of The Intuitions pushing it over the top. “I love you for so many reasons.”
  • Captain Fathands, “The Great Flood” – I remember a conversation at the St James tavern almost two decades ago where childhood friend, bassist/composer Captain Fathands (probably best known musically for his time in the nu-metal comers Groundwar but also the rap-rock fusion The Wick and a series of cover bands) about his desire to put out soundtracks. His music for the wildly popular podcast True Crime Garage the Captain hosts with his brother is frequently my favorite part of the episodes, and I’m delighted to see him expanding and releasing full tracks in this mode like this shadow-splashed, surging piece.
  • Buscrates, “Early Morning” – Pittsburgh-based Orlando “Buscrates” Marshall gives us a sun-drenched, loping, utterly infectious instrumental that nods to Dam-Funk and a history of classic roller skating jams and hints at early Detroit techno in the best way. That rhythm somewhere between a hip dip and a finger snap falls squarely in my sweet spot.
  • Amy Douglas and JKriv, “Freak at Night” – The bouncing, fluid bass line on this courtesy of JKriv doesn’t just set up a backdrop for Amy Douglas’s knock-you-against-the-back-wall sharp disco vocal; the two things joust with one another. The dance floor as seduction and cage match, teetering over the edge but always pulling itself back. “She’s a freak at night. She’s got to satisfy her appetite.”
  • The Crystal Furs, “Gay Bar” – One of my guilty pleasures of all time – and I can do 1,000 words on the problematic concept of a guilty pleasure just like the next blowhard, but you should find me in a bar to go in on that – is that first Electric Six album; as much as I love this song, I wondered how it’s aged. Portland-based queer three-piece Crystal Furs find the pure joy that’s still in this track and give it a contemporary updating that maybe improves on the original’s infectiousness. Kara Buchanan’s Farfisa organ is a particular delight for me on this track.
  • Mightmare, “Can’t Get What I Want” – One of my favorite singer-songwriters working, Sarah Shook, stretches their wings to go different places stylistically with the indie rock project Mightmare. Their voice is right up front over ominous, decay-laden guitars and a crunching postpunk beat. “Anger makes a lonely man. I got things to say I don’t think I can.”
  • Ivan Julian, “Cut Me Loose” – Ivan Julian’s guitar is the blood through the veins of a particular swath of New York music I’ve loved since the moment I heard Blank Generation, and beyond his long association with Richard Hell, he’s lit up records  I’ve loved by Matthew Sweet, Sandra Bernhard, Drivin’ N’ Cryin’, King Missile, and Hunx. The solo record Swing Your Lanterns, and this barbed punk-funk lead-off track is an excellent example of what he’s given to American music and, with a cast of underground music lifers like Florent Barbier and Nicholas Tremulis, still sounds incredibly vital. “I know you brought a whole new bag of hurt from Tennessee and a brand new box of pain that you just found. I kissed you, and I put you on a train; you bit me, and you said we’d meet again.”
  • Kalle Hygien, “Dope Him Up” – This dose of synth-and-drum-machine Swedish punk is adrenaline right into my veins. “His mouth looks like an enema, we’re going to the cinema.”
  • Cerified Trapper, “Trapper of the Year” – The liquid synths and dry, crackling drums are a perfect jumping off point for the furious braggadocio from this rising Milwaukee star, who produced as well. “Tweak out in the store, get hit with this fuckin’ switchy.”
  • Izzaldin, “Spike” – This advance single off the third record – Futura in Retrograde – from rising New York rapper-producer Izzaldin rides a subway-under-not-well-maintained-streets rumble of synth bass and boom bap drums refracted through some contemporary damage with a baritone voice that feels both familiar and fresh. This checked all my boxes. “Took a shot from the three-point arc, took a seat next to Spike just to see the star. I thought it started off as friendly banter: and then he started really disrespecting Indiana, talking ’bout ‘There ain’t gonna be no Pacers shit in here.'”
  • Jay Vega featuring King Ezz and OG VERN, “Smackdown Vs. Raw” – This miniature uses a deceptively easy swagger for a perfect showcase for Columbus producer and rapper Jay Vega, who worked on this with King Ezz and features a verse from OG Vern. Distilled to around two minutes and with no room for filigree. “”No bad business, that ain’t on my name: what they say ’bout you?”
  • System Exclusive, “Party All the TIme” – Pasadena synth-pop duo System Exclusive hit my radar with this surging post-punk take on one of my favorite ’80s guilty pleasures, this Rick James/Eddie Murphy collaboration. “You never come home at night because you’re out romancing. I wish you’d bring some of your love home to me.”
  • King Vision Ultra featuring DJ Haram, Marcus, Dis Fig, “Tragic World Weapon” – I’m not sure how I’ve slept on King Vision Ultra so long but the Algiers connection put this on my radar and it’s exactly the kind of record I love. King Vision Ultra worked with the original stems from Algiers’ record Shook and intertwined them with his own archive to create Shook World (Hosted By Algiers), an investigation of histories, his hometown of New York, his relationships with people, and of the ways we hurt ourselves and one another. DJ Haram from the Discwoman crew supplies the lacerating poetry here, with Berlin-based producer Dis Fig on the sung vocals and a turntablist I wasn’t familiar with, Marcus, adding a perfectly unbalancing layer. “You can’t affirm this madness but I like to imagine it.”
  • The OG Players, “Third Eye Vibe” – Columbus hip-hop/soul super group OG Players consists of trombonist Elaine Mylius (Waves de Ache, Derek DiCenzo), MC/Producer Eric Rollin (Mistar Anderson), Producer Kito Denham, keyboardist Brandon “Bjazz” Scott (Liquid Crystal Project),  and drummer Robert Riley aka Dezoul1 (Talisha Holmes). I had high expectations having seen all – I think, I couldn’t swear I’ve heard Denham’s other work – of their earlier projects and this first single hit it over the fences for me, the loping finger-snap rhythm and that infectious, squelching long, slow drive on a sunny day keyboard part. “Let me tell you about a secret to see us through.”
  • Marquis Hill featuring Joel Ross, “Stretch (The Body)” – The first time I saw Chicago’s Marquis HIll play the trumpet – at Winter Jazzfest – it cut through everything else that night, burning both his name and that tone into my brain. Hill aligns a tight rhythm section anchored by Junius Paul on bass with Micheal King on keys, and new-to-me Indie Buz on drums, and special guests (the great vibes player Joel Ross on this track) to make something that stretches genres. This track bridges lighter flavors of drum ‘n’ and spiritual jazz, riding waves of small percussion instruments and wrapping a wordless chorus around a clattering beat from Buz pinballing back and forth between King’s Rhodes and Ross’s vibes, lit up by Hill’s searing trumpet and a sampled lackadaisical vocal that nods at Ken Nordine.
  • Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, and Robbie Avenaim, “Placelessness – Side B Excerpt” – Chris Abrahams, pianist from longstanding Aussie avant-garde trio The Necks teams up with guitarist/electronics player Oren Ambarchi (who I got into via SUNN O))) and a gorgeous eai record Cloud with Keith Rowe, Toshimaru Nakamura, and Christian Fennesz in the same year) and drummer Robbie Avenaim who’d done other work with Ambarchi I loved. This excerpt from the upcoming full-side piece is full of the powerfully understated drama and righteous mystery I want from these players and left me hungry for the whole thing.
  • Marisa Anderson and Tara Jane O’Neil, “Wishing Well” – This stunning collaboration on a Bert Jansch classic (written with Anne Briggs) features an OG of the kind of guitar that fuses the accessible and the avant-garde, sometimes disparate histories of the instrument and the future, Tara Jane O’Neil (also on vocals) from the great Louisville band Rodan (who I finally saw live at Terrastock 15-ish years ago) and someone carrying that torch high, Marisa Anderson. Clarity and clatter in exactly the right measures. “Wishing well, wilt thou waters hide my burden until I return, return this way again?”
  • Nora Stanley and Benny Bock, “Into the Flats” – Saxophonist Nora Stanley and keyboardist Benny Bock teamed up for a luminous collaborative record (they co-wrote all compositions and play almost everything heared) Distance of the Moon that reminds me of classic ECM but still has its arms around what’s come since. That splash of sparks from the keys washed over by a saxophone figure around 3:30 exemplifies what I love so much about this album. Drummer Myles Martin, a rising star on the LA scene I wasn’t familiar with and the only guest on this track, adds some fascinating color, less driving forward propulsion of the track and more presenting other options.
  • Emily King featuring Lukas Nelson, “Bad Memory” – Singer-songwriter Emily King has always been at the periphery of my awareness but this single from Special Occasion, a burnished, ’60s-vintage slow dance duet with Lukas Nelson landed squarely between my ribs. Their matched low-key vocals and that aching, echoing guitar, the clatter of castanets skipping across the languid melody like a polished stone, it’s all perfect. “Used to dream about my past, now I’m running from it fast.”
  • Melenas, “Bang” – The sense of similar tones getting stretched out and the pulsing krautrock beat gave me the sense of taking off from the last couple of songs in placing this lilting slice of pop-rock perfection from Pamploma-based band Melenas right here.
  • M. Ward featuring first aid kit, “Too Young To Die” – M. Ward’s Supernatural Thing reaffirms his status as one of the great melodists of my generation, full of examples of that rare gift of playing with retro sounds without seeming stuck in some other era. And this perfect example, aided by the sparkling harmonies of first aid kit, is one of the songs on the new one I go back to the most often. “Sailing, sometimes failing, that’s the only way, the only way to fly. Crying, sometimes wailing, that’s the only way that we learn how to try.”
  • Tommy Prine, “Mirror and a Kitchen Sink” – Tommy Prine’s This Far South, produced with Rushton Kelly and Gena Johnson, plants a flag in territory that’s clearly his own, using contemporary colors and rhythms alongside the kind of sharply defined characters and witty wordplay that defined his legendary father. This, like the M. Ward, was a hard call to make – I think at one point I had three songs from this record on the nascent version of this month’s playlist – but I kept coming back to the jaunty bounce of this track, that impossibly catchy acoustic guitar riff underpinning the gimlet gaze of the lyrics. “So what’s the difference between you and me? I’ll tell you right now, it’s a couple teeth. And then I decide whether or not to be crueler than I already am.”
  • Tanya Tucker featuring Brandi Carlile, “The List” – Sweet Texas Sound builds on the momentum and power of Tanya Tucker’s great comeback record While I’m Still Livin’, pairing her again with producers Shooter Jennings and Brandi Carlile. This track is one of several Tucker co-wrote with Carlile and it’s a brilliantly clear-eyed taking stock and kiss off, with a classic sawdust-spattered two-step backing highlighting Jennings’ piano and John Schreffler’s pedal steel. “I ain’t here to make excuses and I’ve since lost all track of my demons and their muses. But if you’re still keeping score, then you can keep your heart attack.”
  • Dale Watson, “I Ain’t Been Living Right” – Dale Watson leans into his spending more time in Texas after some fruitful years in Memphis with the lean and mean Starvation Box, inspired by the example of Marshall, Texas’s legendary son Leadbelly (the title is what Ledbetter’s father called the guitar). This acoustic-driven shuffle is exactly the slow twisting of a knife in the gut that I think Watson does better than any country artist and what drew me to him 25 years ago, making the most of every crevice and scar in that magnificent baritone. “Now, the older I get, I’m finding more regrets: regrets that have been lurking in my mind. Maybe I’ll find solace in my old age and forget I ain’t been living right.”
  • Brian Thornton and Iranian Female Composers Association featuring Katherine Bormann, Alicia Koelz, Eliesha Nelson, “And the Moses Drowned” – I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t familiar with the IFCA before this beautiful record Sirventès but I was a little more familiar with cellist Brian Thornton of the Cleveland Orchestra. The quartet he assembled for this evocative piece by Mahdis Golzar Kashani finds every bit of nuance and mystery, it’s a stunning lead-off to a marvelous record.
  • Tyshawn Sorey Trio, “Seleritus” – Tyshawn Sorey continues to dig into standards with surprising, breathtaking results on Continuing, his new record with Aaron Diehl on piano and Matt Brewer on bass. This gorgeous Ahmad Jamal piece gets to the heart of the fragility and power Jamal conjured simultaneously in a way few piano trios have been able to live up to since; it’s a magical reminder how much life still pumps through the veins of this music and also a stunning tribute to a generational artist who opened up an entirely new pathway in American music.
  • Greg Ward presents Rogue Parade, “Noir Nouveau” – Chicago-based saxophone player and composer Greg Ward’s quintet Rogue Parade’s follow up Dion’s Quest expounds on everything great from their debut Stomping Off From Greenwood. This appropriately smoky, hard-shadows track flanks a blue flame of a saxophone line with the sparkling guitars of Matt Gold and Dave Miller, and the rich, subtle rhythm section of Matt Ulery on bass and Quin Kirchner on drums.
  • Olivia Dean, “The Hardest Part” – British R&B singer-writer Olivia Dean’s debut full length Messy is a remarkable record, consistent and smooth – mostly cowritten with Bastian Langebæk and Max Wolfgang – but knowing exactly when and where to cut and how much of a mark to leave. This smoky slow-drag number exemplifies the mood I come back to this record for, reminding me of early Erykah Badu, and I can’t wait to see what else Dean turns into. “Call me up to meet you: static on the phone. Normally I need you; this time I don’t wanna go. Lately, I’ve been growing into someone you don’t know. You had the chance to love her, but apparently you don’t.”
  • Kris Gruen featuring Anaïs Mitchell “Anchors” – I’ve been hearing the name Kris Gruen – singer-songwriter son of famed photographer Bob – but it took seeing this luminous duet with one of my favorites, Anaïs Mitchell, to finally check his work out. It’s soaring and wistful, like a sunrise over the Hudson. “I forgive you, circle broken, by and by.”
  • Miranda Lambert and Leon Bridges, “If You Were Mine” – Two of my favorite Texas singer-songwriters of relatively (I still had roommates when I first heard Lambert so it’s been at least 20 years) recent vintage team up on a perfect example of finding middle ground, and that space where their voices meet on this perfect piece of longing, this moment frozen in amber, hits exactly right. “‘I’d drink you down like fine wine, till there was nothing left.”
  • Gus Dapperton featuring BENEE, “Don’t Let Me Down” – Another duet shot through with longing and promise but set to more of an insistent clubby rhythm, this duet between New York-based Guy Dapperton and New Zealand-centered BENEE has an extremely appealing groove; I especially love the way their voices melt around one another. “I’m just gonna burn out and fall out of my head.”
  • Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love, “Part 2” – One insistent rhythm gives way to another. Nyemiah SThis classic Norwegian rhythm section who’ve lit me up so many times, live and on record, team up to pay tribute to the Trondheim Conservatory of Music where they met, on its 40th anniversary, with Guts & Skins. They assembled a killing octet featuring players whose work I know well like pianist/organist Alexander Hawkins and completely new to me like baritone saxophonist Hanne deBacker, and delivered a record that walks the line between post-bop and free jazz that doesn’t sell out the pleasures or core of either.
  • Nyemiah Supreme, “Last Day” – The stabbing cymbals and rumbling bass on the track for this electrifying song from rising Queens rapper Nyemiah Supreme seemed to call on the previous tracks and I was stunned by the crackle of her pavement-mosaic-dry delivery and the flashing wit of the wordplay. “There’s nowhere to get – all of that paper, you only enrich.”
  • Wireheads, “Detective” – The bluesy post-punk chug – Fall-ish vocals laid against a mournful harmonica like the smokestack of a passing train – of this Adelaide-based band made me immediately sorry I hadn’t heard their earlier work; Potentially Venus is a terrific rock record. “‘I’m merely scratched,’ he hollered. I am bothered less than Donna; she’s like a fire burning carefree in biosolids.”
  • Smug Brothers, “Let Me Know When It’s You” – I got turned onto the Smug Brothers through friend and Columbus locus Kyle Sowash’s involvement. This song is a lovely slice of middle-American powerpop, jangle poured over a crunching rhythm section like syrup, and it’s on a record The Book of Bad Ideas spilling over with these big hooks and sparkling harmonies. “When you think you’ve heard about a situation and you’re trying to tune into the conversation, you know I won’t pass the test and maybe that’s for the best.”
  • Byron Messia, “Talibans” – St Kitts-based dancehall artist Byron Messia is having a moment with this bolt-from-the-blue (at least to those of us outside the genre) smash hit. While I love dancehall, I don’t pretend my knowledge goes deep; this infectious, menacing watch-yourself tune with a smooth quaver in the vocal over clipped drums, caught my ear immediately. “Make unruh sleep inna yard in four months.”
  • Vox Sambou, “Libète (remix) – Montreal-based singer-bandleader Vox Sambou draws on the various music of the African disapora and mixes it in a way that never feels random or scattered. This single in advance of We Must Unite starts with the Haitian Creole word for freedom and builds to a powerful crescendo, rippling guitars and a thicket of percussion rising behind a powerful, ragged voice.
  • Ken Ishii, “Liver Blow (Ken Ishii 2023 Remix One)” – I got into Ken Ishii a little late – the Nonesuch compilation Reich Remixed came out when I was 18 or 19 and drew a connection between the electronic music I loved getting down to with my friends in clubs and at parties and the avant-garde classical I’d recently discovered. One of my favorite tracks was Ishii’s so I started grabbing anything of his I could find. When I finally got to see him spin in person with my old roommate and friend Jon Rood a couple of years later, in a club I don’t think lasted 9 months called Pulse, it was every bit as revelatory as I hoped. I haven’t done the best job of keeping track but this rework of a 2022 track hit my radar and it gives me the same jolts of experimentation and sensuality his work did when I first discovered it, without feeling like he’s been static.
  • Jorja Smith and Nia Archives, “Little Things (Nia Archives Remix)” – I don’t think it’s any surprise I think London’s Jorja Smith is one of the great soul singers to emerge in the last 10 years, and I’ve loved everything I’ve heard from Nia Archives. Their collab on this remix delivered on those high expectations and then some – the speeding up and layering it over post-jungle drums actually enhances the cold menace in Smith’s original; snippets of vocal dance in the air  between the verses, like slivers of shattered mirror in an image I always remember from a poem of old pal Dave Gibbs. “It’s the little things that get me high. Won’t you come with me and spend the night?”
  • Tego Calderón, “La Receta” – One of the voices that helped define reggaeton to the world, Puerto Rican superstar Tego Calderón returns eight years after his last record, and over 20 since he first appeared, with this dance floor smash of the perreo variety, produced by DJ Urba & Rome. If this doesn’t make your hips move, I’m not sure what to tell you.
  • Tyson, “Promises” – Like the warm breeze coming in from a door opening on a cool dark bar just before the late-evening sunset of Jul while watching a carved ice cube tumble into a rocks glass that fits just so in your hand, this single by Tyson, the daughter of Neneh Cherry and Cameron McVey (Massive Attack, Groove Armada, Yossou N’Dour), is the perfect mix of sensations and architecture. The spaces and the echo around the sparse, crisp beats slit the skin to make space for that melody. “How do I read you when you’re giving me nothing?”
  • Miles Miller, “Passed Midnight” – Another perfectly constructed song keyed for the sweltering middle of summer, from Miles Miller, better known as Sturgill Simpson’s drummer, and exemplary of his stellar Solid Gold. “The shape I’m in doesn’t make me want to give you a call. You’re probably holding on so tight to somebody else tonight. Well, I’m holding on to nothing but the twilight; ain’t it a pretty sight?”
  • Jerry Joseph, “The War I Finally Won” – Singer-songwriter Jerry Joseph’s been making great records since the mid-’90s that completely flew under my radar until 2020’s breathtaking The Beautiful Madness and even that I heard late, so I’m still playing catch up. If this evocative barn burner, with a fiery tambourine so far up in the mix it feels like it might break the fourth wall and slap me in the face, is any indication, the follow-up Baby, You’re the Man Who Would Be King, is a record to watch out for coming up. “I see the enemy is still right here. Let me sleep till the morning; the indecision weighs a ton. I hear the trumpets blow, and I know it’s the war I finally won.”
  • PJ Harvey, “I Inside The Old Year Dying” – Like most old cranks who loved something so much at a formative time, it took me a while to get on board with the differently abstract, spacious music PJ Harvey’s making now. I kept holding her work to a yardstick based on the four-album run almost no one has ever come close to she put out in my youth. It finally opened up for me, cracking wide and letting me lose that chrysalis of bullshit, with the last record so I was ready for her excellent new one, of which this is the title track. Soaring and searing, an indictment and a call to arms. I’m not sure exactly where I think the “ending prayer” portion of this month’s playlist starts – the Miller or the Joseph – but this is where it hits critical mass. “Slip from my childhood skin; / I zing through the forest / I hover in the holway / And laugh into the leaves”
  • Spencer Zahn, Dave Harrington, Jeremy Gustin, “Daylight” – I’ve been a big fan of Spencer Zahn since our mutual friend Mike Gamble introduced us and turned me onto his band Father Figures – and he’s shown up in these playlists several times. I like the music of Harry Styles but I don’t know it all that well, and from the liner notes, neither did this trio when they decided to take it on, but this is the opposite of a piss take. This track, and the rest of A Visit to Harry’s House, treat the song forms with love and generosity but leave enough room to bring their own life to it, their own light, and leave us all smiling. Like you always want a visitor to leave.
  • Joni Mitchell and the Joni Jam, “Amelia” – As soon as I heard Joni Mitchell was singing again at Newport I watched those Youtube videos for the next week almost to the exclusion of everything else. This official recording – backed by a collection of musicians with Brandi Carlile and her band as the nucleus – makes me tear up every time. This version of a song from Hejira that’s not only given me comfort since I was a teenager but has changed with me, featuring a lovely vocal from Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith, is a stunning example of the kind of love and compassion this kind of tribute/celebration needs. “A ghost of aviation: she was swallowed by the sky, or by the sea. Like me, she had a dream to fly. Like Icarus ascending on beautiful, foolish arms – Amelia, it was just a false alarm.”
Categories
Playlist record reviews

Playlist – September 2022

Once again – as befits my favorite cultural season – a lot of writing for other outlets, so I’m racing to get this one done and out before New York this week. But also as befitting my favorite season in general, so much great work. A little more meditative maybe but also some hard partying tracks. Hope you’re all doing well, whether you inherently love fall as much as I do or not. Love to anyone who takes the time to listen to and/or reads these.

https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/94d5c558-a938-471d-a46a-1bb7945a4eed

  • Beth Orton, “Arms Around a Memory” – I was one of the many people who got my head split open by Beth Orton’s Trailer Park when I was 16 and every record through Sugaring Season blew me away, with 2002’s Jim O’Rourke-produced Comfort of Strangers as a personal high water mark. Her new one, Weather Alive, after a six-year wait, brings me back to the best parts of all of those records while stirring in new colors. This track, with a combination of English (including drummer Tom Skinner who knocked my face in this spring playing with Sons of Kemet) and NYC (bassist Shazad Ismaily who shows up here with so much regularity I should send him something, Antibalas’s Stuart Bogie on sax, Winged Victory for the Sullen’s Dustin O’Halloran, and guitarist Greg McMurray whose guitar is a key voice of the current chamber music scene) band centered around Orton’s piano and voice, became an immediate front runner in a record I have a hard time picking favorites from. The subtle, insistent rhythms and repetition and the expansiveness of the synths, backing vocals, and reeds feel like walking through streets you know almost too well, while Orton’s murmured vocal wrestles with ghosts and finds exactly the place to put that memory in a way I still struggle with more often than not. For me, this feels like walking through New York in the morning – helped by the specific reference in the first verse and the Johnny Thunders nod in the title – but I know it works just as well for those memories in the long shadows of London or Kansas City. “And I got to questioning my credibility like you’re the reliable witness to what I feel, though I can still taste the sweetness of what we had, and there’s no one will kiss me as deep as you know you have. Once that I saw how to see all of your love was looking back at me, it was hard not to fulfill the prophecy we could have been.”
  • Afghan Whigs, “Domino and Jimmy” – The new Afghan Whigs record is still sinking in for me; it’s a slower build than the last few post-reunion albums. But I loved this expansive, cracked ballad immediately, and not just because it reunites them with my pal and Scrawl co-leader Marcy Mays, reviving her character from “My Curse” and putting her in direct dialogue with the male half, voiced, of course, by Dulli. It’s a prime example of their rocket ride to the bottom songs, land they plow better than anyone else I can think of, giving glory to people in their worst moments. “You are lost in sight and lost inside my head. You seem to insinuate that I leave. I know it’s been a while. But, baby, if you were waiting for me, we’re going out in style.”
  • Terri Lyne Carrington, “Circling” – One of the great drummers, composers, and bandleaders of our time, Terri Lyne Carrington, turned her attention to a much-needed project to start redressing the place of women in the jazz composition canon with her editing of The New Standards Vol. 1, 100 pieces by women and including many of the best composers working now. This beautiful Gretchen Parlato song augments Carrington’s killer core group of rhythm section mates Kris Davis on piano and Linda May Han Oh on bass, Nicholas Payton on trumpet, and Matthew Stevens on guitar (who co-produces with Carrington), with guitarist Julian Lage, vocalist Michael Mayo, and percussionist Negah Santos – someone please correct me if I’ve gotten the vocalist wrong, I tried to piece this together from partial credits I could find googling. The warm, swirling melody and the perfect empathy of the group – Carrington’s cymbals on the verses, cutting through the dancing guitars, Davis’ piano at precisely the right moments; Payton’s trumpet solo that feels like liquid light – made this an immediate standout on another record that has so many highlights for me, and a song that hit me at a moment I really needed it. “Stop wishing on so many stars above. All that you’ve done has come from wanting love. What if we met at some other place in time? There’d still be rain. There’d still be sun to shine. Your happiness to give away is so much more than all the games they play. So be done.”
  • Garbage Greek, “Bad Habit” – I can’t believe I haven’t put something from this record – one of my favorites of the year and one of my favorite Columbus rock records in a very long time – on a previous playlist. I’ve long liked Garbage Greek, the harder garage project of guitarist/lead vocalist Lee Mason and bassist/vocalist Patrick Koch when schedules stopped their previous (also great) band Comrade Question, but hearing it stripped to a three-piece from five, those two with powerhouse drummer Jason Winner, occasionally augmented live (and on this record) with percussion and backing vocals from Adam Scoppa after the pandemic, shot up to favorite band status. And that added potency is distilled into their finest record, Quality Garbage, which is everything I want from garage rock: muscular hooks, grooves that work as well for a dance party as a fist fight, lyrics that stick but aren’t showy. This song hit me early, but there isn’t a bad track to be found. “I have a nasty habit of forgiving you.”
  • Black Thought and Danger Mouse, featuring Michael Kiwanuka, “Aquamarine” – Roots frontman Black Thought stretches in different directions on Cheat Codes, a stunning collaborative record with producer Danger Mouse. This track, featuring Michael Kiwanuka on the hook, combines dusty samples with gleaming synths and chopped guitar stings as the perfect backdrop for his laid back, layered rhymes. “Trying to find soul again, but my thoughts corrupt the vials and contaminate the console again. It’s a shame, but I cannot complain though I am not the same.”
  • Cory Branan featuring Brian Fallon and Jason Isbell, “When In Rome, When in Memphis” – Memphis Americana singer-songwriter Branan was the first small club show I saw in Columbus after getting vaccinated, and it was a wake-up call to just how good his songs are and his rich coffee after a long night voice just seems to get stronger and more interesting. His new record When I Go I Ghost is a similar reminder of the power of his work, full of interesting arrangements and, while it’s early in my listening, the equal of instant classics The No-Hit Wonder and Adios. This single, with Fallon and Isbell lending backing vocals, is a classic on-the-road rocker with a huge riff and big drums, but wrapped in a little more abstraction, leaning into the mystery that the genre tends to strip out.
  • Danielle Ponder, “Only The Lonely” – My first trip to Nelsonville Music Festival in many years had some frustrations, but it did my heart good to see how much so many of my dearest friends loved it, and it had a few sets that blew me away, including my first exposure to the torchy R&B of Danielle Ponder. Seeing her create such a degree of intimacy in a huge field from the main stage, then digging into her records, has me dying to see her in a club. The crisp crack of the drums under a phantom smoke choir and suspended electric piano chords underpins a vocal as rich and potent as any of the great soul singers of history. “There’s a truth in the dark. It’s gonna break you down, so steel your heart. ‘You don’t love me, you just lonely,’ that’s what my mind say. Your daddy left you guilty, that’s what you don’t see.”
  • The McCrary Sisters featuring Allen McCrary, “Run On” – I’m a sucker for classic gospel quartet music and I’ve been a big fan of the McCrary Sisters for about a decade; I think I came to them through their connections to the Fairfield Four. Coming on the heels of the sad news of Deborah McCrary’s passing, they released this stormy version of the gospel standard “Run On” I heard on one of my Grandmother’s records but snapped into my attention on the Blind Boys of Alabama 2001 record Spirit of the Century. The McCrarys give us a definitive version of a song done so well by so many.
  • Dr. John featuring Aaron Neville and Katie Pruitt, “End of the Line” – Dr. John’s posthumous album Things Happen That Way also features moving versions of “Old Time Religion” featuring Willie Nelson, “Funny How Time Slips Away,” and the Cowboy Jack Clement-penned title track, but I kept coming back to this laid-back swinging take on the Traveling Wilburys song, with fellow New Orleans icon Aaron Neville and Nashville singer Katie Pruitt. Wreathed in second-line horns like smoke, with subtle church-steeped grooves from the great drummer Herlin Riley (powering the best of the post-“Tain” Watts era of Wynton Marsalis) and Jon Cleary’s B3. Hearing those three voices come together on “I’m satisfied” touches me every single time.
  • Tedeschi Trucks Band, “Soul Sweet Song” – Sometimes the undeniably strong Tedeschi Trucks Band gets a little too jammy for me – hearing this as I was playing with the order of the playlist, Anne said, “What are you some kind of a hippie?” – but there’s a warmth and a love for the world their best work has that resonates with me and this is a prime example of them firing on all cylinders. Band members Gabe Dixon and Mike Mattison wrote this in tribute to the late multi-instrumentalist Kofi Burbridge and Susan Tedeschi gives it a vocal like a bonfire, the only sign of life for miles, in the darkness, the promise of warmth and the sun rising again. “In the memory of your melody, when the dawn breaks out, the birds all sing. And I feel your rhythm moving me, ’cause your soul’s sweet song’s still singing.”
  • Late Night Cardigan, “B-Movie” – I hear a similar play of sunlight and shadow to the previous couple of tracks on this tune by Memphis four-piece Late Night Cardigan from their terrific record Life is Bleak and It’s My Cheat Day. Vocalist Kacee Russell sells the loneliness of trying to make someone suddenly being gone make sense, as her and Stephen Turner’s guitars intertwine over the crunching rhythm section of Jesse Mansfield and Zach Mitchell’s steadily turning up the flames.
  • Rich Ruth, “Desensitization and Reprocessing” – For me, this centerpiece of Rich Ruth’s (Nashville musician Michael Ruth) simultaneously mournful and majestic record I Survived, It’s Over is one of the keystones of instrumental music as a way of processing trauma, especially of processing the pandemic we’re still in but I don’t want to make it sound like therapy. The compositional rigor, the delicate layering, the building to fiery free jazz horns and clicking back into the more placid textures of synth and pedal steel, all make it a piece that can stand up to whatever previous associations a listener brings to it.
  • Madison Cunningham, “My Rebellion” – I was a fan of Madison Cunningham’s work on Chris Thile’s Live From Here but never caught one of her own records until this year’s spectacular Revealer. This song’s staccato, repetitive pattern on Cunningham’s guitar ties it to the previous songs as it brings up the emotional intensity and forward motion of the playlist with a supple vocal that takes the melody into surprising places and leaves the lyrics rattling in the listener’s skull. “What is wrong? Have you forgot I’m not a stranger? You’re lead-footed and headstrong and the quiet turns me into a rambler.”
  • Sick Thoughts, “Someone I Can Talk To” – I’ve been a fan of New Orleans Sick Thoughts since first seeing them a number of years ago in Memphis when they were kind of the ur-Gonerfest band, punchy rhythm section in the intense undertow of frontman Drew Owen’s powerful presence and energy. But their new record Heaven is No Fun, and the drop-to-my-knees reminder of everything I love about rock and roll set Anne and I got to see at this year’s Gonerfest took them to another level, the songs are sharper, taking the ear candy riffs that would be tossed off on a bridge on earlier records and allowed to develop into whole songs. A heaping dose of Thin Lizzy in a stew of classic ’77 punk and early ’00s garage but done as well as anyone’s doing it, with more hooks in that scene than anything I’ve heard since Gentleman Jesse’s Leaving Atlanta. My rock record for the end of summer and my favorite record loaded in the barrel for next summer. “Well, there are sometimes that I don’t know where I am. And there are some things that I’ll never understand. There must be someone I can talk to about this. I never realized how much friendship can be missed. But it’s no good now, there’s no one but we two. And I’m alone in the city with you.”
  • Laura Benitez and the Heartache, “Let the Chips Fall” – San Francisco’s Laura Benitez and her crack band crafted one of my favorite sets of classic Bakersfield country/rockabilly in a while with California Centuries. Dave Zirbel’s pedal steel stands out on this track amid a tight rhythm section and Benitez’s clipped, punky vocal on the verses and soaring notes on the choruses. “It took me too many years to start to be brave, and I gotta move now while there’s still a part of me that’s left to save. I know that failing ain’t worse than doing nothing at all, so let the dice roll and let the chips fall.”
  • Snakehips featuring Tinashe, “Who’s Gonna Love You Tonight” – British electronic duo Snakehips reteam with one of my favorite current R&B singers, Tinashe, on this slinky sun-drenched beckoning/indictment rising to a powerful gospel-seared climax. “Who’s gonna tell you that you ain’t just high? Show you that you love this life.”
  • Makaya McCraven, “This Place, That Place” – I’ve been a fan of Makaya McCraven since the very first time I heard him – drawn to that first record because my old friend Tony Barba played on a track or two. And that fandom increased exponentially when I finally saw him life; he merges the repetitive, cell-based constructions of hip-hop, electronic dance music, and modern composition with the strengths of classic free jazz, a nimbleness on his kit, and a Mingus-esque talent for bringing out exactly the strengths of his players. When I interviewed him earlier this year to preview a (stunning) Wexner Center show Anne and I took her Mom to, he talked about the upcoming record, and how great it was that each of the labels he’d worked with recently, free jazz standard bearers International Anthem, British electronic stars XL, and legendary new music label Nonesuch, were teaming up to release In These Times. Hearing it, that almost feels like a metaphor. This record takes everything he’s learned and worked with up to now, especially in the larger band shows like the mind-blowing Webster Hall hit I saw at Winter Jazz Fest a few years ago and ties it all together while also moving forward. Brandee Younger’s harp is a key component of this track, tying the strings together with the horns and Joel Ross’ vibraphone.
  • Julian Lage, “Let Every Room Sing” – Julian Lage’s View With a Room reunites him with the crackling, empathetic rhythm section bassist Jorge Roeder, who I’ve been a fan of since hearing him with trombonist Ryan Keberle’s Catharsis, and Bad Plus/Happy Apple founder Dave King on drums, and adds the additional element of guitarist Bill Frisell who also has an extensive history with King. Their two lines snake and crack around one another in a way that always is surprising and invigorating. There’s enough crunchy noise on this Lage original to remind old heads of Frisell’s early work but without forsaking the Americana leanings and gorgeous melodies of both their more recent outings.
  • Nikki Lane, “Live/Love” – I was a fan of Nikki Lane’s songs and voice the second I heard All or Nothin’, and each record has deepened and broadened that appreciation, but Denim & Diamonds feels like the purest distillation of her magic yet. Whether it’s extra time on the songs, an affinity for Josh Homme’s sympathetic production – he also plays piano, percussion, and mellotron on this track – that works as well on gentle, west coast lopes like this one as the stomping dance numbers, or just a magic confluence of a number of factors, this is one of the most addictive albums I’ve sank into all year.
  • Ice Spice, “Munch (Feelin’ U)” – This Bronx-based rapper’s breakthrough single was all over this summer and coming to it a little late made me very nostalgic for the days I would have heard this in a club or coming out of a car rolling down the street. In less than two minutes, with a creeping track by Riot, it’s a perfect shot in the arm of low-key and well-earned braggadocio. “Sayin’ you love me but what do that mean? Pretty as fuck, and he like that I’m mean.”
  • Snarky Puppy, “Honiara” – Instrumental jazz-funk band Snarky Puppy returned this year with Empire Central, continuing the snarling crime-movie jazz tendency I loved so much on Culcha Vulcha (and the barn-burning live set Andrew Patton and I caught on that tour) but, true to form, bringing in elements from their various side projects and never staying still for too long. The woozy horns and bursting-at-the-seams production keep any part of this from getting too tidy, too clean, and it’s deep enough for the listeners but it’ll get a party out of their chairs.
  • Dmo!, “Save Your Soul” – I found this through one of my favorite local musicians, writer-keyboardist Brandon “BJazz” Scott who co-wrote and co-produced this with Aaron Hardin. I got to know BJazz’s work through his accompanying Talisha Holmes on some of her best thorny R&B and Hardin has a resume including Raheem DeVaughn and Eric Roberson, and this smooth and smoky cry into the darkness is squarely in both of those sweet spots. I couldn’t find much about the singer here but believe I’ll be checking for him going forward.
  • Madi Task, “Quitter” – A newer (or at least newer to me) Columbus singer-songwriter, with some similar gospel tendencies in the piano line and the way she leans way back behind the beat and the lunges at it. It’s raw and vibrant, powerful and a little unformed. “I fill up my cup but it tastes mediocre. The conversations are relying on me. There’s nothing to sip on and nothing to say; I’ll save my wit for a better day. Can’t take the silence? Go back to sleep, ’cause I don’t owe you a goddam thing.”
  • My Idea, “Cry Mfer” – I loved Palberta so I’m obviously interested in whatever else Lily Konigsberg is working on, and this collaboration with Nate Amos didn’t disappoint. The repetition and mix of warmth and chill groove feels like a cold breeze walking through a city and her voice cuts through it like streetlight daggers. “In all my life, I can hardly say I’ve been a light-caster. Found that talking to God was a lot faster.”
  • Courtney Marie Andrews, “These Are The Good Old Days” – The shimmering, mysterious keyboard riff that opens this track sets the tone of questioning memory even while the memory’s happening, interrogating motives, and is a magic springboard (along with other subtle touches on the arrangment: an acid trail guitar, brushed drums) for her candle-in-the-dark vocals in this standout from Andrews’ Loose Future album. “People like me think feelings are facts; falling in love gives us a heart attack.”
  • John Thayer featuring Tara Shupe, “I Couldn’t Find It In the Dark” – John Thayer from the SF band Monkey Lizards made a perfect slightly-bent Americana record with The Hottest Record Of The Year and this song, collaborating with Tara Shupe as co-writer and playing mandolin, piano, and bass along with adding magnetic harmony vocals to Thayer’s holy quaver and guitar and Brian Surano’s subtle, sauntering drums. “I been up every trail, down every road. I’d ask anyone, wherever I would go. Look for it in their faces, and I could see a spark. But I couldn’t find it in the dark.”
  • James Brandon Lewis Quartet, “Molecular” – Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis is killing it lately, from tracks with artists like Moor Mother, William Parker, and Alan Braufman, to one of the greatest contemporary jazz masterpieces Jesup Wagon. I was already sorry I hadn’t gotten to see him live yet, but this new live record with his stunning quartet MSM Molecular Systematic Music – Live rubs salt in that wound. Perfect, empathetic group playing with the insanely tight but never airless rhythm section of Brad Jones and Chad Taylor alongside pianist Aruán Ortiz who fully redirects gravity with that solo about four minutes in, playing killer compositions.
  • Wayne Shorter, Terri Lyne Carrington, Leo Genovese, Esperanza Spalding, “Endangered Species” – One of the great saxophone players of the 20th century, Wayne Shorter has never rested on his laurels or stopped searching, stopped question. This crack quartet of drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, bassist/vocalist Esperanza Spalding, and pianist Leo Genovese (who all get front-of-record billing), tear into this Shorter composition originally heard on his oft-maligned ’80s record Atlantis with a fire that can make any of us who couldn’t hear past the shiny textures of that record feel like an idiot (I may be projecting). Every piece of this – recorded live at the Detroit Jazz Festival – is perfection.
  • The Paranoid Style, “Steve Cropper Plays Femme Fatale” – I was extremely late to this killer indie pop band from DC led by Elizabeth Nelson and Timothy Bracy, but John Wendland’s playing songs from For Executive Meeting including this one won me over. This jumble of images tying Memphis and New York, the past and the present together, over jangling, barbed guitars, makes my heart sing. “In the final estimation, in the final accounting, God have mercy on the man who believes what he’s been doubting. God have mercy on the man who sees her walking down the street. Before you start you know you are already beat.”
  • Giuda, “Medley (Get it over / Space Walk / Watch Your Step)” – One of my favorite contemporary pub-rock examples, this Italian band picks up where Slade left off and Dave Wallingford and I still talk about that one perfect time they came through Ace of Cups. While I’m still hungry for their next visit, Giuda’s raging Live at Punk Rock Raduno captures some of that power and the vibrating enthusiasm of a band and crowd playing one of the first shows after lockdown.
  • Off!, “Free LSD” – Anne turned me onto Off! in the days of their first EPs, drawn from her love of Burning Brides (another band I wouldn’t know without her) from which guitarist Dimitri Coates came, uniting with Black Flag/Circle Jerks singer Keith Morris, and new rhythm section of Autry Fulbright II (from …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead) and Justin Brown (if the Discogs is to be believed, the same drummer who blew me away on Flying Lotus, Gerald Clayton, and Ambrose Akinmusire records). This is another slab of powerful, surging rock.
  • Cam’ron and A-Trak, “All I Really Wanted” – Even hearing about this collaboration with Dipset founder Cam’ron and downtown DJ A-Trak made the nostalgia molecules in my blood boil. Cam’ron’s mainstream rap hits were the soundtrack of my immediately-post-college years and around that time I started working at Chase and friends there said, “You need to check out the Diplomats double CD.” Around that time, A-Trak was getting a lot of buzz as a club DJ leading to touring with Kanye West and then founding Fool’s Gold records and exploding. This reunion doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel but is a magic example of how that music made so many of us feel, and still does. “By the time I turned thirty, I completed my bucket list. I don’t take threats likely, careful who you’re fucking with; dying’ll make you way more famous than your publicist.”
  • EST Gee, “Bow And Say Grace” – This standout track from Louisville rapper EST Gee’s debut full length I Never Felt Nun pairs a smooth rumble of a vocal delivery with a menacing, almost gothic beat that reminds me of the more underground stuff I was listening to around the time I first got into the music I mentioned in the previous blurb. “Roll over, play dead, wreck for the ‘gram – some of they other tricks. I sit back and watch all the rumors they be running with. All who been involved won’t call it off but it’ll never quit. Broke my Granny’s heart, she say her boy done let the devil in.”
  • Mary Bragg, “The Lonely Persistence of Time” – Singer-songwriter Mary Bragg drills down into an existential loneliness on her self-titled fourth record and it’s exactly the record I want in my headphones as I walk through streets covered in wet leaves. Soulful and sumptuous, with her voice and guitar perfectly set up by the rhythm section of Jordan Perlson (who also killed me on Becca Stevens and Joel Harrison’s records) and Ryan Madora, and Rich Hinman’s electric and steel guitars (who’s enhanced great records by everyone from Amythyst Kiah to Sara Watkins to k.d. lang). “It’s a quarter to you as I wait for the blue. How do you find another love that defies and colors the lonely persistence of time? I wanna know. Don’t you wanna know?”
  • Angelica Sanchez Trio, “Before Sleep / The Sleeping Lady and the Giant that Watches Over Her” – Talk about a record that punched me in the gut, especially by artists I already loved. Sanchez is one of the most consistently inventive pianists working in and expanding the jazz tradition and this record, Sparkle Beings pairs her with the astonishing rhythm section of Michael Formanek on bass and Billy Hart on drums, to attack a series of surprising selections from the canon and make them wholly their own. Here, Sanchez wrote an interlude to lead into the Duke Ellington classic for the record closer and, together, they capture the majesty, power, and delicateness of the original while shining powerful new light through it.
  • Redman/Mehldau/McBride/Blade, “Ship to Shore” – Anybody within 5-10 years of my age with even a passing interest in jazz got turned around by the quartet of tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman, pianist Brad Mehldau, bassist Christian McBride, and drummer Brian Blade. Those records blew my mind in High School and I can only imagine the punch they would have packed for someone seeing that band live. I still check for each of their records 25 years later – the first time Anne and I took her Mom to New York, maybe my favorite memory was taking her to see Redman at the Vanguard. I’m happy to report that the second reunion album, LongGone maybe even improves on Round Again. This sumptuous slow blues is everything I’m looking for from a certain kind of jazz and, like the last few, I think these three tracks in conjunction form kind of a prayer for a new day. Thank you all for reading this; I love you.