Tag: Mali Obomsawin

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Best Of Playlist record reviews

Playlist – 2022 Spaces

In contrast to the last playlist, these are compositions and performances I didn’t think fit as neatly into the categorization of songs. Usually – but not always – instrumental, usually – but not always – a little longer, a little more sprawling.

https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/3d5c5631-c345-46e8-8584-b749c9631177

  • Medicine Singers featuring Jaimie Branch, “Sanctuary” – I was a big fan of Yonatan Gat’s band Monotonix live, but they never quite gelled for me on record, but I’ve been extremely excited to see the various paths, curiosities, and enthusiasms he’s followed since breaking out on his own. My favorite is his collaboration with the Native American group Eastern Medicine singers on this stunning self-titled album. The record is full of guests, but every guest seems well-chosen, none more so than Jaimie Branch here, who adds a questing, majestic trumpet that feels like coming home to a place that doesn’t look quite the same.
  • Terri Lyne Carrington featuring Ambrose Akinmusire, “Rounds” – Drummer-composer-bandleader Terri Lyne Carrington’s New Standards project is one of the most important pieces of work enhancing jazz in years, with 100 great new compositions by women. The accompanying record, New Standards Vol. 1 finds Carrington assembling a crack rhythm section of herself, Kris Davis on piano, Linda May Han Oh on bass, Matthew Stevens on guitar, and a series of guests. This album-closing, spiky house fire written by one of my favorite pianists (and the artist we went to see the first time Anne and I went to the Village Vanguard together), Marilyn Crispell, features a jaw-dropping, dangling off the edge of the world trumpet solo from Ambrose Akinmusire.
  • Mary Halvorson, “Amaryllis” – Mary Halvorson made two of her strongest statements yet in 2022, with the mirrored records Amaryllis and Belladonna. I greatly admired the work with the Mivos Quartet on the latter – and it’s one of the things I’m most looking forward to seeing at Big Ears – but I couldn’t get several of the pieces with her crushing new sextet of Patricia Brennan on vibes, Nick Dunston on bass, Tomas Fujiwara on drums, Jacob Garchik on trombone, and Adam O’Farrill on trumpet out of my head, especially this title track on the other album. It’s a call to arms of raging beauty and a successful attempt to transcribe the beauty of the world, that moment where Halvorson’s comping mutates right behind O’Farrill’s blistering solo then takes off in another direction knocks me out.’
  • Loraine James, “Building Something Beautiful For Me (Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc)” – The posthumous renaissance of Julius Eastman continues to be a source of joy. This year brought a couple of artifacts of his own compositions and a breathtaking record of homages and refiguring from London-based composer/producer Loraine James. This title track uses the first piece of Eastman’s work I loved, the vocal intro and massed cellos of The Holy Presence of Joan d’Arc, and stretches the tones, playing with the colors so new light shines right through.
  • Brian Harnetty, “Let There Be a Moving Mosaic of This Rich Material” – Brian Harnetty is one of Columbus’s finest composers in a field where the bar is high. Over the last several years, his work with archives, especially with the past of Kentucky and Ohio, has provided a rich field he’s dug deep and made the best use of. His new record, Words and Silences, is a masterful look at the monk and writer Thomas Merton, using Merton’s own words and Harnetty’s settings to craft a mosaic look at the great man’s life. It’s a remarkable paean to stillness, attention, to getting off the merry-go-round of modern life and stopping to hear ourselves. Like all of Harnetty’s work, the insistence on meeting the materials where they are doesn’t negate the artist’s intention or vision, it opens it wide.
  • Bill Frisell, “Waltz for Hal Willner” – As I said in an earlier Parting Gifts playlist, Hal Willner’s tribute records were world-shattering to me, bringing together Leonard Cohen, Diamanda Galas, Harry Partch instruments in the service of Charles Mingus compositions, everything on Night Music… it all stunned me. And I’m so glad I got to see Willner once doing a piece with recordings accompanied by a small band, including Bill Frisell, where the affection between the two was radiating throughout the Stone. I love everything on Frisell’s new record, Four, pairing him with pianist Gerald Clayton, drummer Johnathan Blake, and Greg Tardy on clarinet and saxophone, but I kept coming back to this beautiful, elegiac waltz.
  • Kalia Vandever, “Passing Through” – Composer and trombonist Kalia Vandever assembled a nuanced, powerful sextet for an album of some of the best jazz compositions anyone’s writing now, Regrowth. Her striking trombone voice is front and center with gripping accompaniment from Immanuel Wilkins on alto, Lee Meadvin on guitar, Paul Cornish on piano (check his dancing solo that rises right out of a gorgeously gnarled stretch from Vandever), Nick Dunston on bass, and Connor Parks on drums.
  • Mark Lomax Trio, “Better Get Hit in Your Soul” – Another of the finest Columbus composers is also one of our best drummers and bandleaders, Dr. Mark Lomax II. For Charles Mingus’s centennial, Lomax and his longtime collaborators Dean Hulett on bass and Eddie Bayard on tenor team up for loving, well-crafted versions of a number of Mingus’s finest compositions. This is one of my favorite pieces on Trio Plays Mingus, with a long, melodic bass intro that flowers into a soulful masterclass in group interplay about a minute in. Three of our greatest players digging into material they’ve been working with as long as they’ve been playing music, with nothing to prove but always the questing spirit for finding something new, of surpassing their own expectations. This rises and rises but never leaves the soulful, earthy qualities of the original piece behind; you could sing every solo in this if you had the knack.
  • Tigran Hamasyan featuring Mark Turner, “All The Things You Are” – Armenian pianist Tigran Hamasyan first caught my attention for his intricate compositions so his album-length detour into standards, StandArt with a sympathetic rhythm section of Matt Brewer and Justin Brown, and guests was a delightful surprise. This gorgeous version of one of my favorite standards features the great tenor player Mark Turner and the lines Hamasyan and Turner weave around one another leave me breathless.
  • Moor Mother featuring Nicole Mitchell, “ARMS SAVE” – Moor Mother’s Jazz Codes plays with and jousts the jazz influences that have always been present in her un-classifiable work. This track, a highlight in a record full of them, featuring multi-reedist and composer Nicole Mitchell, uses the classic poetic device of sliding sentence fragments around, watching them spark against each other, in the night-sky-tapestry of reeds and a subtle beat. “I’m so hot, but no fans, but at the stake of all your demands, guess my presence never been felt.”
  • Mali Obomsawin, “Blood Quantum (Nəwewəčəskawikαpáwihtawα)” – Bassist and bandleader Obomsawin’s Sweet Tooth is one of my favorite debuts in a long while and this 11-minute album closer merges an Obomsawin composition with a contemporary Native American chant written by Obomsawin, Lokotah Sanborn and Carol Dana of the Penobscot Nation with arranging assistance from Lancelot Knight of Muskoday First Nation, and it’s a stunning, defiant, swinging meshing of jazz playing with horns from Allison Burik, Noah Campbell, and the record’s co-producer Taylor Ho Bynum, and a rhythm section including drummer Savannah Harris and guitarist Miriam Elhajli and the music of Obomsawin’s (and the nation’s) heritage.
  • Tarbaby featuring Oliver Lake, “Purple” – The collective trio Tarbaby – pianist Orrin Evans, bassist Eric Revis, and drummer Nasheet Waits – is one of my favorite groups in contemporary jazz, for many years at this point, and some of my favorite work of theirs also brings in the saxophone giant Oliver Lake. This simmering free ballad featuring trumpeter Josh Lawrence is a perfect example of form meeting intention and lighting the flame of beauty.
  • Jacob Garchik, “Bricolage” – Garchik’s new record “Assembly” fits together pieces of improvisations with a killing quintet of Sam Newsome on soprano, Jacob Sacks on piano, Thomas Morgan on bass, and Dan Weiss on drums, into new compositions in a really beautiful way that feels like it builds on his last few records, Ye Olde and Clear Line and playing with some ideas from his film scores while also staying in touch with his lineage as a jazz trombone player.
  • Bobby Previte, “GAMBLE” – One of my great joys this year was getting together in the same place with my childhood friend Mike Gamble and his wife, filmmaker Devin Febboriello, after a break of several years. So it was an extra joy to get to tell him how much I loved his work on Bobby Previte’s Nine Tributes for Electric Band and ask him if it was intimidating to be the guitarist on a record that pays tribute to so many other amazing players that Previte had worked with, from Sonny Sharrock to Charlie Hunter to Nels Cline. And, of course, with the humility I’d expect, the answer was, “Oh man, of course.” But it says something that not only did Previte – who’s played with everybody – call him for this task, but one of the tributes is dedicated to Gamble. And it’s a crushing piece, a key example of an artist being truly seen by another.
  • Sonic Youth, “In & Out” – I loved the collection of Sonic Youth compilation rarities and outtakes this year, In/Out/In, varying from fully formed works to rehearsal space jams. The wordless vocals on this and sly krautrock rhythms kept giving me joy in the months since its release.
  • Angelica Sanchez Trio, “Before Sleep/The Sleeping Lady and The Giant that Watches Over Her” – One of the great pianists working in jazz today, Sanchez assembled an all-star rhythm section of Billy Hart and Michael Formanek for this formidable trio album. The newly composed “Before Sleep” section blends so perfectly into the Ellington piece it feels like they were made for one another.
  • Lara Downes, “Magnetic Rag” – I was late to the party with Lara Downes, discovering her with last year’s series of work by black American composers, but I made up for the newness of that fandom with enthusiasm, so I was ready for her Scott Joplin record Reflections. This piece is a prime example of how a subtle arrangement by Stephen Buck and her light but decisive touch on the piano can remind us of the gorgeous accessibility, and the big riffs in these 100+ year-old songs, reminding us that Joplin helped define where American music was going and that the artistry of Downes is helping keep it alive.
  • Sweet Teeth, “City of Fern” – Sweet Teeth is a band I love in town because I can never quite get my finger on what they’re doing before they’re onto the next thing, but it’s always good. Brothers Stew (guitar, electronics, vocals) and Sam (cello) Johnson have seemingly voracious appetites for sounds, genres, and approaches. With Body Weather, they made a record as good as the times I’ve had seeing them live. This song sets up a deceptively placid surface and subverts those expectations over and over again for its seven-minute run time. “Ghost walk through a city of fern. All those bell shaped flowers try to sing.”
  • Charles Mingus, “Fables of Faubus” – Much as I love Mingus, I balked at the price of The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott’s on Record Store Day so I had to find it electronically after multiple people told me I was an idiot. This joyous and rightfully enraged romp through one of his classics is a key example of why this document is important and how his songs still glow 50 years after being recorded. A particularly good showcase for Jon Faddis on trumpet – whose other work did not wow me like he does here – and John Forster on piano about whom I knew nothing.
  • Wild Up, “Stay On It” – The Wild Up ensemble presents this favorite of mine of the Julius Eastman compositions, arranged by Christopher Rountree and Chris Kallmeyer, that captures all of its joy, its ebullient intensity, its encouragement to keep going.
  • Ethan Iverson, “For Ellen Raskin” – Iverson made his best, most consistent solo record with his Blue Note debut Every Note is True, making excellent use of a spectacular rhythm section of Jack DeJohnette on drums and Larry Grenadier on bass. I can’t count how many records I have with those gentlemen on them, but I can promise there’s not a bad one. And having three melodicists but who also know and love the simplicity of comping, of finding that pocket in a rhythm section, makes every tune on here shine. For me, this is one of the best melodies Iverson’s ever written, begging to be untangled, played with, and admired.
  • Fred Hersch, “Pastorale” – Speaking of melodicists, pianist Fred Hersch has been setting that bar high for decades, and his Breath by Breath, with a rhythm section of Drew Gress and Joachen Rueckert and the Crosby Street String Quartet, is another glowing example. An example of being perfectly lovely without being syrupy or contrived.
  • Mal Waldron, “You Don’t Know What Love Is” – I got into Mal Waldron after reading he was Billie Holliday’s last accompanist around the same time my late high school/early college self got extremely into Steve Lacy, who collaborated with Waldron for many years. I remember being in Portland and seeing a whole section of mostly solo Mal Waldron discs, getting two, and being blown away by both. Everything record of his I’ve ever found had something to teach me, and this year’s Searching in Grenoble from 1978 is a prime example. In excellent sound, in a transitional moment in his life, and it all comes out in a series of stormy pieces like this dissection of a favorite standard of mine, played with the thump of a martini shaker hitting the bar, then delicately as playing curls of smoke.
  • Peter Brotzmann/Milford Graves/William Parker, “Side B” – This year’s Historic Music Past Tense Future is a remarkable document of an explosive meeting between three artists who worked with each other over the years, all growing out of ’60s free jazz. Brotzmann always plays best with people with strong senses of rhythm and the storytelling drums of Graves bring out something different in his playing from the soulful pulse of Hamid Drake or the crunching surprise of Han Bennink. And Parker’s bass, that knew both so well, is a magic meeting place. This reminds me how lucky I was to live when all three of them walked the Earth and to make time to see Parker soon and Brotzmann whenever he next hits the states.
  • Anadol, “Gizli Duygular” – Anadol, the electronic music project of Turkish artist Gözen Atila has a sense of going inside oneself – the record Felicita is a favorite thing to write to – but there’s always a sense of play, the kind of joyful curiosity every meditation teacher always told me I should approach meditating with and the kind of joyful curiosity I try to approach writing and anything I absorb culturally (but often fall short of).
  • Immanuel Wilkins, “Fugitive Ritual, Selah” – Rising star saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins’ latest record for Blue Note, The 7th Hand, is a triumph, a connected suite where each piece makes its own impression. This composition features the core quartet of Micah Thomas on piano, Kweku Sumbry on drums, and Rolling Stones member Daryl Johns on bass, with subtle but gripping interplay and a melody that stuck with me as soon as I heard it.
  • Elvin Jones, “13 Avenue B” – Elvin Jones is very well recorded but there aren’t a lot of examples of him this early as a bandleader after leaving the classic Coltrane quartet. This smoking 1967 set from Pookie’s Pub in SoHo. This piece of classic hard bop features a prime example of his hook-up with bassist Wilbur Little, familiar from Jones’ late ’60s studio dates as a leader but also fiery playing from Joe Farrell, best known for his Return to Forever work, and pianist Billy Greene.
  • Taru Alexander, “Kojo Time” – Drummer and bandleader Taru Alexander’s Echoes of the Masters pays tribute to his inspirations, including his father Roland Alexander. This impassioned romp through a Roland Alexander classic highlights saxophonist Antoine Roney as the entire quintet does a spectacular job with the piece.
  • JD Allen, “This World is a Mean World” – JD Allen, with maybe my favorite tone of any working tenor player, continues his deep dive into blues and the roots of American music with Americana Vol. 2, using the same empathetic rhythm section of Gregg August and Rudy Royston, adding guitar virtuoso Charlie Hunter to the mix to powerful effect.
  • John Scofield, “Junco Partner” – Maybe the first jazz guitarist I was a fan of, John Scofield’s first solo guitar record, self-titled, is a mix of strong originals and classics. This version of the blues traditional – which I learned from the Clash then went back to the Dr. John, the Professor Longhair, the Louis Jordan – highlights Scofield’s blues background and the smoothness of the ideas flowing out of him.
  • Johnny Gandelsman, “Barbary Coast, 1955” – Violinist Johnny Gandelsman went to many of our great American composers for his rapturous and sometimes heartbreaking This is America. For this piece, for five-string violin, Terry Riley wrote a gorgeous homage to a seedy strip of San Francisco in the ’50s.
  • Antoine Fatout, “Roger’s Riff” – Columbus drummer Antoine Fatout has been making noise as a sideman – I first heard him with great guitarist Brett Burleson – and with his own Trio Fa2. This debut record teams him with two of Columbus’s treasures we sometimes share with the world – Roger Hines on bass, best known for a long stretch in Ray Charles’ band, and guitarist Stan Smith (Moacir Santos, Madrugada, Descendre) – for a swinging, melodic record. This is a favorite of mine but there isn’t a bad tune on the album.
  • Oren Ambarchi, “IV” – Oren Ambarchi’s Shebang is one of my favorite recent examples of composition by accumulation. The guitarist brings in collaborators, including drummer Joe Talia, Necks pianist Chris Abrahams, pedal steel player BJ Cole, 12 string guitarist Julia Reidy, and lets them do what they do in cells, slowly drawing it together into this final, jubilant movement.
  • Isaiah Ceccarelli, “Toute Clarte m’est obscure: V. Aubade” – I fucking love an aubade, though I knew the poetic form before I discovered the musical. This fifth movement of Ceccarelli’s Toute Clarte m’est obscure composition centers on Ellen Weiser’s voice that, along with Katelyn Clark’s organ, feels like the sun rising on your face.
  • Mike Baggetta/Jim Keltner/Mike Watt, “Everywhen We Go” – This title track of the new album from this terrific collaboration has a cool spaghetti western feeling, set up as much by Keltner’s crisp drum rolls and edge-of-the-cymbal work as Baggett’s echoing twang and Watt’s melodic heartbeat bass.
  • James Brandon Lewis, “An Anguish Departed” – Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis seems to pop up everywhere these days. This quartet is probably my favorite of the working bands, with Aruán Ortiz on piano, Brad Jones on bass, and Chad Taylor on drums, and Molecular Systematic Music Live captures them at the height of their powers. This mournful throb of a song features wrenching solos from Lewis and Ortiz.
  • Jeremy Pelt, “Still Standing” – Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt follows last year’s conceptual tribute masterpiece with a record of mostly originals, including this one, cinematic in nature as befits the title, and about getting down and playing. The tight band here includes Chien Chien Lu on vibes (check out that buoyant solo), Vicente Archer on bass, Allan Mednard on drums (throughout, his comping is a wonder), Victor Gould on piano, and Brittany Anjou on synth around Pelt’s razor-sharp trumpet sound.
  • Walter Smith III and Matthew Stevens, “Hornets” – In Common III, the latest in a series of collaboratively led records by saxophonist Smith and guitarist Stevens, with an all-time rhythm section of Kris Davis, Dave Holland, and Terri Lyne Carrington, is a perfect example of how tight and beauitful this kind of small group jazz playing can be. One of my favorite things in jazz is hearing how the group comes out of a solo and there are so many excellent examples in this concise five minute piece, particularly after riveting solos from Stevens and Davis, back to that infectious chorus with meaty transitions.
  • Dezron Douglas, “Coyoacán” – Dezron Douglas leads a killer band including George Burton on piano, Joe Dyson Jr on drums, and Emilio Modeste on sax, through a series of terrific compositions on his new Atalayan. This smoldering tune is a highlight on an album full of highlights.
  • Julian Lage, “Heart is a Drum” – Guitarist Julian Lage continues to refine his approach and expand his field of vision with every outing. On View With a Room, his most developed album yet, he re-teams with tight rhythm section Jorge Roeder and Dave King and adds influence turned peer Bill Frisell into the mix for ten great originals. This one grabbed me by the lapels almost immediately.
  • Kali Malone, “Living Torch I” – Composer Kali Malone trades in the pipe organ she’s best known for on Living Torch for a series of synthesizers in a trio format with trombonist Mats Äleklint and bass clarinetist Isak Hedtjärn. With that instrumentation, long, painterly tones are almost expected but Malone and the other two players use those in a way that’s as surprising and fresh as it feels natural and organic. These two pieces are like watching the shadows change as the sun rises over a canopy of trees.
  • Sarah Davachi, “Harmonies in Bronze” – One of my favorite contemporary composers, Sarah Davachi didn’t disappoint on the 2022 record Two Sisters. This pipe organ solo builds slowly and, appropriate to its name, takes on sculptural qualities. The entire record is stunning but this piece makes me want to simultaneously unpack it and just sit back and watch the light drip out of it.
  • Makaya McCraven, “Seventh String” – I had a harder time finding a way into McCraven’s sprawling In These Times, and I suspect seeing more of the material live (after the tastes we got in the excellent Wexner Center show) will snap it into focus. That said, I immediately loved a handful of songs, including this stormy slow jam.
  • Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, “Have You Felt Lately?” – This opening track from LA based composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith uses elastic tones, sudden shifts in rhythm, and treated vocals to build a doorway to an entire universe, shimmering and shifting.
  • Dirty Bird, “The Question” – This loping house track kicks off producer Dirty Bird’s excellent Wagenmuzik album. The chopped, moaning vocal “Is it real?” repeats and folds over on itself around the hard but distant drums, like the soundtrack to a montage at sunset over a dirty street, day melting into night, one world rubbing up against the next.
  • Anna Butterss, “La Danza” – Anna Butterss, known as a bassist but playing everything on this standout track from her excellent Activities record, creates a soundworld that’s full of details and nuance but here never rising above a steady throb, a slow dance in the waning moonlight.
  • Tyshawn Sorey Trio, “Autumn Leaves” – I’ve seen Tyshawn Sorey a lot over the years in many contexts, mostly focused around his compositions or avant-garde improvisation (I still cherish seeing him in the trio with Ingrid Laubrock and Kris Davis at the late, lamented Cornelia Street Cafe). So it was a little bit of a surprise to see this record of standards with pianist (and Columbus native) Aaron Diehl and bassist Matt Brewer come out, but once I heard it it felt like the most natural thing in the world. Standards I’ve heard a million times, like this one, in versions that hold up to any I’ve heard by any of the greats.
  • RedmanMehldauMcBrideBlade, “Rejoice” – The second reunion record of this quartet that was so influential to me and so many others in the ’90s, LongGone, did not disappoint. This bouncing Joshua Redman composition gives he and Mehldau plenty of space to stretch and I’m especially in love with the almost taunting call and response inside McBride’s playing.
  • Tony Monaco, “Lush Life” – One of Columbus’s keyboard treasuers, maestro of the B-3 Tony Monaco, made his best record in years, Four Brothers, teaming up with saxophonist Eddie Bayard, guitarist Kevin Turner, and drummer Willie Barthel III. Here they take on maybe my favorite standard of all time, digging deep on a classic slow-burn rendition.
  • Charles Lloyd with Zakir Hussain and Julian Lage, “Tales of Rumi” – I enjoyed all three of the Charles Lloyd Trios records but I think my favorite was this collaboration with tabla master Zakir Hussain and virtuoso guitarist Julian Lage. The three approach the situation as equals and the equal weight on each instrument shines and lets the difference in tonal quality shine through this winding, snaking piece. As usual with these, I try to end with a prayer. Thank you all for reading and listening.
Categories
Best Of record reviews

Best of 2022 Records

As with the past few years, the actual writing about these pieces will come with the playlist posts, but I like the idea of keeping the tradition of having a list of my favorite records of the year in one place. And good lord, there was a lot to love this year.

New Albums:

  • Florence and the Machine, Dance Fever
  • Anteloper, Pink Dolphins
  • Anaïs Mitchell, Anaïs Mitchell
  • Big Joanie, Back Home
  • Amanda Shires, Take It Like a Man
  • Gabriel Kahane, Magnificent Bird
  • Moor Mother, Jazz Codes
  • Brian Harnetty, Words and Silence
  • Loraine James, Building Something Beautiful For Me
  • Mary Halvorson, Amaryllis
  • Leyla McCalla, Breaking the Thermometer
  • Eli “Paperboy” Reed, Down Every Road
  • Lady Wray, Piece of Me
  • Terri Lynn Carrington, New Standards Vol. 1
  • Sick Thoughts, Heaven is No Fun
  • Kalia Vandever, Regrowth
  • SG Goodman, Teeth Marks
  • Tarbaby featuring Oliver Lake, Dance of the Evil Toys
  • Mali Obomsawin, Sweet Tooth
  • Terence Etc., VORTEX 

Archival/Reissue/Compilations:

  • Various Artists, Here It Is: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen
  • Sonic Youth, In/Out/In
  • Various Artists, Disco Reggae Rockers
  • Mal Waldron, Searching in Grenoble: The 1978 Solo Piano Concert
  • Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
  • Charles Mingus, The Lost Album from Ronnie Scott’s
  • Various Artists, Live Forever: A Tribute to Billy Joe Shaver
  • Cecil Taylor, The Complete, Legendary, Live Return Concert
  • Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Live at the Fillmore, 1997
  • The Lilybandits, Shifty’s Tavern
  • Various Artists, Life Between Islands
  • Various Artists, Sharayet El Disco
  • Ray Pérez y Perucho Torcat, They Do It
  • Elvin Jones, Revival: Live at Pookie’s Pub
  • Charles Stepney, Step on Step
  • Brotzmann/Graves/Parker, Historic Music Past Tense Future
  • Various Artists, Something Borrowed, Something New: A Tribute to John Anderson
Categories
Playlist record reviews

Playlist – October 2022

Last monthly playlist since December I’ll dedicate to my three best-of playlists (also glad there’s less paid writing in Dec because I churn out a lot of year-end words in those bloated gratitude exercises). Between working on this and writing it, I went to New York for the best trip – and the one that felt the most like a “real” NYC trip – since COVID first struck and my and Anne’s first trip to Mexico City (which I loved), but also got to enjoy my favorite season in town. It’s been a particularly good autumn at the end of a roller coaster year. To a holiday season filled with more joy than guilt. Onward, my friends.

https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/1174690c-c1f0-4ebb-aa95-02bb2d8e6343

  • Vieux Farka Touré and Khruangbin, “Diarabi” – I’ve really enjoyed all Khruangbin’s collaborations lately but Ali, their collaboration with Touré on a collection of his father’s classic songs, takes that love to another level. I’ve talked about seeing the elder Touré early in college and that being a huge gateway for me to other sounds and other connections across the world of music, and in a similar way, this re-imagining always keeps the vital core of the song but doesn’t treat it like a museum piece. Every track here is perfect, and we’ve got a reminder here of the covers album as an act of love.
  • Monophonics featuring Kelly Finnigan, “The Shape of My Teardrops” – Long one of my favorite psych-soul bands, San Francisco’s Monophonics, team up with vocalist/lyricist Kelly Finnigan for a concept album built around the artfully crumbling Sage Motel. This track puts them in that silky, saloon tempo they ride so well, drenched in strings and echoing background vocals. “Somebody’s crying over you.”
  • Brian Harnetty, “Thinking Out Loud in a Hermitage” – One of the brightest lights of Columbus composers, Harnetty has done some of his best work interacting with archives. I was sorry Anne and I were out of town for the live debut of this work. His new one, Words and Silences, takes on the American monk and scholar Thomas Merton, using recordings of his own voice. Not “takes on” in terms of grappling with but trying to understand, trying to see Merton as he is and as he presented himself. The arrangements around the vocals often have a cycling, hypnotic feeling, not getting lost in the details but letting them shine just like the diary entries, but those details are all massively important; the clarinet on this track breaks my heart open to let the light in. It’s the best, most fully realized work yet from someone I don’t think has ever made a bad record.
  • Gustav Lundgren Trio, “My Dear Country” – This bucolic title track off Swedish jazz guitarist Lundgren’s latest record teams him with drummer Karl-Henrik Ousbäck (who’s worked with Lage Lund and Ambrose Akinmusire, among others) and bassist Pär-Ola Landin whose melodic lines add some additional gravity and nuance to the gorgeous subtlety of the tune and Ousbäck’s textured drumming (those dancing cymbals around the three-minute mark) changes the complexion of the song’s atmosphere as well as adding propulsion.
  • Bruce Barth Trio, “In Memoriam – for George Floyd & so many others” – Pianist Bruce Barth’s gorgeous new record Dedication features bassist Vicente Archer (a key component of the last couple of great Jeremy Pelt and Orrin Evans records) and drummer Montez Coleman who I think I first heard with Roy Hargrove and it’s a perfect meshing between piano and rhythm section. Befitting the title, the record features beautiful tributes to fellow pianists McCoy Tyner and Tommy Flanagan but I kept coming back to this heartbreaking elegy to black men killed by police brutality.
  • Oren Ambarchi, “IV” – I’ve been a fan of Oren Ambarchi since finding his work with the eai crowd like Otomo Yoshihide and Sachiko M in the early ’00s and, not long after, his crucial contributions to several Sunn O))) records and side projects. His new one, Shebang, is his most immediately accessible and overall satisfying album to date. The four numbered tracks add layers and textures, climaxing in this burst of shimmering color, featuring Jim O’Rourke’s synths, BJ Cole’s pedal steel, Chris Abrahams’ piano, and Julia Reidy’s 12-string.
  • Tigran Hamasyan featuring Mark Turner, “All The Things You Are” – Pianist Hamasyan delivered his first record of standards with the stunning StandArt, and this take on one of the quintessential standards gave me chills all the way down. At times pulsing, floating in space, like the square in a Rothko painting or a Steve Reich piece, always coming back to that perfect melody, dancing with tenor saxophonist Mark Turner.
  • Meg Baird, “Will You Follow Me Home?” – I got into Meg Baird through her time in the Philly free-folk band Espers and have remained a rabid fan through multiple solo records, her time in Heron Oblivion (who were my absolute favorite part of the little Columbus psych fest Melted a few years ago), and various other collaborations. This advance track off her upcoming solo disc Furling is everything I love about her work, that stunning, pure-water voice front and center with backings that have a warm-light ’70s quality but with enough weirdness, enough gaps around the edges to keep it interesting.
  • Melissa Stylianou featuring Gene Bertoncini and Ike Sturm, “It Might As Well Be Spring” – One of my favorite contemporary jazz singers, I got into Stylianou through her work in the vocal trio Duchess (seeing them at the 55 Bar at a happy hour show, sitting down the bar from half a dozen big-name band leaders, is still a memory I treasure). She tears into one of my favorite standards – in a more straight-ahead take than the Hamayasan earlier – with a legend of jazz guitar, Gene Bertoncini, and the warm, swinging bass of Ike Strum.
  • George Strait, “Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me” – This song was one of my gateway drugs to Billy Joe Shaver, in the version by Tom T. Hall, and so it’s no surprise that this take on it by one of the great gods of the Olympus of Texas Music on the stacked-front-to-back-with-gold tribute album Live Forever would have been one of my standouts. The layers of George Strait in his Lion in Winter phase covering a song by one of his influences and doing a song that influence wrote as a young man trying to place himself in that great lineage of Texas singer-songwriters give this some additional juice for me, but it’s also just a stellar read on one of the great ballads. “Well, I reckon we’re gonna ramble till hell freezes over.”
  • Terence Etc, “In Contemplation of Clair’s Scent” – The hurtling, echoing but tightly controlled drums on this infectious track tied it together with the Andy/Sherwood collab of the previous track. I knew Terence Nance as a filmmaker, but this supernova of an album, VORTEX, was my first exposure to him as a singer and songwriter. The grooves are refreshing and surprising, the lyrics finely chiseled but also elliptical. I have no idea what this will be like live – if there are even any plans for it – but if it comes within 200 miles of me, I’ll have a ticket and be in the front.
  • Electric Shit featuring Walter Daniels, “La Bondad Y La Maldad” – This dovetails to help sum up a year of great but expensive and exhausting travel. While researching the fantastic Mexico trip Anne did most of the planning for, I discovered a show Electric Shit was headlining. Looking into them, I found their release from this year teamed the Ecatepec band with gnarled Austin harmonica master Walter Daniels (who co-led those South Filthy records I love and was so glad to finally see them live this year in Memphis) on a tribute record to the Atlanta band The Subsonics for this raging Spanish cover of “Good Half – Bad Half.”
  • Bad Manor, “Hallowed Ground” – This closing track from the black metal band Bad Manor’s delightful debut full-length The Haunting welds a sinister groove to lacerating guitars and a barbed howl, and hits a similar throw-on-your-old-leather-jacket-and-thrash-in-a-dark-room sweet spot for me as the last track.
  • Horace Andy, “Come After Midnight” – I liked reggae legend Horace Andy’s earlier record this year, Midnight Rocker, but I love producer Adrian Sherwood’s rework of Midnight Scorchers, especially this moody, seductive lead-off track. Summoning up a late-night dispatch with the loneliness and urgency of a broadcast from a dying star.
  • Lustre, “Faith” – I’m late to the party on this ambient/atmospheric black metal band, but sole member Henrik Sunding was in a band I liked quite a bit, Hypothermia. And their new record, A Thirst for Summer Rain enraptured me from the first few notes, especially this lovely instrumental that sprays acidic guitars over beds of synths.
  • The Delines, “My Blood Bleeds The Darkest Blue” – I love the Delines just as much as I loved lead singer Amy Boone’s (Damnations TX) and principal songwriter Willy Vlautin’s (Richmond Fontaine) previous bands, which I didn’t think was possible, my ardor for those earlier groups was so strong. But every record has grown that passion for this band, and the new single The Lost Duets actually has their voices directly interacting with one another, so it took me to the moon. The splashes of trumpet and organ stabs like dust swirling in the afternoon sunlight are among the details that make this tune feel like a hand-chiseled window into a world we shouldn’t see.
  • Oakwalker, “Future Lover” – This Memphis band features the lush multi-tracked vocals of Victoria Dowdy (who also plays rhythm guitar) and co-writer/co-leader Ethan Baker’s violin with a swinging rhythm section of Graham Winchester on drums (who’s the secret weapon of what feels like most of Memphis these days, including Jack Oblivian and the Sheiks, The Turnstyles, Devil Train, and the stellar reunited Compulsive Gamblers Anne and I saw this year) and Tyler Marberry. This walked a similar line through the landscape of the bloodied but unbowed as the previous track, tipping a bit more toward hope for the future.
  • Plains, “Problem With It” – I’ve been a big fan of Katie Crutchfield’s Waxahatchee since Cerulean Salt but this collaboration, I Walked With You a Ways, was my first exposure to Jess Williamson. Another almost impossible choice of a song, but this loping rootsy tune about holding the people in our lives – and ourselves – to the right standard, scratched an itch down deep in me. That electric guitar solo – not sure if it’s Brad Cook or Alex Farrar – is in my personal hall of fame for concise solos that sum up the complicated emotions of the melody and lyric. “I drive fast on high alert past the Jet Pep and the Baptist church. On the county line, I’ll be a songbird softly heard, my loose change falling out. Got a heartbreak burn, take the quickest route on this four-lane highway. I’ll trace it in the clouds.”
  • First Aid Kit, “Out of My Head” – This second single from the Swedish folk duo’s stellar record Palomino weaves hints of shadowy drone through a nimble dance beat and sticky harmonies. “All my dreaming, all my trials – where they’ll lead, does it matter now?”
  • Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn, “Umber” – I’m still getting over Second Line, last year’s record that helped cement Dawn Richard among my favorite current R&B singers (and the incendiary set at Big Ears this year), so this collaboration with friendly acquaintance Spencer Zahn (his band Father Figure crashed on my floor but I didn’t formally meet him until the next year’s Winter Jazzfest) was right up my alley. Zahn’s textured chamber jazz arrangements meld with Richard’s dynamic, nuanced voice and lyrics in a way that makes almost too much sense. Every track on Pigments is winning, but the shifting of foreground and background on this one kept calling to me when I tried to choose one.
  • Urban Elegance, “Midnight Flowers” – This homegrown collaboration unites Columbus heavyweights producer/electronic musician Storm9000 with bassist/former guitar maker to the stars Phil Maneri and harpist Trista Hill. It’s not only a great example of community in my town; I believe this collab was sparked by a meeting at my friend Scott Woods’ invaluable Streetlight Guild space.
  • Batts, “All That I Need” – Nightline, her sophomore record with project Batts was my first exposure to Melbourne singer-songwriter Tanya Batts, and it took my breath away. The crunching rhythm section, Brendan Tsui and Lachlan O’Kane augmented by slipper synths, rubs against the soft-focus light around the powerful vocal. “How you feeling, babe? Has it hit you yet? I can see the whole wide world. Let’s never forget how we feel right now.”
  • Illogic, “Passion Fruit” – Illogic was the first rapper in Columbus I was a big fan of, seeing him on stages around campus and making great records with killing producers like Blueprint, DJ PRZM, and Blockhead in the early ’00s. I lost track of his work for a few years but his new record The Transition not only finds him growing into maturity without being boring, it also finds him coming into his own as a beatmaker with warm, classic tracks that speak to today as much as they conjure nostalgia.
  • Scratcha DVA with Tribal Brothers, DJ Polo, and Nasty Jack, “Pull Up – Rhubarb and Custard Vocal” – I’ve been a big fan of British electronic musician Scratcha DVA since I first heard his work a few years ago and I’m pretty sure the person lending some excellent rhymes to this is Nasty Jack but I couldn’t find any additional information about this track. The sliding clatter of the beat and those low tones speaks to me, a Saturday night rager but also with some wistfulness shot through it.
  • Micah Schnabel, “Dirtbag” – Schnabel’s solo work has gotten deeper and knottier, more complex but lit by a brilliant blue flame. He plants a flag against the encroaching wave of homogenization and for the pleasures of community, of being there for the people you love and letting that include yourself. And he ties that to a pulsating groove (anchored here by Jason Winner on drums and Micah on bass) and a singalong chorus that reminds me of my pal Angela saying “Everything of theirs is an anthem,” over a decade ago. “You can ridicule my resume. I did not ask how you get paid. So tell me, how do you get paid?”
  • Labretta Suede and the Motel 6, “Teenagers Gettin’ High” – This New Zealand-bred but Dallas-based retro rock group are putting out one fizzy, swinging stomp after another, and this burst of greasy energy might be my favorite yet.
  • Los Carnash, “Borracho” – Another band I discovered doing research for the Mexico City trip and I think they were the one band we managed to see at the Sonido Necrotico show. A pummeling drummer and a charismatic screamer of a frontman power these short bursts of metal-flecked punk (but on the opposite end of the spectrum from metalcore) power.
  • Damjonboi, “Top Shelf” – Rising Detroit rapper and producer Damjonboi works an appealingly easy going flow, sliding between and around a menacing beat that laces electronic handclaps and stuttered hi-hats with piano stabs and slashing strings.
  • Mali Obomsawin, “Blood Quantum (Nəwewəčəskawikαpáwihtawα)” – Bassist, percussionist, and vocalist Mali Obomsawin, of the First Nation at Odanak, made a powerful statement of purpose, using jazz, the chants of her people (those she grew up with and the contemporary chants like the one underpinning this piece, co-written with Lokotah Sanborn and Carol Dana of the Penobscot Nation, and every other form available). A paean to the beauty and hopefulness in defiance, with a crushing rhythm section that finds Obomsawin partnered with drummer Savannah Harris and guitarist Miriam Elhaji and a brilliant horn section of Allison Burik on alto sax and bass clarinet, Noah Campbell on saxophones, and co-producer Taylor Ho Bynum on cornet and flugelhorn.
  • Jake Blount featuring Demeanor, “Give Up The World” – Jake Blount’s at the fore of the much-needed corrective movement of artists reclaiming the banjo and old time music, tying it to its African roots and telling stories that speak to the here and now in a way that’s both beautiful and refreshing. This year’s The New Faith, is his finest statement yet. On this track, Blount teams with rapper Demeanor (Rhiannon Giddens’ nephew), bassist Mali Oobomsawin, and guitarist/violinist/coproducer Brian Slattery for a record that’s as catchy as it is sharp. “We must leave this world behind.”
  • Julianna Riolino, “Isn’t It a Pity” – Toronto-based singer-songwriter Riolino works with more contemporary roots forms, ’70s Laurel Canyon and ’60s pop soul (that marvelous carnival/cocktail party organ from Thomas Hammerton, Anthony Ronaldi’s bari sax and the shattering, rising guitar solo from I suspect Daniel Romano but could be producer Aaron Goldstein) around her voice like that first bolt of light coming onto the frost-covered window with a great cup of coffee, and witty lyrics with a strong point of view but room for everything else in the world. “A wily old cadaver, a velvet swinging hammer, a windmill of a force is what keeps us both apart.”
  • Rhianna, “Lift Me Up” – Generally I’m on record as preferring the dance numbers – even, or especially, the minor key tension-filled ones – of Rhianna’s catalog, but she his this breathtaking ballad so far out of the park I keep playing it over and over again, slack-jawed. “Burning in a hopeless dream. Hold me when you go to sleep.”
  • Shy Martin, “Wish I Didn’t Know You” – Swedish singer-songwriter Shy Martin splits the difference of the last couple tracks in this spiderweb of a track, seemingly fragile but detailed and incredibly strong.
  • Sunny War, “No Reason” – Bringing the tempo up a little with this more direct anthem – that still doesn’t skimp on the complications of the world singer-songwriter Sunny War aims to reflect. One of the acts I was sorriest to miss at this year’s Nelsonville Music Festival and I’m kicking myself even harder with every song she puts out. “Don’t know you well but I can bet you did some things that you regret.”
  • Nora O’Connor, “Follow Me” – Nora O’Connor’s one of those voices I think of whenever I think of the Chicago country scene, one of the not-in-my-town scenes I gravitated toward first, from her work with The Blacks, Neko Case, Kelly Hogan, the Flat Five, Robbie Fulks, and Mavis Staples. But I get even more excited when there’s new solo work under her own name. “Follow Me” doesn’t disappoint; it’s an easygoing stroll through a sunset when you don’t necessarily know where you’re headed.
  • Seth Avett, “The Poet Game” – Another stroll through memories and an understanding of the way they point toward the future, as Avett brother Seth takes on one of my all time favorite songs as part of a tribute EP to one of the great songwriters, Seth Avett sings Greg Brown. It doesn’t reveal anything new about the song but the little pauses, the way he finds a middle ground between the phrasing of the original and his style of singing, works for me on every level. “I had a friend who drank too much and played too much guitar, and we sure got along. Reel-to-reels rolled across the country near and far, with letters, poems, and songs. But these days he don’t talk to me and he won’t tell me why; I miss him every time I hear his name. I don’t know what he’s doing or why our friendship died while we play the poet game.”
  • Alela Diane, “Dream a River” – From that first line, “I just returned to say goodbye,” over the circling acoustic guitar riff, this song stood out to be on Alela Diane’s consistently excellent Looking Glass album and when those strings come in, I’m transported. “I hear her silver bracelets down the hall. That, and the lingering cry of a song. Everything’s exactly as we left it but where’s the sun come through?”
  • Loraine James, “The Perception of Me (Crazy Nigger)” – The surge in interest in Julius Eastman, a tragically overlooked composer of the downtown scene in ’70s and ’80s New York, has been a blessing to chamber music lovers and to me personally. Phantom Limb’s stellar work assembling and releasing his work also extends into projects like this where electronic composer/producer Loraine James uses some of his most iconic pieces as a jumping off point. This revisioning takes the original piece, which I first heard on Unjust Malaise for four pianos, and removes the percussive part of the hypnotic movements, stretching it out, pulling it back, and working it for different types of keyboard while retaining both its beautiful and its raging, powerful defiance.
  • Mavis Staples, “If It Be Your Will” – I always end with something that feels to me like a prayer and this is both one of the best examples of that form in a pop song, Leonard Cohen’s original closer from Various Positions, given a definitive reading by one of the great American voices. Blue Note’s stellar all-around tribute record to Cohen, Here It Is finds Larry Klein assembling an all-star core band of Bill Frisell (whose chiming guitar comping is crucial to the atmosphere throughout), the rhythm section of Kevin Hays on piano, Scott Colley on bass, and Nate Smith on drums (who fit together so perfectly, especially the drifting clouds of Smith’s brushwork here), longtime Frisell collaborator Greg Leisz on pedal steel, and Immanuel Wilkins on saxophone (following, teasing out the textures in Staples’ read on the song). It’s a perfect track on one of the few great-all-the-way-through tribute albums. Thank you all, as always, for taking this trip with me.