Tag: Missy Mazzoli

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Best Of Playlist record reviews

Best of 2023 – Spaces

Here are some things that moved me in jazz, classical, and other instrumental (mostly) forms this year.

https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/bbe455af-3b1f-4a30-a42c-9a967bc93869

  • Wild Up/Julius Eastman, “If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?” – The ensemble Wild Up continues their vital grappling with/resurfacing the once-thought-lost work of composer Julius Eastman with a third volume containing several of the pieces on the original three-disc anthology I had the hardest time grappling with. The acidic overtones and sharp stabs on this sardonic, jagged piece are perfectly executed here, under the baton of Christopher Rountree, and reflect a world I see in a way I didn’t when I first heard the piece, also laying bare the sense of hope inherent in getting off the mat every time.
  • Wadada Leo Smith and Orange Wave Electric, “Nzotake Shange” – One of America’s finest composers and trumpeters, Wadada Leo Smith (Anne said, after watching a quartet set at the Stone, it sounded like “Falling down stairs” and she wasn’t wrong but in a good way), assembled a dream team of electric downtown-associated players for his remarkable record Fire Illuminations: guitarists Nels Cline, Brandon Ross, and Lamar Smith; bassists Bill Laswell and Melvin Gibbs; electronic musician Hardedge; percussionist Mauro Refosco; and drummer Pheeroan akLaff. Each tune reflects on an individual or a specific moment in history, and this piece, named for the poet and playwright who broke me when I read for colored girls 15 years after it premiered, exemplifies everything I find so intoxicating about the album, the deep groove and the perfectly refined and directed shots of fire spraying over it.
  • Irreversible Entanglements, “root ⇔ branch” – Irreversible Entanglements not only blew my hair back twice this year but also put on an even more assured and powerful second album, Protect Your Light. This piece, partly in tribute to jaimie branch, has been a favorite since I first hit play, and it’s still a balm, horns slowly waltzing through Moor Mother’s poetry and the deep, circular groove of Luke Stewart’s bass before erupting into a hip-swaying march. “Let the horns open the day and get free.”
  • Johnathan Blake, “Lament for Lo” – Drummer Johnathan Blake released his best record as a leader with this year’s Passages, and it’s full of great players. Still, I kept coming back to this drum solo intro/tribute to fellow New York drummer Lawrence “Lo” Leathers, both as a tribute to conciseness in a playlist more given to sprawling statements and a reminder of how much texture and emotional content one instrument being played alone can be.
  • Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, “Last Waltz for Levon” – I’ve been waiting for several of the pieces on Darcy James Argue’s latest record, Dynamic Maximum Tension, to be collected on a recording for a very long time. This one, written in the wake of The Band drummer Levon Helm’s passing, I saw him do almost ten years ago in the basement theater of subculture, and he introduced it by paying tribute to Helm’s deep, instantly recognizable pocket. The Secret Society pays tribute to that slippery waltz that shadow-painting sense of time, in one of a record packed with gems – until writing this, the Duke Ellington tribute “Tensile Curves” was my choice for the playlist periodically, it was the Buckminster Fuller-inspired piece – and I can’t wait to see this band again at Big Ears finally.
  • Henry Threadgill, “The Other One: Movement III, Section 13” – Henry Threadgill followed one of the all-time great music memoirs, Easily Slip Into Another World, with a stunning chamber music record, The Other One, from which this is drawn. Not playing horn, just conducting, Threadgill’s affinity for tension and mystery in dynamics shines through loud and clear and his facility for strings takes on dimensions I wasn’t expecting.
  • Kali Malone, “Does Spring Hide Its Joy v2.1” – One of the standout performances I saw at Big Ears last year, composer and organist Kali Malone convenes a trio with cellist Lucy Raiton and guitarist Stephen O’Malley for a long record of beguiling riffs on melodic cells glowing with long tones.
  • Ingrid Laubrock and Cecilia Lopez, “LUNA MAROMERA” – Ingrid Laubrock put out several good records this year but I kept coming back to this duo record with Cecilia Lopez on electronics, Maromas, a continued investigation of the duo format from one of my favorite saxophonists, that also beguiled me when Anne and I saw the duo in Brooklyn in the Spring. There’s grit here, the ragged breathy tones and the long pulses that decay unevenly, that add to the inherent mystery.
  • Thandi Ntuli and Carlos Niño, “Lihlanzekile” – Producer/percussionist Carlos Niño has gotten a lot of deserved heat this year, I saw him anchor a brilliant trio with Surya Botofasina and Nate Mercereau at Winter Jazzfest in January, and my favorite record of his was this gorgeous duo album with South African pianist Thandi Ntuli. This closing track, translating to “It is clean”, was a piece I returned to over and over, an undulating landscape that changes every time I try to perceive it.
  • Andre 3000, “BuyPoloDisorder’s Daughter Wears a 3000® Button Down Embroidered” – The record that put Niño’s name into the wider American consciousness and which I liked a lot; though, as I discussed with Andrew Patton, it fits more neatly into the ambient genre or even downtempo electronica than the “flute jazz” box some people who didn’t know that was a genre tried to put it in. This track features the trio I mentioned above, creating alongside Andre Benjamin, and is one of the two tracks to feature flute instead of what I think is an EWI. It’s beautiful.
  • Allison Miller, “Fierce” – One of my favorite composer-drummers, Allison Miller, outdid herself this year with a small group record co-sponsored by a series of art spaces with Lake Placid Center for the Arts in the lead, Rivers in Our Veins. As always, she assembled a remarkable group of musicians with a deep history with her and each other: Jenny Scheinman on violin, Jason Palmer on trumpets, Ben Goldberg on clarinets, Carmen Staaf on keys, and Todd Sickafoose on bass. The intertwining – I think – Rhodes and acoustic piano comping under Scheinman’s solo that seems to burble out of Goldberg’s is a highlight of this track, and there’s not a dull track on the album. The interplay is really as good as it gets.
  • Damon Locks and Rob Mazurek, “Yes!” – Trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Rob Mazurek has worked with composer/bandleader/polymath Damon Locks in a variety of settings, most notably Mazurek’s shifting Exploding Star Orchestra, but distilling their two languages down to a duo on New Future City Radio paid off big, both on this record and seeing them live at Big Ears.
  • MEM_MODS, “Midtown Miscommunication” – One of my sleeper favorites in the good-for-all-parties category, a deep Memphis groove project from Paul Taylor (Amy Lavere, New Memphis Colorways), Steve Selvidge (Big Ass Truck, Hold Steady, Lucero), and Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi Allstars).
  • James Brandon Lewis and the Red Lily Quintet, “Were You There” – Saxophonist James Brandon Lewis reconvenes my favorite of his bands, the Red Lily Quintet – Kirk Knuffke on cornet, William Parker on bass, Chad Taylor on Drums, Chris Hoffman on cello – for a tribute to his Grandmother by way of paying tribute to the pioneering gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. Every song on For Mahalia, With Love, is a winner, with deep soulful grooves and stretching out without sacrificing any bit of these timeless melodies. The colors of the instruments coming in on this one remind me of Beethoven’s 9th in the best way.
  • Chris Potter, “You Gotta Move” – Saxophonist Chris Potter has a special affinity for the Village Vanguard. His newest record, Got the Keys to the Kingdom, is another stunning example. Potter and his powerful quartet – Craig Taborn on piano, Scott Colley on bass, and Marcus Gilmore on drums – tear into and pay homage to fascinating repertoire throughout the record, but I kept coming back to this glorious cubist-gutbucket take on Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “You Gotta Move.”
  • Mendoza Hoff Revels, “Echolocation” – Also blues-inflected but with open arms for everything since, the collaboration between guitarist Ava Mendoza and bassist Devin Hoff, featuring James Brandon Lewis in a more coiled, snarling mode than I’m used to, and Ches Smith’s powerful drumming, is the best avant-rock ensemble I’ve heard in recent memory. The liner notes referencing Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time and later Black Flag ring true, but this doesn’t sound like anyone else.
  • Tyshawn Sorey, “Seleritus” – Drummer and composer Tyshawn Sorey digs into the corners of the songbook with his killing trio of Matt Brewer on drums and Aaron Diehl on piano on Continuing. This deep dive into an Ahmad Jamal piece captures the space and silence of Jamal’s kind of shorthand in the common parlance but also captures the heaviness he always brought to the bandstand. A majestic tribute that plays everything these three have learned about the source and brought to their own work through the original.
  • Love in Exile, “Eyes of the Endless” – This supergroup of Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, and Shahzad Ismaily exceeded every expectation I had going in as a big fan of all three players and writers. This piece has Iyer on Rhodes instead of the normal acoustic piano, and both the heavy strike and the ring of that instrument give the astonishing melody from Aftab a different, shimmering texture, like a cape being flung off and tossed into a bay.
  • Kurt Rosenwinkel and Geri Allen, “A Flower is a Lovesome Thing” – The gods of reissuing blessed us with a remarkable document of a duo concert in Paris in 2012 before Allen’s untimely passing. Two voices that shaped the jazz players my age and younger as much as anybody else explode this tune, one of my favorite Billy Strayhorn pieces, thoughtfully, out of love. Every note of this holds the next, waiting to be born, but not in a way that ever feels rote or obvious.
  • Aaron Diehl and the Knights, “Gemini” – Speaking of acts of love, it’s hard to compete with this one. The great Mary Lou Williams wrote her Zodiac Suite – which many jazzers play at least parts of to this day – as a through-composed chamber suite but it’s – I don’t think – ever been recorded as such. Masterful pianist Aaron Diehl restored the score and teamed up with NYC guardians of the contemporary canon, The Knights, for a beautifully recorded, definitive reading.
  • Roy Hargrove, “The Love Suite: In Mahogany – Obviously Destined” – Another gift from the reissue gods: a pristine recording of the 1993 Alice Tully Hall performance of trumpeter-composer Roy Hargrove’s piece The Love Suite: In Mahogany. This movement highlights both Hargrove’s sizzling horn playing and Marc Cary’s piano (that solo a couple of minutes in undulates with silky dynamism, but everyone – Jesse Davis, Ron Blake, and Andre Heyward comprise the rest of the horn section, Rodney Whitaker and Gregory Hutchinson keep things moving and held down as the remainder of the rhythm section – kills it here.
  • Yasmin Williams featuring Aoife O’Donovan, “Dawning” – Columbus was finally blessed with Yasmin Williams as the Wexner Center this year after several cancellations. The entire performance floored me, but I was especially intrigued by this new piece she introduced, revealing Aoife O’Donovan’s involvement. The studio recording delivers on all the promise that collaboration holds. Williams lets every note ring on its own, rolls feel like last year’s snow finally slipping down cliff sides, in a slow drag tempo perfectly suits O’Dovonan’s wordless vocals.
  • Chad Fowler/Zoh Amba/Ivo Perelman/Matthew Shipp/William Parker/Steve Hirsh, “Sentient Sentiment” – Chad Fowler, here on stritch and saxello, assembles a contemporary fire music supergroup and lets them loose in a frenzy of ecstatic, deeply thoughtful play on the five tracks of Alien Skin. The single show I was sorriest to miss in my town was Zoh Amba’s local debut featuring Chris Corsano, and I heard it was just as good as I’ve heard her in the past. Her lines exquisitely intertwine with Fowler’s and Perelman’s, particularly on this slow burn that blossoms into a line of explosions, as Parker, Shipp (both of whom appear elsewhere on this playlist), and Hirsh set up a baseline that shifts exactly as the music needs to.
  • Wolf Eyes, “Engaged Withdrawal” – I’ve been a fan of Wolf Eyes almost as long as I’ve been digging William Parker and Matthew Shipp, and their Dreams in Spattered Lines is another classic, with maturity as a blessing and not a crutch. This song creeps at a measured pace, Nate Young and John Olson leaving one another enough space and care, enough listening, to each make a proper impression on a record that has everything in its place and wastes no gesture, no moment.
  • David Lang/Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra/Sō Percussion, “man made” – The CSO (not that one, the other one), under their director Louis Langrée, teamed up with leading NYC contemporary troupe Sō Percussion for the first recording of David Lang’s stunning piece “man made.” Lang’s program note about the orchestra acting as translators and decoders, for the less traditional instrumentation and movement of the percussion quartet rings true, and that process – showing the strings – makes it all more magical rather than less.
  • Matthew Shipp, “The Bulldozer Poetics” – Shipp continues his growth into a clearer more approachable, even when the work itself gets thornier and more complex, like the world, piano style on the phenomenal solo album The Intrinsic Nature of Shipp. From the crush of those first notes, this driving piece sets up an entire world.
  • Curtis J. Stewart, “vii. Adagio from Johannes Brahms Sonata No. 1 Op. 78 (We Are Going to Be OK)” – Violinist/composer/arranger Curtis Stewart’s remarkable solo record of Love is one of those gargantuan acts of love I keep talking about and being drawn to. An expansive weaving together of pieces he’s been playing for years and knows well by composers who still speak to him, like Brahms and Ellington, and originals, played in tribute to his late Mother in her Upper West Side apartment. 
  • Kieran Hebden and William Tyler, “Darkness, Darkness” – This collaboration between Kieran Hebden, the electronic musician better known as Four Tet, and avant-Americana guitarist William Tyler, delighted me, particularly this take on the Youngbloods song “Darkness, Darkness.” It unfurls slowly, letting the listener glimpse it in pieces, coming into view like a slowly backing-up camera refocusing every few seconds and coalescing into a powerful groove.
  • Rob Moose featuring Phoebe Bridgers, “Wasted” – yMusic co-founder violinist Rob Moose teamed with a variety of singers on his dazzling Inflorescence EP. I kept coming back to this fragile, pulsing collaboration with Phoebe Bridgers. The strings are both stabbing and enveloping light here. “Standing in the parking lot, in the glow of a Rite-Aid sign, everyone I know is staying in tonight. I’ve been here before, just screaming at a cell phone. Seems like a couple of months went by, but it’s years ago.”
  • Gerald Cleaver, “Of the American Dream” – One of the finest jazz drummers, Gerald Cleaver, has been working up a second strain of electronica-based music that I think hit its most assured and together expression yet with 22/23.
  • JD Allen, “Mx. Fairweather” – JD Allen stepped into the ring with electronics on THIS without sacrificing any of that rich, rounded tone. His great trio – Alex Bonney on those electronics and effects, Gwilym Jones on drums – attack this ballad and the other gorgeous originals on the record with subtlety and laser focus.
  • Nubya Garcia, “Lean In” – This killer single from one of my favorite London sax players, Nubya Garcia, summons up some of the textures of the garage club music she grew up with for an infectious mix.
  • Sexmob, “Club Pythagorean” – Downtown New York institution Sexmob – Steven Bernstein, Briggan Krauss, Tony Scherr, Kenny Wollensen – brought longtime collaborator Scotty Hard (Prince Paul, Mike Ladd, Antibalas) into the fold as a full member on their electrifying The Hard Way. This track also features John Medeski on Mellotron for a powerful groove bursting with hooks.
  • Javier Nero, “Kemet (The Black Land)” – Trombonist-composer Javier Nero leads a large band – including guest Sean Jones on a crackling solo on this title track – paying tribute to the ancient African empire of Kemet. The wordless vocals and frenetic cymbal work from Kyle Swan set up gorgeous massed horns, and killer vibes work from Warren Wolf, and a sizzling solo from Nero.
  • Marquis Hill featuring Joel Ross, “Stretch (The Body)” – Trumpeter Marquis Hill approached the ways intention can give our lives meaning and thoughtless action/habits can decay us, in a way that made more musical sense than any other such attempt I can think of, with the riveting Rituals + Routines. This track features vibes player Joel Ross painting constellations around the tight quartet of Hill, Junius Paul, Micheal King, and Indie Buz.
  • Chris Abrahams, Oren Ambarchi, Robbie Aveniam, “Placelessness (Side B excerpt)” – Chris Abrahams (The Necks’ pianist) brought together this trio of avant-garde guitarist and electronics player Oren Ambarchi and drummer Robbie Aveniam for Placelessness, two extended tracks of throbbing minimalism. Those squiggles around the minute mark, creating an interference color between the circular piano figure and the stuttered drums, were my initial handhold into the world of this music, and they still excite me.
  • Greg Ward Presents Rogue Parade, “Noir Nouveau” – Chicago alto player Greg Ward brings together some of his town’s finest players under the Rogue Parade name – Matt Gold, Dave Miller, Matt Ulery, Quin Kirchner – for the delightful concept album Dion’s Quest. This cinematic piece builds slowly, like shadows creeping along a wall, and develops sharper edges and flashes of light.
  • Sara Serpa and Andre Matos, “Carlos” – The vocalist pushing the boundaries furthest in the jazz/improvisation world right now, Sara Serpa, found an exquisite foil in guitarist/bassist Andre Matos. They assembled a great band consisting of Dov Manski on keys, João Pereira on drums, Okkyung Lee on cello, and Sofia Jernberg on additional vocals for the astounding album Night Birds. This original builds up from cells, sharing some sound-world commonality with the last two tracks, and flies to another place entirely.
  • Lawrence English and Lea Bertucci, “A Fissure Exhales” – I’ve been a big fan of Lea Bertucci’s playing and soundscapes for years. This collaboration with field recordings and tape manipulation artist Lawrence English, a standout track for me from their record Chthonic summons a sense of glacial motion, like many of the instrumental records that drew me this year, brings an entire world into my view and keeps revealing new mysteries.
  • Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, “Shallow Water (Tribute Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr., Guardians of the Flame)” – The power of the statement in Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah leaving his – up to now – primary instrument, the trumpet, behind in favor of his self-created Chief Adjuah’s bow and vocals, paid off big in his remarkable Bark Out Thunder Roar Out Lighting, a mythopoetic tribute to all New Orleans has given us and everything it can still be. This tribute to the great Donald Harrison, Sr., features electrifying playing from Weedie Braimah on percussion, Luques Curtis on bass, and Marcus Gilmore on drums, among excellent guests.
  • Dan Wilson, “Bird Like” – Akron-based guitarist Dan Wilson grapples with his influences on the terrific Things Eternal, leading a great quartet of Glenn Zaleski on Rhodes, Brandon Rhodes on bass, and David Throckmorton on drums. The fluid lines and gleeful interplay make this Freddie Hubbard classic vibrantly, wrigglingly, alive.
  • Matana Roberts, “a caged dance” – Anything Matana Roberts does is worthwhile, and the fifth chapter in her Coin Coin series, delving into her family history and examining its context in American and specifically Black American history, In The Garden, might be the best installment yet. Produced with aplomb by Kyp Malone (TV on the Radio) and a large band of excellent musicians, including Mike Pride and Ryan Swift on drums, Stuart Bogie and Darius Jones on reeds, and Mazz Swift on violin, there’s not a weak track to be found. The stuttering, walking-the-line-between early 20th-century jazz and mid-century free jazz intro of this tune grabbed me immediately, and the rest of the track never let go.
  • Angel Bat Dawid, “INTROID – Joy ‘n’ Stuff’rin”  – When I interviewed Angel Bat Dawid years ago, she was working on the multimedia Requiem for Jazz project. While I’m still chomping at the bit to see it realized, the record was maybe the most ambitious and moving jazz and jazz-adjacent piece I’ve heard all year. Massed vocal writing and those interweaving horns on this tune… it doesn’t get better. I’m still unpacking this Requiem and will be for a while.
  • Ambrose Akinmusire featuring Bill Frisell and Herlin Riley, “Owl Song 1” – Trumpeter-composer Ambrose Akinmusire assembled a trio of guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Herlin Riley for the gorgeous Owl Song. This lead-off track is a tribute to all three players’ dedication to tone, space, and adventuring spirits.
  • Missy Mazzoli/Third Coast Percussion, “Millenium Canticles Pt 5, Survival Psalm” – The “Millenium Canticles” suite by Missy Mazzoli, one of my favorite composers and who makes one more appearance on this playlist, is the opening salvo to Third Coast Percussion’s dynamic Between Breaths and this final movement feels like you’ve just made your way to shore. A tribute to finding ways and reasons to live.
  • Beverly Glenn-Copeland, “Harbour (Song for Elizabeth)” – Beverly Glenn-Copeland’s first record in 20 years is a rapturous collection of art songs only he could write. The melody and lyrics of this song, in particular, wrecks me every time. “Don’t you know that you’re the deep, where water, earth, and fire meet? Don’t you know that when you sleep, life’s laughing, weeping?”
  • Mark Lomax II featuring Scott Woods, “Ho’oponopono” – One of the performances I was sorriest to miss in the fall of 2022 was the premiere of Columbus’s greatest composer Mark Lomax’s newest collaboration with poet Scott Woods, Black Odes. I’m still sorry I wasn’t in town to see it, but the record is a spectacular document of an opening into a new era for two of our finest artists. “What else do I need but this hem? / What else do I need to decolonize this kiss to make it a worthy offering?”
  • Missy Mazzoli/Arctic Philharmonic, “These Worlds In Us” – I’ve been a big fan of Missy Mazzoli’s writing since I heard her chamber ensemble Victoire on a blog, and a year or two later saw them in Chicago’s Millennium Park. Her work has grown more expansive, covering a multiplicity of forms, and finally, there was a collection under her name with a variety of uncollected orchestra pieces, Dark With Excessive Bright. This one, new to me, was an immediate favorite and falls into my usual tone: a prayerful/hope-for-the-world piece I like to end these playlists on. Thank you all for reading/listening. I love you.
Categories
Playlist record reviews

Playlist – March 2023

Crawling back from a crazy couple of months of frenzied activity and trying to find a little more of a balance. Have a couple of plans to get next month’s out earlier; we’ll see how successful I am. The month off did remind me how much I enjoy doing these, not only compiling the songs but finding something to say about them, and made me recommit to doing it every month.

https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/d5351ad0-81d4-4716-89d1-74feacef26d6

  • Willie Nelson, “Excuse Me (I Think I’ve Got a Heartache)” – Willie Nelson’s record-length dives into the catalog of specific songwriters are among my favorite items in his wide-ranging oeuvre – I still play his songs of Cindy Walker more than any other record he’s put out in the 20+ years since – and I Don’t Know a Thing About Love, his look at the songs of the great Harlan Howard, is another winner. I grew up with the original Buck Owens version of this but I had fewer loving associations than most of the songs Nelson does here, this one didn’t live in my blood the same way as “Busted” or “Life Turned Her That Way” do, and it let me sink into this arrangement, trading in sly barstool wisdom for the punchy churn of Owens and his Buckaroos, like getting into a bubble bath, especially the interweaving of Mike Johnson’s steel and Jim “Moose” Brown’s keys.
  • Les Mamans du Congo & Rrobin, “Dia” – Mama Glad (Gladys Samba), Bantu singer/songwriter/rapper teams up again with beatmaker and label owner Rrobin for an infectious song that swirls like light as the the golden hour starts to fade. The call and response dancing over minimal keyboard bass and arrangements that are exactly the right kind of busy keep me coming back to this over and over.
  • Kali Uchis, “Happy Now” – Kali Uchis’ Red Moon in Venus is my favorite R&B record so far this year, a kaleidoscope of moods, featuring songwriting that alternately dazzles me with its intricate, beautiful structures, and slaps me in the face at the right time. This final track, co-written with and produced by Sounwave, DJ Khalil, and Mndsgn, was an early contender for favorite song and while that feeling shifts almost daily – the sign of a record I love – it’s still high in the running. “Cosmic conditions conspired against us. ‘Cause you and me, we got chemistry, but what’s with our timing? Guess it’s better we never rushed; our spark turned to flames.”
  • Ari Joshua, “Fresh” – Guitarist Ari Joshua convenes a fantastic Pacific Northwester soul-jazz/funk collective for this killing single, with Skerik (everybody from Mark Eitzel to Bobby Previte to Charlie Hunter to Wayne Horvitz) on tenor and 2/3 of the Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio, Lamarr on organ and Grant Schroff (Polyrhythmics). Not an ounce of fat here but all indications point to them taking it into outer space when they do it live.
  • Daddy Long Legs, “Silver Satin” – I loved Daddy Long Legs from those first couple of singles – and I was already pre-disposed since I’d been a big fan of drummer Josh Styles’ DJ sets so knew how good his taste in grooves was – and they cemented that love the first time I saw them open for and back cracked-perspective R&B great T. Valentine at the (RIP) Lakeside Lounge. The last time I saw them, at Rumba right before the pandemic, they had turned up the ’60s Stones/Northern Soul colors in their palette, and that technicolor finger-snapping gets more vibrant and greasy on their front-to-back great Street Sermons. “At the bottom of a bottle of Jack o’ Diamonds, I lost my head and woke up in Coney Island.”
  • Gina Birch, “I Play My Bass Loud” – The solo debut of Raincoats bassist Gina Birch was everything I wanted it to be, and this title track exemplifies everything I love about it. An oozing rhythm with a bass line I couldn’t shake if I wanted to and a vocal bulging with elastic declamations. “Turn up the volume. I raise my window high. I paint the sky red: it’s getting darker, it’s getting deeper. Red streaks across the sky. Are you ready for this?”
  • Gee Tee, “Cell Damage” – Goner Records (and their live arm, Gonerfest) has always had a particularly good line on great new rock music from Australiza and New Zealand, and this NZ band followed a stunning Gonerfest set last year with one of my favorite noisy garage-punk records in a long time, Goodnight, Neanderthal. This under-two-minutes blast is representative of a record I don’t skip anything on, with vocals drowning in heat mirage lines, washes of fuzzed-out guitar and riding a wave of acid trip synth, steering around the cymbals.
  • Tee Vee Repairman, “Drownin'” – Ishka Edmeades, Gee Tee member, steps out on his own with the soulful freakouts of stellar full-lenght What’s On TV?. Wearing his Devo influence on his sleeve, this struck me as a heartache-drenched sweet spot between Gentleman Jesse’s powerpop and Hunx and his Punx doo-wop stomps. “I’ve been waiting at the station, just don’t know what to do. I was drowning in you.”
  • Yaeji, “Done (Let’s Get It)” – Brooklyn-based Yaeji’s With a Hammer is the first example in years of the kind of warm dance music I was so drawn to – but rarely admitted, openly embracing the harder-edged drum and bass and jungle – in my early 20s. Influenced by classic house, riding on waves of squelching bass and drums full of a writhing-on-the-floor clack but with subtly R&B-flavored vocals in both English and Korean.
  • OkoNski, “Song For My Sister’s Son” – Steve Okonski, who started as a classically trained pianist then became known to the wider world through his affiliation with soul acts Durand Jones and the Indications and Aaron Frazer, stepped into his own with a gorgeous piano trio album (featuring Frazer on drums and Michael Isvara “Ish” Montgomery on bass) that feels to me like it occupies a similar warm, hazy sunrise sonic space as the Yaeji that immediately preceded it.
  • Ingrid Laubrock, “Delusions” – A little more abrasive than the tracks but with a similar internal landscape writ large intensity. One of my favorite saxophone players, Ingrid Laubrock assembles a stunning sextet on her new record The Last Quiet Place of partner Tom Rainey on drums, Michael Formanek on bass, Brandon Seabrook on guitar, Tomeka Reid on cello, and Mazz Swift on violin.
  • Liv.e, “RESET!” – Dallas’s Liv.e plays with moods in a similar way – to my ears – as the previous couple of tracks, digging into R&B history as much as it feels like she’s excavating her own past, her own history of victories and trauma. “Chop my head off, I wanna roll my eyes back. Don’t wanna see what time sent. Don’t wanna know what’s coming next.”
  • Chlöe, “Make it Look Easy” – Chlöe, best known as part of Chloe x Halle, delivered a remarkable, stripped-down record with In Pieces, and while it’s still revealing itself to me, this is an early front runner for my favorite song from the album. From the opening invocation “No matter how many times I break, I pull myself together. Every damn time,” I’m enraptured, and the slow-drag groove with samples around the fingersnaps that feel like dancing ghosts being beckoned, never disappoints me.
  • 6LACK, “Inwood HIll Park” – I got turned onto 6LACK from old friend and co-worker Cassie Schutt and I was immediately a sucker for his laid back, almost deceptively not-giving-a-fuck conversation cadence and low rumble. Since I Have a Lover is another peak, another refinement, a polishing of exactly what he does so well, the space he’s carved out in contemporary hip-hop. “Can’t you see that I’ve been hostile for weeks? Don’t you know you change the patterns of my sleep?”
  • Superviolet, “Overrater” – I was a big fan of Columbus band Sidekicks, one of my favorite pop-punk bands finding new textures and voices in a genre I’d long since lost interest in. But it was a pleasant surprise to hear leader Steven Ciolek emerge with this project, sun-dappled bursting-at-the-seams folk rock produced by Saintseneca’s Zac Little. The similar sense of “Man, I’m just telling you a story ,” and the subtle but right arrangement felt like it created a commonality with the earlier two songs on the playlist. “Well, in a van in headphones is the last way I want to die; just because we’re losers doesn’t mean that we won’t try. So call up Felicia, call up Matt, tell them to craft the plan: surprise release the sixth album as the greatest rock and roll band.
  • boygenius, “Not Strong Enough” – I like the work of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker, a great deal individually but the boygenius collaboration took until this full length, The Record, to hit me as strongly. The guitar stabs and swirling harmonies in this record send me into space and back into myself at the same time, balancing the intimate and high drama with assured hands. “The way I am not strong enough to be your man – I lied, I am just lowering your expectations.”
  • Kendrick Scott, “A Voice Through the Door” – Drummer-composer Kendrick Scott strips down the approach of his last couple of records to a tight trio with saxophonist Walter Smith III and bassist Reuben Rogers for Corridors. This mesmerizing track opens with a solo smith improvisation before a wash of cymbals announces the rest of the trio. One of the great mood pieces being written today, played by musicians with a careful and rare empathy.
  • Meshell Ndegeocello featuring Brandee Younger and Julius Rodriguez, “Virgo” – I’d been a fan of singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello since first hearing her work as a kid, but a breathtaking set at Manhattan’s Blue Note with a stacked cast of collaborators including Tortoise’s Jeff Parker and Rodriguez who also features on this track, brought that love back to the forefront of my brain. This first taste of The Omnichord Real Book has me hungry for more, with a cut-by-a-razor funk drum pattern and guitar riff dancing between the deep groove of moog bass and the exquisite tinsel-rain of Brandee Younger’s harp. “I’m ascending faster than the speed of light to sweet nothingness.”
  • Connections, “Bird Has Flown” – Columbus’s supergroup of rock-and-roll lifers Connections came out of a few years of uncertainty with their strongest album yet, Cool Change, and this is among my favorite tracks from it, with an anthemic shouting call-and-response vocal and soaring guitar and keyboard solos over the kind of choppy groove they do better than any Columbus rock band in years – maybe since leader Andy Hempel and guitarist Kevin Elliott’s last band, 84 Nash.
  • The New Pornographers, “Pontius Pilate’s Home Movies” – Canadian collective New Pornographers return with a rock-solid collection of their cracked songs and infectious melodies. AC Newman and Neko Case’s sly back and forth on this lovely admonition and the pulse of the band remind me exactly what I always loved about this band. “Now you’re clearing the room, like Pontius Pilate, when he showed all his home movies. All his friends yelling, ‘Pilate, too soon!'”
  • The Necks, “Imprinting” – Australian piano trio The Necks have never made a bad album. Every time they come together, they dig deeper into their shared language, into the space they’ve carved at the intersection of post-minimalism chamber music and contemporary improvisation, and this is another winner.
  • Missy Mazzoli, “Dark With Excessive Bright” – I’ve been a fan of Missy Mazzoli’s compositions since first hearing her ensemble Victoire, through a series of great new chamber records from people like Nadia Sirota, yMusic, Now Ensemble, where she almost always penned my favorite tracks, on through an excellent series of operas where she drags that form into the 21st century by the scruff of its neck. This new record of which this is the title track, is an ideal introduction to her work and this concerto for violin and string orchestra featuring soloist Peter Herresthal might be my favorite piece of hers yet.
  • Josephine Foster, “Haunted House” – A new Josephine Foster record is always a cause for celebration in my corner of the world and her new coiled, mysterious Domestic Sphere is everything I could have hoped, with this devastating seismic read on the heartbeat of a character and the world, as one of many chilling salvos. “I am a haunted house. There is no light in me. Your candle is gone out; my windows, they are empty. There is nothing on earth that isn’t poison to me.”
  • Dave Douglas and Elan Mehler, “We Saw You Off” – Trumpeter Dave Douglas’s ranging curiosity, lit by a love for the world, is a perpetual inspiration to me. This collaboration with pianist Elan Mehler sets haiku to new musical settings, sung by Dominique Eade. This setting of a Saigyō piece grabbed me early and hasn’t let go since. “We saw you off / And returning through the fields / I thought morning dew / Had wet my sleeves / But it was tears.”
  • Mark Lomax II featuring Scott Woods, “Ho’oponopono” – I’ve raved about Lomax often enough I don’t think it’s a secret I think he’s Columbus’s finest composer. His collaboration with poet Scott Woods, Black Odes, was the single event I was sorriest to miss last year (I was out of town and sure I saw something great) and this first taste of the recording reminds me exactly why. It’s a return to black love – the first subject I saw Woods tackle more than 20 years ago, he even used to have a poem called “Why Do You Always Talk About Black Love,” I think – but with all the skills of the last 20 years of life, on both of their parts, with delicate and surging arrangements and Lomax’s quintessential taste for harmony given a remarkable showcase. “And so I love you / And so I am sorry / And so I beg forgiveness”
  • Lucero, “Should’ve Learned By Now” – Lucero – who I think I originally heard within a year or two of first seeing Scott Woods read and hearing Lomax play with his group Blacklist – also find ways to apply all the life singer-songwriter Ben Nichols has had in decades leading the band as he and the band learn to relax a little more and open up the arrangements to find new colors to paint these feelings. This sinewy title track off their latest album finds them in fine form, the kind of raging, muscular melancholy they do as well as any band working and better than most – that piano line snaps my heart in two every time. “Well, half of what runs through my head is bullshit I sell to myself. And the other half ain’t well thought out; I really should’ve learned by now.”
  • Kelela, “Missed Call” – The textures are different but this standout track from DC-based Kelela’s terrific album Raven struck a similar chord in me of resiliency and self-admonition, with a neon-splashed groove. “I’m in a dream. I wake up until the moment that we make up.”
  • Gama Bomb, “If I Should Fall From Grace With God” – This metal (check that double-time drumming and the lacerating guitar solo) read on one of my favorite Pogues anthems to rising above and stumbling in the muck on a perpetual cycle, made me grin like an idiot. “Bury me at sea where no murdered ghost can haunt me if I rock upon the waves, and no corpse can lie upon me.”
  • Burna Boy featuring J Balvin, “Rollercoaster” – A more easy-going groove animates this collaboration between these superstars, Nigerian Burna Boy and Colombian Latin trap/reggaeton king J Balvin, and their voices blend together beautifully. If songs of the summer are still a thing, this is high on my list of contenders. “I no wanna wait till it’s all over – this life is a gift from Most High, Jah.”
  • Huntertones, “Biff” – Beloved Columbus expatriates now doing big things in New York and elsewhere, Huntertones use their nearly unquenchable thirst to take the world in and reflect it back with a heavy taste for a variety of rhythms but also a brilliantly strong taste for melody. This delirious pop-funk carnival ride makes exceptional use of the front line of Dan White on tenor, Jon Lampley on trumpet, and Chris Ott on trombone, while leaving space for their longtime rhythm section of guitarist Josh Hill, bassist Adam DeAscentis, and drummer John Hubbell to breathe. That repeated riff has been stuck in my head since I first heard it.
  • MEM_MODS, “Midtown Miscommunication” – This killing instrumental funk-rock project from Steve Selvidge (Hold Steady, Big Ass Truck), Luther Dickinson (North Mississippi All Stars, Black Crowes), and Paul Taylor (New Memphis Colorways, Amy LaVere) more than lived up to my high expectations, with the added seasoning of Marc Franklin’s horn arrangements, played by Franklin and Art Edmaison.
  • DJ Quik, “Class” – In what I realize is an unintentional theme of this month’s playlist, producer-rapper DJ Quik continues to dig into his language. His signature, the smoothed out, warm funk he’s been doing brilliantly for at least 30 years, still sounds like a summer night in the offing. “Sometimes rhyme, then I sing.”
  • Dydy Yeman, “S’envolvement” – I couldn’t find much about this Ivorian Afrobeats artists but this song captured me immediately. The intermingling textures of voices and the scratchy beat put me in a space I wanted to come back to again and again.
  • Tsa manyalo, “Petula patjana” – I got turned onto the South African genre  of Tsa manyalo this year – maybe through ILX? Maybe a blog? I should keep better notes – and this version of this Solly Selema song is like capturing sunlight in a bottle.
  • Lucinda Chua, “You” – London-based cellist-singer Lucinda Chua blew my mind with her full-length debut YIAN. This is an excellent example of the way she builds an entire world for her listeners, the inside of a heart recast as a house of mirrors, and the way the sentences she builds in the lyrics resist resolution, hanging in a state of hazy suspension I found intoxicating. “I want you to know that all of your kindness is all of your kindness.”
  • James & The Giants, “Hall of Mirrors” – One of my favorite American songwriters of the last 20 years, James Toth (I treasure every time I’ve gotten to see his Wooden Wand project) brings a more lush take, in tandem with long-time collaborator Jarvis Taveniere, to this new James & the Giants project. The emphasized hooks and glowing arrangement amplifies the mystery in these songs at the same time they bolster their accessibility. Maybe my favorite song so far this year. “We won’t let the tide or starlight rule us. We’ll toast the dark for the way it cools us. ‘Cause the night is a hall of mirrors.”
  • Rudy Royston, “Morning” – I resisted the easy pairing of morning with night of this track and the one immediately before it, but the similar palette of colors in this perfect drummer-composer Rudy Royston track, glowing with a similar promise of light and life as the Toth right before, and with a marvelous band of John Ellis on bass clarinet, Hank Roberts on cello, Gary Versace on accordion, and Joe Martin on bass, kept calling to me. It’s a marvelous, catchy, piece and it just felt right here.
  • Caroline Rose, “Stockholm Syndrome” – This early highlight of Caroline Rose’s new The Art of Forgetting is an abject lesson in restraint, in paring down, and a reminder of how much menace and heartbreak can live in less than two minutes. “I know that you need air, but I can’t let you out.”
  • Muscadine Bloodline, “Life Itself” – This new-ish country duo lean into one of my favorite radio-ready singles to come out of the genre in quite a while. Burnished sunlight power and an easy, open-hearted appeal with a hook I can’t get enough of. “Can’t think of anyone else. Can’t get you out of my mind.”
  • Cecile McLorin Salvant, “Le temps est assassin” – With Mélusine, our finest jazz singer of her generation continues to resist resting on the supple power of her voice and on what she’s done before. She digs into the French and Haitian heritage of her parents with dazzling results, there isn’t a bad track on this record, even for someone like me whose understanding of French is schoolboy at best.
  • Nakhane, “You’ve Got Me (Living Again)” – A powerful, surging statement of purpose, a rising-up beautifully echoed by the melody, especially that keyboard line, and the lyrics, from this South African singer. “I’ve tried to change for you.”
  • Wadada Leo Smith and the Orange Wave Ensemble, “Nzotake Shange” – Keeping with my usual stylistic marker of ending with something meditative, something like a prayer, this tribute to the poet and playwright Nzotake Shange from one of my favorite composers and trumpet players Wadada Leo Smith, takes on a serpentine groove with a band of astonishing players – guitarists Nels Cline, Lamar Smith, and Brandon Ross, bassists Melvin Gibbss and Bill Laswell, drummer Pheeroan akLaff, percussionist Mauro Refosco, and electronics artist Hardedge – an opening salvo and highlight of Fire Illuminations.
Categories
dance live music theatre

Things I’ve Been Digging – August 24, 2020

Selection of Screenshots from the August Bang on a Can Marathon

Music: Bang on a Can Marathon

Bang on a Can’s founding composers (Julia Wolfe, David Lang, Michael Gordon) have put on a marathon of new work since the mid ‘80s and the current climate changed the marathon’s form but didn’t diminish any of its vital joy, intensity or defiance.

This, the third version I think, was as full of magic as anything I’ve been lucky enough to see since we’ve been shut inside. Highlights included Olivia de Prato’s dark and holy read of Missy Mazzoli’s Vespers for Violin, singer-cellist Layla McCalla’s songs inspired by Langston Hughes, Ken Thompson’s fiery world premiere of Nicole Mitchell’s A Much-Deserved Ass Whooping, and Jodie Landau’s beguiling version of Jacob Cooper’s Expiation.

Patterson Hood, screenshot of livestream

Music: Patterson Hood

I think I first heard of the Drive-By Truckers when I was in college through the one-two punch of No Depression magazine and niche CD site Miles of Music (also where I got my first Marah records), around the time of Pizza Deliverance. I first saw them around 2000-2001 when I was down for an Anime Weekend Atlanta and it stands as one of the most electrifying live shows I’ve ever seen – for years I don’t think I missed them any time they were even close to me.

My fandom for DBT has ebbed and flowed, but they won me back big in the last two records. Patterson Hood (and partner/only other constant member Mike Cooley) has not only built one of the most consistent catalogs of songs, but he’s lit an example of how to grow up in rock-and-roll. He’s stayed true to his impulses and interests, but he left room for them to expand. He’s grown into his curiosity and let his empathy grow instead of shrink. His home-recorded livestreams during this pandemic have been a balm, like hearing from an old friend reporting back.

That said, it might make me an enormous hypocrite that my favorite of these streams so far and the one that nudged me to add it here was his delve back into “The Heathen Songs.” As he and Cooley were gestating their breakthrough Southern Rock Opera, they also wrote a flood of songs for what ended up being the next two records, Decoration Day, The Dirty South, and Hood’s first widely distributed solo disc Killers and Stars.

That was my favorite period of the band, when they shrugged off some thought-it-was-a-joke-song classic college rock feint of the first two and opened up the aperture of their view of the south, and only indulged the big guitar jamming sporadically, with songs that ripped my heart out at the same time I was partying with my friends on the dancefloor.

This trip back down memory lane had a clear eye for what those songs meant to him at the time – particularly on his “divorce trilogy”: “Hell No I Ain’t Happy,” “(Something’s Got to) Give Pretty Soon,” and “Your Daddy Hates Me” – and what the songs mean now. That delicate balance between catharsis and wryness gained new, slippery facets on the driving-hot-nails elegy of “Do It Yourself,” “And some might say I should cut you slack, but you worked so hard at unhappiness. Living too hard just couldn’t kill you, so in the end you had to do it yourself.”

The long – almost two hour – set hit his winking nods on “George Jones Talkin’ Cell Phone Blues” and “Uncle Disney” and a hilarious shaggy dog story wrapped around a talking blues about an early tour involving one of the Columbus’s greatest bands and my dear friends (and, clearly, Hood’s) The Lilybandits.

Hood also put in a plug for Lilybandits singer Todd May’s current gig with Lydia Loveless and spoke with love about Wes and Jyl Freed, the recently deceased Carl Dufresne and Todd Nance, and other friends – famous and not. That love littered the set like the confetti from the war we all should be lucky enough to fight and luckier to survive.

Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, from the artist’s official website

Dance/Theater: Chameleon: A Biomythography by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko

Kosoko was in Columbus in late 2018, touring his hypnotic epic of intimacy, Séancers, at the Wexner Center. While in Columbus, he took advantage of a Wex residency grant to help develop his new piece Chameleon. When I interviewed Kosoko for a preview of Séancers, we talked at length about Audre Lorde, a mutual inspiration of ours.

That inspiration flowers in Chameleon, subtitled a biomythography in a nod to Lorde’s Zami and delving into his ancestors, the pain and joy of his background and the vital chimerical work of making art and surviving as a queer, black man in the toxic nature of America. The power of memory, but also the vital, tragic tonic of forgetting.

Talking about his uncle, Kosoko reflects, “Once he told me, ‘The past will always leave a footprint,’…After his funeral, no one wanted to go inside; it was much easier to pretend he never happened. Although I had been the one to feed him, to clean him, to brush his hair, I was afraid. Not so much for him as I was for myself: for how fast my concerns shifted from keeping him alive to removing every infected memory of his existence. What scared me – and still does – is how successful I was. No one speaks his name: his voice, his laughter, are all questions; a black-bodied amnesia taken back by the ethers. Was he ever really here? On this earth? In that stank room? In that stank, angelic body? Was he ever here teaching me something about love?”

But the work isn’t just its lacerating words, it’s a melting, roiling collection of indelible images cracking the world open. And alongside that, Kosoko fully engaged interactivity, the internet and the moment, taking the snatched-away opportunities for this to premiere at Princeton and Tanz with a combination of Vimeo and Discord, context and community and dialogue. A masterpiece that left me looking for my throat and heart on the floor of this second-story room.