Tom Hull - On the Web

Music Week/Jazz Prospecting

Music: Current count 21547 [21522] rated (+25), 628 [628] unrated (-0).

Midweek I checked and verified that I hadn't rated much. Better than average records this week, and that takes more than average time. The only one of the high B+'s that didn't take at least three plays was Davidson, and that was a double. The two that wound up A- took five plays each: the former before I satisfied myself that I hadn't become too automatic on Ellery Eskelin; the latter wondering whether I'm too sentimental about that '70s loft scene. Maybe I am a tough grader -- as one artist letter charged -- after all. The two piano-bass-drums records (Agnel, Van Hove) have some of the week's best moments, but I held them back for the less striking spots.

Sophie Agnel/John Edwards/Steve Noble: Meteo (2012 [2013], Clean Feed): Pianist, b. 1964 in Paris; tenth album since 2000, a trio with Edwards on bass and Noble on drums. Free, the piano often lurking as bass and drums set up a forest of uncertainty, but very impressive when it all comes crashing together. B+(***)

Lynn Baker Quartet: LectroCoustic (2012 [2013], OA2): Tenor/soprano saxophonist, teaches at Lamont School of Music (University of Denver), second album, with Eric Gunnison (keybs), Eduardo "Bijoux" Barbosa (bass), and Paul Mullikin (drums) -- as the title suggests, the keyb/bass players switch between electric and acoustic modes. Neither do much more than to set up a r&b/soul jazz vibe which validates Baker's honking instincts, although he also enjoys Coltrane-ish riffing. B+(*)

Roger Davidson: Journey to Rio (2011 [2013], Soundbrush, 2CD): Pianist, American but b. 1952 in Paris, France; has 18 albums since 2000, mostly Brazilian themed although a couple take on other Latin idioms. This was recorded in Rio de Janeiro on his first visit to the country, with Pablo Aslan producing and a raft of Brazilian studio musicians. Marceo Martins offers a few fine sax solos and a lot of flute, which flutters delicately over the piano rhythm -- which no matter the accompaniment is central. B+(***)

Jon Davis: One Up Front (2012 [2013], Posi-Tone): Pianist, based in San Francisco in the 1980s and in New York since; website lists 48 albums he's played on since 1985 but none under his own name; AMG lists a previous solo album. Trio with Joris Teepe on bass and Shinnosuke Takahashi on drums. Four originals, one by Teepe, covers from Berlin and Porter, Silver and Mingus, all done with aplomb. B+(**)

Harris Eisenstadt September Trio: The Destructive Element (2012 [2013], Clean Feed): Drummer, b. 1975 in Toronto, father was also a drummer; has been prolific since 2002 -- AMG lists 14 records, one (looks like) a dupe, but hasn't logged this one yet. One of the best of those was his 2011 September Trio with Ellery Eskelin on tenor sax and Angelica Sanchez on piano. Same group here: Eskelin is superb at stepping around the rhythms, while the pianist burns right through them, adding more along the way. A-

Ellery Eskelin/Susan Alcorn/Michael Formanek: Mirage (2011 [2013], Clean Feed): Tenor sax, pedal steel guitar, bass. Main mystery here is Alcorn, who has an album with Dr. Eugene Chadbourne titled An Afternoon in Austin, or Country Music for Harmolodic Souls (Boxholder; I haven't heard it). She's hard to follow here, merging into the bass and rarely coming out. Eskelin responds with ballad volume, but with no one offering him a groove he has to tiptoe around the uncertainty. B+(**)

Lama + Chris Speed: Lamaçal (2012 [2013], Clean Feed): Live at Portalegre Jazz Fest, they say "10^o edition" but mean 2012. Speed, who should need no intro, plays tenor sax and clarinet. Lama is a trumpet trio led by Susana Santos Silva, with Gonçalo Almeida on bass and Greg Smith on drums, both also dabbling in electronics, and this is their second album. A little slow on the start, but when the horns get working they bounce off one another splendidly. B+(***)

Made to Break: Provoke (2011 [2013], Clean Feed): Ken Vandermark group, with V5 drummer Tim Daisy, Devin Hoff on electric bass, and Christof Lurzmann on "lloopp" -- a free software package for live-improvising on a computer. Three longish (19, 20, 24 minutes) Vandermark pieces, dedications to John Cage, Buckminster Fuller, and Marshall McLuhan. The electronics have some difficulty gaining traction, and never amount to more than background, so this reduces to Vandermark's performance: a little screechy on clarinet, but a powerhouse on tenor sax. Group also has a new LP (vinyl only) called Lacerba, which I didn't get. B+(***)

Melodic Art-Tet (1974 [2013], No Business): Quartet, originally formed in 1970 by saxophonist Charles Brackeen and three members of Sun Ra's entourage: Ahmed Abdullah (trumpet), Ronnie Boykins (bass), and Roger Blank (drums). They played in lofts, never released an album, but cut this at WKCR in 1974, with a very young William Parker taking over the bass slot, and Tony Waters on percussion. Four pieces (17, 20, 30, 12 minutes), free with funk overtones, the reeds -- flute and soprano as well as tenor sax -- not as clear as you'd like, but Abdullah turns into a force of nature, and the second half is so ship-shape you could sail to Saturn. A-

Zoot Sims: Compatability (1955 [2013], Delmark): Octet session with Hall Daniels (trumpet), Dick Nash (trombone), Zoot Sims (tenor sax), Bob Gordon (baritone sax), Tony Rizzi (guitar), Paul Atkerson (piano), Rolly Bundock (bass), and Jack Sperling (drums). Sims is by far the best known here, but was just getting noticed in 1955, and the original 4-track 10-inch LP (tracks 1-4 here) was released as Hal Daniels Septet. In 1977, the same four songs (different takes, but the times are real close) were issued as Zoot Sims/Dick Nash-Ville Octet (tracks 5-10, "Nash-Ville" twice). Ends with three "previously unissued" tracks: studio chatter, the title track (a third time) and "Nash-Ville" (a fourth). B+(*)

Trespass Trio + Joe McPhee: Human Encore (2012 [2013], Clean Feed): Trespass Trio is Martin Küchen (alto/baritone sax), Per Zanussi (bass), and Raymond Strid (drums). They're one of several groups I file under Küchen, their two previous albums less successful than the larger Angles. McPhee, a double threat on tenor sax and pocket trumpet -- split here is 5 cuts to 4 -- plays with everyone, often blowing them away. He doesn't do that here, perhaps because Küchen doesn't challenge him; they just negotiate odd angles, as they are wont to do. B+(**)

Els Vandeweyer/Fred Van Hove/Paul Lovens/Martin Blume: Quat: Live at Hasselt (2011 [2013], No Business): Cover lists last names only, and label lists this record as by Quat Quartet, although only "QUAT" ever appears on the package. I added the first names to avoid duplicating the last names here. Credits, respectively, are: vibes, piano, percussion, and percussion. I'd say that makes this the pianist's album, even though the four pieces are joint improvs. Van Hove is an important avant-pianist, his first record dating from 1969 (Requiem for Che Guevara/Psalmus Spei), thirty-some since. Lovens, 12 years younger, has had a comparable career, just shorter (since 1975). Blume is a few years younger, and on a lot fewer albums, and this appears to be the first for Vandemeyer. So much percussion creates a prickly chaotic storm, a whorl of noise that the piano trumps -- most impressive when it's all clashing, less so when Van Hove lays out, or picks up his accordion. B+(***)

Jon Wirtz: Tourist (2013, self-released): Pianist (organ, keyboards), based in Denver, second album. Mixed bag here, some trio, some extra guitar (pedal steel in one case), a spoken word thing, the closer piano with an impassioned trumpet lead (Gabriel Mervine); more semi-pop than post-bop but not necessarily. B

Zs: Grain (2013, Northern Spy): Avant-noise group, originally a trio with saxophonist Sam Hillmer, after a handful of releases (including a 4-CD box as a sextet), now a trio again, with Patrick Higgins (guitar) and Greg Fox (percussion) -- pulled those credits off the website, since the album doesn't say really much of anything. Actually, nearly all of this sounds electronic, and the two parts sound like dozens of pieces -- lots of interesting effects that don't get stuck long enough to become annoying, but that don't quite flow either. B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week (and today):

Brian Andres and the Afro-Cuban Jazz Cartel: San Francisco (Bacalao): July 16
Ron Boustead: Mosaic (self-released): September 3
Dan DeChellis Trio: Strength and Anger (self-released)
Paquito D'Rivera and Trio Corrente: Song for Maura (Sunnyside): July 30
Alan Ferber: March Sublime (Sunnyside): July 30
Bill Frisell: Big Sur (Okeh)
Guillermo Gregorio/Pandelis Karayorgis/Steve Swell Trio: Window and Doorway (Driff)
Pandelis Karayorgis Quintet: Circuitous (Driff)
Pandelis Karayorgis Trio: Cocoon (Driff)
Christian McBride Trio: Out Here (Mack Avenue): advance, July 22
Chip Stephens Trio: Relevancy (Capri)
Brahja Waldman's Quartet: Cosmic Brahjas (self-released, 2CD)
The Whammies: Play the Music of Steve Lacy Vol. 2 (Driff)
Mike Wofford: It's Personal (Capri)

Weekend Roundup

Big event this week was the election of Hassan Rouhani as president of Iran, succeeding scarecrow Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The arrival of an Axis of Evil leader who apparently isn't evil -- who in fact had attempted to reason with the West before -- threw the hawks in Jerusalem and Washington into a tizzy. First they assured us that the president of Iran has no actual power, so the change of president will leave Iran as evil as ever. And just before the election, Obama suddenly changed course and decided to actively arm Syria's anti-Assad "rebels," a move which (not for the first time) brought us into an alliance with Al-Qaeda. Reason? Because Iran backed Assad, and Iran is out eternal enemy, and we all know that the enemy of our enemy is, well not exactly our friend, but the cheapest, most cost-effective pawn we can rent in the Great Game. (Sure, there was some fluff about Assad using chemical weapons, but what press release escalating a war in the Middle East would be complete without something on WMD?)

Meanwhile, some scattered links:

Ramzy Mardini: Bad Idea, Mr. President: A few days before Obama made his Syria announcement, Bill Clinton lectured him publicly, warning that if he fails to intervene in Syria he will be viewed as a "total wuss." I suppose Clinton knows this because he used to be a "wuss" himself, but he reversed himself and bombed Kosovo and thereby came to be recognized as a decisive leader comparable to Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. I'd love to see some polling reflecting that, but Obama took the bait.

Lacking a grand strategy, Mr. Obama has become a victim of rhetorical entrapment over the course of the Arab Spring -- from calling on foreign leaders to leave (with no plan to forcibly remove them) to publicly drawing red lines on the use of chemical weapons, and then being obliged to fulfill the threat.

For nearly two years, the Obama administration has described the Syrian regime as having "lost all legitimacy" and "clinging to power." And yet, it has surprisingly endured. That's because neither assertion is really accurate. Mr. Assad still has strong support from many Syrians, including members of the Sunni urban class. While the assistance Syria receives from its external allies, like Iran and Russia, is important, it would be inconsequential if the Assad regime were not backed by a significant portion of the population. [ . . . ]

The Syrian revolution isn't democratic or secular; the more than 90,000 fatalities are the result of a civil war, not a genocide -- and human rights violations have been committed on both sides.

Moreover, the rebels don't have the support or trust of a clear majority of the population, and the political opposition is neither credible nor representative. Ethnic cleansing against minorities is more likely to occur under a rebel-led government than under Mr. Assad; likewise, the possibility of chemical weapons' falling into the hands of terrorist groups only grows as the regime weakens.

And finally, a rebel victory is more likely to destabilize Iraq and Lebanon, and the inevitable disorder of a post-Assad Syria constitutes a greater threat to Israel than the status quo.

Mardini concludes that Obama "would have been wise to make a forceful diplomatic push first before succumbing to the naïveté of his pro-intervention critics." But he also pointed out that Obama trashed his ability to do anything diplomatic when he gave up any pretense to neutrality and disinterest by publicly insisting that Assad step down.

Also note: Shamus Cooke: Who Killed the Syrian Peace Talks? He argues that talks instigated by Russia and the US have failed "because the U.S.-backed rebels are boycotting negotiations." I'm not sure if that's all there is to it, but we've seen before -- Kosovo and Darfur are two cases I've heard the same thing about -- that when the US picks sides, that side ups its ante in any negotiations. It is certainly arguable that one reason, besides the repressive nature of the Assad government, Syrian groups turned so quickly from peaceful protests to civil war was their expectation that the US would come to their aid, as had happened in Libya.
MJ Rosenberg: To Win UN Job, Samantha Power Begged Forgiveness, Wept, for Criticizing Israel: You may recall that Power got booted from Obama's 2008 campaign for bad-mouthing Hilary Clinton. She did wind up with an under secretary job, under Clinton, and now gets a bump to the UN Ambassador job, but only after taking back every blasphemous thing she's ever said about Israel: specifically a 2002 interview:

She told an interviewer that she did not believe that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon or Palestinian President Yasir Arafat would ever stop the killing on their own and that "external intervention is required." She specifically called on the United States to "put something on the line," by which she meant the "imposition of a solution on unwilling parties." Admitting that the idea of imposing a settlement was "fundamentally undemocratic," she said it was preferable to "deference" to leaders who seem "politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people."

This was not surprising coming from Power. She is the leading advocate of what is known as "liberal interventionism." She has said that as a child she was shaken by the world's indifference to the Holocaust. Her feelings were deepened by her experiences as a journalist in Bosnia. Ever since, most notably in the case of Libya, Power has recommended "going in" to stop the killing of innocents. Right or wrong, it's who she is.

Unfortunately for Power, the reality of U.S. politics dictates that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict be exempted from rules or theories one applies elsewhere. That is why some of the most aggressively anti-war, pro-human rights progressives in Congress, the media and the blogosphere simply go silent, at best, on the subject of the Israeli occupation or, at worst, openly support military actions like Israel's wars in Gaza. They know that the Israel lobby will make life very difficult for those who insist on applying the same moral yardstick to Israel as to other nations.

Also see Ed Kilgore: Power and the Neocons: one reason she was able to escape the wrath of the Israel lobby is that the neocons lover her so.
Paul Ryan: The Mythical Promise of Obamacare Doomed Me and Mitt Romney: How unfair of the Democrats, promising people that their government would help make their lives better, when we all know that the real function of government is to make you more miserable (unless, that is, you're rich):

Former vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan told conservatives Friday that Obamacare helped President Obama defeat Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, decrying the "empty promises" of the law that hadn't yet been implemented.

"This was our challenge that Mitt Romney and I had in this last election," Ryan said in a speech at the annual Faith and Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, DC. "We had to argue against the promise and the rhetoric of President Obama. The great soaring rhetoric, all of the empty promises."

You might be wondering why the Republicans didn't think of that ("soaring rhetoric/empty promises") themselves. Actually, they did, but couldn't resist attacking Obama even when he adopted their program.
Dan Zevin: Hazy With a Chance of Apocalypse: This week's weather forecast. A little far-fetched, I think, especially for Thursday.

Also, a few links for further study:

Tom Engelhardt: The Making of a Global Security State: Does a nice job of summing up how the NSA revelations fit into the imperial security complex that seems to have become a permanent, unassailable feature of our world.
Nicholas Schmiddle: In the Crosshairs: How Chris Kyle became one of America's most proficient killers in Iraq, then brought his gun culture home, parlaying his success into a bestselling memoir, building an empire ranging from training snipers to taking vets on shooting trips to help release stress. Eventually one of the crazed vets he took out shot him. Kyle, of course, was pretty crazed himself, but he hung out with people like the Palins who celebrated that.

Recycled Goods (109): June 2013

My original plan was to follow up last month's 1960s-alt-themed guide with more '60s music: as I was working on May's column, I ran across some records that didn't really fit as "alt" but that I felt like checking out -- Cream records I knew well but never bothered to grade, Hollies albums I never heard, things I missed or only knew through later best-ofs like A Salty Dog and The Who Sings My Generation and a few late Coltranes. I collected about twenty such reviews, but barely scratched the surface, and as the calendar turned over I realized I didn't have enough time to cram it all together. Meanwhile, I had been kicking reviews that didn't fit into the July file, and had a package of Afro-Asian promos that I wanted to serve sooner rather than later. So I wound up flipping the two files. The 1960s will wait until July (or later). Meanwhile, I'll run this grab bag, which includes explorations of some Christgau favorites (Beautiful South, Rilo Kiley, Wussy), an early Oliver Lake I found while looking for his latest, and more Africana.

Tony Bennett/Dave Brubeck: The White House Sessions, Live 1962 (1962 [2013], Columbia/Legacy): Nothing new in their two short and separate sets, but both were riding their popular peaks, Brubeck opening with "Take Five" and Bennett closing with "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." Then they merge, Brubeck's Quartet replacing Ralph Sharon's trio, and it gets wilder, with a much fiercer Brubeck ready to rumble, keeping Bennett quick on his toes as he skitters through "Lullaby of Broadway," "That Old Black Magic," two more. B+(**) [advance]

Dieuf-Dieul de Thiès: Aw Sa Yone Vol. 1 (1981 [2013], Teranga Beat): From Thiès in Senegal, less cosmopolitan than Dakar where big things were happening, these sessions with guitarist Pape Seck and three griot-style vocalists were only released on cassette, and long forgotten, although the group kept trudging along -- I have a later disc of them backing up Tidiane. Even-tempered, a gentle groove that goes on and on, each little embellishment welcome, especially the sax. A-

Harafin So: Bollywood Inspired Film Music From Hausa Nigeria ([2013], Sahel Sounds): From Kano, with a metro area of close to three million people the capital of the Islamic north and the second largest city in Nigeria, home of a Hausa film industry that draws heavily on the musicals of Bollywood -- call it Kannywood. Nine songs credited to as many artists but possibly fewer producers -- one Abubakar Sani claims to have made 5000 songs ("3000 of them hits"); no dates given but the introduction of VHS in 1990 and the Yamaha PSR keyboard in 1994 were enabling technologies, the local talents mimicking the masters, the rhythmic roll turning over and over. B+(**)

Kenya Special: Selected East African Recordings From the 1970s & '80s (1970s-80s [2013], Soundway, 2CD): Obscure 45s from back in the day, 32 of them, closer in spirit and range to crate digs like John Storm Roberts' Before Benga 2: The Nairobi Sound than to the soukous-inflected Guitar Paradise of East Africa. Reportedly the full packaging includes a 40-page booklet, which my promo lacks. So I'm short on details, but the discs themselves jump. A- [advance]

Sedayeh Del: Funk, Psychedelia and Pop From the Iranian Pre-Revolution Generation (1959-77 [2013], Pharaway Sounds): Main hint on dates is the note that Karim Charmanara's Abang e Rooz label was founded in 1959 (releasing 200 singles and 3 LPs that year) and folded in 1977, but I'd guess this leans toward the 1970s. The fourth compilation in a series, a mix of Persian grandiosity -- I wouldn't call anything under the Shah a "golden age," but it sure had gilded pretensions -- and pop moves, imported from Bollywood as well as the West, but something else. B+(***)

The Rough Guide to Acoustic Africa (2000-12 [2013], World Music Network, 2CD): Lazy picks, all but one picked off the shelf from the label's Riverboat subsidiary, which at least makes them easy to date (approximately) -- some also on the label's Unwired and Oxfam comps -- spanning a big continent from South Africa and Mozambique to Senegal and Sudan. The acoustic shtick undercuts the vast stylistic differences across the continent, helping the flow, whiel the vast stylistic range ensures that any dull spots will be followed by something more interesting. Second disc is a "bonus" by Senegalese kora player Noumoucounda Cissoko, evidently -- unlike most of the label's recent 2CD packages -- unavailable on its own. Its string flurry grabs your attention right off, and the songs start to add up, tossing the occasional curve like piano solos and Tumi Molekane's rap. B+(**) [R]

The Rough Guide to African Disco (1976-2010 [2013], World Music Network, 2CD): Sure, it's all dance music, but sort of misses the point and the moment, ranging from Osibisa pleasantries to Manu Dibango to the Mahotella Queens, back to Nigeria-Cameroon then London again for the Sofrito remixes -- too much jumble, not that Teaspoon & the Waves' "Oh Yeh Soweto" isn't a find. More antiquated, the bonus disc is Maloko's Soul on Fire, from the 1980s with Cameroonian vocalist Victor Nguini running through American soul covers like "Stand by Me" and "In the Midnight Hour," given a slight soukous inflection by guitarist Syran Mbenza. B+(*) [R]

Wussy: Funeral Dress II (2011, Shake It): Cincinnati alt-rock band, two singer-songwriters Chuck Cleaver and Lisa Walker make a fine proximate couple -- hard to overstate how much Christgau's coterie love them but the only album I managed to own -- their second, Left for Dead -- never did much for me, though I've streamed a couple albums I was more impressed by, including the original 2005 Funeral Dress. Still, I don't know it well enough to make any of the songs on this unplugged Record Store Day limited edition old friends, or even recognizable. Which I guess makes them seem like new to me. The balance and craft are certainly there. Beyond that, I'm not quite sure I'm not just swept away with other folks' enthusiasm. A- [R]

Briefly Noted

The Beautiful South: Golddiggas: Headnodders & Pholk Songs (2004, Sony Music [UK]): A marvelous band from the start, or even earlier if you count the two Housemartins albums equally stamped by Paul Heaton's vocals, huge in England without any notable success in the US; covers album, mostly rock tunes from the 1970s, nothing obvious either as roots or affectation, in arrangements that sneak up on you. A-

The Beautiful South: Superbi (2006, Sony/BMG [UK]): Ninth (and last) album, never got a US release and didn't bowl them over in the UK either, but not for lack of songs -- the first half, up through "Meanwhile," are memorable from the start, the possible knock on the rest is that they may be too jaunty for a singer as deep as Paul Heaton -- not that I ever mind Alison Wheeler. A-

The Beautiful South: BBC Sessions (1989-98 [2007], UMVD, 2CD): Live sets, four cuts from 1989 when they were getting started, four more from 1998 showcasing their sixth album, and two much longer 1994 sessions, probably timed for their fourth album and the best-of Carry On Up the Charts; the first simplifies, the latter shows they can stretch out and work the crowd, in between they remind you how many great songs they had, although they also repeat a couple too many times and skip a lot more; if this is all the archaeologists ever find, they'll grade it higher. B+(**) [R]

Bola: Volume 7 (2009 [2012], Awesome Tapes From Africa): From Ghana, a real shouter, his vocal intensity strikes me as call-without-response, unless you consider the slinky kologo that finishes every line more than denouement; the songs merge together in this effect, driven relentlessly forward on dancing drums. B+(***) [R]

Colomach: Colomach (1974 [2013], Soundway): North Nigerian group, led by Gneni Mamadou from Togo, closer in spirit to Mali and the Sahara than to the juju and Afrobeat of the southern cities; limited edition vinyl, should protect its obscurity quotient. B+(*)

Tommy Flanagan/Jaki Byard: The Magic of 2: Live at Keystone Korner (1982 [2013], Resonance): Two major pianists, live, start out with duets on standards (first three: Charlie Parker, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington), later on alternating solos. Bright and tinkly, Flanagan seems more at home with the material. B+(*)

The Funkees: Dancing Time: The Best of Eastern Nigeria's Afro Rock Exponents 1973-77 (1973-77 [2012], Soundway): Afrobeat, doesn't have to be any funkier than its models, at least when we're talking James Brown and Fela Kuti, but could use a bit of charisma, something the models have in spades; compilation runs long and rarely lets up or lets you down. B+(**) [R]

Oliver Lake: NTU: Point From Which Creation Begins (1976 [2012], Universal Sound): Early, coming out of St. Louis and thinking Africa, ten musicians with electric bass and piano, congas and toys, but plenty of brass when they need it, John Hicks on piano, and surprising guitar by someone named Richard Martin. A- [R]

Rilo Kiley: Take Offs and Landings (2001, Barsuk): First album by a group led by two former child actors: Blake Sennett, who tended to take things idiosyncratically, and Jenny Lewis, who had a way of making those oddities seem normal; all the components of a great group here, sometimes oversimplified, but sometimes that's the charm. B+(***)

Rilo Kiley: The Execution of All Things (2002, Saddle Creek): Second group album, did much better on a second play that followed the first album; doubt if it's neglected masterpiece, but it offers a lot more than juvenilia too, the whispers and tinkles picking up guitar riffs and innuendo and an outright "it's so fucking beautiful"; ready for prime time: "Spectacular Views." A- [R]

Wussy: Buckeye (2005-11 [2012], Damnably): A 17-cut Europe-only best-of, or intro, condensing four albums -- unless they snuck in an alternate version, something I can't tell -- but that works fine for me, the non-chronological shuffle mixing it up; fans prefer the albums, but if this were readily available it might be all I need -- more hooks, rocks harder too. A [R]

Legend: B+ records are divided into three levels, where more * is better. [R] indicates record was reviewed using a stream from Rhapsody ([X] is some other identified stream source; otherwise assume a CD). The biggest caveat there is that the packaging and documentation hasn't been inspected or considered, and documentation is especially important for reissues. But also my exposure to streamed records is briefer and more limited, so I'm more prone to snap judgments -- although that's always a risk.

For this column and the previous 108, see the archive. Total records reviewed: 3685 (3241 + 444).

Music Week/Jazz Prospecting

Music: Current count 21522 [21501] rated (+21), 628 [634] unrated (-6).

Depressing, unproductive week, most likely just one of many more to come. I've rarely felt as bedeviled by the bloodsucking capitalists out there, the ethic of "I've got mine and now I want yours too" that leads to a whole world of indifference and rot. Of course, I've had that theoretical analysis for a long time. Just a lot of concrete, personal evidence lately.

Also struggling with chaos and clutter. Recent notable graded jazz releases are accumulating in three stacks that look like they're about to go Pisa on me. Not so notable stuff is overflowing its big box. Papers and crap are everywhere. Books too, and in slightly expanding circles, tools and computers. It's an insane mess to live and try to work in. Makes me think much of it should go, but then I have to think about what I wanted to do with it, and what I reasonable want to do in general.

The website isn't much neater. The book section has gotten me into trouble again, and there is reason to think I should just disconnect it. That would break a lot of blog links, but would be simpler than trying to figure out which parts are likely to offend which writers and lawyers. The links section is a simpler problem, since it's mostly broken anyway. I'm not sure that it even make sense to try to collate a link farm these days. (Well, I can still see some value in it if you had better tools than I in fact do.) Maybe should rethink the whole concept of what I want to make public and keep private, or is there any ground in between? My operating principle has long been that it doesn't matter to me, and that if by making something public makes it useful to someone else, that's a plus. But that assumption is being called into question at all levels (including whatever it is that the NSA is actually doing).

For those and other reasons I'm predicting relatively light blogging for the next month or so as I try to clean up, in my head as much as in my house. Of course, as it heats up outside -- looks like 93F at the moment, possibly the first time it's gotten that hot here all year, but the forecast as far as it goes calls for that and then some -- I may wind up deciding that all I want to do is sit in front of the computer and listen to music.

But I will post June's Recycled Goods sometime this week. It won't be the 1960s special I had promised -- that's more likely in July -- and it will be relatively short with few surprises.

No A-list records below -- the two Clean Feeds came close, and there are more in the queue -- so I'll rerun a pic from an A- jazz record in the most recent Rhapsody Streamnotes.

One bit of non-jazz news: see 4-Year-Old Boy Accidentally Shoots, Kills Army Vet Father in Arizona. A tragedy, but shouldn't the father -- not just an Army Vet but Special Forces -- have had his own gun on hand to defend himself?

David Ake: Bridges (2012 [2013], Posi-Tone): Pianist, teaches at University of Nevada, Reno (or Case Western Reserve, depending on how dated his website is). Has a couple books, at least two previous records including a solo. This is a sextet with three front-line horns -- Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Ravi Coltrane (tenor sax), and Peter Epstein (alto sax) -- plus Scott Colley (bass) and Mark Ferber (drums). All originals, more free than the label's norm, hard to keep so much firepower down. B+(**)

Lotte Anker/Rodrigo Pinheiro/Hernani Faustino: Birthmark (2012 [2013], Clean Feed): Danish saxophonist, b. 1958, plays soprano, alto, and tenor here. Has close to a dozen albums since 1997; someone I should look into -- Stef Gijssels had her Live at the Loft as his top album of 2009 -- but this is my first encounter. Pinheiro and Faustino play piano and bass in RED Trio, whose original eponymous 2010 album I can recommend highly. This is softly toned and abstract, the lack of a drummer making it seem like nothing much is happening, but it sneaks up on you, demanding and rewarding your attention. B+(***)

Tony Bennett/Dave Brubeck: The White House Sessions, Live 1962 (1962 [2013], Columbia/Legacy): Actually, two separate sets at Sylvan Theatre, near the base of Washington Monument, rather than some cozy confab in the Rose Garden -- you can guess the crowd size from the applause. Brubeck does four cuts starting with "Take Five" and integrating Middle Eastern and Latin rhythms. Bennett then brings his own band in for six songs, ending with an understated "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." Nice enough, but very compact: the temptation here is the four extra cuts at the end where Bennett sings with the Brubeck Quartet. Main thing you get there is a lot more bite in the piano -- Brubeck was ready to rumble, and Bennett skates around him, but they didn't figure out anything for Desmond to do. B+(**) [advance]

Joey Calderazzo Trio: Live (2013, Sunnyside): Pianist, has a dozen or so albums since 1991, also notably part of the Branford Marsalis Quartet since 1998. Trio with Orlando Le Fleming and Donald Edwards, a 71:05 set recorded at Daly Jazz in Missoula, MT (no date given). Two originals, covers of Keith Jarrett, Bill Evans, Paul Motian, and "The Meaning of the Blues." B+(*)

Michael Dease: Coming Home (2012 [2013], D Clef): Trombonist, fourth album since 2007; quintet with Steve Wilson (alto sax), Renee Rosnes (piano), Christian McBride (bass), and Ulysses Owens, Jr. (drums), plus some guests. Postbop, trombone taking most of the leads, and everything else as full and complex as you'd expect from this band. Dease composed five of eleven tunes, got one each from McBride and Rosnes, and covered Ellington, Peterson, Hubbard, and Jule Styne. B+(*)

Django Festival Allstars: Live at Birdland 2012 (2012 [2013], Three's a Crowd): Dorado Schmitt plays guitar and violin, along with Ludovic Beier (accordion), Pierre Blanchard (violin), lots more guys named Schmitt (all on guitar), a few others you don't know, and Anat Cohen (alto sax), on a mix of Django Reinhardt standards and their own originals in the same vein. B+(**)

The Harris Group: Errands (2013, self-released): Ric Harris, guitarist, second group album, with vibes, bass, and drums for the group proper, violin and flute for extras: effectively, easy groove music with extra tinkles. B-

Yoron Israel & High Standards: Visions: The Music of Stevie Wonder (2013, Ronja Music): Drummer, from Chicago, based in Boston, has a handful of albums since 1995. Group includes Lance Bryant on tenor and soprano sax, Laszlo Gardony on piano and keybs, Henry Lugo on bass, with a couple guest spots including a spoken word rap by Larry Roland. Stevie Wonder songs, something few jazz musicians have made much of, but this is fun all the way through, and Roland adds enough to the title cut that they reprise it. B+(**)

Art Johnson/Marc Devine: Blue Sud (2012 [2013], Warrant Music/ITI): Guitar-piano duets. Johnson was b. 1945, worked in California a long time; not sure how much he's recorded, but he has done piano duets with Dwayne Smith before, and dabbled in Brazilian music. Don't know much about Devine, but he fills in a lot of holes. B-

Roger Kellaway & Eddie Daniels: Duke at the Roadhouse: Live in Santa Fe (2012 [2013], IPO): Pianist, b. 1939, and clarinetist, b. 1941, frequently seen in each other's company of late. James Holland joins in on cello, but only becomes a factor late midway through. Program is mostly Ellington, eight of ten if you count "Perdido," with one original each -- Daniels' is called "Duke at the Roadhouse," Kellaway's "Duke in Ojai." B+(**)

Mark Kleinhaut/Neil Lamb: Jones Street (2011 [2013], Invisible Music): Two guitarists, Kleinhaut with a half-dozen albums since 1999, Lamb with more like four. Back cover says, "greetings from Savannah, Georgia; evidently the home of the title street. Has a delicate, laid-back feel, with a bit more swing than new age allows. B+(**)

Liberation Prophecy: Invisible House (2013, self-released): Group from Louisville, KY; led by saxophonist Jacob Duncan with Carly Johnson ("Our Lady of Song") singing most of the pieces -- their one previous album, 2006's Last Exit Angel, had Norah Jones and Andre Easton singing. Music has bits of avant-jazz and prog-rock -- publicist cites Charles Mingus, Frank Zappa, Carla Bley and Sun Ra -- a mix I can't vouch for. Two spins and the best I can say is that they may turn out to be interesting but it's not obvious why. B

Diane Marino: Loads of Love (2013, M&M): Standards singer-pianist, fifth album since 2003; cover notes "featuring Houston Person," which is about as smart a move as any singer can make, adding a little something to every song he plays on (10 of 12). B+(**)

Eric Revis: City of Asylum (2012 [2013], Clean Feed): Bassist, best known as part of Branford Marsalis Quartet since 1997; side credits have mostly been mainstream, but his own albums -- this makes four since 2004 -- have been more avant. This is a piano trio with Kris Davis and Andrew Cyrille. Mostly joint credits, with covers from Monk and Jarrett, and one Revis original. The piano is feisty, slippery, edgy, and the bass is prominent. B+(***)

Julian Shore: Filaments (2012, Tone Rogue): Pianist, second album; all originals, music by Shore and lyrics by singer Alexa Barchini (liner notes includes three lyrics; Barchini sings on six cuts, and Shelly Tzarafi also sings on five). The vocals have a soft, arty feel, and nothing else does much to soften the chill -- horn spots, three guitarists, although Kurt Rosenwinkel makes his presence felt. B

Mary Stallings: But Beautiful (2012 [2013], High Note): Standards singer, b. 1939, cut an album with Cal Tjader in 1961, then nothing until 1990, regular work since. With Eric Reed on piano, sometimes supplemented by Danny Janklow on alto sax and/or Brian Clancy on tenor sax, which helps. A fine singer, but songs like "I Thought About You" make the difference. B+(**)

Marlene VerPlanck: Ballads . . . Mostly (2012 [2013], Audiophile): Standards singer, b. Marlene Pampinella in Newark in 1933; cut an album as Marlene in 1955; nothing else until 1979, but she's recorded regularly since 1989. She built this album around seven arrangements of Cy Coleman songs by her late husband, J. Billy VerPlanck, adding four more songs by Harry Warren, and four more. Cut with two piano trios, adding Claudio Roditi's trumpet on four cuts, and Houston Person's tenor sax on four more. Singer is precise and fluid, no excess mannerisms, and the horns are a plus. B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

The Aperturistic Trio: Truth and Actuality (Inner Circle Music)
Ryan Cohan: The River (Motéma Music): advance, July 9
Drye & Drye: Open Letter (NCM East): July 16
Vana Gierig: Making Memories (Enja)
Alan Jones & François Théberge: Another View (Origin)
Chris Morrissey: North Hero (Sunnyside)
Bob Mover: My Heart Tells Me (Motema, 2CD)
Terje Rypdal: Melodic Warrior (ECM): advance, August 6
Kristin Slipp + Dov Manski: A Thousand Julys (Sunnyside)
Christian Wallumrød: Outstairs (ECM): advance, August 6
Denny Zeitlin: Both/And: Solo Electro-Acoustic Adventures (Sunnyside)

Weekend Roundup

Some scattered links, but nothing on the NSA scandal yet:

Kathleen Geier: A disturbing trend: labor's falling share of GDP, virtually everywhere in the world: A recent ILO (International Labor Organization) report shows a significant drop in labor's share of national income in 26 out of 30 developed countries, from 66.1 to 61.7 percent in 1990-2009.

It wasn't always this way. As Taylor notes, before the 1980s, labor's share of national income fluctuated somewhat from year to year but tended to be stable overall. Also, during this period, we've seen large surges in productivity -- and yet those productivity gains are not being shared by labor. This is an ominous sign for any society. One of my all-time favorite quotes is this one, from John Maynard Keynes: "Nothing corrupts society more than to disconnect effort and reward." [ . . . ]

Thus, you had the Great Compression, where wage inequality was kept in check, and the excesses of the previous era's robber barons (and what a wonderful turn of phrase that was!) seemed a thing of the past. Paul Krugman and others have noted that it wasn't market forces or laws against self-dealing or excessive executive compensation that reined in the corporations of yesteryear. It appears to have been "social norms." Or, as I would describe it, a soundly based, and healthy, fear of working class power.

Gradually, though, that system began to unravel. The trauma of the Great Depression was forgotten. Global competition cut profit margins and the capital class realized they didn't want to be so generous to their workers any more. More to the point, it dawned on them that they didn't have to be. Thus, the neoliberal new world order was born -- not only in the U.S., but throughout the world.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, there were cuts to social welfare programs in many countries, and there were also a number of important worldwide fights against labor unions, which labor usually lost. In the U.S., the corporate right poured enormous resources into political lobbying efforts and to propaganda shops that massaged public opinion. It worked! It's taken the current years-long depression to finally dislodge some that neoliberal propaganda from a lot of folks' skulls.

Although this trend is international, David Cay Johnston: Inequality Rising -- All Thanks to Government Policies puts much of the blame on the US government. Nor should this be surprising: starting about 30 years ago, the Democratic Party abandoned its dependence on organized labor and became the pro-business party; meanwhile the Republicans had nowhere to go to outflank them than to become the flat-out anti-labor party. Both stances hurt, and in a two-party system that's what you get.
Matthew Yglesias: The Charts That Should Revolutionize D.C.'s Fiscal Policy Debate and Why They Won't: First, the charts, which show that projected "Federal budget deficit as a share of GDP" drops in 2014 and remains relatively stable for a decade, as does "publicly held debt as a share of GDP."

Looking at this, the deficits scolds should at least tone it down a bit, but they haven't: "the political dialogue on the subject doesn't seem to have changed at all." As Yglesias says:

The dialogue hasn't changed because the elites steering the discourse don't care, even slightly, about deficits or debt.

What they care about is reducing the federal government's fiscal commitment to bolstering the living standards of elderly people. The Powers That Be hate Social Security and always will because it's a program whose entire purpose is to pay people money not to work. That's not a perverse consequence of Social Security. It's not a contentious partisan claim about Social Security. It's not a dubious interpretation of what Social Security is all about. That's the point. It's to give people money so they can retire with dignity. "Retire" being a fancy word for "not working." You're never ever going to persuade business leaders to stop agitating for cuts in a program that has this feature. Business leaders want people to work! At a minimum, if people are hoping to not work, business leaders are going to want people to save (i.e., loan funds to business leaders) in order to achieve that purpose. Taxing people who are working in order to pay money so that people can enjoy retired life in peace is the antithesis of everything business elites want out of public policy.

My boldface there. I was originally tempted to end the quote there to leave the basic point, but the rest of it is worth saying too -- just don't forget the point in boldface.

One thing that no one really got into during the depths of the recession was the observation that in a period where the private sector was deleveraging and therefore killing jobs, sensible public policy would have tried to compensate by moving optional workers out of the workforce, so that those remaining would have a better chance of keeping their jobs and wages. One way to do this would be move people into early retirement -- to make Social Security and Medicare and such available to somewhat younger workers if they are willing to retire. Another way would be to make college more attractive -- more scholarships and even stipends to cut down on those part-time jobs that distract students from their studies. And, of course, you could expand public employment, or pump more money into the creation of public goods, including things like art. When you think about it, a lot of this sort of thing was in fact done during the New Deal, but none of it happened during the Great Recession, when politicians -- mostly Republicans but I can't remember many Democrats complaining -- decided that the whole brunt should be shouldered by the working class.

Also, links for further study:

David Bromwich: Stay Out of Syria!: No point wishing for a plague on both sides since that plague has already arrived:

And each day adds a new reminder of the futility of allegedly pragmatic solutions. A Times report on May 15 by Anne Barnard and Hania Mourtada ("An Atrocity in Syria, with No Victim Too Small") told of the sectarian "cleansing" by pro-government forces of Sunni enclaves, in the village of Bayda and the city of Baniyas, both located in a mainly Alawite and Christian province. Three hundred twenty-two corpses have been identified, many of them horribly mutilated. As a pledge of retaliation, a rebel commander filmed himself "cutting out an organ of a dead pro-government fighter, biting it and promising the same fate to Alawites." It is a saccharine optimism that says the country has begun to fall apart and a more "proactive" US could hold it together.
Kelefa Sanneh: Paint Bombs: On anthropologist David Graeber, his old book (Debt: The First 5,000 Years) and his new book (The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement), the latter spawned by the Occupy Wall Street movement and effectively a history and handbook of same, with various asides into all sorts of anarchist tendencies -- James C. Scott's Two Cheers for Anarchism is another book cited, but Sanneh also talks about Murray Rothbard. Can't say as he does a very good job of clarifying all this, but the last couple lines are worth quoting:

But in America anarchism's appeal surely has something to do with the seeming durability of our current arrangement, and the inexorable growth of the government that maintains it. Such is the power of a sprawling and sophisticated state: the bigger it gets, the easier it becomes for us to imagine that we could live without it.

Thinking Around the Israeli-American Impasse

Back in 2005, I wrote a modest proposal for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. I mailed it out to a bunch of people -- an example of "running it up the flagpole to see who salutes it" -- and it was uniformly ignored. The distinct feature of my piece was a mechanism that would allow Israel to keep all of the East Jerusalem environs they annexed in 1967. My argument was that if a majority of the Palestinians in the new territory voted to approve joining Israel, and annexation could be separated from the UN's 1967 assertion of the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war."

Jerusalem was one of the major sticking points in the "final status" negotiations under Barak in 2000. Even though there was at the time substantial support within Israel for a "two-state solution" that would give up settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, every opinion poll of Israelis that I was aware of showed more than 90% refusing to return East Jerusalem. The equation on annexation for Israel has always been the trade-off between land, which Israel coveted, and people, which Israel feared and loathed. The alternative to the "two-state solution" would be for Israel to extend citizenship and equal rights to all of the people in the Occupied Territories -- a scheme that has become increasingly attractive as expanding Israeli settlements (those "facts on the ground") have made it ever harder, both politically and practically, to disentangle two states. However, Israel has always rejected such a "one-state solution" out of hand, for fear that its demography would tip against a Jewish majority.

However, I figured that the relatively small number of non-Jews in Greater Jerusalem, balanced against Israel's intense desire to keep the land, would be a trade-off that Israel might accept. I also figured that requiring approval of that non-Jewish population would do two things: it would justify annexation under self-determination, grounds that no one could reasonably object to; and it would urge Israel to campaign for the allegiance of a block of Palestinians. Given Israel's past treatment, one would initially expect the latter to reject such an offer, but Israel could offer much in the way of inducements to win the vote, including reforms that would help make Palestinians more welcome as Israeli citizens -- reforms that in general would help to lessen the conflict.

Like I said, my proposal went nowhere. By that time, the Arab League was floating a proposal that called for a full return to the 1967 borders (per UN SCR 242 and 338), albeit with no serious repatriation of pre-1948 refugees. The US was pushing a non-plan called "The Road Map for Peace," which was rejected by Israel, as was every other initiative. There have been proposals by ad hoc groups of Israelis (e.g., the Geneva Accords, the Israeli Peace Initiative of 2011), the coalitions running Israel, both under Kadima and Likud prime ministers, appear to have no interest whatsoever in ever solving anything. The problem isn't even that they have a proposal that Palestinians can never accept. It's that they prefer the status quo, where they face just enough danger to keep their security state sharp, where the settlement project continues to fire their pioneer spirit, and where their low standing in world opinion reinforces the Zionist conceit that the whole world is out to get them -- a unifying narrative with little downside risk, least of all to their standard of living.

I bring this up because I see now that John Kerry is trying to restart some sort of "peace process." Stephen M. Walt writes:

News reports suggest that Kerry is trying to advance this goal by employing a time-honored tool of Middle East diplomacy: bribery. No, I don't mean direct under-the-table payoffs to key leaders (although the United States has done plenty of that in the past and I wouldn't rule it out here). Instead, I mean offering the various parties big economic incentives to lure them back to the table. Back in the 1970s, for example, Henry Kissinger got Israel to withdraw from the Sinai by promising it enormous military aid packages and assorted other concessions. Jimmy Carter did the same thing when he brokered that Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in 1979, and U.S. largesse also greased the subsequent peace deal between Israel and Jordan in 1994. When domestic politics make it impossible to use sticks, carrots are all you have left.

This time around, Kerry has reportedly assembled a $4 billion investment package for the Palestinian Authority, designed to improve economic conditions in the West Bank and demonstrate to the Palestinians the benefits of peace. Presumably all they need to do is agree to resume negotiations and the money will flow; the investment is supposedly not linked to a final-status agreement. This approach is also a familiar American tendency at work: The United States is happy if the parties are talking, even if they are simultaneously taking steps that are "not helpful" and if they never get to the finish line.

The real question is: Should Abbas & Co. take the money and resume discussions?

Of course they should, but not because it will produce an agreement. Any talks that do resume are going to lead nowhere, and the Palestinians might as well get paid for engaging in an otherwise meaningless activity. The talks are meaningless because Israel is not going to agree to a viable Palestinian state, and certainly not one based on the 1967 borders. Remember that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's entire career has been based on opposition to a Palestinian state and that the official platform of his Likud party "flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river." Netanyahu is under no domestic pressure to cut a deal either; on the contrary, he'd be in political hot water if he tried.

Ever since the Oslo Accords, the basic Israeli strategy has been to negotiate endlessly while continuing to expand settlements, with the number of settlers more than doubling since 1993. Even then Prime Minister Ehud Barak's supposedly "generous" offer at Camp David in 2000 fell well short of an acceptable deal, as his own foreign minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami, later acknowledged. Netanyahu now leads the most right-wing government in Israel's history, and his government would collapse if he were to agree to allow the Palestinians anything more than a handful of disconnected bantustans under complete Israeli control. That's why Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been reluctant to resume the negotiations; he knows that talks merely provide a cover for further colonization.

But acknowledging that reality could also be liberating. Given that negotiations are pointless and that more and more people know it, the Palestinians should simply take the money that Kerry has assembled and agree to the charade, while making it clear that they will not settle for less than the Clinton parameters. They can also hint that if a viable and sovereign state is not in the cards, then they will begin to campaign for full civil and political rights within the "Greater Israel" that now exists.

Walt is unsure why Kerry is even bothering, but the US has long had interests in the Middle East beyond Israel, and they demand a certain facade of balance. On the other hand, the Saudis (in particular) don't seem to be very demanding of results, much like they buy sophisticated American aircraft then never really learn to use it. Rashid Khalidi's Brokers of Deceit: How the US Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East details how the US initiated three major attempts at "peace process" in Israel-Palestine, then bowed to Israeli pressure (or in some cases just anticipated it) to get nothing accomplished. Kerry is most likely to just add another chapter of failure.

Khalidi has a good description of how this works (pp. 119-120):

Over a period of more than sixty years, beginning in fact many decades before our starting point of 1978, and before even the occupation of 1967, Israel has created for the Palestinian people a unique and exquisitely refined system of exclusion, expropriation, confinement, and denial. Above all, this system is buttressed by a robust denial that any of this is happening or has ever happened. In some ways this denial is the worst part of the system, constituting a form of collective psychological torture. Thus some deny that there is any such thing as an "occupation." Others refuse to call the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem the "occupied territories"; they are instead referred to as "the administered territories," or "the territories," or worse, "Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza district," as Begin and his acolytes put it. Arab East Jerusalem is not Arab, it is not "occupied," and it has not been conquered: it has been "reunited." Jerusalem is not a city that has been a center of Arab and Muslim life for nearly fourteen hundred years: it is the "eternal, indivisible capital of Israel," not only now and forever into the future, but also at every moment in the past, back to the dim mists before recorded history. The Palestinians were never expelled from their homeland. A nomadic people without roots in the land, they simply wandered off, or left because their leaders told them to. Violence employed by Palestinians is "terrorism"; violence employed by Israel, usually producing approximately ten times the casualties, is "self-defense." There is a "peace process." One could go on and on with equally grotesque examples of such Orwellian newspeak, which effectively constitutes a tissue of falsehoods, an enormous web of denial.

Israel has not only worked tirelessly to create "facts on the ground" that dim the prospects of peace. Israelis have also created a mental clutter of catch phrases and jargon that make peace impossible to talk about.

I'll break this post here, and put a first draft of my thinking about how to resolve the conflict after the break . . .

Continue reading "Thinking Around the Israeli-American Impasse"

Kansas Flies Business Class

A piece in the Wichita Eagle today -- Dan Voorhis: Businesses will benefit from several recent laws enacted in Kansas -- points out that the Kansas state legislature hasn't only been up to complete lunacy this session. Sure, they've passed new anti-abortion and pro-gun laws that are blatantly unconstitutional, and they've cut income taxes -- exempting "small businessmen" like the Koch brothers altogether -- while raising sales taxes. But they've also been minding business:

Also, in bill after bill, the Legislature strengthened the hand of employers, especially in their dealings with employees.

SB149 mandates drug screening of Unemployment Insurance claimants as well as those receiving other cash assistance from the state. A first screening failure results in treatment; a second failure means a loss of benefits.

SB187 expands the nominating board for Workers Compensation appeals judges. Previously, board nominations were split between the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO. Now the board will be expanded to more groups, including more employer-related groups. It increased judges' pay in an attempt to attract higher-quality candidates. It also shortens the time to file a claim from 30 to 20 days for an employee or from 20 to 10 days for someone who has left employment.

HB2069 banned the ability of local governments to mandate that workers be paid prevailing wage rates on construction projects using public dollars. The Unified Government of Kansas City/Wyandotte County was the only local government to have such a mandate.

HB2022 banned public sector unions from automatically deducting member dues for political activities. It also gives employers a stronger ability to withhold pay, such as to replace uniforms or repay loans.

HB2105 strengthened employers' legal grounds for denying a worker unemployment insurance. It also re-wrote the formula for employers' contributions to the unemployment insurance pool to increase the amounts paid by employers who have more layoffs.

Voorhis didn't mention the biggest giveaway, which was a bill that ended regulation of the phone monopoly, AT&T, but then he wasn't really reporting -- he was just echoing what the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce lobbyist was bragging about.

Reminds me why I left Kansas in the first place. It was 1974 and I was working in a type shop downtown. I had gotten a series of small raises early on as the owner noticed how much work I was producing, but he developed eye problems, leaving his idiot son in charge of the company, who did nothing. After a long stretch, I went to him and asked for a raise. He told me that my salary was already the maximum the market could bear in Wichita. He did feign sympathy, however, suggesting that if I really did need to make more money, I should move to a higher wage market, like . . . Tulsa, Oklahoma! I quit shortly after that -- at which point they did offer me a much more substantial raise than I had asked for -- and moved to New York City.

Twenty-five years later I moved back to Wichita, bringing a telecommuting job with me. When that ran out, I looked around a bit, encountering the same lame-brained mentality from business owners I had originally fled. One job prospect offered $12/hour to design and build database-driven websites for a client based in China -- yes, outsourcing their IT work to Kansas.

The one thing that Kansas doesn't need is more leverage for business owners to drive wages down. It depresses the economy, and is depressing for everyone involved, leaving everyone in a state of mental disability.

The biggest political difference between the New Deal and now is the amount of effort Roosevelt put into fighting deflation: both in keeping prices from collapsing and in increasing wages, even going so far as to promote unions. Obama has done none of that, letting wages sink while monopoly rents skyrocket. And if Obama and the Democrats won't fight for you, numbskulls like the Chamber of Commerce get a free ride.

Music Week/Jazz Prospecting

Music: Current count 21501 [21466] rated (+35), 634 [630] unrated (+4).

Got a lot of mail, including the Clean Feed package from Portugal, so looking forward to that. Meanwhile, picked through what I had almost at random, winding up with a lot of B+(*) albums -- 13 of 20. Each has something distinctive on top of consistent quality, but not something I found all that interesting. That grade is probably the norm for jazz these days. There's certainly a lot of it.

Saw the movie 42 this afternoon. I knew the Jackie Robinson story from many sources, notably Jules Tygiel's Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy, and Red Barber's memoir, 1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball, but alas nothing much firsthand: Robinson's rookie year was three years before I was born, and he retired the year before the first season I can recall with any immediate authority. The movie made one major error: the Dodgers held their 1947 spring training in Havana, Cuba, and not in Panama. The event barely mattered in the movie -- at least we didn't have to suffer while Rickey was playing his great game, waiting for the team to pressure him to advance Robinson -- making the change all the more puzzling. They did get the trade record right -- I thought that Walker, Higbe, and Casey were moved out earlier than they were. (Walker actually had a pretty good year in 1947, and a strong start with Pittsburgh in 1948 before he collapsed. On the other hand, even before Robinson Rickey rarely waited until an older player was done before he traded them off -- wouldn't have been worth as much.)

But the movie didn't mention Rickey's 1948 trade of Eddie Stanky, who appears as one of Robinson's earliest and staunchest supporters, to Boston to open up second base for Robinson (and first base for Gil Hodges, who had to get out of Roy Campanella's spot). Stanky helped win the 1948 pennant for the Boston Braves. The filmmakers decided to end on clinching the NL pennant, savoring the up note rather than waiting for the Yankees to beat the Dodgers in the World Series. Robinson and Rickey got the publicity, and you can't begrudge them that, but Bill Veeck broke the AL color line later that same year with Larry Doby, who struggled as a pinch hitter to a .156 batting average. But in 1948, Doby outhit Robinson (.301 to .296) and it was Cleveland in the World Series, beating the Braves, with Satchel Paige a late addition, pitching 6-1 down the stretch. Rickey proved that a meticiulously selected, carefully groomed black man at the peak of his physical prowess could play at a high level in the major league. Veeck proved that an untried rookie and a 42-year-old who had been derided as "not good enough" for two decades could win pennants. The dam broke after that, and nowadays one wonders whether the all-white days before 1947 -- Cobb and Ruth and Matthewson and Grove notwithstanding -- should even be considered major league. Integration was the best thing that ever happened to baseball: made me a fan, at least until the 1994-95 lockout turned me off.

PS: Sad to find out that Tygiel died in 2008, only 59 years old.

David Arnay: 8 (2013, Studio N): Pianist, has a couple previous albums. The concept here is to start with a solo piece (a very jaunty "Caravan"), then for each additional piece add one instrument: the duo picks up bass, trio drums, quartet Doug Webb's tenor sax, and so on until you get to the octet at the end. Six originals -- the other cover is "Giant Steps." B+(*)

Diego Barber/Hugo Cipres: 411 (2013, Origin): Barber is a guitarist from Spain, has a couple previous albums, none like this, which is elegant jazztronica driven off Cipres' "desktop" synths. Seamus Blake plays tenor sax (and EWI) for extra lift, Johannes Weidenmueller fattens the bottom, and Ari Hoenig adds some conventional drums. B+(***)

Kenny Blake featuring Maria Shaheen: Go Where the Road Leads (2012 [2013], Summit): Search algorithm woes: an AMG search for "kenny blake" amusingly offered Kenny Chesney and Blake Shelton as 2nd and 3rd choices; more perplexing is Tim McGraw in the 1st slot, although I suppose you could consider him the least common denominator between Chesney and Shelton. The pop saxophonist came in 9th, after the Beach Boys and a phalanx of bad Kennys -- Rogers, Loggins, G, Wayne Shepherd. Sixth album since 1991, first with (or for) singer Shaheen. Most of the songs are originals by producer Peter Morley. Covers include Porter and Jobim: the latter goes far beyond "obligatory" to be one of the album's highlights. Contrary to standard practice, Baker tends to lead the singer's lines, justifying the credit order, but Shaheen is a fine singer. B+(*)

Joe Burgstaller: License to Thrill (2012 [2013], Summit): Trumpet player, b. 1970, played in Canadian Brass, Meridian Arts Ensemble, and NY Brass Arts Trio; teaches at Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, CA. Has two previous albums of classical music: Mozart and Bach. Starts solo here with an original piece, adds one or two instruments (usually piano) for the rest: Vivaldi, Bach, Gershwin, Corea, Fritz Kreisler, Jennifer Higdon, Piazzolla, trad, a "world premier recording" of a piece by Su Lian Tan. Wouldn't call any of it thrilling -- stately, picturesque, pretty in very conventional ways. B+(*)

Marc Cary: For the Love of Abbey (2012 [2013], Motéma): Pianist, b. 1967, has ten albums since 1995. This one is solo, focusing on songs by Abbey Lincoln -- Cary played with her on two 1997-98 albums -- plus one Ellington cover and two originals. B+(*)

Etienne Charles: Creole Soul (2013, Culture Shock Music): Trumpet player, from Trinidad, moved to Florida then New York to study (Florida State and Juilliard), teaches at Michigan State. Second album. Band includes alto and tenor sax, piano, bass, drums, with guest vocals and percussion. Tries to mix it all up, but neither explodes nor coheres. B [advance]

Liz Childs Quartet: Take Flight (2009 [2011], self-released): Standards singer, second album -- one original here, co-credited with guitarist Ed MacEachen, plus sixteen covers for a total of 77:14, including the usual suspects, Bessie Smith, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and two Jobims. Voice suggests a Diana Krall wannabe. Band is a guitar-bass-drums trio, with MacEachen a quality foil, keeping it light but adding something tasty. B+(*)

Corey Christiansen: Lone Prairie (2012 [2013], Origin): Guitarist, fourth album since 2004; group includes keybs/piano (Steve Allee and/or Zach Lapidus, the latter also credited with SuperCollider), bass, drums, percussion. Songs have a western flare, with three originals, one each from Marty Robbins and Ennio Morricone, and six credited as "Traditional" -- e.g., "Red River Valley," "Sittin' on Top of the World." Notes say recording date was August 30-31, 2013 -- clearly a typo, but one that will become less obvious over time. B+(*)

Trilok Gurtu: Spellbound (2012 [2013], Moosicus/Sunnyside): Percussionist, b. 1951 in old Bombay, India; has a couple dozen albums since 1984. Early on he toured with Don Cherry, and this is something of a tribute, framed with tape bits of Cherry from the 1970s, and featuring a long list of trumpet players who wanted to get in on it: Ambrose Akinmusire, Paolo Fresu, Hasan Gozetlik, Matthias Hofs, Ibrahim Maalof, Nils Petter Molvaer, and Matthias Schriefl. Mostly Gurtu originals, but covers include one by Cherry, Dizzy Gillespie's "Manteca," and several Miles Davis pieces, hinting at a spacey world fusion. B+(**)

Molly Holm: Permission (2012 [2013], Rinny Zin): Singer, San Francisco area, studied North Indian Raga and was a member of Bobby McFerrin's Voicestra. First album, half originals, covers include "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," "Afro Blue," "Straight No Chaser," things from Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul. Band includes Larry Schneider on soprano sax and Famoudou Don Moye on drums, and guests pop in and out. Likes to scat, has a bit of Sheila Jordan in her delivery, but interesting as all that is this didn't quite come together. B+(*)

Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette: Somewhere (2009 [2013], ECM): He's 68 now, and his label keeps shipping out new product every year, but since he turned 65 or so the recording dates have started to creep back -- the new product more likely to come out of old tapes than new. Critics tend to fall into two camps: some savor every scrap served up, and some have started to wonder whether we have enough of the more/less same thing by now. His "standards trio" with Peacock and DeJohnette dates back to 1983, a couple dozen albums by now, and for someone who isn't a piano fanatic, they do tend to all blur together: impressive, admirable even, but how much do you need? Still, every once in a while they make you pause and appreciate just how extraordinary this group is. Last time for me was My Foolish Heart: Live at Montreux, a 2001 tape released as a double in 2007, but this is another one on that special level, recorded live at KKL Luzern Concert Hall in 2009. A-

Brian Landrus Kaleidoscope: Mirage (2012 [2013], Blueland): Started as a baritone saxophonist, on his fourth album (since 2003) has expanded to include the whole deep end of the reed family: bass clarinet, bass flute, bass sax, contra alto clarinet. Features a string quartet conducted by Ryan Truesdell, plus guitar, keybs, bass, and drums -- all name players (Nir Felder, Frank Carlberg, Lonnie Plaxico, Rudy Royston). A complex concoction, all soft edges with fuzzy splotches. B+(**)

Monday Michiru: Soulception (2012, Adventure Music): Singer, from Japan, AMG lists 23 albums since 1994, pegging her genre as "Electronic" and styles as "Acid Jazz, Club/Dance, Trip-Hop." She is backed by jazz musicians here, including Alex Sipiagin (trumpet) and Adam Rogers (guitar). Indeed, she should know her way around jazz, given that an early album was called Jazz Brat -- an especially good title if your parents are Toshiko Akiyoshi and Charlie Mariano. Having trouble sorting this out, although she has promising moments -- but then the title is a muddle, too. B

PJ Rasmussen: Adventures in Flight (2013, Third Freedom Music): Guitarist, b. 1990, wrote all of his own material, leads a postbop sextet (tenor sax, trumpet, piano, bass, drums), the guitar adding a nice sweetness to music that goes through all of the motions. B+(*)

Rose & the Nightingale: Spirit of the Garden (2012 [2013], Sunnyside): Leader here is cellist Jody Redhage, the composer of all but one tune and four group improvs. Song-oriented, the two singers are Leala Cyr (also trumpet) and Laila Biali (also piano) -- Redhage also has a voice credit, but listed after cello, whereas Cyr and Biali are credited with voice first -- with Sara Caswell (violin, mandolin) completing the group, except when guests Alan Ferber (trombone, 2 cuts) or Ben Wittman (percussion, 5 cuts) drop in. B+(*)

The Rosenthals: Fly Away (2013, American Melody): Phil Rosenthal plays banjo and sings, as he had with the bluegrass band Seldom Scene (1976-86). Daniel Rosenthal is Phil's son. He plays trumpet, notably in jazz big band Either/Orchestra. Phil is a pretty deadpan singer and he doesn't take any chances with his standard fare -- at most a little yodel, but the trumpet is a nice touch. B+(*)

Nick Sanders Trio: Nameless Neighbors (2012 [2013], Sunnyside): Pianist, raised in New Orleans, based in New York; first album, a trio with Henry Fraser on bass and Connor Baker on drums, produced by Fred Hersch. The one thing that jumps out is the rumble on "Motor World" -- makes me wonder if his more delicate work has more going on than initially meets the ear. B+(*)

Benjamin Taubkin + Adriano Adewale: The Vortex Sessions (2010 [2013], Adventure Music): Adewale is a percussionist, b. in Sao Paulo, Brazil; moved to UK in 2000; has an album under his own named group, another group called Sambura. Taubkin is a pianist, also from Brazil, with close to a dozen albums since 1998. These duets were recorded in London at Vortex Jazz Club. B+(*)

Joan Watson-Jones/Frank Wilkins: Quiet Conversations: A Duet (2012, Eye of Samantha): Standards singer, third album since 1998, accompanied by piano, nice and intimate. She did write two originals, buried near the end. Van Morrison's "Have I Told You Lately" is an inspired pick; Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" isn't. B+(*)

Frank Wess: Magic 101 (2011 [2013], IPO): Tenor saxophonist -- also perhaps the most celebrated of all jazz flautists, but none of that here (other than a picture on the inside cover -- b. 1922 so he cut this just shy of 90, came up with Billy Eckstine and Lucky Millinder in the 1940s, was a key member of Count Basie's 1953-64 orchestra, probably cut his best albums in 1989-93 (Dear Mr. Basie, Entre Nous, Tryin' to Make My Blues Turn Green). Quartet: Kenny Barron (piano), Kenny Davis (bass), Winard Harper (drums). Seven standards: Monk, Ellington, "Come Rain or Come Shine," "The Very Thought of You." Slight but lovely. B+(**)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

Sophie Agnel/John Edwards/Steve Noble: Meteo (Clean Feed)
Lotte Anker/Rodrigo Pinheiro/Hernani Faustino: Birthmark (Clean Feed)
Robin Bessier: Other Side of Forever (self-released)
Blue Cranes: Swim (Cuneiform)
Larry Corban: The Circle Starts Here (Nabroc)
Dave Damiani: Watch What Happens (Hard Knocks)
Jon Davis: One Up Front (Posi-Tone)
Harris Eisenstadt September Trio: The Destructive Element (Clean Feed)
Ellery Eskelin/Susan Alcorn/Michael Formanek: Mirage (Clean Feed)
Drew Gress: The Sky Inside (Pirouet)
Michael Hackett Quintet: New Point of View (Summit)
Gregg Kallor: A Single Noon (Single Noon)
Kikoski Carpenter Novak Sheppard: From the Hip (BFM Jazz)
Lama + Chris Speed: Lamaçal (Clean Feed)
Dave Liebman/Michael Stephans: Lineage (Whaling City Sound)
Steve Lindeman: The Day After Yesterday (Jazz Hang)
Made to Break: Provoke (Clean Feed)
Rob Mazurek/Exploding Star Electro Acoustic Ensemble: The Space Between (Delmark)
Eric Revis: City of Asylum (Clean Feed)
Frank Rosaly: Cicada Music (Delmark)
Daniel Rosenboom: Daniel Rosenboom's Book of Omens (Nine Winds)
Sasha's Bloc: Melancholy (self-released)
Chris Schlarb: Psychic Temple II (Asthmatic Kitty): advance, July 16
Deborah Shulman & the Ted Howe Trio: Get Your Kicks: The Music & Lyrics of Bobby Troup (Summit)
Zoot Sims: Compatibility (1955, Delmark)
Steve Swallow Quintet: Into the Woodwork (ECM): advance, July 16
The Michael Treni Big Band: Pop-Culture Blues (self-released)
Trespass Trio + Joe McPhee: Human Encore (Clean Feed)
Rick VanMatre: Lines Above (Summit)
Wayne Wallace Latin Jazz Quintet: Latin Jazz-Jazz Latin (Patois)

Rhapsody Streamnotes (May 2013)

Fifty-eight records this month. Genre-wise I figure they break down to 15 rock, 15 jazz (didn't know where else to put Haden), 9 electronica, 8 country/Americana, 7 rap, 3 r&b (counting Autre Ne Veut), 1 world. Looked a little harder than usual for jazz. CDs for Ceramic Dog and Stetson arrived after I reviewed them from Rhapsody. Bought a copy of the Uncluded, but haven't had time to play it yet, which is probably why the grade hasn't shed its minus. Doing a better job this month at searching out things you probably haven't heard of, although almost everything here is preceded by a reputation (exceptions, for me, are Ehwald and Kropinski, where I followed the label). Some records came late to Rhapsody: Taylor Swift and Atoms for Peace were previously tagged as "missing." Could be that prolonged contact with Swift might raise the grade, but I gave it two plays and felt no need to listen further. Same could be said for some other high B+ records: Autre Ne Veut, Handsome Family, maybe Nat Birchall. Swallow them all and you'll wind up with 250 A-list records as opposed to my usual 120 -- plenty for most dedicated, far-ranging consumers.

No more than a handful of these were things I didn't expect to like -- Low, for sure, and I probably should have known better than Justice and Petra Haden and maybe Little Women. From the metacritic file (scaled back but not quite dead) the top-rated records I haven't heard are: My Bloody Valentine, Flaming Lips, Laura Marling, Frightened Rabbit, Suede, Charles Bradley, Foals, John Grant, Marnie Stern, Villagers, Foxygen, Mountains (12 of the top 40). Not much point there. Still plenty of time before the turkey shoot.

These are short notes/reviews based on streaming records from Rhapsody. They are snap judgments based on one or two plays, accumulated since my last post along these lines, back on April 26. Past reviews and more information are available here (3381 records).

Adult.: The Way Things Fall (2013, Ghostly International): Detroit electropop group, married couple Nicola Kuperus and Adam Miller, fifth album since 2001; originally reminded me of 1980s new wave disco bands like OMD and Cabaret Voltaire, but rather than regimenting the beats they get trickier, more sophisticated -- haven't heard their early records but they do seem connected to Detroit techno. Choice cut: "Nothing Lasts." Part of a bleak second side, the sort of gloominess one can only dance through. A-

Terry Allen: Bottom of the World (2013, Tia): Singer-songwriter from Lubbock, TX -- the town he immortalized on his still-finest album, 1979's Lubbock (On Everything). First studio album in a decade or more, dressed up the opener ("Four Corners" [of Colorado]) but didn't bother to keep it up, running slow and slower as the album drags on, burying his dog and John Wayne. B+(**)

Darcy James Argue's Secret Society: Brooklyn Babylon (2012 [2013], New Amsterdam): Composer-arranger-conductor, made a big splash with his debut Infernal Machines in 2009 and will make a similar impression with this 18-piece big band suite. Starts off with a fine theme, and any time he picks up the pace and/or volume he threatens to rip the roof off. Still, why would someone with so much firepower call for a piccolo solo? B+(**)

Atom[TM]: HD (2013, Raster-Noton): Uwe Schmidt, German electronicist, based in Chile; Discogs lists over 70 aliases including Atom Heart (which is how Rhapsody files this), Señor Coconut, Tobias Selbermann, and Weird Shit. Beats off kilter, words mechanicistic (unless you dig "I love you like I love my drum machine"; "Ich bin meine Maschine" is even more literal. Odd note out is a remix of "My Generation" -- pretty good one, at that. B+(**)

Atoms for Peace: Amok (2013, XL): Thom Yorke album with a few others, name comes from an Eisenhower speech, a classic instance of Orwellian doublespeak. Nothing so clear on the album, which seeks a higher register and stays there, alien to a strange old world. B+(*)

Autre Ne Veut: Anxiety (2013, Software): Brooklyn native Arthur Ashin hides behind the French name, his second album diving into full-fledged faux soul, catchy and creamy, like it should be. B+(***)

Bibio: Silver Wilkinson (2013, Warp): British electronica producer, his birthname, Stephen Wilkinson, creeping back into the title. Record itself is a bit of a hodge podge, with some pieces reminding me why I liked the last one (Mind Bokeh), some more ambient pieces, and some puzzlers. B+(*)

Big Baby Gandhi: Unreleased Freestyles + Other Bad Song Ideas (2013, self-released, EP): Six songs, 21:39, some old freestyles and rejects from past mixtapes; high and warbly beats, raps self-referential to the nth, not that he doesn't have that stoner charm. B [bc]

Big Baby Gandhi and Yuri Beats: America Eats Its Babies (2013, Greedhead, EP): Five cuts, 10:22 unless my stream source is shortchanging me; reviews talk about Gandhi's "retirement" -- going back to school to become a pharmacist or something -- but this isn't much of a swansong: namechecks for "Annie Hall" and "Madonna," one explicit sex ditty, not sure the title is even addressed implicitly. B [dl]

Nat Birchall: World Without Form (2012, Sound Soul and Spirit): John Coltrane was by far the most influential tenor saxophonist since the Hawkins-Young split. Several generations of tenor players grew up trying to play like him, even to the point of carrying a soprano sax around, but few have made it work more completely than Birchall. English, from Manchester, with a handful of albums, he easily conjures up a sense of space that Coltrane usually struggled with, while Adam Fairhall does a nifty Tyner, accented nicely by Corey Mwamba's vibes. B+(***)

Jason Boland and the Stragglers: Dark & Dirty Mile (2013, Proud Souls Entertainment): Group from Stillwater, OK, a college town on the red dirt of the Cimarron River; together since 1999, barely noticed as far as I can tell, getting by on plainspoken songs and a bit of unexaggerated twang. B+(**)

Ceramic Dog: Your Turn (2013, Northern Spy): Guitarist Marc Ribot's power trio, with Shahzad Ismaily on bass and Ches Smith on drums; second album together, but where Party Intellectuals featured Ribot's name and leaned jazz, this one is hard rock but finds fancier ways to get dissonant. Six songs have lyrics, three sung by Ezter Balint, the others one each from the trio; solid enough the songs carry the singer, while the guitar busts loose. A- [+cd]

Chance the Rapper: Acid Rap (2013, self-released): Chancelor Bennett, from Chicago, second freebie, has a double-jointed underground sound, a big grin on the vocals, especially on the subject of "Cocoa Butter Kisses." Takes a while for this to settle in, partly because he seems so offhand. At one point, he pauses as if searching for a rhyme, and comes up with "do you realize that everybody in the world hates the fucking Lakers?" Didn't realize that, but can relate. A- [dl]

Daft Punk: Random Access Memories (2013, Daft Life/Columbia): French house duo from the 1990s, has a checkered history including two Alive albums, the second pretty good, so they carried over the live drums for a live feel on this 74-minute studio album, looking for old sound effects, even talking about them a bit, but also spinning cheesy little pop tunes. B+(**)

Daughter: If You Leave (2013, Glass Note): When I first saw this, I flashed on the one-shot New York group that released Skin on avant-jazz label AUM Fidelity back in 2003. No such luck: these are Brits, a trio built around singer-guitarist Elena Tonra. Understated, everything neatly folding back on itself. B

Deerhunter: Monomania (2013, 4AD): Opens with two cuts of thrash noise that coheres in unexpected ways, quite an accomplishment. Then come songs barely framed by the noise, and by the end of the album they're skittering across their sound so adroitly I wound up flashing on Pavement. A-

Peter Ehwald: Double Trouble (2013, Jazzwerkstatt): German tenor saxophonist, leads a group with two bassists (Robert Landfermann and Andy Lang) and a drummer (Jonas Burgwinkel). Starts rough and ready, then settles into a charming slow groove, not what you'd call ballads but improv at an easy speed. B+(***)

Ex Cops: True Hallucinations (2013, Other): Alt-rock by the numbers: AMG's review likens them to the Velvet Underground, the Bats, Spacemen 3, Feelies, and the Chills, but that doesn't make them as memorable. B+(*)

Fantasia: Side Effects of You (2013, RCA): Won an American Idol cup, an accomplishment that amounted to zero interest for me personally -- I've never watched, but my wife did off-and-on and was especially taken by her. Fourth album but first I've heard: harder beats and more grit than I expected. B+(**)

John Fogerty: Wrote a Song for Everyone (2013, Vanguard): Nothing is more certain to raise the hackles on critics than re-recording your old hits: seems lazy and crass even when it isn't outright fraud -- as Merle Haggard has done, more than once. This one is done with so many guest stars it has the air of a tribute, but since Fogerty himself is on hand, no one can steal his voice, let alone compete with it. High quality but inessential and not much fun. Still, "Fortunate Son" has never sounded angrier. B+(*)

Foot Village: Make Memories (2013, Northern Spy): California noise band, four drummers with some synth and tuba and vocals, debuted in 2006 with Fuck the Future and have five albums now, if you count this 6-cut 34:38 vinyl only. Long first cut sets the tone, which only grows fiercer until the closer ("The End of the World") backs off. B+(*)

Patty Griffin: American Kid (2013, New West): Countryish singer-songwriter from Maine, seventh album since 1996, a tribute to her father, starts with a freedom of the road song that reminds one "you don't have to go to war," then one on the isolation of the road, "Don't Let Me Die in Florida." Her one cover is "Mom & Dad's Waltz," sung for every last drop of emotion. B+(***)

Petra Haden: Petra Goes to the Movies (2013, Anti-): Charlie Haden's daughter, grew up in a broad world of music but has to hang onto a concept to get an album together. Movie music is awful more often than not, and she takes to the bad and ugly as well as the good. Does get some help -- at least the "all vocals" concept didn't stick. C+

The Handsome Family: Wilderness (2013, Carrot Top): Brett Sparks does most of the singing in a voice that is both utterly plain and oddly majestic, a curious front for mischievous songwriter Rennie Sparks -- or at least that's my take. Mostly songs about animals this time, "Octopus" the first one you really notice, and a cut above an average they don't seem to care much about. B+(***)

The Haxan Cloak: Excavation (2013, Tri Angle): Bobby Krlic, a sort of ambient-industrial thing with a haunting depth but not much dynamic -- the little on "The Drop" helps. B+(*)

Jenny Hval: Viscera (2011, Rune Grammofon): Norwegian singer-songwriter, first album, found it looking for a new one. Has that ethereal feel the label likes plus a little more backbone. B+(*)

Iggy & the Stooges: Ready to Die (2013, Fat Possum): With Ron Asheton dead, the old Stooges lineup is buried, but James Williamson goes way back (Raw Power) and his return makes a difference here, even when his guitar reminds one more of classic '70s riffing than the dumbed-down primitivism that put the group on the map. What is dumb is the album cover, with suicide vest and crosshairs -- these guys are old enough to start thinking about serious mortality, not that thinking has ever been their point. B+(*)

Inspectah Deck & 7L & Esoteric: Czarface (2013, Brick): Minor Wu-Tang figure meets Boston underground duo for discreet turntablism with comix themes -- maybe the book would help draw you in? Or at least explain some shit? B+(*)

Jamaican Queens: Wormfood (2013, Notown): Detroit group, synth pop more or less, male vocals awkward, has a penchant for pilfering melodic bits and stringing them together into pastiches -- was surprised to hear a bit of "Baby's on Fire" first thing, but I stopped trying to keep track at Bowie, noting only that when they slow down they get even cruder at it (and less annoying). B

Justice: Access All Arenas (2013, Because): French electronica group, popular enough to fill arenas, which leads to an almost cartoonish amplification and simplification of their music, not that there ever was much to it anyway. C+

Bassekou Kouyate & Ngoni Ba: Jamo Ko (2013, Out Here): I'll take the good politics on faith, noting only that as the Salafists tear up Mali this is the soundtrack they strive to stomp out. The groove is more immediately accessible, and while it never slips into the stratosphere like the best music from south of the desert, it offers a steady supply of grit. A- [cd]

Uwe Kropinski: So Wie So: Acoustic Guitar Solos (2012 [2013], Jazzwerkstatt): German guitarist, b. Berlin 1952, has nearly two dozen albums since 1985. He starts with "Funky Box," tapping for literal effect as well as strumming the guitar. Beyond that the solos are more introspective, which seems par for solos on any instrument. B+(*)

Oliver Lake/Christian Weber/Dieter Ulrich/Nils Wogram: All Decks (2011 [2013], Intakt): Festival date with trombonist Wogram joining the alto sax great's Swiss pickup trio. Improv, which means great sax runs, solid trombone, and a little brain fart at the end. B+(**)

Little Women: Lung (2012 [2013], AUM Fidelity): Second group album, an avant jazz quartet with two saxes -- Travis Laplante on tenor, Darius Jones on alto -- plus guitar (Andrew Smiley) and drums (Jason Nazary). One long piece, 42:16, with a nine-minute intro that is nearly inaudible. Loud enough up to a stop around the 37-minute mark, with four-note repeated riff and much thrashing on drums; then they whimper on home. B-

Low: The Invisible Way (2013, Sub Pop): Duluth, MN, slowcore band, together twenty years now. Always seemed like a concept, but I've never found an album that lived up to it, or even many moments. B-

Natalie Maines: Mother (2013, Columbia): Singer (but not songwriter -- she does get three co-credits here) from Lubbock, TX; best known as the lead voice in Dixie Chicks; best remembered for dissing GW Bush back when Country Music was too busy waving the flag to think. Title track is from Roger Waters, following an Eddie Vedder opener, and winding up with five songs by Ben Harper or Eddie Louris. Don't blame her for souring on Country, but that doesn't leave her with much. B-

Merzbow/Pándi/Gustafsson: Cuts (2012 [2013], Rare Noise): AMG credits Masami Akita (dba Merzbow) with 136 albums since 1979; they also list 57 albums since 1988 for saxophonist Mats Gustafsson; Balász Pándi is a drummer with a mere three albums, including this one (counted under all three names). Noise improv, Merzbow's electronic static roughed up in real time by the others, sometimes even beat into something that is almost . . . musical, then again not. B

Roscoe Mitchell: Duets With Tyshawn Sorey and Special Guest Hugh Ragin (2013, Wide Hive): Saxophonist, 72, a mainstay of the Art Ensemble of Chicago since the late 1960s. Don't have the credits to break this down, but it sounds like the duos give way to trios when trumpeter Ragin jumps in. Also, figure drummer Sorey for the piano -- actually quite impressive -- and Mitchell, in standard AEC operating procedure, adds to the percussion. So a lot going on, and spectacular when they crank it up. A-

The National: Trouble Will Find Me (2013, 4AD): Eminent indie band, sixth album since 2001, the last two (at least) big poll contenders. I was caught unawares by High Violet, although I can't tell you why -- something I don't detect here, not that most of the songs don't fold up neatly enough. More like they just don't make me care enough to unfold them. B+(**)

Neon Neon: Praxis Makes Perfect (2013, Lex): Side project for Gruff Rhys and someone dba Boom Bip, couldn't resist the title. The beats are loud and have an old-fashioned danciness but the vocals are a major turnoff. C+

William Parker/Conny Bauer/Hamid Drake: Tender Exploration (2010 [2013], Jazzwerkstatt): Recorded at Roulette in New York, three titles each named for a trio member, probably pure improv. Bauer is a German avant-trombonist (aka Konrad or Conrad), been around since the early 1970s, notably in Zentralquartett. He's not a commanding soloist, but adds all sorts of sounds and colors to one of the most relentlessly creative bass-drums duo ever. B+(***)

Pistol Annies: Annie Up (2013, RCA): Sophomore album, Miranda Lambert you know about, and Ashley Monroe too, so only Angaleena Presley lacks a matching solo career, putting her one solo credit here. Not as hot, in any sense of the word, as the debut, a cozy singalong, remarkable for the melodies and drawls, attention to detail and avoidance of cliché -- all too rare where they hail from. A-

Mike Pride: Drummer's Corpse (2012 [2013], AUM Fidelity): Drummer, plays avant-jazz but also noise and metal. Title track runs 33 minutes, adds six guests on drums and gong to otherwise noisy guitar and chaotic vocals. Second track is 26 minutes, mostly atmospheric guitar and bass with some edge but broken up with multiple recitations, some at the same time -- in the end, another way to annoy you. B

Mike Pride/From Bacteria to Boys: Birthing Days (2012 [2013], AUM Fidelity): Drummer-led piano trio with Alexis Marcelo and Peter Bitenc, preferably plus a saxophonist -- Darius Jones on their roughhousing first album; Jon Irabagon, Jonathan Moritz, or Jason Stein (bass clarinet) taking turns here. Results are scattered, or maybe you'd prefer eclectic? B+(*)

Joshua Redman: Walking Shadows (2012 [2013], Nonesuch): Tenor saxophonist, habitually drops in one track on soprano too, father was Dewey Redman; made a big splash when he came up, changed his style notably when he played Lester Young in Robert Altman's Kansas City, and has been swapping in concepts furiously for the last decade -- this is one of the hoariest of clichés, the strings-backed ballad album, spotting composers as moldy as Bach and the Beatles. Brad Mehldau produced and offered his trio, joined on half the tunes by a string orch conducted by Dan Coleman. The trio is forgettable, the strings awful, and while sometimes the sax rises above the muck, too often it doesn't. (Redman's original, "Let Me Down Easy," is a partial exception, with a strong Mehldau line and strings that for once don't suck him down.) B-

The Replacements: Songs for Slim (2013, New West, EP): Only a partial reunion, Slim Dunlap replaced guitarist Bob Stinson in 1987, cut two albums under his own name, suffered a severe stroke in 2012. This blasts through five songs in 13:57, two Dunlap originals, covers from Gordon Lightfoot, Leon Payne ("Lost Highway"), and "Everything's Coming Up Roses." B+(*)

Dawn Richard: Goldenheart (2013, AltaVoz): R&B chanteuse (enough with the divas), has a previous album under another name and who knows what else -- aside from Diddy's Dirty Money nothing I recognize. People I respect love this and hate this, but it's so even-keeled I can't do either. B+(*)

Rilo Kiley: Rkives (2004-07 [2013], Little Record Company): Outtakes from the group's last two albums, more or less. I'm not enough of a scholar to weigh respective versions, or even to dwell on the fine aspects of relationship songs, but I will note that Jenny Lewis is remarkably talented at steadying the group sound and planting her voice as its sensible center. A- [cd]

RP Boo: Legacy (2013, Planet Mu): Kavain Space, from Chicago, sometimes cited as the originator of "footwork music" ("the fast, repetitive, rhythmically syncopated music & dance style that's a grandchild of Chicago house"). The staccato stutter works for a while but the novelty (and the repetition) can wear thin. B+(**)

Savages: Silence Yourself (2013, Matador): Brit all-female punk quartet. Good idea but not a new one, the singer somewhere between Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde vocally, the bass chops resonante, the songs . . . well, I don't recall any, but they weren't bad. B+(*)

Colin Stetson: New History Warfare, Vol. 3: To See More Light (2013, Constellation): Saxophonist, plays everything from alto down but favors the big bass sax, and makes extensive use of circular breathing, which gives his tones resonance and a warbly rhythm, even though no other musicians are credited, and and music was reportedly laid down live with no overdubs or loops. They did dub in some vocals later, credited to Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver), and they add to the eeriness of it all. Nothing else quite like it. A- [+cd]

Still Corners: Strange Pleasures (2013, Sub Pop): Studio duo (live quartet) built around singer Tessa Murray and "multi-instrumentalist" (mostly means keybs) songwriter Greg Hughes. Light electropop shading toward ambient, pleasant enough but hardly strange. B+(*)

Taylor Swift: Red (2012, Big Machine): Fourth album (not counting two live ones and a Holiday Collection), sixteen songs, 65:09: in the old days this would have appeared as one of those double LPs marking major serious artistdom, like Blonde on Blonde or Exile on Main Street or Songs in the Key of Life or Physical Graffiti, but confined to a single CD she did the next worst thing and settled for making it more expensive and scarcer -- it's taken a good six months for this to make it to Rhapsody. A bunch of relationship songs, some making up and some breaking up, none of which hooks as indelibly as "Mean," but they have big drums and that hit feel, and if I gave her more of a chance she'd probably beat me into submission -- maybe even make me think the price is worth it. B+(***)

The Thermals: Desperate Ground (2013, Saddle Creek): Portland group, half-dozen albums, grunge roots I'd say rather than punk, a couple (Kathy Foster and Hutch Harris) among the trio, which is why "Our Love Survives" comes through most emphatically, though no less desperately than the rest. B+(*)

Tyler, the Creator: Wolf (2013, Odd Future): After Bastard and Goblin, no evidence of linear progression in the LA rapper's bad boy persona, but then he's not what you'd call a big thinker. What he does have is an understated, easy rolling beat track, and if you can space out on the words -- not so hard, really, especially at more than 75 minutes -- this almost works as underground shit. B

Ben UFO: Fabriclive 67 (2013, Fabric, 2CD): British DJ, has a previous Rinse remix tape, cobbles together a very long one here (27 cuts, mostly 5-6 minutes each), not that it ranges very far -- nice, consistent electronic timbre, medium beat, quite listenable. B+(**)

The Uncluded: Hokey Fright (2013, Rhymesayers Entertainment): Duo, rapper Aesop Rock and anti-folksinger Kimya Dawson. His weak spot is writing more words than he can possibly find music for; hers is that her musical imagination rarely goes beyond nursery rhymes. But they do more than cancel out each other's weak spots: he makes her funkier, and she makes him smarter. A-

Wavves: Afraid of Heights (2013, Mom + Pop Music): Surf rock stooges, where Iggy aspired to be "your dog," they are happy to "still be your dog." B

A Downloader's Diary (30): May 2013

by Michael Tatum

After months of worrying whether or not the year was going to yield any great music, here comes the deluge, with the three pick hits my kind of raucous -- even with two originating from the European continent. As for the much adored new record from Vampire Weekend -- who aren't so raucous, after all -- you'll just have to wait.

Bombino: Nomad (Nonesuch) So conventional wisdom says I'm supposed to curse Nonesuch Records because they snatched Omara Moctar from the benevolent auspices of Vermont mircoindie Cumbancha, but unless Nonesuch bought out his contract with raccoon furs and wampum beads, I don't particularly see the downside, especially with new producer Dan Auerbach revving up Moctar's basic Tuareg rock and roll with a second drummer, an American bassist, and keyboards. Yet while this forcefully loco-motivates over 2011's Agadez -- and while Moctar most likely would have pleasantly repeated that record had he not made the jump to the majors -- Aurerbach represents a different kind of hegemony, as well as a creative dead end. There's no artistic growth here -- no surprise guests, no genre experiments, no bolder moves other than turning a few control board knobs clockwise and telling the engineer to look the other way when the needle narrowly crosses over into the red. In fact, excise the desert blues orientation and nothing distinguishes this sonically from Auerbach's own El Camino with the Black Keys, or Locked Down, last year's surprise comeback from Dr. John. Don't get me wrong -- especially compared to those overrated items, I hear many strong songs, penetrating vocals, and piercing, ductile solos that confidently shuffle Moctar into the small, select club of guitarists of the first rank. But I hear no big ideas other than Auerbach declaiming his Tamashek interpreter to precisely convey the concept of "going big or going home." A–

Chicha Libre: Cuatro Tigres (Barbès) This four track download-only EP delights all aspects of my being: the pop music critic, the half-Mexican/half-WASP, the novelty-loving post-modernist, the card with the stack of blank CDs and a black felt tip pen. Consider the group's demographics: based out of Brooklyn, with members from hailing from Iquitos, Paris, Caracas and San Luis Potosi. Or their cover of "The Guns of Brixton," a reggae pastiche from a British punk band detailing a race riot, delivered here in a unmistakably Texan drawl. Or "Alone Again Or," an unassailable classic from a racially integrated quartet, with the original arrangement, here taken to its logical conclusion, itself a nod to the flamenco dancing of author Bryan MacLean's mother. Or the theme to The Simpsons, a show whose worldwide fame hinges upon the ethnically vague orientation of its Pantoned-116 namesakes. That leaves only one the original of which you might not be familiar: "Rica Chicha," a cover of Los Shapis' electrocheese cumbia smash that kicked off the genre that made these jokers' careers possible -- a bit like No Age covering "Smells Like Teen Spirit," except every urban Peruvian knows Kurt Cobain. And to prove my point, my misread of the title (which refers to a rich beverage) made me disappointed that the lyric didn't begin with the lines: "Ella es una chicha rica/Y ha ido demasiado lejos/Le hacen saber que no importa de todos modos." Americans -- we're so uncultured! A–

Deerhunter: Monomania (4AD) From claiming dubious status as a "non-practicing homosexual" to tearing through an hour-long "My Sharona" marathon to take the piss out of a boisterous heckler, the question of whether Bradford Cox's pleas for attention distract from his band's music should only be of interest to those who make scrap churning out half-baked think pieces. His reaction to demos for his Atlas Sound project leaking online ("It became the kind of internet-fueled drama that I was quickly learning to despise") evinces the canned staginess of a Bravo reality show, and the bizarre proclamation "As a [gay man], my job is simply to sodomize mediocrity," would bewilder genteel Edmund White and Stephin Merritt types. Yet Cox's capricious unpredictability and undeniable charisma serves as the glue to this shambolic Atlanta outfit -- consider his buddy Lockett Pundt's Lotus Plaza side project, which radiates uncommon musicality but is stilted by its auteur's wilted carrot mien. Halcyon Digest went over my head two years ago because neither Pink Floyd worship nor limning nostalgia are my thing. But if I had paid better attention, the manner in which Cox mucked-up the music -- from the filtered vocals to the outre sound effects -- would have made its contrasting beautiful passages stick. This breakthrough ups the ante by dirtying up the guitars and muscling into the vocals while teaching fog machines and motorcycle engines how to rock. Not only that, but Cox has cultivated a sense of humor to match his Pitchfork interviews, from a cheeky c&w travelogue that doesn't leave Pensacola, Florida to "Dream Captain," a (take your pick) wage slave and/or kept man protest outfitted with the corny refrain "I'm a poor boy/From a poor family." Punks? Nah, that was in a previous life -- that phase lasted only a month. But Lord, if there must be prog, let it be like this. A

Steve Earle & the Dukes (& Duchesses): The Low Highway (New West) On record, Earle has spent the last ten years splitting the difference between oracle and crackpot, while in the interim churning out a novel, grabbing a spot on HBO's Treme and marrying for the seventh (and we hope last) time. So there's no explaining why this little item ranks as his best since 2002's Jerusalem or before, except perhaps his disappointment in Barack Obama to keep hope alive on more than just an eye-catching t-shirt. Of course, this loyal Democrat and Occupy Wall Street beardo doesn't call out the beleaguered prez by name -- rather, he obliquely lets Kennedy and the Maharishi stand in for the man on "21st Century Blues" while grumbling over Lockheed Martin's failure to build that flying car and teletransporter he was promised. Meanwhile, in the low highway leading to the despondent present, an Iraqi war vet fills potholes in the road, Grandpa plots to burn down a Wal-Mart, and an enterprising youth provides the formula for quality meth (I ask you: when was the last time you heard the word "iontophoresis" used in a song?). Theme: "There's a hole in my shoe but I don't mind/Cause it keeps me connected to the ground." Most valuable player: violinist and backing vocalist Amanda Shires, who we can only hope reprises her Emmylou act on Jason Isbell's next record. A–

The Knife: Shaking the Habitual (Mute) The element that makes this Swedish duo's magnum opus so damn hard to listen to -- and ultimately so rewarding -- is pitched electronic percussion. Unlike 2006's Silent Shout, on which resident maestro Olof Dreijer utilized basic drum machine programs, here the tribal thundering isn't just rhythm, it's the music itself, with each building block meticulously placed and tuned precisely, an effect not unlike Jamaican kettle drums (sampled for your pleasure in "Raging Lung"). On this jagged, disconcerting bedrock, the "melodic" components offer little relief, with many -- the sour synth-penny whistles on "Without You My Life Would Be Boring," the strangled electro-squelches on "Full of Fire" -- are flattened, sharpened, zrrled, or bronked for heightened dissonance (dig the Chinese water torture effect of that giant violin bow dragged across a buzzing power line on "Fracking Fluid Injection"). In other words, the perfect complement to sister Karin's banshee wails, protesting not only mindless shopping cart pushers and gluttons binging at the world banquet, but celebrating raw, carnal sexuality: territorial pissings and penetration urges, all in the name of conjugality, and in the sensuous "Wrap Your Arms Around Me," freeing an "unborn child from the castle." Not that the y-chromosomed liberals-not-radicals who write history don't make Karin seethe, as in this tellingly truncated couplet: "Let's talk about gender, baby/Let's talk about you and me/Let's talk about gender, baby/Let's talk about errrr waaaaapppp." A

Pistol Annies: Annie Up (RCA Nashville) Where their dandy debut mixed and matched the songwriting credits, this one attributes two solely to Angaleena Presley (she must have material lying around -- she's the only member of the trio without a solo contract), two to Lambert/Monroe, and eight to the group, suggesting the Annies wrote the bulk of this material in the studio; i.e., not when the spirit hit, but when the money was on the line. As crimes go, this is minor -- a slapdash group effort is a small price to pay for that made-whole Ashley Monroe solo album -- but nevertheless, you can hear the rush, rush: the two uptempo throwaways tucked away on the second half, the bouncy "Don't Talk About Him, Tina" and the feisty two-stepping hoedown "Damn Shame," last time would have been filler. Elsewhere, the anticlimactic Victoria's Secret commercial that opens lacks titillating specifics, a perfectly entertaining marriage plaint ends with a hackneyed "Can I Get an Amen?," and the manipulative "Loved by a Working Man" fails to mention the not-so-blue-collar day jobs of the real-life beaus in question (country singer, White Sox starting pitcher, tour manager). Maybe I'd be less cynical about this record if it didn't end with the lame greeting card devotional "I Hope You're the End of My Story." But given Miranda Lambert's recent woeful tour of the gossip rags (hubby rumored to be cheating, she reportedly retaliates by monitoring his cell phone, then lobbies for positive PR by opening an ice cream parlor) what can one say when the two best songs concern the time-honored Southern pretense of pointlessly keeping up appearances? As in: "We're the Pistol gosh-darned Annies, we're here to drink lemonade, politely shake your boyfriend's hand, and willing to play our music at a reasonable level?" B+

Rainbow Arabia: F.M. Sushi (Kompakt) The ubiquitous Knife comparisons escape me -- that band's obviously in my heavy rotation too, but I don't hear it. For one thing, Los Angeles' Tiffany and Danny Preston (husband/wife not sister/brother) have Euro leanings, but it's not their identity. For another, they're not strident enough -- though I applaud the live drummer augmenting their preprogrammed beats, the rhythms themselves are comparatively conservative, even measured against the "Iko Iko" inspired numbers on 2011's excellent Boys and Diamonds. As oblivious to dubstep as they are to grunge, their decidedly un-radical music is brazenly straight out of 1986 -- New Order synths here, Quarterflash sax there, arpeggios nicked from various Eurythmics hits -- albeit gratifyingly more elaborate, even extravagant. And Tiffany herself plays the lustily aching siren, not the floating, full-bodied apparition. In other words, they're a little trashy -- arty without being gratingly self-conscious about it, and as unlikely to be hitbound in 2013 as they would have been twenty-five years ago. Maybe back then they would have been dismissed by the finicky Britpop clique as "too weird." But now they're rapturous nostalgia even for those who didn't realize how much they missed Bananarama. A–

The Rough Guide to African Disco (World Music Network) Oh, those dastardly world music imprints -- anything to seduce us into buying their product, as if this nebulous concept could introduce us to anything as immortal as "Ring My Bell." Except as nebulous concepts go, African Disco sure beats Acoustic Africa (or, The Rough Guide to Cross Promoting Our Recent Releases) and Arabic Revolution (fine in theory, but next time, don't invite the sensitive collegiate types). Plus, unlike compilations centered around countries and regions, especially ones which have been plundered to death, African disco, much like the Yankee kind, eschews artists of "quality," giving rise to one hit wonders and quirky oddities that may have previously flown beneath our radar -- of the thirteen featured artists, only Manu Dibango and Mahlathini & The Mahotella Queens have sustained whole albums, with only the Lijadu Sisters, Sir Victor Uwaifo, Osibisa, and Tony Allen recognizable second-stringers. That leaves a handful of Gloria Gaynors and Rose Royces, christened with delightful monikers such as Teaspoon & the Waves, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, and Mixed Grill, the latter responsible for the winningly greasy workout "A Brand New Wayo" ([Some people] want to make that bread without sweat . . . people call that hustle!"). Significantly, many tracks lean closer to funk than anything Giorgio Moroder put his name on, at least until two-thirds of the way through, when the spirits of Jan Hammer and Bill Conti stink up the joint, reminding us that American television reaches across the Atlantic Ocean as pervasively as American music. Those anomalies aside, this can stand with whatever Rhino booty-shaking compilation of your choice. Better than "Ring My Bell": Mahlathini's immortal "Kazet," home of the world's most beautiful guitar lick and this still-startling quatrain, groaned in the language of the people that imprisoned them and their countrymen in the dilapidated slums of Soweto: "This is our kind of rhythm in Africa/We send our messages through music/This is our tradition in Africa/Come on, let's sing together now." A–

Rachid Taha: Zoom (Wrasse) Perhaps it was the unnerving sight of the rai king playing the jocular master of ceremonies in that hideous magenta-neon sports coat, but 2010's Bonjour tanked with the critics even though it was among this committed vulgarian's prettiest records. However, with anti-Muslim rancor accelerating in supposed liberal bastion France (the burqa outlawed, racially-motivated crimes on the rise) perhaps he thought it was time for a show of strength, and indeed, the first half is the man in powerhouse form, from Dylanesque opener to a Celtic punk stomper, peaking with an amazing, so-sarcastic-it-must-be-sincere cover of "It's Now or Never" (yes, that one) offered as a coyly heartfelt plea for tolerance. But the second half is prime, dirtyass rock and rai, from a Bo Diddley shuffle that demands to see your passport to a banger that makes skronking good use of that accursed Auto-Tune. On the spectacular re-make of the anti-racist "Voilà Voilà" -- the young Taha's first hit with his original band -- Brian Eno once more dons his king's lead hat. And on the terse "Straight to Hell" tribute "Algerian Tango," Mick Jones drops bombs between the minarets down the Casbah way. A

Wussy: Duo (Shake It) Diehards are mystified why this isn't a masterpiece -- as if all bands knowingly issued their finest music in limited edition formats on Record Store Day -- but deconstructing its minor-pleasures-not-major-triumph isn't exacting. It's not a matter of acoustic versus electric or the Cleaver/Walker duo versus the band proper as much as tentative demos versus polished product. Funeral Dress II worked beautifully because those sublimely perfect arrangements had been confidently set in place for seven years, with a combination of time, reflection, and the acoustic setting tinting and shading the emotions of the classic originals. By contrast, these seven song-sketches are various levels of thought-through: generally, Walker's material is more fully formed (though the equivocal play in the title "New American Standard" is jejune), but Cleaver's is pokier -- a problem since on Wussy's proper albums Cleaver's hookier songs often set the stage for Walker's more introspective ones. Perhaps the occasion's forced deadline caught him short of new material, but this isn't always rough-hewn in a good way -- the privacy invasion theme of his "Like It or Not" is fertile lyrical territory, but in a band version, Mark Messerly would have fashioned an enticing way to fill up the dead musical space preceding the refrain. The grotesque backwoods vignette "Ring a Ding I'm Rotten Inside" would surely be consigned to a b-side (and too bad). Although consider the remake of the Ass Ponys' "Pretty as You Please," its reprisal a tip off as much as it is a revelation -- on the one hand, you miss Dave Morrison's sample-ready drum intro on the 2000 original, but on the other, Walker's spine-tingling harmonies guarantee you'll actually remember that song a decade from now. Which is why, flaws be damned, I'd rather hear this than the Ass Ponys' august Some Stupid With a Flare Gun. A–

Honorable Mentions

Fantasia: Side Effects of You (J) You can take the girl out of American Idol, but you can't take American Idol out of the girl ("Supernatural," "Ain't All Bad," "Without Me") ***

Aaron Neville: My True Story (Blue Note) Talk about your anachronisms -- how about pre-Beatles covers from a time when rock and rollers never imagined that one day they might need a dose of Viagra? ("My True Story," "Gypsy Woman") ***

Ghostface Killah: Twelve Reasons to Die (Soul Temple Entertainment) Oh, goodie -- I love re-runs! ("Blood on the Cobblestones," "Twelve Reasons to Die") **

Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Mosquito (Interscope) It's forward, lateral, then fumble ("Sacrilege," "Mosquito") **

Wavves: Afraid of Heights (Warner Bros.) The title metaphor would make more sense if he didn't champion his victory scaling molehills ("Demon to Lean On," "Paranoid") *

The Rough Guide to Arabic Revolution (World Music Network) Scattershot and disorganized, not unlike most revolutions (El Tanbura, "Heela Heela"; DAM featuring Abeer Al Zinati "Hon Enwaladet") *

Trash

Paramore: Paramore (Fueled by Ramen) This album has opened up all kinds of awareness for me. I never knew that anyone took this Tennessee quartet-now-a-trio seriously, nor did I think the tragic departure of their bible-thumping lead guitarist and drummer (brothers, I didn't know that either) would move some to mourn the death of the apparently distinctive, well-regarded "Farro sound." I never imagined that anyone would thrill to Hailey Williams chronicling the band's soap opera in song, nor that anyone would descry sonic "variety" in what is essentially a blatant arena move (guess that's what Williams means when she opines "Some of us have to grow up sometimes"). Hell, I didn't know there were boho types who insisted Paramore were some kind of "indie" band despite Atlantic Records camouflaging their connection to major label bucks by inventing a pseudo-imprint (wink, wink). Okay, now I'm just being ornery. Really, I have nothing against Disney punk, at least in theory. But catchier toonz do not signify artistic growth -- neither do strings or three ukulele "interludes" (which on a riskier record would merely be called "songs"). Admittedly, the incessant blare does give up a moment or two worth your time. But as a vocalist Williams still lacks subtlety, the bombastic arrangements have no sense of dynamics, the shallowness quotient would make Britney Spears blush, and the record itself goes on way too fucking long -- real punk albums would keep it to thirty, forty minutes rather than an endless 63:48. B

Mikal Cronin: MCII (Merge) Why is this shaggy anachronism garnering such unadulterated huzzahs? Granted, he's a more passable melodist than his day job boss Ty Segall, but like so many in the shop class rock crowd, his vocals cultivate no special distinction beyond somnolence, and the prerequisite low-budget production can't disguise the fact his precious BFA in music hasn't taught him any new tricks to spruce up his dire late '70s clichés -- I dare you not to guffaw at the ballerina piano triplets that introduce "Weight." And his lyrics are hardly more radical than anything the Black Crowes serve up, from the clumsy "I've been starting over for a long time," to the banal "I learned a little bit a long, long time ago/Just from a friend I used to know/About how love can end so slow" to the downright farcical "I fear the fight that I'm about to fight for you girl/Cause it's a side, a sight of me I've yet to see." Leading me to believe two possibilities: either Bob Seger is currently toiling in the a&r department at Merge, or there are a great many young, white stoner-boys writing rock criticism. I wonder which one it is? B–

James Blake: Overgrown (Universal Republic) Despite a broader production palette that peaks with a startling RZA cameo, as tediously self-regarding as the debut -- it takes a real simp not to realize "a touchdown on a rainy day" scores the same amount of points as those on hundred-degree scorchers. B–

Kurt Vile: Wakin' on a Pretty Daze (Matador) Still takin' a "whizz on the world," but at least "To be frank, I'm fried/But I don't mind" imparts insightful context. B–

Bleached: Ride Your Heart (Dead Oceans) Bananarama as indie rock without Stockman/Waterman/Aiken, though you might not have known that from examining the Tiger Beat gender politics B–

The Rough Guide to Latin Psychedelica (World Music Network) Santana was of his time, the not so revolutionary music compiled here (mostly of 70s provenance) is at least ten years behind the times, and the occasional English lyrics are for all time: "Let's take care of business/Let's get high." C+

The Mavericks: In Time (Valory/Big Machine) When meaningful content has always been your albatross, turning up the volume is not recommended -- especially when your attempt at said content is the ghastly "(Call Me) When You Get to Heaven." C+

DJ Koze: Amygdala (Pampa) Warning: German electronic maestro's Marvin Gaye quote of choice isn't "I'm a stubborn kinda fella" but "We are all sensitive people/With so much to give." C+

Savages: Silence Yourself (Matador) The perfect band for those who spend their dorm room downtime debating whether or not Taylor Swift promulgates traditional patriarchal values. C

This is the 30th installment, (almost) monthly since August 2010, totalling 740 albums. All columns are indexed and archived here. You can follow A Downloader's Diary on Facebook, and on Twitter.

Music Week/Jazz Prospecting

Music: Current count 21466 [21440] rated (+26), 630 [629] unrated (+1). Average music week. Spent a lot of time with Carrier and Rempis, which in the end made a difference -- a break I don't cut everyone, but then not everyone has earned it.

Memorial Day today. Reading through the paper I'm deluged with pieces on dead soldiers. Boeing runs a full-page ad with a flag at half-staff and a list of iconic battles, starting with Normandy and Midway (in the wrong chronological order) and ending with Fallujah, the Iraq city Bush had destroyed in a fit of pique (postponed until after the election when he was beyond embarrassment). The editorial page advised us to check out Veterans Park down on Veterans Way, home of 17 war memorials (with more built nearly every year -- there was another article proposing a new one to honor Indian soldiers). Just once I wish someone would applaud real American heroes, like the Mennonites and Quakers, and for that matter God-ignoring socialists, who opposed all those wars. The Boeing ad listed Khe San, but a more poignant reminder of the Vietnam War would have been Kent State.

Updated the Jazz Prospecting archive for May. Monthly Jazz Prospecting totals for the last four months are { 52, 55, 55, 53 }. Those are all close to average months, but it is rare to string them together so consistently: in 2012 I varied from 29 to 90 per month, and only did 33 in January 2013. The average for 16 months is 51.375 (total 822). At some point I want to add the Rhapsody albums into the archive -- I have more than 10 jazz albums in this month's Rhapsody Streamnotes file. That will run later this week, along with A Downloader's Diary.

Black Host: Life in the Sugar Candle Mines (2013, Northern Spy): Drummer Gerald Cleaver gets first listing on the cover, has all the song credits except one joint improv and one piece by Bartok. The other names are draws: Darius Jones (alto sax), Cooper-Moore (piano, synth), Brandon Seabrook (guitar), and Pascal Niggenkemper (bass). Jones is a powerhouse who likes to get plug ugly (as on his Little Women albums) yet can make something sublime out of the chaos (see his own albums, although I still can't vouch for Book of Mae'bul), although the most striking solos are the guitarist's. B+(***)

Will Calhoun: Life in This World (2012 [2013], Motéma): Drummer, best known for playing in the rock/metal group Living Colour, although he's been gravitating toward jazz for a while now. Big group here, including Donald Harrison (sax), Wallace Roney (trumpet), Marc Cary (piano), Ron Carter and Charmett Moffett (bass), and some Africans (best known is Cheick Tidiane Seck). Four Calhoun originals, plus some pieces from the band, plus Monk, Coltrane, Shorter, Cole Porter, etc. Runs a bit light and slick. B

François Carrier/Michel Lambert/John Edwards/Steve Beresford: Overground to the Vortex (2011 [2013], Not Two): Alto sax, drums, bass, piano; Carrier and Lambert from Montreal, have played together regularly since the 1990s; the others from England, where this was recorded. Four long pieces, group credits (although Beresford is only listed on the last two -- no credits given, but the latter half is where the piano is most evident). Carrier is superb, as usual: always searching, often finding. A-

Hamilton de Holanda & André Mehmari: Gismonti Pascoal: The Music of Egberto and Hermeto (2009-10 [2013], Adventure Music): Brazilians, 10-string mandolin and piano, respectively -- De Holanda has a substantial discography, but this is the first I've seen from Mehmari -- playing Brazilian legends, guitarist Egberto Gismonti and pop star Hermeto Pascoal, who each make a cameo (the latter on Fender Rhodes). The piano dominates, and takes some chances. B+(**)

Martin Lozano Lewis Wiens Duncan: At Canterbury (2012 [2013], Barnyard): Toronto group, playing, by the way, at Canterbury Music Company in Toronto: Jean Martin (drums), Frank Lozano (tenor and soprano sax), Jim Lewis (trumpet, flugelhorn), Rainer Wiens (guitar, mbira), Christine Duncan (voice, theremin). Joint improv, mostly set out in subdued tones and speed, an invitation to focus on subtleties, which are not without interest. B+(*)

Christian McBride & Inside Straight: People Music (2013, Mack Avenue): Bassist, mainstream guy with 14 albums since 1994 making him one of the best-known players around. Splits piano-drums duties, adding Steve Wilson (alto sax, one cut soprano) and Warren Wolf (vibes). Wolf, Wilson, and the two pianist contribute half of the songs (4 of 8), the rest McBride. Wilson plays a light, airy sax, and the vibes are all froth on top of the bassist's trademark swing. B+(**)

Ruth Wilhelmine Meyer/Helge Lien: Memnon (2012 [2013], Ozella): Subtitled "Sound Portrait of Ibsen Characters, done sparsely with an arch-soprano voice and piano accompaniment. Dark and moody, of course -- an evident labor of love, just one with little appeal to me, though better when the piano breaks free, or when the voice sinks deep into the murk. B

The Rempis Percussion Quartet: Phalanx (2012 [2013], Aerophonic, 2CD): Dave Rempis, first appeared in the Vandermark 5 on alto sax but is equally adept at tenor and soprano; one of the most impressive saxophonists to appear in the last decade. His main vehicle over the past five years has been this quartet, with two drummers (Frank Rosaly and Tim Daisy) and bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten. I've only heard the previous records on Rhapsody or Bandcamp -- Flaten has a tremendous selection of his work on the latter -- and the one-two play regimen has invariably left them just shy of my A-lists, which is where this live double -- 53 minutes in Milwaukee and 75 in Antwerp -- started. Repeated play pushed it over the line, smoothing over the rough spots, easing me down during the lulls, certain that something exciting is just around the corner. A-

Cécile McLorin Salvant: WomanChild (2012 [2013], Mack Avenue): Singer, b. in Miami, mother French, father Haitian; first album, wrote 2.5 (of 12) songs; some common standards, more obscure, one in French, other outliers include "Jitterbug Waltz" and "John Henry." Backed by piano (Aaron Diehl), guitar/banjo (James Chirillo), bass (Rodney Whitaker), and drums (Herlin Riley). B+(*)

Wheelhouse: Boss of the Plains (2010 [2013], Aerophonic): Chicago trio: Dave Rempis (alto/baritone sax), Jason Adasiewicz (vibes), Nate McBride (bass). Avant, of course, but not especially fast or noisy, the bass a steadying influence, the bari sax meant to be moody. B+(***)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

Offiong Bassey (Moonlit Media Group)
Beat Funktion: Moon Town (DO Music)
Andy Bey: The World According to Andy Bey (High Note)
Von Freeman: The Great Divide (2004, Premonition, LP)
The Harris Group: Errands (self-released)
John O'Gallagher: The Anton Webern Project (Whirlwind)
Preservation Hall Jazz Band: That's It! (Legacy): advance, July 9
RJ & the Assignment: The Stroke of Midnight (self-released)
Mary Stallings: But Beautiful (High Note)
Jeff Williams: The Listener (Whirlwind)

By the way, the Von Freeman LP is a record I rated A- when it originally came out.

Weekend Roundup

Some scattered links from the previous week:

Paul Krugman: The Closing of the Conservative Mind:
Start with the proposition that there is a legitimate left-right divide in U.S. politics, built around a real issue: how extensive should be make our social safety net, and (hence) how much do we need to raise in taxes? This is ultimately a values issue, with no right answer.

There are, however, a lot of largely empirical questions whose answers need not, in principle, be associated with one's position on this left-right divide but, in practice, are. A partial list:
1. The existence of anthropogenic climate change
2. The effects of fiscal stimulus/austerity
3. The effects of monetary expansion, and the risks of inflation
4. The revenue effects of tax cuts
5. The workability of universal health care
I've deliberately chosen a list here where the evidence is, in each case, pretty much overwhelming. There is a real scientific consensus on 1; the evidence of the past few years has been very strong on 2 and 3; there are no serious studies supporting the view that we're on the wrong side of the Laffer curve; one form or another of UHC operates all across the advanced world, with lower costs than the US system.

So? You could, as I said, take the "liberal" position on each of these issues while still being conservative in the sense that you want a smaller government. But what the "reformish" conservatives Ryan Cooper lists do, in almost all cases, is either (a) to follow the party line on these issues or (b) to hint at some flexibility -- and thereby cultivate an image of being open-minded -- as long as the issues don't get close to an actual policy decision, but to always find a way to support the Republican position whenever it actually matters.
I think what's happening on these five issues is that Republicans have wound up denying the science because they don't like the usual policies liberals propose to deal with these problems, so instead of thinking up alternatives that they find more palatable they deny everything. One thing that has pushed Republicans into a corner here is that after some conservative counterproposals have been accepted by liberals, figuring anything is better than no solution, they've had to retrench. Examples include cap-and-trade for managing carbon emissions, and "Romneycare/Obamacare" to provide universal health care coverage while preserving insurance industry profits. One thing this shows is that the conservative think tank proposals were often meant to be red herrings.

The striking thing here isn't just that conservative denialism has been elevated to a matter of faith. It's their general obliviousness to problems and their effects -- and not just on the poor, who they make a point of hating, or on the middle class, whoever they are, but even on the rich, and more generally on business people they claim to support. For instance, they defend a health care industry that is set up to increasingly extort ever larger shares of the economy, putting every other industry at a competitive disadvantage. They oppose any effort to regulate consumer fraud by the banking industry, even though a large slice of those "consumers" are really investors. They oppose any efforts to limit fossil fuel depletion, even though the effect of that depletion is not only more pollution and climate change, it's also dramatically higher energy prices for everyone. They oppose any increase in taxes (well, except for regressive sales taxes) even when that means degradation of essential infrastructure (which business needs more than anyone), of the school system (which business depends on to train workers), and even police and fire (which are especially important government services for property owners).
Jamie Malanowski: I Stand With Rosen: Evidently James Rosen, of Fox News, "was named by the Justice Department as a possible criminal 'co-conspirator' for his alleged role in publishing sensitive security information." Malanowski regards him as "a meticulous reporter, a person of good judgment, the author of a deeply researched biography of John Mitchell that has convinced me that Nixon's Attorney General got a bum rap in Watergate," etc. So he doesn't sound like all that sympathetic a person to me, but he somehow got caught up in Obama's (or Holder's) anti-leak obsession, and when it comes to government secrets, my position is that we owe Bradley Manning a Medal of Honor. Malanowski writes:

The Justice Department can go to hell. James is getting legally muscled because the government wants to stop leakers, and thinks the best way to stop leakers is to criminalize the people who report the leaks, that is, reporters. It is shocking that this action is being performed by the Obama administration; one had such higher expectations of Obama, although no more. Once again we see that power does corrupt. And this why we need people like Rosen, because when we have stars in our eyes we are often blind to the limitations of public officials in whom we have invested our hopes and aspirations. Our leaders are only human, susceptible to temptation, and therefore must be watched, watched, watched, by leakers, and by reporters.

Add this to the AP debacle, and it seems clear that someone in the administration has gone badly off the rails. Obama needs to dump Eric Holder, and pronto. I stand with Rosen.

I haven't followed the AP case closely, nor this, but Glenn Greenwald has. See his Justice Department's pursuit of AP phone records is both extreme and dangerous, and on Rosen, Obama DOJ formally accuses journalist in leak case of committing crimes. Greenwald compares these acts to the grousing against leakers by presidents Nixon and GW Bush, and finds that Obama has gone much farther in attempting to intimidate and coerce the press.
No More Mister Nice Blog: A Grand Unified Theory of Government-Created Tornadoes and the IRS Scandal: I don't exactly understand the various conspiracy theories but I just want to point out one more thing: if the government could create and direct tornados, the perfect place to test that capability would be Oklahoma City. For one thing, there is a lot of comparison data which would allow them to contrast this tornado against previous tornados: this is the third time in the last decade that a major tornado has followed the same south suburban track. (But I'll also note that a similar Haysville-to-Andover track has been hit by numerous tornados around Wichita.) But you also have to figure that nobody's more gullible about "acts of God" than Oklahomans. Also there's an economic angle, what with Sen. Coburn complaining about about all the federal disaster aid corrupting his constituents -- something you'll never hear from Kansas Sen. Roberts (no matter how much he wants to screw the rest of the world). But the real teaser is that the government did something like this before: back in the early 1970s when they wanted to know how supersonic flights across the US would affect people on the ground they used Oklahoma City for test subjects. Turned out that even Oklahomans couldn't stand being barraged with sonic booms, and the SST project was killed.

A couple more relevant posts from the same blog: Why Republicans Can Politicize Disaster Relief and Democrats Can't; and Only Wingnuts Are Stupid Enough to Believe That a Guy Who Can't Get Anything Done Is All-Powerful..
David Sirota: There's no substitute for government disaster relief:

Within hours of this week's tornado disaster in Oklahoma, I (like many others) received emails from the president of the United States and my U.S. senator. With impassioned language, they both claimed to care deeply about yet another community devastated by a cataclysm, and then said the best way for America to support private charities.

The work of non-governmental organizations, no doubt, is critical, and contributing money to them is laudable. But there is something troubling about government leaders initially implying -- if subtly -- that a non-governmental response is as significant as a governmental one. And there is something even more disturbing about that message being sent at a time when budget cuts and sequestrations engineered by those very governmental leaders threaten to prevent a more effective response to such disasters in the future. [ . . . ]

After all, while local, state and federal governments are just as imperfect as corporations and nonprofits, they are -- unlike those private sector counterparts -- popularly controlled institutions. That means in a democratic society they should be a primary way we collectively prepare for and respond to mass emergencies. Indeed, one of the most basic definitions of the term "civilization" -- as opposed to anarchy -- is a society that simply recognizes we're all in this together and consequently builds publicly run institutions to honor that truism.

Though they refuse to publicly admit it, anti-government conservatives actually seem to realize this truism when they or their constituents are personally involved. Oklahoma provides an illustrative example.

In the wake of the tornado, you haven't seen Oklahoma's right-wing legislators making anti-"Big Government" arguments to deride the fact that their state receives more federal tax dollars than it contributes. Instead, you will likely -- and rightly -- see them lobbying to bring back disaster relief funds from Washington. Likewise, you haven't see Oklahoma's arch-conservative demagogues like Republican Sen. Tom Coburn saying government shouldn't help respond to the latest tornado. Instead, he's now insisting "there's a legitimate role" for government to play.

He's absolutely correct. It just shouldn't take a tragedy for him or anyone else to realize that this will always be the case, at least if America is going to remain a truly civilized society.

I think Sirota overrates private charities. I, for one, would much rather pay taxes and expect that the government will respond appropriately to each and every disaster that comes along, including ones too obscure for me to notice, than to have to sort through all of the appeals from all sorts of more or less legitimate, more or less efficient charities, even if I wasn't pretty certain that most of them deliver very little real value. Moreover, Sirota misses some important reasons why it should be government that provides a backstop for disaster relief. One is that the federal government can always raise whatever funds it needs, whereas no private group, state or local government can. Another is that solid disaster relief halts economic downturns caused by disasters. (For an example of what happens when the government, mostly due to politics, isn't up to the task, look at post-Katrina New Orleans.) Economic stimulus not only put people to work and puts money in their pockets, it helps make them long-term employable.

Also, a few links for further study:

Peter Frase: Post-Work: A guide for the perplexed: Uses Ross Douthat as his whipping boy, who sees wage-work as a bond that holds the proper order of society together (not that the case for slavery was ever much different):

Although it's pitched in a kindlier, New York Times-friendly tone, Douthat's argument is reminiscent of Charles Murray's argument that the working class needs the discipline and control provided by working for the boss, lest they come socially unglued altogether. Good moralistic scold that he is, Douthat sees the decline of work as part of "the broader turn away from community in America -- from family breakdown and declining churchgoing to the retreat into the virtual forms of sport and sex and friendship." It seems more plausible that it is neoliberal economic conditions themselves -- a scaled back social safety net, precarious employment, rising, debts and uncertain incomes -- that has produced whatever increase in anomie and isolation we experience. The answer to that is not more work but more protection from the life's unpredictable risks, more income, more equality, more democracy -- and more time beyond work to take advantage of all of it.

Also see Frase's Curious Utopias, which talks about "basic income" proposals.
Joseph Massad: The Last of the Semites: Article was originally posted on Al Jazeera, then pulled down after people like Jeffrey Goldberg charged it with being anti-semitic. For background, see Ali Abunimah; also Glenn Greenwald. I know people who liked this article, probably because they feel that Zionism is tainted by its early appeal to anti-semitism, and further tainted by the notable support given to Israel by people who are still effectively anti-semites, and it isn't often that someone makes those arguments. But the argument is carried too far: it's oddly amusing to claim that West Germany's "reparations" to Israel is a consistent extension of Nazi Germany's "pro-Zionist" policies (mostly the transfer arrangement that let German Jews flee for Palestine), but it isn't true, because there was no post-WWII extension of pre-WWII policies attacking Jews. Massad argues that Europeans and Americans only came to sympathize with Jews who perished in the Holocaust after they came to see Jews as "white." One could just as easily argue that while the Holocaust was fully shocking when it was discovered, the West didn't really own up to the history until the 1960s, when the civil rights movement and the anti-colonial movements were first successful. What happened then, and in subsequent decades, was that anti-semitism in America and Europe all but dissolved, contrary to the founding perception of Zionism -- that no matter where Jews went, they would wind up facing murderous hatred, so the only way they could live in security would be by establishing their own mightily armed nation. Nonetheless, and unnecessarily as it turned out, they built just such an armed nation.

Massad is right that the pre-1948 Zionist movement leaders shamelessly catered to anti-semites. But what happened after 1948 was far stranger than he imagines. He does have one part of it, in that conventional Euro-American anti-semites still support Israel, but it's not just because Israel is open to receive unwanted Jews. It's also that Israel has come to embody so many traits of the old right: racism, militarism, colonialism. And Israel has largely succeeded in conflating itself with world Jewry, for better and worse. Advantages for Israel included being able to capture "reparations" from Germany and Switzerland for crimes committed against Jews who had no affiliation with Zionism. The equation has also allowed Israelis to treat anyone who opposes their political practices as anti-semitic. While such charges are often ridiculous, there certainly are people who started anti-Israeli and became anti-semitic. Indeed, Israel now seems to be trapped in a circular system of creating enemies to validate their original (and at least in America and Europe disproven) percept that they have to build unassaible military might to protect themselves against a perpetually hostile world. And so they do, becoming ever more paranoid, and ever more inhumane, in the process.
Jane Mayer: A Word From Our Sponsor: Subtitled: Public television's attempts to placate David Koch. Koch gets such deference because he is a big contributor, hence a board member, of WNET, the PBS station in New York, leading to a form of "self-censorship." One aspect of this is that it doesn't seem to be Koch attempting to flount his power; rather, it is WNET's management going out of its way not to offend him. That sort of deference and obsequiousness is actually more typical of how the ruling class works.

Also relevant here is a piece in the Wichita Eagle: Roy Wenzl: Koch lawyer says Obama administration has tried to intimidate Koch Industries. Mark Holden, chief legal counsel for Koch Industries, bases his charge on a quote a from an Obama political adviser, economist Austan Goolsbee, which the article finally quotes after fifteen paragraphs of "he said" from Holden. The Goolsbee quote:

So in this country we have partnerships, we have S corps, we have LLCs, we have a series of entities that do not pay corporate income tax. Some of which are really giant firms, you know Koch Industries is a multibillion dollar business. So that creates a narrower base because we've literally got something like 50 percent of the business income in the U.S. is going to businesses that don't pay any corporate income tax. They point out (in the report) you could review the boundary between corporate and non-corporate taxation as a way to broaden the base.

Holden argues, "tax records are confidential. Goolsbee's comments raised the thought that Goolsbee or the White House had broken that confidentiality illegally, and reviewed the tax records." That isn't much of a thought. In fact, about the hardest way possible to identify Koch Industries as outside the corporate income tax system would be to snoop through their non-existent corporate tax records. On the other hand, if anyone wanted an example of a large company that doesn't pay corporate income tax, Koch would be obvious, as it is by far the largest such company in the US. You don't have to have a political vendetta against the Koch brothers to know that, although the fact that they've spent millions of dollars to subvert democracy certainly has increased their profile.

Goolsbee has a point: if you narrow the tax base by exempting a bunch of companies from corporate income tax, you either have to tax everyone else more or give up valuable government services. Last year, the state of Kansas decided to exempt "small business" income from state income tax, a loophole that will help a few struggling entrepreneurs but will also exempt the richest person in the state from having to pay Kansas income tax. That person's name? William Koch.
Jaron Lanier: The Internet destroyed the middle class: Scott Timberg interviews Lanier, a computer scientist noted for his work in virtual reality, also the author of two books critical of computerized culture: You Are Not a Gadget and Who Owns the Future? I don't know whether those books are worth taking seriously, but his claim that "the internet destroyed the middle class" ignores the fact that the internet became significant at least a decade after conservative political forces started dismembering the middle class. I won't deny that the internet has added to the forces pushing wages downward, not least by increasing competition both on the producer and consumer end. On balance, I'm not sure that's a bad thing, but doing it at the same time as the safety net and basic support for education are being shredded could well be disastrous.

Woke Up Screaming

Woke up screaming, around noon today: leg cramp, high up my thigh. My wife ordered me to stand on it. Good advice, but I couldn't find my way out from under the covers until she pulled them off. Finally swung my legs over the side, tilted out of bed and steadied myself leaning against a dresser or something. My mouth was parched, so I asked for some water. A couple sips dissolved the residue that had gummed my jaws together. I stumbled to the bathroom. The sharp pain subsided, leaving a sore knot. Put on some socks and pants, and ventured downstairs. Good thing we put that new stair rail in.

Not a typical day, but most days have something unpleasant sooner or later. The dry mouth is an everyday occurrence. Back in the winter I tried going without antihistamines, but my sinuses only got worse. Now that the skies are thick with pollen (plus whatever else the recent onslaught of storms dredged up) I'm doubling up on the over-the-counter meds. For many years I took a prescription super-dose of Allegra, but the insurance company dropped that from their formulary so we tried the loratidine and I eventually started supplementing it with benadryl. Nothing works. I haven't had a completely clear breath through my nose since 1986, on a vacation to Cape Cod.

Among the unpleasant tasks scheduled for today is another formulary problem: Blue Cross/Blue Shield [MA] and/or Express Scripts have decided that the two anti-cholesterol meds I take now require physician override paperwork, so my prescription renewal has been held up. (And because Express Scripts canceled my "auto renewal" on those prescriptions unawares to me, I'm real close to running out of both.) What they want, aside from my death, is to force all their "customers" to switch to generic atorvastatin (Lipitor), and when you look at the price tags of Crestor and Zetia you can see why. Those drugs are "protected" by patents which allow their "owners" to charge whatever the market will bear, and the pharmaceutical companies do just that, ruthlessly. Changing their formulary rules is one way that bulk buyers like Express Scripts can fight back against getting gouged, but in doing so they inflict real costs as well as hassles onto physicians and patients. In my case, to get the same results I'm currently getting will require recalibrating my statin dosage upwards -- several visits and tests -- and expose me to further side effects, not that any of those things matter to the insurer.

If I could wave a magic wand and fix one thing, it would be to get rid of patents. There are lots of bad things about patents, like how they increase the cost of innovation (obviously by involving lawyers), and how they disincentivize others from improving patented inventions, but the worst aspect is the "reward" of monopoly rights. Free markets work precisely because they are free of monopoly. One could come up with some regulatory scheme to limit patent rents: for drugs, you could assign royalties for generic duplicators, which would allow for some measure of competition around a higher cost point while still rewarding the patent holder's development efforts. But that would mostly make the patent process more political, and perhaps even more litigious. Better to get rid of patents altogether, then put public funds into "open source" research and development, which manufacturing companies could then build products on -- less potential gain, but also less cost and liability.

Patents work in various ways in other industries, but the effects are much the same: they subvert capitalism by promoting monopolies; they push research into dark secrecy, often hiding flaws until it's too late; they reduce incentives for others to offer improvements; they add legal costs, both to file patents and to defend against them; they can be assigned or sold to parasitical trolls; they lead to an increasingly inequal world where a few "owners" extort rents from everyone else. What they don't do is stimulate innovation, or even do a very good job of rewarding it. Many innovations occur to multiple people independently, and many more would if research spaces weren't so compartmentalized by corporate interests. And most patents fail to pass the basic test of unobviousness. In drugs, for instance, all it takes to get a patent is a new molecule -- something that chemists create all the time. Take away the patents, the monopoly pricing, the ridiculous marketing budgets, and all of that and you'd wind up with a world where Express Scripts had no reason to make doctors jump through hoops to get away with prescribing the drugs they regard as most fit for their patients. And that would be one less hassle for me on a day that has way too many of them.

Much of my politics, by the way, is driven by a desire to reduce the amount of unnecessary hassle I -- and by extension other people, since I figure that we're all pretty much alike -- have to deal with. One facet of this is that I don't get all worked up over "personal responsibility" -- the great bugaboo of the right. They think that people prove their personal worth by overcoming adversity, so they back policies that create a lot of it (like our current health care system, or our "education" and "justice" systems), although most of them wind up being races rigged by the rich for the rich.

Much of the day I try to process some music, and today hasn't been very productive. I woke up not only in pain but bleary-eyed, something that happens a lot. Today I have a lot of trouble copying down info from the microscopic print on CDs -- looks like my eyes will end my music review career before my ears do (although my grandfather and father lost most of their hearing by close to my age). Also had trouble concentrating: took me four plays of Christian McBride to get a little squib written down, even though the album was pretty obvious. Will Calhoun got two plays. Played Black Host twice and held it back for tomorrow. Listening to Daft Punk on Rhapsody as I write this.

One thing that slowed me down was interruptions. The HVAC guy came over for a Spring system check, so I watched what he did, thinking I could do all but the pressure test myself, and picking his mind on how to install a new condensate pump -- a project I keep procrastinating on although I've had all the parts for about a year now. Didn't start that but did knock off one little project that's been sitting around for a couple weeks. I have a little space in the downstairs half-bath between the vanity and the back wall; hard to get to, but wide enough I thought I could slip in one of those roll-out baskets they make for under-sink cabinets. I bought the unit and built and painted a bracket to hold it a couple weeks ago, but the space is so hard to reach it would be hell to secure -- and indeed it was, as every possible approach involved painful contortions. I couldn't get one wall anchor in, or get close enough to see why. (Probably hit a stud, which otherwise would have been good news.) And I left the wall side sitting loose on a pair of corner braces -- I would normally have screwed them tight but couldn't negotiate the angle. Still, pretty sure it's solid enough, so I felt like I got something done today.

And wrote this little "day in the life" screed -- more therapy for me than info for you. Some of this may just be inevitable wear and tear, but much of the hassle seems unnecessary. And the more I struggle with nuissances, the less good I get done.

Music Week/Jazz Prospecting

Music: Current count 21440 [21406] rated (+34), 629 [622] unrated (+7).

Lost some ground last week, after a good start which picked up some stragglers, finding some honorable mentions but nothing to add to the A-list. Rated count is up because I've adding things to the Rhapsody Streamnotes file -- including a fair amount of jazz I didn't receive. (Including three new AUM Fidelity releases that finally make me feel not so bad about being jilted and dumped from their mailing list.) No Clean Feed package yet -- probably time to complain. Did get a package from Lithuania with tantalizing obscurities, including a 1974 item with a very young William Parker on bass (Melodic Art-Tet).

Streamnotes will run after A Downloader's Diary, whenever that's ready, certainly by the end of the month. Trying to keep up with the incoming jazz, but not worried about it. More bothered by everything else that's slipping, including a way overdue update to the Christgau website, and lots of seemingly imaginary projects of my own. I did manage to finish my "stone moat" around the back of the house -- just in time for it to get roughed up by yesterday's tornado. We didn't suffer any building damage, so whatever it was wasn't a real ground-touching tornado but it stripped a lot of leaves and twigs and deposited them in swirling patterns on our roof -- something I've never seen before.

Perry Beekman: So in Love: Perry Beekman Sings and Plays Cole Porter (2013, self-released): Guitarist-vocalist, based in Woodstock, NY; first album as far as I can tell, although he's "been playing in jazz clubs, and at private and corporate events throughout New York City for the past 25 years." Fifteen Cole Porter songs, backed by piano and bass. Hard to go wrong. B+(*)

Marc Bernstein & Good People: Hymn for Life (2012 [2013], Origin): Saxophonist, from New York but based in Denmark, lead instrument here is bass clarinet. Fourth album since 1999, quartet with Jacob Anderskov (piano), Jonas Westergaard (bass), and Rakalam Bob Moses (drums), plus featured singer Sinne Eeg. She has a remarkable voice, dark and smoky. B+(***)

Blue Cranes: Swim (2013, Cuneiform): Group, quintet with two saxes (Reed Walsmith and Joe Cunningham), keyboards (Rebecca Sanborn), bass (Keith Brush) and drums (Ji Tanzer); based in Portland, OR; handful of albums since 2007, including a remix of the last one (not counting an intervening EP). Long guest list this time, including strings on 5 (of 9) cuts. Big slabs of sound, nothing but volume to make you think they need more than one horn. B [advance]

Freddy Cole: This and That (2012 [2013], High Note): Nat's little brother, 14 years junior which makes him 81 now, finally found his mature voice a few years back and has been on a steady roll. Backed by pianist John Di Martino, with tasty guitar by arranger Randy Napoleon, and select sax and trombone spots. Scrounging a bit for songs he hasn't done before, but he even makes something of "Everybody's Talkin'." B+(***)

The Jay D'Amico Quintet: Tango Caliente (2012 [2013], Consolidated Artists Productions): Pianist, sixth album since 1983, the last three subtitled "Jazz Under Glass." First tango themed album, although he's done classical- and opera-themes. Expanded his trio to include Andrew Sterman on tenor sax and flute, and Richie Vitale on trumpet and flugelhorn -- nothing that will be mistaken as authentic. Nothing caliente here; don't know the Spanish for "lukewarm," but it's not even that. C+

Marko Djordjevic & Sveti: Something Beautiful 1709-2110 (2013, Goalkeeper): Drummer, from Serbia, studied at Berklee. Recorded first album as Sveti in 1995. Group now is a piano trio (Bobby Avey and Desmond White) with tenor sax added on half the tracks (Eli Degibri and Tivon Pennicott, three cuts each). All originals. B+(**)

Satoko Fujii Ma-Do: Time Stands Still (2011 [2013], Not Two): One of pianist Fujii's many groups, with Natsuki Tamura on trumpet, Norikatsu Koreyasu on bass, and Akira Horikoshi on drums: their third and final album together -- Koreyasu died of a heart attack shortly after. Some typically fine moments from Fujii and (especially) Tamura, but overall a bit subdued, almost poignant in the end. B+(**)

Satoko Fujii New Trio: Spring Storm (2013, Libra): Japanese pianist, has a lot of albums but not many conventional piano trios. This one has Todd Nicholson on bass and Takashi Itani on drums. Some fine examples of her impressive block chording and much more in a more melodic vein. B+(***)

Laszlo Gardony: Clarity (2012 [2013], Sunnyside): Pianist, b. 1956 in Hungary, came to US in 1983 to study at Berklee. Tenth album since 1986, a solo, all original material, inching up to a strong rhythmic vamp at the end. B+(***)

I Compani: Extended (2013, Icdisc): Dutch group, founded by saxophonist Bo van de Graaf around 1985, ten or so albums since then, their favorite subject the film music of Nino Rota, although another is Sun Ra, who provides the only non-Rota cover here, plus a song title. As the title suggests, the band has been beefed up here, to as many as 24 members, which can mean massive or mayhem but is usually slyly amusing. Weak spot is the vocals, a mix of art song and opera that easily rubs me the wrong way. B+(*)

Richard Lanham: Thou Swell (1998 [2013], RL Productions): Singer, started out with his brothers in a doo-wop group called the Tempo Tones -- YouTube has a video dated 1957, and Discogs lists one song on an obscure, undated compilation -- and went on to sing with King Curtis, did something with Wynton Kelly, joined another group called the Boateneers -- can't find any evidence of them -- and so forth, eventually recording this debut album, which in turn was shelved for fifteen years. Tenor saxophonist Jerry Weldon arranged, the songs notably checking Ray Charles and Nat Cole, with some gospel and calypso worked in, all of which are to his taste. B+(*)

Ivan Lins: Cornucopia (2012 [2013], Sunnyside): Brazilian singer-songwriter, b. 1945, scored his first hit in 1970 and has been a major figure ever since, with over 35 albums. This one is a major production, backed by the SWR Big Band, singer Paula Morelenbaum, Themba Mkhize's South African Choir, bassist Nilson Matta, and lots of extra percussionists. B+(**)

Miki Purnell: Swingin' to the Sea (2013, Sweet and Lovely Music): Standards singer, one original on this her debut album. From San Diego, where she maintains a day job as a family practice physician. Likes vocalese (titles like "Bluesette" and "A Night in Tunisia"), doesn't scat much, has a slightly girlish voice that grows on you. Guests Tamir Hendelman (piano) and Lori Bell (flute) produce. Nice, delicate reading of "The Nearness of You," and her "Swinging on a Star" is utterly delightful. B+(*)

Sherri Roberts: Lovely Days (2011-12 [2013], Blue House/Pacific Coast Jazz): Standards singer, fourth album, backed by pianist Bliss Rodriguez and nothing more -- she handles it well, but it doesn't feel like much, especially when the pace turns glacial on "Moon River." B

Wallace Roney: Understanding (2013, High Note): Trumpeter, has at least 16 albums since 1987, basically a mainstream hard bop guy although he's been dabbling with electronics the last few albums. No such electronics here: back to basics, and crank it up a bit. He'a also replaced his brother, saxophonist Antoine Roney, with Arnold Lee on alto and Ben Solomon on tenor. Mostly covers from the hard bop years, including two each from McCoy Tyner and Duke Pearson. One original each by Roney and Solomon. Nothing new here, but it does smoke. B+(**)

Anna Webber: Percussive Mechanics (2012 [2013], Pirouet): Plays flute and tenor sax, originally from British Columbia, studied at McGill and moved to New York. Second (or third) album, recorded in Germany, with clarinet/alto sax, piano, vibes/marimba, bass, two drummers -- no names I recognize -- the emphasis on jangly, off-center percussion. All original compositions. B+(*)

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

Susanne Abbuehl: The Gift (ECM): advance, June 11
Laura Ainsworth: Necessary Evil (Eclectus): June 25
David Ake: Bridges (Posi-Tone)
Kenny Barron: Kenny Barron & the Brazilian Knights (Sunnyside)
Ketil Bjørnstad: La Notte (ECM): advance, June 11
Michel Camilo: What's Up? (Okeh)
The Convergence Quartet: Slow and Steady (No Business)
Correction With Mats Gustafsson: Shift (No Business): advance
Roger Davidson: Journey to Rio (Soundbrush, 2CD)
Gene Ess: Fractal Attraction (SIMP)
Joel Harrison 19: Infinite Possibility (Sunnyside)
Julia Hülsmann Quartet: In Full View (ECM): advance, June 11
Yoron Israel & High Standards: Visions: The Music of Stevie Wonder (Ronja Music)
Bob James & David Sanborn: Quartette Humaine (Okeh)
Keith Jarrett/Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette: Somewhere (ECM)
Eugenie Jones: Black Lace Blue Tears (self-released)
Annie Kozuch: Mostly Jobim (self-released): June 25
Brian Landrus Kaleidoscope: Mirage (Blueland)
Aaron Lebos: Reality (self-released)
Steven Lugerner: For We Have Heard (NoBusiness/Primary): advance
Melodic Art-Tet (1974, No Business)
Evan Parker/Barry Guy/Paul Lytton: Live at Maya Recordings Festival (No Business)
Gary Peacock/Marilyn Crispell: Azure (ECM): advance, June 11
Carline Ray: Vocal Sides (Carlcat)
Cécile McLorin Salvant: WomanChild (Mack Avenue)
Vandeweyer/Van Hove/Lovens/Blume: Quat: Live at Hasselt (No Business)

Weekend Roundup

After a lazy week, some more links to ponder:

Igor Bobic: Obama Promises to Hold IRS Accountable on 'Outrageous' Targeting: Given the history of the federal government harrassing left-wing political organizations, "outrageous" isn't the first word that pops into my mind regarding the revelations that some IRS personnel singled out "tea party" group applications for review of 501(C) status. My reaction was more like a giggle, but then I found out that none of the "targeted" organizations were actually denied. I'm not expert in the relevant law, but I do know that a peace organization I'm close to has both a 501(C) fund that is strictly non-political ("educational") and another funding stream that isn't tax exempt but can be used for more political activities (although in practice it isn't used for anything partisan or electoral). So it doesn't exactly surprise me that "tea party" groups would skirt that law: they are primarily political propaganda outlets, funded by rich right-wingers who can use the tax-exempt feature to stretch their self-interested bucks. Unlike most of the people who donate to our little peace group. (We haven't itemized deductions in many years, so our donations don't save us a dime on our taxes.) Obama is right that the IRS should be non-partisan, but his reaction shouldn't be an outrage that feeds into enemy talking points. (For instance, I see Glenn Beck now claiming that the "IRS scandal" is "all connected" with the Benghazi attack and the Boston bombings. On the Republicans' ability to keep these pseudo-scandals in the news cycle, crowding out real issues, see Julian Rayfield: Sunday Shows Round-Up: All About the IRS and Benghazi. As for real but ignored issues, see Conor Friedersdorff: The Biggest Obama Scandals Are Proven and Ignored -- a list Republicans don't care about or even applaud.)

See Connie Cass: A Look at Why the Bengazi Issue Keeps Coming Back for a useful review of what happened there and who said what when. Of the various facts, the one that jumps out at me was that the "US consulate" in Benghazi was actually a CIA station, and aside from Ambassador Stevens the people involved were CIA agents and contractors, so the instinct to lie and cover up is deeply ingrained. The other key point is that the real political issue here was Obama's decision to intervene in Libya's civil war and help ouster Moammar Gaddafi. Obama promised not to put US military forces on the ground in Libya, but it seems inevitable that the CIA were active, routing guns and information to anti-Gaddafi forces -- some of which were bound to be anti-American Islamists (proving again how little the CIA learned from Afghanistan, where US clients included future leaders of the Taliban and indeed Osama Bin Laden himself).

Of course, intervention in Libya isn't on the Republican's own "talking points": they'd rather attack the administration for trying to substitute "extremists" for "terrorists," mostly in the belief that their language is a more potent stimulus to further US-backed wars in the region. Even there, what they loathe Obama for isn't that he hasn't been belligerent enough for their taste -- excepting McCain and Graham, of course, who never met a war they didn't want to plunge into -- but that Obama isn't jingoistic enough.
Paul Krugman: How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled: Book review of: Neil Irwin: The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire (Penguin); Mark Blyth: Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford University Press); and David A. Stockman: The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America (Public Affairs). But starts off with the Reinhart-Rogoff fiasco -- the paper that claimed that when a nation's debt/GDP ratio crosses the 90% mark the economy sinks into catastrophe, but turned out to be wrong in so many ways:

The real mystery, however, was why Reinhart-Rogoff was ever taken seriously, let alone canonized, in the first place. Right from the beginning, critics raised strong concerns about the paper's methodology and conclusions, concerns that should have been enough to give everyone pause. Moreover, Reinhart-Rogoff was actually the second example of a paper seized on as decisive evidence in favor of austerity economics, only to fall apart on careful scrutiny. Much the same thing happened, albeit less spectacularly, after austerians became infatuated with a paper by Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna purporting to show that slashing government spending would have little adverse impact on economic growth and might even be expansionary. Surely that experience should have inspired some caution.

So why wasn't there more caution? The answer, as documented by some of the books reviewed here and unintentionally illustrated by others, lies in both politics and psychology: the case for austerity was and is one that many powerful people want to believe, leading them to seize on anything that looks like a justification.

Here's a very good explanation of how recessions (depressions) happen, especially following a prolonged expansion of debt:

All that was needed to collapse these houses of cards was some kind of adverse shock, and in the end the implosion of US subprime-based securities did the deed. By the fall of 2008 the housing bubbles on both sides of the Atlantic had burst, and the whole North Atlantic economy was caught up in "deleveraging," a process in which many debtors try -- or are forced -- to pay down their debts at the same time.

Why is this a problem? Because of interdependence: your spending is my income, and my spending is your income. If both of us try to reduce our debt by slashing spending, both of our incomes plunge -- and plunging incomes can actually make our indebtedness worse even as they also produce mass unemployment.

Krugman could have extended these paragraphs into a tutorial on how [Keynesian] macroeconomics has learned how to ameliorate and reverse recessions, but he wound up illustrating the principles negatively, by showing how actual central bankers ignored standard prescriptions and made their economies worse. The key insight is that if my income is someone else's spending, and others in the private sector aren't spending, that deficit can be made up by having government spend more. In other words, all it takes to avoid disaster is the political will to deliberately do something constructive about it. That will power was undone by a coalition of bankers and conservative politicians, partly because they fixated on threats (to them, anyway) that were mostly imaginary, and mostly because they didn't give a damn about the hardships their welfare forced on everyone else.

Krugman notes how many advocates of austerity see it as a morality play -- as Andrew Mellon put it "to purge the rottenness" from the system (nor is this view limited to curmudgeonly bankers; see Alex Pareene: Kinsley Loves Austerity Because It Is "Spinach") -- and he finds examples in Stockman's book (a tirade against one "spree" after another). Krugman then adds:

So is the austerian impulse all a matter of psychology? No, there's also a fair bit of self-interest involved. As many observers have noted, the turn away from fiscal and monetary stimulus can be interpreted, if you like, as giving creditors priority over workers. Inflation and low interest rates are bad for creditors even if they promote job creation; slashing government deficits in the face of mass unemployment may deepen a depression, but it increases the certainty of bondholders that they'll be repaid in full. I don't think someone like Trichet was consciously, cynically serving class interests at the expense of overall welfare; but it certainly didn't hurt that his sense of economic morality dovetailed so perfectly with the priorities of creditors.

It's also worth noting that while economic policy since the financial crisis looks like a dismal failure by most measures, it hasn't been so bad for the wealthy. Profits have recovered strongly even as unprecedented long-term unemployment persists; stock indices on both sides of the Atlantic have rebounded to pre-crisis highs even as median income languishes. It might be too much to say that those in the top 1 percent actually benefit from a continuing depression, but they certainly aren't feeling much pain, and that probably has something to do with policymakers' willingness to stay the austerity course. [ . . . ]

I'd argue that what happened next -- the way policymakers turned their back on practically everything economists had learned about how to deal with depressions, the way elite opinion seized on anything that could be used to justify austerity -- was a much greater sin. The financial crisis of 2008 was a surprise, and happened very fast; but we've been stuck in a regime of slow growth and desperately high unemployment for years now. And during all that time policymakers have been ignoring the lessons of theory and history.

It's a terrible story, mainly because of the immense suffering that has resulted from these policy errors. It's also deeply worrying for those who like to believe that knowledge can make a positive difference in the world. To the extent that policymakers and elite opinion in general have made use of economic analysis at all, they have, as the saying goes, done so the way a drunkard uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination. Papers and economists who told the elite what it wanted to hear were celebrated, despite plenty of evidence that they were wrong; critics were ignored, no matter how often they got it right.

It would take a much longer piece, but at some point it would be worth breaking out the things that constitute "immense suffering": the unfairness of so much unemployment; discrimination against all sorts of marginalized workers, especially the old (who policymakers expect to work longer and longer) and the young (who face extra difficulties in starting careers, and in many cases start with unprecedented debt burdens); and much more. Nor is public spending only needed to counterbalance the drop in private spending -- the need for infrastructure and public goods has never been greater, and the austerity fixation is crippling us (physically, mentally, aspirationally).