Tuesday, November 13, 2018


Music Week

Music: current count 30591 [30559] rated (+32), 300 [292] unrated (+8).

Once again, a long, slow slog through Weekend Roundup links pushed Music Week into Tuesday. I wrote a brief summary/introduction Monday evening, and was prepared to post then, but figured I'd roll this post into the same update. Then I found myself spending a few hours Tuesday afternoon adding links -- generally trying to limit myself to items posted by Sunday, but wound up adding a few new ones in the end.

For instance, since I already had a long list of Matthew Yglesias links, I added one called The 2018 electorate was older, whiter, and better educated than in 2016 that I ultimately decided was misleading: those are shifts that occur in every midterm election from the previous presidential election, because many fewer people vote in midterms. On the other hand, you get the exact opposite effect if you compare 2018 to 2014, 2010, etc. And that happened precisely because many more people voted in 2018 than in 2014, 2010, . . . in fact, you have to go back to 1966 to find a midterm election with higher voter participation (see Camila Domonoske: A Boatload of Ballots: Midterm Voter Turnout Hit 50-Year High). This year's turnout was 47.5%, down from 60.1% in 2016, but way up from 36.7% in 2014.

Still, I had to stop somewhere, so I left four Tuesday Yglesias links for next week: the most important is Democrats' blue wave was much larger than early takes suggested. Also especially interesting is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slams Amazon's imminent arrival in Queens. I'm not sure that the left much less Democrats in general have developed a coherent response to the repeated scamming of states and cities by big corporations like Amazon -- and the list goes on forever, ranging from the $4 billion Foxconn con in Wisconsin to the dozens of local outrages we fend with every year here in Wichita -- but this one has the makings of serious public exposure.

As for music, it's been a fairly typical week. Solid rate count, would have been higher except for a new 3-CD Art Pepper archive set, followed by an older (and even better) 4-CD set that I had only heard a sampler from at the time. Late last week I got Downbeat's December issue with their 83rd Annual Readers Poll results, so I started out by checking out leading albums I hadn't heard. I think I had only heard 5 of the top 10 new albums -- also (less surprising) 5 of the top 10 historical albums -- so I had some work to do there. Most of those were on last week's list (Chick Corea/Steve Gadd, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra/Wynton Marsalis, Joey Alexander, Kurt Elling, and further down Esperanza Spalding), although the only missing historical album I found was Jimi Hendrix's Both Sides of the Sky, which led me to the old one below.

First Rays of the New Rising Sun was the only non-jazz album on this week's list until Sunday, when ventured into a batch of country albums in Robert Christgau's Expert Witness. I don't think the Pistol Annies album is as good as he says, but figure it's good enough, as are the others (Becky Warren, Mandy Barnett, and Robbie Fulks/Linda Gail Lewis -- the latter was an A- here some weeks ago).

I haven't done an update of the Christgau Consumer Guide database since late January: initially because it's takes enough work I tend to put it off, but then I suffered a one-two punch as first my local server than my public server crashed. When I pulled the data back from archive, I ran into a character set incompatibility that made it impractical to update the database (i.e., there was no point changing anything until the underlying problem was fixed). I floundered with it for a while, then put it off, working on other things instead. Finally I took another shot at it last week, and got to the root of the problem (a hidden flag in the server-side export utility that I hadn't run into before). Once I got a clean copy of the database, I started adding in more recent reviews. I'm up through September now, and will catch up in a couple days (maybe tonight).

I should be able to just update the database without reconciling the entire website. Since the server crash, I've been doing limited incremental updates every week (instead of waiting months, as was my previous custom). There are tradeoffs: I could wind up forgetting something, but I'm in the middle of a bunch of programming changes because a lot of functions have been dropped from PHP 7 (which is what I'm running locally, vs. PHP 5 on the public server). Until I get all of those things fixed (hundreds of changes) I don't dare do a full synch up. In the past I've always done database and website file updates at the same time, but they are independent enough I should be able to do each as needed. I guess we'll see.


New records rated this week:

  • Richie Cole: Cannonball (2018, RCP): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Andrew Cyrille: Lebroba (2017 [2018], ECM): [r]: B+(***)
  • Josephine Davies: Satori (2016 [2017], Whirlwind): [r]: A-
  • Josephine Davies' Satori: In the Corners of Clouds (2018, Whirlwind): [bc]: A-
  • John Escreet: Learn to Live (2018, Blue Room): [r]: B+(*)
  • David Hazeltine: The Time Is Now (2018, Smoke Sessions): [r]: B+(*)
  • Fredrik Kronkvist: Kronicles (2017 [2018], Connective): [r]: B+(**)
  • Chris Lightcap: Superette (2018, The Royal Potato Family): [bc]: B+(*)
  • Donny McCaslin: Blow. (2018, Motéma): [r]: B+(*)
  • Makaya McCraven: Universal Beings (2017-18 [2018], International Anthem): [r]: A-
  • John O'Gallagher Trio: Live in Brooklyn (2015 ]2016], Whirlwind): [r]: B+(***)
  • Pistol Annies: Interstate Gospel (2018, RCA Nashville): [r]: A-
  • Nikita Rafaelov: Spirit of Gaia (2016-17 [2018], Gotta Let It Out): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Rudy Royston: Flatbed Buggy (2018, Greenleaf Music): [r]: B+(**)
  • Jerome Sabbagh/Greg Tuohey: No Filter (2017 [2018], Sunnyside): [r]: B
  • Yuhan Su: City Animals (2018, Sunnyside): [r]: B+(**)
  • Subtone: Moose Blues (2018, Laika): [r]: B+(*)
  • Harry Vetro: Northern Ranger (2018, T.Sound): [cd]: B+(**)
  • Cuong Vu 4Tet: Change in the Air (2017 [2018], RareNoise): [bc]: B+(**)
  • Becky Warren: Undesirable (2018, self-released): [r]: A-
  • Jeff Williams: Lifelike (2017 [2018[, Whirlwind): [r]: B+(***)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

  • Charlie Haden & Brad Mehldau: Long Ago and Far Away (2007 [2018], Impulse): [r]: A-
  • Keith Jarrett: La Fenice (2006 [2018], ECM, 2CD): [r]: B+(*)
  • Art Pepper: The Art Pepper Quartet (1956 [2017], Omnivore): [r]: A-
  • Art Pepper: Unreleased Art Pepper Vol. 10: Toronto (1977 [2018], Widow's Taste, 3CD): [cd]: A-

Old music rated this week:

  • Jimi Hendrix: First Rays of the New Rising Sun (1968-70 [1997], MCA): [r]: A-
  • Joakim Milder: Ways (1990-92 [1993], Dragon): [r]: B+(*)
  • Red Mitchell/Joakim Milder/Roger Kellaway: Live in Stockholm (1991 [1993], Dragon): [r]: B+(**)
  • Art Pepper: Blues for the Fisherman: Unreleased Art Pepper Vol VI (1980 [2011], Widow's Taste, 4CD): [r]: A-


Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • The 14 Jazz Orchestra: The Future Ain't What It Used to Be (Dabon Music): January 1
  • Anguish: Anguish (RareNoise): November 30
  • Eraldo Bernocchi: Like a Fire That Consumes All Before It (RareNoise): advance, November 30
  • Magnus Broo Trio: Rules (Moserobie)
  • The Gil Evans Orchestra: Hidden Treasures Monday Nights: Volume One (Bopper Spock Suns Music): December 7
  • Adam Forkelid: Reminiscence (Moserobie)
  • David Friesen: My Faith, My Life (Origin, 2CD): November 16
  • Thomas Marriott: Romance Language (Origin): November 16
  • Joakim Milder/Fredrik Ljungkvist/Mathias Landraeus/Filip Augustson/Fredrik Rundkvist: The Music of Anders Garstedt (Moserobie)
  • Jay Thomas With the Oliver Groenewald Newnet: I Always Knew (Origin): November 16
  • Piet Verbist: Suite Réunion (Origin): November 16
  • Aida Bird Wolfe: Birdie (self-released): November 15

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