Blog Entries [50 - 59]

Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Music Week

August archive (final).

Music: Current count 44745 [44701] rated (+44), 24 [30] unrated (-6).

Calendar has today as the last Monday in August, so I should be wrapping up the monthly archive and starting a new one for September. But I'm finding it hard to move ahead, maybe because I feel like I've accomplished so little this summer. Made very modest progress on some of my projects, but too little to mention. Did come up with a healthy set of reviews this week, most of which surprised me.

I did publish a third Notes on Everyday Life column on Saturday, Bernie Sanders Finds It's OK to Talk Like an Old Lefty. This was occasioned by reading his post-2020 campaign book. I'm thinking about follow it up this week with a "More Thoughts" piece, as I find myself with some:

  1. I might start with the section on policies (pp. 265-275), which offer various combinations of impossible, unreliable, insufficient, and vague, not that they don't dance around real problems. I doubt I can (or should) posit an alternate list, at least until we sort through some other considerations.
  2. I have a short point on the the "failure" of his 2020 campaign -- quotes because I'm not sure he wanted to win, although losing to Biden wasn't really optimal either.
  3. Another short point on how he was first out of the gate with his anti-oligarchy tour against Trump, even though he has no real chance for a 2028 run.
  4. Some thoughts about how to focus the "anger about capitalism" he recognizes into a way of talking and formulating policies. People are pretty heavily armored against his old left critique, and my new left critique hasn't fared much better, but misgivings about capitalism are much more broad-based than we credit, and that suggests approaches we haven't really explored.

The last point will have to be very schematic: I haven't really figured it out yet, and doubt I could explain it briefly if I had. One idea is to try to formulate each postulate as a end (telos) and a set of initial paths toward it. For example, if your end is a full right to quality health care, what are the practical steps that move you in that direction? Bernie's Medicare-for-All is a pretty big step, but one that's hard to sell whole (and does it still work if it's cut up into an ACA-style compromise?). I have some thoughts, but no time to go into them here.

There's also a section on media, another subject worth looking into, but while Sanders has valid complaints, but they're not all that useful. There's little that can be done with policies -- not that a number of past policy decisions haven't made the situation worse. Given that there's no practical way to make media trustworthy, the only real alternative is to get viewers and readers to be more wary, and more critical. Neil Postman argued that the highest goal of education is to equip us with finely-tuned bullshit detectors. That the media fails so often in this regard cannot be chalked up to a shortage of bullshit to detect.

One need hardly add that the point of Trump's assault on education is to dull critical senses, or to obliterate them altogether. Why not turn this around on them, pointing out not just what they're trying to get away with, but how them are doing it. It's not as if the public isn't already skeptical of the Fake News Lamestream Media. One thing I've found in life is that it's virtually impossible to restore shattered faiths (e.g., my own early and quite fervent belief in religion, patriotism, and free enterprise). You'd have a better chance of building on what they already find credible, which is that the whole system is rotten. Then show how Trump is part of that rot, and not a fix. His desire to turn American history into some sort of catechism isn't just dogmatic. It's some kind of lobotomy.

One reason I'm having trouble facing September is that I had this schedule in my mind about the 20th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll: we'd make some key website design decisions in August, then start qualifying voters in September, so when November came around the website and mailing lists would be ready, and the poll would deploy like clockwork. Thus far none of that's happened. I'll try to get some messages out in the next week or two, to get the ball rolling. I run an "admin" email list for people who would like to help out, or just act as a sounding board for my ruminations, so if you're interested in joining that, let me know. If you know of anyone who should be voting but isn't, let me know -- or better still, get them to contact me. I'll post more info when I have some.

PS: I posted this a day late, basically because I ran out of energy Monday night, and still wanted to mention the jazz poll. Spent most of the day working on the garage wood pile. I didn't make a lot of progress, but I did make a little. Should be done this week (although rain could spoil tomorrow). I thought about pulling Monday's records forward here, but I figure I won't have much next week -- I'm finally optimistic about my home projects, which will cut down on my listening/writing time. Besides, plenty already below. (Although I might as well sneak in cover pics for two surprise A- records next week.) I still haven't done the monthly cutoff, but will probably treat the rest of the week as the first of September.

New records reviewed this week:

Eric Alexander & Vincent Herring: Split Decision (2025, Smoke Sessions): Tenor and alto sax, mainstream, both came up in the 1990s (late 1980s for Herring), third album styled as a joust (after 2005's The Battle and 2012's Friendly Fire), backed by Mike LeDonne (piano), John Webber (bass), and Lewis Nash (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Barry Can't Swim: Loner (2025, Ninja Tune): Scottish electronica producer Joshua Mainnie, second album. B+(***) [sp]

Alain Bédard Auguste Quartet: Particules Sonores (2024, Effendi): French Canadian bassist, side credits back to 1985, second Auguste Quartet album, with Mario Allard (saxes), Marie-Fatima Rudolf (piano), and Michel Lambert (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Hayes Carll: We're Only Human (2025, Hwy 87): Country singer-songwriter, albums since 2002, most real good and some brilliant. More of the former here, some of the latter. A- [sp]

Sharel Cassity: Gratitude (2023 [2025], Sunnyside): Alto saxophonist, half-dozen albums since 2008, star-studded rhythm section here -- Cyrus Chestnut (piano), Christian McBride (bass), Lewis Nash (drums) -- with guest trumpet (Terell Stafford) and/or trombone (Michael Dease) on a couple tracks. B+(***) [sp]

Monique Chao Jazz Orchestra: Time Chamber (2023 [2024], Da Vinci Jazz): Pianist, born in Taipei, based in Milan, released a quartet album in 2021, a Subconscious Trio album in 2022, and now this big band album: sounds exceptional out of the gate, but runs on a bit past my interest. B+(**) [sp]

Bootsy Collins: Album of the Year #1 Funkateer (2025, Bootzilla/Roc Nation): Prime-time bassist for James Brown and George Clinton, recorded classic funk albums in the 1970s with his Rubber Band, mixed results since then, finds the old magic for the title track, and hints at it further on. Of the later developments, most of the rap just doubles down on the funk, but it runs long and spreads a bit too far. B+(***) [sp]

Adegoke Steve Colson & Iqua Colson With Andrew Cyrille/Mark Helias: Glow: Music for Trio . . . and Voice (2025, Silver Sphinx): Pianist, originally from New Jersey but associated with AACM, backed by bass and drums, with his wife on most songs -- she's accompanied him as far back as 1980's Colson Unity Troup. B+(***) [cd]

Deafheaven: Lonely People With Power (2025, Roadrunner): Black metal band, sixth album since 2011, easily the highest-rated album I hadn't heard this year (20 on my metacritic list, next one down was Heartworms at 57; 83/19 at AOTY), by definition useless to me, but tolerable at low volume (I know, not the point), but they do seem to have something special -- manic frenzy that comes through anyway. I'm not sure I wouldn't like them even more at even lower volume, but might miss the quiet bits that definitely help. B+(*) [sp]

DJ Koze: Music Can Hear Us (2025, Pampa): German electronica producer Stefan Kozalla, 7th studio album since 2000, lots more DJ mixes, singles, etc. B+(**) [sp]

Wayne Escoffery: Alone (2024, Smoke Sessions): Tenor saxophonist, born in London, based in New York, albums since 2001, impressive chops and tone but albums have been erratic. Title suggests solo, but he's backed by Gerald Clayton (piano), Ron Carter (bass), and Carl Allen (drums), so must just be his mood. B+(**) [sp]

Joe Farnsworth: The Big Room (2025, Smoke Sessions): Mainstream drummer, albums since 1998, Discogs counts 234 side-credits since 1992 (most often with Eric Alexander). Sextet with Jeremy Pelt (trumpet), Sarah Hanahan (alto sax). Joel Ross (vibes), Emmet Cohen (piano), and Yasushi Nakamura (bass), with all but the bassist bringing songs (one cover is "I Fall in Love Too Easily"). Flashy up front, but interest tails off. B+(*) [sp]

Steven Feifke: The Role of the Rhythm Section Vol. II (2023 [2024], La Reserve): Pianist, has several blbums since 2015, including a previous volume in 2022. He also has a septet and a big band, but this is just a trio, with Dan Chmielinski (bass) and Bryan Carter(drums). Mostly standards, with a serious focus on the rhythm. B+(**) [sp]

Béla Fleck/Edmar Castañeda/Antonio Sanchez: BEATrio (2025, Thirty Tigers): Banjo, harp, and drums trio. Fleck was born in New York, was inspired by Earl Scruggs to start in bluegrass, called his group the Flecktones, which recorded ten studio albums 1990-2011, but he has branched out in jazz and world music, here with the Colombian harpist and Mexican drummer (first initials BEA). B+(*) [sp]

Garbage: Let All That We Imagine Be the Light (2025, Infectious Music/Stunvolume/BMG): Rock band from Wisconsin, eighth album since 1995, singer Shirley Manson, drummer Butch Vig already had a reputation as a producer (Nirvana). Starts nice enough, but sharpens up considerably. Eventually you get to: "They hate your women/ They rob your children and they love their guns/ They're all liars, they're all users." A- [sp]

Jacob Garchik: Ye Olde 2: At the End of Time (2023 [2025], Yestereve): Trombonist, from San Francisco, based in New York, dozen or so albums since 2005, one called Ye Olde in 2015. Avant-fusion group then featured the multi-guitar attack of Brandon Seabrook, Mary Halvorson, and Jonathan Goldberger, with Vinnie Sperrazza on drums. This time Ava Mendoza replaces Seabrook, aside from two tracks with others (Miles Okazaki and Sean Moran on guitar, Josh Dion on drums). This got distributed early enough to show up on some mid-year ballots (I had my copy at the time; Discogs says this was "already being sold at concerts as early as July 11). Not much to my taste, but impressive enough I'm cutting it some slack B+(**) [cd] [08-29]

Bruce Gertz Quintet: Octopus Dreams (2024 [2025], Open Mind Jazz): Bassist, composer here, hype sheet says he's led "over 20 albums," Discogs lists his credits as starting in 1979, with "featuring" spots under Jerry Bergonzi and Mick Goodrick. Quintet here with trumpet (Phil Grenadier), tenor sax (Rick DiMuzio), piano, and drums. B+(*) [cd]

Roger Glenn: My Latin Heart (2025, Patois): Flute player, also vibes/marimba, alto sax, and vocals here, cover proclaims "a jazz legend revealed": the legend has one previous album, from 1976, plus 60+ side credits starting in 1970 with Mary Lou Williams, Mongo Santamaria, and Donald Byrd, later with Cal Tjader, and while he's slowed down since 2006, there are no real gaps. B+(**) [cd]

S.G. Goodman: Planting by the Signs (2025, Slough Water/Thirty Tigers): Folk singer-songwriter, from Kentucky, third album since 2020. B+(**) [sp]

Kelly Green: Corner of My Dreams (2024 [2025], La Reserve): Jazz singer-songwriter, plays piano, based in New York, several albums since 2017. Arrangements lean toward strings. B+(*) [cd]

Andy Haas/Brian g Skol: The Honeybee Twist (2024 [2025], Resonant Music): Duo, sax with live effects and drums. The saxophonist has a long list of interesting albums, from Martha & the Muffins through Radio I-Ching to recent works. This seems marginal, an experiment in moving through space and time, but interesting nonetheless. B+(***) [cd]

James Holden & Waclaw Zimpel: The Universe Will Take Care of You (2025, Border Community): Cover just offers surnames. Holden is a well-established (since 2006) electronica producer, with titles like The Idiots Are Winning and Imagine This Is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities. Zimpel is a Polish clarinetist, albums since 2008, that first with Chicago-based free jazzers (Dave Rempis, Tim Daisy), but also has a couple albums with Schackleton, so he's been down this road before. This starts off shimmering, goes beyond glitzy, and winds up somewhere in the stars. A- [sp]

Aruán Ortiz: Créole Renaissance (2024 [2025], Intakt): Cuban pianist, in US since 2002, based in New York, dozen-plus albums since 2012, this is his second solo, the first with a title that played off "Cuban" and "Cubism" (Cub(an)ism). This one again references art (e.g., surrealism), especially as used by modernist intellectuals of the African diaspora -- the centerpiece here namechecks many such movements. B+(***) [cd] [08-29]

Greentea Peng: Tell Dem It's Sunny (2025, AWAL): British neo-soul singer-songwriter Aria Wells, second studio album (first in 2021), closer to trip-hop here, but the singer is the focus, not just atmosphere. A- [sp]

PlainsPeak: Someone to Someone (2024 [2025], Irabbagast): New quartet led by Jon Irabagon (alto sax), all his pieces, with Russ Johnson (trumpet), Clark Sommers (bass), and Dana Hall (drums), the group name a nod to Chicago, where the skyscrapers are supposed to tower higher than any of the surrounding plains -- which is probably true as far as one can see from there, but the plains I know go higher (if not steeper). Still, a good example of freewheeling two-horn quartets. A- [cd]

Playboi Carti: [I Am] Music (2025, AWGE/Interscope): Atlanta rapper Jordan Terrell Carter, fourth album since 2017, most sources credit title as simply Music, but cover reads I Am Music (all caps, twice). For further confusion, the 30-track (76-minute) album cane out on 3/14, followed by similar 30-track V1, V2, and V3 releases through 3/20, and in April a 34-track variant called Sorry 4 Da Wait. (Discogs also lists "variants" 1-8.) B+(**) [sp]

Mike Pope: The Parts You Keep (2022 [2025], Origin): Bassist, has previous albums from 2002, 2012, and 2021. This is an ambitious work, with originals studded with Parker and Coltrane pieces, "That Old Feeling," and ending with a bit of classical music featuring his 85-year-old pianist mother. Otherwise, the pianist is Geoffrey Keezer, with Nat Smith on drums, and spots for trumpet (Randy Brecker), sax (Roxy Coss), guitar (Amaury Cabral), and strings (two tracks). B+(**) [cd]

PUP: Who Will Look After the Dogs? (2025, Rise): Canadian post-punk album, acronym stands for Pathetic Use of Potential, fifth album since 2013. B+(*) [sp]

Julius Rodriguez: Evergreen (2024, Verve): Originally a drummer, leaves that part to others here while he plays keyboards (including piano and organ), guitar, and electric bass, and does some programming. Gets occasional help on horns and elsewhere, including a Georgia Anne Muldrow vocal. B+(***) [sp]

Marc Seales With Ernie Watts: People & Places (2022-23 [2025], Origin): Pianist, side-credits from the 1980s but not much as leader until he landed on this label, first with Don Lanphere in 1996, on his own since 2004. Good to hear so much tenor sax. B+(***) [cd]

Kae Tempest: Self Titled (2025, Island): English poet/rapper, has published poetry collections since 2012, four plays, a novel, and studio album since 2014 (or 2011?). Music is very strong here, and so are the words. A- [sp]

Emma-Jean Thackray: Weirdo (2025, Brownswood/Parlophone): English singer-songwriter, started in jazz playing trumpet, second album, vocals are up front, synthesizers are her main instrument, and she's played everything else, aside from two guest spots. B [sp]

These New Puritans: Crooked Wing (2025, Domino): English band, fifth studio album since 2008. Caroline Polachek guests. B+(*) [sp]

Ben Thomas Tango Project: The Hat With the Grin and the Chuckle (2025, Origin): Vibraphone/bandoneon player, second group album (I missed the title when I originally logged this). Band includes two violins, clarinet, piano, and bass, with Thomas also credited for percussion. B+(**) [cd]

Water From Your Eyes: It's a Beautiful Place (2025, Matador): Chicago band, principally Rachel Brown (vocals) and Nate Amos (guitar/production), started with self-released albums in 2017, breakthrough was 2023's Everyone's Crushed. I was slow on that one, and I'm slow on this one, but it's distinctive and interesting enough that I keep coming back to it, even though I'm not sure what it's delivering. A- [sp]

Carlos "Zingaro"/João Madeira: Arcada Pendular (2023 [2025], 4DaRecord): Portuguese violin and bass duo, the former with many albums since 1988, many more side credits since 1969, but still no explanation for the quote marks (last name evidently Alves; use sometimes suggests a nickname, but quotes are as often omitted). I'm beginning to feel compromised here, as I would normally never give a violin-bass duo stream more than a cursory single pass, with some flavor of B+ depending on how it hit me, but Madeira keeps sending me CDs, and after 4-5 plays I start to love them. (Needless to say, there's no guarantee that I'll give your CD commensurate attention. But it happens on occasion, and with Madeira it's happened a lot.) A- [cd]

Zurhub [Mattan Klein/Ezequiel Hezi Joit]: Countryside Motorways (2024 [2025], Origin): Flute and guitar, backed by keyboards (Itay Simhovich), bass (Assaf Hakimi), and Dani Benedikt (drums). B [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru: Church of Kidane Mehret (1963-72 [2025], Mississippi): Ethiopian pianist (1923-2023), also plays organ and harmonium here, also happened to be an Ethiopian Orthodox nun, a selection of her 1963-96 solo recordings was a highlight of the Éthiopiques series. This is a 1972 album with two earlier cuts added. She's done some remarkable work, but too much organ here. B [bc]

Kinloch Nelson: Waiting: More Recordings, 1968-1976 (1968-76 [2025], Tompkins Square): Guitarist, in the American primitive vein, from Rochester, studied classical and jazz guitar (the latter with Gene Bertoncini, the former Stanley Watson), has been playing since 1967 ("performing since 1969"). This follows a 2019 Tompkins Square compilation, Partly On Time: Recordings 1968-1970, with several other self-released albums. B+(**) [sp]

Alick Nkhata: Radio Lusaka ([2025], Mississippi): Singer-songwriter from Zambia (1922-78), formed a quartet in the 1940s, which later became the Lusaka Radio Band, and later still the Big Gold Six, having some hits in the 1950s, and possibly after independence in 1964 (he had worked as a field recording engineer during WWII, and with the Central African Broadcasting Service until 1974). I don't see any dates, but Discogs lists his singles (where dated) between 1950-59. This sounds naively crude at first, but picks up midway (perhaps with a bit of calypso?). B+(***) [bc]

Old music:

The Colson Unity Troupe: No Reservation (1980, Black Saint): AACM pianist Adegoke Steve Colson and vocalist Iqua Colson, still together with a new 2025 album, released two albums under this name, this one with Wallace LaRoy McMilan (a saxophonist from St. Louis who also worked with Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, and Wadada Leo Smith 1975-82, but not much since), Reggie Willis (bass), and Dushun Mosley (percussion). The music is quite adventurous here, but the changes sorely try the vocalist, who winds up sounding operatic. B+(**) [sp]

Roger Glenn: Reachin' (1976, Fantasy): Flute player, also vibes, started in Latin jazz with Mongo Santamaria and in fusion with Donald Byrd, combines them on his first own album (and only album until 2025). Electric keyboards by Mark Soskin and Larry Mizell, electric bass (Paul Jackson) and guitar (Ray Obiedo), lots of percussion (bata, congas, shekere). Good funk as long as they keep it up. B+(*) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Gino Amato: Latin Crossroads 2 (Ovation) [08-13]
  • Earscratcher: Otoliths (Aerophonic) [10-10]
  • Fieldwork: Thereupon (Pi) [09-05]
  • Champian Fulton & Klas Lindquist: At Home (Turtle Bay) [05-02]
  • Zack Lober: So We Could Live (Zennez) [10-03]
  • Ravita Jazz: Alice Blue (Ravita Jazz) [08-15]
  • Steve Rosenbloom Big Band: San Francisco 1948 (Glory) [09-01]
  • Gonzalo Rubalcaba/Chris Potter/Eric Harland/Larry Grenadier: First Meeting: Live at Dizzy's Club (5Passion) [07-11]
  • Jaleel Shaw: Painter of the Invisible (Changu) [07-11]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, August 18, 2025

Music Week

August archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44701 [44663] rated (+38), 30 [36] unrated (-6).

I ended last week's post with long list of projects I hoped to get done last week. The only ones I've accomplished are "another newsletter" -- the piece there is titled Sheila Jordan (1928-2025) -- and a Loose Tabs (which ran to 277 links, 20669 words). Which is to say that once again I spent pretty much the whole week at the computer, hacking out long strings of words. Meanwhile, the house projects languished, and the "dinner for some very old friends" fell through. I don't think we even used the new car except for one grocery store trip.

I should do better this week. I did the first tiny bit of "setting up the website framework for the broader Notes on Everyday Life project": the website archive of the newsletters is here. It's currently hand-collated, but I can maintain that until some further inspiration comes along. The second part, which I've referred to as "the pile," will still take some design work, but I have a rough idea what I want to do there: each file will have a set of embedded markup, which can be used both by the PHP code that presents the file and by external programs, which can build up indexes and feed search tools. This doesn't have to be very fancy, but I have to think about index terms and trade-offs between simplified markup and extra work in output. I'm expecting at this point that I'll wind up using this software for several piles. It might even make sense to treat it as an open source software project, but right now I'm thinking that's Version 2, as making software reusable is a much bigger job than just getting something to work. (You'd think that this sort of thing must already exist somewhere, and it probably does, albeit with more complexity and more trouble than I need: one such example is Mediawiki, which was actually my original idea for such a tool.)

It only now occurs to me that the easiest pile to prepare data for might be music reviews. I've long been stymied by the idea of adapting an album-review database, like I used for Christgau, to my data, which has a slightly different granularity. (Apologies for not trying to explain what I mean by that.) But for practical purposes, it might suffice to just offer artist pages, each with an intro and all the relevant albums. As I already have most of the reviews sorted by artist, it wouldn't be hard to move them into the pile. The notebooks, on the other hand, will be more work, as they'll need to be sorted topically. (Perhaps AI could help there?)

Still, I hope to spend more time on the house projects this week. Those will pull me away from the computer, and result in fewer new records rated, but this is a slow season anyway. I'm surprised to find August half gone already. I need to start thinking about some preliminary jazz poll organization. I had hoped to use this time to restructure the website, but haven't come close to working on it. While the quality of what I do still seems satisfactory, the quantity has sunk considerably.

One thing I did take the time to do today was to vote in the DownBeat Readers Poll. I typically have zero effect there, and they don't publish ballots, so unless I publish mine, no one will notice or care who I vote for. I do, however, keep notes, so you can look them over. Main value to me comes from the album lists, as they serve as a checklist for my own listening. In this case, I've noted that I haven't heard 24 new jazz albums (18.8% of 128), 11 historic jazz albums (28.3% of 32), 36 blues albums (75.0% of 48), and 12 "beyond" albums (21.7% of 58). I'll work on whittling that down, but should also note that they didn't nominate tons of really good albums, and they nominated even more not-so-great ones.

I'm generally pleased with the newsletter response so far. I'm just starting to figure it out, and I'm trying to ease into it. I wasn't expecting to do a post on music, at least this early, but it suddenly seemed like the thing to do. Not sure what the next one will be, but I need to go back and re-read Loose Tabs and this one and see what comes to mind.

New records reviewed this week:

Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet: El Muki (2025, Saponegro): Peruvian trumpet player, established his group in 2005, composed all the pieces. B+(***) [cd]

David Bailis: Running Through My Mind (2025, Create or Destroy): Guitarist, leads a quintet, some nice work by Caroline Davis (alto sax). B+(**) [cd]

Miki Berenyi Trio: Tripla (2025, Bella Union): British singer-songwriter, born in London, father Hungarian, mother Japanese, singer-guitarist in Lush (1987-96), reunited briefly 2015-16, had another short-lived band Piroshka, first album under her own name here, with Oliver Cherer (bass), Moose (guitar), and a drum machine. B+(***) [sp]

Ron Blake: Scratch Band (2021 [2023], 7Ten33 Productions): Saxophonist (tenor/baritone/soprano here), had three albums on Mack Avenue 2003-08, only a couple since (but many more side credits, including 1990s work with Roy Hargrove). Trio with Reuben Rogers (bass) and John Hadfield (drums). I remember the 1990s as a great decade for mainstream tenor saxophonists, full of warmth with a bit of gruff. I wouldn't call this a great example, but it fills the role and fits the need. B+(***) [cd]

Rory Block: Heavy on the Blues (2025, M.C.): Blues singer-guitarist, debut album 1975, 75 now, 37th album, writes some but recent albums have been covers/tributes -- this appears to be a mix. [PS: Christgau notes a "detailed booklet," which I haven't seen, but could motivate extra spins that might put this over. On the other hand, I moved on to Maria Muldaur, which sounded solid A on first play.] B+(***) [bc]

Erika de Casier: Lifetime (2025, Independent Jeep Music): Singer-songwriter, born in Portugal, parents from Belgium and Cape Verde, based in Copenhagen, fourth album since 2019, trip-hop (more or less). B+(**) [sp]

Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band: New Threats From the Soul (2025, Sophomore Lounge/Tough Love): Indiana band, second album, singer-songwriter plays guitar/keys/more, has worked his way through several previous bands (State Champion, Tropical Trash, Electric Drywall Band, Equipment Pointed Ankh). Stretches 7 songs to 57:06. [PS: I bump this up after my wife raved about it.] B+(***) [bc]

Mike Freeman Zona Vibe: Circles in a Yellow Room (2019 [2025], VOF): Vibes/marimba player, originally from Omaha, based in New York, seems to have a 1991 debut, another in 2000, third Zona Vibe album since 2011. Sparkling, with trumpet (Guido Gonzalez), tenor sax/bass clarinet (Jim Gailloreto), and a lot of Latin tinge. B+(***) [cd]

Dylan Hicks & Small Screens: Avian Field Recordings (2025, Soft Launch): Singer-songwriter, based in Minneapolis, interesting as such since his 1996 debut, has lately turned toward jazz, or "ambient and meditative instrumentals" as he describes the six interludes separating seven real songs here. I'm not that much into ambient/meditative, and the songs tend to slip past me -- I think I hear a bit of Randy Newman here and there, but not the sarcasm. Or maybe Dave Alvin? Still, working while this is on is a pleasure, and what little attention I do pay is amply rewarded. A- [cd]

Bonnie J Jensen: Rise (2024-25 [2025[, MGM Metropolitan Groove Merchants): Jazz singer-songwriter from Australia, fifth album. B+(*) [cd]

Sheila Jordan With Roni Ben-Hur & Harvie S: Portrait Now (2023 [2025], Dot Time): Jazz singer, got her start chasing Charlie Parker when he played Detroit, and after 1951 in New York, where she married his pianist, Duke Jordan, studied with Lennie Tristano and Charles Mingus. She always sung, but remained a well-kept secret, even after George Russell gave her a feature on his 1962 album, which led to a single Blue Note album, Portrait of Sheila (1963), and well into the 1970s she made her living doing secretarial work. I encountered her on Roswell Rudd's 1974 album Flexible Flyer (or maybe it was Rudd's 1973 Numatik Swing Band -- in either case it must have been 1978 when I caught up), and she's been my favorite jazz singer ever since. (One of the first things that attracted me to Francis Davis was how much he appreciated Jordan.) She cut a second album in 1975, when she was 47, and never again paused. In 1977 she hit on the idea of recording only backed with a bass -- Arild Andersen (one of Russell's now-famous students from his Scandinavian exile days) on Sheila -- a format she's often returned to, notably with Cameron Brown and Harvie S (né Swartz). Harvie returns here, along with guitarist Roni Ben-Hur. Title refers back to her first album, but to make a point of how far she's come. She's not quite in perfect voice, but her ability to accentuate just the right syllables, salvaging standards like "Willow Weep for Me," and still maneuver around a piece as tricky as "Relaxing at the Camarillo" -- and turn it into a riveting story, not just a piece of scat gymnastics -- is uncanny. Regrets after deaths are common. Mine is that she never had a producer who could just let the tape run as they fed her with songs, like Norman Granz with Ella Fitzgerald, or Rick Rubin with Johnny Cash. I imagine it would be like lobbing softballs at Ted Williams. A- [sp]

Maria Muldaur: One Hour Mama: The Blues of Victoria Spivey (2025, Nola Blue): She started in Jim Kweskin's Jug Band back in the 1960s, went solo with a hit song and album in 1973, leaned increasingly to blues in the 1990s, and found her calling with her 2001 Memphis Minnie tribute (Richland Woman Blues), which brought her to Blue Lu Barker (2018) and now to Spivey, whose 1926-36 singles provide the juiciest of these 12 songs, many salacious but ending with the grim "T.B. Blues." Spivey made a comeback in the early 1960s, so there's a personal connection. Also worth noting that Spivey spent a lot of time fronting real jazz bands, so the fit here with backup by Jim Dapogny and Tuba Skinny is natural. Elvin Bishop and Taj Mahal are duet partners. A [sp]

Jesika von Rabbit: Bunnywood Babylon (2025, Dionysus): Singer-songwriter Jessica Leischow, from Wisconsin, second album, formerly fronted the band Gram Rabbit (5 albums, 2006-12). B+(**) [sp]

Jonathan Richman: Only Frozen Sky Anyway (2025, Blue Arrow): Singer-songwriter from Massachusetts, founded the Modern Lovers, their John Cale-produced debut album was recorded in 1972 but didn't appear until the punk/new wave explosion in 1976. I loved that album, and also his 1983 Jonathan Sings!, but not much more, and haven't his later albums, of which there are 20 or more. This is not bad, but unlikely to stick with me. B+(*) [sp]

Ross Thorn: Ross Thorn Tries Fitting In (2025, Casa De Copas): Folkie singer-songwriter from Duluth, has a couple previous albums on Bandcamp but none in Discogs, no credits given but cover pic shows him with a banjo and there's a fair amount of guitar and fiddle in the background. B+(***) [bc]

Chris Wabich: 1978 (Steep) (2024 [2025], ADW): Drummer, albums since 2007, "featuring" names on the cover: Josh Nelson (piano), Dan Lutz (bass). Presumably his pieces. Very nice. B+(***) [cd]

Morgan Wade: The Party Is Over (Recovered) (2025, Ladylike/Sony): Country singer-songwriter, fifth album since 2018, all aces (though I'm having a little trouble focusing here). B+(***) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Lonnie Johnson With Elmer Snowden: Blues & Ballads (1960 [2025], Craft): Bluesman, famed as a guitarist, recorded from 1925 on, landed on Prestige's blues label as the folk blues revival was kicking up. He sings and plays electric here, with Snowden on acoustic guitar. (Snowden is better known as a banjo player and as a jazz bandleader, including of the Washingtonians before Duke Ellington took over.) Also with Wendell Marshall on bass. The blues, including a surprising "St. Louis Blules," are fine. I'm less sure of the ballads. B+(*) [sp]

Edna Martinez Presents Picó: Sound System Culture From the Colombian Caribbean (1950s-70s [2025], Strut): Colombian DJ, based in Berlin, curated these dance tracks -- I hear there's a "detailed booklet," but haven't seen it, leaving me with no more than impressions that the music dates from the 1950s to 1970s, and while played by Colombian sound systems called "picós," the music is more likely African (especially Congolese) than local. (One review also notes Jamaican soca, Ghanaian highlife, Arab disco, and various Caribbean forms, like jibaro, descarga, rhumba, mambo, and gwo ka, as well as salsa, cumbia, and champeta). A- [sp]

Old music:

Alberta Hunter/Lucille Hegamin/Victoria Spivey: Songs We Taught Your Mother (1961 [1962], Bluesville): Three blues singers from the 1920s, rediscovered during the big folk blues revival c. 1960. The trio had their early work compiled by Document into 4-5 CDs each. Hunter (1895-1984) recorded one more album in 1961, then staged a fairly major comeback in 1980 with Amtrak Blues. Hegamin (1894-1970) only appeared on one more album (A Basket Full of Blues, with Spivey and Buddy Tate). Spivey was a decade younger (1906-76), and more active at least through 1965. They take turns, reviving their old hits, backed by a mix of old jazz hands, including Willie "The Lion" Smith (piano), J.C. Higginbotham (trombone), and Zutty Singleton (drums). B+(***) [sp]

Peter Ind: Looking Out (1958-61 [1962], Wave): English bassist (1928-2021), first album, mostly with guitar (Al Schackman or Joe Puma), piano (Ronnie Ball or Sal Mosca), a couple cuts with drums (Dick Scott), one with vocalist Sheila Jordan -- probably her first recording, already distinctive. The rest is equally engaging, with the bass mixed prominently (turns out some of it was overdubbed). B+(**) [sp]

Peter Ind: Jazz Bass Baroque (1987 [1988], Wave): First side continues his bass overdub experiments, ranging from "Bach" to "Lush Life." Second side is a live set with Daryl Anger (violin) and Martin Taylor (guitar). B+(**) [sp]

Peter Ind: Looking Out/Jazz Bass Baroque (1958-87 [1999], Wave): Two (or effectively three) albums crammed together, each interesting, together adds up to a nice overview. B+(**) [sp]

Lonnie Johnson With Victoria Spivey: Idle Hours (1961, Bluesville): Major blues singer-guitarist (1899-1970), made 130 recordings for Okeh 1925-32, still regarded as classics (see Steppin' on the Blues, 58 on Robert Santelli's blues albums list), including some duets with Spivey. He continued to work steady, including some time in dixieland bands, but by 1960 he was recording for Prestige's blues subsidiary. Her early string ended in 1936, but came back for this reunion. B+(**) [sp]

Sheila Jordan/Mark Murphy: One for Junior (1991 [1993], Muse): Two bebop singers, distinctive voices, fast dynamics, quick to sling the scat. I've always adored her, but I've never cared for what little I've heard by him. Title refers to the late painter Helen Mayer (aka Junior Morrow). Backed by Kenny Barron (piano), Harvie S (bass), and Ben Riley (drums), with Bill Mays (piano/synth) on two tracks. She's terrific, of course. He's, well, pretty decent. B+(**) [yt]

Sheila Jordan/Jose Carra/Bori Albero: En La Fundación Valparaiso (2018 [2024], Clasijazz): Part of a Spanish tour just shy of her 90th birthday, from three sets in Mojácar, a small town on the Mediterranean coast east of Granada, backed by local piano and bass (although she cites Cameron Brown as her bassist in "Sheila's Blues"). B+(***) [sp]

Stephan Kramer: Thank You Sheila (2018, House Master): German guitarist, seems to be his only album, cover adds: "with Chris Lachotta and Alexander Hoetzinger feat. Sheila Jordan." Recorded live in Munich, no date given, with Jordan entering on the second cut, and it's her record from then on out. Choice cut: "Lady Be Good" (on Ella Fitzgerald). Ends with a very nice guitar piece. B+(***) [sp]

Steve Kuhn & Toshiko Akiyoshi: Country and Western Sound of Jazz Pianos (1963, Dauntless): Two pianists, Kuhn's first album, Akiyoshi has credits back to 1954, most of the c&w standards ("Trouble in Mind," "Down in the Valley," "Along the Navajo Trail," etc.) not sounding all that country, with sparkling pianos backed by guitar (Barry Galbraith), bass (Dave Izenson/John Neves), and drums (Pete LaRoca). B+(*) [sp]

Steve Kuhn/Gary McFarland: The October Suite (1966 [1967], Impulse): Pianist, and composer/conductor, with Ron Carter (bass) and Marty Morell (drums), plus strings on the first side, woodwinds on the second. McFarland (1933-71) played vibraphone early on, led and/or produced/arranged albums from 1961 on, many with titles like Soft Samba and Big Band Bossa Nova (for Stan Getz). B+(*) [sp]

Steve Kuhn Quartet: Last Year's Waltz (1981 [1982], ECM): Piano trio with Harvie S (bass) and Bob Moses (drums), plus singer Sheila Jordan, a group listed on their previous (1980) album as Steve Kuhn/Sheila Jordan Band. Live at Fat Tuesday's. Starts with three Kuhn originals, which while exciting enough don't give Jordan much to work with. Then we get an 8:19 "I Remember You" which is just extraordinary. Second side starts with a jaunty piece by the bassist, and two more by Kuhn, before Jordan again gets to feast on covers (although don't miss Kuhn's detonation of Monk). A- [sp]

Roswell Rudd/Steve Lacy/Sheila Jordan: Blown Bone (1967-76 [1979], Philips): Trombonist, one stray track from a 1967 session, the rest from two sets in 1976 with Lacy (soprano sax), bass (Wilbur Little), drums (Paul Motian), The first of those 1976 sets adds Enrico Rava (trumpet), plus singer Jordan on two tracks. The other adds electric piano (Patti Brown), clarinet/soprano sax (Kenny Davern), and tenor sax (Tyrone Washington), with Louisiana Red singing a blues. B+(***) [yt]

Victoria Spivey: Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order: Volume 1 (11 May 1926 to 31 October 1927) (1926-27 [1995], Document): One of the classic female blues singer from the 1920s, recorded singles for Okeh 1926-28 (23 tracks here, plus more on Volume 2), with other labels up to 1937 (4 CDs today in this series). As is often the case for this label, lots of surface noise from the source 78s. But a cleaned up selection could be worth it. B+(**) [sp]

Victoria Spivey: Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order: Volume 2 (31 October 1927 to 24 September 1929) (1927-29 [1995], Document): Probably the rest of her Okeh singles -- the Victors start later in 1929 -- including duos with Lonnie Johnson and some tracks with jazz groups led by Clarence Williams and Henry Allen. Sound still dubious, but where it clears up some terrific music ensues -- especially with Allen's band riffing. B+(***) [sp]

Victoria Spivey: Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order: Volume 3 (1 October 1929 to 7 July 1936) (1929-36 [1995], Document): She recorded for Victor in 1930, and Brunswick in 1931. Not sure what else there is before some 1936 Decca sides (this ends with "T.B.'s Got Me Blues"), but this works in pieces with a few other leaders. Sound's better, especially on the closing jazz band sides. A- [sp]

Victoria Spivey: Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order: Volume 4 (30 August 1936 to 21 July 1937) (1936-37 [1995], Document): This seems to be the end of her early recordings, on Vocalion (some as Jane Lucas), stretched to 22 tracks with 5 extra takes. She continued performing up to 1951, often in music films and stage shows, but I'm not seeing any recordings until 1961, when Bluesville brought her back for several albums. She's become a remarkably poised singer, as songs you don't need her for like "Trouble in Mind" prove, and the bands swing. She clearly deserves a proper compilation. B+(***) [sp]

Victoria Spivey With Lonnie Johnson: Woman Blues! (1962, Bluesville): She gets the leads this time, and plays piano, while he plays guitar, and sings some, mostly seeming superfluous. B+(**) [sp]

Christian Stock Trio & Sheila Jordan & Adrian Mears: Straight Ahead (2000, YVP): German bassist, side-credits back to 1982 but not a lot of them, found himself leading a trio here with Karel Růžička (piano) and Walter Bittner (drums). Twelve tracks, with the singer in on four ("Autumn in New York," "Badbados," "Sail Away," and "Song of Joy"), the trombonist on three others. Nice pieces, limited interest. B+(*) [sp]

Aki Takase: ABC (1982, Union Jazz): Japanese pianist, started playing in US in 1978, moved to Berlin in 1988, where she married another notable pianist, Alexander von Schlippenbach. She recorded this early album in New York, with Cecil McBee (bass), Bob Moses (drums). Sheila Jordan sings to open, but after that the only voice is a bit of shading, if that. B+(**) [yt]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Maria Muldaur: One Hour Mama: The Blues of Victoria Spivey (Nola Blue) [07-21]
  • Aruán Ortiz: Créole Renaissance (Intakt) [08-29]
  • Carlos "Zingaro"/João Madeira: Arcada Pendular (4DaRecord) [07-11]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, August 17, 2025

Loose Tabs

This is an occasional collection of newsworthy links and comments, much less systematic than what I attempted in my late Speaking of Which posts. The new name comes from my extensive use of browser tabs. When I get around to cleaning up, I often find tabs opened to old articles I might want to comment on and/or refer back to. So these posts are mostly housecleaning, but may also serve as a very limited but persistent record of what 20+ years ago I started calling "the end of the American empire" and nowadays feels more like "the end of civilization." I collect these bits in a draft file, and flush them out when periodically. My previous one appeared 28 days ago, on July 20.

This file came together in several widely separated spurts, between which it slowly accreted. The time spread is such that I no longer have any real sense of structure or coverage. It's not clear to me what I looked at, and what I'm missing. Several pieces led to long digressions, some of which I may go back to and refine into distinct posts in my new Notes on Everyday Life newsletter. While whatever I write there will eventually show up on my website, I promise that it will be more focused there, as well as delivered direct to you via email, than the piles of scattered notes I've been assembling here. So please consider subscribing.

The first section here are major categories, where I didn't wait for a keynote article. These are not necessarily regular features.

Epsteinmania: As far as I'm concerned, the Epstein-Trump story is a complete waste of time. The facts have been around for a long time now, and hardly anyone outside of the news media and the kiddie pool of the DNC care. The only thing that keeps the story going is how Trump keeps finding novel ways to deny it. All he has to do to shut up, and it will be gone within a couple news cycles. That he keeps it going suggests that there are other things he doesn't want us to talk about. Indeed, there is a lot, as the Walsh article below utterly fails to disclose.

  • David Dayen [07-15] Jeffrey Epstein Is a Policy Issue: "It's about elite immunity, the defining issue in America for more than two decades." No, the defining issue is increasing inequality. Warping the (in)justice system is an inevitable side-effect, but Epstein isn't exactly proof for "elite immunity": no doubt he got favorable treatments, but he wound up dying in jail. Maybe Trump is proof, but under pretty extraordinary circumstances. (That Trump's exception will make the system even worse is extremely likely.) Also, I think the both-sidesism here is way out of bounds. I agree that Democrats suck up to the rich more than they should, but virtually all of them accept that there are rules that everyone (even presidents) have to live by. Trump sees power as purely partisan. Even if he only supports "elite immunity" for elites on his side.

  • Ryan Cooper [07-18] Epstein Signals the End of Donald Trump's Crackerjack Crisis Management Style: "For a decade, his chump fan base automatically believed his lies — until now."

  • Eric Schliesser [07-21] On the Epstein Files; and Corruption. "It is a curious fact that in our public culture hypocrisy is treated as a worse sin than many actual crimes."

  • James D Zirin [07-24] Epstein and Trump: Why We're Unlikely to See the Files: "Judges will probably keep the Epstein files sealed, Bondi seems unlikely to release anything, and the Supreme Court's version of blanket presidential immunity will thwart any criminal case against Trump."

  • Allison Gill [08-01] Someone Waived Ghislaine Maxwell's Sex Offender Status to Move Her to a Minimum Security Camp in Texas.

  • Maureen Tkacik [08-01] Making America Epstein Again: "Trump's transactional ethics are making the US a refuge for criminals. This mirrors something Israel has done for years." I'm a bit surprised by the Israel angle here, not that I have any reason to doubt it. More can be found here:

    • Mouin Rabbani [07-25] Israel: Safe Haven for Pedophiles? "An examination of Darryl Cooper's claim that Israel functions as a safe haven for criminals and pedophiles escaping justice."

  • Peter Rothpletz [08-02] The simple way Democrats should talk about Trump and Epstein: "The scandal has haunted the president in part because of a truth voters already feel: Republicans protect elites."

  • Rebecca Solnit [08-03] The problem is far bigger than Jeffrey Epstein: "Treating the scandal as an aberration misunderstands the global epidemic of violence against women." My first reaction was that this is an instance of claiming a story for one's other crusade, much like how every fire or hurricane gets turned into a lecture on global warming, or every case of fraud can be turned into an indictment of capitalism. That works, of course, because there is truth in the larger stories, but it can also cover up peculiarities that are interesting on their own. In this case, while Epstein may share in the bad habits of many other men, what's distinctive about his case is the extraordinary wealth he held, and was able to use to get his way. (I have no idea whether violence was involved or implied, as in most other cases of rape — a possible weak link in Solnit's argument — but power is almost always backed up with the threat of force.) Still, while I wouldn't have approached this story in this way, I agree with Solnit's conclusion:

    The piecemeal stories — "here is this one bad man we need to do something about" — don't address the reality that the problem is systemic and the solution isn't police and prison. It's social change, and societies will have changed enough when violence against women ceases to be a pandemic that stretches across continents and centuries. Systemic problems require systemic responses, and while I'm all for releasing the Epstein files, I want a broader conversation and deeper change.

    I'd just shift the focus to Epstein's wealth, and the great power we concede to people with such wealth. I'm not saying that every billionaire is inherently evil, but those who have impulses in that direction are empowered by their wealth to pursue them. Epstein is an example of that, and he's far from the only one.

  • Judith Butler [08-05] Trumpists against Trump: St Clair quoted this bit, while noting that "in the latest Pew Survey, Trump's popularity among his own voters has fallen by 10%." I'm skeptical. (The 10% certainly seems credible, as well more than that was based on gross misunderstanding of who they were voting for, but of this being the specific issue that moved them.)

    Trump insists that the whole Epstein affair is a "hoax" and that his own followers are "stupid" and "weaklings." Their reaction has been intense and swift, since Trump now sounds like the elitists who disparage them — elitists like Hillary Clinton, who called them "a basket of deplorables." Trump scoffs at their complaints, noting that his supporters have nowhere else to go. They feel not only deceived by their hero but demeaned, insulted and outraged, the way they felt when Democrats were in power.

    Still, Butler's point that Trump's a whiny bitch is on the mark, and more of his voters are likely to come around to that view, even if they can't find anyone else to vote for.

  • Bryan Walsh [07-26] Four stories that are more important than the Epstein Files [PS: This entry was the basis for Notes on Everyday Life: Four Stories]: This piece should have been an easy lay up. Instead, Walsh has done the impossible, and come up with four stories even more inane and useless than the Epstein Files:

    1. America's dangerous debt spiral: maybe if he was talking about personal debt, but he means the old federal debt sawhorse, which Trump is pumping up (but lying about, because deficits only matter when Democrats might spend them on people).
    2. A global hunger crisis: he's talking about places like Nigeria, with just one side mention of Gaza, even more casual than "surges in food prices driven by extreme weather"; while climate change could be a major story, the most immediate food crises in the world today are caused by war.
    3. A real population bomb: the complaint that American women aren't having enough babies.[*]
    4. A generational security challenge: here he's complaining about America not being able to produce enough ships and missiles, with the usual China fearmongering, but no regrets about squandering stockpiles on Ukraine and Israel.

    The title works as clickbait, as I imagine there are lots of people out there thinking there must be more important matters than Epsteinmania. And I could imagine this as an AI exercise: gimme four topics that sound big and important but aren't widely covered, except for scolding mentions by fatuous frauds. Still, as usual, natural stupidity is the more plausible explanation — at least the one my life experience has trained my neurons to recognize.

    To some extent, the Epstein-Trump scandal recapitulates the conspiracy-mongering after Vincent Foster's death. I don't care about either enough to sort out the sordid details. But this got me wondering about a 1990s edition of "Four stories that are more important than Vincent Foster's death." I'm not going to hurt my brain by trying to imagine what Walsh might come up with, but these strike me as the big stories of Clinton's first half-term:

    1. Clinton's surrender of his "it's the economy, stupid" platform, which he campaigned and won on, to Alan Greenspan and "the fucking bond market," effectively embracing Reagan's "greed is good" policies and "the era of big government is over."
    2. Clinton's surrender to Colin Powell of his promise to end discrimination against gays in the military, which was not only a setback for LGBT rights but the end of any prospect of a peace dividend following the end of the Cold War, as Clinton never challenged the military again; they in turn were able to dictate much of his foreign policy, laying the groundwork for the "global war on terror," the expansion of NATO, the "pivot to Asia," and other horrors still developing.
    3. Clinton's prioritization of NAFTA, which (as predicted) demolished America's manufacturing base, and (less publicized at the time) undermined the political influence of unions and triggered the mass influx of "illegal immigrants" — factors that Republicans have taken advantage of, not least because they could fairly blame worker hardships on Democrats.
    4. Clinton's health care fiasco, a bill so badly designed and ineptly campaigned for that it set the right to health care back by decades (while ACA was better, it still contained the corrupt compromises of the Clinton program, and still failed to provide universal coverage).

    It took several years to clarify just how important those stories actually were (or would become). It's taken even longer to appreciate a fifth story, which is arguably even greater and graver than these four: the commercialization of the internet. At the time, this was regarded as a major policy success, but one may have second thoughts by now. The Clinton economy was largely built on a bubble of speculation on e-businesses. While some of that bubble burst in 2000-01, much of it continues to inflate today, and its effect on our world is enormous.

    But in 1992-93, Republicans were so disgusted as losing the presidency to a hayseed Democrat like Clinton — especially one who claimed to be able to do their pro-business thing better than they could — that they latched on to petty scandal. They flipped the House in 1994, largely on the basis of checking account scandal. Bringing down Clinton was a bit harder, but started with flogging the Foster story. It grew more important over time, despite everyone agreeing that there was nothing to it, because it ensconced Kenneth Starr as Clinton's permanent prosecutor, uncovering the Lewinsky affair, leading to the sham impeachment, and more significantly, his circling of the wagons, which turned the DNC into his personal political machine, eventually securing Hillary Clinton's doomed nomination, and Trump's rise to power.

    I'm not really sure yet which four stories I'd pick if I had to write this article — mostly because there are so many to choose from, and they overlap and are replicated and reflected in various guises everywhere the Trump administration has influence. While the wars trouble me the most, and gestapo tactics initially directed at immigrants are especially flagrant, one also cannot ignore the gutting (and extreme politicization) of the civil service, the use of extortion to dominate various previously independent institutions (universities, law firms, media companies), the carte blanche given to fraud and corruption (with crypto an especially flagrant example of both), and the utter debasement of the "rule of law."

    There are also a whole raft of economic issues, which only start with fraud and corruption, but mostly stem from a shift of effective power toward corporations and their financier owners, increasing inequality and further entrenching oligarchy. The emerging Trump economy is not less efficient and less productive, it is increasingly unfair and unjust, and much fuller of precarity, which will sooner or later cause resentment and provoke resistance, sabotage, and possibly even revolution. Inequality is not just unfair. It is an acid which dissolves trust, faith, and good will, leaving only force as a means of preserving order. Sure, Trump seems cool with that, as well as the Hobbesian hell of "war of all against all," figuring his side has a big edge in guns, and maybe God on his side. But nearly everything we do in the world depends on trust that other people are going to be respectful, civil, orderly. It's hard to imagine coping in a world where our ability to trust the government, other institutions, and other people has decayed, stranding us in a savage jungle of predators.

    You might be wondering why I haven't mentioned climate change yet. I've long described failure to act on it as an opportunity cost — a choice due to political decisions to prioritize other things (like war), but so many opportunities have been squandered that one suspects more malign (or at least ignorant) interests. Although one cannot doubt human responsibility, it is effectively a force of nature now, beyond political agendas, so the more urgent concern is how does government copes with inevitable disasters. With Trump, no surprise that the answer is badly — even worse than under Biden — and not just in response but in preparation, even to the ability to recognize a disaster when one occurs.

    Climate change may well be the factor that destroys Trump: he can't keep it from happening, he has no empathy for victims when it does, he lacks the ways and means to respond adequately, and having denied it at every step along the way, he has no credibility when his incompetence and/or malice is exposed. It undermines his very concept of government, which crudely stated is as a protection racket, as the people who normally pay him for favors will soon find they are anything but protected. Sure, lots of poor people will be hurt by climate change, but the rich can take little comfort in that, because they own the property that will be devalued and in some cases destroyed — and even if it doesn't hit them directly, the insurance spikes will do the trick. Businesses and lenders will go under because they can't bear the risks, and no amount of blame-shifting Fox propaganda is going to cover that up.

    I could say similar things about AI, automation, and other technological advancements, but the issues there are more complex. Suffice it to say that Trump's let-the-market-and/or-China-decide stance (depending on who chips in the most) won't work. There is much more I could mention. Civil rights enforcement is dead. Does that mean old-fashioned racism will rebound? Antitrust enforcement is dead (provided you bribe the right people, as Paramount just did). Federal grants for arts and sciences are pretty much dead. So is any chance of student loan relief. There is very little but your own scruples to keep you from cheating on your taxes, and who has those these days? Want to talk about pollution? Measles? We're not even very far down the list.

    And the kicker is, instead of having all this ridiculous stuff to complain about, we're really in a position to do some extraordinarily good things for practically everyone on the planet. What's holding us back is a lot of really bad thinking. And it's not just Trump and his toady Republicans and their rabid fanbase, although they're easily the worst. I spend a lot of time reading Democrats on strategy, agenda, media, etc., and they still fall way short of what is needed, due to lack of understanding and/or will power. I'd like to think that they at least are capable of empathy, understand the concepts of civil rights and a government that serves all people, and are at least open to reason, but all too often they leave you in doubt.

    By the way, only later did I notice that none of Walsh's stories implicate Trump. He gets a glancing mention in the debt story, as Gaza does with hunger, but he's effectively saying that everything else involving Trump is even less important than Epstein. I limited my alternate to Clinton stories, because they were easier to weigh against Foster. There were other big stories of Clinton's first half-term, like the dissolving of the Soviet Union, the founding of the European Union, the Oslo Accords, and even the Hubble Telescope, but I tried to keep my head in the game. Walsh seems to be hoping for another game entirely: one where we can pretend Trump doesn't matter.

    [*] There are lots of ways to debunk this. See John Quiggin [07-22] The Arguments for More (or Fewer) People, including many valid comments. One of this cites a book — Adam Becker: More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity — as "required reading for understanding where these people are coming from and why they are all completely insane."

Israel/Palestine: The atrocities hardly need me keeping track. What interests me more is how and when people see them, and realize that something else has to be done.

  • David Wallace-Wells [06-25] The Judgment of History Won't Save Gaza. No, but denying where Gaza fits in the long history of mass killing won't excuse Israel either. That the notion that "being on the right side of history" should be a motivation for good behavior may seem quaint in a culture that celebrates Breaking Bad, but in most times, most people have preferred to think of themselves as decent and virtuous. That such sentiments are scorned in today's Israel and America is not something to brag about. But even in a basically apologetic piece, here's a quote on what Israel has actually done:

    Reporting from the United Nations shows that today, nearly every hospital in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed, as have most schools and mosques. According to the United Nations Satellite Center, in less than two years, nearly 70 percent of all structures in Gaza have been possibly, moderately or severely damaged — or destroyed. As of January, U.N. figures showed nine in 10 homes were damaged or destroyed. About 90 percent of the population has been displaced, with many Gazans multiple times. A study published in January by The Lancet, the London-based medical journal, suggested that nearly 65,000 Palestinians had been killed by traumatic injury in the first nine months of the war — a figure 40 percent higher even than the estimates suggested by the Gaza Ministry of Health. The study also estimated that more than half of the dead were women and children; some estimates of the share of civilian casualties run higher. More than 175 Palestinian journalists have been killed.

    Those figures have been disputed, by Israel and many of its supporters, as has the degree to which this war has killed proportionally more civilians than many of the most gruesome military offensives of recent memory (Falluja, Mosul). But as you read about the recent targeted strikes on Iran, which according to the Israeli military killed a number of senior military and nuclear leaders, it's worth reflecting on reporting by +972 magazine, from earlier in the Gaza conflict, that for every low-level combatant that Israel's military A.I. targeted, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians in a strike — and that, in at least several instances, for higher-ranking figures, as many as 100 or more civilian deaths were tolerated. (Last April, I wrote about +972's reporting, much of which was later corroborated by The Times.)

    In recent weeks, the most horrifying news from Gaza has been about the attacks on those lining up for desperately needed humanitarian aid. Earlier in the conflict, it was especially striking to watch Cindy McCain — the head of the World Food Program and the widow of Senator John McCain, so much a stalwart supporter of Israel that his laughing face has been used in memes about the recent strikes in Iran — raise the alarm about the critical levels of hunger throughout Gaza. In May, she warned of famine — as she had been, on and off, for about a year. After that alarm-raising, a new food-distribution system was soon established. According to the U.N. human rights office, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed since then, while waiting for food.

  • Peter Beinart [06-30] A New Playbook for Democratic Critics of Israel: "Zohran Mamdani's primary victory shows pro-Palestine candidates how to win without abandoning their values."

  • Muhannad Ayyash [07-13] Calling for world to account for the Gaza genocide: Review of Haidar Eid: Banging on the Walls of the Tank, which "reveals a disturbing but irrefutable reality: the world has abandoned the Palestinian people to be annihilated as a people in the most calculated and brutal fashion possible."

  • Bret Stephens [07-22] No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza: While the New York Times is legendary for their supplicant bias towards Israel, none of their columnists have more militantly cheered on the complete and utter devastation of Gaza than Stephens has. The only surprise here is that he doesn't come right out and embrace the genocide charge, but evidently whoever pulls his strings urged him to be a bit more circumspect. (Although his main argument that Israel isn't committing genocide is his brag that if Israel wanted to do so, they would have killed a lot more than 60,000 Palestinians.) Obviously, there's no point arguing with someone like him. Henceforth, we should just make sure to identify him always as "Holocaust Denier Bret Stephens."

  • Alice Speri [07-22] Harvard publisher cancels entire journal issue on Palestine shortly before publication.

  • Jason Ditz:

  • Aaron Maté [07-27] As Gaza starves, Trump tells Israel to 'finish the job': "The Trump administration abandons ceasefire talks just as aid groups warn of 'mass starvation' in Gaza, and Israeli officials admit to yet another murderous lie."

  • James North:

  • Aaron Boxerman [07-28] In a First, Leading Israeli Rights Groups Accuse Israel of Gaza Genocide: Notably, B'Tselem finally opens its eyes.

  • Malak Hijazi [07-29] Don't stop talking about the famine in Gaza: "Israel wants you to believe that airdrops and symbolic aid trucks will solve the famine in Gaza. Don't believe them. These measures are not meant to end hunger, only to quell growing global outrage as the genocide continues unchecked."

  • Branko Marcetic [07-29]: How much is shoddy, pro-Israel journalism worth? Ask Bari Weiss. "As her Free Press is poised to seal a $200 million deal with the mainstream news giant CBS, let us reflect on why."

  • Katrina Vanden Heuvel [07-29] A New Report Exposes How Major American Corporations Have Been All Too Eager to Aid Israel's Atrocities in Gaza: "It also reveals our nation's now undeniable complicity in what has been described as the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century."

  • Qassam Muaddi

    • [07-31]: As Gaza starvation shocks the world, Witkoff is in Israel to push for a ceasefire deal. Really? Just a day before, Muaddi wrote US pulls out of Gaza ceasefire talks, and nothing here really contradicts that. We should be clear here that while it's possible for Israel to negotiate with Hamas for release of the few hostages who have managed to survive the bombardment (and Israel's own Hannibal Directive), a ceasefire is something Israel can (and should) implement unilaterally. If Trump wanted a ceasefire, all he has to do is convince Netanyahu to stop the shooting and bombing. And if he has any trouble, he can halt Israel's supply of bullets and bombs. That he hasn't done this so far strongly suggests that he doesn't want to, possibly because he's a monster, or because he has no will in the matter. Once you have a ceasefire, there are other things that need to be negotiated. My preference would be for Israel to renounce its claim to Gaza and kick it back to the UN, which would have to then deal with the Palestinians, with aid donors, the US, etc. My guess is that once Israel is out of the picture, the UN would have no problem getting Hamas to release the hostages and to disband and disarm. Israel could claim their victory, and would be left with defensible borders. (This would, of course, leave Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory, and in external refugee camps, with their own serious issues, but they're less pressing than ending the slaughter and starvation in Gaza.)

    • [08-13]: Starvation chronicles in Gaza: "I'm mostly tired of expecting the world to end this. I need to sleep. I have to wake up early to go look for food."

    • [08-14]: Israel swings between plans to occupy Gaza and resuming ceasefire talks: "As the Israeli army announced it was preparing plans for the occupation of Gaza City, initial reports indicate the ceasefire negotiations may resume, leaving open the question of whether Netanyahu's occupation plan is a negotiating tactic." Or (more likely) the negotiation rumors just another feint?

  • Michael Arria:

  • Philip Weiss [08-01]: Israel's international isolation has begun: "US and global politics surrounding Israel are shifting rapidly as the world recoils in horror at Israel's starvation of Gaza."

  • Jack Hunter [08-01]: How MTG became MAGA's moral compass on Gaza: "Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has bucked her president, called for yanking aid to Israel, and was the first Republican to call what is happening 'a genocide'." By the way, I'm getting the impression that Responsible Statecraft is increasingly betraying its Koch roots and leaning right. Hunter is merely the writer most desperate to tout MAGA Republicans (including Trump) as peace icons.

  • Stavroula Pabst [08-01] Admin asked if US approves Gaza annex plan, says go ask Israel: More evidence of who's calling the shots for Trump foreign policy.

  • Mitchell Plithnick [08-01] Interview with Prof. Joel Beinin: No transcript, but I listened to all 1:09:31 of this. One side comment here was Beinin's note that the Jewish population had collapsed following the destruction of the 2nd temple (AD 70), with only a small minority adopting the new Rabbinic Judaism, which defined Judaism up to now. The implication is that as Jews turn against Israel, most will simply cease to identify as Jewish, while some will attempt to come up with a redefinition of Judaism that frees itself from Israel. I haven't found anything he's written on this, except complaints from some Zionist sources about his interpretation of Jewish history.

  • Francesca Fiorentini [08-01]: The 7 Worst Plans for Gaza: Don't bother. The article is a joke piece, and not a funny one. Besides, we already know the worst plan, which is for Israel to continue doing what it's done for 650+ days now, until they finally admit that all the Palestinians have died, just to spite Israel, who tried so hard to keep a few alive for decades, because war was the only way of life Israelis ever knew.

  • Aaron Boxerman/Samuel Granados/Bora Erden/Elena Shao [08-01] How Did Hunger Get So Much Worse in Gaza? Maybe because the aid trucks are used as bait for snipers? But that's just worse compared to what? Way before 2023, Israelis were restricting food imports to Gaza — their euphemism was "putting Gazans on a diet."

  • Mehdi Hasan [08-02]: The US is complicit in genocide. Let's stop pretending otherwise. I'm skeptical that "the US government, enabled by the media, is an active participant in Israel's atrocities in Gaza." Complicit? For sure. One could probably go further and argue that Israel could not, and therefore would not, be able to commit genocide, at least in this manner, without US material and diplomatic support, which under both Biden and Trump has been uncritical and unflinching, sometimes even beyond what was asked for. I also think the US has a deeper responsibility for Israel's turn toward genocide, even if much of the ideological underpinnings was imported from Israel, starting with the neocon embrace of Israel's far-right anti-Oslo opposition in the 1990s. (The Project for a New American Century started with a position paper on Israel's "defense of the realm.") But it's hard to be a participant in a reality you're so dedicated to pretending isn't real. I think it's probable that most Americans who still side with Israel are merely misinformed and/or deluded, and not fully in line with genocide. However, such negligence is hard to excuse for people who have a public responsibility to know what Israel is doing, and to implement US policy according to our own best interests. Hasan isn't wrong to include them among the "participants," even though their actual role is often passive and banal — words that have previous uses in describing people who not just tolerated but facilitated holocausts.

  • Aviva Chomsky [08-03] On Creating a Cover for Genocide: "Preventing criticism of Israel by defining it as antisemitic."

  • Julie Hollar [08-04]: Mainstream media largely sidelined starvation story, until it couldn't: "A deep dive into coverage shows a shocking lack of interest until now, and even then the reporting is skewed away from culpability."

  • Richard Silverstein:

  • Nathan J Robinson [08-05]: Why Won't US Politicians Say "Genocide"? Starts with a long list (with links) of organizations that have.

  • Max Boot [08-05] I still love Israel. But what I'm seeing is wrong. "It's still possible to love the country and condemn this war. But it's getting difficult." Original title (per Jeffrey St Clair, who added "imagine what it takes to finally turn Max Boot's war-mongering stomach") was "I hate the war in Gaza. But I still love Israel." I don't mind when people say they love Israel, as long as they understand that ending the war is the only way Israel can save itself.

  • Tareq S Hajjaj [08-07] Israel claims it's allowing aid into Gaza, but its 'engineering of chaos' ensures the aid doesn't reach starving Palestinians: "As limited aid trickles into Gaza, Israel's strategy of 'engineering chaos' by shooting at aid-seekers and permitting looters to steal aid ensures that food doesn't get to starving Palestinians."

  • Qassam Muaddi [08-07] Leaked Cabinet transcript reveals Israel chose to starve Gaza as a strategy of war: "Netanyahu chose to blow up the ceasefire and starve Gaza's population in order to force a surrender from Hamas, while top military and security officials favored moving to the second phase of a ceasefire, leaked cabinet meeting minutes reveal."

  • Abdaljawad Omar [08-08] The war without end in Gaza: "Israel's latest plan to occupy Gaza City reveals that the assault on Gaza is more than just a war over territory. It is a war to extend, and dictate the tempo of killing and destruction — to exhaust Gaza into submission." My main quibble here is that "submission" implies survival. Israel wants Gaza to be depopulated, either by death or by exile, and they don't care which (although as Deir Yassin in 1948 showed, they've long understood that mass murder is effective at driving exile).

  • Jonathan Ofir [08-08] 4 out of 5 Jewish Israelis are not troubled by the famine in Gaza: 79%.

  • Asaf Yakir [08-13] How War Became Israel's New Normal: "It is a mistake to think that Benjamin Netanyahu is solely responsible for Israel's genocide or that removing him would bring it to an end. To win support for war, he has mobilized large swathes of Israeli society, from liberals to the far right."

  • Ali Ghanim [08-12] Anas al-Sharif Was My Friend. Here's Why Israel Feared Him So Much. "On Monday, Anas, 28, was targeted, along with three other Al Jazeera journalists, in an Israeli strike on a tent complex around Al-Shifa Hospital."

  • Elfadil Ibrahim [08-14] Why Egypt can't criticize Israel for at least another two decades: "A record gas deal exposes a strategic vulnerability as Cairo trades political autonomy for energy security."

  • Martin Shaw [08-16]: When Genocide Denial Is the Norm: "Genocide scholar Martin Shaw argues that ending Israel's genocide in Gaza and isolating Israel on the international stage must become the cause of every country that claims to represent human values."

  • Angel Leonardo Peña [08-16] How Zionism is leading the reactionary wave worldwide: "Zionism is no longer hiding in the shadows, as it once did, supporting global reactionaries with training and support. It has now taken center stage as the vanguard of the global right, and all reactionaries are following." Back in the 1930s, one thing nearly all fascists had in common was anti-semitism. Today the nearly universal common thread is their embrace of Israel, especially as genocide becomes more obvious. The argument that criticism of Israel is proof of antisemitism is not just wrong; the opposite is much closer to the truth.

  • Tony Karon [08-17]: Anti-Semitism, Zionism and "the Americanization of the Holocaust: Much to recommend here, including this quote from Hagai El-Ad:

    We're approaching the moment, and perhaps it's already here, when the memory of the Holocaust won't stop the world from seeing Israel as it is. The moment when the historic crimes committed against our people will stop serving as our Iron Dome, protecting us from being held to account for crimes we are committing in the present against the nation with which we share the historical homeland.

Russia/Ukraine: During the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to end this war "in a day." Of course, he had neither the diplomatic skills nor the inclination to actually do that — and he spent his day on other priorities, like pardoning his insurrectionists and organizing his gestapo — but even observers as skeptical as me of his peace credentials and foreign policy aims thought he'd be more likely to end the war than Biden's neocons, who saw the war as nothing more or less than an opportunity to bleed a hated foe dry. Granted, the terms would be less than ideal, but at this point ending the war on any terms is preferable to slogging on "to the last dead Ukrainian" (which seemed to be the Biden/Zelensky policy). I've never bought the line that Trump is Putin's stooge. Still, Putin holds most of the cards here, and it's been clear for some time that the war would only be settled on his terms. That Trump couldn't move faster was partly due to his own incompetence, but also because Putin decided to press his advantages: to gain more ground, while Trump made plain his disinterest in supporting Ukraine (not that he had reservations about allowing Europe to buy American arms to fight Russia).

The first stories below, from Aug. 1, reflect the moment Trump turned hawkish on Ukraine. Less than two weeks later, there seems to be a deal float, starting with a face-to-face meeting. There is not a lot of reason to expect this to pan out. (The meetings with Kim Jong-Un went nowhere, but mostly because Trump's security cabal was run by deep state saboteurs like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo. No doubt similar people are still around, but buried deeper in the bureaucracy.) Whether this one does is almost totally up to Putin. If he can get most of Russian-speaking Ukraine and relief from most sanctions, he should be happy to let the rest of Ukraine go their own way. It's hard to see what more he could demand with any chance of agreement, and the downside is he pushes most of Europe into being even more aggressively anti-Russian than the US has been under Biden. Plus he gets a chance to make Trump look good — not something Trump can readily do on his own.

The last stories immediately follow the Trump-Putin summit on August 16, during which nothing was concluded, as the next step will be for Trump to meet with Zelensky.

  • Eli Stokols/Paul McLeary [08-01] Trump, escalating war of words with Russia's Medvedev, mobilizes two nuclear submarines.

  • Anatol Lieven [08-01] Trump vs. Medvedev: When talking tough is plain turkey: "Exchanging nuclear threats like this is pure theater and we should not be applauding." The war of words started over Trump's threats to impose sanctions if Russia doesn't comply with a ceasefire in 10 days." This led to Trump publicly positioning nuclear submarines to illustrate his threat to Russia, in a rare attempt at nuclear blackmail. Lieven argues that "Medvedev and Trump are both trying to look tough for domestic audiences." I doubt that either people much cares, but the leaders' personal machismo is on the line. What is truly disturbing about the Trump position is that the one thing Putin is least likely to accept is an ultimatum that would expose him as weak. On the other hand, rejection would make Trump look weak, so he's walked into his own trap.

  • Tyler Pager/David E Sanger [08-08]: Trump Says He Will Meet With Putin in Alaska Next Week: "Trump also suggested that a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine would include 'some swapping of territories,' signaling that the US may join Russia in trying to compel Ukraine to cede land."

  • Stavroula Pabst:

  • Anatol Lieven [08-09] Trump's terms for Russia-Ukraine on the right course for peace: "A meeting in Alaska, while putting land concessions on the table, is an essential first step." I've separated this from his earlier piece, because events intervened. Holding out any degree of hope viz. Trump strikes me as foolish, which is why I say it all comes down to Putin. But if Putin really did want to make Trump look good, why wait until now?

  • Norman Solomon [08-09] Democrats should give peace a chance in Ukraine: Democrats need to align with peace and social justice movements everywhere, pushing diplomatic solutions to conflicts that also recognize and advance human rights, regardless of power politics, narrow economic concerns, and the arms lobbies. But they need to prioritize peace, which is something the Biden administration failed to recognize — and which tragically cost them the 2024 election. The one advantage they have over Republicans is that they lean, at least in principle, toward social justice. Unfortunately, US foreign policy, under Democrats as well as Republicans, has reduced such views to hypocrisy, which has done immense damage to their reputation — both around the world and among their own voters.

  • Michael Corbin [08-12] Trouble in Russian economy means Putin really needs Alaska talks too: "Mixed indicators signal wartime growth has plateaued." I haven't really sorted this out. I don't think that economic considerations is going to dictate Putin's policy, but they must be somewhere in the back of his mind.

  • Harrison Berger [08-14] Stephen Cohen's legacy: Warnings unheeded, a war without end: "At his own peril, the late historian used his considerable influence to challenge rather than echo establishment narratives about Russia and Ukraine."

  • Zachary Paikin [08-14]: On Ukraine war, Euro leaders begin to make concessions — to reality: "The spirit going into Alaska will continue to be cautiously optimistic, as long as the parties with most at risk don't get in their own way."

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos [08-15]: Deal or no deal? Alaska summit ends with vague hints at something: "There was no ceasefire, but none of the new sanctions Trump threatened, either. Whether this was a 'win' or 'loss' depends on who you ask." Why ask us? We're only "experts"! A lot of people were quick to pick on Trump for failing to bring home a peace deal, but that assumes he has a lot more power than he actually has. The main power that the US has is to underwrite the indefinite extension of the war, as Biden did from 2022 on. One side can get a war going and keep it going. But making peace requires some agreement from both sides, where one side is unambiguously Putin. So all Trump could hope for was for Putin to give him something he could take back to his side, which minimally includes Zelensky, NATO, and the EU. Whether what he brought back works depends on how good an offer Putin made, but that he brought it back signals that he's abandoned Biden's "fight to the last dead Ukrainian" plot. Now we have to see whether the "allies" were just going along with Washington, or have red lines of their own.

  • Adam Pasick [08-17]: What to Know About Russia-US-Ukraine Peace Talks: Actually, there doesn't seem to be much to know here. Trump got his marching orders from Putin in Alaska. He now has to face Zelensky and other European leaders (including NATO and EU's über-hawk Von Der Leyen) in Washington. If they buckle, and given the loss of US support bankrolling the forever war they might, then presumably there will in short course be an agreement that will cede the Russian-speaking Ukrainian territories (Crimea, Luhansk, and Donbas) to Russia, and leave the Ukrainian-speaking parts of Ukraine free and independent, with both sides agreeing not to fight any further. That's basically what could have happened in 2014, when a pro-western faction seized control of the Kiev government, and Crimea and Donbas revolted and declared their independence. Something like that happened peacefully with the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. It's never been clear why something along those lines didn't happen in Ukraine, but many nationalists — including, obviously, some Russian ones, but they are far from alone — are attached to their territorial ambitions, plus there was the underlying geostrategic interest of the US in advancing NATO at Russia's expense.

    The 2014-22 war was basically one waged by Ukraine to reconquer lost territory, even though there is little reason to think that the people living there preferred Kiev over Moscow. Putin sought to reverse that war by invading in 2022, which allowed Russia to gain some extra territory in the south, establishing a land bridge between Donbas and Crimea, mostly because Ukrainian forces were preoccupied with defending Kiev and Kharkhiv in the north. Ukraine reversed some of their losses late in 2022, but their 2023 counteroffensive failed, and the war has largely been stalemated ever since, with some minor Russian gains in Donetsk recently.

    Since the Russian offensive failed in 2022, it's been clear that Russia would not be able to overturn the Kiev government, let alone occupy western Ukraine. It's also been clear that Ukraine would not be able to dislodge Russian forces from territory that favors Russia, and that Russia has much greater depth which would allow it to wage the war much longer than Ukraine could. That Ukraine has been able to fight on as long and hard as it has is largely due to American and European support, which is waning. It is also clear that the impact of sanctions against Russia has not dimmed their will to continue the war. The idea that Russians would turn against Putin also appears fanciful. However much one may dislike the idea of allowing any nation to conquer part of any other, there is no practical alternative to a peace which largely vindicates Putin's decision to invade. The US under Biden refused to consider any concessions, which allowed (encouraged?) Zelensky to take a maximalist stand. Trump, on the other hand, seems inclined to respect Putin's needs. His problem is squaring them away with the minimal needs of Ukraine and their European partners.

    Whether he can, I suspect, will depend more on how reasonable a deal Putin is willing to offer than on Trump's hitherto clueless "art of the deal." However much Russia resented NATO, the fact that America was always in charge used to moderate the risk NATO posed to Russia. If Putin doesn't offer something Ukraine/Europe can live with, they're liable to break with Trump and continue the fight on their own. A Europe provoked to break with the US could become much more of a threat to Russia than NATO ever was (not an existential threat, in that Europe will never conquer and occupy Russia, but it could be more effective at isolating and shunning Russia).

    I'm not bothered by Putin's insistence on no ceasefire. While my approach would be to start with a ceasefire, Putin is wary that offering one first would allow Ukraine to drag out future negotiations (much like the US has never come to terms with North Korea, 72 years after that ceasefire). While any killing that occurs between now and whenever is unnecessary and probably meaningless, it is more important to get to a proper peace deal sooner rather than later. And while Putin is an intensely malign political figure, it is better for all concerned to establish some sort of civil relationship with Russia post-bellum — as opposed to America's usual grudge-holding (again, see North Korea, also Iran, and for that matter Afghanistan).

    Personally, I would have liked to see this worked out better, but no one involved cares what I think. They're going to operate according to their own craven impulses. But I wouldn't worry too much about the details, as long as we get to some kind of peace. Justice is a much taller order, but better to pursue it in peace than in war.

    The NY Times has more on Ukraine here, where the latest title is "Trump Backs Plan to Cede Land for Peace in Ukraine."

  • Anatol Lieven [08-17]: Why Trump gets it right on Ukraine peace: "In Alaska he found reality: he is now embracing an agreement without demanding a ceasefire first, which would have never worked anyway." I wrote the above before getting to this piece. Nothing here changes my mind on anything. Lieven is right to point out that "Trump is engaged in a form of shuttle diplomacy." He needs to get both sides to agree, but he only has leverage over one side, so he only gets the deal that Putin will allow, and that only if Putin allows a deal that Zelensky can accept. He's gambling that both are agreeable, in which case he hopes to snag a Nobel Peace Prize before he blunders into WWIII. That at least is a motivation one can imagine him considering. Anything else is laughable: e.g., Lieven's line that "We should at least give [Trump] credit for moral courage." Also hilarious is "Putin is hardly the 'global pariah' of Western political and media rhetoric." It's almost like Lieven thinks he's such a big shot pundit he imagines that his flattery might sway Putin and Trump to do the right thing. Rest assured that even if they do, it won't be for the right reasons. And neither will admit that it was someone else's idea.

Trump administration: Practically every day, certainly several times every week, I run across disturbing, often shocking stories of various misdeeds proposed and quite often implemented by the Trump administration. Collecting them together declutters everything else, and emphasizes the pattern of intense and possibly insane politicization of everything.

Current Affairs:

  • [08-06] Our 200th News Briefing! I signed up for the free peak at this when it originally came out, but they soon moved it off Substack, and it doesn't normally seem to be available on their website, so I lost track of it. (I'm still signed up for something on Substack, which mostly seems to be funding appeals.) Still, as a tribute to round numbers, this sample is available. Some interesting stuff here, but nothing I'd pay money for.

  • Andrew Ancheta [05-21] Why You Should Fix Your Own Stuff: "Companies like Apple and Microsoft don't want you to repair your own tech, because they make a fortune from planned obsolescence. But learning to do it yourself brings empowerment." Few things bother me more than business schemes to make their products independently repairable. The right-to-repair bills mentioned here would help, but we need to go further, and make all software and hardware open source and interoperable. And while I can personally attest that being able to repair your own stuff feels good, there is so much stuff that's so complicated that no one can understand how to repair it all. I'd like to start thinking about repair cooperatives, and publicly funding them.

  • Nathan J Robinson

    • [07-24] Rise of the Idiot Interviewer: "Podcast bros are interviewing presidents and power players without doing basic research beforehand. The result is a propagandistic catastrophe."

    • [07-30] Living in Omelas: "When we face the suffering that our civilization is built on, what are our obligations?" Starts with a Ursula Le Guin story, but eventually circles back to Gaza.

    • [2024-10-01] Surely AI Safety Legislation Is A No-Brainer: "Radical Silicon Valley libertarianism is forcing us all to take on unnecessary risks, and the new technology is badly in need of regulation." Not a new piece, but new to me. I've done essentially nothing with AI so far, but probably should start working with it. I'm already finding Google's searches to be significantly improved with it (and not just because the web page links are almost exclusively commercial crap). But I have no idea how you go about regulating it to ensure any degree of safety. What I am fairly sure of is that the profit motive ensures that it will be used for purposes ranging dubious to nefarious, so one was to reduce risk would be to cut back on profit motives.[*] However, it is very hard to regulate industries without their cooperation — indeed, the main force for license requirements is the desire to limit competition — because our political system is designed so that special interests compete, while the general interest has no lobby.[**] So I wouldn't be surprised to find most of the push to regulate coming from the companies themselves, not so much to protect users as to validate their own business models.

      [*] One simple way to do this would be to declare and nothing developed with AI can be patented or copyrighted. You could go a step further and declare that nothing that can be reverse-engineered with AI is eligible. The arguments for doing this are pretty obvious. Needless to say, we're not going to see a lot of lobbying to limit patents and copyrights, although the AI companies will probably lobby for laws to limit their exposure for whatever harm AI may cause. We'll hear that without limitation of liability, the industry will be stifled, which means they won't be able to make as much money, or be as careless in making it.

      • [**] By the way, I have a solution for this: tax lobbying expenses at 100%, so that in order to spend $1 on lobbying, you also have to donate $1 to a public fund for counter-lobbying. That way every side of every issue gets equal weighting, so winners will be determined on their merits. Same thing can apply to political donations. It would take some work to set up a fair and effective distribution system, but I have a bunch of ideas for that, too.

  • Grady Martin [07-29] The "Careless People" Who Make Up Elite Institutions: "Sarah Wynn-Williams' bestseller is a disturbing exposé about the inner workings of Facebook. But Wynn-Williams herself is complicit in the harms she criticizes, and so is her entire class of elite strivers."

The following articles are more/less in order published, although some authors have collected pieces, and some entries have related articles underneath.

Laura Snapes [2024-09-30] Farewell to the car CD player, source of weirdly deep musical fandoms. Some time after I bought my 1986 Audi, I replaced the radio with a CD player. Same with my 1994 Nissan, unless it came with one (I'm a bit unsure, but if it did, it was gone within a week). The 2006 Toyota had one by default, but we opted for the 6-CD changer. I don't think I ever loaded more than one CD at a time, but it came with extra speakers, and made a statement. When I started contemplating a new car just before 2020 happened, I was dismayed to find virtually nothing offering CD players, or even radios that could be ripped out and easily replaced. When we finally gave in and bought our new Toyota, all we could get was a 10.5-inch media/info console with bluetooth, wi-fi, one usb port, and a bunch of trial subscriptions. I spent our first week driving in silence, except when the wife insisted on NPR, which was painful.

Thomas Frank [2024-11-09] The Elites Had It Coming: Just stumbled across this, not recalling it but thinking, of course, this is what he would say the day after the election debacle. Turns out I did cite this piece in my post-election Speaking of Which, even pulling out a quote indicting Democrats as "their most brilliant minds couldn't figure [Trump] out." In rereading the piece, I'm more struck by the two paragraphs above the one I quoted:

Mr. Trump, meanwhile, put together a remarkable coalition of the disgruntled. He reached out to everyone with a beef, from Robert Kennedy Jr. to Elon Musk. From free-speech guys to book banners. From Muslims in Michigan to anti-immigration zealots everywhere. "Trump will fix it," declared the signs they waved at his rallies, regardless of which "it" you had in mind.

Republicans spoke of Mr. Trump's persecution by liberal prosecutors, of how he was censored by Twitter, of the incredible strength he showed after being shot. He was an "American Bad Ass," in the words of Kid Rock. And clucking liberal pundits would sometimes respond to all this by mocking the very concept of grievance, as though discontent itself were the product of a diseased mind.

Elie Mystal [07-02] Democrats Should Become the Pro-Porn Party. I was surprised to see this, and welcome it, but don't hold out much hope. Democrats have long sought to portray themselves as exemplars of probity, even to the point of allowing themselves to be caricatured as elitist scolds, with the suggestion that they are really just virtue signalling hypocrites. Perhaps they're still reeling from the Cleveland-era charges of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion"? (Not far removed from their preference for blue over red, which can be linked back to McCarthyite-era red scares, something they felt vulnerable to because, like communists, they tended to at least pay lip service to the notions of equal rights and social justice. The purpose of red-baiting was not just to attack and isolate communists but also to tar the liberals, who when they ran scared discredited themselves, isolating themselves from their most principled and committed allies.)

Prohibition was at the heart of those charges, and so it remains: the belief that "improper" personal behavior can and should be repressed by those in power. While people with good intentions can be tempted by prohibitionism — the temperance movement being a prime example — its real constituency is on the right, because they are the ones who believe in power, which in hard and/or soft form is the only way they can maintain their unjust social and economic hierarchy. While they happily invent their own morality to suit their interests, it's even easier to ride on old religious prejudices, especially as they have a ready constituency, led by their own authoritarians. Moreover, labeling some people as deviants seems to make the others feel superior, and that is the definition of social hierarchies.

Democrats could oppose these right-wing schemes by defending every targeted group, but that lets the right set the framework for the debate, taints you, divides you, and dissipates energy with many isolated defenses. Much better to articulate a general principle, and show how prohibition and other prejudices spread to harm others, ultimately including the people who initially approved. To some extent Mystal does this, seeing porn as a free speech issue, and personal access to it as a question of privacy. Democrats mostly agree as far as law — Mystal cites a Kagan dissent against Alito & Thomas — but muddle their defense by trying to show their disapproval of acts, speech, and thoughts they would stop short of prohibiting. This fails on all counts: it reinforces the right-wing view that they're right and you're evil; it makes you look and sound guilty; it offers the targets of their hatred little reassurance that you'll defend their rights, or that you even care much about them. You'd be much better off making a strong defense of key rights, including free speech and privacy, then making it clear that their defense extends to things like porn, regardless of whether one personally approves or not.

Some Democrats have made some effort here (in terms of not just defending but showing some respect for targets of attack), at least on issues like abortion and even the T in LGBTQ, but drugs (beyond marijuana) and sex work still seem to be taboo. (Whether there's a political constituency to be gained there is hinted at but not much discussed. A lot of people enjoy porn, even if few will champion it in public.) A big problem here is that anti-porn forces try to shift the question to the question of children — conventionally under 18, which is several years past the point where people start taking an interest in sex and really should understand. I'd go further than Mystal and argue that all age restrictions on viewing porn should be abolished. (I could see where acting in porn might be a different concern, but there are lots of areas where I doubt the value of being so overly protective and controlling of adolescents — the matter of younger children is certainly less clear cut.) Still, porn seems to me like a relatively low-priority issue, unlikely to gain much traction, although more clearly articulated views of free speech and privacy might help, especially to counter the rampant bigotry of the right.

  • Elie Mystal [07-30] The Rule of Law Is Dead in the US: "The rule of law presupposes that there are rules that provide a consistent, repeatable, and knowable set of outcomes. That's no longer the case.".

Kevin Munger [07-14] Attention is All You Need: On the collapse of "literary culture," and social media as "secondary orality," followed by a primer on how AI works. Title collides with Chris Hayes' recent book on attention, so Munger recommends "best experienced through the medium of an Ezra Klein podcast, then also mentions "Derek Thompson's report on the end of reading, which leads to a joke about their recent book, Abundance.

Nate Chinen [07-15] The Times, A-Changin': Reports on a leaked "internal memo" of a shake-up in the New York Times arts coverage, where "veteran critics" Jon Pareles (pop music), Margaret Lyons (TV), Jesse Green (theater), and Zachary Woolfe (classical music) "will soon be taking on unspecified 'new roles,' while the paper searches for replacements on their beats." I was pointed to this by Piotr Orlov, who concluded "The whole episode simply reaffirms a basic Dada Strain [his blog] tenet: the need to organize and build our own institutions. (And maybe stop chasing the ever-more poisoned chalice.)" I've believed that much since the early 1970s, as soon as I ran into the notion of controlling the "means of production"; which is to say, even before I first encountered, and developed an immediate distaste for, the New York Times. Chinen's reaction is milder, perhaps a lingering effect of having tasted that poisoned chalice, tempered by personal familiarity. And, for now at least, the four still have jobs, and may come to find opportunities in writing less routine coverage, as well as behind-the-scenes influence. But the more disturbing aspect of Chinen's piece is the broader shift of media megacorps, which is really what the Times has become (the newspaper itself just a facade from an earlier era), to monetizing novel forms of attention grabbing, which increasingly substitute for critical thinking. As a non-reader (or a hostile one when I do glimpse something), I've long regarded the New York Times as some kind of black hole, where good writers cash in and become irrelevant, rarely if ever to be seen or heard again. Jon Pareles has long been a prime example: I remember him fondly from his 1970s reviews in Crawdaddy, notably for introducing me to musicians I had never heard of, like George Crumb and Dudu Pukwana. Many more have followed, willing cogs in their machine. Jon Caramanica, for instance: Chinen reports that he's given up "the word," finding a new calling making "popcast" videos. Sounds like a waste to me, but I guess they've figured out how to make money out of it, and for them, what else matters?

Bob Boilen [07-16] The end of public radio music?

Ryan Cooper [07-17] How Did Elon Musk Turn Grok Into MechaHitler? "The malfunctioning xAI chatbot provides some insights into how large language models work." For starters, it appears they haven't overcome the oldest maxim in computer science: "garbage in, garbage out."

Paul Krugman [07-22] Has Brazil Invented the Future of Money? "And will it ever come to America?" I'm not familiar with this concept, but it's long been obvious to me that we could save a huge amount of money if we set up a public non-profit utility to handle payments.

Last week the House passed the GENIUS Act, which will boost the growth of stablecoins, thereby paving the way for future scams and financial crises. On Thursday the House also passed a bill that would bar the Federal Reserve from creating a central bank digital currency (CBDC), or even studying the idea.

Why are Republicans so terrified by the idea of a CBDC that they're literally ordering the Fed to stop even thinking about it?

I'd go much farther and wipe out much of the existing banking industry, which is predatory and counterproductive. It's unclear to me that there is anything worthwhile that banks can do more efficiently and/or productively than a public service utility. Given that government can borrow less expensively than private banks — especially if you overlook the favorable terms banks receive from government — this can extend to most routine loans. Everyone could be provided not just a free checking and savings account, but a credit card. (Note that many other forms of loans, like mortgages and student loans, are already backed by government, so would cost less to administer directly.)

As Krugman notes, the finance industry has a lot of lobbying clout in America, and this is directed at preventing consideration of alternatives. (Same for the better known but actually smaller health care and oil industries.) So we are, at least for now, screwed, repeatedly. Inequality is effectively a measure of the political power that elites have to concentrate surplus value in their own hands. Other nations, like Brazil, don't have to get sucked into this trap, and as such, especially as the rot of the so-called Washington Consensus becomes more obvious, can offer us laboratories for alternative approaches.

I've read Krugman regularly for many years, but I didn't follow his move to Substack. Looking at the website, these are a few posts that caught my eye (although some are cut short, so there's some kind of shakedown involved):

  • [04-03]: Will Malignant Stupidity Kill the World Economy? "Trump's tariffs are a disaster. His policy is worse." The basic analysis is solid. The suggestion that the methodology could have been cooked up by AI is amusing. The top comment by George Santangelo is worth quoting:

    Tariffs aren't imposed by Trump for economic reasons. Trump has found the ultimate grift. Put tariffs on everything and wait for the requests to remove them, industry by industry, company by company. In return, Trump or his family or his pals receive money, business, information and any other advantage for the removals. Who will know whether a real estate development by Jared Kushner for the Saudis results in an advantageous price for the land and development fees for the Trump organization? It's the perfect corrupt plot. Any and all United States monies are subject to theft by the ultimate thief.

    I chopped off the "BTW" bit, relating to Trump's convictions and impeachment. The latter is an impossible reach, so it might be better to just admit that Trump — with his packing of the courts and personal takeover of the DOJ — is above and beyond the law, and make voters face the consequences of that. Along the way, just try to document the many ways (criminal or not) Trump and his cronies line their pockets from his administration's arbitrary and often irrational actions.

  • [07-16]: Trump's parade flopped. No Kings Day was a hit. "Right now, images largely determine the outcome."

  • [07-29]: I Coulda Made a Better Deal: "What, exactly, did Trump get from Europe?" His "better deal" was none at all.

  • [07-30]: Fossil Fool: "How Europe took Trump for a ride."

  • [07-31]: The Media Can't Handle the Absence of Truth: "And their diffidence empowers pathological liars." More on the gullibility of the media. Their assumption is that both sides have slightly tinted views of reality, allowing them to interpolate. But that breaks down when one side goes bonkers, and they lack the critical faculties to determine which. (Of course, they fare even worse when both sides are grossly wrong, as on Israel.)

  • [08-01]: Trump/Brazil: Delusions of Grandeur Go South: "Trump thinks he can rule the world, but he doesn't have the juice."

  • [08-03]: The Economics of Smoot-Hawley 2.0, Part I: "Tariffs will be very high as far as the eye can see. What does that mean?"

  • [08-05]: The Paranoid Style in American Economics: "Remember, every accusation is a confession." The subtitle is a truism that should be pointed out more often. The main thing I learned in my high school psych class was the concept of projection: how we ascribe to others our own sick motives and ambitions. Thus the US thinks China wants to rule the world. Thus Bush thought Saddam Hussein would nuke New York if we didn't prevent him from developing any form of nuclear deterrence. Thus a bunch of white idiots think that any loosening civil rights would turn blacks into slave masters. Most often when you accuse someone else of nefarious motives, you're admitting to your own.

  • Greg Sargent [07-30] Krugman Wrecks Trump's Europe Deal: "Scam on His Voters: An interview with Paul Krugman, who "explains at length why [Trump's trade agreement with Europe is] actually a big loss for our country — and especially for his MAGA base."

  • Krugman also has a series of papers on "Understanding Inequality" published by Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality:

    1. Why Did the Rich Pull Away From the Rest?
    2. The Importance of Worker Power
    3. A Trumpian Diversion
    4. Oligarchs and the Rise of Mega-Fortunes
    5. Predatory Financialization
    6. Crypto: This one is still paywalled, and despite the "Part VII" in the title may not be part of the series, but he offers it has a case study, "seen as a sort of hyper-powered example of predatory finance, influence-buying and corruption." Points listed: 1. The strange economics of cryptocurrency; 2. Crypto as a form of predatory finance; 3. How crypto drives inequality; 4. How the crypto industry has corrupted our politics.

Catherine Rampell [07-23] 11 tips for becoming a columnist: Washington Post opinion columnist, now ex, started writing about business for the New York Times, has done TV punditry at CNN and MSNBC. I've cited her 10 times in Speaking of Which, but my recall is vague.[*] This seems like generally wise advice, so I thought I'd check up on what else she's written in her last days:

  • [07-17] Democrats risk taking the wrong lessons from Trumpism: "Replicating Trump's populism is not the answer." Lead picture, and much of the article, is Zohran Mamdani, but she also mentions Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and "new convert" Chris Murphy, while exempting "more pragmatist, technocrat-driven" Democrats like Obama. But consider her definition:

    After all, that is the unifying theme of populism: Promise voters they would have a better life and nicer things if not for [insert scapegoats here]. Identifying a cabal to blame can help win elections, but it is not a great strategy for governing. . . . But the rhetoric from the populist left and right has some similarities: You would have nice things if not for the corrupt elites keeping them from you. . . . The common tendency to respond to complicated social problems with scapegoats, slogans and simple solutions explains why a populist everyman such as Joe Rogan can seemlessly transition from Feeling the Bern to jumping on the Trump Train.

    Several (well, many) things come to mind here. Identifying enemies is common to all effective politics. This is because most people need to personify the forces affecting them, rather than just blame abstractions (isms, groups, secret cabals, etc.). This only seems unusual because mainstream Democrats, desiring to be all things to all people, shy away from opposing anyone (or limit themselves to safe targets among the powerless — scapegoats, as you say). Left and right (and for that matter middle, in their own muddled way) share the trait of identifying enemies and promising benefits to others. But the differences in who they blame and what they promise are considerable, so why ignore that? Once you look, there are obvious differences between left and right. For starters, the left blames people who actually exercise substantial power, whereas the right blames phantoms and ascribes them with mythical power. (Ok, some of their targets are real, like unions, public interest groups, and honest Democrats, but few wield substantial power.) And the left tries to offer real solutions. The right may try to appeal to the same people and issues as the left, but they blame false villains, and offer ineffective solutions. So sure, they may be able to confuse some folk like Rogan, but note that Rogan only switched to Trump after Democrats excluded Sanders — although in Rogan's case, that Trump appeared on his program but Harris refused may have mattered more.

    One more point here: Rampell, like many recent left-adverse liberals, uses "populism" derisively, as a crude attempt to smear sincere leftists by associating them with right-wing demagogues. There are many problems with this[**], but the one I want to note here is that it betrays a distrust in the ability of most people to understand their own best interests and to govern themselves. The implication here is that we know better, and you should defer to our superior understanding — which is conditioned by their own economic interests and cultural values. It shouldn't be hard to understand why the anti-elitist impulses that most people hold might kick in here, especially given the track record of "pragmatic Democrats" like Clinton and Obama. There are lots of things one can say about Trump's demagoguery and how it exploits the worst impulses of popular opinion, but to call it "populist" implies that the fault lies in the people, and not in their manipulators. After all, what are anti-populist liberals but higher-minded manipulators?

    One more quote, which offers a good example of how cynically centrist-liberals distort leftist programs to arrive at nothing but a defense of the status quo:

    Rich people and corporations can definitely afford to pay higher taxes, as I have argued many times. But the reason we don't have Medicare-for-all (as designed by Sanders) is that Americans don't have the stomach for the middle-class taxes such a huge expansion of the safety net would require.

    Even if you seized the entire wealth of every billionaire in the country — i.e., impose a 100 percent wealth tax — that would pay for Medicare-for-all for just over a year. Forget free college or other Scandinavian-style welfare-state expansions that the fabled billionaire money tree is also earmarked for. But anyone who points out math problems like this, or suggests some less ambitious alternative, is tarred and feathered as a corporate shill or handmaiden to the oligarchs.

    I count about five major fallacies here, but we could split hairs and double that. One actually tilts in favor of her argument: a lot of the wealth counted by rich people is illusory, based on inflated values for assets, bid up by other rich people desperate for assets. So there are practical limits to how much wealth one can tax away. On the other hand, destroying all that imaginary value wouldn't be a bad thing. Moreover, whatever real value there is, is redistributed, mostly to people who can put it to better use. Moreover, even if you can't satisfy desired spending by only taxing the rich, that doesn't mean you shouldn't tax the rich. They're the obvious place to start, because they have most of the money, and they can afford it.

    New welfare services don't have to be fully funded out of new revenues. In many cases — health care being an obvious one — they directly replace current expenses. There's much more along these lines. For what it's worth, I think Democrats are hurting themselves in proposing to only raise taxes on the rich. There is certainly a lot of room to do so, and doing so would have some positive benefits beyond raising revenues that can be put to better ends, but to fix the worst problems of inequality, we also need to work on the rules and policies that create so much inequality. As that is done, the rich will have less money to tax away, so the mix of revenues, like the mix of wealth, should spread out. As long as income and estate taxes are strongly progressive, it shouldn't be a problem to set the overall tax level according to desired expenses and make up the funding with consumption taxes. Any service that can be done better and/or cheaper by a public utility is a good candidate for public funding, especially if metering it would be harmful. Those cases should be net savings for the whole nation, even if they appear as tax increases. We already do this in many cases, but it's easy to think of more that can be done better (e.g., banking).

    [*] Sample titles, which despite some both-sidesism suggests why an increasingly Trump-friendly WP might be disposed to get rid of her:

    • It's almost like the House GOP never care about deficits after all
    • A year after Dobbs, House GOP proposes taking food from hungry babies
    • Supposed 'moderates' like Nikki Haley would blow up the government
    • Efforts to kill Obamacare made it popular. Trump says he'll try again.
    • Trump can't find anyone to spot him $464 billion. Would you?
    • Two myths about Trump's civil fraud trial
    • The internet was supposed to make humanity smarter. It's failing
    • Those who would trade democracy for economic gain would get neither
    • Hot tip: Both parties should stop bribing voters with tax cuts [on exempting tip income]
    • Voters prefer Harris's agenda to Trump's — they just don't realize it. Take our quiz.

    [**] As a Kansan, I associate populism with the 1892-96 People's Party, a left-democratic movement that emerged in response to the ultra-conservative Grover Cleveland and the oligarchic takeover of the Republican Party. They were especially successful in Kansas, so I tend to view them as part of my political heritage (as does Thomas Frank; see especially his book, The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism; some reviews are still interesting, such as Aaron Lake Smith [Jacobin], and James Traub [NY Times], which also covers a Gene Sperling book that looks better than expected).

Will Hermes [07-23] Nick Drake, Long a Folk Mystery, Is (Partly) Revealed: "A 42-track collection built around two found recordings helps illuminate the creative process of the revered but elusive icon, who died in 1974."

Moira Donegan [07-26]: Columbia's capitulation to Trump begins a dark new era for US education: "The university's agreement reveals its willingness to bend to the administration's will and undermines an American myth." The agreement includes paying "a $220 million fine," and more:

The deal that resulted gives the Trump administration everything it wants. A Trump-approved monitor will now have the right to review Columbia's admissions records, with the express intent of enforcing a supreme court ban on affirmative action — in other words, ensuring that the university does not admit what the Trump administration deems to be too many non-white students. The Middle Eastern studies department is subject to monitoring, as well, after an agreement in March.

The agreement is not a broad-level, generally applicable regulatory endeavor that applies to other universities — although given the scope of the administration's ambitions at Columbia, it is hard to say whether such a regulatory regime would be legal. Instead, it is an individual, backroom deal, one that disregards the institution's first amendment rights and the congressionally mandated protections for its grants in order to proceed with a shakedown. "The agreement," writes the Columbia Law School professor David Pozen, "gives legal form to an extortion scheme." The process was something akin to a mob boss demanding protection money from a local business. "Nice research university you have here," the Trump administration seemed to say to Columbia. "Would be a shame if something were to happen to it."

That Columbia folded, and sacrificed its integrity, reputation and the freedom of its students and faculty for the federal money, speaks to both the astounding lack of foresight and principle by the university leadership as well as the Trump movement's successful foreclosure of institutions' options for resistance

Ben Schwartz [07-30] Jay Leno's Phony Case for Balanced Comedy: "The former Tonight Show host thinks a dose of bothsidesism will punch up the late-night scene."

David A Graham [07-31] The Warped Idealism of Trump's Trade Policy: "The president once promised he'd prioritize Americans' bottom line above all else. He's abandoned that pledge."

Paul Starr [07-31]: The Premature Guide to Post-Trump Reform: "American history offers three general strategies of repair and renewal." But has the need for reform ever been so acute? Or so fraught with obstacles based on entrenched pockets of power? He offers three "levels": The post-Watergate model; Changing the Supreme Court; Amending the Constitution.

Pankaj Mishra [08]: Speaking Reassurance to Power: Basically a long rant about the fickleness of the American intelligentsia, so eager to celebrate any note of freedom tolerable to the ruling class, and so reticent to break ranks when that same ruling class turns tyrannical and bloody.

Why 'King of the Hill' Is the Most Significant Work of Texas Culture of the Past Thirty Years. Cartoon series, ran from 1997-2009, gets a reboot, after Hank and Peggy spend their last years working in Saudi Arabia, and return to Texas retirement, finding their old world changed in oh so many ways — one being that their son, Bobby, has become a German-Japanese fusion chef. We've seen 4-5 episodes so far, and they bounce off in interesting directions. (My wife has probably seen the entire original run. I've only seen enough to get the general idea.)

Steve Kopack/Monica Alba/Laura Strickler [08-01] Trump fires labor statistics boss hours after the release of weak jobs report: "Without evidence, Trump called the data 'rigged' and implied that BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer manipulated the numbers 'for political purposes.'" Fake data is something that only Trump is entitled to, and everyone else must line up behind his lead. I rarely do this, but here's the actual Trump "truth":

Last week's Job's Report was RIGGED, just like the numbers prior to the Presidential Election were Rigged. That's why, in both cases, there was massive, record setting revisions, in favor of the Radical Left Democrats. Those big adjustments were made to cover up, and level out, the FAKE political numbers that were CONCOCTED in order to make a great Republican Success look less stellar!!! I will pick an exceptional replacement. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAGA!

  • Haley Brown [08-08] They Shoot Messengers, Don't They?

  • Edward Helmore [08-02] Republicans slam Trump's firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics chief.

  • Chris Lehman [08-14] The Case Against EJ Antoni: Meet Trump's pick to destroy the BLS. Actually, he needs no introduction, as he's one of the few right-wing hacks so awful I recognized the name immediately. As Lehman puts it:

    But killing the messenger who brandishes bad economic news is only half the battle for the ambitious MAGA fateful; to really get things rolling, you need to promote a practiced bootlicker into the new policy void. And this is where central casting appears to have unearthed Antoni, who is basically the economics version of Chris Rufo—a mendacious talking head who will do virtually anything to distort the basic terms of inquiry in order to arrive at an ideologically predetermined outcome.

    Lehman digs up damning testimonials, even from conservative economists (Kyle Pomerleau at AEI: "He has either shown a complete misunderstanding of economic data and principles, or he's showing a willingness to treat his audience with contempt and mislead them"). Lehman also notes that BLS doesn't just send out press releases. Its statistics feed directly into the economic policy machinery, affecting millions of Americans through things like the COLA (cost of living adjustment) used to calculate Social Security benefits.

Dean Baker [08-01] Bringing Back Stagflation, Lower Growth, and Higher Prices: "When Trump talks of turning the economy around, he speaks the truth — he just gets the direction of change wrong." This does us the favor of sorting out and summing up the economic reports on Trump's first six months, and looks ahead, expecting growth to continue slowing and prices to continue rising, even though those factors are supposed to cancel each other out. Further deterioration in the trade balance was not supposed to be the result of tariffs, but here you go. (Tourists spending money in the US count as imports, and Trump's gestapo tactics are warning people away.) All this was before Trump's latest move to make the numbers more "politically correct." Whether future numbers can be believed is impossible to know, but many voters had no problem disbelieving Biden's relatively decent numbers. By the way, Baker's blog is always worth reading:

Ryan Cooper [08-01] COVID Contrarians Are Wrong About Sweden: "Trying to 'let it rip' in early 2020 was a disaster."

David Daley [08-01] How the GOP Hopes to Gerrymander Its Way to a Midterms Victory: "In a series of mid-decade redistricting gambits, state legislatures are looking to rig next year's congressional balloting in advance." We're basically in a race where Republicans are trying to lock down centers of power to make it near impossible for Democrats to regain power by merely winning elections. Daley has especially focused on the gerrymandering issue — his first book on the subject was Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America's Democracy (2016), and his latest is Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right's 50-Year Plot to Control American Elections — but they've done much more, all stemming from their belief that government "of, by, and for the people" is an intolerable risk to their special interests.

Jeffrey St Clair, plus some more from Counterpunch:

  • [08-01] Roaming Charges: Something's Gone Wrong Again: First half on Israel, and does as good a job of summarizing the atrocities and factoring in American complicity as anything in that section. A brief section on famines around the world reminds me not to make light of Walsh's 2nd story, but that's because he doesn't sacrifice credibility by softballing Gaza, where "the risk of famine is total." He also notes a New York Times example I don't recall from North's articles (St Clair's highlight in bold):

    While Israel allows some food into Gaza, it has drastically reduced the number of places from which food is distributed, forcing Palestinians to receive food aid from a handful of sites that are hard to access. In a crude form of crowd control, Israeli soldiers have repeatedly shot and killed scores of Palestinians along routes leading to the new food distribution sites, forcing civilians to choose between the risk of gunfire and the risk of starvation.

    Isn't this not just the textbook definition of terrorism but an extraordinary, hitherto unexampled instance of it? While killing is an obvious metric of the war, pegging the number at 60,000 — about 3% of Gaza's population — risks underestimating the psychological impact. (Israel lost about 1% of its Jewish population in the 1947-49 War of Independence, which is generally remembered as a time of extraordinary trauma — by the way, about two-thirds of those were soldiers, so the civilian impact was much less, although still horrifying, I'm sure.) But death is just one of many metrics for Gaza: the most obvious being the 90% displaced, and at least that many malnourished. Figures like that are driving up the death rate — which I suspect is increasingly uncounted — but the much more widespread effect is psychological. We don't have a word for one army systematically trying to drive a whole country insane, because no one has ever done anything like that before, but that's a big part of what Israel is doing right now. And the chances that they don't fully comprehend what they're doing are almost inconceivably slim.

    As for the people who've just realized that Israel is committing genocide, St Clair cites an article by Raz Segal in Jewish Currents dated October 13, 2023: "A Textbook Case of Genocide: Israel has been explicit about what it's carrying out in Gaza. Why isn't the world listening?" That, by the way, was about the same date when I realized that Israel was not going to stop with a particularly draconian revenge tantrum but fully intended to, as more than a few of their fans put it at the time, "finish the job."

    Much more, as usual, seguing to ICE, the heat dome, fire season, pollution, and much more. This item is worth noting:

    Under Jair Bolsonaro, the proportion of Brazil's population suffering from food insecurity reached 23%. Today, 19 months into the 3rd Lula administration, the UN has announced this proportion has dropped below 2.5%. Brazil has been removed from the FAO UN World Hunger Map.

    Trump, by the way, is threatening Brazil with high tariffs unless they drop the prosecution of Bolsonaro and regulation of US social media companies.

  • [08-08] Roaming Charges: Empire of the Downpresser Man: Starts with the latest batch of ICE atrocities. Cites (but doesn't link to) a piece by Max Boot: "I hate the war in Gaza. But I still love Israel." In a similar vein of bad people having second thoughts about their evil commitments, St Clair quotes Alexander Dugin: "I come to very sad conclusion: Donald Trump is totally mad. It is the shame. We loved him."

  • [08-15] Roaming Charges: From Police State to Military State: Starts with the question of crime in DC. Then ICE and/or Israel. Among the tidbits is this Newsweek headline: "Intersectional Communist Zohran Mamdani Shows Democrats Can't Quit Obamaism." This is like the answer to the question of after all the garbage up front, what's the dumbest word you can possibly end this headline with? Another amusing bit: in Gallup's latest "most popular political figures" poll, the richest man in the world came in dead last, 5 points behind Netanyahu, 12 behind Trump.

  • Danbert Nobacon [08-08] Economic Terror and the Turbochuggf*ck in Texas: I'm not sure the neologisms help, like "capitrickalist free malarketry" and even "entrapocracy" (which turns out to come from a song title), but the rant about "toxic business activism" and the "Kochtopus" isn't wrong.

  • Nafis Hasan [08-08] War and the Cancer-Industrial Compex: An excerpt from a new book: Metastasis: The Rise of the Cancer-Industrial Complex and the Horizons of Care.

  • Thomas Knapp [08-08] Attack of the Bubble Boys: On Trump and Vance, "isolated and coddled lest contact with regular human beings harm them."

  • Michael Zoosman [08-08] Bearing the Mark of Cain for Naming the Gaza Genocide. A founder of L'chaim! Jews Against the Death Penalty regrets that he waited until July 2025 to use the word "genocide" re Israel, and bears witness to the level of "vitriol and recrimination" he's since received.

Adam Gabbatt [08-03] 'He has trouble completing a thought': bizarre public appearances again cast doubt on Trump's mental acuity. I expect I'll be able to find an article like this every week for the remainder of his term. These stories are easy sells because we're so used to associating age with dementia that we think to note exceptions. And of course, some are retribution for the political savaging of Joe Biden's never-all-that-astute mental acuity. Biden had been muddled and gaffe-prone for so long that it was hard to discern actual age-related deterioration from his norm. Trump benefits even more from the camouflage provided by having been crazed and inane for decades now. He himself has claimed that his incoherent rapid-fire hopping among disconnected topics is really just proof of his genius, and the world is starkly divided between those who never believe a word he says and those who celebrate every morsel of "genius" (not caring whether they believe it or not — they're fine with anything that hazes the normies, and Trump is the world champion at that). Same dynamic appeared in his first term, but pre-Biden, the focus was more on Trump's psychopathology, another fertile field for speculation and confirmation bias. While anything that discredits Trump is welcome, we should always bear in mind that the real problem with Trump is his politics, and that having won the 2024 election his administration has little further need of him, so his debilitation is unlikely to offer much comfort.

Adam Bonica [08-03] The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine: "How a single consulting firm extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns."

Rhonda Ramiro/Sarah Raymundo [08-06] How US imperialism blackmails the world with nuclear weapons, from Hiroshima to today: "Since the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, US imperialism has driven nuclear proliferation worldwide. Current nuclear flashpoints, such as Iran, show how the US continues to use nuclear blackmail to reinforce its dominance." There are two theories behind nuclear weapons: deterrence and blackmail. Neither involves using them, unless one tragically miscalculates and has to do so for credibility. But sane people see no possible value in nuclear war, or in war for almost any other purpose, so they have no desire to test deterrence. Roughly speaking, from 1953 through 1993, the US accepted the deterrence theory, and sought a "detente" with the Soviet Union, rather than pushing its luck with blackmail stratagems (like Nixon's "madman theory"). Since 1993, the US has become more aggressive, but is still cautious when faced with nuclear-armed "foes" like Russia and China (or even North Korea), while growing very aggressive with its conventional weapons. Israel conceived their nuclear arsenal as a deterrent against larger Arab enemies, but that threat evaporated with the 1979 treaty with Egypt, and even more so with the 1991 defeat of Iraq. Since then, their nuclear threat has allowed them to bomb Syria and Lebanon with impunity, as neither nation has any ability to retaliate against Israel. Since the 1990s, Israel has recognized that Iran is capable of producing a nuclear weapons, which could undermine Israel's blackmail threat. So Israel mounted a propaganda campaign to play up the Iranian threat, mostly to hold the US alliance firm (Americans have still not moved beyond the 1979-80 hostage crisis), However, as Israel has turned genocidal, they've found that their credibility depends on showing that they can and will strike Iran, and that they can and will use US forces to reinforce theirs. If Iran's leaders actually believed in the logic of deterrence and/or blackmail, they will proceed directly to developing and deploying their own weapons. There is no evidence yet that this is happening, but either way we should understand that the fault lies in the original adoption by the US and Israel of the nuclear arms race.

More nukes (turns out that FDR jumped the gun: the day that has really stood out "in infamy" is August 6):

  • Tony Karon [08-07]: A Hiroshima-Gaza connection? "Curiously enough, it's Israel's leader that claims the US nuclear massacre of 200,000 mostly civilians in Japan in 1945 legitimizes the genocide for which he's wanted at The Hague."

  • Peter Dodge [08-08]: 80 Years at the Brink, Time to Change the Narrative.

  • Eric Ross [10-12]: Hiroshima Remains an Open Wound in Our Imperiled World.

    Not everyone in the Allied nations shared in the prevailing atmosphere of apathy or even jubilation over those nuclear bombings. Before the second bomb struck Nagasaki, French philosopher Albert Camus expressed his horror that even in a war defined by unprecedented, industrialized slaughter, Hiroshima stood apart. The destruction of that city, he observed, marked the moment when "mechanistic civilization has come to its final stage of savagery." Soon after, American cultural critic Dwight Macdonald condemned the bombings in Politics, arguing that they placed Americans "on the same moral plane" as the Nazis, rendering the American people as complicit in the crimes of their government as the German people had been in theirs.

    American scholar Lewis Mumford likewise regarded that moment as a profound moral collapse. It marked, he argued in 1959, the point at which the U.S. decided to commit the better part of its national energies to preparation for wholesale human extermination. With the advent of the bomb, Americans accepted their role as "moral monsters," legitimizing technological slaughter as a permissible instrument of state power. "In principle," he wrote, "the extermination camps where the Nazis incinerated over six million helpless Jews were no different from the urban crematoriums our air force improvised in its attacks by napalm bombs on Tokyo," laying the groundwork for the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. . . .

    In a 1986 keynote address before the World Jewish Congress in Jerusalem, "The Final Solution to the Human Problem," [Carl] Sagan argued that Hitler "haunts our century . . . [as] he has shattered our confidence that civilized societies can impose limits on human destructiveness." In their mutually reinforcing preparations to annihilate one another, erase the past, and foreclose the possibility of future generations, he concluded, "the superpowers have dutifully embraced this legacy . . . Adolf Hitler lives on."

    This reminds me of the argument that Hitler succeeded in his campaign to destroy Judaism, not so much by killing so many Jews as in turning the survivors into Nazis.

James K Galbraith [08-07] The Trump Economy? Some Reagan Parallels: "In contrast with the now sober-seeming Reaganites, Trump has taken credit for the economy from day one." Well, not every day, especially with the recent flurry of "fake news."

Melvin Goodman [08-08] Trump's Policies Will Make China Great Again: Well, "great" is greatly overrated, but it's so much a part of Trump's mentality it's tempting to taunt him with for failing on his own terms. In economic terms, China doesn't need America any more. One questions whether they ever did: whether it was just western conceit to see the rest of the world as developing in our footsteps, repeating our same mistakes. For instance, their recent shift from coal to solar has turned them from followers to leaders. Trump, on the other hand, is trying to smash us into reverse.

David D Kirkpatrick [08-11] The Number: "How much is Trump pocketing off the Presidency?" Plenty of detail here, but the bottom line is $3.4 billion.

Bhaskar Sunkara [08-11] Democrats Keep Misreading the Working Class: "Many in the party see workers as drifting rightward. But new data show they're more progressive than ever on economic issues — if Democrats are willing to meet them there." Related:

  • David Kusnet [07-17] How the Left Lost the Working Class — and How to Win Them Back: "To avoid becoming the foil for Right Populism, Left Populists need to respect working-class values of work, family, community, patriotism, and the aspiration for stability and security." I think he's confusing the Left with Democrats here. If you look at the polling for Bernie Sanders, who actually speaks "working class" (as opposed to Elizabeth Warren, who prefers "middle class" although she has a similar meaning and equivalent policies — what's missing is the sense that she's one of us), the Left polls pretty well, as do nearly every Left economic issues. Sure, the "cultural" stuff is more mixed, but Sanders' very liberal views on those matters isn't much of a deal breaker. Center Democrats lost the working class with their trickle-down rationalizations for their pandering to neoliberal businesses (mostly tech and finance) that turn out to be as predatory as the old robber barons. Republicans won a few votes with lies, demagoguery, and salt-of-the-earth flattery, but to call such rhetoric — and that's literally all it is — Populist just betrays your own insecurity with working class folk. [PS: I just wrote that reacting to the headline. Turns out this is a review of Joan C Williams: Outclassed: How the Left Lost the Working Class and How to Win Them Back. I liked her previous book, White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America [2017], so I figure she's mostly on solid ground, and that her use of "Left" instead of "Democrats" targets her prospective readers. Kusnet, by the way, is a former Clinton speechwriter, but from 1992-94, when he was still looking for working class votes, and not just foundation donors.]

Ian Bremmer [08-11] Can Democracy Survive AI? Two better questions are: Can democracy survive capitalism? And can capitalism survive AI? I'm not saying that AI is some kind of value-neutral technology that could equally be put to good or evil purposes. It potentially changes a lot of things. But it is a power tool, and the politico-economic system decides who gets power and how they can use it, and right now all this power is in the hands of a few megalomaniacal capitalists. Regulation may take some of the edge off, and allow for some breathing room, but unless it changes who owns AI and what they can do with it, the threats not only remain but multiply. And note that my first question predates AI. Capitalists, operating under their own logic, have already destroyed much of what passes for democracy in the US. AI is only going to make this worse, at least in the short term. As for the long term, that's harder to speculate on. As Marx was not even the first to realize, capitalism is inherently unstable. AI could make it even more unstable — and if it's any kind of intelligence at all, it probably will.

Sheila Jordan, jazz singer extraordinaire, died on August 11, age 96. [PS: See Notes on Everyday Life for my piece on her.] I read about her failing health a few weeks ago — like so many Americans, she was struggling with the costs of home hospice care, as if agreeing to die wasn't sacrifice enough — but I hadn't noticed that she released an evidently new album this January. [Portrait Now, with Roni Ben-Hur (guitar) and Harvie S (bass), recorded in 2023, and released in time for her last tour date, in Chicago.] Here are some pieces, starting off with obits, plus a few older pieces:

Nicholas Liu [08-13] The Case Against Business Schools: I don't doubt that they teach a few useful practical skills, and sure, you can call them "finishing schools for capitalism's managerial aristocracy," but their real reason for being is to counteract any ethical impulses their students may have, to make them more ruthless and efficient economic predators. Any reference to "social responsibility" is just camouflage, following the Churchill-Rumsfeld quote that "the truth is so precious it must be surrounded by an armada of lies." This refers to a book by Martin Parker: Shut Down the Business School: What's Wrong With Management Education (2018).

Aaron Regunberg [08-13] Establishment Democrats Are Going to Torpedo the 2026 Midterms: "Having failed to learn the key lesson from last year's defeat, party leaders are promoting moderate candidates to run against populist progressives in next year's elections." Steve M called this "the most disheartening thing I read yesterday."

Ian Millhiser [08-14]: Justice Kavanaugh just revealed an unfortunate truth about the Supreme Court: "The Court has a special set of rules for Trump." A couple more pieces by Millhiser, plus some related pieces:

Zach Beauchamp [08-14] The "weirdos" shaping Trump's second term: "A liberal writer explains her journey through intellectual MAGAland." The writer in question is Laura K Field, who has a new book, Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, which is about how a few "intellectuals" are using Trump to advance their own peculiar thinking -- the book page mentions Patrick Deneen, Christopher Rufo, Peter Thiel, and JD Vance, but the interview focuses more on Michael Anton, and mentions Adrian Vermeule and Sohrab Ahmari. First, can we stop with calling them "weirdos"? That doesn't clarify anything, and may make them seem cuter than they merit. Second, while MAGA is useful to these "thinkers," MAGA doesn't need them, because whatever MAGA is, they aren't ideologically driven. At most, they pick up ideas to support gut instincts, with Trump the most obvious case of all. So understanding their "thinking" doesn't help us much, either with their political appeal or with their consequences.

Eric Foner [08-14] The Education of a Historian: "Freedom is neither a fixed idea, nor the story of progress toward a predetermined goal." One of America's preeminent historians reminisces, starting with his star-studded leftist family. Excerpt from his new book, Our Fragile Freedoms: Essays.

Adam Shatz [08-16] 'Like a Hymn': "The jazz pianist Amina Claudine Myers has spent her career weaving jazz, blues, gospel, and classical music into a distinctively personal idiom."

Tweets:

  • Daniel Gilmore [08-01]:

    Increasingly firm in my belief that if Trump had gotten into office and basically just fucked off—golfed, took some bribes, traveled a bunch—he'd be at like 50-55% approvals. Every single day of the ~6.5 months he's been back in power thus far has been an exercise in bleeding himself out.

    To which jamelle added:

    oh absolutely. the issue is that trump is too vindictive to have just let sleeping dogs lie. he wanted to get revenge on everyone that aggrieved him in his first term. i am 100% certain, in fact, that the project 2025 stuff was sold to him as a tool for getting that revenge.

  • Joshua Ehrlich [08-17]: Response to "what's your take on the moment we're living through in 50 words or less":

    we are living in a time of profound suffering and profound opportunity. restoring the post-war status quo is not a solution, and the real roadblock to fixing our country is that nearly all of the will to be innovative is on the side of the fascists.

    I doubt I'd call it "innovation," but they are willing to break convention with little or no concern for consequences, which makes them appear to be dynamic -- something people who don't know any better are easily impressed by.

Current count: 277 links, 20674 words (25025 total)

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Monday, August 11, 2025

Music Week

August archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44663 [44630] rated (+33), 36 [25] unrated (+11).

Some time after I bought my 1986 Audi, I replaced the radio with a CD player. Same with my 1994 Nissan, unless it came with one (I'm a bit unsure, but if it did, it was gone within a week). The 2006 Toyota had one by default, but we opted for the 6-CD changer. I don't think I ever loaded more than one CD at a time, but it came with extra speakers, and made a statement. When I started contemplating a new car just before 2020 happened, I was dismayed to find virtually nothing offering CD players, or even radios that could be ripped out and easily replaced. When we finally gave in and bought our new Toyota, all we could get was a 10.5-inch media/info console with bluetooth, wi-fi, one usb port, and a bunch of trial subscriptions. I spent our first week driving in silence, except when my wife insisted on NPR, which was painful. Exposing oneself to too much news and opinion isn't healthy.

I asked google "why did car companies stop offering cd players," and AI responded:

Car companies stopped offering CD players as standard features due to a shift in consumer preferences towards digital music and the convenience of streaming services. The rise of smartphones, Bluetooth, and USB connectivity has made it easier and more appealing to access music through these devices rather than through physical CDs. Additionally, CD players are more expensive to manufacture and install than other audio components, and their removal helps manufacturers cut costs.

This mostly sounds like bullshit to me. I don't doubt that this is what they say and want you to believe, but that's all it is. AI is only as good as its training data. It hasn't overcome the maxim of "garbage in, garbage out." The costs are trivial in a $30,000 car (nor do you find them appearing in more expensive models), and "consumer preferences" are largely dictated by marketing schemes, meant to steer people to corporate preferences. I doubt convenience too. I use streaming a lot at home, but the user interfaces are awful, and I only get by because I'm constantly on the keyboard. I'm trying not to go too crazy here. I'm often slow adopting new tech. (I certainly dragged my feet when CDs came out -- you know, back when they had superior sound and lasted forever.) So I'll try to give it a go. But this week has been pretty miserable for me and my music.

My big goal last week was to finally publish my first Substack post. I've written quite a bit of Loose Tabs draft material, and I figured one long comment on an especially inane Vox piece would kick things off nicely, as it does a fairly succinct job of summing up the current political situation, with relevant notes on the ineptness of the opposition and the cluelessness of a way-too-indulgent media, while introducing my general themes. All I needed to do was write a bit of header and footer, but I tore up three or four of the former by Friday before I got something I could stand. As expected, I did a fair amount of editing on the core piece, and sent it out to a couple people Saturday evening. Sunday I added a couple more paragraphs, then finally sent it out, under the title Four Stories. Please check it out, and subscribe to get it delivered regularly by email. There is no charge, no advertising, and no nagging (if I can help it). You do not have to have a Substack account to subscribe. If you have questions or problems, let me know.

I posted notices on X, Bluesky, and Facebook. Subscribers are up to 41, which looks like more than a third of the views on any of those mass social media platforms. (The X tweet has 93 views, almost double the 51 of last week's Music Week notice.) But I've been enjoying the stream of mail from Substack, especially sign-up notices from old friends, and I'm saving the marketing tips in case I ever get around to thinking about promotion. Right now this is mostly a pivot in how I'm approaching writing. More on that when I have something to show.

As noted in the letter, I only had 17 records rated through Friday. I didn't try to explain why. The distractions were major, but also every now and then I just have trouble figuring out what to play next. So I settled on the dumbest (but easiest) algorithm of all: I started playing the highest-rated non-genre (rock/pop, but not metal) albums on my metacritic list: Pulp, Turnstile, Caroline, Rich Dawson, Jasmine.4.T, Swans, Steven Wilson, Divorce, Doves, Lorde, etc. These are all albums I hadn't been in any hurry to play, and in many cases might never have bothered with. By the end of the week, I was down to Sparks (110), and up over 30 albums rated. Most vindicated my previous neglect, with the few pleasant surprises -- Bob Mould, Self Esteem, Horrors -- not quite rising past B+(***). That leaves us way short of A-list albums this week. Aside from those three, the best prospect is Antony Szmierek, followed by the other Vibrational Therapy albums.

After the cutoff, I decided to tweak the algorithm to allow me to pick one-in-three albums. I went with Miki Berenyi over Youth Lagoon and BC Camplight, and got another B+(***). The top unheard albums now are all metal (Deafheaven, Heartworms, Spiritbox). I sample a few metal albums every year, although only one so far this year (Mean Mistreater). Updates to the lists have been very sporadic of late, which is one reason I've struggled to find things to listen to. I've also let the jazz queue languish, but most of what's pending hasn't been released yet.

Goals for next week include: finally building Laura's new computer; shopping for eye glasses; building one more rack for the woodpile project; building my recycling kiosk; posting Loose Tabs; another newsletter; cooking dinner for some very old friends. The probably won't get to section also includes: sorting out my electrician tools and parts; setting up the website framework for the broader Notes on Everyday Life project; analyzing the DownBeat polls. Probably some more stuff I'm forgetting right now, given that I've done next to nothing on my planning documents, but most of what's left falls into definitely-won't-get-around-to territory. Loose Tabs could swallow everything else, so I'll focus on cutting that one short.

PS: A while back I was trying to track down a broken link to rockcritics.com. I finally found the answer, which is that the old domain name is defunct, but the website is still available here. This came up with reference to a 2002 interview with Robert Christgau, but it also concerns a 2014 interview with me, where I talk a little about my intellectual evolution, how I got into writing rock and jazz criticism, and how I built Robert Christgau's website (as well as a few things about my website). This interview turned out to be the basis for most of what is in my Wikipedia page, so it's rather important to me -- albeit something I hadn't looked at in years. It may be worth a revisit and some second thoughts.

New records reviewed this week:

Addison Rae: Addison (2025, As Long as I'm Dancing/Columbia): Pop singer-songwriter, last name Easterling, first album, but evidently famous since 2019 as a TikTok content creator ("amassing over 88 million followers, making her the fifth most-followed individual on the platform, as of 2025"). B+(*) [sp]

Brandi Carlile & Elton John: Who Believes in Angels? (2025, Mercury): Novelty star pairing, 8th studio album since 2005 for the American singer-songwriter, 33rd for Reg (or Sir Elton!), who I haven't checked out since 2010, and haven't graded an A- (or for that matter B+) album since 1975's Rock of the Westies. Aside from a Laura Nyro cover, all songs are co-credited to the stars, but also to Bernie Taupin and producer-guitarist Andrew Watt. Most favor Carlile, arena-scaled, with the closer pure John-Taupin. B- [sp]

Caroline: Caroline 2 (2025, Rough Trade): English "post-rock" band, second album. Floundered awhile, then finally seemed like it might be developing into something sonic, then was over. B [sp]

Circuit Des Yeux: Halo on the Inside (2025, Matador): Singer-songwriter Haley Fohr, born in Indiana, based in Chicago, 7th studio album since 2008 (plus 2 released as Jackie Lynn). Some kind of baroque pop, grandiose and overwrought, but not devoid of sonic interest. B [sp]

Edwyn Collins: Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation (2025, AED): Scottish singer-songwriter, started in new wave/jangle pop group Orange Juice (three albums 1982-84, some live albums and compilations since, including a 6-CD box of everything), 10 solo studio albums from 1989. He has a voice that shouldn't work, but sometimes does. B+(**) [sp]

Rich Dawson: End of the Middle (2025, Weird World/Domino): English singer-songwriter, ninth album since 2007 starting with Richard Dawson Sings Songs and Plays Guitar, which is about par for the course. Cover appears to have "ard" scratched out, while spine credits this to "(Just Rich)" with label/number "WEIRD166CD." Awkward fit offers little appeal, but there's something to be said for weird. B [sp]

Divorce: Drive to Goldenhammer (2025, Gravity/Capitol): British alt-country band, first album after a couple of EPs, singers Tiger Cohen-Towell and Felix Mackenzie-Barrow, with guitarist Adam Peter-Smith and drummer Kasper Sandstrom, have described themselves as "Wilco meets ABBA." B+(*) [sp]

Djo: The Crux (2025, AWAL): Singer-songwriter Joe Keery, from Massachusetts, started in a psych band, has a fairly substantial career as an actor, but this is his third album as Djo -- name sounds African to me, but not the music, which can be entertaining once you lose any preconceptions. B+(*) [sp]

Doves: Constellations for the Lonely (2024, EMI North): English alt-rock trio, sixth album since 2000 (big gap between 2009-20), big in UK, not so much in US. B+(*) [sp]

Franz Ferdinand: The Human Fear (2025, Domino): Scottish band, first album (2004) was a huge hit, as was its 2005 follow up, but later albums have been spread out (4, 4, 5, and now 7 years between). Not a bad band, knows how to craft a catchy song, and bring some energy. B(*) [sp]

The Horrors: Night Life (2025, Fiction/Universal): English rock band, first album 2007, originally garage or gothic or post-punk or shoegaze or neo-psychedelia, sixth album, first I've heard since 2011 and first released since 2017, Faris Badwan the singer, at this point has an understated vibe I'm enjoying. Sixth album since 2007 (previous 2017). B+(**) [sp]

Jasmine.4.T: You Are the Morning (2025, Saddest Factory/Dead Oceans): British singer-songwriter Jasmine Cruikshank with band, first album after a 2019 EP and some singles. B [sp]

Kronos Quartet and the Hard Rain Collective: Hard Rain (2025, Red Hot Org, EP): Postclassical string quartet, started with the moderns but has wandered eclectically ever since, here backing two long takes of the Dylan song, the words taken up by a queue of 15 (or more?) singers, starting with Allison Russell and Iggy Pop, and ending with Willie Nelson. Third piece is by Terry Riley and Sara Miyamoto, some kind of dirge as best I can tell. Conceptually an EP, but adds up to 29:54. B+(**) [bc]

Jim Legxacy: Black British Music (2025, XL): British rapper, James Olaloye, Nigerian descent, second mixtape after three EPs (since 2019). B+(*) [sp]

Nicolas Leirtrø: Cherry Blossom (2024 [2025], Sonic Transmission): Norwegian bassist, first album, solo, has side credits (notably with Amalie Dahl and Mats Gustafsson) back to 2016. B+(*) [bc]

Lorde: Virgin (2025, Republic): Pop singer-songwriter from New Zealand, fourth album since 2013, all big international hits. I'm surprised at how flat and featureless this one sounds. B [sp]

M(h)aol: Something Soft (2025, Merge): Irish postpunk band, second album, 11 tracks, 29:58, some songs, some just rattle the air. B+(***) [sp]

Bob Mould: Here We Go Crazy (2025, Granary Music): Ex-Hüsker Dü (1983-87) -- which I got a welcome refresher on with new releases of old live albums -- with 15 solo albums since 1989 (plus several as Sugar), very consistent sound throughout, although my own level of interest has waxed and waned considerably. (I also thought that while Mould was primarily responsible for Hüsker Dü's sound, it was Grant Hart who wrote their best songs, despite their sound. So I never expected Mould alone to match the group highs -- although Hart alone couldn't do that either). Still, this one sounds better than any I recall, so maybe "crazy" helps. Not consistent enough to overwhelm my general reluctance, but close. B+(***) [sp]

Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke: Tall Tales (2025, Warp): Electronic musician, born in England but based in Australia, Discogs credits him with 4 albums and 18 singles/EPs since 2007, but many more credits going back to 1991. The Radiohead frontman wrote and sang the lyrics here. Jonathan Zawanda created artwork for the music, developed that into an accompanying film, and published "a limited amount of Tall Tales zines." B+(**) [sp]

Pulp: More (2025, Rough Trade): British band, principally Jarvis Cocker, released 7 albums 1983-2001, the big one was Different Class (aka "Common People") in 1995 (NME put it number 6 in a 2013 list of "500 Greatest Albums of All Time"), regrouped briefly in 2011 and again in 2022, but this is their first new album (after a half-dozen solo albums). It does have occasional moments of grandeur, or as one review put it, "Pulp remains resolutely Pulpy." B+(*) [sp]

Self Esteem: A Complicated Woman (2025, Polydor): English singer-songwriter Rebecca Lucy Taylor, third album since 2019, some interesting songs. Makes extensive use of choir and string arrangements, not something I normally take to. B+(***) [sp]

Big A Sherrod: Torchbearer of the Clarksdale Sound [Listener's Circle Vol. 72] (2025, Music Maker, EP): Blues guitarist-singer, "A" for Anthony, has a couple albums from 2014 and 2022, this one runs 5 songs, 28:28. B+(**) [bc]

Slick Rick: Victory (2025, Mass Appeal): Rapper Ricky Walters, born in England to Jamaican parents, moved to New York at 11, recorded four albums 1988-99, so this one's taken until he's turned 60. B+(***) [sp]

Sparks: MAD! (2025, Transgressive): Brothers Ron and Russell Mael, unflappably cranking out records more than 50 years after their brilliantly titled but horribly executed debut (A Wolfer in Tweeter's Clothing). They've always been a bit clever, and they've occasionally been able to find a hook. That sufficed for a while, but what's sustained them over the long haul was hack professionalism, which sustains indifference, if not disgust. B- [sp]

Swans: Birthing (2025, Young God/Mute): Heavy rock band ("experimental") founded 1981 and fronted by Michael Gira, 17th studio album since 1983 (not counting 10 live albums, and miscellany), many like this one running long (115:35, their 6th straight 2-CD). Long obscure, but they nicked the US charts in 2012, rose to 37 in 2014, and extended internationally in 2016. Sounded just oppressive at first, with its first interesting pattern emerging maybe a half hour in. Eventually settled into a dank ambient groove that was tolerable enough to allow me to think about other things. B [sp]

Antony Szmierek: Service Station at the End of the Universe (2025, Mushroom Music): British rapper, or "spoken word artist," first album, after an EP in 2023, but the first single from this appeared in 2022. Music is closer to house than to hip-hop, but I can see it either way. B+(***) [sp]

Turnstile: Never Enough (2025, Roadrunner): Band from Baltimore, fourth album since 2015 (EPs back to 2011), "hardcore punk" per Wikipedia. I don't know about that, but they combine an agreeable degree of noise, crunch, and melody. B+(*) [sp]

William Tyler: Time Indefinite (2025, Psychic Hotline): Guitarist, based in Nashville, started out of the folk tradition on Tompkins Square (2010), but has played in rock groups (Lambchop, Silver Jews), and has an album called Modern Country. This one has some of the glistening tones I associate with synths and ambient music. B+(*) [sp]

Akira Umeda & Metal Preyers: Clube Da Mariposa Mórbida (2025, Nyege Nyege Tapes): Brazilian visual and sound artist, many albums (tapes?) since 1997, on a label that's turned Kampala into a world center for offbeat electronica. Metal Preyers is a loose group with members from London and Chicago that has appeared on several of the label's projects. B+(*) [sp]

Vibration Black Finger: Everybody Cryin' Mercy (2024 [2025], Enid): Group/alias for British DJ/producer Lascelle Gordon (aka Lascelles, or Lascelle Lascelles), also associated with Nat Birchall, Beth Orton, Heliocentric, and Brand New Heavies. Third album, following a 2016 EP. Good enough to send me back to their earlier albums, which more clearly fit as jazz (or maybe I just mean more horns/fewer voices). B+(***) [bc]

Steven Wilson: The Overview (2025, Fiction): English singer-songwriter, plays guitar and keyboards, draws on 1970s prog rock with airs of Pink Floyd, started in Porcupine Tree (1992-2009), eighth solo studio album since 2008, two long pieces totaling 41:44, with an extra 60:26 of "The Alterview" in the deluxe edition. The proper role of a bonus disc is to add something extra for those who already enjoy the product, which is a fair description of this one. With my already limited interest, I could have done without it, but let it run anyway. It's a bit less buttoned-down than the first disc, which may have helped to clarify what is probably the better presentation. B+(*) [sp]

Wretch 32: Home? (2025, AWAL): British rapper Jermaine Sinclair, Jamaican family, 7th studio album since 2008, another half dozen mixtpes. B+(**) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Roots Rocking Zimbabwe: The Modern Sound of Harare Townships 1975-1980 (1975-80 [2025], Analog Africa): White settlers under Ian Smith declared Southern Rhodesia independent in 1965. The African majority fought back and prevailed in 1980, although that was hardly the end of the troubles. This collects 25 songs from the last third of the 15-year civil war. The best known bands are Green Arrows and Blacks Unlimited (with Thomas Mapfumo, who also leads off with an early track). B+(***) [sp]

Old music:

New Tutankhamen: I Wish You Were Mine (1979 [2019], Nyami Nyami): Late 1970s group from the territory renamed Zimbabwe in 1980, prominent on Analog Africa's recent comp, so I figured it was worth checking out. Draws more on American soul/disco than on South African models. B+(*) [bc]

Vibration Black Finger: Blackism (2008 [2017], Enid): British jazz-funk group, produced by Lascelle [Gordon], who got his start with "acid jazz" group Brand New Heavies (1991). Curious delay between recording this and release, with two albums and several EPs since. Inspired here by 1970s electric Miles, with Andy Knight (trumpet), James Arben (sax), two drummers, and possibly others on a back cover scan I can't decipher (a vocal bit by Maggie Nichols?). A- [sp]

Vibration Black Finger: Can You See What I'm Trying to Say (2020, Jazzman): Second album, no credits that I can see, although there are vocalists, and glancing references to Musical friends," but this is mostly down to Lascelle Gordon, conjuring up a mixed bag of tricks. B+(***) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Bruce Gertz Quintet: Octopus Dreams (Open Mind Jazz) [08-15]
  • Larry Keel/Jon Stickley: Larry Keel & Jon Stickley (self-released, EP) [09-05]
  • Roberto Magris: Lovely Day(s) (JMood) [09-01]
  • Mike Pope: The Parts You Keep (Origin) [08-22]
  • Bill Scorzari: Sidereal Days (Day 1) (self-released) [10-17]
  • Marc Seales With Ernie Watts: People & Places (Origin) [08-22]
  • Ben Thomas: Tango Project (Origin) [08-22]
  • Chris Wabich: 1978 (Steep) (ADW) [08-01]
  • Yoko Yates: Eternal Moments (Banka) [09-19]
  • Zurhub [Mattan Klein/Ezequiel Hezi Joit]: Countryside Motorways (Origin) [08-22]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, August 4, 2025

Music Week

August archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44630 [44592] rated (+38), 25 [18] unrated (+7).

Major personal news is that we bought a new car. I've been wanting to for several years, but we've traveled so rarely since 2020 that there's been little need. Still, over the last year the clutch has been so dicey I've been afraid of driving out of town, even for the day trips we like to offer our occasional visitors, or for checking in on the few friends and relatives within easy reasonable distance. By the time I got the car into the shop, it was barely drivable and deteriorating fast.

I like to do a thorough job of shopping for big purchases like cars, and had done a fair amount of research, but when the time came, we panicked and bought what I initially identified as the safe default choice. The good news is that it's done now, moving a fairly large project from pending to done. (Well, mostly done: we still have tags, taxes, insurance, not sure what else as there's a lot of new technology I don't fully understand; e.g., they're pushing some kind of AT&T "powerful Wi-Fi hotspot" subscription with a 2-day window for a 20% discount.) The bad news is that I'm still unhappy with the way it all unfolded.

Still, we drive so little we shouldn't let minor quibbles get the better of us. Laura is unhappy that the passenger seat is so low (and unadjustable for height, unlike the driver seat; why not offer that?). And I hate that I won't be able to play CDs in the car. I'm trying not to panic on that score. I have a lot to learn about the new media console system. For that matter, there is a lot I never learned about my fairly ancient cell phone, but may have to as the phone seems to be the nerve center of the car's media package. I've only now downloaded my streaming apps, but haven't tested them out yet.

While numerous trips to car dealers kept me away from other projects around the house, between closing on the car on Friday and picking it up today I managed to listen to a few albums (38 below), and write a fair chunk of the next Loose Tabs. In particular, I haven't done anything on the Substack-based Notes on Everyday Life I announced a couple weeks ago (other than my edit of their "Coming Soon" page, retitled Hello World, which offers an idea of what I had in mind. I'm pleased to note that despite no output, I have 29 free subscribers waiting. I expect to send them something in the coming week.

Whether that first message fits my plan or not isn't clear yet. My latest thinking is that while everything will land somewhere on the website, the timing will vary: some things will show up first in the newsletter, others on the website, with each referring to the other. Redundancy should encourage me to edit more, and possibly expand on items I rushed out. (I missed last night's deadline in posting this. Looking at it again this morning I've already made a dozen edits in the previous paragraphs.) While I have enough Loose Tabs to publish now -- and probably too much for most folk to digest -- I still have a lot of open tabs to get to. I'll probably hold that post back until I finish my rounds (in a week or so), then put it up on the website. I could then write a shorter digest for the newsletter, with links to featured pieces, with the whole post as context. On the other hand, a couple items are already big and/or important enough to extract, polish up a bit, and turn into newsletter items, so they may appear ahead of the Loose Tabs blog post.

I'm not sure where music might fit into this scheme of things. I'm conscious that most of my current subscribers come for the music tips, but my ability to write reviews is already stretched pretty thin. Still, I might come up with a framework to tack on some timely listening notes at the end, perhaps like Jeffrey St. Clair does in his "Sound Grammar" section. He also does one on books, which I could handle -- perhaps not just on what little I manage to read, but by advancing some items that would later appear in a Book Roundup?

My main source for records this week has been Phil Overeem's August 1 list, which I'm still working my way through, plus a few items from Chris Monsen's mid-year list. The main exception is probably the sampling of Holger Czukay. I found (and have since lost) a Chinese website that seemed to suggest a recent reissue of Der Osten Ist Rot, which got me started, although I didn't go very deep. But when I looked up what Christgau had to say about Czukay (very little), I was reminded that I never managed to find a copy of David Toop's Oceans of Sound 2-CD compilation (graded A). A quick check at Amazon shows the book still in print, but no evidence of the CDs.

I finished Chris Hayes' book, The Siren's Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource. I found it useful, generating a lot of interesting thoughts about technology, media culture, and capitalism. Like his previous two books -- Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy (2012) and A Colony in a Nation (2017) -- he took a novel approach to framing a big problem, although this one is a bit more tenuous, making me think that attention may not be the best way of framing the problem. I was especially impressed by the depth of research. While he is clearly smarter than your average TV talking head, what finally came clear in the acknowledgments section was that he has some genuinely brilliant research assistance. I certainly didn't expect to see mention, let alone a learned discussion, of Alexandre Kojève. His discussion of Marx's early writings on alienation is also so spot on that he felt the need to insert a parenthetical "I am not a Marxist" disclaimer.

I've moved on to a book called How AI Works, figuring it's about time I get some fairly unbiased insight into such a superhyped technology. I knew a fair amount about AI back in the 1980s, but haven't followed it, so it wasn't clear how useful my past understanding was. I'll write more about this in the future. One notable thing is that this has gotten me thinking about more mundane matters of technology, like website development. I just ordered a book from the same publisher called The Modern Web, because it seems to cover a lot of details that I've never been able to quite grasp (e.g., the chapters on device-responsive CSS and flexbox layouts). On the other hand, I'm surprised to be ordering a book on web technology originally published over a decade ago (2013). But looking around, I'm not seeing anything newer that looks genuinely useful. Given that most of my web development was learned in 2001-03, maybe the best I can hope for is to advance in decade-sized chunks.

Or maybe I'm just thrashing, as everything we seem to try, or at least hope to try, is failing. Or maybe failing isn't the right word: just slipping further and further away.

New records reviewed this week:

Ilia Belorukov & Marina Džukljev: Everything Changes, Nothing Disappears (2022-23 [2024], Acheulian Handaxe): Russian alto saxophonist, based in Serbia, long list of albums since 2007, here in a duo with the Serbian pianist. B+(***) [sp]

Gina Birch: Trouble (2025, Third Man): British singer-songwriter, second solo album, but side credits go back to 1977, when she was a founder of the Raincoats. B+(**) [sp]

Tyler Childers: Snipe Hunter (2025, RCA): Country singer-songwriter, from Kentucky, self-released a good album in 2011, didn't follow it up until 2017 and has been superb ever since. A- [sp]

Doseone & Height Keech: Wood Teeth (2025, Hands Made, EP): Rapper/producer/poet/artist Adam Drucker, from Idaho, based in Santa Fe, first album 1998, long associated with Anticon, Wikipedia has a long list of musicians he's recorded with but omits the one that brought him to my attention: Buck 65. Baltimore rapper Dan Keech, aka Height, has a similar career and is also well into his 40s. Six "blistering" songs (12:13), "written and recorded in protest": "May all kind hearts feel seen in these songs. May all fascists, bigots and closed minded individuals feel stared at." Scratchy voice signified metal until the words became clearer. B+(***) [sp]

Eddy Current Suppression Ring: Shapes and Forms (2025, Cool Death, EP): Australian alt-rock group, five albums 2006-09, one more in 2019, and now this skinny EP (3 songs, one a Camper Van Beethoven cover, 6:55). B+(*) [bc]

Ex_libris: Ex_libris - 001 (2025, Ex_libris, EP): Electronica producer Dave Huismans, Discogs says based in Berlin but Bandcamp has Utrecht, Netherlands. New alias, but he started in 2006 with A Made Up Sound, alternating with 2562. Two EPs, this one 3 tracks (24:32). Ambient with a little extra. B+(**) [sp]

Ex_libris: Ex_libris - 002 (2025, Ex_libris, EP): Same day sequel, 3 more tracks (23:57). B+(**) [sp]

Fines Double: Espejismo (2025, self-released): Portland-based hip-hop producer/dj, second album, uses a long list of featured rappers (names I recognize: AJ Suede, Curly Castro, PremRock, Billy Woods). The words tend to scatter, but the music is intricate and sinuous, a nice flow with interesting quirks. B+(***) [sp]

Ben Lamar Gay: Yowzers (2023-24 [2025], International Anthem): Cornet player, sings, several albums since 2018, also plays synth, diddley bow, and percussion, with a diverse group that signifies exotica (flute, tuba, guitar, ngoni, percussion, several voices), in combinations that sometimes dazzle or beguile or just bewilder. B+(*) [sp]

Andreas Haddeland Trio: Estuar (2025, Tare): Norwegian guitarist, at least eight albums since 2003, with Lars Tormod Jenset (double bass) and Ulrik Ibsen Thorsrud (drums). B+(**) [bc]

Heat On: Heat On (2024 [2025], Cuneiform): Chicago group, two saxophonists -- Edward Wilkerson Jr. (tenor, best known for 8 Bold Souls) and Fred Jackson Jr. (alto) -- with bass (Nick Macri) and drums (Lily Finnegan), playing 8 tracks composed by the drummer. Finnegan started out in hard core punk band Deodorant, but also plays in Ken Vandermark's Edition Redux, and has a duo album with Gabby Fluke-Mogul. None of that background suggests how meticulously, or remarkably, this plays out. A- [dl]

Gilad Hekselman: Downhill From Here (2023 [2025], La Reserve/Diggers Factory): Israeli guitarist, moved to New York in 2004, dozen-plus albums since 2006, this a trio with Larry Grenadier (bass) and Marcus Gilmore (drums). B+(*) [sp]

Kjetil Husebø: Piano Transformed - Interspace (2024 [2025], Optical Substance): Norwegian pianist, twelve albums since 2010. This is solo, sometimes adding sampling and live electronics, spread over 2-CD (18 songs, 92:29). B+(*) [bc]

Mikko Innanen & Ingebrigt Håker Flaten: Live in Espoo (2025, Fiasko/Sonic Transmissions): Finnish saxophonist, alto is probably his first choice but also plays baritone, sopranino, tenor, and oboe here, fair number of albums since 2006, including some dandies. Duo here with the prolific Norwegian bassist, who gets a fair share of the mix and makes the most of it. A- [sp]

Karol G: Tropicoqueta (2025, Bichota/Interscope): Colombian singer-songwriter Carolina Giraldo Navarro, fifth album since 2017, all high on the US Latin charts. Technically a mix of styles, proudly "Latina Foreva," but those details, like the language, are lost on me. The beats break through first, but much more follows. The guest track for Manu Chao stands out, but by them I'm already sold. A- [sp]

Eric McPherson: Double Bass Quartet (2022 [2025], Giant Step Arts): Drummer, leads a group with Cuban pianist David Virelles and two bassists: John Hébert and Ben Street. One original each from three members, plus six covers, two from Andrew Hill. B+(**) [cd]

Memphis Metaphysics: Memphis Metaphysics (2023 [2025], Sonic Transmissions): Swiss pianist Margaux Oswald and Norwegian guitarist Hein Westgaard recorded this in Memphis with three Americans: Art Edmaiston (tenor sax), Ra Kalam Bob Moses (drums), and Kevin Cheli (percussion). The Europeans were thinking Memphis as in Egypt, the songs named after ancient spirits, with artwork to match. B+(**) [sp]

Pasquale Mirra/Hamid Drake: Lhasa (2022 [2025], Parco Della Musica): Italian vibraphonist, several albums since 2014, many more side-credits, in a duo with the drummer -- pictured on the cover with one of his frame drums. B+(*) [sp]

PAL: Under Your Radar (2025, self-released, EP): Cleveland group, Maureen Joyce (keys) and Jake Schott (guitar) the singers, tag line mentions "punk" five times, "skronk" three, "art" two, perhaps most acutely "angular," which they fit more than any band since Devo. Seven songs, 10:25. B+(***) [bc]

Alex Sipiagin: Daydream (2024 [2025], SkyDeck Muisic): Russian trumpet/flugelhorn player, moved to US in 1990, has a couple dozen albums since 2003, this one recorded in Italy with singers Giuditta Franco and Marta Frigo, guitar and piano, bass and drums. B [sp]

Alex Sipiagin: Reverberations (2024 [2025], Criss Cross Jazz): Trumpet/flugelhorn leader, with alto sax (Will Vinson), piano (John Escreet), bass, and drums, kicking off with three originals before breaking out the Mingus, Ellington, Tyner, and Strayhorn. Aubrey Johnson contributes a vocal I could do without. B+(*) [sp]

Sultan Stevenson: El Roi (2025, Edition): British pianist, second album, mostly trio with bass (Jacob Gryn) and drums (Joel Waters), three (of 8) tracks adding trumpet/flugelhorn (Josh Short) and tenor sax (Soweto Kinch). B+(*) [sp]

Bill Stewart: Live at the Village Vanguard (2023 [2025], Criss Cross Jazz): Drummer, a dozen-plus albums as leader since 1990, hundreds of side credits. Trio with Larry Grenadier (bass) and Walter Smith III (tenor sax), from a week-long stand. B+(**) [sp]

Three-Layer Cake: Sounds the Color of Grounds (2025, Otherly Love): Trio of Mike Pride (drums/marimba), Brandon Seabrook (guitar/banjo/mandolin), and Mike Watt (bass, some spoken word vocals). Second album. B+(**) [sp]

Premik Russell Tubbs/Margee Minier-Tubbs: Oneness-World (2025, Margetoile): Both compose and produce, Margee at the executive level, also claiming all the lyrics, vocals, and some percussion. Premik plays sax, flutes, and EWI. Others help out: the only name I recognize is Zack Brock (violin). I could pass on the music, but the spoken word was more than a little interesting, including a disquisition on fashion that didn't neglect the costs, both tragic and mundane. B+(*) [cd]

Meryl Zimmerman: Easy to Love (2024, Tuxedo Cat): Standards singer from New Orleans, only other credit I can find is a 2007 appearance in the St. Louis a cappella group Mosaic Whispers. "Selections from the Great American Songbook," backed by Kris Tokarski (piano), Nobu Ozaki (bass), and Hal Smith (drums). B [bc]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Master Wilburn Burchette: Master Wilburn Burchette's Psychic Meditation Music (1974 [2025], Numero Group): California-based mystic (1939-2023), "transfixed by the parapsychological, spending as much time reading books on Tibetan mysticism fundamentals as he did practicing guitar," he released seven albums 1971-77, "before abruptly burning and discarding everything related to his musical explorations." This was his fourth album, two LP-side pieces called "Yin" and "Yang," done on some kind of synth (unspecified). B+(*) [bc]

Electric Satie: Gymnopédie '99 (1998 [2025], In Sheep's Clothing): One-shot group, led by Mitsuto Suzuki, who arranged the French composer's pieces (adding one of his own) mostly for Moog. First track is a misdirection, with Ryoji Oba arranging and Silvio Anastacio guitar and vocal. B+(***) [sp]

Brian Eno/Holger Czukay/J. Peter Schwalm: Sushi. Roti. Reibekuchen (1998 [2024], Grönland): Live set from Bonn "at the opening reception of Eno's Future Light-Lounge Proposal Multimedia Installation." Title is from a menu, where the latter are German potato pancakes. The principles seem to be playing various electronics, but the first track (in particular) gains from live drums and bass. B+(**) [sp]

Hüsker Dü: Jan. 30, First Ave Pt. 1 (1985 [2025], Numero Group, EP): Minneapolis group, hardcore with just enough melodic sense to break through my resistance (actually, but me it was their 1983 EP Metal Circus, which I initially hated but eventually came around on), coming off their 2-LP magnum opus, Zen Arcade, and just before New Day Rising. This has been described as "their legendary homecoming concert," recorded to 24-track tape at the time for a possible live album, but shelved with new studio albums coming fast and furious. Thought lost in a 2011 fire, but now "restored completely." First sample: 5 songs (10:58), no idea how much more is left. I doubt I've played any of their records in this century, but a couple songs are so indelible I'm pleased to be reminded ("Books About UFOs," "Makes No Sense at All"). B+(**) [sp]

Hüsker Dü: Nov. 3, Salt Lake City (1985 [2025], Numero Group, EP): Another sample from the live audio archive, recorded November 3, five songs (17:45) that later appeared on Candy Apple Grey (1986) -- my second favorite of their albums, explaining why most of the songs sound familiar, but a bit muted. B+(*) [sp]

Old music:

Holger Czukay: Der Osten Ist Rot (1984, Virgin): Krautrock pioneer (1938-2017), born in Danzig (now Gdansk), Czukay was his Polish family name, but they went by Schüring, calculated to sound more Aryan, which got them expelled to Germany in 1945. He grew up in Duisburg, played bass, studied under Stockhausen, and was a founder of Can in 1968 (leaving after 1977), playing bass and adding samples and electronics, especially radio sounds. He recorded a solo album in 1969, and more from 1979 on, of which this is one of the more famous, with Jaki Liebzeit co-writing several songs (also playing drums, trumpet, piano, organ). A few interesting pieces here, but the effect is rather widely scattered. B+(*) [sp]

Holger Czukay: Rome Remains Rome (1987, Virgin): As scattered as its predecessor, but longer pieces sustain the interesting bits, while inflicting less whiplash. This was running a notch up until the 10:33 "Perfect World" swept me away, with its hints of Afrika Bambaataa and Kid Creole and anticipation of DJ Shadow -- albeit, sure, in a rather plastic way, but this could anchor a solid A album. That sent me back to recheck the Jah Wobble-powered funk pieces ("Hey Baba Reebop," "Hit Hit Flop Flop" and "Sudetenland"), the Pope-sampled "Blessed Easter," and the truly atmospheric "Music in the Air." A- [sp]

Fines Double: Flotar (2021, Filthy Broke): First album, only a few featured rappers (mostly Defcee and AJ Suede), so more emphasis on the rhythm tracks, which are pretty distinctive. B+(**) [bc]

Blaze Foley: Blaze Foley [The Lost Muscle Shoals Recordings] (1984 [2017], Lost Art): Alt-country singer-songwriter, actual name Michael Fuller, took his stage name from Red Foley and Blaze Starr, shot dead at 39 in 1989 with just this one album to his credit: original title, Blaze Foley, but "lost" due to "some trouble with the law" (most of 500 copies were confiscated in a DEA drug bust). A decade later he was mostly famous as the subject of songs by Townes Van Zandt and Lucinda Williams, with Gurf Morlix releasing a tribute album in 2011 (Blaze Foley's 113th Wet Dream, probably Morlix's best). Since then, various live scraps have appeared, which rarely live up to the legend. B+(*) [bc]

Hüsker Dü: Extra Circus (1983 [2017], Numero Group): Five extra tracks from the session(s) that produced their breakthrough 7-song, 18:57 Metal Circus EP. Total: 7:33 -- three tracks less than 1 minute each, the only one over 2 minutes is "Standing by the Sea," which you may know from Zen Arcade, so nothing revelatory, but pretty good while it lasts. B [sp]

PAL: PALS (2023, self-released, EP): First record, a 7-song EP (11:05), just a trio at this point, so singer-songwriter Maureen Joyce plays drums as well as keys. B+(**) [bc]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Nicole Glover: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Savant)
  • Luigi Grasso: La Dimora Dell'atrove (LP345) [09-26]
  • Andy Haas/Brian G Skol: The Honeybee Twist (Resonant Music) [08-01]
  • Dylan Hicks & Small Screens: Avian Field Recordings (Soft Launch) [08-12]
  • Lex Korten: Canopy (Sounderscore) [09-19]
  • Linda May Han Oh: Strange Heavens (Biophilia) [08-22]: packaging only, no music (is this a joke?)
  • Webber/Morris Big Band: Unseparate (Out of Your Head) [09-26]
  • Simón Willson: Feel Love (Endectomorph Music) [09-25]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, July 28, 2025

Music Week

July archive (finished).

Music: Current count 44592 [44557] rated (+35), 18 [16] unrated (+2).

I've had a disturbing week, leaving me all but paralyzed with fear, uncertainty, and doubt -- "FUD" if you're inclined to laugh at it, but right now I'm not. I suppose it started with a routine out-patient test at a local hospital, which has raised no alarms (although messages to visit the "patient portal" for reports have revealed nothing), but disrupted my day, setting off a series of bad choices: a stop at a new restaurant that disappointed, a bit of custard afterwards that I didn't need (while denying myself the "butter pecan concrete" I would have relished), some pricey and esoteric grocery shopping at Whole Foods, where I bought some skinny trout filets that forced me to fix an unplanned dinner (a sub-stellar trout almondine with sides of zucchini and oven fries). While objectively I've muddled through, I've remained out of sorts all week.

The low point came on the day when I spent a couple hours awkwardly leaning into the front porch door trying to reconnect a broken power wire to a doorbell camera. It's been broken for months, and for most of that time just too small and obscure to see how it could go back together. I finally got the wire in, only to have it pop out again when I tried to reconnect the clip. After that, it was impossible. I finally concluded I'd have to get someone out to if not fix it then suggest a different camera setup. Seems like I've been failing at a lot of these maintenance tasks lately. It's very discouraging. [PS: I did some further research moments ago, which suggests I misunderstood some things. Still probably not salvageable, but replacing the entire clip may be straightforward to someone with the right parts and equipment.]

I also spent a bunch of time this week doing research on buying a new car. I have a big table of models, but I'm still a long ways from figuring it all out. Meanwhile, the old car is on its last legs, or seems to be, and I need to get someone to look at it, because I no longer seem to understand how cars work. There was a day when my highest ambition was to become a mechanic (ok, a race car designer). Dreams like that die hard. (Although I had two cousins who did just that. One was already building and racing go-karts as a teen. Later he spent most of his life teaching mechanics, but wound up doing tricky plastics repairs in a body shop by then managed by the other.) Still, made some progress after months of spinning my wheels. Should be a major focus next week.

Many more projects on hold. The one most relevant here is the Substack newsletter, Notes on Everyday Life. I haven't sent anything out yet, but I've started to get some free subscribers, and I edited their original "Coming Soon" page as Hello World, the title taken from the original demo program in The C Programming Language. The edited text serves as a brief (6 paragraph) mission statement. I'll try to publish an initial post sometime in the coming week. No idea yet what will be in there. I do have one possibly serious problem with Substack so far: with Firefox, the dashboard controls are dead in the water. Thus far I've only been able to work on it through Chrome, which I almost never use. The problem also applies to other supposedly public web pages, like this one (from Chris Monsen's Listening Booth, a mid-year list that is probably very useful).

Probably more I should write about here, but it's gotten too late, so I might as well go ahead and post. One last thing I do need to mention is that I wrote up three answers today.

New records reviewed this week:

Arcade Fire: Pink Elephant (2025, Columbia): Canadian rock band, seventh album since 2004, the first several were huge critical as well as commercial hits, most I liked well enough but little remember now. So I had little enthusiasm for this when it came out, but must admit they remain a good band, and this album has some genuine appeal. B+(*) [sp]

Beach Bunny: Tunnel Vision (2025, AWAL): Indie pop band, Lili Trifilio the singer-guitarist, third album, "jam-packed bubblegum hooks and angsty riffs." B+(**) [sp]

Yaya Bey: Do It Afraid (2025, Drink Sum Wtr): R&B singer-songwriter from Brooklyn, raps some, several albums since 2016. B+(*) [sp]

Brian Charette: Borderless (2024 [2025], SteepleChase): Organ player, working solo, evidently his third such -- starting with Borderline in 2013, then Beyond Borderline in 2019 -- which puts him in mind of church music, but when his own pieces run out, he drops in some Jobim, Booker T, Huey Lewis, "Willow Weep for Me," "Tadd's Delight," "Moody's Mood for Love." With a couple vocals. B [sp]

Brian Charette: Working Out With Big G (2024 [2025], SteepleChase): The attraction here is tenor saxophonist George Coleman, 89 at the time, but the typography on cover and spine tells me to credit this solely to the organ player, while noting support from Paul Bollenback (guitar) and George Coleman Jr. (drums) -- a sequel to their 2017 album. All standards, starting with Charlie Parker and ending with Irving Berlin. Coleman still sounds fine, but he seems pretty relaxed. B+(***) [sp]

Eric Church: Evangeline vs. the Machine (2025, UMG Nashville): Country singer-songwriter, debut 2006, went multi-platinum with 2011's Chief. Seems to be moving beyond his arena rock phase. B+(*) [sp]

Clipse: Let God Sort Them Out (2025, Roc Nation): Hip-hop duo from Virginia Beach, brothers Gene and Terrence Thornton, aka No Malice and Pusha T, big album in 2002 (Lord Willin'), but this is their first since 2009 (both released solo albums in 2013, with Pusha T adding three more through 2022). More drug trade than I'd like, but they steer away from gangsta by treating it more as a calling, a prism for a world view, interesting on its own terms. A- [sp]

Chick Corea/Christian McBride/Brian Blade: Trilogy 3 (2020 [2025], Candid): Piano/bass/drums trio, their initial 2014 3-CD album documented 2010-12 tours, a second 2-CD from 2018 picked up scraps and added a 2016 tour. This one, from a 2020 tour -- the pianist died in 2021 -- fits on a single CD, although the 2-LP is probably the point. B+(*) [sp]

Paquito D'Rivera & Madrid-New York Connection Band: La Fleure De Cayenne (2025, Sunnyside): Cuban clarinet and alto sax player, debut 1975, moved to US in 1981, many albums, group here mostly Cubans based in Madrid (piano/bass/drums/percussion) with a vibraphonist (Sebastian Laverde) from Colombia. B+(*) [sp]

Dawn Patrol Jazz Band: A Tribute to Benny Strickler and the Yerba Buena Jazz Band (2024-25 [2025], self-released): Band led by drummer Hal Smith, who's been a major figure in the trad jazz world since 1979, so no direct connection to the Yuerba Buena Jazz Band (1940-59). Strickler (1917-46) was a trumpet player who briefly played with them c. 1942 (although none of the 6 sides they recorded together are reprised here). Group here with Rick Holzgrafe (cornet), Steve Drivon (trombone), two clarinets, piano, banjo, and tuba. B+(**) [bc]

McKinley Dixon: Magic, Alive! (2025, City Slang): Rapper, from Maryland, based in Chicago, fifth album since 2016 (first two self-released). B+(**) [sp]

DJ Haram: Beside Myself (Hyperdub): DJ/producer based in Philadelphia, Zubeyda Muzeyyen, part of duo 700 Bliss with Moor Mother, first album after a mixtape, several guest rappers including Bbymutha, Moor Mother, and Armand Hammer. B+(**) [sp]

Open Mike Eagle: Neighborhood Gods Unlimited (2025, Auto Reverse): Underground rapper, from Chicago, debut 2008, more than a dozen albums, this one sneakier than most. A- [sp]

The Haas Company Featuring Jerry Goodman: Thirteen (2025, Psychiatric): Fusion group led by drummer Steve Haas, each volume featuring a guest, here playing electric violin. B [cd] [08-01]

Jasper Høiby: Fellow Creatures: We Must Fight (2025, Edition): Danish bassist, started in Phronesis in 2007, other groups include Planet B, Three Elements, and Fellow Creatures -- a 2016 title recycled here but with a different group: Alex Hitchcock (sax), Ketija Ringa Karahona (flute), Saled Silbak (oud), Luca Caruso (drums), Xavi Torres (piano). B+(**) [sp]

Infinity Knives & Brian Ennals: A City Drowned in God's Black Tears (2025, Phantom Limb): Music by the former, aka Tariq Ravelomanana, from Tanzania but moved in childhood through several African countries before settling "as a junior high student" in Baltimore. Has a couple albums on his own, as does lyricist Ennals, before teaming up for their third album here. Some sharp politics, but also some fuzzy music. B+(**) [sp]

Rico Jones: Bloodlines (2024 [2025], Giant Step Arts): Tenor saxophonist, from Colorado, based in Harlem, "a rising star and one of the most accomplished saxophonists of his generation," which judging from his biography (which doesn't give a birthdate or age, but is pretty details "from the age of 13") would put him in the 24-28 range, here with his first album. Not many in his cohort I could contrast him with, but Zoh Amba (b. 2000) has 7 + 4 albums in my database. No one else really pops to mind, as it's unusual for jazz musicians to lead albums before they turn 30. Hyperbole aside, this is pretty impressive: original pieces, starting with a 30:21 suite, plus four more pieces that add up to another 31:15. Quartet with guitar (Max Light), bass (Joe Martin), and drums (Nasheet Waits). B+(***) [cdr] [07-25]

Kokoroko: Tuff Times Never Last (2025, Brownswood): British septet, led by Sheila Maurice-Grey and Onome Edgeworth, slotted as jazz but strikes me as too soft-edged even for Afrobeat. B [sp]

Lil Wayne: Tha Carter VI (2025, Young Money/Republic): New Orleans rapper Dwayne Carter, Wikipedia counts 14 studio albums and 29 mixtapes since 1999, most of the former, especially his Tha Carter series, big hits. Considerable craft here, but little I actually care about; e.g., "I'm alone in the studio with my gun." B+(*) [sp]

Niontay: Fada<3of$ (2025, 10k): Rapper, last name Hicks, born in Milwaukee, grew up in Florida, now in Brooklyn, second album. Some esoteric groove music. B+(*) [sp]

Pink Siifu: Black'!Antique (2025, Dynamite Hill): Rapper Livingston Matthews, albums since 2019, this one hews close to the underground for an excessive 77 minutes. B+(*) [sp]

Altin Sencalar: Unleashed (2024 [2025], Posi-Tone): Trombonist, "California-born, Texas-raised, New York-based," "drawing on his Mexican and Turkish heritage," second album, with Greg Tardy (tenor sax/clarinet), Behn Gillece (vibes), Boris Kozlov (bass), and EJ Strickland (drums), plus on three tracks Bruce Williams (alto/soprano sax/flute). B+(*) [sp]

Slikback: Attrition (2025, Planet Mu): "UK bass" or "deconstructed club" or something along those lines, by Freddy M Njau, from Nairobi, Kenya, who seems to have done a lot of this sort of thing since 2019. B+(*) [sp]

Hal Smith's San Francisco Jazz All-Stars: Live at the International Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival '24 Sedalia, MO [Vol. 1] (2024, self-released): Trad jazz drummer, many albums since 1979, cover print here includes a "featuring:" of song titles, and a full list of "all-star" names: Tom Bartlett (trombone/vocals), John Otto (clarinet), Brian Holland (piano), John Gill (banjo/vocals), Dan Anderson (tuba). Gill is by far the most famous in my book, and (along with Bartlett and Smith) provides a link to Turk Murphy, who following Lu Watters put San Francisco on the trad jazz map in the 1940s. [bc]

Junior Smith and His Remote Rangers: Junior Smith's Remote Round Up (2025, self-released): Trad jazz drummer Hal Smith, with much of his usual crew, playing western swing, inspired by Bob Wills' Tiffany Transcriptions, featuring vocalists Alice Spencer and Katie Shore (who also plays fiddle). B+(*) [bc]

Snowpoet: Heartstrings (2025, Edition): British duo, Lauren Kinsella (vocals) and Chris Hyson (keyboards), fourth album since 2016, plus bass, drums, and some saxophone, on a jazz label but their "depth, sonic richness, and lyrical honesty" is very niche-specific. B+(*) [sp]

Laura Stevenson: Late Great (2025, Really): Singer-songwriter from Long Island, started playing keyboards in a group called Bomb the Music Industry, first solo album 2008, this makes seven. B+(*) [sp]

Kelsey Waldon: Every Ghost (2025, Oh Boy): Country singer-songwriter from Kentucky, tenth album since 2010. The Gold Mine (2014) was the first I heard, and I was very taken with the voice, the songs, the deep country vibe. Everything she's done since then has been very good, and this is no exception, even if it seems like my enthusiasm is waning. B+(***) [sp]

Wet Leg: Moisturizer (2025, Domino): British rock duo, actually from Isle of Wight, second album, first was one of 2022's top-regarded albums, I never quite got the excitement then, even less now. B+(**) [sp]

Jessica Winter: My First Album (2025, Lucky Number): Pop singer-songwriter, don't know much about her, but it mostly works. B+(**) [sp]

Wu-Tang X Mathematics: Black Samson, the Bastard Swordsman (2025, 36 Chambers/DNA Music): Latter is DJ/producer Ronald Bean, a Discogs entry under Allah Mathematics, with a dozen variants, and ten releases since 2003, and 101 production credits since 1994, with many Wu-Tang affiliates starting with Method Man in 1998, and the whole Clan in 2000. So soundwise, he is them, and vice versa. "Clan" was dropped on their 2017 The Saga Continues, but that seems to have less to do with attrition -- ODB died in 2004; all nine others are still on board here -- than with consolidating their brand: a business strategy, which is probably all the "Final Chamber" tour is, or the "Las Vegas Residency," or the album they recorded for a private auction, or the "cooperative action RPG." In this case, note that I'm playing the 12-cut stream, as opposed to the 11-track LP or the 13-track digital or the 26-track "deluxe" or whatever's on the CD or 2xCD, let alone the instrumental version, or the 2x12" 45RPM Record Store Day special. A- [sp]

Brandee Younger: Gadabout Season (2025, Impulse!): Harp player, albums since 2011, third major label deal on Impulse. Lot of guest spots, including some prominent names, but ultimately they don't add much. B+(*) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Sly & the Family Stone: The First Family: Live at the Winchester Cathedral 1967 (1967 [2025], High Moon): Very early, only one original piece ("I Ain't Got Nobody"), but it clearly points toward their debut album, A Whole New Thing later that same year. After that it's all covers: Otis Redding and Motown, "St. James Infirmary" and "Funky Broadway." Probably fun to witness at the time, but nothing to write home about. B [sp]

Sly & the Family Stone: Sly Lives! (Aka the Burden of Black Genius) [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack] (1967-73 [2025], Sony/Legacy): Tie-in to Questlove's documentary, baited with "seven rare and previously unreleased mixes and alternate versions, along with three new edits," dates not given but begins with two songs from A Whole New Thing and ends with "Que Sera" from Fresh. I'm not finding this very useful, but if if you're starting from scratch, this could be a good introduction. There certainly are moments of genius. B+(**) [sp]

Old music:

Joe Sanders: Introducing Joe Sanders (2011 [2012], Criss Cross Jazz): Bassist, American but based in Paris, first of three albums, many more side credits (Discogs counts 68 since 2000). He wrote 5 (of 10) songs here, including a vocal shared with Gretchen Parlato. With Will Vinson (alto sax), Luis Perdomo (keyboards), and Rodney Green (drums). Nice variety, worth noticing the bass. B+(**) [sp]

Grade (or other) changes:

New York Dolls: In Too Much, Too Soon (1974, Mercury): I always favored their second album, perhaps because I got to it first, but possibly not for a year or two after the fact, by which point the CBGB scene was exploding, with all sorts of new wonders. When I went back over the A+ lists, this was one that gave me a pause. When I finally got around to replaying, it easily satisfied my criteria: every cut bursting with ideas, flowing inexorably into a complete album, capped by the magnificent "Human Being." [was: A] A+ [cd]

Rechecked with no grade change:

New York Dolls: New York Dolls (1973, Mercury): Also replayed their first album, New York Dolls, several times, and left it at A. Several really great songs, especially "Subway Train," but doesn't quite have the complete flow of the second album. One thing I was struck by was how much the ballad ("Vietnamese Baby"?) anticipated the Go-Betweens -- another recent replay -- but A+ albums shouldn't have odd songs out (at least ones that aren't sui generis). A [cd]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Gabriel Alegría Afro-Peruvian Sextet: El Muki (Saponegro) [08-15]
  • Adegoke Steve Colson & Iqua Colson With Andrew Cyrille/Mark Helias: Glow: Music for Trio . . . and Voice (Silver Sphinx) [08-22]
  • Eric McPherson: Double Bass Quartet (Giant Step Arts) [07-25]
  • PlainsPeak: Someone to Someone (Irabbagast) [08-15]
  • Ned Rothenberg: Looms & Legends (Pyroclastic) [09-05]
  • Charlie Rouse: Cinnamon Flower: The Expanded Edition (1977, Resonance) [09-19]
  • Miguel Zenón Quartet: Vanguardia Subterranea: Live at the Village Vanguard (Miel Music) [08-29]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, July 21, 2025

Music Week

July archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44557 [44524] rated (+33), 16 [16] unrated (-0).

I never really bought the idea of a Reagan Revolution. Although the long-term consequences of the 1980 election were profound, the immediate impact was fairly mild, in part because they still felt the need to disguise what they were doing, in part because the institutions that came out of the New Deal, WWII, and the postwar era up through Johnson and in some cases even Nixon were still pretty robust. Reagan himself remained a sunny tonic, personally much more popular than his policies, although I never even for a moment fell for him. My stock line about the 1980s was that the only growth industry in America was fraud. No surprise that the president himself was one huge, paper-thin charlatan, but he got away with it, mostly because the media and Democrats like Clinton and Obama wanted in on the graft.

On the other hand, the first six months of Trump's second coming does feel like revolution, especially if, like me, you've gotten past the old left sentiment that revolutions advance us toward more just societies. A more clinical view of revolution is that it's a time when the old order turns brittle and cracks, allowing some new parties a sudden rush to unconstrained power. I've been thinking about these issues for most of my life, and I think I have a distinctly different take on the moment. I came out of the 2024 election with the sense that something profoundly weird had just happened. At this point, I think we can start to clarify what that was, why it happened, what it means, and where it's likely to go.

I don't know that I can write all that up, but my plan is to give it a few weeks and see what comes out. Worst case I add it to all the other failed book outlines I've cranked out since the 1990s (or maybe the 1970s, when I had lots of book ideas, but definitely not the 1980s, when the only one was a threaded novel about what killed my wife). I have some ideas about how to put it together. But first, after my immersion in the Francis Davis Poll, I figured I should take a few days and knock out a Loose Tabs piece. I did, after all, have some scraps saved up, plus a good number of open tabs. That wound up taking up all of last week.

This week, I have this Music Week today, and some (probably pointless) medical tests tomorrow, but after that I intend to knuckle down, with several other tasks available for breaks. Some of this is leftover or continuing house work. I figure I should start doing some preliminary Poll work in September: reviewing voter lists, rebuilding the website. The only other thing I feel like mentioning here is that I've set up a Substack newsletter, which I'm calling Notes on Everyday Life -- a name that some friends used for an underground/new left tabloid circa 1972-74. I've held a domain name to that effect for some time now, perhaps hoping to reunite the band, but these days it seems to just be me. My idea now is to demolish the current WordPress blog on the website and replace it with some kind of Mediawiki, that I can use for a topic sort of my scattered writings. I don't know how soon that can happen -- unlikely in the next month or two, unless I can find some help -- but while I see it as eventually related to the newsletter, it's not a precondition.

The newsletter, at first anyway, will offer periodic reports on my projects and thinking. I hope to send my debut "hello world" post out by the end of the week, but I'm pleased to note that I already have two subscribers, so I can rest assured that someone will read whatever I come up with. As this is the first time I've actually mentioned it, perhaps some more of you will sign up by the time I roll out? To keep thing simple, I haven't set up a paid tier, nor am I likely to anytime soon now. I started a planning document, but it's way too messed up to share at this point. I will have one at some point, as I figure things out. Meanwhile, I'd welcome any questions and/or comments.

I will say that what I'm looking/hoping for with Substack is:

  1. A way to send push notices out on demand, without the personal hassle of having to manage my own email list.
  2. A more concrete sense of how many people are reading, both based on the mailing list and statistical tools
  3. More feedback through a comment forum, which again should require a fairly minor amount of my time to monitor.

Those are all points that I didn't see any other easy method of implementing on my own. They mostly address my insecurity as a writer, which goes to motivation. I'm not a fan of the basic Substack paradigm, which is: everyone go into your own room and mount a soapbox no one else will ever notice. If I had a grant (not as a content provider, but as an ISP) I'd design something very different. Still, I probably wasted a lot of time considering alternatives, which only started to differentiate once one had commercial ambitions.

One nice thing from Substack so far: I wrote a comment to Robert Christgau's Xgau Sez, and was surprised to get 9 likes and 1 thoughtful reply -- 2-3 times the best I do on X or Bluesky. The comment was about grading A+ records, and took a bit of research to prepare for.

The research led me to add (or revalue) grades in my database for several items I had missed. As both of our databases were constructed over many decades of listening, both have a fair number of obsolete editions -- long out-of-print and/or superseded by later editions, often with new names/covers (like the Motown set). I never bothered listing the Ray Charles set before, because it was so long gone, but I did have (and love) it -- it was basically my first real overview of his work (although I certainly knew singles from much earlier). However, one of the things you can do with our datasets is explore similarities and divergences, as I did in my notebook. Having the same albums in both facilitates that. I've gone out of my way to listen to most of his A-list albums. I have a list somewhere of items I still haven't heard, which must run well over 100, but the A+ subset is small, so I figured I should close out that gap. I drew a line, however, at doing cover graphics, in each case for its own reason, which you can probably guess.

First non-jazz A- records this week in quite a while, to some extend diminishing returns after all the jazz finds that surfaced in the Poll, but also because I needed a break. Four (of five) come from the June and July Consumer Guides, and they are all strong records by old-timers. The fifth (James McMurtry) could also have been, as Christgau has gone A- or higher on him 5 times since 2004. In this case, however, I got my tip from Christian Iszchak, who also pointed me to Hailey Whitters, Youssou N'Dour, and Little Simz.

I still expect to write up some notes on the DownBeat Critics Poll, but for reasons unknown I haven't gotten my hard copy of the magazine yet. I have found a link to the online edition, but figured I'd wait until I could see better. I mentioned this in yesterday's Loose Tabs (which also includes a couple other music-related sections). I inevitably find more items to add there, but haven't had time today to make more than a couple minor edits.

PS: I was playing Hailey Whitters' Corn Queen when I initially posted this. A few minutes later, I decided to bump the album up a notch, from B+(***) to A-. I think I caught all the tables, but didn't edit do a thorough edit, so things like the A-list count may be off. The Springsteen album was another late add, not reflected in the rated count, but included in the A-list count.

New records reviewed this week:

Michael Arbenz Meets Andy Sheppard: From Bach to Ellington: Live (2025, self-released): Swiss pianist, studied classical, twin brother of drummer Florian Arbenz, has a couple albums from back around 2001. His brother got real active during the Covid lockdown with various long-distance encounters, and he eventually got sucked into several of those, then spun out on his own, with an album on Ellington, and another called Classicism. Duo with a British saxophonist, perhaps best known for collaborations with Carla Bley (notes also mention Gil Evans and George Russell, which makes for a nice trifecta). B+(**) [bc]

Elia Aregger Trio: Live (2025, Unit): German guitarist, seems to be his/their first album, with Marius Summer (bass) and Alessandro Alarcon (drums). B+(*) [sp]

Willi Carlisle: Winged Victory (2025, Signature Sounds): Folk/country singer-songwriter, based in Arkansas, fifth album since 2018 (counting a recent self-released set of covers I should probably check out). Minor tidbit from his bio that looms surprisingly large here is that his father was a "polka musician." That's just one of many oddments I find amusing but can't quite make sense of. Possibly worth a revisit, but not yet. B+(***) [sp]

Dawn Clement/Buster Williams/Matt Wilson: Delight (2024 [2025], Origin): Pianist, sings some, several records since 2003, most recently in Esthesis Quartet, also played on Matt Wilson's Good Trouble. Great rhythm section here. B+(**) [cd]

Marco Colonna: Icarus Falling: To Mosab Abu Toha (2025, self-released): Saxophone trio, the leader, with a fairly long list of credits since 2011, on baritone, with Renato Ferreira (tenor) and Simone Alessandrini (soprano), the album dedicated to the Palestinian poet. B+(**) [bc]

Big Chief Bo Dollis Jr. & the Wild Magnolias: Chip Off the Old Block (2025, Strong Place Music): As Mardi Gras Indians go, my top pick has always been the Meters-powered The Wild Tchoupitoulas (1976), but the Wild Magnolias, led by Bo Dollis (1944-2015), beat them to the punch in 1974, and they were fun too. Both groups still exist, the Tchoups lately led by Flagboy Giz, with the somewhat more prolific Magnolias backing Bo Jr. B+(*) [sp]

Lafayette Gilchrist & New Volcanoes: Move With Love (2025, Morphius): Pianist, based in Baltimore, first came to my attention with David Murray around 2004 but seems to have had albums as early as 1999. Has a previous live album with this group from 2011, and another in 2018 (billed as "EP," but the 5 tracks add up to 54:50). This was live, no date given, an octet with trumpet, trombone, tenor sax, guitar, bass guitar, drums, and percussion, plus two extra saxophones on 4 (of 6) tracks: the one that repeatedly caught my ear was Christian Hizon's trombone, amid much good-natured funk and revelry. B+(***) [cd] [07-25]

Kali Trio: The Playful Abstract (2022-23 [2025], Ronin Rhythm): Swiss trio of Raphael Lohrer (piano), Urs Müller (guitar), and Nicolas Stocker (drums), each with related electronics, third album, follows the rhythm-centric schema of producer Nik Bärtsch. B+(*) [sp]

Hélène Labarrière: Puzzle (2025, Jazzdor): French bassist, more than a dozen albums since 1988, this a quintet with Catherine Delaunay (clarinet), Robin Fincker (sax), Stéphane Bartelt (guitar), and Simon Goubert (drums). Some very powerful stretches here, but rough in spots. B+(**) [bc]

José Lencastre/Flak: Cloudy Skies (2025, Phonogram Unit): Portuguese duo, tenor sax and guitar, the latter aka João Pires de Campos -- the latter started in the rock band Rádio Macau in 1984, but since moved into jazz with String Theory and numerous collaborations. B+(**) [bc]

Adrianne Lenker: Live at Revolution Hall (2024 [2025], 4AD): Singer-songwriter, leader of Big Thief, has several albums on the side, 2024's Bright Future was widely touted as one of the year's best. I had a lot of difficulty with it, something I summed up as "hard to hear," meaning it took much more effort than it seemed to reward, while conceding there was something in it for those who stuck with it. That goes double for this live spinoff, "audio from 3 days of the 2024 Bright Future tour," an intimate live setting with all the ambiance (and audience), an unobtrusive band (maybe just piano and violin), some songs (if you can hear them, which for me is random enough to suspect there may be more if I bothered), running on through 43 tracks to 126 minutes, digital only (aside from limited edition double-cassette). B+(**) [sp]

Peter Lin/AAPI Jazz Collective: Identity (2024 [2025], OA2): Trombonist, born in Louisiana, traces his heritage back to Taiwan, AAPI stands for Asian-American and Pacific Islander, a quintet with Erena Terakubo (alto sax/flute), Mike Bond (piano), Daseul Kim (bass), and Wen-Ting Wu (drums), plus guest spots for Mỹ Tâhn Huynh (vocals, 3 tracks) and Brandon Choi (trumpet, 4 tracks). Nice swing feel, vocals included. B+(***) [cd]

Little Simz: Lotus (2025, Little Simz): British rapper Simbi Ajikawo, sixth album since 2015. Good reputation, and I've been impressed in the past, but seems like a lot of work to connect with this. What am I missing? B+(*) [sp]

David Lord: Forest Standards Vol. 4 (2022 [2024], BIG EGO): Guitarist, fourth album since 2018, with alto sax (Alex Sadnik), bass clarinet (Brian Walsh), bass (Billy Mohler), and drums (Chad Taylor). B+(*) [sp]

Emi Makabe: Echo (2025, Sunnyside): Japanese singer-songwriter, based in New York, second or third album, also plays shamisen and flute, filed under jazz but I'm not feeling it (even though I'm impressed with the credentials of the band, a trio of Vitor Gonçalves, Thomas Morgan, and Kenny Wollesen, with guest spots for Bill Frisell and Jason Moran). A bit of spoken word sounds promising. B [sp]

James McMurtry: The Black Dog and the Wandering Boy (2025, New West): Singer-songwriter from Texas, father a famous novelist, started recording his songs in 1989, may have always had a knack for storytelling but real breakthrough was in 2005 with Childish Things, and he's rarely disappointed since. This took a bit, but "Sons of the Second Sons" caught my attention -- not many other songs about primogeniture, but the word I noticed was "genocide" (as in "products of genocide" leading up to "in search of a Caesar"). A- [sp]

Youssou N'Dour: Éclairer Le Monde - Light the World (2025, self-released): Senegalese superstar, 41st album (by one count). B+(***) [sp]

Pat Petrillo: Contemporaneous (2024 [2025], Innervision): Drummer, has a previous Pat Petrillo Big Rhythm Band album (2022), gets more with less here. Ambition is: "a mashup of Snarky Puppy and the Brecker Brothers, jamming with Weather Report at Grover Washington Jr's backyard barbecue in Philly." When those are your terms, it's hard, and perhaps pointless, to quibble over whether you succeeded or not. B+(*) [cd]

Public Enemy: Black Sky Over the Projects: Apartment 2025 (2025, Enemy): I noticed that Chuck D had a new album out in May, and gave it a cursory spin, but wasn't aware of this one until it showed up in Christgau's Consumer Guide. The sound is definitely there, and they have lots to be angry about, so this seems right for the times. "God ain't on your side . . . this time!" A- [sp]

Stefan Schultze/Peter Ehwald/Tom Rainey: Public Radio (2024 [2025], Jazzwerkstatt): German pianist, several albums since 2011, one previous with this trio (tenor sax, drums), more group work with Ehwald. Front cover lists Ehwald first, but most other sources start with the pianist. B+(**) [sp]

Bruce Springsteen & E Street Band: Land of Hopes & Dreams (2025, Columbia): Live "EP" from a May 14, 2025 concert in Manchester [UK] (31:39, 4 songs + 2 "introductions"), rushed out for a moment of clarity, against the tide. I wince at the bit about "allies," and I feel less chauvinist and less righteous, but I can still join in saying: Amen. A- [sp]

Dlala Thukzin: 031 Studio Camp 2.0 (2025, Dlala): South African amapiano DJ, Discogs comes up short but Wikipedia lists eight albums since 2020, and this is the fifth in my file. B+(***) [sp]

Tropos: Switches (2024 [2025], Endectomorph Music): Brooklyn-based quartet, at least one previous album, all members contribute songs: Ledah Finck (violin), Yuma Uesaka (clarinet/bass clarinet), Phillip Golub (piano), Aaron Edgcomb (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Hailey Whitters: Corn Queen (2025, Big Loud/Pigasus): Country singer-songwriter from Iowa, fourth album since 2015, second to get some big label distribution. This is catchy, appealing, with solid songs and sound. A- [sp]

Sarah Wilson: Incandescence (2024 [2025], Brass Tonic): Trumpet player, "(12)" in Discogs, three previous albums (2006, 2010, 2021), sings some but not here, a postbop sextet with alto sax, trombone, guitar, bass, and drums. B+(*) [cd]

Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts: Talkin to the Trees (2025, The Other Shoe/Reprise): After 3-4-5-? retreaded new albums in the last year, he surprises us with a really new one. Not that the music sounds very new, but the lyrics (or rants, if you prefer) are ripped from today's headlines (and some fine print). No doubt this belongs in his voluminous second tier, but three plays in and that seems good enough. A- [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Manu Dibango: Dibango 82 (1982 [2025], We Want Sounds): Saxophonist from Cameroon (1933-2020), played in Paris with Joseph Kabasele before leading his own groups, scoring a big hit in 1972 with "Soul Makossa." Previously unissued session. B+(**) [bc]

John Lee Hooker: The Charcot Sessions (1969 [2024], Southern Echoes): Major blues guitarist-singer, d. 2001, sources divided on his birth (1912 or 1917), by which time he seemed even more ancient than he was -- a topic of a running joke in Robert Christgau's reviews. He did his major work starting with "Boogie Chillen" in 1948, and he just got deeper as he aged until he became such a monument he could build albums out of casual duets (e.g., The Best of Friends). These Paris sessions were previously released on obscure labels (America, Carson, Blue Moon; most on a 1970 French LP I Wanna Dance All Night), collected together here for 2-CD or 3-LP. Nothing spectacular, but consistent as ever. B+(***) [bc]

Grace Potter: Medicine (2008 [2025], Hollywood): Singer-songwriter from Vermont, solo debut 2002, also recorded as Grace Potter & the Nocturnals (2005-13), went unnoticed by me until her 2023 album Mother Road made my A-list. This one was recorded as a solo album in 2008 by T-Bone Burnett, but shelved, with 8 of 12 songs appearing on her 2010 Grace Potter & the Nocturnals album. Pretty solid album. B+(***) [sp]

Old music:

Billie Holiday: Ken Burns Jazz: The Definitive Billie Holiday (1936-58 [2000], Verve): I found this on Christgau's A+ list, and was surprised to find it not even in my database -- I thought I had all of the Ken Burns Jazz titles. If you want a single-disc career-spanning overview, this should do the job, but by the time this came out, I may not have seen the point. I was by then inclined to eschew mixing her early Columbias (1936-42) and late Verves (1952-58) -- both have their virtues, as distinct as early and late Elvis, but still as unbalanced -- while respecting but not loving much of her in-between Commodore and Decca sides, and flat out hating the terminal Lady in Satin. Straddling worked brilliantly for the Burns edition of Ella Fitzgerald, but I'm less happy with this one. [NB: Spotify skips 3 songs.] A- [sp]

KADEF: KADEF (2023, RR Gems): Acronym for: Karma, Agape, Discernment, Enactment, Freedom. Montreal group, suggested genre: Gnawa Jazz Krautrock, the former drawing on vocalist Zaid Qoulail, and possibly from various combinations of guembri, qraqeb, and/or oud, but I filed it in jazz under producer Devin Brahja Waldman (saxes, drums, electric bass), a familiar name from many other projects. B+(***) [sp]

Motown Classics: Gold (1960-72 [2005], Motown, 2CD): A Christgau A+: no need for me to recheck it, as it's just a repackage of 2000's Motown: The Classic Years, which I keep handy in my travel cases and replay frequently, only slightly favoring the first CD. Just barely tiptoes into the 1970s, where you can see signs of, uh, maturity: "Ball of Confusion," "War," "The Tears of a Clown," "What's Going On," "Papa Was a Rolling Stone." They (especially Stevie Wonder) weren't done, but it's a good dividing line. A+ [cd]

Grade (or other) changes:

Ray Charles: A 25th Anniversary in Show Business Salute to Ray Charles (1954-71 [1971], ABC): Not technically a grade change, as I never wrote down the previous grade: I have a section in the scratch file for LPs I used to have and think I remember well enough to assign a grade to. I rarely use it, especially as these days it's usually possible to recheck such an item using streaming. This one went out of print almost immediately. I bought a copy as a gift -- actually, I owed an apartment mate some money, and offered to pay it off over time in expertly-selected LPs, so I also enjoyed my purchases for a while. This was, at the time, canonical, with a superb selection both from Atlantic and from ABC, plus a few later cuts that were probably weaker but didn't spoil the deal. When CDs came around, the Atlantics got the full box treatment, while the Charles-owned ABC masters showed up in half-assed compilations -- my favorite was called Uh Huh: His Greatest Hits, named after his Pepsi commercial jingle (I don't recall whether it was included), but I have several more (often marred by his Beatles covers). This was an A+ for Christgau at the time, and that's how I remember it, but after all these years, I should hedge a bit. I've never gotten into building my own playlists, let alone burning them, but I could see doing that with Charles, and probably coming up with something much like this one. A [ex-lp]

Chuck D: Chuck D Presents Enemy Radio: Radio Armageddon (2025, Def Jam): Public Enemy majordomo retains his signature sound, which sounds as hard-edged as ever, but the impact is blunted by the radio concept, which chops and screws everything. That, at least, was my initial take. Play it more and find more. And while this isn't especially long (35:50), it's so jam-packed I doubt one could ever get to the bottom of it all. [was: B+(*)] A- [sp]

Louis Jordan: Five Guys Named Moe: Vol. 2 (1939-55 [1992], MCA): Another Christgau A+ item, I originally capped this at A in deference to its predecessor, simply The Best of Louis Jordan, which came out on 2-LP in 1975 and on CD in 1989, and still is my first call pick. But both volumes are in my travel cases, and this one never fails to delight me. [was: A] A+ [cd]

PinkPantheress: Fancy That (2025, Warner, EP): British pop singer-songwriter Victoria Walker, one album, second mixtape, just 20:28. Seemed slight, but sustains multiple replays, getting better without overwhelming. [was: B+(*)] B+(***) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Rez Abbasi Acoustic Quintet: Sound Remains (Whirlwind) [06-27]
  • David Bailis: Running Through My Mind (Create or Destroy) [08-15]
  • Ron Blake: Scratch Band (7Ten33 Productions) [08-09]
  • Hannah Delynn: Trust Fall (self-released) [09-09]
  • Mike Freeman Zonavibe: Circles in a Yellow Room (VOF) [07-24]
  • Steve Tintweiss and the Purple Why: Live in Tompkins Square Park 1987 (Inky Dot Media) [08-07]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, July 20, 2025

Loose Tabs

This is an occasional collection of newsworthy links and comments, much less systematic than what I attempted in my late Speaking of Which posts. The new name comes from my extensive use of browser tabs. When I get around to cleaning up, I often find tabs opened to old articles I might want to comment on and/or refer back to. So these posts are mostly housecleaning, but may also serve as a very limited but persistent record of what 20+ years ago I started calling "the end of the American empire" and nowadays feels more like "the end of civilization." I collect these bits in a draft file, and flush them out when periodically. My previous one appeared 25 days ago, on June 26.

Some of what follows I've had sitting in the draft file a while. I figured that once I was done with the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll: Mid-Year 2025, the next thing I should do is shake out the accumulated Loose Tabs, plus make a quick tour to catch up with news I've mostly neglected for a month or more. I knew I couldn't get that done by Monday's Music Week, so I kicked it out until the window opened for next week's column. I initially set Friday as the date, but I had until Sunday. No surprise that I'm wrapping this up Sunday evening, knowing full well I could continue working on it indefinitely. But I figure it's good enough for now. We'll talk about next week in the next Music Week.

Internal index:

Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill": I cribbed this from a meme explaining "what's in Republicans' 'Big, Beautiful Bill'?" Reading columns left-to-right, top-down within:

  • More than $3.5T added to the national debt
  • Cuts to food support for veterans
  • $148B in lost wages and benefits for construction workers
  • Billionaires get massive tax breaks
  • Hundreds of thousands clean energy jobs lost
  • 16 million kids lose free school meals
  • Higher premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket expenses, even if not on Medicaid
  • Cuts tax credits for buying electric vehicles
  • Increases in gas prices
  • 16 million Americans lose health care
  • Nationwide increases in energy bills
  • The largest cut to Medicaid in history
  • $186B in cuts to SNAP food assistance
  • New student loan borrowers pay more
  • Billions for surveillance & deportation
  • Largest transfer of $$ from the poor to the rich in history

The bill has since been passed by Congress and signed by Trump, so is now the law of the land. Until it passed, it was essentially true that everything Trump's administration had done took the form of an executive power grab. Trump's ability to impose his will on Republicans in Congress was also evident here: the days of having to negotiate with nominal party leaders like Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan are long gone. The new law validates and extends many of Trump's power grabs. Meanwhile, the courts are bending over backwards to extend Trump's powers even more. Some more pieces follow here (and there'll probably be more scattered about):

  • Matt Sledge [05-28] Trump's big, beautiful handout to the AI industry: The bill "bans states from regulating AI while pumping billions into autonomous weapons."

  • Cameron Peters [07-02] Trump vs. after-school programs, briefly explained: "The Trump administration is withholding nearly $7 billion in education funding."

  • Umair Irfan [07-02] Trump's plan to replace clean energy with fossil fuels has some major problems: "The budget bill sabotages one of the biggest growth sectors of the US economy." There's also a map here of how "The Senate's bill would raise electricity prices in every state." As well as the usual trolling about how Trump is the future of clean energy development to China.

  • Andrew Prokop:

  • Russell Payne [07-02] "Special treatment": How Republicans bought Lisa Murkowski's vote.

  • Dylan Scott [07-03] Republicans now own America's broken health care system: "The $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts will be felt by Americans." I'll believe this one when I see it. Republicans have broken things to hurt many people's lives going at least as far back as Taft-Hartley in 1947, yet they rarely get blamed for anything, with even major debacles quickly forgotten.

  • Nicole Narea

  • Branko Marcetic [07-08] A Tale of Two BBBs: Trump's Big Beautiful Bill vs. Biden's Build Back Better. "It's hard not to conclude from all this that Trump and the GOP simply cared more about the policy agenda contained in their BBB than Biden and the Democrats did about theirs." I suspect that is largely because Republicans have learned that not delivering on their promises costs them credibility, while Democrats don't think they need credibility because even at their most inept they're still a better bargain than Republicans. Even when they went through the motions, as Clinton did in 1993-94 and Obama in 2009-10, they pulled their punches, passing weak measures that did little for their base (and in their trade deals actively undercut themselves). Then both lost Congress, and with it the expectation they could ever implement anything (even when they won second terms). Biden did a little better, but not much.

  • Eric Levitz:

    • [07-08]: The wrong lesson to take from Trump's gutting of Medicaid: "Did the president just blow up Democrats' model for fighting poverty?" This has to do with the debate between means-tested and universal rights. It's easier for Republicans to cut Medicaid because they think it only benefits poor people, who mostly aren't Republicans, so fuck them. On the other hand, if we had a universal right to health care, then we wouldn't need a cut-rate version just to apply to poor people. Medicaid was basically just a band-aid over a much larger wound, which the reductions will further expose. On the other hand, Republicans are ignoring two less obvious benefits of Medicaid: it saves lives of people who otherwise can't afford America's ridiculous profit-seeking system, as opposed to just letting them die, which could expose the injustice and moral bankruptcy of the system, and possibly undermine the social and economic order they are so enamored with; and it also provides a subsidy to the industry, without which they'd be driven to even greater levels of greed and extortion.

    • [07-16]: The lie at the heart of Trump's entire economic agenda: "The White House wants to send Medicaid recipients to the mines." Apt sub-heds here: "America is not desperate for more low-paying, arduous jobs"; "The administration's solutions to this problem are all whimsical fantasies"; "The high cost of post-truth policy."

  • Ryan Cooper/David Dayen [07-07] Ten Bizarre Things Hidden in Trump's Big Beautiful Bill: They suggest that "with the president asleep at the switch, all kinds of nutty provisions got snuck into the bill," but Trump's such a fan of nutty that even if he was unaware, they may have done it for his amusement. The list:

    1. Incentivizing SNAP Fraud
    2. The Mass Shooter Subsidy
    3. The Spaceport Sweetener
    4. No Tax on Oil Drillers
    5. Handouts for Chinese Steel Companies
    6. The Garden of Heroes [$40M to build big, beautiful statues]
    7. A Tax on Gambling Winnings
    8. Unlimited SALT [state and local tax deduction]
    9. Tax Breaks for Puerto Rican Rum
    10. More Chipmaker Subsidies?

  • Heather Digby Parton [07-09] How $178 billion is creating a police state: "A massive funding increase for ICE means more detention camps and more masked agents in the streets."

  • Dylan Scott [07-18] Your health insurance premiums could soon go up 15 percent -- or more: "The health care consequences of Trump's budget bill are already here."

  • David Dayen [07-18] Crypto Week Revealed the Dittohead Congress: "There are no 'hard-liners' in the Republican conference. And nobody interested in standing up for the institution of Congress either." Also on crypto:

    • Jacobin [06-13] The Crypto State: An interview with Ramaa Vasudevan: "The Trump White House has helped install the ticking time bomb that is cryptocurrency directly into our economy. When it blows up, the damage will be catastrophic."

Israel/Gaza/Iran/Trump: Another catch-all topic:

Current Affairs: Nearly everything here is worth looking at:

David Klion [02-27] Chris Hayes Wants Your Attention: "The Nation spoke with the journalist about one of the biggest problems in contemporary life -- attention and its commodification -- and his new book The Siren's Call." I picked this up, because I've started to read the book, although I'm not sure how much attention I want to give it. This reminds me a bit of James Gleick's Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything (2000), which starts out with a concept that seems to govern much of everything, but all the examples pale next to the concept, which is more fun to think about than to read about. Interesting here that the interview suggests that Hayes has already moved on. When Klion makes a comment about "the development of a mass intellectual culture after World War II" and finishes with "it feels like we've come in at the very end of that era," Hayes responds:

Part of that is a story about that growth plateauing. There was an idea that an ever-higher percentage of people were going to be four-year college grads, but it stopped at a certain level. That's the structural, sociological part of the story, but it's also technological—we're seeing a generational shift from typing out your texts to dictating them, which seems deranged to me. The move away from writing and reading is clearly happening, and it is more than a little unnerving.

That bit about "growth plateauing" could be his next book. There's already a big, fairly technical book on the subject -- Robert J Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The US Standard of Living Since the Civil War -- but no one has really written the book about what it really means. For one thing, the notion that Clinton took from Robert Reich that increasing inequality would be palatable as long as there was sufficient growth and upward mobility via education has clearly failed -- and not just because growth has plateaued, which for the US happened in the 1970s, but because there never was (and never would be) enough work for "symbolic manipulators" in this or any world.

  • Eric Levitz [06-24] Is the decline of reading poisoning our politics? "Your brain isn't what it used to be." I looked at this piece, decided not to bother with it, then remembered it while reading the Hayes quote, so thought I'd log it here. I'm sure there's a vast literature on crap like this [I mean: unguarded generalizations based on defective psychological modeling, not that there aren't other kinds of crap floating about] where the exceptions turn the norms to mush. This one tempts me because I read serious non-fiction books, and doing so helps make me smarter about things than many of the people I read are, so there's an element of flattery at work here. But then I read something like: "Garfinkle believes that this aversion to the rigors of abstract thought underlies the left's illiberal dogmatism, and the right's xenophobic populism." Actually, if you had any skills whatsoever at abstract thought, you'd realize that two things that aren't things can't possibly have anything underlying them. I mean QED, motherfucker!

Peter Beinart [04-03] Chuck Schumer Cannot Meet the Moment: "In his new book on antisemitism, the minority leader offers a vision of progress without popular struggle that profoundly underestimates the Trump threat." This covers the book very nicely, but is if anything too gentle to the politician. He is certainly right that it wasn't just the Holocaust that convinced Americans to discard antisemitism: the civil rights movement was pivotal, and not just because most Jews supported it, but because most of us came to see antisemitism and racism as aspects of the same fundamental wrong. Schumer's focus on "left antisemitism" is not just an unwarranted exaggeration but a logical fallacy. All leftists, by definition, oppose all forms of subordination, directed against all classes of people -- Jews, Palestinians, any and every other identity group you care to name. Moreover, the left has a one-size-fits-all solution: don't privilege any group over any other. The right, on the other hand, breeds all sorts of prejudice and discrimination, because once you start with the belief that some people should rule over others, it's inevitable you'll start applying labels -- it's also inevitable that the people the right attack will resist, with some replying in kind, and others gravitating toward the left.

Jews in the diaspora have tended to align with the left, because they seek a principled opposition to the prejudice that targets them, and they understand that defending other targeted groups helps build solidarity for their own cause. (Right-wingers, at least in the US, keep returning to antisemitism less due to old prejudices than to the understanding that equality for Jews, as for any other group, undermines their preferred hierarchy, and their political program. The present moment is even better for them, as they get some kind of dispensation from the antisemitism charge by embracing Israel, in all its prejudice, repression, and violence -- trademarks of the right.) Some American Jews, like Schumer, find this confusing, because they so identify as Jews that they feel obligated to defend right-wing power in Israel that they neither agree with nor fully understand, often by misrepresenting or flat-out denying what that power is plainly doing. And they're so desperate to defend their credulity they buy into this totally bogus argument about "left antisemitism." Note that I'm not saying that there aren't some people who oppose Israel's apartheid and genocide don't also hold antisemitic beliefs: just that any such people are not leftists, and that the answer to them is to join the left in demanding liberty and justice for all. Name-calling by Schumer not only doesn't help -- it betrays one's ignorance and/or duplicity. This is perhaps most clearly exposed in the Schumer quote: "My job is to keep the left pro-Israel." The layers of his ignorance and arrogance are just mind-boggling. But doesn't this also suggest that the first loyalty of the Democratic Party leader in the Senate is not to his voters, to his constituents, to his party, or even to his country, but to Israel? Perhaps that's part of the reason he's served his party so poorly?

One more point should be made here: Israel is not, and for that matter never has been, worried about stirring up antisemitic violence in the diaspora: their solution is for Jews to immigrate to Israel, which they maintain is their only safe haven. They've done this for many years, especially in Arab countries like Iraq and Yemen. So they have ready answers whenever they provoke blowback. Nor do they mind when their right-wing allies use moral outrage against Israel for their own purposes, such as clamping down on free speech in US universities. Worse case scenario: people blame "the Jews" for this assault on their freedom, which they use to market aliyah.

Also worth citing here:

  • Peter Beinart [06-06] The Era of Unconditional Support for Israel Is Ending: Here I was expecting that this would be about the increasing turn of American Jews against blind blank check support for Netanyahu, but it's really more about how Trump has reprioritized US foreign policy to line his own accounts. Nothing to get excited by: even if Trump starts to maneuver independently, he has no principles we can put any faith in, and the Arab princes he's so enamored with are among the world's most right-wing despots.

  • Peter Beinart [07-06] Democrats Need to Understand That Opinions on Israel Are Changing Fast.

  • Ezra Klein [07-20] Why American Jews No Longer Understand One Another. This tiptoes uneasily around the arguments, but at least acknowledges that for many American Jews, there are limits to their support for Israel, with an increasing share becoming quite critical. And that many of them oppose Netanyahu for the same reasons they oppose Trump.

Luke O'Neil [2019-04-09] What I've Learned From Collecting Stories of People Whose Loved Ones Were Transformed by Fox News: Old piece, but this dovetails with people I know. In particular, I had two cousins who were socioeconomic and cultural twins (both small town, one Arkansas, the other Idaho), but their views on politics and society diverged radically when one fell into the Fox lair, while the other got her news from sources like the BBC. This piece comes from a book, Welcome to Hell World: Dispatches From the American Dystopia. He also wrote a 2021 sequel, Lockdown in Hell World. Related here:

  • Sarah Jones [07-18] It's Okay to Go No Contact With Your MAGA Relatives. Sure, but is it necessary? In my experience it generally isn't, but I'm not easily offended, or offensive, and as someone who's social contacts are pretty limited in the first place, I don't feel like I need more trouble. On the other hand, I don't go looking for it either, so "no contact" can easily become the norm.

Yasha Levine [06-13] Bari Weiss: Toady Queen of Substack: "How a cynical operative married a California princess, sucked up power, and found fame and fortune and love. And how technology won't save us." I know very little about her other than that she's a major Israel hasbaraist, and that her "The Free Press" is the "bestselling" U.S. politics newsletter at Substack. Levine offers some numbers: one million free subscribers, "somewhere near" 150,000 paid subscribers, and a company valued at $100 million, partly due to investments of patrons like Marc Andreessen ("who also funds Substack") and David Sacks.

William Turton/Christopher Bing/Avi Asher-Schapiro [07-15] The IRS is building a vast system to share millions of taxpayers' data with ICE: "ProPublica has obtained the blueprint for the Trump administration's unprecedented plan to turn over IRS accounts." This is just one instance. Sorry for burying the lead, but for more on the big picture:

Viet Thanh Nguyen [06-16] Greater America Has Been Exporting Disunion for Decades: "So why are we still surprised when the tide of blood reaches our own shores? Some personal reflections on Marco Rubio and me -- and the roots of Trump's imperial ambitions." PS: I should take a closer look at Nguyen's older essays.

Timothy Noah [06-19] How the Billionaires Took Over: "Yes, Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. But the far bigger menace is the monstrous growth in wealth concentration over five decades that made a Trump presidency possible -- and maybe inevitable. Here's how we let it happen." Long piece, lots of history.

Anatol Lieven [06-20] The 17 Ukraine war peace terms the US must put before NATO: "Threats must be imposed if either side or both reject these demands. The time is now." I've followed Lieven closely from well before Putin's military invasion of Ukraine, and I've found him to be a generally reliable guide, but I'm scratching my head a bit here. Certainly, if they all agreed to these 17 terms, far be it from me to object. But about half of them seem to add unnecessary complications just to check off superfluous talking points. For instance, "7. Ukraine introduces guarantees for Russian linguistic and cultural rights into the constitution. Russia does the same for Ukrainians in Russia." Why should either nation have its sovereignty so restrained? Ukraine was so constrained as part of the Minsk Accords, which turned out to be a major sticking point for Ukrainian voters. Besides, how many Russian-speakers still remain in Ukrainian territory? And how many Ukrainians are still living in Russian-occupied territory?

The arms/NATO provisions also strike me as added complexity, especially on issues that should be addressed later. In the long run, I'm in favor of disbanding NATO, but that needs to be a separate, broader negotiation with Russia, not something ending the war in Ukraine depends on. I could expand on this, but not here, yet.

I wrote the above paragraph shortly after the article appeared. Since then a lot has changed viz. Ukraine, or has it?

  • Aaron Sobczak [07-11] Diplomacy Watch: Trump changes tune, music to Zelensky's ears: "The president's views on Putin shifted dramatically this week."

  • Cameron Peters [07-14] Trump's new Ukraine plan, briefly explained.

  • Ian Proud [07-14] Russia sanctions & new weapons, is Trump stuck in Groundhog Day? "The president who insisted that the Biden era policies did not work finds himself in a rerun of his own first term on Ukraine policy." Which, you might recall, didn't work either. Trump's whole approach to foreign policy was so incoherent no one ever did a real accounting of all the things he screwed up, and what the long-term costs have become -- or will, as some of them are still mounting. Granted, his predecessors did a lousy job, and Biden's analysis of what Trump did wrong was faulty and Biden's fixes were worse. Ukraine is a good example: the drive to expand NATO started in the 1990s under Clinton, but the real demonization of Putin kicked in under Obama, and became much more tangible with the 2014 coup in Ukraine, which led directly to the secession crises and civil war. Trump sat on that conflict for four years, doing nothing but pushing Democrats into a hot lather over his efforts to extort Ukraine to gather dirt on Biden. Biden then tilted so hard toward Ukraine that Putin invaded, leaving the present stalled war -- which Trump campaigned on a promise to "end in a day," something he not only hasn't done but hasn't made any progress at. Speaking of things Trump could have done but only made worse (with no recovery from Biden):

  • Jennifer Kavanagh [07-15] How Trump's 50-day deadline threat against Putin will backfire: "The 'art of the deal' will likely result in the opposite of its intended effect on the Russian president."

  • Stavroula Pabst [07-18] Diplomacy Watch: Will Europe pay for Trump's Ukraine aid? "The Europeans, via NATO, will reportedly pay for the deal."

Samuel Moyn [06-25] Why America Got a Warfare State, Not a Welfare State: "How FDR invented national security, and why Democrats need to move on from it." A review of Andrew Preston: Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security.

Jack Hunter [06-26]: Don't read the funeral rites for MAGA restraint yet: "Influencers in the movement are choosing to turn ire on Israel's role and warning Trump off protracted, regime change quagmire." But Trump is the one with all the power in this relationship, and the chorus only matters when they stay in tune. Besides, it's not like Trump needs, or even wants, ideological cover. His brand is to shoot from the hip, to be unpredictable, to take US foreign policy wherever the money leads. Hunter, on the other hand, is desperately looking for any inkling that at least some of his conservative cohort are anti-war. This leads to a long string of articles like:

Elie Honig [06-27] The Supreme Court Just Gave the President More Power. The Court's ruling in Trump v. CASA severely limits the power of district courts to issue injunctions against Trump's executive power abuses. More Court stuff:

  • Ian Millhiser: He covers the Supreme Court for Vox, and I've always found his explanations to be quite enlightening. I used to cover nearly everything he wrote, but haven't cited much of late, as Vox became increasingly difficult. So we've got some catching up to do.

  • Cameron Peters [07-08] The Supreme Court's order letting Trump conduct mass federal layoffs, briefly explained. I want to add a few points here, that may seem too obvious to mention, but are important nonetheless: (1) if Biden, or any other Democrat, was firing people and impounding money to pursue narrow political vendettas and/or to impose partisan policies, it's very unlikely that the Republican majority on the court would be ruling in favor as they did with Trump; it's even unlikely that the Democratic-appointed minority would allow a Democratic executive doing the same. (2) No Democratic president -- not just a Biden or an Obama, but you could extend the list as far left as Sanders and Warren, would think to invoke such powers, so the Court is risking very little in allowing to a generic "president" powers that would only be claimed by a fascist would-be dictator. (3) When/if we ever have another Democratic president, the Court majority will scramble to shut down this and many other doors they've opened Trump can unilaterally impose his will on government. After all, the main reason for packing the Court was to prevent any future change that would weaken autocratic/plutocratic power. (4) Any future Democratic president will face increasing pressure from their own ranks to make comparably bold actions in search of whatever policy goals were embraced by the voters. Democrats have long been lambasted for failing to deliver on promises. Trump shows that they shouldn't let "norms" and even existing laws get in the way. The Courts won't like this, but contesting it will be political, and will expose the partisan nature of the current packed Court. Savvy Democratic politicians should be able to campaign on that. (Meanwhile, the not-so-savvy ones -- the ones we're so accustomedto deferring to -- should fade to the sidelines.)

    I think the point I'm getting at is this (and let's bring out the bold here): The more Trump succeeds at imposing his agenda, the more he hastens his demise, and the more radical the reconstruction will have to be. Of course, my statement is predicated on strong belief that what Trump wants to do will fail disastrously, even on his own terms. It might take a sizable essay to explain how and why, but suffice it here to say that the more I see, the more I'm convinced. My first draft of that line had "restoration" in lieu of "reconstruction," but when I started thinking of history, my second thought (after the obvious Hitler/Mussolini analogues) was the Confederate secession. We tend to overlook Jefferson Davis as a revolutionary political figure, because his government was immediately overwhelmed by the Civil War. I keep flashing back to a weird, thin book I read 50 years ago, by Emory M Thomas, called The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience (1971), which tries to run with the idea. I only remember a few points -- like how late in the war they ran so short of soldiers they considered freeing slaves to fight on their behalf -- but with Trump one could riff on this subject ad nauseum. But it's not like we need more reasons to oppose Trump -- like there's anyone who failed to see Trump as a fascist would wake up and say, "oh yeah, now I see the problem." The more interesting thing is what happened to the Union once they were freed of the dead weight of the slaveocracy. The Civil War has been interpreted as a Second American Revolution, with profound effects, even if Reconstruction itself was sabotaged early by Andrew Johnson, ended prematurely by Rutherford Hayes, and ultimately undone by Jim Crow -- all mistakes that won't be forgotten. I'll spare you my own riffing on this, but lots of interesting things flow from this thought.

  • Karen J Greenberg [07-08] Courts open door to Trump's terrifying "occupying force" fantasy: "Trump's authoritarian playbook just got court approval -- and it won't stop at California."

  • Austin Sarat [07-16] Rule of loyalists: Emil Bove would be the perfect Trumpian judge: "A reckless judicial nominee who would serve Trump's agenda instead of the rule of law."

Kelsey Piper [06-27]: A million kids won't live to kindergarten because of this disastrous decision: "The world's war on child death was going well. Then RFK Jr. came along."

Nick Turse:

Ed Kilgore [07-01] Do Democrats Need or Want a Centrist 'Project 2029'? First thing is they shouldn't call it that, and anyone who thinks otherwise should be disqualified immediately. Trump ran scared from Project 2025, for good reason -- and clearly now, not because he disagreed with it, but because he realized it was bad marketing. Other than that, my first reaction was that it might not be such a bad idea. I'd like to see centrists try to articulate their policies, instead of just pissing on anything coming from the left as unrealistic, unaffordable, etc. I've long thought that if they ever honestly looked at problems as something they'd be obligated to solve, they'd find viable not in the corporate think tanks and lobbies but on the left. Maybe they could repackage ideas like Medicare for All and Green New Deal to make them more palatable to their interest groups, but the core ideas are sound. If so, they have a chance to regain some of the credibility they've lost in repeatedly losing to Trump. And if not, someone can rise from the ranks and rally the left against these scumbags. (Some of whom, like Jake Sullivan, are irredeemable.) More on 2029:

  • Branko Marcetic [07-20] Democrats' Project 2029 Is Doubling Down on Failure: At first this looks like the sort of anticipatory putdown left critics are prone to, but it offers profiles of the project's movers and shakers, and they are indeed a sorry bunch: Andrei Cherny, Neera Tanden, Jake Sullivan, Ann-Marie Slaughter, Justin Wolfers, Jim Kessler. That's as far as he gets, finally noting: "All but three of Third Way's thirty-two serving trustees hail from the corporate world, with a heavy emphasis on finance."

Emily Pontecorvo [07-02] Trump Promised Deregulation. His New Law Would Regulate Energy to Death: "The foreign entities of concern rules in the One Big Beautiful Bill would place gigantic new burdens on developers." I didn't read past the "to continue reading, create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles" sign, but scrolling down suggests that there are more articles worth exploring, like:

  • Here's How Much Money Biden Actually Spent From the IRA
  • NRC Expected to 'Rubber Stamp' New Reactors
  • Noem Defends FEMA's Response to Texas Floods
  • The Pentagon's Rare Earths Deal Is Making Former Biden Officials Jealous
  • EPA Claims Congress Killed the Green Bank
  • How the Interconnection Queue Could Make Qualifying for Tax Cuts Next to Impossible
  • Trump Opened a Back Door to Kill Wind and Solar Tax Credits
  • The Only Weather Models That Nailed the Texas Floods Are on Trump's Chopping Block
  • The Permitting Crisis for Renewables

Eric Levitz [07-03] California just showed that a better Democratic Party is possible: "California Democrats finally stopped outsourcing their policy judgment to their favorite lobbies." Well, specifically, they passed a pair of housing bills: "One exempts almost all urban, multifamily housing developments from California's environmental review procedures. The second makes it easier for cities to change their zoning laws to allow for more homebuilding." This looks like a big victory for the Abundance crowd, where California had been a prime example of regulation-stifled housing shortages. (Newsom was explicit: "It really is about abundance." That's the kind of left critique that centrists can get behind, because it doesn't necessarily involve taking from the rich.) What this shows to me is that Democrats are open to change based on reasoned arguments that appeal to the greater good. Don't expect that to work with Republicans. But a big part of my argument for voting for Harris and all Democrats in 2024 was that they are people who we can talk to, and sometimes get to listen.*

[*] Except for Israel, as Marc Lamont Hill and Mitchell Plitnick explain in their book, Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics. We're still working on that.

Abdallah Fayyad [07-03] Zohran Mamdani's not-so-radical agenda: "Despite the Democratic nominee for NYC mayor being labeled a communist, his agenda actually promises something more ideologically modest." I don't have a good sense of New York City these days, or follow its politics, so I've paid scant attention to Mamdani, even as lots of people I do follow are very besotted with him. But I know my left, so the first thing that struck me here was the implicit fear-mongering of assuming that a "Democratic socialist" -- or any other label you want to assign to someone who initially strikes me as a personable and very intelligent politician, including "communist" -- would run on a truly radical platform. That he won the primary in a city where Democrats are an overwhelming majority should be taken as proof that he presents himself as a reasonable, sensible guy, and that most of the people who have paid attention accept him as such. I can see how people who know next to nothing about New York might easily get confused, but they should just accept that they don't know, and leave it to the people who live there.

I know something of what I'm saying here. I lived in NYC in the late 1970s, when rents were manageable (sure, at first they seemed high after moving from Kansas, but wages -- I made my living as a typesetter, and wrote some on the side -- were better too), and I returned pretty regularly up through 2001 (I was there for 9/11). After that, not so much, and not at all in the last 10 years. My last couple visits were especially depressing, as rents had gone way up, and most of my favorite bookstore haunts had vanished. So I can see how some of Mamdani's proposals could resonate, even as they strike me as inadequate for real change. But that's always the problem for candidates who start out with a left critique but wind up spending all their energy just fighting the uphill battle against past failures and lingering corruptions. Left politicians are ultimately judged less on what they accomplish, than on the question of whether they can retain their reputation for care and honesty, even when they have little to show for it. So I respect them, first for running, perhaps for winning, and hopefully for surviving. But I also have some pity for what they're up against, at each step on the way. As such, I find it hard to get excited when they do succeed, as Mamdani has so far. One might hope that this shows that the people want what the left has to offer. But it may also just show that the people are so disgusted with the alternatives they're willing to try anything. After all, the guy Mamdani beat was Mario Cuomo, and do to some peculiarity of NYC politics he still has to beat him again. Then there's Eric Adams. Sure, in retrospect, Bernie Sanders' 2016 vote was inflated by the quality of his opposition. So, no doubt, is Mamdani's, but it's fun to watch, because he, like Sanders, is a rare politician who's fun to watch.

Ok, more Mamdani:

David Corn/Tim Murphy [07-03] Here are the Declaration of Independence's Grievances Against King George III. Many Apply to Trump.

Lydia DePillis/Christine Zhang [07-03]: How Health Care Remade the U.S. Economy. They lead with a chart showing that health care has become the single largest employment segment, with 13% of all workers, vs. 10% for retail, and 8% for manufacturing (down from a more than double that when Clinton was elected in 1992). The share of spending has grown even larger -- outpacing even housing, which is also growing -- in large part because profits are so exorbitant. They offer some other reasons, which are valid to a point, but profits are the driving force. None of this is news, unless you're one of those people who only believe what they read in the New York Times.

Andrew O'Hehir [07-06] Alligator Alcatraz: American history from the dark side: "Yeah, it's a concentration camp. It's also a meme, a troll and an especially ugly distillation of American history." It's significant enough that Trump has started building concentration camps, but even more important is the effort they're putting into marketing them. They not only think this is a good idea, they think it will be massively popular -- at least among the people they count on as their base.

Alligator Alcatraz, like nearly everything else about the second Trump regime, is a deliberate, overt mockery of the liberal narrative of progress. It's a manifestation of "owning the libs" in physical, tangible and almost literal form. (So far, MAGA's secret police have not specifically targeted the regime's domestic opponents, but the threats get more explicit every day.) Terrorizing, incarcerating and deporting immigrants is an important regime goal in its own terms, of course, but the real target of terrorism -- state terrorism included -- is always the broader public. Liberal outrage, to some significant degree, is the point, as are a mounting sense of powerlessness and increasing anxiety about the rule of law and the constitutional order.

  • Maureen Tkacik [07-17] Meet the Disaster Capitalists Behind Alligator Alcatraz: "Incompetent and militarized 'emergency response' is on track to be a trillion dollar industry by the end of Trump's second term." I've always thought that Naomi Klein's "Disaster Capitalism" was less a stage than a niche, but with Trump in power it's becoming a very lucrative one:

    The forecasters of such things predicted last winter that "emergency management" will be nearly a trillion-dollar sector of the economy by 2030. And that was before Trump declared eight new national emergencies during his first week in office, then went about variously nuking and systematically dismantling every federal agency equipped to respond to emergencies. Disaster capitalism's windfall could come a year or two early, so don't let this lesson escape you. Those who fail to procure a no-bid contract to build the next concentration camp may be condemned to live in it. Or as Crétier himself put it in 2020: "I see the world in a very predatorial way. You're either on the menu or you're looking in the menu."

Sarah Kendzior [07-07] Guns or Fireworks: "America is not its government and normal does not mean right." Celebrating the 4th of July in St. Charles, MO, with a "38 Special" ("fifty ride tickers for thirty-eight dollars"). The title is a guessing game played at the Riverfest ("full of fun, unsafe rides").

Maggie Haberman [07-09] Trump Treats Tariffs More as a Form of Power Than as a Trade Tool: "Instead of viewing tariffs as part of a broader trade policy, President Trump sees them as a valuable weapon he can wield on the world stage." I think this is an important insight, although one could push it a bit farther. Trump has no real trade policy. I don't think he can even conceive of one. He doesn't have a notion of national interests -- sure, he talks a lot about "nation," but that's really just himself: he assumes that the nation's happiness is a simple reflection of his own happiness. He understands power as a means for engorging himself, and that's all that really matters to him. Congress did something stupid way back when, in allowing presidents to arbitrary implement tariffs, sanctions, and such. They gave the office power, so now he has it and is using and abusing it, because that's all he is. I'm tempted to say that nobody imagined that could possibly happen, but that sounds just like something he'd say.

Zack Beauchamp [07-09] Liberalism's enemies are having second thoughts: "Why Trump 2.0 is giving some anti-liberals second thoughts." A rather scattered survey of various thinkers who have tried to critically distinguish their ideas from conventional liberalism, suggesting that there are anti-liberal currents both on the right and on the left. I'm not very conversant with these people, being only vaguely aware of Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed from the right and Samuel Moyn's Liberalism Against Itself to the left, and little else other than the Abundance Agenda (under "Where do we go from here?" where it is viewed as part of the liberal revival). These titles suggest that the problem with liberalism was never what it promised but simply what it delivered, most often because the desire for equality so often fizzled once one's own needs were met.

Charles R Davis [07-09] "This is going to be normal": Soldiers descend on US cities: "The raid on MacArthur Park did not lead to any arrests, but that wasn't the point."

Elizabeth Kolbert [07-10]: Flash floods and climate policy: "As the death toll climbs in Texas, the Trump Administration is actively undermining the nation's ability to predict -- and to deal with -- climate-related disasters." See St Clair (below) for more on this, as well as:

  • Umair Irfan [07-07] Why were the central Texas floods so deadly? "How missed flood warnings and infrastructure gaps cost so many live in central Texas."

  • Cheyenne McNeil [07-08] Cruz pushed for NOAA cuts days before Texas flooding: "The Senator was on vacation in Greece when fatal flooding hit Texas." In case you were expecting him in Cancun.

  • Noel King/Cameron Peters [07-18] Trump cut the National Weather Service. Did that impact Texas flood warnings? "What NWS and FEMA cuts could mean for future disasters, explained." Interview with CNN climate reporter Andrew Freedman. NWS cut 600 employees, including several in key positions in Texas, while FEMA cuts were described as "quite broad." Freedman doesn't seem to think that made much difference. I'd counter that it says much about what Trump considers important. One side effect of all the climate change denialism is that they also wind up pretending climate disasters won't happen, so they don't prepare for them, so they screw up when they do. Democrats may not be any better than Republicans at preventing climate change -- their efforts are mostly limited to subsidizing businesses offering "green" technology -- but by accepting the reality of climate change, and by believing that government has an important role in helping people, they put a much more serious effort into disaster recovery assistance. Clinton promoted FEMA to cabinet level. Bush buried it under DHS, where the focus was countering terrorism (and, extremely under Trump, immigration).

Zack Beauchamp [07-10] Trump quietly claimed a power even King George wasn't allowed to have: "A scary new revelation about Trump's effort to circumvent the TikTok ban."

Adam Clark Estes [07-10] Little videos are cooking our brains: "The future of the internet is a slop-filled infinite scroll. How do we reclaim our attention?" I don't deliberately look at TicToc or Instagram, which seem to be the main culprits here, but I've noticed the same thing with X and Bluesky (although I've found settings on the latter to do away with autoplay). I've certainly felt the sensation, as I would scroll through dozens of short videos, finding it hard to resist, with my will power increasingly sapped. I ordered the Chris Hayes book, The Siren's Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource, after one such session. We'll see if that helps . . . if I can focus enough to read it?

Zusha Ellinson [07-10]: The Rapid Rise of Killings by Police in Rural America: "A 17-year-old shot and killed by a sheriff's deputy on a New Mexico highway last summer was one in a growing number of cases." This is uncomforting reading, even though it seems so predictable.

Jeffrey St. Clair:

  • [07-18] Roaming Charges: Masked and Anonymous: Starts with a long list of ICE horrors, before moving on to climate horrors and other horrors. He offers this translation of Ezra Klein's Abundance: "Trickle-Down for Hipsters." Offers this quote from Astra Taylor:

    Supreme Court says the president can't abolish student debt, but he CAN abolish the Department of Education. This isn't hypocrisy. It's end times fascism—a fatalistic politics willing to torch the government and incinerate the future to maintain hierarchy and subvert democracy.

  • [07-11]: Roaming Charges: Heckuva Job, Puppy Slayer! I assume you get the reference. While nobody expects Republicans to prevent disasters, you'd think that they'd try to seem less incompetent when they do happen, as with no prevention efforts they inevitably do. This starts off with the Texas flood disaster, and covers it succinctly, before moving on to ICE, Israel, and other matters. Closes by repeating his Mid-Year Poll ballot, having written more about Francis Davis (and me) here:

  • [07-07] Sound Grammar: Francis Davis and the Best Jazz of 2025, So Far.

Chris Hedges [07-11] The Persecution of Francesca Albanese: She holds the post of UN Special Rapporteur, charged with investigating the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Having found the obvious, the Trump administration is moving to sanction her. It's not clear to me how they can do that, or what the practical effects might be, but the linkage pretty much cinches the case that Trump is complicit in the genocide.

Michael Brenes [07-11] What If the Political Pendulum Doesn't Swing Back? This revisits Arthur M Schlesinger Jr's 1986 book, The Cycles of American History. Noted because I've been thinking about cycles theory, pendulum moves (including what Bill James called the "plexiglass principle"), and such, although I don't have a lot of respect or interest in Schlesinger.

Dexter Filkins [07-14]: Is the US ready for the next war? Long article on how cool drones and AI are, by a veteran war reporter who lacked the empathy and/or moral fiber to follow Chris Hedges into questioning the whole world. Ukraine and Israel are prime examples, where new techniques for dealing death are being field-tested. The real question isn't how to fight the next war, but why? Filkins, as usual, is clueless.

Adam Gurri [07-14] Marc Andreessen Is a Traitor: "It is the tech oligarchs, not young radicals, who have turned against the system that made them."

Kiera Butler [07-14] Churches Can Now Endorse Candidates and Trump Couldn't Be Happier:

David Daley [07-16]: How Texas could help ensure a GOP House majority in 2026: When I first heard Trump pushing to further gerrymander House seats in Texas, I was surprised they had left any seats open. The current split is 25-12, with Democrats concentrated in the big cities, and everything else neatly carved up to favor Republicans. Turns out there are two districts along the Rio Grande that Democrats won by thin margins in 2024. Still, that depends on Trump consolidating his 2024 gains among Latinos, which isn't a strong bet.

Molly Jong-Fast [07-18]: Canceling Stephen Colbert Isn't Funny. Coming two weeks after [07-02] Paramount to Pay Trump $16 Million to Settle '60 Minutes' Lawsuit, this feels like the other shoe dropping. The lawsuit was utterly bogus, and any company with an ounce of faith in free speech would have fought it to the Supreme Court (or probably won much easier than that), but the settlement is a conveniently legal way to pay off a bribe, and cheap compared to the multi-billion dollar sale Paramount is seeking government approval on. (And Trump, of course, is back at it again: see Trump will sue the WSJ over publishing a "false, malicious, and defamatory" story about Trump and Epstein.) I'm not up on Colbert: I haven't watched his or any other late night talk show since the election. Before the election, I took some comfort in their regular beatdowns of Trump and his crew, and especially in the audience's appreciation, which made me feel less alone. However, with the loss I resented their inadequacy (as well as even more massive failures elsewhere in the media and in the Democratic political classes). But I suppose I was glad that they still existed, and hoped they would continue fighting the good fight -- maybe even getting a bit better at it. At this point, it's pretty clear that Trump's popularity will continue to wane as the disasters pile up. So his only real chance of surviving is to intimidate the opposition, to impose such fear and dread that no one will seriously challenge him. You'd think that would be inconceivable in America, but here you see companies like Paramount bowing and scraping. And as the WSJ suit progresses, how much faith do you have that someone like Rupert Murdoch will stand up to Trump? More:

Kaniela Ing [07-18] This Viral Speech Shows How We Win Back Rural America: "Voters aren't tuning out because they don't care. They're tuning out because they've been exhausted by fake choices, sold out by both parties, and tired of inauthenticity."

Chuck Eddy [07-18] A Load of Records Off My Back. Mixed feelings here, including some I simply don't want to think about. My only serious attempt to sell my music was in 1999 in New Jersey, when we were moving and the LPs seemed like a lot of dead weight -- not least because some flood water seeped into still-packed boxes in the basement, making me think that if I couldn't take better care, I didn't deserve to own such things. I did spend many hours salvaging what I could from the mess: cleaning pulp out of the grooves of vinyl, putting them in blank sleeves. I mostly kept old jazz that I thought I might want to refer back to. I probably saved more money in moving charges than I made selling them. We moved here in 1999, and since then I've never sold anything. I do think of disposing of much of what I have, but it's a lot of trouble for very little reward (and I don't just mean money). Chuck's story doesn't inspire me, but I suppose it's worth knowing that if he can do it, maybe there's hope for me.

Obituaries: Last time I did an obituary roll was May 14, so we have some catching up to do. This is quickly assembled, mostly from New York Times obituaries.

  • John Ganz [06-05] The Last True Fascist: "Michael Ledeen and the 'left-hand path' to American Fascism." I remember him as the right-wing ideologue of the poli sci department at Washington University, back in the early 1970s when I was a sociology student there. I never had any dealings with him, but friends who majored there loathed him (and vice versa, I'm sure). This was well before he became famous for putting bad ideas into worse practice. But while I always knew him as an ogre, this adds much more detail and nuance.

  • John Fordham [07-27] Louis Moholo-Moholo obituary: "Jazz drummer with the Blue Notes who brought enthralling new sounds from South Africa to the wider world in the 1960s."

  • Jannyu Scott [06-26] Bill Moyers, a Face of Public TV and Once a White House Voice, Dies at 91: One of the few people from the Johnson Administration to put Vietnam behind him and redeem himself with a long public service career. I have many memories of him, but the one that always seemed most telling was the story of how he tried to get Johnson to call his program "The Good Society" instead of "The Great Society." Like another politician who comes to mind, Johnson always wanted more, and never got it. (Mary Trump hit a similar note when she called her book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man.)

  • Linda Greenhouse [05-09] David H. Souter, Republican Justice Who Allied With Court's Liberal Wing, Dies at 85: "He left conservatives bitterly disappointed with his migration from right to left, leading to the cry of "no more Souters." Which is to say that he was the last of the Republicans to allow decency, good sense, and respect for law to guide him instead of right-wing ideology. He was GWH Bush's second appointment to the Court (after Clarence Thomas), a New Hampshire fellow promoted by John Sununu to replace William J. Brennan (an Eisenhower appointment, and one of the most honorable Justices in my memory). While Reagan's appointment of Scalia sailed through without a hitch, he leaned so hard to the right that the later appointments of Bork and Thomas turned into pitched political battles. Some Democrats feared the same from Souter, but I remember at the time two bits of evidence that suggested otherwise. One was that he showed great respect for Brennan, and solicited his advice. The other was a comment by a friend, Elizabeth Fink, that Souter might surprise us, because as a bachelor he had lived an unconventional lifestyle. She proved right, as she so often was. (Another Liz Fink story: Chuck Shumer used to like to walk up to people on the street and ask them "how am I doing?" He did that to Liz once, and she answered curtly: "you're evil.")

  • Alex Traub [06-02] Alasdair MacIntyre, Philosopher Who Saw a 'New Dark Ages,' Dies at 96: On him, also see Samuel McIlhagga: The Anti-Modern Marxism of Alasdair MacIntyre.

  • Ludwig vanTrikt (66): He was one of our long-time voters in the Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll, from Philadelphia, worked in radio there and wrote for Cadence. Here are notes on Instagram and Echovita. I've corresponded with him a fair amount, and always found him warm and engaging. Mutual friends have described him as "a really good person," who generously "did what he had to do in whatever way he could."

  • Some more names I recognize: with New York Times obituaries. Connie Francis (singer, 87); David Gergen (political hack, 83); Michael Madsen (actor, 67); Jimmy Swaggart (preacher/con man, 90); Dave Parker (baseball, 74); Mick Ralphs (guitarist, 81); Lou Christie (singer, 82); Foday Musa Suso (kora player, 75); Sly Stone (bandleader, 82); Guy Klucevsek (accordion player, 78); Al Foster (drummer, 82); Loretta Swit (actress, 87); Bernard Kerik (crooked cop, 69); Tom Robbins (journalist, 76); Susan Brownmiller (feminist author, 90); Joe Louis Walker (blues singer-guitarist, 75); Johnny Rodriguez (country singer-guitarist, 73).

    Some more I didn't catch in the Times, but found in Wikipedia: Hal Galper (pianist, 87); Alan Bergman (songwriter, 99); Lalo Schifrin (composer, 93); Sven-Åke Johansson (drummer, 82); Brian Wilson (singer, 82); Robert Benton (film director, 92). Obviously, some names in the second list should have been caught in the first (Wilson, Benton). I also took a glance at Jazz Passings, noting a couple more names (like Aïyb Dieng and Brian Kellock), but mostly from earlier in the year.

No More Mister Nice Blog: This is becoming a regular feature. I may skip the occasional piece.

  • [07-10]: This former(?) right-wing extremist is a smarter Democrat than most of the Party's establishment: Joe Walsh, "who was an extremely conservative Republican member of Congress before he became a Never Trumper," interviewing Dean Phillips, who ran for president as a Democrat in 2024, but now says there's no room in the Democratic Party for both him and Mamdani.

    Moderate Democrats don't have to like Zohran Mamdani. But if they're certain he's bad for the party, they should simply say as little as possible about him. That way, they're not denigrating the party as a whole and they have more time to criticize Republicans -- y'know, the party they run against every election cycle? But Democrats apparently don't believe that criticizing only your opponents is good politics.

  • [07-11]: Republican vulnerabilities are obvious, but the Democratic Party doesn't seem to notice.

  • [07-12]: Live by the ooga-booga, die by the ooga-booga.

  • [07-13]: Oh, look, it's time for the downfall of Trumpism (again): He's being sarcastic. Surely he knows better than to take David French's word for unease among the Magadom, especially over a charge as ridiculous as pedophilia: the reason they love to attack liberals for that is because they like to see them squirm and recoil in disgust (or look defensive in denial), not because they care one whit about the issue. And if you do manage to prove that Trump is guilty, that's just one more feather in the badass plumage they love him for. But this piece eventually comes around: "Republicans don't really fight one another. They hate us too much to do that."

  • [07-14]: This is how Trump thinks he'll turn the page on Epstein? Looks like he's doing some "wag the dog" over Ukraine. He's turning so belligerent that Lindsey Graham is on board.

  • [07-16]: Establishment Democrats choose the least appealing option: There's a lot here on how many of the young male-oriented podcasts that turned toward Trump in 2024 are turning against him, but not toward the Democratic Party (although Sanders and Mamdani have been picking up support):

    The one political philosophy that doesn't appeal to young voters is mealy-mouthed left-centrism, but that's precisely what Democratic leaders seem to want to give us all. They don't even want the Democratic Party to be a big tent that includes progressives, even though progressives seem to have solved the problem -- winning back young voters -- that the party is paying consultants millions to solve.

    There's a fumbled sentence next to the end here. I think what he means is that the party mainstream is so afraid of losing billionaire donors that they've forgotten that elections are ultimately about winning more votes. The Harris campaign offered pretty conclusive proof that raising more money doesn't guarantee winning, especially when you lose all respect doing so.

Mid-Year Music Lists: I usually collect these under Music Week, but it's probably easier here.

Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll: Mid-Year 2025: I had hoped to see more press about our poll, and fear that once again I dropped the ball after struggling so just to get my piece published. I'll collect whatever relevant articles I find here. One sidelight: DownBeat published their 73rd Annual Critics Poll on the same day, competing with our claim to be the biggest critics poll anywhere. I don't mind. I'm not competitive in that way. I'm pleased to see many of our voters getting belated but much-deserved invites, and I suspect that they helped lift the margins of their major category winners this year, especially: Anthony Braxton (Hall of Fame); James Brandon Lewis (artist of the year); Mary Halvorson (group of the year); and Patricia Brennan (album of the year, our winner last year, Breaking Stretch; our Mid-Year winner, Steve Lehman's Plays the Music of Anthony Braxton came out after their disorienting April 1 dividing line, so not a fair comparison there). I'll have to look at their poll more closely, including the list of 251 voting critics, and write more on it later. I did, however, annotate my own ballot here.

Tweets:

  • Middle Age Riot: Picture of bleeding Trump with fist raised:

    FLASHBACK: One year ago, this was staged, I mean happened.

    sassymaster commented:

    you can't grow an ear back. What's the shooter's name? Why no 24 hour media coverage about the shooter. Maybe Jake Tapper will write a book with the answers.

    I threw in this lost-gestating comment:

    Isn't there an Agatha Christie book where the murderer shoots herself in the ear to deflect attention by pretending to be the target? The ear looks good: it bleeds profusely, and is scary close to the brain, but it's safer than anywhere else, so if you were going to fake a shooting, that's the way [to do it].

    I thought of that at the time -- we had just finished a massive Agatha Christie TV binge -- but discounted it only because I couldn't imagine how they thought they could keep such a scam secret. Of course, he wouldn't have had to shoot himself. Once he dropped to the ground, he could clamp a tiny explosive to the ear and detonate it. Killing the supporter behind him made it look more real, and killing the "shooter" on the distant roof brought the story to a sweet ending. The second "assassin" lurking at the golf course further sold the story, which couldn't have been better scripted to propel his "miraculous comeback." And his media critics are so conditioned to never believe conspiracy stories they never questioned it.

  • Laura Tillem [07-13]:

    Just watched the PBS Hannah Arendt documentary. Let me count the ways it is like now:

    1. The rise of Hitler so very much like Trump whipping up hatred against all kinds of people.
    2. The deliberate starvation of the Jews to the point of extermination like Israel's concentration camps in Gaza. As currently being described by Holocaust scholars.
    3. The rise of McCarthy and the searching out and turning in and persecuting dissent in the universities. Like Canary Mission et al.
    4. The lawlessness of Nixon just like Trump.

    Makes me sick.

The Intercept [07-19] No American Gulags. I gets tons of fundraising emails, and delete them nearly as fast as they come in. This looked like one, but is actually an action pitch -- something else I get lots of and quickly delete. If you want to sign up, the link will get you there. But I was struck by the text, which deserves a place here (their bold):

When unidentified people in masks jump out of unmarked vehicles, handcuff someone, take them to an undisclosed location, and detain them indefinitely, that's not law enforcement. It's kidnapping.

When the U.S. government then sends people it's kidnapped to a foreign country, the practice escalates to human trafficking.

ICE is creating a global pipeline of American-sponsored gulags in countries often notorious for violence and human rights violations.

People sent to these overseas prisons have no idea how long they'll remain incarcerated in a country that is not their home.

The U.S. Constitution is clear: Not only is every person entitled to due process in a court of law, but even those convicted of crimes must not endure cruel and unusual punishment.

More than 71 percent of current ICE detainees have no criminal conviction — and still ICE trafficked detainees to CECOT, the infamous Salvadoran torture prison where it's been said "the only way out is in a coffin."

There should be no such thing as an American gulag.

Current count: 276 links, 13502 words (17370 total)

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, July 14, 2025

Music Week

July archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44524 [44492] rated (+32), 16 [18] unrated (-2).

Last week's Music Week was delayed until Tuesday, as I was trying to wrap up my essay and a bunch of last-minute corrections for the Mid-Year 2025 Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll. So this week's report only covers six days, although it feels like much longer. I handed my essay with standings in on Wednesday, and Arts Fuse published it on Friday, with an improved title: Sharing What We Know at Mid-Year. Jon Garelick also wrote a complementary essay, Listomania! Confessions of a Bad Voter. I unlocked the website so you could see the complete results: New Jazz Albums (441); Rara Avis (134), and all of the voters/ballots.

Once the poll went up, my next job was to get the word out, and I kind of fumbled the ball there. I did post tweets on X and Bluesky. I even posted on Facebook, and shared that with two groups there. And I blasted off a letter to the voter email list. Arts Fuse also sent out their usual notices. But that's about it. I got a couple of letters back, but not many. And when I searched for acknowledgments, I found very little (but I collected notes on what I found; see link below).

At the time, I thought the most useful thing I could do would be to write up my own blog post. I didn't expect to write a lot, but I was feeling cramped by character count limits, and somewhat nauseated by the fleeting artifice I was seeing everywhere in social media. I wound up writing well into Saturday (although the initial Friday post date still stands). I started with my original essay title, Our Second Mid-Year Critics Poll, and started out with the table of essential links. What followed was less about the poll winners and also-rans than it was about the work behind it, and how I saw that work in the present world context.

By the time I finished, I was feeling exhausted, or at least weary. I find my writing increasingly lapsing into memoir -- a feeling I need to explain everything in terms of how it affected me personally, perhaps some kind of fear of losing oneself as you get old and increasingly irrelevant, or just because I'm more aware than ever of how far estranged I feel from the majority. But I do want to make one thing clear here: I'm not disappointed with the reception the poll has received. I'm pretty satisfied with what we've done. And I'm looking forward to doing it again this fall. But I might be a bit relieved that I don't have to keep plugging it right now.

No doubt part of this is because the feedback I have gotten makes up in quality what it lacks in quantity. For instance, this email, from one of our voters, popped up while I was writing the above:

Want to compliment you for an informative Mid Year Poll. Your commentary was insightful and the results exceptionally enlightening. But most importantly, I want to thank you for your dedication to this project. Trying to imagine the countless hours you spent on this makes my head swim.

I also got one letter in the questions queue from a reader in Toronto:

Really enjoy reading your blog and getting new lines of inquiry for jazz.

Can't get into the political side too much as it drives me to the brink of madness, how human beings can be so stupid, but, I guess we're wired that way, I suppose. Social norms just took a turn somewhere back in our forebears time and it just went downhill from there.

I always keep in mind that homo sapiens were always fighting for food, lodging, etc.

Can't escape our animal instincts, it seems.

Anyway, keep up the good work and keep the polls going.

I'm sure that, even though people might not acknowledge you or your work, it is doing some good.

The jazz part is kind of like triage, where you quickly sort through the bodies to pick out a few worth rescuing, even as you know you simply don't have the time or energy to give so many others anything approaching the respect they no doubt deserve. The political/philosophical questions interest me more: I've found myself favoring "philosophical" over "political" recently, because I'm more concerned with how people think, and less so about the distribution of power -- the limits of power might be something else, leading us back to philosophy. I'm not sure my ideas have achieved any real clarity yet, but it does occur to me that much common thinking is profoundly and/or pathetically atavistic, governed by concepts that once seemed valid but are no longer viable, and in some cases plainly ridiculous.

One example is the habit of gravitating toward the leader who shows the most self-confidence in a crisis (e.g., the 90% approval ratings of GW Bush after 9/11, even though he was obviously wrong in every conceivable aspect; I saw that at the time, so why did so few others?). One thing I've thought a great deal about lately is how much the world has changed in my lifetime (which gets us back to 1950), and in the several generations before me (my parents' grandfathers fought in the Civil War, against the Slave Power). At some point I radically reoriented my own thinking to break with theirs, and to take a fresh look at the changed world. Exploring that would be the point of delving deeper into my memories, as I seem to be doing. Along the way I've heard a lot of music, so that's necessarily part of the story, but only part.

When I did another search for jazz poll references today, I only came up with one more piece: Nate Chinen: Take Five: Midsummer Magic. He mentioned that DownBeat's Critics Poll[*] came out the same day as our poll, and admitted that he hadn't voted in either of them: "it has been a challenging season for work-life balance, and I simply got overwhelmed and missed the deadlines." Chinen's essay ends early with only one album under his "Take Five": perennial poll favorite Cécile McLorin Salvant's Oh Snap, which according to my notes isn't due for release until Sept. 19 -- far enough out that no one in our poll jumped the gun (although we did get votes for several August releases)[**]. Supposedly there's more for paid subscribers: we're entering into Substack here. Although he promises he's going to vote in our year-end poll, he wouldn't be the first jazz writer to take his thoughts and bottle them up out of sight and mind.

I don't mean to grouch. I figure everyone's entitled to their own business plan. I'll be unveiling one in the next week or two, although I'm not sure it qualifies as business. I signed up for a Substack account today, and did a bit of preliminary configuration, but haven't written much less published anything yet. The name is "Notes on Everyday Life": a few of us published a political rag named that back in St. Louis in the early 1970s. I registered a domain name like that a fair while back, but I never did much with it. I have some new ideas, where the domain name hosts a sprawling pile of writing about everything, and the Substack offers a view into the pile. The main value I see is:

  1. A system for push notifications.
  2. A fairly reliable email list that I don't have to host and/or maintain.
  3. A comment system that should be fairly safe and manageable.
  4. Some statistical measures of how much interest there is in my writing.

I'm fairly agnostic about the monetization features, which I haven't set up, and may quite possibly never try to use. I'm moving slowly through the various configuration options, trying to figure out what to use, and how to use it. I think it's still premature to publish the URL and solicit subscribers. When I'm ready, I'll announce it first through Bluesky, then here. One bit that I will share here and now is the "Publication short description" -- not really a plan, just something that popped into my head when asked:

Fifty-some years ago I discovered that the personal is political, and wrote about that under this name. Now I'm trying to make it personal again, or at least anti-political.

I'll leave you to ponder what that means. I do expect to write something on it within the week.

After two mammoth weeks for A-list jazz, this week came up pretty short. Perhaps diminishing returns, or flagging energy. Maybe it's time to play something other than jazz -- despite my essay's recommendation that jazz is what the world needs in these perilous times.

[*] I'm not finding a useful link, although Chinen offered this one, which gives you a cover scan featuring Anthony Braxton, who won their Hall of Fame category this year, and touting other winners, like our 2024 album of the year (Patricia Brennan, Breaking Stretch) and rara avis runner-up (Alice Coltrane, The Carnegie Hall Concert). The most interesting claim for me is "it's the largest & most comprehensive Critics Poll in Jazz History" -- largest has been our claim for several years (177 last year; last time I counted theirs was a couple years back, at something like 113, so when I saw Frank Alkyer bragging about the size of his poll, I was skeptical. But according to Chinen, 251 ballots were cast, which is indeed impressive. I'll be interested in seeing who all voted, and how many new names they pulled off of our lists. Also how the larger electorate shifts their various standings. Aside from Brennan and Coltrane, two other major category winners (James Brandon Lewis and Mary Halvorson) have always fared better in our poll than in theirs. I've voted in DownBeat's poll for many years now, and have usually taken copious notes when doing so (see mine for 2025).

By the way, let's also link to All About Jazz's Best Jazz Albums of 2025: All-Star Break Edition. This is also AAJ's second mid-year poll: their first was hastily thrown together after I sent out invites to ours, and this one is much larger, although still only 3 albums deep per voter. I don't know whether our poll spurred these others on, but I'd be happy if it did.

[**] Substack has a Twitter-like feed called Notes. I get notifications about it sometimes, and looked at it today to investigate some stupid overgeneralization. Scrolling down, I see now that Chinen's "Take Five" is a deal where he spots five tracks "you should hear." I probably got the same link he shared, but didn't bother with it because I only focus on whole albums (well, also some EPs, which I generally disparage). I also saw a note that Chinen's "The Gig" had broken into the top 20 music Substacks. I looked their leaderboard up, and see he's slipped back to 21. Most of the top-100 "Bestsellers in Music" are musicians, although Ted Gioia ("The Honest Broker") is number one. He's a jazz critic who also listens to a lot of classical and who has never met a year he couldn't generate a top-100 list for, but he's been MIA from our poll the last couple years, a phenomenon I've alluded to. Other critics I recognize on the list: Greil Marcus (17), Piotr Orlov (45), Eugene S. Robinson (59), Will Friedwald (60), Will Hermes (65), Burning Ambulance [Phil Freeman] (98), Nelson George (99). Orlov and Freeman are the only ones there who voted in our poll, although others have in the past. There are probably some pop/rock critics on the list that I skipped over -- Josh Terry (34) is one I had a hazy recollection of and verified. Robert Christgau didn't make the list, nor did any of the other music feeds I subscribe to.

Looking at the U.S. Politics leaderboard, I see a lot more names I recognize, some that would be interesting to sample, some that would be appalling. Several people I used to read regularly are perched high on the list: Matt Taibbi (9), Paul Krugman (10), Robert Reich (11), Matthew Yglesias (14) -- but they've effectively made themselves invisible (and possibly irrelevant?) by retreating into their private lairs. I shouldn't get too judgmental about something I may wind up doing myself. Farther down, I find some possibly interesting names, and click on a couple: Amy Siskind (100), Sarah Kendzior (55). Clicking mostly gets you a feed of Notes, which are mostly graphics-heavy plugs for articles, but those two were better than most. I even clicked on a Kendzior article, and was pleased to see this: "Thank you for reading! I would never paywall in times of peril. But if you'd like to keep this newsletter going, pease consider becoming a paid subscriber. That ensures every article remains open to everyone."

I made a preliminary pass at creating a Best Jazz Albums of 2025 list. I only pulled out the A/A- albums so far, leaving the B+(***) Honorable Mention section empty, as well as the Notes section, which lists records with lesser grades. But I did manage to collect all of the still unheard albums from the Mid-Year Poll into the Recommended but Unheard list: 166/441 new music albums (37.6%), 42/110 rara avis (38.1%; poll listed 134 albums, but 24 are new reissues of albums I've previously heard, so shouldn't count here). I had previously mention that half of the albums receiving votes were ones I hadn't previously heard of. That's not disproven here, as I've spent the last month whittling that list down as it's been growing.

New records reviewed this week:

Eric Alexander: Chicago to New York (2024 [2025], Cellar Music Group): Mainstream tenor saxophonist, well establish since 1995, also plays some soprano here, leading a quartet with Mike LeDonne (piano), Dennis Carroll (bass), and George Fludas (drums). Back in prime form. B+(***) [sp]

Andy Biskin/Peter Hess/Mike McGinniss/Sam Sadigursky: Reed Basket (2025, self-released): Clarinet quartet, everyone plays Bb and bass clarinet, but you also encounter Eb, alto, and contra-alto. Biskin has a few albums going back to 2000, including such deep Americana as a Stephen Foster set and Songs From the Alan Lomax Collection. Mostly vintage fare here, I think, but I was pleased to hear "A Walk on the Wild Side" in the mix. B+(**) [sp]

Ingi Bjarni: Hope (2023 [2025], Losen): Pianist from Iceland, last name Skúlason, several albums since 2019, this a quartet with guitar (Hilmar Jensson), bass (Anders Jormin), and drums (Magnús Trygvason Eliassen). B+(**) [sp]

Jane Ira Bloom: Songs in Space (2024 [2025], Outline): Soprano saxophonist, 20+ albums since 1980, this a quartet with Dominic Fallacaro (piano), Mark Helias (bass), and Bobby Previte (drums), playing original pieces plus two standards ("I Could Have Danced All Night," "My Foolish Heart"). B+(**) [sp]

Antonio Borghini & Banquet of Consequences: Resta Chi Va (2024 [2025], We Insist!): Italian bassist, debut album 2004, group name continues from his 2023 title. With Tobias Delius (tenor sax/clarinet), Pierre Borel (alto sax), Rieko Okuda (piano), Anil Eraslan (cello), and Steve Heather (drums). This is a good setting, especially for Delius. A- [sp]

Vilhelm Bromander Unfolding Orchestra: Jorden Vi Ärvde (2024 [2025], Thanatosis): Swedish bassist, many side credits since 2008, first album as leader 2016. I count 13 musicians here, only 2 brass but an all-star sax section (Martin Küchen, Alberto Pinton, Christer Bothén, Elin Forkelid), with Alex Zethson (piano) and Mattias Ståhl (vibraphone/marimba). Intimations of grandeur, not my favorite mode, but impressive nonetheless. B+(**) [bc]

Milena Casado: Reflection of Another Self (2025, Candid): Trumpet player from Spain, studied at Berklee, based in New York, first album, produced by Terri Lyne Carrington and Morgan Guerin, hype sheet drops some big guest names without pinning down details. Some soft fusion grooves, and scattered vocals. B+(*) [sp]

Theo Croker: Dream Manifest (2025, Dom Recs): Trumpet player, from Florida, sings some, appeared in 2006 and is closing in on a dozen albums, with his electric keyb grooves he's passed over into pop jazz with some redeeming funk. B+(*) [sp]

Theon Cross: Affirmations: Live at the Blue Note New York (2025, New Soil): British tuba player, started with credits in Sons of Kemet, Moses Boyd Exodus, SEED Ensemble, and has a couple albums as leader since 2019. No date or credits I can find for this, other than "featuring standout performances by Isaiah Collier, James Russell Sims, and Nikos Ziarkas." Hard to follow, but I always loved the put-put-put of a tuba, and the sax finally emerges toward the end. B+(**) [sp]

Angel Bat Dawid & Naima Nefertari: Journey to Nabta Playa (2025, Spiritmuse): Born in Atlanta, parents were missionaries, moved to Kenya when she was 7, eventually back to Chicago. Plays clarinet and piano, electronics, sings, fourth album since 2019. Nefertari ("aka Karlsson") seems to come from England, is credited with various keyboards, flutes, vibes (and other percussion), vocals, and harp. The drags on a lot, like it should at least be interesting, but can't keep attention. B [sp]

John Ellis: Heroes (2023 [2025], Blue Room Music): Saxophonist, albums since 1996, leads a quintet through eight originals: Michael Rodriguez (trumpet), Gary Versace (piano), Reuben Rogers (bass), and Kush Abadey (drums). Ends with a nice African-style piece. B+(**) [sp]

Elliot Galvin: The Ruin (2023 [2025], Gearbox): British pianist, several albums since 2012 as well as groups like Dinosaur and side-credits. Some trio with bass and drums, some with string quartet, some with both, with Shabaka Hutchings playing bamboo flute on one track, shakuhachi on another. B+(*) [sp]

John Hart: Love Is (2023 [2024], SteepleChase): Guitarist, more than a dozen albums since 1990, trio here with Kirk Knuffke (cornet) and Carlo DeRosa (bass). More fine work, espcially from Knuffke. B+(**) [sp]

Ryan Keberle & Collectiv Do Brasil: Choro Das Aguas (2023 [2025], Alternate Side): Trombonist, has some big band experience (notably with Maria Schneider and Pedro Giraudo), his own albums start in 2007 with several rotating projects, this his second with a Brazilian group: Felipe Seviera (keyboards), Felipe Brisola (bass), and Paulinho Vicente (drums). Eight songs from Ivan Lins, plus two originals. Good spotlight for his trombone. B+(***) [cd] [07-18]

Joe McPhee: I'm Just Sayin' (2025, Smalltown Supersound): Avant-sax legend since the late 1960s, 85 now, only credited with "voice and poetry" here, his accompaniment from Mats Gustafsson, credited with "baritone and bass sax, flutes, piano mate, piano harp, organ, fender rhodes and live electronics." B+(**) [sp]

Amina Claudine Myers: Solace of the Mind (2023 [2025], Red Hook): Pianist, has also played a fair amount of organ, originally from Arkansas, moved to Chicago in the 1960s, involved in AACM, moved on to New York, recording her first albums 1979-80, but not many. Still, she got a lot of attention for last year's duo with Wadada Leo Smith, and for this solo piano effort. B+(**) [sp]

Qasim Naqvi: Endling (2024 [2025], Erased Tapes): Pakistani drummer, based in New York, known for the trio Dawn of Midi, has several albums, including a recent trio with Wadada Leo Smith and Andrew Cyrille. This is something else, synthesizer with a centerpiece vocal from Moor Mother. B+(*) [sp]

Camila Nebbia: Rastro O Vacío (2025, Lilaila): Tenor saxophonist, from Argentina, based in Berlin, has been prolific lately. Solo here, 17 mostly short pieces (only 2 over 4:03, and only 2 more over 3:07), a little rough in spots but impressively bold. B+(**) [bc]

Gilbert Paeffgen Trio: Der Mann Auf Dem Trampolin (2024 [2025], Rabbit Hill): Swiss drummer, also plays hammered dulcimer (prominent here), has mostly trio albums since 1994, this one with Claude Meier (bass) and Fabian M. Mueller (piano). B+(***) [cd]

Evan Parker/Bill Nace: Branches (2024 [2025], Otoroku): A founding figure of the European avant-garde, plays soprano sax here, his distinctive style built largely out of circular breathing. Nace is from New Jersey, mostly a guitarist, active since 2008, plays "electric two-string tashiōgoto" here, generating a lot of harmonic fuzz that seems well matched to Parker's buzz. One 40:11 piece. B+(*) [bc]

Eric Scott Reed: Out Late (2025, Smoke Sessions): Mainstream pianist, learned in his father's church, joined Wynton Marsalis in the 1990s, has several dozen albums, this the first to use his middle name, a quintet with Nicholas Payton (trumpet), Eric Alexander (tenor sax), Peter Washington (bass), and Joe Farnsworth (drums). The saxophonist is most notable here. B+(**) [sp]

Toms Rudzinskis: Interception (2023 [2024], Jersika): Alto saxophonist, from Latvia, has a couple previous albums back to 2014. Quartet with piano, bass, and drums, plus a string quartet on the side. B+(***) [sp]

Aki Takase/Daniel Erdmann/Kazuhisa Uchihashi: Tanto (2022 [2025], Innocent): Trio of piano, tenor/soprano sax, and guitar/idiophone, recorded in Japan, although the pianist has long been based in Berlin, and has a half-dozen recent albums with Erdmann. B+(***) [bc]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Gato Barbieri: Standards Lost and Found 1 (1968 [2024], Red): Tenor saxophonist (1932-2016) from Argentina, moved to New York in the 1960s and produced an impressive series of free jazz albums for Flying Dutchman, followed by another powerful set Latin-tinged albums for Impulse! in the 1970s, but won a Grammy for the soundtrack to Last Tango in Paris and wound up recording pop-jazz fare for Herb Alpert. This is an early set, recorded after his first album, recorded in Italy with Franco D'Andrea (piano), Giovanni Tommaso (bass), and Pepito Pignatelli (drums), half of the eight "standards" from Miles Davis (3) or Herbie Hancock (1), 2 from the band (D'Andrea and Tommaso), plus "Lush Life" and "Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise." B+(***) [bc]

Gato Barbieri: Standards Lost and Found 2 (1968 [2025], Red): Same group, probably same session ("Spring 1968"), eight more "standards": covers of Charlie Parker, Ahmad Jamal, two each from Monk and Ornette, plus two Barbieri originals. B+(***) [bc]

Blackbyrds: City Life (1973-74 [2025], Craft): Jazz-funk fusion group, released seven albums 1974-80, trumpet player Donald Byrd played on their first album, was listed as producer here, the band a quintet of keyboards (Kevin Toney), sax (Stephen Johnson), guitar (Orville Saunders), bass (Joe Hall), and drums (Keith Kilgo), with other musicians thanked but not properly credited. This was their first (of three) gold records, charted at 1 (jazz), 3 (r&b), and 16 overall. This seems pretty slight, but the extras include a version of "Rock Creek Park" long enough to win me over. B+(*) [sp]

Jaki Byard: Blues for Smoke (1960 [2025], Candid): Pianist (1922-99), first recorded album but wasn't released until 1971 in Japan, later (1988?) in US. Solo, original pieces, some sparkling. Went on to record some outstanding albums -- The Last From Lennie's (1965) is a favorite, but my sampling has been limited. B+(**) [sp]

Walter Davis Jr: A Being Such as You (1979 [2025], Red): Pianist (1932-90), worked with Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Max Roach, and others; released an album, Davis Cup, on Blue Note in 1959, but nothing else until he started showing up on European and Japanese labels in 1978. He recorded two albums in Italy in quick succession, Blues Walk half trio, half added trumpet, then this set of solo piano. B+(*) [bc]

Dexter Gordon: Landslide (1961-62 [2025], Blue Note): Tenor sax great, made his mark on bebop with "The Chase" (1947), recorded major albums for Savoy in the 1950s, but really hit his stride in his 1961-65 run on Blue Note. This was cobbled together from three sessions in 1980, and is finally getting the fancy vinyl treatment. I'm streaming, and they sound like scraps, but they couldn't be anyone else's. B+(**) [sp]

Green Cosmos: Abendmusiken (1981-82 [2025], Frederiksberg): German group, recorded this one album, a quartet of Michael Boxberger (soprano/tenor sax), Benny Düring (piano), Ulrich Franke (bass), and Alfred Franke (drums/kalimba). Draws nicely on the spiritual dimension of Coltrane. B+(**) [sp]

Sun Ra: Uncharted Passages: New York Piano Soliloquies 1977-79 (1977-79 [2025], Modern Marmonic): Solo piano, nine tracks from July 1977 -- same studio and month as the solo album St. Louis Blues, but the only titles repeated here ("St. Louis Blues," "Honeysuckle Rose") are in longer versions -- plus four tracks (three standards) from a later date. Two vocals by June Tyson, which I regard as a plus. B+(**) [sp]

Sun Ra: On Jupiter (1979 [2025], Saturn/Strut): Originally released on El Saturn in 1979, credited to Sun Ra and His Arkestra, three tracks, with a live take of "UFO" added to the 2021 CD reissue. This keeps the live track, returns to the original artwork, and cuts the credit back down to just Sun Ra. B+(**) [sp]

Old music:

  • None

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • None

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Friday, July 11, 2025

Our Second Mid-Year Critics Poll

The Arts Fuse published our second mid-year jazz critics poll today. You can read all about it here:

I say "our" guardedly. The 2024 mid-year poll was originally my idea, although based on my experience in helping Francis Davis with his annual year-end poll, especially the last several years, as his health worsened. And while he didn't actually participate in it, he allowed my use of his name, mailing list, and website (which I had built from scratch years ago). So I could say "our" in the sense of "Francis and me," except that he died in April, so his contribution to our project has now become intangible. Still, he seemed pleased when I offered to keep his annual tradition going, in what is now our 20th year. But after his death, I only did so with the blessing and encouragement of his widow, Terry Gross, so now she, too, is a critical component of "we."

But there are larger circles of "we," without which my own efforts would be much poorer, or perhaps impossible. First there is the dozen or so volunteers so serve as my sounding board as I think my way through this fairly complex project, and who often provide invaluable help with specific tasks. Some are old personal friends, but most are voters who stepped up when I asked for help -- or in a couple cases, offered to help even before I asked, and one was a previously unknown reader who caught a mistake on the website and went on to give the whole thing a very thorough proofreading. (I am a notoriously lousy proofreader, so I really appreciate help on that score.) I won't name them all here, but Jon Garelick wrote the keynote essay, freeing me to just focus on the technical details. And William Marx finished the editing and presentation at The Arts Fuse, which gave us a professional look that I seem to be incapable of achieving.

The next larger circle of "we" is the 113 critics who voted in the poll. Without them, we would literally have had nothing to say. These are all remarkable people, who have spent countless hours searching out and listening to the deluge of new jazz, and to sharing their discoveries in print, radio, and/or digital media. It's been a pleasure and an honor to have gotten to know them, and to work with them. And that also includes dozens more who politely declined to send in their lists, mostly because they lacked time and/or felt uncomfortably unsure of their choices. (I sympathize, as a critic who's guessing so often he's gotten used to not letting uncertainty bother him.)

But "we" also extends to the hopefully much broader circle of readers, who find this and other polls interesting and useful in exploring and understanding the vast and dauntingly complex world of jazz and more or less related music. This poll is by some of us, but for all of us. Although I can't say as we ever talked about it -- Francis and I weren't exactly "pals" as one voter recently put it, so much of what we gleaned from one another was between the lines, for which now you only have my word -- but my initial take was that Francis started a poll of his friends mainly to drum up some content for his annual best-of piece, only to find to his delight that it opened doors to an ever-widening community of critics and fans.

And once he saw his creation, he deemed the poll a cause worth continuing, even at personal cost. After he left the Voice, he had no need to crank out year-end pieces. (Or perhaps I should say after the Voice left us. I also wrote for the Voice back then, and had gotten involved with the poll when their IT department scoffed at Francis's insistence on publishing complete ballots -- something they had done for Robert Christgau's much more commercially viable Pazz & Jop poll). But even in those early days the poll was finding a much broader and more demanding range of postmodern jazz than was featured in narrower (but supposedly more popular) publications like JazzTimes and DownBeat. JazzTimes ran a year-end poll of their own writers, and Francis took great interest in comparing their results to ours. Their poll skewed much more commercial than ours, even with most of their writers also voting in ours. Some of this may be ascribed to Francis vetting critics according to his own taste -- not that he didn't respect and entertain other viewpoints. (I'm probably less picky, or maybe just less discerning than he was, possibly because I'm less convinced of my own opinions, and maybe because I'm too aware of how idiosyncratic my views are to expect others to share them.)

One thing I thought about mentioning but didn't find a way to work it into my essay was how much I've missed not having Francis looking over my shoulder, overseeing the project, even batting down my crazy ideas, imparting an air of stability and dignity to the whole affair. I'm not normally inclined to defer to authority, but I held Francis in exceptionally high esteem, and wanted to please him, perhaps because I couldn't imagine actually impressing him. I especially wanted not to fail him, where an obvious metric would have been losing voters. No doubt many of my ideas annoyed him, but I rarely pressed a point, or let my frustrations sour the relationship. Over time, I got better at anticipating and internalizing his way of thinking. I'm still not smart enough to answer the question, "what would Francis think?" But I'm not totally clueless or careless either.

I had written some rock reviews in the mid-1970s, including 10-12 for Robert Christgau at the Village Voice. Some friends had egged me into sending him a sample of my samizdat, and he took me under his wing, as he did a number of bright young writers during the 1970s.[*] In some ways, Christgau was as imposing a figure even then as Davis was when I encountered him much later, but I noticed less at the time, or cared less: probably some mix of arrogance and naivete, not uncommon in one's mid-twenties but something one grows out of with age. We became friends, and remained in touch. He talked me into writing my first piece on jazz reissues in 1996, and several more pieces in the early 2000s. I talked him into letting me build him a website in 2001. I had written some Consumer Guide-style pieces back in the 1970s, and returned to the format for an oldies column I started writing for Michael Tatum in 2003, Recycled Goods. I knew nothing technical about music, so I always felt like an impostor as a jazz critic, but I knew a lot of history, I had a voracious appetite for new music, and by then I had heard enough of it to develop an ear for what was distinctive and interesting. I had pretty systematically explored many references, especially The Penguin Guide, but also the collected works of Gary Giddins and Francis Davis. So when Giddins left the Voice, I wasn't surprised that they would look to Davis to fill his shoes. (Davis had filled in when Giddins took a sabbatical, which was when I first encountered his work.) I was surprised when Christgau asked me to write a Jazz Consumer Guide, but jumped at the chance. I figured the idea was that with Davis doing the big, quality reviews, I could fill in with quantity. And with neither of us were based in New York, they could use freelancers to fill occasional live coverage. It worked pretty well until the Voice went to hell. They fired Christgau in 2006, but Rob Harvilla kept us working up to 2010, when he too split. After that it was effectively over.

By then, Francis needed me to make sure that the ballots would be published in full. He used to collect everything on his own, then dump the whole pile on me when it was done. I wound up spending more time checking his work than it would have taken me to count the ballots in the first place. Somewhere along the line, I managed to make myself indispensable, so every poll started with an email asking whether I would be available to help out, and making it seem like without me the poll would end. For reasons too embarrassing to explain here, I always was. Sometimes I would nominate a voter, or write a bit on the side, and he was usually open to that. But he was something of a control freak: not unreasoning, arbitrary, or cruel, but very much in charge. I could respect that. He was a great man, and I was pleased to be able to help him. Later, as his health failed, he needed more and more help, and eventually had to cede everything to me. But he had that commanding air about him, even as he became nearly helpless in the last poll, when I finally had effective control, and started inviting almost totally unvetted European critics just to mix things up (and make my numbers: I was proud of that record 177 in 2024). And he actually was pretty gracious, so perhaps my insecurity had gotten out of hand.

At some point along the way, one of our voters made a reference to "the Francis Davis poll," and I latched onto that idea. At first it seemed like a harmless bit of flattery, a way of keeping him engaged as he was slipping away. But he didn't object, and once thanked me for "turning him into a brand." But the name now feels like a legacy to maintain, as well as an inspiration to carry on. How long I can continue isn't clear. While Davis seemed like much the senior figure, I'm only four years younger than him. My present plan is to run a 20th Annual Poll in November, then we'll see.

I'd like to, in the meantime, significantly redesign the website. The present one, at least since 2016 or so, has been cobbled together by tacking each new year onto the end: I start with a copy of the previous year, then edit some dates, tweak the programs, and build up a new set of data files. The top level is just an index of polls. And the early years are just scattered files that originally appeared elsewhere, as they predate the software I wrote to generate the web pages. A better solution would be to consolidate the history at the top level: the bits that have changed over time can be documented as such, while the continuities only need to be written up once. I tried to write some of this up in 2022, in an essay I don't recall him as being very happy with. Since he can no longer correct me, it would be good to go back through his files to check what he was thinking: a big and no doubt fascinating project.

The second thing would be to consolidate the data in a database. This would allow us to construct queries that cross poll boundaries: for example, we could see how a critic voted from year to year, or how an artists' albums fared each year. Those are simple things I frequently wonder about, but only scratch the surface. The biggest problem here is dealing with the rule changes over time. I suspect we will also find errors made long ago, and will have to explain them one way or another. I don't have a detailed design here, but I do have a fairly good feel for the data, to help organize it in more useful form.

This is conceivably a large amount of work -- even if I don't seriously consider any of the "blue sky" notions that keep popping into my head, like community and resource development -- and I'm not sure I'm really up to it. I've always had a pretty solid work ethic (runs in my family) but I never developed the discipline to really see my ideas through, let alone to satisfy standards that have been diagnosed as perfectionist. Consequently, much of what I do is driven by my personal desire to help friends (also runs in my family), driven by their needs and limited by satisfaction -- which is probably why the Christgau and Davis websites are good enough to serve their purposes, but not nearly as good as they could (or should) be, and also why my own website (and for that matter much of my life) remains a rambling, incoherent mess.

It seems like one area where I always come up short is in getting the word out. When the essays were published on ArtsFuse, I put out my usual notices on X, Bluesky, and also one on Facebook (with further shares to two groups). I also sent mail to all of the voters (not that gmail necessarily delivered it all). I hoped people would take notice and spread the word. So when I later searched through Google, I was rather disappointed at how little I found:

I also have a few personal thanks in my inbox (4 in response to the group email, a few more elsewhere). I will likely find more in the days to come, but not much. Previous polls produced more feedback, but not a lot more. Nothing really does. Some of this is probably my fault: I don't make it especially easy to comment or to contact me. My engagement in social media is fairly minimal. Perhaps my style and airs put people off? Or maybe the world is just so saturated with demands for attention that everyone is turned off. The season may even have an effect.

I fairly regularly throw out questions on the off chance that someone might take an interest and answer, but they rarely do. At some point during my ruminations on the poll, I asked for tips on how to get noticed, and I did get one answer back on that. The suggestion was that we needed a logo, so the poll could be used as branding in the promotion of winning albums. And with this logo, we could get publicists to promote their winning albums, and thereby propagate the brand without having to pay for out own PR. I'm not dead set against this strategy. I'm on pretty good terms with quite a few publicists, and I usually try to keep them informed and interested (although I've been remiss so far in notifying them). And while I'd say I'm a "no logo" kind of guy (and not just because of the politics of this), I don't doubt that a little more graphic design would spruce up the website (and possibly seduce the aggregators into giving us a bit more presence). But I was thinking more in terms of trying to get more people (especially voters) to write up their own takes on the poll (or at least blast their own ballots out). That was part of the reason for inviting Jon Garelick to write his essay. (He's a regular Arts Fuse writer, so we already had leverage there.) I even toyed with the idea of offering interviews, which isn't really in my nature, but I know enough about the poll I could probably muddle through. Still, it's not too late to try again. After this post, I'll pivot back to publicity again.

But the logo idea got me thinking about the big difference between our poll and more famous others, ranging from small potatoes like the JJA Jazz Awards to big-time publicity rackets like the Grammys. It's not just the logo that we don't have. We also don't have trophies. Nor do we have dinners, where we can wear formal dress and hobnob with celebrities. Steve Lehman can brag about his win, but it's not going to get him a subway pass or a hot dog or much of anything else tangible. It's not even going to get him the chance to meet some of the critics who admire his work. And the further down the list you go, the less you have to brag about -- although in my book making the list at all is some kind of honor.

If someone approached me with some pro bono graphic design or publicity work, I'd seriously consider it, because I think the poll does good work, and more people should find out about it. But if someone offered to turn it into a spectacle, I'd probably just walk away in disgust. It's true that I've made a little bit of money off my work here, but that was never my reason, and I'm pretty sure that was never Francis's reason either. I've been fortunate in my later years is that I've been able to write and do what I want with virtually no regard to earning an income. That's a rare luxury in a world where there is actually very damn little correlation between the social worth of work and its remuneration. It's about as good a definition of freedom as you can find. So I don't see any point in sacrificing that just to toil in someone else's circus. I'd rather keep doing things that are actually interesting for their own sake, and helpful in a world where everyone is becoming enraged by the growing fear of forces trying to rip you off.

[*] If Trish Romano reads this, follow up your oral history of the Village Voice with one that focuses just on the music section in the 1970s. That was the golden decade for New York rock and roll, and especially for rock crit, and Christgau wouldn't have called himself "the dean of American rock critics" without sensing the centrality and importance of the moment. And delay risks running out of time. Christgau gave up the post of Music Editor early in the 1980s, which allowed him more time to work on his own writing, but the section languished -- or so it seemed to me, but having stopped writing and moved away from New York it could be that I wasn't paying attention, or had just passed the once ominous milestone of a 30th birthday.

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