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Music Week [10 - 19]

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

September archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44818 [44780] rated (+38), 21 [22] unrated (-1).

After another week of massive thrashing, I finally decided to delay this until after I finished my next Substack Notes on Everyday Life piece. It is called More Thoughts on Bernie Sanders and Capitalism. As it goes out in email, I want to give it a night to rest, then reread and edit it tomorrow. (The link above will get you to my first rough draft, in what I regard as the definitive archive for such pieces. I made an edit to the previous column, Bernie Sanders Finds It's OK to Talk Like an Old Lefty, which was so minor I didn't bother with updating the copy on Substack.) I wrote the section on Sanders' political program on Monday, while it was raining all day. I wrote the preceding "thumbnail history" today.

The extra day (or may be two, since I only did the cutover around 9 PM on Tuesday) let me push the rated count over 30. I was surprised to see the A-list grow to 10. Not a record, and not much more than last week's 8, but I figured I'd resist my temptation to downgrade the non-jazz releases I rarely spend much time with, especially as Haim, CMAT, and Sabrina Carpenter held up for 3-5 plays each. Still didn't get anything serious written about the latter, but it's not like I haven't been writing about anything.

I should also mention that I have a fair amount of Loose Tabs drafted. Pretty good chance I'll post one of those before next Music Week. It's pretty ugly so far, but I also opened up a book file for the latest political concept. Mostly just gross outline cribbed from a letter which goes back to June 1. As my plan going way back before that has always been to spend a month writing off the top of my head, the fact that I've already procrastinated more than three months bodes ill, but it's a step. A big chunk of tomorrow's post fits in with the thinking.

So it's not like I'm getting nothing done, but the pace remains extremely slow. I did manage to finally get Laura's new computer up and running. Only thing left is to configure the mailer. I had a long-running problem with a light upstairs, which I finally got working (at least with the original halogen bulb; the replacement dimmable LED bulbs come on but never dim, and worse still never turn off -- wonder what could explain that?). I have some padding ready to put up in the carport, to keep from banging the new car doors on the brick. I started to put it up on Sunday, but ran out of light; they it rained, then I wrote, and tomorrow I have a gruesome dentist thing, but it shouldn't take long once I get it started. I got far enough on the woodpile project to take some pictures. Then I noticed that the first round of pictures on it were dated June 19.

I spent some time today shopping for hooks to hang moulding on. I don't urgently need to add it, but I have lots of pieces in the basement. Next step will be to build the recycling kiosk. The idea there is to cobble it together using up some of the most useless pieces of scrap wood. It will sit in the foyer, and collect stuff to give away. I'm looking forward to doing some decluttering after that. Also need to do some plumbing: upstairs sink is probably something I can do, but I'll need some help for the basement floor drain.

That should be enough for the week -- especially Loose Tabs can chew up endless time. Also need to do some work getting Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll set up. We don't need to send invites out until November, but I don't want to put things off to the last minute, per usual. I'm slowly working my way through John Cassidy's Capitalism and Its Critics, and finding it very useful. I've ordered a bunch more books in the last week, with no idea when/how I'll get to them. The way things are going, it's doubtful I will.

New records reviewed this week:

Baths: Gut (2025, Basement's Basement): American electropop producer Will Wiesenfeld, fourth studio album since 2010 (also has two "B-Sides" compilations), has scattered moments but doesn't sustain them. B [sp]

Marilina Bertoldi: Para Quien Trabajas Vol. 1 (2025, Sony Music Argentina): Argentinian singer-songwriter, considered rock, has a couple previous albums, sort of a new wave sound, in Spanish, impressive until it slips a bit toward the end (10 songs, 29:27). B+(**) [sp]

The Beths: Straight Line Was a Lie (2025, Anti-): Indie rock band from New Zealand, singer-songwriter Elizabeth Stokes the singer-songwriter, Jonathan Pearce is lead guitarist/producer, fourth studio album since 2018. B+(***) [sp]

Sabrina Carpenter: Man's Best Friend (2025, Island): Pop singer-songwriter, started with Disney as a teen, so this is counted as her 7th album, but just 3rd in my book. This follows up on her breakthrough hit. A- [sp]

Chicago Jazz Orchestra: More Amor: A Tribute to Wes Montgomery (2024 [2025], Chicago Jazz Orchestra): Trombonist Jeff Lindberg is artistic director, with several group albums starting with a Porgy & Bess in 2004. Bobby Broom is featured here on guitar, playing both Montgomery's classics and the chintzier fare of his later years, with no shortage of strings. B+(*) [sp]

Chicago Underground Duo: Hyperglyph (2024 [2025], International Anthem): Rob Mazurek (trumpets, electronics, voice, flutes, bells) and Chad Taylor (percussion, including mbira and kalimba). B+(***) [sp]

CMAT: Euro-Country (2025, CMATBaby/AWAL): Irish singer-songwriter Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, third album, all effusively admired, and not without reason, although the big production can be as much work to listen to as they were to concoct. "Ready" is way over the top, enough so that the more modest fare comes as a relief. I'm not very good at parsing her texts, but accept on faith that she's very smart, means well, and is having a remarkably good time with her newfound fame. A- [sp]

George Coleman: George Coleman With Strings (2022 [2025], Savant): Tenor saxophonist, now 90, perhaps best known for his brief term in the Miles Davis Quintet, but he's recorded some outstanding albums on his own: My Horns of Plenty (1991) is a favorite, Eastern Rebellion (1975) is another classic, and A Master Speaks (2016) kicked off one of history's finest octogenarian revivals. Seems like everyone wants to do a strings album sooner or later, even though very few have panned out. Stan Getz, in Focus, is perhaps the only one where the strings are as interesting as the sax; Art Pepper's Winter Moon is one where the strings are as gorgeous as one might hope for, and the sax even more splendid. But early efforts, like Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, and Ben Webster, were nothing more than signature saxophone over mediocre backdrops, and that's been par for the course. Bill Dobbins handles the strings here, and gives them a tolerable air of 1940s soundtrack melodrama. Also helping is a fine mainstream rhythm section: David Hazeltine (piano), John Webber (bass), Joe Farnsworth (drums), and Café Da Silva (percussion). A- [sp]

Hannah Delynn: Trust Fall (2025, self-released): Nashville-based folkie singer-songwriter, first album after a couple of EPs, very slow, rather an accident that I gave this sufficient play to warm to some of its details. B+(**) [cd] [09-09]

Dijon: Baby (2025, R&R/Warner): R&B singer-songwriter Dijon Duenas, American but born in Germany to a military family stationed there. Second album, got some rave reviews but I have trouble getting past the glitchiness. B+(*) [sp]

Joe Ely: Love & Freedom (2025, Rack 'Em): Legendary Lubbock singer-songwriter, started in the Flatlanders, his 1978 Honky Tonk Masquerade is an all-time favorite, and he's had lots of good ones since then, most recently 2024's Driven to Drive -- but that one was reconstructed from older demos. This was also based on home studio demos, but no info on how old they are. (One song talks about being 30 but feeling 45. Ely's 78 now.) Still sounds pretty good. B+(***) [sp]

Fieldwork: Thereupon (2024 [2025], Pi): Fourth album under this name, the first in 2002 with pianist Vijay Iyer and sax (Aaron Stewart) and drums (Elliot Humberto Kavee). The second substituted Steve Lehman on sax (2005), and the third brought in Tyshawn Sorey on drums (2008) -- a supergroup, even then, with Sorey contributing 6 songs to 3 for Iyer and 2 for Lehman. All three are superb, as is this new one, from the free rhythmic extravaganza to open to the soft landing to close. Song credits split 5-4-0, but "all tracks collectively developed." A- [cd]

Folk Bitch Trio: Now Would Be a Good Time (2025, Jagjaguwar): Indie folk-rock trio from Melbourne, Australia; first album, after singles going back to 2020. B [sp]

Ghostface Killah: Supreme Clientele 2 (2025, Mass Appeal): Wu-Tang rapper Dennis Coles, went solo in 1996, followed by Supreme Clientele in 2000. Regarded at the time as the most gangsta of the Clan, I wasn't a fan at the time, although later albums like Fishscale impressed me. B+(*) [sp]

GoGo Penguin: Necessary Fictions (2025, XXIM): English fusion band, 7th album since 2012, a piano-bass-drums trio but with synths and extra strings. B+(**) [sp]

Omer Govreen Quartet: All Things Equal (2024 [2025], J.M.I.): Israeli-born, Amsterdam-based bassist, has side-credits with Michael Moore and Ziv Taubenfeld, probably his first album as leader, original compositions, played with Aleksander Sever (vibes), Floris Kappeyne (piano), and Wouter Kühne (drums). B+(***) [sp]

Haim: I Quit (2025, Columbia): Three sisters, all sing, play guitar-bass-drums-plus, with producer Rostam Batmanglij (mostly keyboards but also guitar, mandolin, and sitar) co-credited on all songs. I was reluctant at first, but this is pretty catchy. A- [sp]

Ill Considered: Balm (2025, New Soil): London-based group, ten numbered albums plus a few more starting with their eponymous debut in 2017, specialize in free improv built on top of deep grooves, although this one short-changes the groove in favor of solemn ambience. Group is reduced to: Idris Rahman (tenor sax/bass clarinet/flute), Liran Donin (bass/taishogoto), and Emre Ramazanoglu (percussion). Unusual business plan calls for an LP run limited to 300, each with "a unique hand-painted cover by Vincent De Boer [where] each one forms part of a larger 300-piece canvas" (on Bandcamp for £50, limit 1 per customer). B+(**) [sp]

Ill Considered: Live at Eye Film Museum (2024, New Soil): A full live show in Amsterdam, in one 89:28 chunk (although there are obvious gaps between pieces). B+(**) [bc]

Ill Considered & Rob Lewis: Emergence (2024, New Soil): I've tried to follow this group fairly closely, but several recent albums escaped my attention. As best I can figure out, Lewis is a London-based cellist-composer who mostly does soundtrack work. Some of that comes through, only sometimes as overwrought drama. B+(**) [bc]

Ill Considered: UnEvensong (2024, New Soil): Fourth album in as many months, rushed out in early December as a Christmas album, but while titles like "Come All Ye Faithful" and "Frosty the Snowman" are familiar, they don't weigh heavy on the music, which soars (ah, there's a wee bit of "Auld Lang Syne"). B+(***) [sp]

Larry Keel/Jon Stickley: Larry Keel & Jon Stickley (2025, self-released, EP): Two flat-picking guitarist singer-songwriters, filed this under bluegrass, which seems to be where they've been working since 2004 or so. Five songs, 17:09. B [cd]

KRS-One: Temple of Hip Hop Global Awareness (2025, R.A.M.P. Ent Agency): Another old-timer, just turned 60, still able to summon up the anger and the sound ("boom bap back to the basics") of his prime, which like Public Enemy and Wu-Tang sounds especially great right now. Of course, he's even more self-conscious and ever more didactic than his peers, but that's always been his thing. A- [sp]

Laufey: A Matter of Time (2025, AWAL): Icelandic singer-songwriter, last name Jónsdóttir, mother a Chinese classical violinist, has studied in Scotland and at Berklee, lived in DC and Los Angeles, has a twin sister who's a violinist and has a degree in international relations. Third album since 2022, gets some attention from jazz critics, but also hits the pop charts. Whatever this is, it is pretty accomplished. B+(**) [sp]

Billy Lester Trio: High Standards (2017 [2025], Ultra Sound): Pianist, described by Howard Mandel in 1998 as "a late-bloomer on that reticent branch of the jazz tree, the school of Lennie Trisano." His Discogs credits start in 2002 (aside from a composition credit for a song Anthony Braxton recorded first in 1997 as part of his Tristano Project). Trio here with Marcello Testa (bass) and Nicola Stranieri (drums), same as his Italy 2016 album, playing standards plus a closing 9:29 "Free Improvisation." B+(**) [cd] [09-12]

Christian McBride Big Band: Without Further Ado, Vol. 1 (2025, Mack Avenue): Mainstream bassist, emerged as a band leader in the 1990s and has retained his standing as a poll winner. He's had many ventures, with this his fourth big band album. Key here is that he's lined up a long list of big name singers, starting least conventionally with Sting and Andy Summers. B+(**) [sp]

Ashley Monroe: Tennessee Lightning (2025, Mountainrose Sparrow): Pistol Annies singer-songwriter decided to go big on her 7th album (since 2009): 17 songs, 61 minutes. So far hardly anyone has noticed (80/1 at AOTY after nearly a month). I can't say as I noticed much either, at least until the closing "Jesus Hold My Hand." B+(*) [sp]

Ned Rothenberg: Looms & Legends (2024-25 [2025], Pyroclastic): Alto sax/clarinet player, tends to work the gentler side of free jazz, and has since 1981. Solo here, includes some shakuhachi, a very attractive album, one that doesn't sound like practice, as most solo reeds albums do. Holds up to multiple replays. A- [cd]

Superchunk: Songs in the Key of Yikes (2025, Merge): Indie rock band from North Carolina, 13th studio album since 1990 (with a 2001-10 gap), Mac McCaughan the singer-songwriter. Got a reputation for political songs recently, but I'm mostly just hearing soaring guitars. B+(**) [sp]

Sunny Sweeney: Rhinestone Requiem (2025, Aunt Daddy): Country singer-songwriter, sixth studio album since 2006. Terrific sound, songs include anthems, as timeless as the clichés they're built on. A- [sp]

Teyana Taylor: Escape Room (2025, Taylormade/Def Jam): R&B singer-songwriter, fourth album since 2014, two gold records so far, also has a fairly substantial acting career. Talks through a lot of this. B [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Larry Stabbins/Keith Tippett/Louis Moholo-Moholo: Live in Foggia (1985 [2025], Ogun): British saxophonist, b. 1949, not a lot under his own name but side credits start up in 1971, joining the pianist in 1978, and the drummer by 1982, while also working in groups led by Chris McGregor, John Stevens, Tony Oxley, and Barry Guy. This same trio recorded Tern in 1982. Two long pieces here (45:34 and 27:11). In fast company here, he rises to the occasion. A- [sp]

Old music:

Hannah Delynn: The Naked Room Demos (2021, self-released, EP): "Stripped down and straight forward," 5 songs, 18:57. B [bc]

Hannah Delynn: Making Friends (2023, self-released, EP): Five well-crafted, nicely produced songs, 16:58. Leans toward pop, but doesn't deliver much. B [bc]

Evan Parker/Ned Rothenberg: The Monkey Puzzle (1997, Leo): Duo, another one followed in 2007, former plays soprano and tenor sax, latter bass clarinet and alto sax. Parker has a lot of this sort of thing, both solo and duo. Rothenberg adds a nice balance. B+(***) [bc]

Ned Rothenberg Double Band: Overlays (1991, Moers): Two alto saxophonists (with Thomas Chapin), two electric bassists (Jerome Harris, also on guitar, and Kermit Driscoll), two drummers (Adam Rudolph, credited percussion, and Billy Martin). The basses set up a funk current that the saxes tease at and play with like Ornette Coleman. A- [bc]

Ned Rothenberg: The Crux: Selected Solo Wind Works (1989-1992) (1989-92 [1993], Leo): Seven pieces (54:45), on alto sax (4), bass clarinet (2), and shakuhachi (1). He fills his space with wonder and fascination. B+(***) [bc]

Ned Rothenberg Double Band: Parting (1996 [2004], Moers Music): The last of three Double Band albums, released after second saxophonist Thomas Chapin's death, with Jerome Harris back on electric guitar and bass, Tony Scherr on electric and acoustic bass, and drummers Michael Sarin and Samm Bennett. Wile some of this is impressive, it can also be overwrought. B+(*) [sp]

Ned Rothenberg: Ghost Stories (1999-2000 [2000], Tzadik): Four tracks recorded in three sessions, a 6:30 shakuhachi solo, and three longer: duos with Riley Lee (shakuhachi) and Satoshi Takeishi (percussion), and the 19:41 title piece with cello (Erik Friedlander), pipa (Min Xiao-Fen), and percussion (Takeishi again). B+(*) [sp]

Ned Rothenberg Sync: Harbinger (2001-03 [2004], Animul): Plays clarinet, bass clarinet, alto sax, and shakuhachi, backed by Jerome Harris (acoustic bass, string guitar, acoustic bass guitar) and Samir Chatterjee (tabla). This is very nice. B+(***) [bc]

Ned Rothenberg/Satoh Masahiko: Decisive Action (2003-04 [2004], BAJ): Duo with piano, two sessions, Rothenberg playing clarinet, bass clarinet, alto/soprano sax, shakuhachi. B+(**) [bc]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Mike Clark: Itai Doshin (Wide Hive) [10-03]
• Orhan Demir/Neil Swainson: Wicked Demon (Hittite) [07-14]
• Wadada Leo Smith/Sylvie Courvoisier: Angel Falls (Intakt) [10-03]
• Mark Turner: Reflections On: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Giant Step Arts) [10-10]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, September 1, 2025

September archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 44780 [44745] rated (+35), 22 [24] unrated (-2).

August is done and dusted. Having learned as a child that summer is the school break from June through August (or Memorial Day through Labor Day), I'd say summer is done too. Were I to look back at my notebooks and planning documents from May, I'm sure I'd be deeply depressed at how little I have to show for this summer -- especially as I recall looking forward to post-operation eyesight, some fairly ambitious home projects, a new car which could make travel possible again, and a newly restructured view of my writing projects. Truth is, I've made some progress on all of those fronts, but they're all unsettled, while time is marching on, or maybe even running out.

I've offered lists of things to do the last couple weeks. Little point in repeating them here. Perhaps I'll have more to show next week. I will note that while I predicted the rated count would fall this week, it's held up pretty well (35 albums), but more notable is the quantity and quality of the A-list albums (8, with 2 at full A grades), and mostly surprises (only 2-3 I had expectations for: Zenón is always good; Cat & the Hounds was Joe Bebco's mid-year top pick and right up my alley; I expected Hooker to be good, but more like 2024's high-B+ The Charcot Sessions). Two albums came from Saving Country Music's mid-year list, two more from Hip-Hop Golden Age's evolving list, and several HM from both sources. I had seen a fair amount of hype for the Jaleel Shaw album, but was in no rush to seek it out, until a copy showed up in the mail (along with the Hancock album I had requested, and the nearly as good Rubalcaba). One thing is that many of the reviews offer very little beyond a slugline and a grade.

Nothing more on Jazz Critics Poll to report. I'm still planning on running it this year, but it's unlikely I'm going to find time to do much more than that. I also made no progress on writing my next Notes on Everyday Life post, after outlining it last week. I did think about a new intro, on why the donor class is willing to indulge Trump's revolutionary fantasies but is terrified of Sanders and other democratic leftists. My guess is that once I start, the piece will come together quickly. But getting to it is a problem. I'm also thinking about using Substack's Notes outlet, less to promote my longer pieces than because much of what I'm thinking about can be written up in a single paragraph, although fitting the character count limits in X and Bluesky can be a pain.

Beyond that, I'm thinking about doing a couple of actual "everyday life" posts: one on the computer I've been building -- which is ready for its smoke test, although I'd still like to tidy up some of the strangling wires (which are too many and often too long); another is a post on the recycling kiosk, which I expect to cobble together as soon as the woodpile project is completed (again, just some tidying up to do before working on the kiosk). Both have been humbling experiences, although I'm sure they'll be remembered more kindly once they're working. Meanwhile, I'm taking the Cassidy book at a leisurely pace, just finishing the chapter on John Hobson's critique of imperialism, which still hasn't sunk in very deep in Washington.

I do have a few Loose Tabs, but they're very hit-and-miss, the longest section the one on Trump administration corruption. I recommended an article, In Trump's D.C., the swamp runneth over, on Bluesky. I got a question today, from Canada, which reads in part:

I know you're astonished with how many people actually voted for an obviously deranged loon, but do you think his voters will ever see through or even care about the grift he's carrying out. Will ordinary joes raise their voices, or will that result in blood in the streets?

With these military deployments, do you think there could be a backlash within the ranks to stop the madness? A little extreme, I know, but things are getting a lot out of hand.

I'm not a good person to be asking this to, partly because I see much more of what's going on than most people do, and partly because I tend to err on the side of optimism (which was much more fashionable when I was a child than it's since become). But since you asked, I think this comes down to a few key questions:

1. Is Trump going to be popular enough in 2026 (and 2028) for Republicans to win? I don't think he is now, and I don't think there is any chance that his acts are going to help him out. On the other hand, Democrats are also very unpopular right now, but as they are out of power, they're more likely to benefit from Trump's unpopularity than be hurt by their own. Republicans were very unpopular in 2008 and 2020, but for reasons that were largely forgotten about two years later. On the other hand, they do seem to benefit from a double standard.
2. If Trump sees not being able to win, and if his options to cheat are insufficient, will he try to derail the elections? I don't see how he could do this, but I don't doubt that he would try if he could. Short of this, he does have lots of options to influence the election, and these could (and probably will) get really ugly.
3. If the elections are held and Republicans lose, could he prevent the winners from taking office? Aside from litigating a few close races, this would amount to staging a coup. While the military is likely to support many normally illegal Trump orders, this would be a very big ask.

The US is a pretty complex political system, with lots of independent power distributed among many institutions. Since inauguration, Trump has made an unprecedented attempt to grab more power than any previous president. And I think he's been more successful than anyone would have predicted, in large part because many institutions -- including big law firms, universities, newly anti-woke businesses, and much of the media -- have knuckled over without a fight. Businesses and financiers are still pretty confident they can buy what they need. And the Republican-packed courts have repeatedly bowed to their "unitary executive." So right now, we don't have a good sense of where everyone's red lines lie. The big player here is the media, which while nowhere near as formidable as in the past can still emerge as as a public conscience to save democracy. Democrats had little success in 2024 painting Trump as a threat to democracy, because most people, led by most of the media, didn't buy the menace. Canceling elections, stealing them, and/or staging a coup could tip the balance, and turn resistance from a seemingly irrational obsession of "premature antifascists" to something mainstream patriots can get behind.

On the other hand, note that even if Democrats win big in 2026, Trump will still be president for two more years, and can still do a lot more damage -- especially if the Supreme Court effectively blesses his dictatorial impulses. And it's going to take decades and/or unprecedented radical democratic majorities to undo the consequences of a monumentally foolish electorate in 2024. As for the Democrats, that's another can of worms.

When we bought the car, I considered the possibility of driving to Arkansas for the annual Brown Family Reunion. I did see a post today from a distant relative I could have met there, referring back to his "8th great-grandfather, Jeremiah Brown Sr. (1687-1767)," and providing a link to Jeremiah Brown House and Mill Site," a National Register Historic Place in Maryland originally built in 1757 by Brown. I've never seriously looked into my genealogy, but figure it might be an interesting sideline to the memoir project. I do know a bit about my ancestors back to the Civil War, after which Abraham Hull moved from Pennsylvania to western Kansas, and Matthew Brown moved from Ohio to northern Arkansas. I know that Abraham had a grandfather who immigrated in 1798, a refugee from the failed revolution in Ireland. So it looks like the Browns go back even further, but still count as refugees. Good chance John Brown is another distant relative (or so I've been told). None of this has any obvious bearing on how I turned out.

New records reviewed this week:

Gino Amato: Latin Crossroads 2 (2025, Ovation): Pianist, sequel to his 2024 album, arranged a set of standards for latin big band and singers, like "Moonlight in Vermont" and "I Love Paris" and "Windmills of Your Mind" and "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard." B+(*) [cd]

Oren Ambarchi & Eric Thielemans: Kind Regards (2023 [2025], AD 93): Australian guitarist, lots of records since 1998, duo here with a Belgian drummer, ducking and weaving through two sides, 47:12. B+(**) [sp]

Oren Ambarchi/Johan Berthling/Andreas Werlin: Ghosted III (2024 [2025], Drag City): Guitar/bass/drums trio, the latter two Swedish, third album together. B+(***) [sp]

Apollo Brown & Bronze Nazareth: Funeral for a Dream (2025, Escapism): Detroit hip-hop producer Erik Stephens, many albums since 2009, with rapper Justin Cross, less famous but has a lot of credits since 2002. A- [sp]

Rodney Crowell: Airline Highway (2025, New West): Quality country singer-songwriter since 1978, another fine batch of songs. B+(***) [sp]

Jesse Daniel: Son of the San Lorenzo (2025, Lightning Rod): Country singer-songwriter, fifth (or 6th?) album since 2018. B+(**) [sp]

Matt Daniel: The Poet (2025, self-released): Country singer-songwriter from Texas, seems to have a previous album. Don't know from poet, but he's a pretty classic-sounding songster. B+(***) [sp]

Joe Ely: Love & Freedom (2025, Rack 'Em): Legendary Lubbock singer-songwriter, started in the Flatlanders, his 1978 Honky Tonk Masquerade is an all-time favorite, and he's had lots of good ones since then, most recently 2024's Driven to Drive -- but that one was reconstructed from older demos. This was also based on home studio demos, but no info on how old they are. (One song talks about being 30 but feeling 45. Ely's 78 now.) Still sounds pretty good. B+(***) [sp]

Colin Hancock's Jazz Hounds Featuring Catherine Russell: Cat & the Hounds (2024 [2025], Turtle Bay): "A 1920s Jazz and Blues Centennial," arranged and produced by Hancock, who plays cornet and C-melody sax. Seems to be his first album, but he scored a coup in getting the singer. Only band member I recognize is Evan Christopher (clarinet/alto sax), but Vince Giordano (bass sax) guests. Terrific songs from the real jazz era. A- [cd]

The Hives: The Hives Forever Forever the Hives (2025, PIAS): Swedish post-punk group, five albums 1997-2012, a hiatus from the departure of their bassist ("Dr. Matt Destruction") and ended in 2023 with The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons (an alias credited with their songwriting). Title song suggests they've found the secret to endurance, which is keeping it simple, but also fast and loud. B+(***) [sp]

Cody Jinks: In My Blood (2025, Late August): Country singer-songwriter, from Texas, styled outlaw, started in a thrash metal band, 11th album since 2006, has got the voice and knows a few licks. B+(*) [sp]

Olivia Ellen Lloyd: Do It Myself (2025, self-released): Country singer-songwriter, originally from West Virginia, now based in Brooklyn, has a previous album from 2021 (Loose Cannon). B+(***) [sp]

Tony Logue: Dark Horse (2025, Jenny Ridge Productions): Country singer-songwriter, has a couple previous albums. Hard worker, Lynyrd Skynyrd fan. "The road I'm on is dark and dirty/ It's that crazy that keeps me sane." B+(***) [sp]

Roberto Magris: Lovely Day(s) (2024 [2025], JMood): Italian pianist, couple dozen albums since 1990. This one is solo, starts with an original, then hits the usual bases (doubling up on Monk and Andrew Hill), in fine fashion. B+(***) [cd]

Juliet McConkey: Southern Front (2025, Soggy Anvil): Country singer-songwriter, out of Austin, second album. B+(*) [sp]

Brad Mehldau: Ride Into the Sun (2025, Nonesuch): Pianist, got his start on Fresh Sound in 1993 before landing on a major label in 1995 and soon moving through his remarkable The Art of the Trio series. Since then he's diversified, with everything from Bach to Beatles and solos to big bands. This is about half orchestra, with some vocals and flutes and such, most playing Elliot Smith songs. Some nice piano spots, but not much else I find interesting. B [sp]

Nerves Baddington: Driving Off Cliffs (2025, Apt. B Productions): Birmingham, AL duo, Inkline the rapper and Kilgore Doubt the producer, have a couple previous albums I've liked. B+(**) [sp]

Cam Pierce: A Thousand Lonely Horses (2025, self-released): Country singer-songwriter from Oregon, based in Nashville, leans toward the western end of c&w, seems to have a couple previous albums but I'm finding almost nothing on the internet: just one SCM review, and a streaming widget. Songs are solid-plus, voice good, pace assured. A- [os]

Ken Pomeroy: Cruel Joke (2025, Rounder): Country singer-songwriter, a Cherokee from Oklahoma, third album. B+(***) [sp]

Queen Herawin: Awaken the Sleeping Giant (2025, Matic): New York rapper, sophomore album. Dense and powerful. Done prematurely at 32:22, but no regrets. A- [sp]

Ravita Jazz: Alice Blue (2025, Ravita Music): Bassist Phil Ravita, from Baltimore, has a previous album co-led by Skip Grasso, wrote most of the originals, plus a couple from pianist Greg Small, while covering "I Can't Stand the Rain" and a medley of Led Zeppelin and "Sunny Side of the Street." Features saxophonist Paul Carr. B [cd]

Steve Rosenbloom Big Band: San Francisco 1948 (2024 [2025], Glory): Alto saxophonist, has a side-credit from 1983 and a quintet album from 1997, but not a lot more, as his main gig seems to have been in psychiatry. Original pieces, conventional big band. It's possible my CD is defective, as it sounds awfully murky, but crystal clarity wouldn't help much either. [PS: If it was meant to sound like this, drop the grade to D.] C [cd]

Gonzalo Rubalcaba/Chris Potter/Eric Harland/Larry Grenadier: First Meeting: Live at Dizzy's Club (2022 [2025], 5Passion, 2CD): Cover just lists their first names, which is sufficiently unique for the pianist, probably first guess for the saxophonist, and probably surmisable for the others (at least if you assume drums and bass). This is about as good as you'd expect: Potter steals the show, as he often does, and hearing him expound at length is always a pleasure, as is the pianist when he inserts one of his distinctive solos. B+(***) [cd]

Jaleel Shaw: Painter of the Invisible (2022 [2025], Changu): Alto saxophonist, originally from Philadelphia, half-dozen albums since 2005, Discogs lists 57 performance credits, has some range and isn't real consistent but finds a nice post-Coltrane vibe here and expands on it at length (11 tracks, 71:13). Mostly quartet with Lawrence Fields (fender rhodes), Ben Street (bass), and Joe Dyson (drums), with spots for Lage Lund (guitar) and Sasha Berliner (vibes), one track on piano. A- [cd]

Sam Stoane: Tales of the Dark West (2025, Cloverdale): Cowgirl from rural California, first album, originals plus covers of Gene Autry ("Back in the Saddle Again") and Rodney Crowell ("Even Cowgirls Get the Blues"). A- [sp]

Turnpike Troubadours: The Price of Admission (2025, Bossier City): Honky tonk band from Oklahoma, 7th album since 2007, a favorite of Saving Country Music, I've never been much impressed. B+(*) [sp]

Molly Tuttle: So Long Little Miss Sunshine (2025, Nonesuch): Singer-songwriter, fifth album since 2019, last two topped the bluegrass charts, but Saving Country Music reviewed but refused to grade this "sad development that the Millennial Queen of Bluegrass has gone pop" and adds that producer Jay Joyce "deserves to get chlamydia from the Tyler Childers koala." I'd have to look that one up, but offhand seems dumb and mean. I had to look Joyce up too: produced albums since 1998, mostly starting with Nashville artists like Eric Church and Patty Griffin (and more recently Ashley McBryde and Lainey Wilson) and making them slightly more pop, although it doesn't seem like he's made anyone into something alien (at least not Brandy Clark or Miranda Lambert). Here she wrote the songs here (most with fiddler Ketch Secor; two more leaned on Kevin Griffin; then there's the Charli XCX cover). They're fine (a couple better than that). B+(**) [sp]

Vega7 the Ronin/Machacha: The Ghost Orchid (2025, Copenhagen Crates): Rapper from Queens, eighth album since 2022, with Danish producer Mattæus Overgaard Jensen, prolific since 2016, second album together. B+(***) [sp]

Hayley Williams: Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party (2025, Post Atlantic): Singer-songwriter, started 2005 fronting the group Paramore (6 albums through 2023; she's the only continuous member) before releasing a solo album in 2020, this her third. So well hooked only indifference holds me back. B+(**) [sp]

Miguel Zenón Quartet: Vanguardia Subterranea: Live at the Village Vanguard (2024 [2025], Miel Music): Alto saxophonist, from Puerto Rico, long-running quartet with Luis Perdomo (piano), Hans Glawischnig (bass), and Henry Cole (drums), celebrates their 20th anniversary with their first-ever live album, drawn from a six-day stand. They've been producing superb studio albums all along, taking Latin idioms and distilling them (and Coleman and Coltrane) into conventional quartet form all along, so it's no surprise that this is also superb. Some day I expect the whole series to get boxed up, as with Art Pepper. A [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

John Lee Hooker: The Standard School Broadcast Recordings (1973 [2025], BMG): Major bluesman, born (1912?) to sharecroppers in Mississippi, left home for Memphis, wound up in Detroit in the 1940s, recording his first hits in 1948-49, and plying his trade up to his death in 2001, recording duets and guest spots with anyone who would have him, which by then was pretty much everyone (cf. The Best of Friends). While fans came and went, he managed to sound ancient and primeval in the 1950s, and even more so in the 1990s. This is a previously unreleased studio session, recorded in San Francisco, with piano-bass-drums backup (notable is his 20-year-old son, Robert Hooker, on piano), playing long, relaxed versions of 8 songs (58:17), some reworked classics and some jams. It was commissioned for "a groundbreaking educational program sponsored by Standard Oil (later Exxon)," only three of which were broadcast. Less intense, but as satisfying as anything he ever recorded. A [sp]

Steve Tintweiss and the Purple Why: Live in Tompkins Square Park 1967 (1967 [2025], Inky Dot Media): Cover also notes: "NYC Free Jazz," and lists names across the top banner: Jacques Coursil (trumpet), Perry Robinson (clarinet), Joel Peskin (tenor sax/bass clarinet), Randy Kaye (drums./piano), Laurence Cook (drums), Steve Tintweiss (bass/vocals/percussion/composer/leader), James DuBoise (guest trumpet). Tintweiss played on some ESP-Disk and related albums (1966-70), and appeared on some Amy Sheffer albums in the 1980s, but had nothing under his own name until he started rifling through old tapes in 2019. Not extraordinary nor outrageous, but I take a little nostalgic joy in this primitive squelchiness. B+(**) [cd]

Zulu Guitar Blues: Cowboys, Troubadours and Jilted Lovers 1950-1965 (1950-65 [2025], Matsuli Music): Early, almost primeval roots of township jive. B+(**) [sp]

Old music:

Brad Mehldau: Après Fauré (2023 [2024], Nonesuch): Established himself in the late 1990s as a major jazz pianist, so I've followed him pretty regularly, balking only when he seemed to stray too far into classical and/or soundtrack music, so I skipped this (and several other albums; working backwards here as long as I can stand it). Solo piano exercise, with five pieces by Gabriel Fauré (four nocturnes and an excerpt from "Piano Quartet No. 2") along with "Fauré-like" originals. Nice enough. B [sp]

Brad Mehldau: After Bach II (2017-23 [2024], Nonesuch): Solo, picks up some scraps from the session that produced his 2018 After Bach, and adds some extra material, again mixing in a few originals modeled on. I don't hate much of it, but my patience is wearing thin. B- [sp]

Brad Mehldau/Ian Bostridge: The Folly of Desire (2022 [2023], Pentatone): Piano and voice duo, the former composing in his archest classical mode, the latter a British tenor with a long list of recordings (since 1995), and evidently some reputation among lieder aficionados. I expected to hate this, and often I do, but Bostridge does have a remarkable voice, and after he's slogged through the 11 title songs, he finally puts it to good use, with an exceptional version of "These Foolish Things." Four more songs, including two by Cole Porter (and one by Schubert) are less striking, but they could make a decent standards album. B- [sp]

Perico Sambeat: Ademuz (1995 [1998], Fresh Sound New Talent): Spanish alto saxophonist, also plays flute, albums since 1990, appeared on Brad Mehldau's New York-Barcelona Crossing albums, takes the lead here, with Mehldau (piano) and Mark Turner (tenor sax) prominent on the cover, along with trumpet (Michael Leonhart), guitar (Kurt Rosenwikel), bass, drums, percussion, and voice (Enrique Morente). B+(**) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

• Armen Donelian: Stargazer (Sunnyside) [10-03]
• Phil Haynes & Free Country: Liberty Now! (Corner Store Jazz) [10-17]
• Rubén Reinaldo: Fusión Olivica (Free Code Jazz) [06-04]
• Jovino Santos Neto Quartet: Mais Que Tudo: Live at Kerry Hall 1995 (Origin) [09-19]
• Craig Taborn/Nels Cline/Marcus Gilmore: Trio of Bloom (Pyroclastic) [09-26]
• Milan Verbist Trio: Time Change (Origin) [09-19]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Tuesday, August 26, 2025

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

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.

Monday, August 11, 2025

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

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

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

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.

Monday, July 14, 2025

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.

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

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Friday, July 11, 2025

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

• Tom Hull: Sharing What We Know at Mid-Year
• Jon Garelick: Listomania! Confessions of a Bad Voter
• New Jazz Albums
• Rara Avis
• The Voters

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:

• Avant Music News [07-12] The Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll Mid-Year 2025 Results
• Bebop Spoken Here [07-11] Press release: Francis Davis Jazz Critics Mid-Year 2025 Poll
• Jeffrey St. Clair [07-09] Francis Davis and the Best Jazz of 2025, So Far
• Phil Overeem [07-01] Death Don't Have No Mercy: My Mid-Year Francis Davis Memorial Jazz Critics Ballot
• Nate Chinen [07-14] Take Five: Midsummer Magic: Didn't vote, but gives us a mention.
• Also this by poll winner Steve Lehman on Instagram.

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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