Blog Entries [200 - 209]

Monday, January 9, 2023

Music Week

January archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 39353 [39330] rated (+23), 42 [39] unrated (+3: 14 new, 28 old).

In early November, Francis Davis decided that he couldn't afford the time needed to run a 17th annual edition of his Jazz Critics Poll. He asked me to take over, as I had done most of the grunt work last year, and had helped out for many years before that. I agreed, figuring I'd spent a lot of time this year tracking music, even aggregating ratings, plus I had been procrastinating on other projects, so why not finish out the year doing a good turn? I organized a mailing list, and sent ballots out around November 13, with a December 12 deadline. I wound up collecting and compiling 151 ballots: down a bit from 2021's 156, but still a good showing. I worked out a deal with Arts Fuse to publish the results, and started to prepare them for publication.

Then I got Covid. While I was never very sick, it created a lot of stress as we tried to keep my wife from getting infected. Also producing a lot of stress was the terminal spiral of our dog Sadie, nearly 15, inherited 8 years ago with Liz Fink died (and as such, sort of a sacred trust). I totally missed our original delivery date, and didn't make any serious progress until New Year's. I finally pulled most of it together on Wednesday, and sent the pieces in Thursday. They were published Friday afternoon, about the same time we had a vet visit to put the dog down.

The archive index page is: The 17th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll: 2022. This includes links for the articles published at Arts Fuse:

The two pieces by me were originally conceived of as four, but Bill Marx wanted to combine the tables with the essays. Francis's essay came in after I had handed all of my pieces in. He had seen all of my stuff by then.

The archive page also includes links for complete results (the Arts Fuse list stops at 50 new releases, and 20 reissues/historical), and for all of the individual voter ballots:

I suppose I'll have more to say about the Poll, its results, and the process behind it, but at this point the combination of exhaustion and frustration probably makes that unwise. As I point out in one (or both) of the essays, the most important point for the poll is the data it generates, so please dig into that. You're bound to learn some things.

My listening of late has been very skewed. One thing that has frustrated me immensely, and is wholly my own fault, is that my system for filing CDs has completely broken down, to where I can't find anything. I should have spent the last several weeks rechecking the year's highest rated albums, but have failed in that almost completely. I wound up streaming the top three finishers, leaving Mary Halvorson's Amaryllis and Cécile McLorin Salvant's Ghost Song at my original B+(***) -- although Salvant's Kurt Weil cover is pretty great -- but I did bump up the grade for Immanuel Wilkins's The 7th Hand considerably. Below that, I could neither stream nor find my copy of Tyshawn Sorey's Mesmerism, another B+(***) first time around. I only had two of the top ten finishers made my A-list, and only three of the next ten (ok, four more from 21-30, three from 31-40, and two from 41-50).

Still, I emerged from this experience with more respect than ever for my fellow voters. I suspect that Francis was a bit reluctant to hand his baby over, because he regarded me as some kind of fringe critic. I found myself caring very little about the standings, as long as the ballots showed considerable thought, which they did.

So, instead of catching up with new jazz (as I did a lot of in November and especially December), I played old records, especially a lot of Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, and Lester Young. Then last week, I pulled up a list of unheard Penguin Guide 4-star albums, and thought I'd knock off a few. Hence, the reviews below are almost all modern but not recent jazz. No idea why I first landed on an Italian clarinetist, but I worked back from him, then returned to the top of the list.

I should mention that despite being so out of it, I did manage a Speaking of Which news revue yesterday. I also added three books to the Recent Reading roll, after several weeks of neglect.

Matt Taibbi did some brilliant work early in his career -- like his designation of presidential campaign coverage as "the stupid season," and his Wimblehack rankings of America's worst political journalists (note that Karen Tumulty has defended her title numerous times, not that I'm sure she's still the worst). But his Twitter feed has become little short of obnoxious, so I was thinking of dropping him -- but I figured the book looked like it had a sound premise, so maybe I should give him that chance. It is, indeed, a pretty good book, even if a little too both-sidesy. And sure, he goes a bit off the deep end on Russiagate, but that's more in his conclusions than in the reporting. And although Rachel Maddow (who I find seriously annoying) splits the cover, in the book she's relegated to an appendix.

Lepore's The Name of War is more about how Prince Philip's War (1675-76) has been remembered than what actually happened, which borders on genocide. Kaplan's 1959 makes a case for that year as one of pivotal change in America. So far, it's pretty convincing. A big concern of my memoir is how much America has changed, especially in the first twenty years of my life (the 1950s and 1960s). By the way, Kaplan is a Jazz Critics Poll voter, and he has a very detailed chapter on Kind of Blue in the book.

New records reviewed this week:

75 Dollar Bill: Social Music at Troost Vol. 3: (Other) People's Music (2015-17 [2022], self-released): Guitar and drums duo, Che Chen and Rick Brown, debut 2014, have added others especially to the live albums they've been releasing on Bandcamp since the lockdown, including sax, vocals, and bass to some of these pieces, as well as "bar patrons, friends, neighbors." This is a set of covers, ranging from Harry Partch and Pauline Oliveros to Yoko Ono to Bob Dylan and Dolly Parton. Phil Overeem's record of the year. A- [dl]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Chet Baker Trio: Live in Paris: The Radio France Recordings 1983-1984 (1983-84 [2022], Elemental Music, 2CD): Collects two sets of radio shots, with Baker playing trumpet and singing, backed by piano (Michel Graillier) and bass (Dominique Lemerle or Riccardo Del Fra). B+(*) [sp]

Old music:

Arcana: The Last Wave (1995 [1996], DIW): Avant-fusion trio, recorded two albums, this first one with Derek Bailey (guitar), Bill Laswell (bass), and Tony Williams (drums), with Laswell producing. B+(***) [sp]

Derek Bailey: Drop Me Off at 96th (1986-87 [1994], Scatter): British avant-guitarist, revered by the Penguin Guide but barely sampled by me, solo from two live sessions. My favorite bit is one where Bailey talks about his record company catalog, as his scattered guitar licks take a back seat. B+(**) [bc]

Chet Baker: The Best Thing for You (1977 [1989], A&M): Don Sebesky produced this session, which doesn't look to have been released until shortly after Baker's death in 1988. The first side is standards, with Paul Desmond (alto sax), Kenny Barron (piano), Ron Carter (bass), and Tony Williams (drums). Second side is a 17:03 Sebesky piece with a bunch of extras. Both sides impress, even Sebesky's kitchen sink treatment. A- [sp]

Chet Baker Quartet Featuring Phil Markowitz: Live at Nick's (1978 [1989], Criss Cross): Trumpet and vocal (including some scat), from a live set in London, with Markowitz on piano, Scott Lee on bass, and Jeff Brillinger on drums. Reissue adds two pieces, expanding from 44:53 to 68:37. B+(***) [r]

Chet Baker Quintet Featuring Warne Marsh: Blues for a Reason (1984 [1985], Criss Cross): No vocals, just trumpet and tenor sax, backed with piano (Hod O'Brien), bass (Cecil McBee), and drums (Eddie Gladden). Marsh makes a huge difference here, cutting corners and slashing around curves, but Baker, too, gets the idea. A- [r]

Chet Baker Trio Featuring Philip Catherine: Chet's Choice (1985 [1989], Criss Cross): Trumpet/vocal with guitar and bass (mostly Jean-Louis Rassinfosse), the CD adding three tracks. Catherine provides a bit of groove, keeping it all running smoothly. A- [r]

Bernt Rosengren: Notes From Underground (1973 [1992], EMI Svenska): Swedish tenor saxophonist, also plays flute and piano, played early on with George Russell, Krzysztof Komeda, and Don Cherry. The occasional vocal tracks have a Middle Eastern sound, and Okay Temiz helps the the percussion (and Bengt Berger plays tabla). The horns can get intense. B+(***) [sp]

Bernt Rosengren: Stockholm Dues (1965 [1989], Columbia): The Swedish tenor saxophonist's first album, at least as a leader, reissued in a "Swedish Jazz Masters" series with three extra tracks. With trumpet (Lalle Svensson), piano, bass, and drums, plus vocals on a couple tracks. B+(**) [sp]

Jimmy Rowles and George Mraz: Music's the Only Thing That's on My Mind (1976 [1981], Progressive): Piano and bass duets, with Rowles singing three songs. B+(**) [sp]

Jimmy Rowles: Shade and Light [The Definitive Black & Blue Sessions] (1978 [2001], Black & Blue): Piano trio with George Duvivier (bass) and Oliver Jackson (drums), recorded in Paris. B+(***) [sp]

Terje Rypdal: Lux Aeterna (2000 [2002], ECM): Norwegian guitarist, early on was one of many Norwegians influenced by George Russell, recorded with ECM since 1971. This is a large-scale suite in five movements, featuring Bergen Chamber Ensemble conducted by Kjell Seim, with organ and many strings, way too thick, also a vocal section. Only Palle Mikkelborg's trumpet stands out. B- [sp]

Terje Rypdal: After the Rain (1976, ECM): Essentially a solo album, with the guitarist dubbing in keyboards, soprano sax, flute, and bells. Guitar tone cries and shimmers. B [sp]

Randy Sandke and the New York Allstars: The Rediscovered Louis and Bix (1999 [2000], Nagel Heyer): Trumpet player (also cornet here), not exclusively a trad jazz guy but is such a Beiderbecke fan that he named his son Bix, and Armstrong is hardly an afterthought. One side for each, drawing on obscure compositions. George Avakian produced ("presents"), and the Allstars are aptly named (as well as a nod to Armstrong: featured on the cover are Kenny Davern, Wycliffe Gordon, Dick Hyman, and Ken Peplowski, with many more in the fine print. A- [sp]

Louis Sclavis/Dominique Pifarély/Marc Ducret/Bruno Chevillon: Acoustic Quartet (1993 [1994], ECM): French clarinetist, many albums since 1981, Discogs co-credits with with the violinist, and indeed only their names are above the title, and Pifarély wrote three tracks to Sclavis' four, but the other names (on guitar and bass) are in the same oversized type as the leaders. B+(***) [sp]

Louis Sclavis Sextet: Les Violences de Rameau (1995-96 [1996], ECM): Play soprano sax as well as his usual clarinets, in a group with trombone (Yves Robert), violin (Dominique Pifarély), keyboards, bass, and drums. B+(**) [sp]

Louis Sclavis Sextet: Ellington on the Air (1991-92 [2016], Ouch!): An earlier Sextet album, originally issued on IDA, with the same group as above. This one is built around Ellington pieces (including Bubber Miley and Juan Tizol). B+(***) [sp]

Louis Sclavis Quintet: L'Affrontement Des Prétendants (2000 [2001], ECM): Clarinet and soprano sax, joined up front by Jean-Luc Cappozzo on trumpet, backed by cello (Vincent Curtois), bass (Bruno Chevillon), and drums (François Merville). B+(***) [sp]

Bud Shank: The Doctor Is In (1991 [1992], Candid): Alto saxophonist, originally from Ohio, studied in North Carolina, moved to California and played with Short Rogers, Charlie Barnet, and Stan Kenton. A cool jazz icon in the 1950s, recorded regularly but seems like he caught a second wind in the early 1990s. Quartet with Mike Wofford (piano), Bob Magnusson (bass), and Sherman Ferguson (drums). B+(***) [sp]

Tommy Smith: Spartacus (2000 [2001], Spartacus): Scottish tenor saxophonist, had a run of flashy records on Blue Note (1989-94) and Linn (1995-2000) before settling into his own label here. Quartet, featuring credit for pianist Kenny Barron, with James Genus (bass) and Clarence Penn (drums). Leans toward ballads. B+(**) [sp]

Gianluigi Trovesi: Around Small Fairy Tales (1998, Soul Note): Italian clarinet and alto saxophone player, albums since 1978, throw in the kitchen sink here, in the form of Orchestra Da Camera Di Nembro Enea Salmeggia, with oboe, harp, vibes, and at least a dozen string instruments. B+(**) [sp]

Gianluigi Trovesi/Gianni Coscia: In Cerca Di Cibo (1999 [2000], ECM): Clarinet (piccolo/alto/bass) and accordion duets. B+(**) [sp]

Gianluigi Trovesi: Dedalo (2001 [2002], Enja): Leads off with alto sax here, later switching to his clarinets, backed by the WDR Big Band, in an exceptionally festive mood. Also named on the cover: Markus Stockhausen (trumpet), Fulvio Maras (percussion, and Tom Rainey (drums). The opener "Hercab" is funky enough they reprise it live at the end. A- [sp]

Gianluigi Trovesi Ottetto: Fugace (2002 [2003], ECM): The leader, composer of all but two fragments (from trad. and W.C. Handy), plays alto sax and clarinet, the octet rounded out with trumpet, trombone, cello, two bassists, drums, and percussion (Fluvio Maras), with several of those also credited with electronics. B+(***) [sp]

Grade (or other) changes:

Immanuel Wilkins: The 7th Hand (2022, Blue Note): Alto saxophonist, major debut in 2020, second album, quartet with Micah Thomas (piano), Daryl Johns (bass), and Kweku Sumbry (drums), plus guest spots. Even more ambitious: "hour-long suite comprised of seven movements that strive to bring the quartet closer to complete vesselhood." Impressive chops, but also structure and flow. Once again I underrated him. [was: B+(*)] A- [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • John Bailey: Time Bandits (Freedom Road) [01-23]
  • Falkner Evans: Through the Lines (CAP) [01-20]
  • Mimi Fox Organ Trio: One for Wes (Origin) [01-20]
  • Metropolitan Jazz Octet: The Bowie Project (Origin) [01-20]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, January 8, 2023

Speaking of Which

After hustling to get the 17th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll posted on Friday, including my essay at Arts Fuse, I was pretty uncertain as to what to do next. Making matters worse was that same day the dog we inherited from the late Elizabeth Fink breathed her last. I was, at the time, figuring it'd be at least a week before I'd bother with a Music Week, much less a Speaking of Which, column. But lacking any other inspiration, I sat down and started collecting this. I had very little news exposure over the last month, first coming down with a fairly mild but disconcerting case of Covid, then finding our internet connection increasingly flaky. The latter was finally cured by a new cable modem, so as I started collecting this, I was pleased to find the system as solid and even faster than ever.

Of course, even without my usual news sources, I was aware of the comedy/horror show in the US House, mostly through the late night shows, which emphasized the comedy side. Still, I didn't see any lasting value in citing articles while the votes were going on. Now, of course, we can not only look back on the debacle, we can look forward to the dysfunctional future.

Eric Alterman: [01-06] George Santos a Liar? Small-Time When Compared to His Fellow Republicans.

Bernard Avishai: [01-07] Netanyahu's government takes a turn toward theocracy. Religious parties have often been part of ruling coalitions, but they've never been so prominent before, or as demanding. One obvious flashpoint is Itamar Ben Gvir, who's often run afoul of Israeli law, yet now is in charge of (selectively) enforcing it. More on Israel:

Jonathan Chait: [01-04] 'Reactionary Centrism,' the Left's Hot New Insult for Liberals: "New jargon just dropped." I'm not much for jargon, let alone insults, but the definition offered here is a recognizable type: "someone who says they're politically neutral, but who usually punches left while sympathizing with the right." The first clause is pretty exactly how self-proclaimed centrists describe themselves. But centrism seems to extend to people who are not politically neutral -- who align with a major political party, which since the GOP purge mostly means Democrats these days -- but who recognize and try to balance multiple interests. If such people are honest, they should be arguing equally with both sides in favor of the other. In practice, though, a lot of them seem to relish fighting with the left, while letting all but the extreme right-wingers off the hook.

Hence there is a need to qualify centrist with some adjective other than fair or honest: reactionary might do the trick, but one should beware that it has two meanings. The root meaning is someone who reacts adversely (perhaps even violently) to change. That may apply to many centrists, especially those who worry that any change or challenge might rock the boat, leading to an even more vicious right-wing backlash. The other meaning, which is why the word is problematic, refers to that backlash itself.

Reactionaries are generally distinguished from conservatives because where the latter merely want to preserve their system and privileges, reactionaries want to radically change the system to restore their own expected privileges. On the left, we often refer to reactionaries as fascists, since that's the more vivid example. Chait is concerned, because he feels vulnerable as a centrist (albeit a Democratic one). I'd be inclined to cut him some slack, but the whole article seems like an excuse to kick the left for impolitic terminology, rather slight grounds that kind of make the point he's arguing against.

It seems to me that we would be better off trying to figure out real, viable solutions to problems, than simply mapping out who is left or right of whom. Not every left solution is ideal, but there are many to choose from, which isn't something you can say about a right that has drifted so far into its fantasies that centrists need to wake up and recognize that they're actually well left of center, and need to treat their comrades with more respect.

Neel Dhanesha: [01-06] California's deadly floods won't break the megadrought: "Atmospheric rivers are dumping rain on California. That's not a good thing." I'm pretty sure that the first time I ever heard "atmospheric river" was in Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, which was "science fiction" two years ago. For more:

Connor Echols: [01-06] Diplomacy Watch: Russia takes aim at Western resolve: Aside from Russia announcing a 3-day ceasefire around the Orthodox Christmas -- a ploy that Ukraines were quick to dismiss -- very little to report here, devolving into the propaganda trope about "Western resolve." Little reason to fear there: American foreign policy seems largely under the thumb of the weapons cartel, who are having the time of their lives, feeding a voracious war without American casualties. While Ukraine still has dreams of regaining ground, Russia's war has largely become one of attrition, which despite inflicting real damage only intensifies Ukrainian resolve. (The German Battle of Britain is an example, although the hardship here may well be a bit worse.) More:

  • Connor Echols: [01-05] How Western tanks could change Ukraine's war effort. Recent arms promises to Ukraine have shifted toward tanks, both from France and the US. The thinking, at least on paper, is that tanks could lead a breakthrough in regaining occupied land. But a big tank advantage didn't help Russia much early in the war, and tanks have rarely been effective without sufficient air coverage, which Ukraine still lacks, so this may mostly be for show.

  • Jen Kirby: [06-06] Putin's so-called Christmas ceasefire, explained, or rationalized away, since Ukraine is unhappy to play along.

  • Paul Krugman: [01-06] What Ukraine Teaches Us About Power: I'm not sure I agree with his argument that there were no decisive battles in WWII -- what about Stalingrad? El Alamein? Midway? -- but he is quite right that in the end, it was economic power that prevailed. The key chart here is the one that compares GDP: while Russia towers over Ukraine, the Russian economy is but spare change compared to Europe and the US, which is what allows NATO to fund Ukraine without breaking a sweat.

  • Anatol Lieven: [01-06] Where the war in Ukraine could be headed in 2023.

  • Condoleezza Rice/Robert M Gates: [01-07] Time is not on Ukraine's side: Talk about people I have no interest in weighing in on anything! Title suggests a note of caution, that it would be good to negotiate sooner rather than later, but they're really urging escalation now to counter Putin: e.g., "For Putin, defeat is not an option. . . . Count on Putin to be patient to achieve his destiny." Perhaps they worry because they understand that Americans aren't very patient people. After all, they spent much of their public disservice prolonging wars most people had realized had gone sideways. What's missing is even the rudiments of a theory suggesting that their push for more weapons will do any good. Rather, they cite 1914, 1941, and 2001 as lessons that "unprovoked aggression and attacks on the rule of law and the international order cannot be ignored." And finally they resort to quoting Zelensky channeling Churchill: "Give us the tools, and we will finish the job." Surely they know that Churchill needed a lot more than tools (Lend-Lease) to defeat Nazi Germany. You'd also expect them to know that taking direct aim at a country with the "strategic depth" and nuclear arms of Russia is a fool's errand. But these two didn't get to the pinnacle of the US war machine by virtue of their grasp of reality (or history).

    And just to nitpick, why 1914 but not 1939, or 1941 but not 1917? And why 2001 instead of 2003? The latter was the war they wanted in 2001, but had to postpone until they could snow us. And while Iraq fits their "unprovoked aggression" line to a tee, note that no other nation raised the alarm and came to Iraq's defense, and the aggressors failed anyway.

  • Ishaan Tharoor: [12-14] Ukraine's resilience sets a global standard. Not that I'm unimpressed, but I thought the global standard was set by Vietnam from before 1954 to 1975. I can give you other examples, including Finland and Afghanistan against Russia (as well as Afghanistan against the UK and the US). I'd also like to note that Ukraine's resistance against invasion was most impressive in the early days, before the US offered any significant weaponry, back when the US wanted to offer Zelensky "a ride," so he could become a propaganda tool, like Juan Guaidó.

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos: [01-06] What foreign policy elites really think about you: "If public opinion doesn't match up with the Washington program then it must be wrong, misunderstood, or worse, irrelevant." US foreign policy has always been tightly controlled by special interests, and usually ignored by parties struggling over the domestic economy. That didn't change with WWII, but before it was mostly trading companies, with resource (especially oil) companies gaining ground after 1900. What did change with WWII was the creation of the military-industrial complex, which shifted focus away from peace and stability to war and chaos. Since 2001, hardly any of the self-organized elites bothers to pretend otherwise. Anyone who thinks otherwise is ridiculed or worse. One of the clearest measures of this is US support for Israel, which has significantly lessened among the public, but if anything has hardened and become more reflexive among the elites. For more on their thinking, see:

  • Gregory Foster: [01-02] The zombification of US national security: "Time to drive a stake through the heart of these establishmentarian ideas, which are super dysfunctional but never seem to die." Sub-heds: The Fetishization of .mil-ism; The Enduring Gluttony of Defense Spending; The Canonization of Military Essence; The Delusion of Military Autarky; "The Capabilities-Commitments Conundrum; The Great Power Competition Subterfuge.

Thomas Geoghegan: [01-06] The Constitutional Case for Disarming the Debt Ceiling: "The Framers would have never tolerated debt-limit brinksmanship. It's time to put this terrible idea on trial. Related:

Luke Goldstein: [01-06] FTC Ban on Noncompetes Sets Up Huge Legal Fight. Having had my own bitter experience with a noncompete dictate, I'm very happy to see this rule. In my case it was a rare requirement only demanded of top management, and we were presumably compensated for our loss of freedom (though I'd argue I wasn't). It still left a great deal of bitterness, which probably capped any possibility I had of further advancement. Still, that's not what this is about. Rather, companies have since started demanding noncompete restrictions on even bottom-rung employees. Had that been in effect in my day, most of my job changes would have been prohibited. No surprise that groups like the Chamber of Commerce are up in arms over this rule. Employers are still nostalgic for the days when they had complete power over their workers.

Melissa Gira Grant: [01-03] Welcome to Ron DeSantis's 2024 Campaign Against "Wokes": One of the most important planks of Trump's 2016 campaign was the revolt he led against "political correctness." It worked because pretty much no one likes having their speech corrected, especially the object isn't a notorious slur and the substitute is awkward and tortured ("differently abled" is one I've been hit with). (Bill Maher, who may be a jerk but isn't a right-winger, made political incorrectness his calling card.) However, I'm not sure that attacking "wokes" (or even the more abstract "wokeness") is going to be such a winning strategy. The difference is that it's one thing to say that you have the right to be a bigot and to hold opinions many of us deem ignorant, and another to say that if you're not a bigot, and take offense at bigots, you're evil, and need to be throttled -- which is basically DeSantis's position. DeSantis doesn't stop at hitting liberal columnists for their "wokeness"; he's gone after big corporations that simply don't see the profit in racism.

Margaret Hartmann:

Ellen Ioanes: [01-07] North Korea's nuclear escalation, explained: The author seems more puzzled, but the right-wing turn in South Korea -- after the attempted thaw was largely sabotaged by Trump lieutenants like Bolton -- and also by the Biden administration's indifference to the issue. Despite occasional bouts of panic, North Korea's nuclear arsenal has never been, and will never be, a serious threat to the US (not that it couldn't annihilate South Korea and cause a lot of damage to Japan). From a military standpoint, nuclear weapons have never been worth a hill of beans, as the US has repeatedly found out in the series of military blunders that actually started in Korea. What is dangerous is trying to keep North Korea bottled up, when its leader have been trying so frantically for decades now to signal that they just want to be respected and treated decently.

Ben Jacobs: [01-07] How Kevin McCarthy (finally) became speaker of the House: "McCarthy was able to sway several far-right members of his party by agreeing to extraordinary concessions that will rewrite the politics of the House." Of course, there was never a chance that he wouldn't cave in to the far right, because he's not fundamentally opposed to them. While it was fun watching Republicans make fools of themselves, McCarthy's own demeanor during the ordeal suggests he was in on the scheme, which allowed him to shift effective power to the nihilists -- at this point, even "far right" doesn't do them justice, and "MAGA" isn't quite fair to Trump (not that he deserves any better) -- and also blame, when it all blows up. Jacobs has been covering this story in real time, so his older pieces are already dated: e.g., [01-03] Kevin McCarthy's once-in-a-century House speakership failure.

David Cay Johnston: [12-31] Trump's Taxes Are the Best Case Yet for Putting Him in Prison. Author also wrote [12-27] Trump's Brazen Tax Cheating Revealed.

Whizy Kim: [01-04] The ultrarich are getting cozy in America's tax havens at everyone else's expense. One serious problem that hardly anyone talks about is how having multiple state and local tax jurisdictions creates intense competition to carve out tax loopholes, which are now so widespread and so lucrative that they drive many business decisions. Every carve-out is ultimately compensated by taxpayers with less leverage, either in higher taxes or in reduced services. I don't know how you could go about doing this, but a single national taxation system, when they distributes money down to state and local governments (which, if they have nothing better to spend it on, could ultimately rebate it to citizens), would wring the incentive for this out of the system, and in doing so would end much of the system's inherent corruption. As I recall, Nixon made a start back around 1970 with his "revenue sharing" program. It's strange that no one talks about this, even though a lot of federal money is routinely transferred to states and on down the line.

Ezra Klein: [01-08] The Dystopia We Fear Is Keeping Us From the Utopia We Deserve. Features a book of "reactionary futurism" by J Storrs Hall, Where Is My Flying Car?. The argument is that we got sidetracked in trying to conserve energy (or at least utilize it more efficiently), when we should have been figuring out how to create much more, enough to enable the wonders of a set of formerly futurist inventions like the flying car.

Robert Kuttner: [01-03] Who Will Talk Jay Powell off the Ledge? "He has committed the Fed to an interest rate course that will create a needless recession, and he refuses to admit that inflation is subsiding on its own." Again, Biden made a bad mistake appointing this Republican to a second term (much as Obama did with Bernanke, and Clinton with Greenspan). For what it's worth, I'm not terribly upset that he raised interest rates up off the floor: that's helped cool down house prices, and perhaps most important, it's slowed down speculative gambling on futures, which now seems to have been the main thing driving oil prices up. When several left-of-center economists were lobbying for Powell to get that second term, they pointed to his changed views. I can't tell you now what they thought he was thinking, but he seems to have clung to the hoariest of old views: that the only proof that inflation is declining is that unemployment is rising.

Ian Millhiser:

Charles P Pierce: [01-04] Given the Choice Between Free Money or Sicker Residents, Republicans Chose Sickness: "Their refusal to expand Medicaid is making it impossible for rural hospitals to stay in business." His examples are elsewhere, but this is particularly a problem here in Kansas -- where a significant majority want Medicaid expansion, but the Republicans they foolishly elect think it's smart politics to discredit Obamacare by turning away people who would benefit from it. Pierce, by the way, kicks out 2-3 useful posts every day.

Andrew Prokop: [11-02] Will 2023 be the year Donald Trump is indicted? I suspect, the less it matters, the more likely it becomes. Also on Trump:

Nathan J Robinson: [12-06] Let ChatGPT Convert You to Socialism. I got interested in AI back in the 1980s, but haven't followed it since. One idea I had back then was to write a program that could crank out weekly letters to my mother. I would feed it a couple bullet points if I had any actual news, and it would mix them in with semi-random swatches of boilerplate. I was quite certain that she would be delighted, and none the wiser. That sort of thing is probably much closer to reality today, but will more likely be used by spammers trying to defraud you. On the other hand, I can imagine smarter programs that read your mail for you, sort out the dangerous and the merely crappy. Still, any arms race is likely to ultimately blow up. The best solution is to refashion the world to make predatory behavior less likely.

I haven't rekindled my interest in AI, so I know very little about where it's gone and how it's being used (other than my impression of badly). My nephew is pretty seriously into AI image generation: he's a graphic artist, and wants to see if he can use it to generate his style of art more efficiently. Robinson has done some of that too, but has focused more on ChatGPT, which he reports on here.

Jeffrey St Clair: [01-06] Roaming Charges: No Speaker, No Cry. "There are 100 members of the 'Progressive Caucus,' who capitulated within seconds to nearly every demand Pelosi made, and 40 members of the Freedom Caucus who don't mind waterboarding their own leader in public to get their way & ditching him if they don't." Also: "The problem is McCarthy himself is endorsed by Trump and the neo-fascist Marjorie Taylor-Greene, along with Freedom Caucus hardliners Jim Jordan and Louis Gohmert. In the face of a MAGA raid on the Capitol, McCarthy still voted to overturn the 2020 elections and boasted: 'I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it.'"

Eric Topol: [01-08] The coronavirus is speaking. It's saying it's not done with us.

New York Times: [01-08] Live Updates: Brazilian Authorities Clear Government Offices of Rioters, Official Says: Right-wing Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro lost his re-election bid a couple months ago, so now as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has taken office, Bolsonaro's mob has decided to throw their own January 6 riot. For more, see Ellen Ioanes: [01-08] Bolsonaro supporters storm Brazil's seat of power.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Saturday, December 31, 2022

Music Week

December archive (done).

Music: Current count 39330 [39275] rated (+55), 39 [36] unrated (+0: 11 new, 28 old).

I've been known to extend the last Music Week of December to the end of the month, because the transition from year to year is such a natural breaking point, and I don't want to cheat 2022. Still, lots of things contributed to this delay, including an illness that didn't lay me up so much as it sapped my will to do anything, and a still persistent problem with internet connection that has made it hard to stream and to research. The main casualty in this has been the Jazz Critics Poll, which should have been published last week, but is now delayed . . . hopefully no later than next week. I still have much to write for it, so I won't dawdle further here.

Note that other website updates are minimal: I haven't done anything to wrap up the monthly Streamnotes; I'm a couple entries behind in the Recent Reading; and who knows what else I've left broken. One thing I can leave you with is a PJRP ballot, which I basically scraped from my 2022 list without further thought:

  1. The Regrettes: Further Joy (Warner) 16
  2. Tyshawn Sorey Trio + 1: The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism (Pi) 15
  3. Gonora Sounds: Hard Times Never Kill (The Vital Record) 14
  4. Big Thief: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You (4AD) 10
  5. Dave Rempis/Avreeayl Ra Duo: Bennu (Aerophonic) 10
  6. Omri Ziegele Where's Africa: That Hat (Intakt) 8
  7. Charlotte Adigery & Bolis Pupul: Topical Dancer (Beewee/Because Music) 7
  8. Saba: Few Good Things (Saba Pivot) 7
  9. Bob Vylan: Bob Vylan Presents the Price of Life (Ghost Theatre) 7
  10. Nilufer Yanya: Painless (ATO) 6

More details in the EOY lists for Jazz (73 A-list) and Non-Jazz (80 A-list). My tracking file shows 1524 records rated this year (out of 4619 listed). You might also find the EOY Aggregate interesting.

New records reviewed this week:

$ilkmoney: I Don't Give a Fuck About This Rap Shit, Imma Just Drop Until I Don't Feel Like It Anymore (2022, DB$B): Rapper from Virginia, fourth album, this title only slightly longer than the others. B+(**) [sp]

Taru Alexander: Echoes of the Masters (2022, Sunnyside): Drummer, father a saxophonist, started early, playing with Reggie Workman at 13. First album, cover surrounds his picture with a name cloud of various sizes, of which I can make out Billy Higgins and Roland Alexander near the top, elsewhere Tony Williams, Mulgrew Miller, McCoy Tyner, John Coltrane, and largest of all, Freddie Hubbard. Actual group here has Antoine Roney (tenor sax), James Hurt (piano), and Rashaan Carter (bass), with Hanka G. singing one track. B+(***) [sp]

Jake Blount: The New Faith (2022, Smithsonian Folkways): Black (ok, biracial) folk singer-sonwriter from DC, digs deep for his roots, then uses them to sing about the future, a bleak one, though perhaps not as bleak as it would be without a heritage that has survive plenty. B+(**) [sp]

Zach Bryan: American Heartbreak (2022, Warner, 2CD): Country singer-songwriter, born in Okinawa to a Navy family, did eight years in the Navy himself, but was still just 26 when this third album was released, and it's a whopper, with 34 songs running 121:00. B+(**) [sp]

Call Super: Swallow Me (2022, Can You Feel the Sun, EP): British electronica producer, Joseph Richmond-Seaton, three albums, more EPs and singles since 2011. This is basically a single: two tracks, 16:16. One of my favorite beat purveyors, but fairly minor. B+(**) [sp]

Sabrina Carpenter: Emails I Can't Send (2022, Island): Singer-songwriter from Pennsylvania, started as an actor at age 12, fifth album by age 23. B+(***) [sp]

Melissa Carper: Ramblin' Soul (2022, Mae Music): Country singer-songwriter, plays banjo and upright bass, started out with a family band, has two self-released albums on her own, plus two more with Rebecca Patek (one as Buffalo Gals Band). B+(**) [sp]

The Casual Dots: Sanguine Truth (2022, Ixor Stix): Second album, after an eponymous 2004 debut on Kill Rock Stars. DC alt-rock trio, froonted by singer-guitarist Kathi Wilcox. B+(**) [sp]

Marc Copland Quartet: Someday (2022, InnerVoice Jazz): Pianist, 40-plus albums since 1988, a quartet with Robin Verheyen (tenor/soprano sax; also wrote 2 songs to Copland's 3), Drew Gress (bass), and Mark Ferber (drums). Near-perfect balance. A- [sp]

Jon Cowherd Trio: Pride and Joy (2022, Le Coq): Pianist, originally from Kentucky, has a couple albums under his own name, several dozen side credits. Trio here with John Patitucci (bass) and Brian Blade (drums). One oddity is the Vol. 2 in the lower right corner -- as best I can tell, Vol. 1 was a Patitucci album called Trio with Vinnie Colaiuta and Bill Cunliffe. Another oddity is that this opens with two of three tracks (of eight total) with Chris Potter (tenor sax) and Alex Acuña (percussion). B+(*) [sp]

Dandy Dandie: Hypnos & Morphée (2019 [2022], Yolk Music): Side-project composed and arranged by French saxophonist Alban Darche (one track by trumpet player Geoffroy Tamisier), built around texts from Poe, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Roethke, and others, sung by Chloë Cailleton. With piano by Nathalie Darche, but no drums or anything else, has an art song feel, but I like the sax. B+(*) [sp]

Harold Danko: Rite Notes (2021 [2022], SteepleChase): Pianist, thirty-plus albums since 1979, takes this one solo. B+(*) [sp]

Daphni: Cherry (2022, Jiaolong): Canadian electronica producer Dan Snaith, recorded a couple albums as Manitoba (2001-03) before switching to Caribou (2005, 5 albums through 2020) and adding Daphni as an alias (2012, 4th album). B+(***) [sp]

Eli Degibri: Henri and Rachel (2021 [2022], Degibri): Israeli saxophonist (tenor/soprano), studied in Boston and moved to New York before returning in 2011, eighth album since 2003, dedicated to his parents. B+(***) [sp]

Hamid Drake: Dedications: Black Cross Solo Sessions 6 (2020 [2022], Corbett vs. Dempsey): Drummer, originally from Louisiana but moved to Chicago as a child, playing especially with Fred Anderson, and later with William Parker. Solo, nine pieces, each dedicated to free jazz notables, not least the drummers. B+(**) [bc]

Dai Fujikura/Jan Bang: The Bow Maker (2022, Punkt): Japanese composer of "contemporary classical music," based in UK, teams here with the Norwegian composer-producer, who tends to straddle jazz and electronica. Atmospheric, a bit dark at times. B+(*) [sp]

Runhild Gammelsæter & Lasse Marhaug: Higgs Boson (2022, Ideologic Organ): Norwegian voice/electronics duo, she has a PhD in cell physiology and is on the board of a biotech company, but has a background singing in metal bands. He has a rep as a noise artist: I first encountered him in Vandermark groups, but more often these days I see him credited with album art. Second album together, after 2014's Quantum Entanglement. B+(*) [sp]

Julia Hülsmann Quartet: The Next Door (2022, ECM): German pianist, several albums since 2000, fourth Quartet album, with Uli Kempendorff (tenor sax), bass, and drums. Nice, even tone, with a lot of movement beneath the surface. B+(***) [sp]

Shawneci Icecold/Fred Lonberg-Holm: Sepphoris (2022, Underground45): Pianist from Rhode Island, has a hip-hop sideline as well as several free jazz albums, mostly plays harmonium here, with Lonberg-Holm on cello and electronics. Runs 29:57. B+(**) [cd]

Shawneci Icecold/Shuishan Yu: Flowing Water: Music for Guqin & Harpsichord (2022, Underground45): Another duet set, the guqin an ancient Chinese string instrument, plucked fits in nicely with the harpsichord. B+(**) [cd]

Jazzanova: Strata Records: The Sound of Detroit (2022, BBE): German production collective, started in 1995, only a few proper albums but lots of remixes. This one honors a small Detroit label which released nine albums 1974-75, by artists little-remembered, a cocktail of jazzy pop that the producers are tempted to add some fizz to. Sean Haefeli claims most of the vocals, unfortunately. B [sp]

Kassmasse: Bahil | Weg (2022, Meedo): Ethiopian, sings/raps in Amharic, with a catchy beat and agreeable musicality. B+(***)

Lady Aicha & Pisco Crane's Original Fulu Miziki Band of Kinshasa: N'djila Wa Mudjimo (2022, Nyege Nyege Tapes): This seems to be the same group that released a highly recommended EP earlier this year (Ngbaka EP), but at greater length here, not least in the headline credit. Like Congotronics, they salvage and engineer instruments from junk, not just drums but that's what makes this work. A- [sp]

Little Simz: No Thank You (2022, Age 101/Awal/Forever Living Originals): Late album drop from UK rapper Simbi Ajikawo, her fifth, after 2021's Sometimes I Might Be Introvert swept many of the year's best album lists. Major musical contribution here by Dean Josiah Cover (of Sault), with Cleo Sol (also of Sault) backing vocals, but still sharpest when the raps cut through to the front. A- [sp]

Igor Lumpert's Innertextures: I Am the Spirit of the Earth (2021 [2022], Clean Feed): Slovene tenor saxophonist, based in New York since 2000, favored group name dates from a 2004 album title. B+(**) [sp]

João Madeira/Wagner Ramos: Meristema (2022, 4darecord): Portuguese duo, bass and drums, fairly minimal but sustains my interest for 71:11. B+(***) [cd]

Joe Magnarelli: New York Osaka Junction (2022, SteepleChase): Mainstream trumpet player, early albums (1998-2006) on Criss Cross, recent ones (since 2018) here. Osaka connection is organ player Akiko Tsuruga, joined with Gary Smulyan (baritone sax) and Rudy Royston (drums). As hopped up as a big band. B+(*) [sp]

Majamisty Trio: Wind Rose (2021 [2022], Majamisty): Serbian piano-bass-drums trio (Maja Alvanovic, Ervin Malina, Lav Kovac), fourth album, cover notes two featured guests: Aneta George (vocals), and Ulrich Drechsler (clarinet). B+(*) [sp]

Dado Moroni/Jesper Lundgaard/Lee Pearson: There Is No Greater Love (2016 [2022], Storyville): Italian pianist, many albums since 1980, this a trio with a Danish bassist and an American drummer. Flashy swing-oriented piano, gets down on "C Jam Blues." B+(***) [sp]

Odesza: The Last Goodbye (2022, Foreign Family/Ninja Tune): Electropop duo from Washington state, Harrison Mills (Catacombkid) and Clayton Knight (BeachesBeaches), fourth album since 2012. Guest vocals include Juliana Barwick, Bettye LaVette, and Låpsley. B+(**) [sp]

Sadistik x Kno: Bring Me Back When the World Is Cured (2022, self-released): Seattle rapper Cody Foster, half-dozen albums since 2008, helped here by Atlanta producer Ryan Wisler, a founder of CunninLynguists. B+(***) [sp]

Sault: 11 (2022, Forever Living Originals): British collective, anonymous when they first appeared in 2019, their first albums striking me as the second coming of Chic, but we now know that's just one of various masks. We also have a couple identities: producer Inflo (Dean Josiah Cover, who's worked with Little Simz), and vocalist Cleo Sol (who has three of her own albums). This kicks off a batch of five new digital-only albums that dropped on November 1. Strikes me as trivial on its own. Most reviewers glommed them together, then threw up their hands. B+(*) [sp]

Sault: AIIR (2022, Forever Living Originals): Title seems to refer back to their April, 2002 Air, which, as I noted at the time, with its strings and choral vocals "lost me." Same elements here, not worth making fine distinctions over, although this has five new titles, is shorter (25:27 vs. 45:06 for the seven-piece Air). B [sp]

Sault: Earth (2022, Forever Living Originals): African drums, scattered raps, bits of tasty guitar, other effects which may or may not work. B+(*) [sp]

Sault: Today & Tomorrow (2022, Forever Living Originals): A venture into retro rock, some say punk, but nowhere near that immediate, which is probably just as well. B+(*) [sp]

Sault: Untitled (God) (2022, Forever Living Originals): One more, a long one (21 songs, 73:08), "God" appears in several titles and more lyrics, but "We Are Gods" strikes me as suspicious. I'm reminded here how often thinking of God turns the mind to mush, but the last two songs make me wonder whether mush is the point ("God in Disguise," "Life We Rent but Love Is Free"). Possibly the best album of the series, but more likely the worst. B [sp]

Frank Paul Schubert/Kazuhisa Uchihashi/Klaus Kugel: Black Holes Are Hard to Find (2021 [2022], Nemu): German saxophonist (alto/soprano), albums since 2005, in a trio with guitar/electronics and drums. B+(***) [cd]

Maya Shenfeld: In Free Fall (2022, Thrill Jockey): Israeli composer, originally studied classical guitar, but moved to Berlin and got into electronics. First album, stately pieces that drift between ambient and drone. B+(*) [sp]

Sowal Diabi: De Kaboul à Bamako (2022, Accords Croisés): An international project, named for Persian and Bambara words for "question" and "answer," with two singers -- Mamani Keita of Mali and Sogol Mirzael of Kurdish Turkey -- plus Iranian violinist Aïda Nosrat and various French musicians. Both ends of the imaginary journey have been damaged by war and terror, but if Mali is the answer, the answer must be music. A- [sp]

Special Interest: Endure (2022, Rough Trade): Third album from a New Orleans no-wave dance-punk group, a' contradiction they flaunt but don't necessarily resolve. B+(*) [sp]

SZA: SOS (2022, Top Dawg/RCA): R&B singer Solána Rowe, second album, both critical and commercial successes, not that they do much for me. B+(**) [sp]

Ricardo Toscano Trio: Chasing Contradictions (2021 [2022], Clean Feed): Portuguese alto saxophonist, several albums, this a basic trio with Romeu Tristão (bass) and João Pereira (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Wako: Ut Av Det Nye (2022, Øra Fonogram): Norwegian quartet, led by pianist Kjetil Mulelid and saxophonist Martin Myhre Olsen, with Bárður Reinert Poulsen on bass and Simon Olderskog Albertsen on drums. Sixth album since 2015. B+(**) [sp]

Weyes Blood: And in the Darkness, Hearts Aglow (2022, Sub Pop): Singer-songwriter Natalie Mering, fifth album, but only the second to see much chart presence. Much pomp and splendour, with a little more beat this time. B [sp]

Jason Yeager: Unstuck in Time: The Kurt Vonnegut Suite (2022, Sunnyside): Pianist, several albums, starts from anecdotes showing the comic novelist, born 100 years ago, to have been a jazz fan, indeed a wannabe jazz pianist, and presents him with some music, which may or may not have tickled his funny bone. B+(**) [cd]

Per Zanussi & Vestnorsk Jazzensemble: Li (and the Infinite Game) (2022, Clean Feed): Norwegian bassist, several albums since 2004, his Zanussi 5 Live in Coimbra (2014) impressed me. Working with a large (11 by my count) group here. B+(**) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

The Pyramids: AOMAWA: The 1970s Recordings (1973-76 [2022], Strut, 4CD): Saxophonist Bruce Baker, originally from Chicago, better known since 2012 as Idris Ackamoor, founded this Afrocentric, Sun Ra-influenced group in Antioch, Ohio, in the early 1970s as part of Cecil Taylor's Black Music Ensemble. A- [bc]

Buddy Tate & White Label: Tate's Delight (1982 [2022], Storyville): One of the famed Texas Tenors, came up in the Basie band, has a local Danish quintet for support, playing upbeat songs they all should know, including "Jumpin' at Woodside" and "Lester Leaps In." B+(***) [bc]

Old music:

Roland Alexander: Pleasure Bent (1961 [1962], New Jazz): Tenor saxophonist (1935-2006), from Boston, first album, Discogs only credits him with one more (a live quintet in 1978), came to my attention only when his drummer son released a good hard bop album (although now I recognize a few notable side credits, like Eddie Gale's Black Rhythm Happening (1969). This is remembered as a hard bop lineup, with Marcus Belgrave (trumpet) and Ronnie Mathews (piano), but is more mainstream, the sax tone softer, with a bit of swing. B+(**) [r]

Willi Carlisle: Too Nice to Mean Much (2016, self-released, EP): Arkansas tunesmith, first album, or most of one (six songs, 25:56), got some clever words, banjo too. B+(***) [sp]

Willi Carlisle: To Tell You the Truth (2018, self-released): Twelve songs this time, four credited to Traditional. Seems to be aiming for something darker, more primitivist. B+(**) [sp]

Billy Harper Quintet: Destiny Is Yours (1989 [1990], SteepleChase): Tenor saxophonist, from Texas, 1975 album Black Saint inspired the name for one of the era's most important labels. With Eddie Henderson (trumpet), Francesca Tanksley (piano), Clarence Seay (bass), and Newman Baker (drums) -- with a new bass player, this group went on to record three volumes of Live on Tour in the Far East (Vol. 2 is especially spectacular). B+(**) [sp]

Ronnie Mathews With Freddie Hubbard: Doin' the Thang! (1963 [1964], Prestige): Pianist (1935-2008), mostly shows up in side credits, starting in 1961 with albums led by Roland Alexander and Bill Hardman. This was his first album as leader, with four originals plus Ellington and Davis covers, with Hubbard on trumpet, Charles Davis on baritone sax, Eddie Kahn on bass, and Albert Heath on drums, shortly before Matthews appeared on Hubbard's Breaking Point. B+(**)

Ronnie Mathews/Roland Alexander/Freddie Hubbard (1961-63 [2002], Prestige): CD reissue combines two LPs, both with Mathews on piano: one with Hubbard on trumpet (Hubbard gets the small cover print, although he's much the bigger name), and another led by tenor saxophonist Alexander, with Marcus Belgrave on trumpet. B+(**) [r]

Grade (or other) changes:

Willi Carlisle: Peculiar, Missouri (2022, Free Dirt): Folksinger from the Ozarks, earned his credentials the new-fashioned way, with a BA in Writing and Performance Studies and a MFA in Poetry, plus two self-released albums before moving up to a label with a name. [was B+(***)] A- [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Art Ensemble of Chicago: The Sixth Decade From Paris to Paris: Live at Sons D'Hiver (RogueArt, 2CD) [2023-01-20]
  • François Carrier/Alexander von Schlippenbach/John Edwards/Michel Lambert: Unwalled (Fundacja Sluchaj)
  • Fred Frith/Susana Santos Silva: Laying Demons to Rest (RogueArt) [2023-01-20]
  • Gerry Hemingway: Afterlife (Auricle)
  • Shawneci Icecold/Fred Lonberg-Holm: Sepphoris (Underground45) [10-02]
  • João Madeira/Wagner Ramos: Meristema (4darecord) [10-16]
  • Shawneci Icecold/Shuishan Yu: Flowing Water: Music for Guqin & Harpsichord (Underground45) [10-27]
  • Frank Paul Schubert/Kazuhisa Uchihashi/Klaus Kugel: Black Holes Are Hard to Find (Nemu) [01-12]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Tuesday, December 27, 2022

Speaking of Which

Long time, many delays, most significant of which was coming down with Covid a week ago. It followed a couple days of socializing, something I'm clearly ill-practiced at. The wife of a cousin died the previous week. I missed the funeral, but went out to the farm to see some of the family, who had all been at the funeral. Then, next day, I fixed our usual latke holiday dinner, for a rather tightly packed crowd of nine. Two days later I tested positive. I've had all three booster shots, and got a 5-day run of paxlovid. As illnesses go, I've suffered worse, but in this politically charged time, this one feels both sad and infuriating. And there have been many compounding hardships, from record cold that broke an appliance to a dog sadly on her last legs. Plus fear of infecting my wife, which so far hasn't happened, and as such remains a constant struggle.

Still, the main side-effect has been a huge sense of disinterest in everything I've been doing, or wanting to do. The most immediate victim is the Francis Davis Jazz Poll, which won't come out on time, because I haven't gotten it together. My usual Music Week post is also delayed, perhaps indefinitely. (Certainly no guarantee it will appear tomorrow.) For some reason, this post framework has been easier to get back into than anything involving music. It started just jotting down links, and most of the ones I grabbed early are still pretty bare (and I'm unlikely to return to them). But over several days, a few comments started to form. Still, I figure this is still mostly an exercise to file away bookmarks, in case I ever feel like revisiting the history.

Beware that Covid-19 cases have been rising steadily since new cases dropped under 37,000 on Oct. 30, to 70,425 (+90%) on Dec. 22 (numbers around Christmas bounce due to reporting fluctuations).

Ben Armbruster: [12-16] Diplomacy Watch: Is the Overton window of the Ukraine war's end game shifting? Also: Connor Echols: [12-23] Diplomacy Watch: Sketching the uncomfortable path to peace. Both titles sound more optimistic than there seems to be evidence for.

  • Connor Echols: [12-21] Zelensky addresses Congress, makes push for advanced weapons.

  • Masha Gessen: [12-22] Volodomyr Zelensky's critical visit to Washington, DC: I have a major bone to pick here: the notion that, "The United States and its allies have not done enough to stop the war in Ukraine." The context here is Ukraine's demands for ever more powerful weapons, which the US (or as Biden shifted responsibility, the European "allies") have slow-pedalled for fears of provoking Russia into a broader war (something Putin has repeatedly, if not all that convincingly, threatened). Gessen finds this caution "obscene." But there's no reason to think that more (and fancier) weapons would "end the war." That's only going to happen in negotiation. And while one can fault the US and Europe for not doing enough to bring about negotiations -- not least by fueling fantasies that Ukraine might regain all Russian-occupied territory -- Biden et al. (especially Zelenskyy) have done one key thing, which is to show Putin that the only way out is through negotiation. Adding Patriot missiles to the mix is a big win for Raytheon, but not an essential step toward ending the war.

  • Jonathan Guyer/Li Zhou: [12-21] Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy's unexpected visit to the US, explained.

  • Jonathan Guyer: [12-16] This DC party invite shows all the money to be made off the Ukraine war: "A Ukrainian Embassy reception, sponsored by America's biggest weapons makers."

  • Ben Freeman/William Hartung: [12-23] New Ukraine aid is a go -- and it's more than most states get in a year: "Congress just passed a $45 billion assistance package for Kyiv on the way out of the door for the holidays. We put this spending into context."

  • Fred Kaplan: [12-22] The Power of Volodymyr Zelensky's Charm Offensive: "The next Congress can't slash support for Ukraine now." As Kaplan notes, Zelensky "knew all the right buttons to push." Kaplan also wrote: [12-16] Henry Kissinger Wrote a Peace Plan for Ukraine. It's Ludicrous. Actually, the "peace plan" isn't so bad. Kaplan's probably right that it isn't something Putin can accept, but I don't agree with the posture (which Kaplan seems to have adopted after his own proposals fell into history's dustbin) that until Putin is ready to sue for peace, there's no need for anyone to sketch out a possible compromise. The piece's other point is that Kissinger and his worldview, largely formed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, is ludicrous.

  • Greg Sargent: [12-23] Tucker Carlson's rage at Zelensky caps a year of getting things wrong. Bizarrely fascinating to watch right-wing jerks like Carlson lose their minds, as they try to apply old attack tropes to new cases that fit even worse -- like characterizing Zelensky at a "welfare queen." Still, the first thing this reminded me of was the counterexample of Reagan proclaiming the Afghan mujahideen as "like our founding fathers." Which led me to:

  • Cathy Young: [12-22] Putin's Useful Idiots: Right Wingers Lose It Over Zelensky Visit. A term often attributed to Stalin, but vastly exercised by right-wing pundits to ridicule liberals as soft-in-the-head fools, still, it literally works in this case: the targets are certifiable idiots, and their rage and sputterings serve little purpose other than to comfort Putin. I don't doubt that one can make a case that Ukraine is corrupted by oligarchs, tainted by collaboration with fascists, and far from a liberal democracy; also that anti-Putin Democrats are having way too much fun watching Ukrainians die just to spite the guy they blame for Hillary Clinton losing to Trump in 2016. One could go deeper and critique the deep direction of US foreign policy ever since globalists started promoting US hegemony in the early 1940s. But these jerks aren't saying anything like that. They want to see Ukraine safely under Putin's illiberal thumb, and they want to see Washington's "democracy promoters" -- which, frankly, has mostly been a propaganda ploy to spread American hegemony -- rebuffed at every turn.

Dean Baker: [12-16] We Don't Need Government-Granted Patent Monopolies to Finance Drug Development: Quite frankly, they do much more harm than good.

Doug Bandow: [12-21] Ending the Syrian war, getting US troops out, and lifting sanctions: "The status quo is doing more harm than good. Let's admit failure before more people are hurt and put in harm's way." I would have been quite happy had Assad been driven into exile, or even strung up, but that didn't happen, despite the efforts of at least a dozen other countries to intervene. Realism suggests the need to reach some sort of deal where the US offers to normalize relations (including removing troops and ending sanctions), provide humanitarian aid, and use its influence to dissuade its "allies" from attacking and/or trying to subvert the Assad regime (Turkey being the most immediate threat, but Israel regularly bombs Syria), in exchange for agreement not to punish dissidents and to allow political prisoners to go into exile. Note, however, that the US has never negotiated such a deal, as it always seemed politically expedient to perpetuate "cold war" hostilities, and in the end the US never cared that much about the people it supposedly entered the conflict to help -- most were left to their own devices, then begrundingly allowed to immigrate if they made it that far.

Dave Barry: [12-25] Dave Barry's 2022 Year in Review: Getting old here, and there. Old enough I can remember a time when he was genuinely funny. Probably because less seemed to be at stake then.

Matthew Cooper: [12-22] Charlie Peters, Washington Monthly Founder and Mentor to Leading Journalists, Turns 96: Peter founded Washington Monthly in 1969. I started subscribing shortly after that. For a while, I suppose I could have followed two different political paths: one into reform-minded Democratic Party politics, which was influenced significantly by reading the policy-wonky articles in Washington Monthly, and the other into more radical left movements. Peters was a guru of the former path, but I probably stopped reading him before the McGovern loss crushed my faith in elections. But while the new left offered a convincing critique of liberal capitalism, I never found a practical politics there. I stopped subscribing to Washington Monthly after a few years, so I didn't notice when Peters was one of the first to expound a new notion of neoliberalism. I've never been clear how much his adoption of the term has in common with the "New Democrats" who made neoliberalism a dirty word. The last thing I read by him was a lament on how his native West Virginia abandoned the Democratic fold.

Shirin Ghaffary: [12-16] Elon Musk's Twitter journalist purge has begun.

Melvin Goodman: [12-23] How the New York Times Mythologizes US-Israeli Relations. Something they're not alone in, but have been at the forefront of, at least since . . . well, the earliest examples in this article are from the 1950s.

Margaret Hartmann: [12-16] 7 Great Things About Trump's Incredibly Dumb NFT Announcement: You know the bar's low when the article starts with: "NFTs are the least harmful thing Trump could have announced." Other Trump trivia pieces (see Prokop below for the Jan. 6 criminal referrals, and Narea for his taxes):

  • Olivia Nuzzi: [12-23] The Final Campaign: "Inside Donald Trump's sad, lonely, thirsty, broken, basically pretend run for reelection. (Which isn't to say he can't win.)" You can compare this with Nuzzi's July 14 piece: Donald Trump on 2024: 'I've Already Made That Decision': "The only question left in the former president's mind is when he'll announce." Not why? Or: do I have a chance? Or: how stupid will I look? The only thing he seems to understand is the graft another campaign makes possible.

Ben Jacobs: [12-23] Did George Santos lie about everything? And how incompetent was the media in failing to figure him out before the election? Same for whoever was supposed to do "oppo research" for the Democrats. Too little, too late, but the New York Times has more: [12-23] George Santos's Early Life: Odd Jobs, Bad Debts and Lawsuits. On the other hand, while journalists aren't much good at discovering, they are pretty adept at piling on: Joe Perticone: [12-23] George Santos's Problems Are Just Getting Started.

Ed Kilgore: [12-14] Democrats Came Shockingly Close to Keeping the House: Going into the election, my working assumption was that Democrats would win the popular vote for the House, but could lose control due mostly to gerrymanders. But it appears now that Republicans actually won the popular vote (50.6% to 47.8%, a margin of 2.8%) while winning the House by somewhat less (222-213, a margin of 2.0%). I don't know what this means, but one effect of gerrymandering is to suppress turnout by making elections less competitive ("safe" seats were often won by 70% or more), but also slanting competitive seats toward Republicans may have boosted R turnout more than D.

Siobhan McDonough: [12-22] Why are American lives getting shorter? "US life expectancy got worse during Covid-19, and then kept getting worse."

Ian Millhiser:

Brian Murphy: [11-09] Ernie Lazar, who quietly amassed huge FBI archive, dies at 77: Late tip here from Rick Perlstein, a beneficiary of his research.

Nicole Narea: [12-21] Trump's tax returns are about to become public. What happens now?

New Republic: The Scoundrels, Ghouls, and Crooks of 2022.

Timothy Noah:

Andrew Prokop: [12-19] The January 6 committee's case against Trump.

Dylan Scott: [12-15] Ron DeSantis's vaccine "investigation" is all about beating Trump.

Dan Secatore: [12-19] What I Learned Curating Presidential Theater for Obama: "A former Obama advance man on how the hollow pageantry of political stagecraft legitimizes bad policy and distracts us from more substantive political discussions."

Stephen M Walt: [12-13] The United States Couldn't Stop Being Stop Being Stupid if It Wanted To. The "realist" blames liberals, for thinking that the rights and liberties we expect at home should be available to everyone else, but what kind of liberalism is one that extends its values at gun point? Granted, Americans like to talk about liberal values when they go to war, but that's only because it sounds better than admitting to crass imperialist aims.

Brett Wilkins: [12-20] UN Experts Decry Record Year of Israeli Violence in Occupied West Bank: "Israel's deplorable record in the occupied West Bank will likely deteriorate further in 2023."

Also, a golden oldie: Rick Perlstein: [2021-10-26] A Short History of Conservative Trolling.

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Music Week

December archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 39275 [39203] rated (+72), 36 [32] unrated (+4: 8 new, 28 old).

The rated count, and the reviews below, cover 9-10 days, which partly explains the big numbers. But even at the normal 7-day mark I was close to 50, a total that pops up mostly when I go off into deep dives of mostly-familiar old music (often with short run times), like my recent specials on Jerry Lee Lewis (58) and Loretta Lynn (63). This week was nowhere near that easy, but I was locked into a zone counting jazz critics' ballots, and they were generating long lists of things to check out.

The official deadline was end-of-business Monday, but on Tuesday I compiled a list of invited critics who hadn't voted and sent off last-ditch reminders. That produced another half-dozen ballots, bringing the total to 150. That leaves me four short of last year. I'm a bit disappointed, but it's still a respectable turnout, enough to maintain our boast of having the broadest, most comprehensive poll anywhere.

I still have a ton of work to do, starting with adding notes to explain various artifacts of the poll. The biggest problem this year was how many voters wanted to combine votes for two albums in one line, especially where labels released two albums by one artist at the same time: Mary Halvorson, Amaryllis and Belladonna (May 13, on Nonesuch; complicating this, they were released as separate albums on CD and digital, but were packaged together on vinyl); and Ahmad Jamal, Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse 1963-1964 and 1965-1966 (Dec. 2, on Jazz Detective/Elemental).

This week's haul means that I've currently heard and rated 843 jazz albums this year (out of 1443 in my tracking file, a file which now includes 185 albums that got votes in the Jazz Critics Poll that I haven't yet heard, even as I'm shouldering the day-to-day work.

Needless to say, work on my Non-Jazz EOY and my EOY aggregate files has largely stalled (although not before Beyoncé took a commanding lead in the latter).

To answer a question I just got, the poll will again be published by Arts Fuse, some time between Christmas and New Years, and will be known as the 17th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll, in honor of its founder and guiding spirit, who I'm pleased to say is still keeping a keen eye on things.

I did manage to kick out a belated Speaking of Which on Tuesday. Buried therein is the germ of an idea on how to solve a large share of America's political problems.

I didn't get around to writing about the plan to shift the Democratic presidential primaries away from Iowa and New Hampshire and focus on South Carolina, but I recall floating an idea quite a while back to restructure primaries: run them in five Super Tuesday rounds, starting with the 10 smallest states (plus D.C.), then the next 10, etc. The bottom 10 states have too many Dakotas, but are still pretty diverse. You could even do more than 10 for the first round, so you can pick up traditional early states like Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada. A couple new ideas could help here: the Democratic Party could run the primaries privately, mostly using mail votes (based on state registration records), so you wouldn't have to get a lot of state laws passed; the Party would be responsible for providing a neutral forum for debates, pamphlets, and get-out-the-vote efforts, in effect centralizing a lot of the fundraising tasks, and making campaigning much less prohibitively expensive; eligibility would be limited from round to round based on results.

.

New records reviewed this week:

Alex Acuña: Gifts (2021 [2022], Le Coq): Drummer, originally from Peru, moved to Puerto Rico in 1967 and on to Las Vegas in 1974. Played in Weather Report 1975-78, many side-credits since along with a few albums he led. Peruvian saxophonist Lorenzo Ferrero stands out among a fine Latin jazz ensemble. B+(**) [sp]

Adeem the Artist: White Trash Revelry (2022, self-released): Country singer-songwriter Adem Bingham, originally a "seventh-generation Carolinian," considered the ministry before a songwriting bug and other concerns led to a very good debut album called Cast-Iron Pansexual. Here a deep dive into his "white trash" roots generates an even better sequel. A- [sp]

[Ahmed]: Ahad/Wahid (2022, A Cheeseboard Production, EP): Two songs, 11:04, a free jazz quartet with Pat Thomas (piano), Antonin Gerbal (drums), Joel Grip (bass), and Seymour Wright (alto sax). They had a good album out in 2021. This could fit into another. B+(*) [bc]

Zoh Amba: O, Sun (2021 [2022], Tzadik): Young tenor saxophonist, from Tennessee, first album of many released in 2022 -- I count six in my tracking file -- making her enough of a big deal that she got an in-depth profile in the New York Times. Quartet with Micah Thomas (piano), Thomas Morgan (bass), and Joey Baron (drums), with producer John Zorn joining for one track (alto sax, on "Holy Din"). Some hot streaks, but mostly this is toned down nicely. A- [dl]

JoVia Armstrong & Eunoia Society: The Antidote Suite (2022, Black Earth Music): First album, has a fair number of side-credits (percussion and vocals) going back to Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble in 2002. Composes and plays "hybrid cajon kit" here. Group also features Leslie DeShazor (violin), plus various guests including Mitchell (flute), Jeff Parker (guitar), Yaw Agyeman (vocals), and Teh'Ray Hale (rapper). B+(**) [bc]

Balance: Conjure (2020 [2022], Two Rooms): Saxophonist Marcus Elliot and pianist Michael Malis, with drums (Gerald Cleaver) on two tracks, and spoken vocals (Chace Morris) on two more. B+(**) [bc]

Barcelona Clarinet Players: Fantasías Barcelónicas: A Tribute to Paquito D'Rivera (2021 [2022], Sunnyside): Spanish (or Catallan?) quartet: two clarinets, basset horn, and bass clarinet, with the Cuban object of their affection sitting in on four (of eleven) tracks. B+(*) [sp]

Basher: Doubles (2021 [2022], Sinking City): New Orleans group led by tenor saxophonist Byron Asher, who has several group albums, with Aurora Nealand on alto sax, Daniel Meinecke (synthesizers), and two drummers. A potent mix of avant riffing with swarming rhythm, not that it always works. B+(*) [bc]

Battle Trance: Green of Winter (2022, New Amsterdam): Saxophone quartet, third studio album, all tenors, led by composer Travis Laplante, with Patrick Breiner, Matthew Nelson, and Jeremy Viner. B+(*) [sp]

The Baylor Project: The Evening: Live at Apparatus (2022, Be a Light): Singer Jean Baylor, husband-drummer Marcus Baylor, a band with Terry Brewer on keyboards, Yasuhi Nakamura on bass, and a horn section (trumpet, trombone, tenor/soprano sax). B+(**) [sp]

Karl Berger/Kirk Knuffke: Heart Is a Melody (2022, Stunt): The cornet player could claim this, but much respect to the 87-year-old German who plays vibes, piano, Rhodes, and Melodica. Also to the smaller-print names on the cover: Jay Anderson (bass) and Matt Wilson (drums). B+(***) [sp]

Ran Blake: Looking Glass (2015 [2021], A-Side): Pianist, about 80 when he recorded this, one of many solo albums. Thoughtful and unpredictable as ever. B+(***) [sp]

Blue Lines Trio: Chance and Change (2022, Casco): Dutch group, debut album 2014, with compositions by Michiel Scheen (piano) and Raoul van der Weide (bass, crackle box, sound objects), plus George Hadow on drums. Most impressive when they pick up the pace and break free. B+(***) [bc]

Blue Moods: Myth & Wisdom (2021 [2022], Posi-Tone): The label's house band -- Diego Rivera (tenor sax), Art Hirahara (piano), Boris Kozlov (bass), and Joe Strasser (drums), with Dave Kikoski on piano for 3 (of 10) tracks -- kick off the Mingus centenary year with ten favorites. B+(**) [sp]

Surya Botofasina: Everyone's Children (2022, Spiritmuse): Keyboard player, based in New York, a follower of Alice Coltrane, bills this debut as "spiritual avant-garde music," though it ticks most of the boxes for ambient, then starts to build something more grandiose, which eventually turns into just long. B+(*) [bc]

Staffan Bråsjö: Stratosfär (2020 [2022], self-released): Swedish pianist (also plays organ here, and conducts choir elsewhere), seems to be his first album, although he has side-credits, including the group Into the Wild. Trio with Josefin Runsteen (mostly violin) and Vilhelm Bromander (bass). With the notes citing Bach and Beethoven, this could pass as classical chamber music, but must be jazz because I find it very likable. B+(***) [bc]

Anna Butterss: Activities (2022, Colorfield): Bassist, both electric and acoustic, originally from Australia but based in Los Angeles, appears on Jeff Parker's Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, produces a similar, subtle, shifting groove album here, dubbing in guitar, keyboards, percussion, and flute, along with bits of vocal. Josh Johnson plays sax on two tracks, and there are spot drums/percussion credits. B+(***) [sp]

Frank Carlberg Trio: Reflections 1952 (2021 [2022], 577): Finnish pianist, based in New York, couple dozen albums since 1992. Trio with John Hébert (bass) and Francisco Mela (drums), with a couple vocal spots. The date was a turning point for Thelonious Monk, with reflections on his music, but nothing as simple as a cover. B+(***) [bc]

François Carrier/Alexander von Schlippenbach/John Edwards/Michel Lambert: Unwalled (2022, Fundacja Sluchaj): Alto sax, piano, bass, drums. It seems like Quebec natives Carrier and Lambert have spent much of the last two decades wandering around Europe in search of inspiring piano and bass partners. They finally hit the jackpot in Berlin. A- [dl]

Chicago Soul Jazz Collective Meets Dee Alexander: On the Way to Be Free (2022, JMarq): First group album, so it's hard to picture them without the singer, who is a major asset. B+(*) [sp]

Trish Clowes: A View With a Room (2021 [2022], Greenleaf Music): British saxophonist (tenor/soprano), six albums on Basho before this one, a quartet with Ross Stanley (keyboards), guitar, and drums. Nicely appointed postbop. B+(**) [sp]

Theo Croker Quartet: Jazz at Berlin Philharmonic XII: Sketches of Miles (2021 [2022], ACT): American trumpet player, albums since 2007, quartet -- Danny Grissett (piano), Joshua Ginsburg (bass), and Gregory Hutchinson (drums) -- backed by Berliner Philharmonic conducted by Magnus Lindgren, in a long, surefire program that draws on Miles Davis. B+(**) [sp]

Espen Eriksen Trio Featuring Andy Sheppard: In the Mountains (2022, Rune Grammofon): Norwegian pianist, Trio with Lars Tormod Jenset (bass) and Andreas Bye (drums) has eight albums, this the second joined by the saxophonist (3/7 tracks). Piano is solid on its own, but the sax is special. B+(***) [sp]

Extended: Without Notice (2020 [2022], self-released): New Orleans-based piano trio -- Oscar Rossignoli, Matt Booth, Brad Webb -- all three write songs. Released an album, Harbinger in 2019, that I misread and took the title to be the group name. (Fixing that is going to be a pain.) Meanwhile, another smart set. B+(**) [bc]

Ezra Collective: Where I'm Meant to Be (2022, Partisan): British jazz quintet, led by drummer Femi Koleoso, with Ife Ogunjobi (trumpet), James Mollison (tenor sax), Joe Armon-Jones (keyboards), and TJ Koleoso (bass). Second album, mostly a groove I find very attractive, various guest spots including vocal features (Sampa the Great, Kojey Radical, Emeli Sandé, Nao). B+(**) [sp]

Fazer: Plex (2022, City Slang): German quintet, with trumpet (Matthias Lindermayr), guitar (Paul Brändle), bass, and two drummers. Some sort of post-rock fusion vibe, but the trumpet has some moves, and it's never overly pat. B+(**) [sp]

Anthony Ferrara: Cold Faded (2022, SteepleChase): Young tenor saxophonist, based in New York, second album, gets a veteran rhythm section: Gary Versace (piano), Jay Andersen (bass), and Billy Drummond (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Free Form Funky Freqs: Hymn of the 3rd Galaxy (2020-21 [2022], Ropeadope): Funk-fusion all-star jam: G. Calvin Weston (drums), Vernon Reid (guitar), and Jamaaladeen Tacuma (bass). Third album, after ones in 2008 and 2013. Could be freer (or for that matter, funkier), but lots of pyrotechnic guitar. B+(*) [bc]

Charlie Gabriel: Eighty Nine (2022, Sub Pop): Longtime clarinet/tenor sax player with Preservation Hall Jazz Band, steps out front with an album named for his age, perhaps not a debut, but should be. A banner proclaims "Preservation Hall Presents," and with Ben Jaffe producing the band backs up his old songs, but nothing that screams "trad jazz." He sings a couple, but not as eloquent as his sax. B+(***) [sp]

Marshall Gilkes: Cyclic Journey (2022, Alternate Side): Trombonist, sixth album since 2008, a nine-part suite with a fairly large (12-piece) group: a wide range of brass, but no reeds. This has a lovely sound, but triggers my anti-classical reflex. B+(*) [sp]

Onno Govaert + Martina Verhoeven/Dirk Serries: Twofold (2021 [2022], A New Wave of Jazz, 2CD): Dutch drummer, albums since 2008, offers two substantial duo discs, one with piano (45:38), the other with guitar (42:10). B+(***) [bc]

Pasquale Grasso: Be-Bop! (2022, Sony Masterworks): Italian guitarist, seventh album since 2015, most solo but this one adds bass (Ari Roland) and drums (Keith Balla), playing one original, one Monk, seven songs by Charlie Parker and/or Dizzy Gillespie, plus "I'm in a Mess," which Gillespie recorded in 1951, and Samara Joy sings. B+(**) [sp]

Craig Harris: Managing the Mask (2021 [2022], Aquastra): Trombonist, also credited with didgeridoo and vocals (three tracks), started with Sun Ra (1976-80), recorded a couple of notable albums for Soul Note in the 1980s, hasn't released a lot more but his 2005 Souls Within the Veil was masterful. B+(**) [sp]

Ulf Ivarsson/Bill Laswell: Nammu (2022, Ropeadope): Two bassists, one Swedish, the other American, have similar careers on the fringes of jazz and pop, leads a group here with Thomas Backman (baritone/alto sax, bass clarinet), organ, and drums. Better for its heavy grooves than ambient affectations. B+(**) [sp]

Keefe Jackson/Jim Baker/Julian Kirshner: Routines (2019 [2022], Kettle Hole): Saxophonist from Arkansas, in Chicago since 2001, Discogs lists 12 albums and twice that many groups. Plays tenor and sopranino here, with piano/synthesizer and drums. Very hit and miss: great in spots, then hits a tone I can't stand. B [bc]

Ant Law & Alex Hitchcock: Same Moon in the Same World (2020-21 [2022], Outside In Music): British, guitar and saxophone, both have previous albums, recorded this during lockdown with various guests -- exact credits are hard to come by. B+(**) [sp]

Janel Leppin: Ensemble Volcanic Ash (2022, Cuneiform): Cellist, also plays keyboards, sixth album since 2011, married to guitarist Anthony Pirog (probably a subject for further research), who amps up the string contingent here (cello, harp, and Luke Stewart on bass). They're joined by two saxophonists (Sarah Hughes on alto, Brian Settles on tenor), with Larry Ferguson on drums. B+(***) [dl]

Joyce Moreno: Brasileiras Canções (2022, Biscoito Fino): Brazilian singer, started in late 1960s, just used her first name until 2009. B+(**) [sp]

Paal Nilssen-Love Circus: Pairs of Three (2021 [2022], PNL): Norwegian drummer, many projects including The Thing. New group here: a sextet with trumpet (Thomas Johansson), alto sax (Signe Emmelulth), accordion, guitar, and bass, plus South African singer Juliana Venter -- who may color background, or free associate (at one point sampling "Strawberry Fields Forever" then sliding into "we are the victims of the Deep State"), or just lay out. Much going on here. B+(***) [bc]

Jeff Parker ETA IVtet: Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy (2019-21 [2022], Eremite): Guitarist, I still associate him with Chicago but he's moved on to Los Angeles, worked in avant-jazz and post-rock groups and produced a wide range of albums under his own name. Four tracks here from three dates, ranging 18:00-23:37, are ambient vibe pieces with some meat on their bones, from a quartet with Josh Johnson (alto sax & pedals), Anna Butterss (bass), and Jay Bellerose (drums). A- [dl]

Pillbox Patti: Florida (2022, Monument): Florida native Nicolette Hayford, has been kicking around Nashville a decade or so, accumulating songs about the hard life, admitting youth is past and barely notice, leaving her cohort "a little fucked up, but we're still breathing." Debut album, a short one (8 songs, 29:15). B+(**) [sp]

Ishmael Reed: The Hands of Grace (2022, Reading Group): Famous novelist and poet -- I read The Freelance Pallbearers shortly after it came out in 1967 but lost track after The Last Days of Louisiana Red (1974) -- crossed over to jazz when Kip Hanrahan produced his Conjure albums, then released a collection of his piano in 2003. More piano here, mostly solo but some accompanied by flute, guitar, violin, and/or voice (Tennessee Reed). Nothing great, but catches your interest. B+(**) [bc]

Revelators Sound System: Revelators (2022, 37d03d): Jazz side project of MC Taylor (Hiss Golden Messenger) and Cameron Ralston (The Spacebomb House Band). B+(*) [sp]

Stephen Riley: My Romance (2021 [2022], SteepleChase): Mainstream tenor saxophonist, steady run of albums since 2007, this one a trio with Brian Charette (organ) and Billy Drummond (drums). B+(***) [sp]

Gonzalo Rubalcaba & Trio D'ÉTÉ: Turning Point (2018 [2022], 5Passion): Cuban pianist, long based in Florida, many albums since 1985. This is a trio with Matthew Brewer (bass) and Eric Harland (drums), playing seven original Rubalcaba pieces. B+(***) [sp]

Rich Ruth: I Survived, It's Over (2022, Third Man): Given name Michael Ruth, based in Nashville, plays guitar, bass, keyboards, percussion. Second album, billed as ambient but a little loud for that, even before the saxophones (3 + flute) kick in. B [sp]

James Singleton: Malabar (2022, Sinking City): Bassist, from New Orleans, has been around a while but doesn't have much as leader. This is boundary-pushing postbop, with' two saxophones (Rex Gregory and Brad Walker), guitar, drums, and vibes/percussion (Mike Dillon). B+(**) [sp]

Gary Smulyan: Tadd's All, Folks (2021 [2022], SteepleChase): Baritone saxophonist, twenty-some albums since 1997, plays Tadd Dameron songs here, backed by piano (Pete Malinverni), bass (David Wong), and drums (Matt Wilson), sharing the spotlight with vocalist Anaïs Reno. B+(**) [sp]

SWR Big Band/Magnus Lindgren/John Beasley: Bird Lives (2021, ACT): German big band, founded 1951 in Stuttgart attached to public radio station SWR, Discogs lists 50+ albums since 1998, nearly all vehicles for guest stars. Both Lindgren, a Swedish saxophonist, and Beasley, an American pianist, are into big band arranging, and they've lined up a long list of stars -- e.g., Chris Potter and Joe Lovano on tenor sax, Charles McPherson and Miguel Zenón on alto -- to plow through Charlie Parker's songbook. This has some big moments, but perhaps a bit too much formaldehyde? B+(*) [sp]

Jamaaladeen Tacuma/Mary Halvorson: Strings & Things (2014 [2022], Jam-All Productions): Bass and guitar duo, plus some electronics, recorded on the sly during a tour in Japan. Typical of her guitar style in a friendly context. Seven tracks, 28:52. B+(**) [bc]

Thollem: Obstacle Illusion (2021 [2022], Astral Spirits): Pianist, last name McDonas, three dozen albums since 2004, four pieces here, each between 18:13 and 18:45. No credits for other musicians, but second piece sounds like a mix of organ and electronics. B+(*) [bc]

Micah Thomas: Piano Solo (2022, LP345): Young pianist, impressive in several recent side-credits, has chops and ideas. B+(**) [sp]

Pat Thomas & XT [Seymour Wright/Paul Abbott]: Akisakila/Attitudes of Preparation (Mountains, Oceans, Trees) (2018 [2022], Edition Gamut): British pianist plays tribute to Cecil Taylor by arranging his 1973 piece, with drums and sax, like the original with Andrew Cyrille and Jimmy Lyons. As with the original, the thrash is pretty intense. Finishes with an interview with Cecil Taylor, which Thomas vamps around with. Discogs gives Will Holder a co-credit, for wrapping the album up in small type I can't read. B+(***) [bc]

Tess Tyler: Fractals [Vol. 1] (2022, Manners McDade): Composer, from Bristol, first album (although there's a Vol. 2 out the same day -- the volume numbers aren't on the covers, but referred to on Bandcamp). No credits, but a video shows her playing piano with electronics and a drummer. A- [bc]

Tess Tyler x Spindle Ensemble: Fractals [Vol. 2] (2022, Manners McDade): Five songs from Vol. 1 performed with the composer on piano, accompanied by a Bristol-based string quartet, intended to offer another view into the compositions. All aspects are reduced, including length (30:21). B+(*) [bc]

Johannes Wallmann: Precarious Towers (2021 [2022], Shifting Paradigm): German pianist, fourth album, postbop quintet with Sharel Cassity (alto sax), Mitch Shiner (vibes), bass, and drums. B+(**) [sp]

Yellowjackets: Parallel Motion (2022, Mack Avenue): Fairly popular jazz fusion group, debut 1981, keyboard player Russell Ferrante the only original member, but saxophonist Bob Mintzer joined in 1990, and keeps the group respectable, even when they offer little else of interest. B [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Don Ayler: In Florence 1981 (1981 [2022], Railroad Town Music): Trumpet player, brother of saxophonist Albert Ayler, played in many of his brother's 1960s bands, quit after Albert died in 1970, and didn't play until the late 1970s. This live septet is the only thing recorded under his name: originally released on three LPs. It's basically six 15:41-17:27 pieces (107:02, including an extra spoken bit), performed by a mostly obscure septet -- only name I recognize is bassist Richard Willimams (he did a stretch with Sun Ra), but saxophonists Frank Doblekar and Abdul Rahim Mustafa (Donald Strickland) are honorary Aylers, and the guitar and piano can emerge from the cracks. Nice to hear them keep the faith. A- [sp]

Donald Byrd: Live: Cookin' With Blue Note at Montreux (1973 [2022], Blue Note): Trumpet player (1932-2013), from Detroit, started in hard bop c. 1956, was a mainstay of the Blue Note label from 1959, when it entered a golden age, through its late-1960s decline, his experiments in fusion and funk, all the way to 1976. Group here represents his electric funk period, with Larry Mizell's synthesizers, electric piano (Kevin Toney), guitar (Barney Perry), and bass (Henry Franklin), drums and congas, two saxophones, and a second trumpeter (Fonce Mizell, who worked at Motown). B+(*) [sp]

Jean-Charles Capon/Philippe Maté/Lawrence "Butch" Morris/Serge Rahoerson (1977, Souffle Continu -21): French cellist (1936-2011), swung both ways in groups like Bach Modern Quintet and Baroque Jazz Trio, in a quartet here with tenor sax, trumpet, and drums. B+(***) [bc]

Ellery Eskelin/Gerry Hemingway: From the Archives: Live at the Stone in NYC, 2010 (2010 [2022], Auricle): Tenor sax and drums duo, a couple years after they recorded a similar duo called Inbetween Spaces. Three improv pieces totalling 59:53. A bit tentative, but impressive when they get going. B+(***) [bc]

Ronnie Foster: Two Headed Freap (1972 [2022], Blue Note): Organ player, from Buffalo, first album of five released 1972-75 by Blue Note, had two 1978-79 Columbias, not much since until his Reboot (Blue Note) this year, which may have motivated a luxury vinyl reissue. Funk grooves with Gene Bertoncini (guitar), George Duvivier (bass), and Jimmy Johnson (drums), plus a little extra glitz on harp and vibes. B+(*) [sp]

ICP Orchestra: 30 Yr Jubileum 1997: Day 1 (1997 [2022], ICP): From a "three-day festival/jubileum/party in 1997 to celebrate the 30 year anniversary of ICP." The lineup evolved over time, but this one is especially memorable: Misha Mengelberg (piano), Han Bennink (drums), Thomas Heberer (trumpet), Wolter Wierbos (trombone), Michael Moore (alto sax/clarinet), Ab Baars (clarinet/tenor sax), Ernst Reijseger and Tristan Honsinger (cello), and Ernst Glerum (bass). Add guests Steve Lacy (soprano sax) and Roswell Rudd (trombone), and of course they're playing Herbie Nichols and Thelonious Monk. Four tracks, 31:19. B+(***) [bc]

ICP Orchestra: 30 Yr Jubileum 1997: Day 2 (1997 [2022], ICP): A much longer set (114:28), opening with three songs by guest Cor Fuhler (piano/organ/keyolin), with Louis Moholo (drums) and Roswell Rudd (trombone) also sitting in. After that, it's a kaleidoscope of Mengelberg pieces (with a Moholo co-credit). A- [bc]

ICP Orchestra: 30 Yr Jubileum 1997: Day 3 (1997 [2022], ICP): A third set, runs 52:15, with Roswell Rudd guesting again, playing Mengelberg pieces plus a Herbie Nichols at the end. B+(***) [bc]

Ahmad Jamal: Live in Paris (1971 [2022], Transversales Disques): Newly uncovered "lost tapes" from a live performance, three fairly long piano trio pieces (39:44), with Jamil Nasser (bass) and Frank Gant (drums). These are "excerpts from the full performance," but they are superb throughout. A- [bc]

Jack McDuff: Live at Parnell's (1982 [2022], Soul Bank Music): Organ player Eugene McDuffy, recorded a ton 1960-65 for Prestige, several albums 1969-70 for Blue Note, and had a bit of a revival in the 1990s with Concord. This was from a period when he recorded little, selected from a week in Seattle, released on 3-LP (comes to 118:28). There is some dispute over who else is playing, but the sax and guitar are both rougher and more stronger than I'd expect. B+(**) [sp]

Brother Jack McDuff: Moon Rappin' (1969 [2022], Blue Note): One of four albums the organ player released on Blue Note 1969-70, reissued this year in the label's Classic Vinyl Series. With uncredited guitar, bass, drums, and tenor sax/flute (somewhere). Still, the organ is what matters. B+(**) [sp]

Thelonious Monk: Celebrating 75 Years of His First Recordings Revisited (1947-52 [2022], Ezz-Thetics): "23 Remastered Thelonious Monk Titles From The Blue Note Recordings." A selection from the recordings Blue Note has long hawked as The Genius of Modern Music, as well as in various compilations (The Very Best is a personal favorite, but this is half-again as long: 71:42). Revolutionary in its day, repertoire now. B+(***) [bc]

Thelonious Monk Quartet: Live Five Spot 1958 Revisited (1958 [2022], Ezz-Thetics): More cherry-picking among the newly copyright-free classics. This is the same music Riverside picked for two LPs: Thelonious in Action and Misterioso, remastered with minor edits to fit a single CD. Johnny Griffin plays tenor sax, with Ahmed Abdul-Malik on bass and Roy Haynes on drums. Robert Christgau cites a Griffin solo on Misterioso as life-changing, but I'd be hard-pressed to tell you which, but note that the other album was the one where he got a "featuring" credit. [NB: Lonehill Jazz has its own competing Complete Live at the Five Spot 1958, including additional non-album material on 2-CD. This album is basically the first disc plus one cut from the second.] A- [bc]

Old music:

None.

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Lakecia Benjamin: Phoenix (Whirlwind) [01-27]
  • Fred Hersch & Esperanza Spalding: Alive at the Village Vanguard (Palmetto) [01-06]
  • Mike LeDonne/Eric Alexander/Jeremy Pelt/Kenny Washington/Peter Washington: The Heavy Hitters (Cellar) [01-20]
  • Tyler Mitchell Octet: Sun Ra's Journey (Cellar) [01-20]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Tuesday, December 13, 2022

Speaking of Which

I opened this during a brief lull on Friday, adding a bit here and there, but by Sunday evening I was so swamped with my collation of the 17th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll that it became clear that I wouldn't be able to find time to post until after Monday's deadline.l That's pushed it back two days, and will push Music Week back another, to Wednesday (at the earliest). In making a final round, I haven't limited myself to Sunday's articles, but I am trying to keep it light and manageable.

Zack Beauchamp: [12-09] The bizarre far-right coup attempt in Germany, explained by an expert: Interview with Peter Neumann. Also:

Melissa del Bosque: [12-11] Arizona governor builds border wall of shipping crates in final days of office.

Jessica Corbett: [12-10] Kari Lake files suit to reverse her loss in race for Arizona governor: I've occasionally wondered who is the Trumpiest governor in America -- Ron DeSantis is certainly the most prominent, although Kristi Noem pops into mind -- but to be truly Trumpy, you have to lose an election and refuse to let it go. Lake is the only one other than Trump with the ego to do that, although one suspects that even she is only following the Leader.

Tim Craig: [12-10] As bitcoin plummets, Miami vows to hold onto its crypto dreams: Paul Krugman linked to this and tweeted: "Republicans have long insisted that governments shouldn't try to pick winners. So I guess they've decided to pick losers instead." He continued: "Crypto has always been a combination of technobabble and libertarian derp. But the sheer scope of the scam continues to amaze. The fact that there's still an FTX arena is the cherry on top."

Connor Echols: [12-09] Diplomacy Watch: NATO infighting continues as Putin signals long war: "Western policy on Ukraine is hitting a snag as Turkey and Hungary flex their new-found geopolitical muscles." Little here beyond the hostage swap of Brittney Griner for Viktor Bout.

More on Ukraine:

Rhoda Feng: [12-07] The Gamification of Everything Is No Fun: Review of Adrian Hon: You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us.

William Hartung: [12-09] New spending bill squanders billions on dysfunctional weapons programs: "The increase alone [$80 billion] from last year is more than what some of the world's biggest countries spend on their own defense budgets." This year's bill allocates $858 billion. More on this:

  • Andrew Cockburn: [12-08] The B-21: another Air Force diva that can't deliver?

  • Fred Kaplan: [12-08] There Is No Good Reason for a Defense Budget This Large: "And yet, no one is even talking about the additional $45 billion." That's beyond the DOD's request; $80 billion over last year (+10%); adjusted for inflation, it's still "the largest U.S. military budget since World War II."

  • Charles P Pierce: [12-08] The Money the US Spends on its Military Is Obscene, and So Is the Way It's Legislated.

  • Li Zhou: [12-07] Why Republicans are so intent on rolling back the military's Covid-19 vaccine mandate. Let me give you my theory: Most Americans were willing and even eager to get vaccinated, but a tiny minority objected, giving all sorts of cockamamie reasons that basically boiled down to them insisting on putting their personal health concerns over public ones. I'm not unsympathetic to individuals taking that stand, although in this case I think their reasoning is unsound, and because it shows their disinterest in public health. However, the military is supposedly committed not to the individuals that constitute it but to the core and the public as a whole. When one joins, one gives up a certain amount of personal freedom to support that whole, and in this context, vaccine mandates are a small personal price to pay. By the way, the military has a long history of requiring vaccinations and much more, ranging from standard hair cuts to (in my father's WWII case) circumcision. Why Republicans should choose to take up the anti-vax cause in the military has less to do with opposition to the imposition of state power -- which they often promote for causes they like -- than with the idea that anti-vax soldiers are politically sympathetic to their agenda, and their desire to grow a political column within the armed forces that might eventually be used to seize power and impose the dictatorship of their dreams. After all, soldiers who put the public welfare and a belief in the sanctity of law ahead of their personal political allegiances aren't likely to overthrow the government. By the way, it's not true that all anti-vaxxers are right-wingers. Only the ones who attempt to impose their idiot views on others are.

Shirin Ghaffary: [12-09] What the Twitter files don't tell us: "The documents are ammo for conservatives, even if they lack crucial context." Elon Musk selected Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss to orchestrate these leaks, figuring they'd give them the political spin he wanted. Also on this:

Margaret Hartmann: [12-08] Donald Trump Cost Lara Trump Her Fox News Gig: "Nepotism giveth, and nepotism taketh away."

Eric Herschtal: [12-08] How the Right Turned "Freedom" Into a Dog Whistle: "A new book traces the long history of cloakroom racism in the language of resistance to an overbearing federal government." Review of Jefferson Cowie: Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power.

Ellen Ioanes: [12-10] Iran's months-long protest movement, explained. Also:

Ed Kilgore: [12-13] Is DeSantis More Electable Than Trump?: This is not a question Democrats should fret over. Better or worse? Perhaps, but best to prepare against the union of their two sets of views, which is often worse than any divergences you might be able to discover. (And note that Trump's deviances from Republican orthodoxy are like subatomic particles: tiny, unstable, and very short-lived.) No real need to go down this rabbit hole, but:

Keren Landman: [12-06] The US has never recorded this many positive flu tests in one week: "And health care systems are getting crushed . . . again."

Rebecca Leber: [12-10] The weird Republican turn against corporate social responsibility: "Companies say they want to acknowledge environmental impacts. Republicans are mad about that." It used to be easy to think that Republicans are simply shills for big business, and that they'll reflexively support anything that adds to corporate bottom lines. The reality is more complex and more nuanced than that -- much more than I can unpack here, but whatever the political and ideological underpinning may be, for all practical purposes it just seems like Republicans really want a world that is even more dystopian than the one they've already created.

Eric Levitz: [12-08] Climate Hawks Should Have Given Joe Manchin His Pipeline: Because Manchin's "permitting reform" bill would have made it easier not just to build his pet pipeline but to install more wind power and transmission lines, which are currently bogged down in the permit process.

Neal Meyer/Simon Grassmann: [12-12] The Case for Proportional Representation. This is a "response" to another piece, by Benjamin Studebaker: [06-16] Proportional Representation Is a Terrible Idea That the Left Should Not Embrace. From a practical standpoint, I'm not sure exactly that they are proposing (or opposing), but I had a related idea a couple weeks back, and this gives me a chance to jot it down. My idea wasn't to divide the number of representatives up proportionately, but to keep districts (including states) and award weighted votes to the top two (or possibly more than two, subject to some minimum threshold) representatives. With a two-party system, each district would have two representatives: one Republican, one Democrat, with their voting weight set by the election split (rounded up for the winner, down for second place). The Senate could also be organized this way, with or without factoring the state population in. (Obviously, factoring it in would eliminate one big problem with the Senate.) I'm not sure what you'd do about executives (other than reduce their power). Think about it: this would solve a lot of problems, starting with gerrymandering; it would give more people a stake in representative government (living in Kansas, I can testify that at present "my" representatives are totally fucking useless); it would also reduce the incentive people have to invest in campaigns, given that most districts can only be swayed by a few percentage points. What this has to do with "left" political strategy is beyond me, but a more functional democracy seems likely to be a good thing.

Ian Millhiser:

Françoise Mouly: [12-02] Remembering the artist Aline Kominsky-Crumb, a trailblazing funny woman: Dead, at age 74.

Nathan J Robinson: [12-12] Why We Need Book Reviews: "Books are where the knowledge is. A flourishing democracy depends on a culture that care about and talks about books." Amen to that. Given that my own reading capacity is so starkly limited, I find that it also helps to have a map to books I (mostly) haven't read.

Paul Rosenberg: [12-10] How the New York Times helped Republicans win the House: "The Gray Lady told America that rising crime and worsening inflation were driven by Democrats. None of it was true." Among other things, quotes Dean Baker: "In short, the media decided that we had a terrible economy, and they were not going to let the data get in the way."

Storer H Rowley: [12-05] Biden Faces Netanyahu and Israel's Most Right-Wing Government. One imagines that Democrats including Biden should take offense at the rampant racism and the callous contempt for human rights and peace, but they've tolerated (and for all practical purposes endorsed) such behavior in increasing amounts for decades. It's hard to see why that changes now, although we are seeing more articles like Uriel Abulof: [11-25] "Have I Just Met the Jewish Hitler?"

Barbara Slavin: [12-10] When will the US learn that sanctions don't solve its problems? "Harsh economic penalties rarely, if ever, work to change a targeted regime's behavior; so why do we still use them?" Could have filed this under Ukraine, but it's a much more general problem. In Russia's case, sanctions -- even if ineffective -- may be justifiable as a way to do something in response to invasion short of escalating the war. One might also imagine scenarios where the threat of sanctions might work to deter undesired behavior, but that's only likely to work if you're threatening to take away something a country depends on: South Africa is the poster case, and Israel might work the same way (at least that's the hope of the BDS movement). And relieving sanctions can be useful as a diplomatic bargaining chip, but only if you're willing to bargain and withdraw the sanctions: Iran and North Korea should be success examples here, but aren't, because ultimately preferred to nurse their grudges over allowing other nations any degree of normal freedom.

Jeffrey St Clair: [12-09] Roaming Charges: The Mask of Order.

Emily Stewart: [12-13] FTX's implosion and SBF's arrest, explained. This has become much bigger news than I care to go into. One wonders, for instance, if the decision to prosecute Brinkman-Fried isn't an attempt to whitewash the rest of the crypto racket, much like Bernie Madoff became the fall guy for a much larger and deeper financial scandal. But, what the hell:

Li Zhou: [12-06] Raphael Warnock is officially Democrats' 51st senator. Here's why that matters. On the other hand, days later the other shoe dropped: Christian Paz: [12-09] How Kyrsten Sinema's decision to leave the Democratic Party will change the Senate. She's registering as an Independent, and says she won't caucus with the Republicans, so that probably means that for organizational purposes Democrats will retain a 51-49 advantage, but now dependent on three independents (also Angus King and Bernie Sanders). More on these stories:

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, December 5, 2022

Music Week

December archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 39203 [39159] rated (+44), 32 [33] unrated (-1: 4 new, 28 old).

I sent a deadline reminder to Jazz Critics Poll invitees on Friday, and get a deluge of ballots back, bringing the total to 55. Took a long time to get them all counted, so yesterday's Speaking of Which was exceptionally short, mostly limited to links I might want to look back at later. Actual deadline is still a week away: December 12. We got 156 ballots last year, and I sent out more than 200 invites this year, so I expect a lot more work coming in.

With all this, I had little time to review my own prospective ballot. However, I might as well practice what I preach and settle on a ballot now (with extra mentions for context:

New albums:

  1. Tyshawn Sorey Trio + 1 [With Greg Osby]: The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism (Pi) **
  2. Dave Rempis/Avreeayl Ra Duo: Bennu (Aerophonic) **
  3. Omri Ziegele Where's Africa: That Hat (Intakt) **
  4. Marta Sanchez: SAAM (Spanish American Art Museum) (Whirlwind)
  5. Rodrigo Amado: Refraction Solo: Live at Church of the Holy Ghost (Trost)
  6. Andrew Cyrille/William Parker/Enrico Rava: 2 Blues for Cecil (TUM)
  7. Tomas Fujiwara's Triple Double: March (Firehouse 12)
  8. Avram Fefer Quartet: Juba Lee (Clean Feed) *
  9. Wadada Leo Smith: The Emerald Duets (TUM, 5CD)
  10. Dave Sewelson: Smooth Free Jazz (Mahakala Music '21) **
  11. Rob Brown/Juan Pablo Carletti: Fertile Garden (NoBusiness)
  12. Luke Stewart's Silt Trio: The Bottom (Cuneiform) **
  13. Manel Fortiá: Despertar (Segell Microscopi)
  14. David Murray/Brad Jones/Hamid Drake Brave New World Trio: Seriana Promethea (Intakt) **
  15. Fred Hersch: Breath by Breath (Palmetto)
  16. Thumbscrew: Multicolored Midnight (Cuneiform) **
  17. Arild Andersen Group: Affirmation (ECM) **
  18. Darren Johnston: Life in Time (Origin)
  19. Mostly Other People Do the Killing: Disasters Vol. 1 (Hot Cup) *
  20. Sun Ra Arkestra Directed by Marshall Allen: Living Sky (Omni Sound) **

Historical (Reissues and Archival):

  1. William Parker: Universal Tonality (2002, Centering/AUM Fidelity, 2CD)
  2. Horace Tapscott Quintet: Legacies of Our Grandchildren (1995, Dark Tree)
  3. Sam Rivers: Caldera [Sam Rivers Archive Project, Volume 6] (2002, NoBusiness)
  4. Cecil Taylor: The Complete, Legendary, Live Return Concert: The Town Hall, NYC November 4, 1973 (1973, Oblivion) **
  5. Dave Brubeck Trio: Live From Vienna 1967 (Brubeck Editions)
  6. Bill Evans: Morning Glory: The 1973 Concert at the Teatro Gran Rex, Buenos Aires (Resonance) **

Vocal Jazz:

  1. Gerry Hemingway: Afterlife (Auricle)
  2. Moor Mother: Jazz Codes (Anti-)
  3. Jacob Sacks/David Ambrosio/Vinnie Sperrazza: Trio Trio Meets Sheila Jordan (SteepleChase) **

Debut:

  1. Julieta Eugenio: Jump (Greenleaf Music)
  2. Zoh Amba: O, Sun (Tzadik)
  3. Mali Obomsawin: Sweet Tooth (Out of Your Head)

Latin Jazz:

  1. Felipe Salles/Zaccai Curtis/Avery Sharpe/Jonathan Barber: Tiyo's Songs of Life (Tapestry)
  2. Miguel Zenón: Música De Las Américas (Miel Music)
  3. Kalí Rodríguez-Peña: Mélange (Truth Revolution)

Aside from Historical, this mostly corresponds to my highly volatile Best Jazz of 2022 list. My Historical votes have varied from the list for several years now, mostly because I value archival albums over reissues (especially the often-excellent Ezz-Thetics series), and because I value physical CDs over downloads and streaming. That worked against Cecil Taylor, and in favor of Sam Rivers (although I could just as well have picked Dave Brubeck, so there may be some mystery factor at work there).

The Vocal category may also call for some explanation. The Hemingway album has vocals throughout, but isn't jazz in any broadly conventional sense -- you just hear little bits that suggest a jazz sensibility, which is to be expected from one of the great jazz drummers of the last 40 years. Camae Ayewa unconventional in other ways: a poet who first turned to rap then to jazz, her record is more explicitly jazz, but her vocals aren't. I found myself wanting to file several records last year on both lists, as I did Hemingway and Moor Mother this year. On the other hand, if you want a real, classic jazz singer, try Sheila Jordan.

This week's haul is, once again, almost all jazz. A few weeks ago, when I first assembled the EOY Jazz and Non-Jazz files, I was surprised to find, for the first time since I've been splitting them, many more A-listed Non-Jazz albums. The gap has now closed to 68 to 75, and will probably close further next week. My secret tool is getting to see the Jazz Critics Poll ballots first. One thing that's slowed me in the counting is that I've been assembling a list of everything voted for that I haven't heard yet, which is currently 130 albums out of 443. That number has been increasing much faster than I can whittle it down. Most years we get votes for about 600 albums. There seems to be even less consensus than usual this year, so the final number may well exceed expectations.

Meanwhile, other projects -- like the EOY Aggregate -- are languishing. I doubt that will change until the end of the year.

If you're sitting on a Jazz Critics Poll invite, please fill it out and send it in. If you're not, but think you should be and want to fill one out, holler at me. I'm running out of time and energy to vet new voters, but we do have another week left.

New records reviewed this week:

Rodrigo Amado: Refraction Solo: Live at Church of the Holy Ghost (2021 [2022], Trost): Tenor saxophonist from Portugal, I've heard 25 of his albums since Lisbon Improvisation Players in 2002, and this is the 12th I've A-listed, including all but one of the last nine. What makes this one improbable is that it's solo -- as much as I love tenor sax, it's hard for any monophonic instrument to satisfy without some rhythm to nudge it along and/or bass for harmonics (or piano for both). Yet this one works: it opens with "Sweet Freedom," a profound (20:54) meditation on Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins -- a quote from the latter always grabs me -- and two shorter pieces don't outstay their welcome (total: 33:41). A- [cd]

Kate Baker & Vic Juris: Return to Shore: The Duo Sessions (2019 [2022], Strikezone): Jazz singer, has some side credits but this is the first album under her name, co-wrote three songs (out of 10). Date is "shortly before" her guitarist-husband's death, and much of the interest here will be in hearing him in such an intimate setting. But she's every bit as appealing. B+(***) [sp]

Jeb Bishop/Pandelis Karayorgis/Damon Smith: Duals (2021-22 [2022], Driff/Balance Point Acoustics, 3CD): Trombone, piano, bass, three hour-long sets each duos of two of the three. Such duets are intrinsically limited, but each player brings real strengths to the match ups. B+(**) [dl]

Michael Blake: Combobulate (2022, Newvelle): Canadian saxophonist, mostly tenor but credit here is plural, debut 1997, backed here by brass section -- Steven Bernstein on trumpet, Clark Gayton on trombone, Bob Stewart and Marcus Rojas on tuba -- plus drums. B+(***) [dl]

Emmet Cohen: Uptown in Orbit (2022, Mack Avenue): Pianist, albums since 2011 include four Masters Legacy Series volumes -- sessions with Jimmy Cobb, Ron Carter, Benny Golson, and George Coleman -- a respect for tradition he continues here, framed by pieces from Willie "The Lion" Smith and Duke Ellington. Between, you'll find originals plus his arrangements of Neal Hefti, Cedar Walton, and Gerry Mulligan. Backed by bass and drums, half with a horn or two present (Sean Jones on trumpet, Patrick Bartley on alto sax). I have to admit, I'm partial to his stride. B+(**) [sp]

Allen Dennard: Flashback (2022, Allen Dennard Music): Trumpet player from Detroit, seems to be his first album. Annoying lack of info on this album, but he's got some chops. B+(*) [sp]

Dopolarians: Blues for Alvin Fielder: Live at Crosstown Arts, Memphis (2022, Mahakala Music): A tribute to the late drummer (1935-2019), who was born in Mississippi, headed to Chicago, played with Sun Ra, was a charter member of the AACM, eventually returned to the South, and plugged into the tiny free jazz scenes in New Orleans, Memphis, Dallas, and (joining this group in 2018) Little Rock. Billed here as a sextet, core members are Christopher Parker (piano), Chad Fowler (sax), Kelly Hurt (vocals), and Chad Anderson (drums, taking over Fielder's chair), joined here by Marc Franklin (trumpet), Douglas Ewart (sax), and William Parker (bass). Ends with a nice dedication. B+(**) [bc]

Dopolarians: Sunday Morning Sermon (2022, Mahakala Music): No recording date, but obviously before drummer Alvin Fielder died in 2019. Core group is Christopher Parker (piano), Chad Fowler (alto/baritone sax), and Kelley Hurt (vocals), with Fielder on drums and Kidd Jordan on tenor sax. Bassist William Parker is listed on the cover, but not on the Bandcamp page. The piano solos cut down on the fire-breathing, which is probably just as well. B+(**) [bc]

Dezron Douglas: Atalaya (2021 [2022], International Anthem): Bassist, many side credits but only a 2012 live album and a locked-down 2020 duo with wife-harpist Brandee Younger have his name up front. Quartet with sax (Emilio Modeste), keyboards (George Burton, and drums, plus one vocal (Melvis Santa). I like the way the bass leads into the sax, something he must have learned with Pharoah Sanders. I didn't like the vocal, and not just the singer. B+(***) [bc]

Mats Eilertsen: Hymn for Hope (2021, Hemli): Norwegian bassist, more than a dozen albums since 2004 as well as a wide swathe of side-credits. This a quartet with Tore Brunborg (tenor sax), Thomas Dahl (guitar), and Hans Hulbaekmo (drums). Consistently nice vibe here. B+(***) [sp]

Fractal Sextet: Fractal Sextet (2020-22 [2022], Alchemy): Guitarist Stephan Thelen, who has released a couple volumes of Fractal Guitar, got the ball rolling with four compositions, then sent the files around to be developed and detailed by this international coterie: Jon Durant added more guitar, along with Fabio Anile (keyboard), Colin Edwin (bass guitar), Yogev Gabay (drums), and Andi Pupato (percussion). A- [sp]

Satoko Fujii: Hyaku: One Hundred Dreams (2022, Libra): Japanese pianist, very prolific since 1995, even went monthly a couple years back for her 60th birthday. Counts this as her 100th album, and I'm not about to check her math. She rounded up eight frequent collaborators for this, but unlike most nonets, this is light on horns (two trumpets, tenor sax, and bassoon), with double drums and Ikue Mori electronics. A single piece in five parts, but it doesn't feel arranged -- more like a series of do-you-thing solo spots. So it's not one of her more compelling statements, but offers a nice synopsis of a remarkable career (including some of the piano that caught our ears in the first place). A- [cd] [12-09]

Forbes Graham/Jeb Bishop/Pandelis Karayorgis/Nate McBride/Kresten Osgood: Water Lilies (2022, Driff): Artist order as given on cover, but Graham (trumpet) and Bishop (trombone) only play on the fifth and last track (a 30:52 "Quintet Improvisation"). The others (piano, bass, drums) play rhythm there, and trio for the first four tracks (34:14). Both are substantial. B+(***) [dl]

Mark Guiliana Jazz Quartet: The Sound of Listening (2022, Edition): Drummer, from New Jersey, started in the trio Heernt, has leaned toward fusion but this is more postbop, with Jason Rigby (tenor sax/clarinet/flute), Shai Maestro (piano), and Chris Morrissey (bass). B+(**) [sp]

Mats Gustafsson & Nu Ensemble: Hidros 8: Heal (2016 [2022], Trost): Swedish saxophonist (all weights plus related instruments, but probably best known for baritone, which he plays here), main group in 1990s was AALY Trio, followed by The Thing since 2000, but he has many more records. First Hidros album in 2001. Group here is a conduction tentet, with Anna Högberg (alto and bari sax), Susana Santos Silva (trumpet), Per-Åke Holmlander (tuba), Hedvig Mollestad (guitar), Massimo Pupillo (bass), plus turntables, electronics, and two drummers, with an intriguing Christof Kurzmann vocal in the middle of the second side, which then sets up the massive ending we've all been waiting for. A- [bc]

Jo Harrop: The Heart Wants (2021, Lateralize): British jazz singer, billed as her "first self-penned album," but Discogs lists a previous album. Has so-credits on eight (of 12 or 13) songs, with Duke Ellington and Tom Waits among the covers. B+(**) [sp]

Gerry Hemingway: Afterlife (2020-22 [2022], Auricle): Drummer, was part of Anthony Braxton's extraordinary Quartet in the 1980s, also of the long-running BassDrumBone trio with Ray Anderson, and has dozens of significant albums on his own, over 250 in total. Still, none of the others are like this: songs with words, sung or just rapped, over widely varied beats with scattered instrumental colors. Bandcamp page cites 11 contributing musicians with no clue to what or where, since their contributions are just samples applied to the mix. First few second remind me of DJ Shadow. Rest isn't so obvious, but shades from pop to blues, with fanciful rhythm throughout. A- [bc]

Ifsonever: Ifsonever (2022, Jazz & Milk): Daniel Helmer, first album, opens with voiceover presumably to clear his head, follows with ambient electronics with just enough beat to keep it enjoyable. B+(***) [bc]

George V Johnson Jr: Walk Spirit Talk Spirit (2022, Your Majesty): DC-based jazz singer, Discogs lists one previous album, but offers no help parsing this one. Website suggests In Memory of McCoy Tyner as a subtitle, but he only does two Tyner songs, plus pieces by Lou Donaldson, Hank Mobley, Wes Montgomery, Herbie Hancock, Charlie Parker, and Nat Adderley, writing his own lyrics (aside from deferring to Mark Murphy for "Canteloupe Island"). So, vocalese? No credits for the hard-swinging band, either. B+(**) [sp]

Max Johnson Trio: Orbit of Sound (2021 [2022], Unbroken Sounds): Bassist, handful of albums since 2012, composed all five pieces, joined by Anna Webber (tenor sax/flute) and Michael Sarin (drums). B+(***) [sp]

Pandelis Karayorgis Trio: The Hasaan, Hope & Monk Project (2021-22 [2022], Driff): Greek pianist, moved to Boston in 1985, first album (1989) was a Monk set, trio with bassist Nate McBride goes back to 1999, drummer Luther Gray joined by 2012. This mixes six Monk tunes in with pieces by Elmo Hope (3) and Hasaan Ibn Ali (4). B+(**) [dl]

Ruben Machtelinckx + Arve Henriksen: A Short Story (2022, Aspen Edities): Belgian guitarist, eighth album since 2012, a duo with the Norwegian trumpet player. Nice, ambient pairing, always attentive. B+(***) [bc]

Hermon Mehari: Asmara (2022, Komos): Trumpet player, from Eritrea (although Discogs says Kansas City, where he got his degree), has a couple albums -- I was especially taken by his one with Florian Arbenz. Reflects on his war-torn nation here, backed by a band with piano/vibes (Peter Schlamb), bass, and drums, plus Eritrean vocalist Faytinga on two songs. Some terrific trumpet. A- [sp]

Raul Midón: Eclectic Adventurist (2022, Artistry/Mack Avenue): Guitarist, from New Mexico, dozen albums since 1999. Mostly solo. B+(*) [sp]

Per Møllehøj/Kirk Knuffke/Thommy Andersson: 'S Wonderful (2022, Stunt): Danish guitarist, has a couple albums, wrote three (of nine) songs here, with cornetist Knuffke writing two. Those pieces, with Andersson on bass, offer nice instrumental filler between the swing-era covers from Gershwin and Ellington, and two classics (with Knuffke vocals) from W.C. Handy. B+(**) [sp]

Hedvig Mollestad & Trondheim Jazz Orchestra: Maternity Beat (2021 [2022], Rune Grammofon): Norwegian guitarist, sings some, mostly works in her Trio but her brings in the heavy guns: 12-piece avant-jazz group founded in 2015 with a couple dozen albums, each featuring some special guest. Some terrific passages, but bogs down in spots. B+(*) [sp]

Ra Kalam Bob Moses/Damon Smith: Purecicle (2021 [2022], Balance Point Acoustics): Drums and bass duo, Moses goes back to 1975, Smith to 1999. Smith conjures up a lot of quasi-industrial grunge here. B+(**) [sp]

Qasim Naqvi/Wadada Leo Smith/Andrew Cyrille: Two Centuries (2021 [2022], Red Hook): Pakistani drummer, best known in the piano trio Dawn of Midi, composed their pieces and plays modular and minimoog synthesizers, deferring to Cyrille on drums, with Smith on trumpet. One of many fine settings for Smith this year. B+(***) [sp]

Oxbow & Peter Brötzmann: An Eternal Reminder of Not Today: Live at Moers (2018 [2022], Trost): Fringe hardcore rock group from San Francisco -- first three albums, starting in 1989, were titled: Fuckfest, King of the Jews, and Let Me Be a Woman -- pick up a saxophonist, who adds a new dimension to their g-b-d thrash plus words (Eugene Robinson), working hard to fit in and inevitably standing out. B+(***) [bc]

Nicholas Payton: The Couch Sessions (2022, Smoke Sessions): Trumpet player from New Orleans, also keyboards, debut 1993, father played bass and sousaphone in trad jazz bands. Basically a hard bop player, but knows his tradition, and likes to dabble in electronics. Trio with Buster Williams (bass) and Lenny White (drums). Nothing special about his keyb groove, or his rapping, but his trumpet can still light up the room. B+(**) [sp]

Dafnis Prieto Featuring Luciana Souza: Cantar (2021 [2022], Dafnison Music): Cuban drummer, hot shit when he hit New York, though I found his early albums more impressive than enjoyable. Group here -- Peter Apfelbaum (woodwinds), Martin Bejerano (piano), and Matt Brewer (bass) -- manage to keep up, redeeming the herky-jerk rhythms. Singer is probably a plus, too. At least there's no ballad risk. B+(***) [sp]

Scenes: Variable Clouds: Live at the Earshot Jazz Festival (2021 [2022], Origin): Seattle quartet, seventh album since 2006, with Rick Mandyck (tenor sax), John Stowell (guitar), Jeff Johnson (bass), and John Bishop (drums). Closes very strong (with Jim Pepper's "Witchi Tai To"). B+(***) [cd]

Patrick Shiroishi: Evergreen (2021 [2022], Touch): Los Angeles-based saxophonist, huge number of recordings since 2017: Discogs lists 46 albums, 2 singles/EPs, 6 miscellaneous -- which is where this 4-cut, 42:06 set is filed. Starts with cemetery field recordings, adding synths, clarinet, and tenor sax, with a spoken word memoir of the Japanese-American concentration camps. B+(*) [bc]

Tom Skinner: Voices of Bishara (2022, Brownswood/International Anthem/Nonesuch): British drummer, debut album, but Discogs offers 100+ side-credits, including Sons of Kemet, Melt Yourself Down, Owiny Sigoma Band, and the Smile. Two star saxophonists (Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings), with cello and bass. A- [bc]

Cory Smythe: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes (2021 [2022], Pyroclastic): Four original pieces with a large group -- eleven, including singer Sofia Jernberg -- that feels smaller because they pick things apart rather than build them up, followed by seven solo piano takes of the title piece, that sound different because, well, I don't know why. B [cd]

Tyshawn Sorey + 1 [With Greg Osby]: The Off-Off Broadway Guide to Synergism (2022, Pi, 3CD): Drummer-led trio, with Aaron Diehl (piano) and Russell Hall (bass), plus alto saxophonist guest, who makes all the difference, not that the rhythm section doesn't keep him going. Osby was something of a star during his 1995-2005 run on Blue Note, but since then has only released one album as sole leader, so I was surprised that Discogs gives him a steady stream of co-leader credits, like this one. He even wrote two songs here, slipped in with 17 "standards and jazz classics," from Cole Porter and Fats Waller to Ornette Coleman, springboards running anywhere from 7:09 to 20:00. [Haven't played this enough, but pretty sure this is the right grade.] A [dl]

Stephan Thelen: Fractal Guitar 3 (2021-22 [2022], Moonjune): American guitarist, based in Zürich, leads the band Sonar as well as pursuing various solo projects, often tied to mathematical concepts, like the third installment of this series. Each track has 3-5 guitars (Thelen plus Eivind Aarset and Markus Reuter, often Jon Durant) with drums (Manuel Pasquinelli), sometimes keybs, bass, and/or percussion. Patterns: deeply ingrained, finely tuned, just noisy enough. A- [bc]

Rodney Whitaker: Oasis: The Music of Gregg Hill (2022, Origin): Bassist from Detroit, albums since 1996, this his third one featuring Hill's compositions -- Hill is a self-taught composer-pianist based in Lansing, who's still active feeding compositions to several followers, including Bruce Barth (piano here). Strong leads from Terell Stafford (trumpet) and Tim Warfield (tenor/soprano sax), plus four vocals by Rockelle Fortin. B+(**) [cd]

Eri Yamamoto Trio: A Woman With a Purple Wig (2022, Mahakala Music): Japanese pianist, based in New York since 1995, more than a dozen albums since 2006, mostly trios, like this one with David Ambrosio (bass) and Ikuo Takeuchi (drums). She sings a couple songs here, but doesn't show much subtlety as a lyricist. B+(*) [bc]

Jeong Lim Yang: Zodiac Suite: Reassured (2021 [2022], Fresh Sound New Talent): Korean bassist, based in Brooklyn, has a couple previous albums. This one offers a "free reinterpretation" of Mary Lou Williams' 1945 suite, with Santiago Leibson (piano) and Gerald Cleaver (drums). B+(***) [bc]

The Zebra Street Band: Shirwku (2021 [2022], Trytone): Dutch group (well, Amsterdam, more or less): Alistair Payne (trumpet), Salvoandrea Lucifora (trombone/tuba), Andrius Dereviancenko (tenor sax), John Dikeman (baritone sax), plus two drummers (Fabio Galeazzi and Onno Govaert) keeping it bouncy, while the horns riff on brass bands. A- [cd]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Geri Allen/Charlie Haden/Paul Motian: Live at the Village Vanguard (Unissued Tracks) (1990 [2022], DIW): All-star piano-bass-drums trio, supplements the same-titled album released in 1991, which grabbed nine original pieces (Allen 2, Haden 3, Motian 4). The leftovers include some nice covers like "Cherokee" and "In Walked Bud." B+(**) [sp]

Derek Bailey: Domestic Jungle (1990s [2022], Scatter): British avant guitarist (1932-2005), big Penguin Guide favorite but I've only lightly sampled his work. This is a private cassette recording (aside for two tracks released by David Toop in 1997), often guitar played along to the radio or some other unreliable rhythm/noise source -- surprisingly a plus here. B+(***) [bc]

Joyce With Mauricio Maestro: Natureza (1977 [2022], Far Out): Brazilian pop/jazz singer-songwriter since 1969, last name Moreno but usually the first name suffices. Claus Ogerman produced this album in New York, but it didn't get released (until now). Maestro (original surname Figueiredo) wrote or co-wrote four (of 7) songs (Moreno wrote the other three, and shares one of Maestro's credits), plays guitar, and sings (two leads). Drags a bit when he leads, but a spot of Michael Brecker sax clears the fog. B+(**) [sp]

Old music:

Julieta Eugenio: Unaccompanied Saxophone Vol. 1 (2020, Greenleaf Music, EP): Tenor saxophonist, from Argentina, based in New York, released a superb full-length album in 2022, following this EP (4 tracks, 24:54). Four standards, takes them at a sensible pace. B+(**) [bc]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Zack Lober: No Fill3r (Zennez) [2023-02-24]
  • Simon Moullier: Isla (self-released) [2023-02-17]
  • Simona Premazzi: Wave in Gravity: Solo Piano (PRE) [2023-02-17]
  • Jim Snidero: Far Far Away (Savant) [2023-02-03]
  • Jeong Lim Yang: Zodiac Suite: Reassured (Fresh Sound New Talent) [10-29]
  • The Zebra Street Band: Shirwku (Trytone) [08-01]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, December 4, 2022

Speaking of Which

This week's column will be the schematic one I thought I was going to write last week. How do I know? Well, I didn't open this file until 6:00 PM, and I still have other work to get done by bedtime.

Dean Baker: Evidently Baker has been banned from Twitter (see: Left-Wing Twitter Accounts Criticizing Elon Musk Are Being Suspended for "Platform Manipulation and Spam", yet Elon Brings One of America's Most Prominent Nazis Back to Twitter, as Hate Speech's Rise on Twitter Is Unprecedented).

Charles Bethea: [12-04] Will Republicans who have soured on Trump turn out for Herschel Walker? I don't think we're talking about a very big group here, but if you're a Republican and Walker is the only candidate on the ballot, would you bother to vote? Especially when a victory means Walker will be in the public eye, as a "leading light" of the GOP, for six more years?

Christopher Byrd: [12-04] Cory Doctorow wants you to know what computers can and can't do: "A conversation about the 'mediocre monopolists' of Big Tech, the weirdness of crypto, and the real lessons of science fiction."

Patrick Cockburn: [12-05] The Cruel, Dishonest and Shameful Story of Britain's Last Colony May Be Coming to an End: The Chagos Archipelago, in the Indian Ocean.

Connor Echols: [12-02] Diplomacy Watch: Divisions flare in the West as winter looms: "As energy prices rise and temperatures drop, European publics are feeling squeezed by the Ukraine's war's secondary effects." More on Ukraine:

Omar Guerrero: [11-28] Why the Right Can't Boogaloo.

Margaret Hartmann: [10-30] Trump Was Tricked Into Dining With Too Many Antisemites: The story of his life, in a nutshell. A downside of wearing his prejudices and ignorance on his sleeves is that he's amazingly easy to con into saying and/or doing something disgusting. You'd think that with his money and exposure, he'd take some precautions, but the only people willing to work for him are ones as debased as he is -- and even then they're often playing a long game to find the most propitious moment to sell him out (e.g., Omorosa, Michael Cohen, Stormy Daniels).

More on Trump and/or antisemitism:

Ellen Ioanes: [12-04] What Congress can do with Trump's tax returns.

Paul Elliott Johnson: How the Right Developed Its Victim Complex: "Once a party that touted rugged individualism, today's Republicans have an ever-expanding list of grievances and complaints about perceived wrongs."

John Limbert: [12-01] Iran's clerics have declared war on their own people: "A tight, privileged fraternity of religious leaders has monopolized power in Tehran since 1979. It's now backed itself into a corner." More on Iran:

Ian Millhiser:

Lily Sánchez: [11-23] On Slowing Down to Cook.

Jeffrey St Clair: [12-02] Roaming Charges: Railroaded, Again: He's very unhappy, but not surprised, about Biden and the Democrats ending the railroad strike.

Michael D Swaine: [11-28] Here's how the US shouldn't respond to China protests: "Washington has a habit of getting involved in ways that make things worse for demonstrators on the ground." More on China:

The story above that needs the most unpacking is the way US media has lined up behind the idea that China's anti-Covid strategy was a disaster, even though America's schizophrenic response to the pandemic resulted both in a per capita death rate 600 times as high, while China's economy has continued to grow faster than America's. One might argue many sides of this issue, but those facts do not prove that China has less regard for the health and welfare of its people than we do -- if anything, quite the opposite. Yet the implication seems to be politicians who actively sabotaged pandemic response were somehow being heroic. For a prime example, see Charles P Pierce: [11-30] The Ghoulish Hubris of Letting People Die and Calling That Bravery.

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Monday, November 28, 2022

Music Week

November archive (final).

Music: Current count 39159 [39116] rated (+43), 33 [33] unrated (+0: 5 new, 28 old).

First half last week I spent thinking about cooking a little something for Thanksgiving dinner. We wound up with five people. I bought a pound of ground turkey and two of hamburger. I mixed the former with chopped spinach and feta cheese, and added a little butter and garlic powder to both. The idea was to cook them on the little-used gas grill, but it didn't heat up, so my fallback was frying pans indoors. They both came out very well done, but with a lot of tasty brown. Topped them with smoked gouda and havarti, and had bacon, red onion, and pickles to add. Sides were baked beans (topped with bacon), Russian potato salad (with olives, red onion, smoked salmon, and dill), and Spanish slaw (with carrots, red bell pepper, and golden raisins). Had spice cake for dessert, with store-bought butter pecan ice cream. I'm learning to settle for relatively simple dishes that don't kill me. Not quite as good as the birthday dinner, but fit the bill, and didn't leave us with a lot of leftovers.

Second half of the week felt like a void. I finally opened up a file for Speaking of Which, figuring I'd just copy down a few links for future reference -- sort of a placeholder, with few if any comments. But on Sunday I made the rounds, and often couldn't help but write something. Rarely as much as I could, but this sort of analysis is all but second nature these days.

One nice thing about the meal was that I got a chance to talk shop with my nephew. He's been using some kind of AI software to generate images. I had a fairly serious interest in AI back in the 1980s, but haven't followed it much since then. Still, I have some ideas about what it might be good for and where it might cause more trouble than it's worth, so it was good to compare my thoughts with his actual experience.

[PS: I added a link to yesterday's post, as part of Vox's "World to Come" series: AI experts are increasingly afraid of what they're creating. Just a thought, but if you got rid of patents and copyright for AI code, and required that all code be open source, that would slow down the pace of development, and make it harder to hide harmful applications. I also added a link to another No More Mister Nice Blog piece, about how Mike Pompeo rates the head of a teacher's union as "the most dangerous person on the planet."]

A couple notes on the 17th Annual Jazz Critics Poll: Francis Davis asked to be kept informed of the voting, so I've been forwarding mail to him. I also broached the possibility of including his name on the masthead, and he said he'd be honored. I have 26 ballots counted so far, with two more weeks until deadline. I haven't had much time to go back over possible voter lists, but I'll try to do that over the next few days. The most striking thing so far is that the vote is exceptionally scattered: three albums appear on six ballots each, so 23% of the total. This compares to 2021, when James Brandon Lewis appeared on 34% of the ballots, and to 2020, when Maria Schneider scored 36%. Still early days. As I recall, there were six other leaders last year before Lewis finally broke from the pack.

I've done the basic indexing for November Streamnotes, but still have the Music Weeks to compile. I've also fallen behind on the EOY Aggregate, but that's largely because the number of EOY lists doubled today. (Pro tip: I mostly use the lists collected by Album of the Year and Acclaimed Music Forums.) I want to settle on a jazz ballot by Friday. This is what my 2022 list currently looks like. No way will I have time to resample everything on it, so I'm stuck with my memory and spot checks. I did replay Omri Ziegele today, and dropped it a tiny bit -- probably the vocals, as almost everything else is marvelous.

The EOY file has traditionally included a "2%" list of records I haven't heard but think might be worth looking for. This year I've significantly expanded that list to include everything that's gotten Jazz Critics Poll votes, even if I'd put their odds of hitting A- at much less than 2%. I may thin them out later, or just revise the explanation.

A couple quick notes on the music. The Paul Smoker albums are actually remastered digital-only, so the label arguably should be to the reissue, if only there was one. In general, when I stream an album that matches an original release, I attribute it to the original label, instead of the reissue label. I have no qualms about that with streaming services, but it may be a bit unfair in this case.

I've also resurrected "Limited Sampling" this week. I really wanted to hear the Dick Hyman album, but could only find fragments. I expect there will be more of these in the next few weeks. In most cases so far, they're possibly good albums that Bandcamp only has a couple tracks from. However, in the future, I may start including records that are fully available but I hit reject on. Similarly, limited sampling could mean something I've only heard a YouTube or Soundcloud single from. I don't count these as graded albums, but they do show up as heard in the EOY aggregate, with +/- notes.

New records reviewed this week:

Arctic Monkeys: The Car (2022, Domino): Britrock band, have grown increasingly baroque (and unpleasant) since their pretty good 2006 debut. Seventh album. I can't say this one is unlistenable, but the strings and stuff aren't very interesting. And I have no reason to think that Alex Turner is, either. B- [sp]

Simon Belelty: Pee Wee (2020 [2022], Jojo): Guitarist, first album, although he seems to have been around a while, with a 2001 credit with pianist Kirk Lightsey, who appears here. Provides plenty room for leads from Josh Evans (trumpet) and Asaf Yuria (sax), as well as Lightsey. B+(**) [cd]

Wolfert Brederode: Ruins and Remains (2021 [2022], ECM): Dutch pianist, albums since 1997, this one has credits below the title for Matangi Quartet (strings) and Joost Lijbaart (percussion). B+(**) [sp]

Sarah Elizabeth Charles: Blank Canvas (2022, Stretch/Ropeadope): Jazz singer-songwriter, several albums since 2012, backed by piano, guitar, bass, and drums, with a couple guest spots. B+(*) [cd]

The Chicago Plan [Gebhard Ullmann/Steve Swell/Fred Lonberg-Holm/Michael Zerang]: For New Zealand (2019 [2022], Not Two): Group name from the title of a 2016 album by the same quartet. Leaders play tenor sax/bass clarinet and trombone, credited with three songs each, backed by cello and drums -- the latter pair their Chicago connection. B+(***) [cd]

The Clarinet Trio: Transformations and Further Passages (2021 [2022], Leo): Three clarinetists, nothing else, with Jürgen Kupke, Michael Thieke (alto clarinet), and Gebhard Ullmann (bass clarinet). They open with a collective improv, each takes a solo interlude at some point, the other pieces tend to be by German avant composers, with Albert Mangelsdorff the most frequent touchstone. B+(***) [cd]

Louis Cole: Quality Over Opinion (2022, Brainfeeder): Singer-songwriter from Los Angeles, plays drums, keyboards, guitar, and bass, also sings. Fourth album since 2010. Seems to have a jazz background, going back to his parents, but straddles genres without getting stuck anywhere. Twenty mostly-short songs, but adds up to 69:59. B+(*) [sp]

Hollie Cook: Happy Hour (2022, Merge): British singer-songwriter, father was Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook, mother a backing singer for Culture Club, played keyboards in a late edition of the Slits, fourth solo album since 2011. Weaves a bit of reggae rhythm in. B+(**) [sp]

Cooper-Moore & Stephen Gauci: Conversations Vol. 1 (2019 [2020], 577): Piano and tenor sax duo, collecting six improv pieces (41:47), with another volume kept back in reserve (released 2022). The first sax notes fly awkwardly, but once the piano kicks in, Gauci finds his track. A- [sp]

Craig Davis: Tone Paintings: The Music of Dodo Marmarosa (2021 [2022], MCG Jazz): Pianist, studied at Indiana and Manhattan School of Music, seems to be his first album but claims "30 years of professional experience." Ten songs by bebop pianist Marmarosa, plus his own "A Ditty for Dodo," ably supported by John Clayton (bass) and Jeff Hamilton (drums). B+(***) [sp]

Paul Dunmall Quintet: Yes Tomorrow (2021 [2022], Discus): British saxophonist (alto/tenor), has a long career on the free jazz scene. Group backs him here with guitar (Steven Saunders), trombone (Richard Foote), bass, and drums. B+(***) [sp]

Chad Fowler/Ivo Perelman/Zoh Amba/Matthew Shipp/William Parker/Steve Hirsh: Alien Skin (2022, Mahakala Music): An impromptu session, with three saxophonists -- Fowler plays stritch and saxello, Amba and Perelman tenor, with Amba also on flute -- backed by piano, bass, and drums. Starts off cautiously with a bass solo. Still, impossible to keep this much firepower down. Invigorating when they bust out, intriguing when they hold back a bit. A- [sp]

Laszlo Gardony: Close Connection (2022, Sunnyside): Hungarian pianist, albums since 1984, teaches at Berklee. Trio with John Lockwood and Yoron Israel, "embraces his Hungarian folk-music and prog-rock roots." B+(**) [cd] [12-02]

Ben LaMar Gay: Certain Reveries (2022, International Anthem): From Chicago, credited with cornet, synthesizer, and vocals, in a duo with drummer Tommaso Moretti. Shifts between several modes: the free jazz improv the most immediately appealing, the more ambient stretches take some time to sink in, but can't be dismissed as merely ambient. B+(***) [sp]

Milford Graves/Jason Moran: Live at Big Ears (2018-20 [2021], Yes): Legendary avant percussionist, died in 2021, in a duo with the once-famous pianist -- Moran's string of 1999-2010 Blue Notes dominated the decade, but aside from a 2014 Fats Waller tribute and a couple side-credits, hardly anyone managed to hear his self-released albums. B+(***) [bc]

Here It Is: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen (2022, Blue Note): Covers twelve Leonard Cohen songs, the core band has some jazz cred -- Immanuel Wilkins (alto sax), Bill Frisell (guitar), Kevin Hays (piano), Larry Goldings (organ), Greg Leisz (pedal steel guitar), Scott Colley (bass), Nate Smith (drums) -- with ten guest vocalists, few doing justice to the songs (Sarah McLachlan's "Hallelujah" is an exception). B [sp]

Conrad Herwig: The Latin Side of Mingus (2022, Savant): Trombonist, started as a mainstream player in the 1980s with Clark Terry, played in big bands (Toshiko Akiyoshi, Mingus Big Band), picked up some Latin moves with Eddie Palmieri. This is his seventh Latin Side Of album, following tributes to John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson, and Horace Silver. This one touts Randy Brecker and Ruben Blades as special guests, with a half-dozen more names on the cover. A lot of Mingus tributes on the 100th anniversary of his birth. B+(**) [sp]

Aubrey Johnson & Randy Ingram: Play Favorites (2022, Sunnyside): Standards singer, second album, accompanied by just piano. Works several Brazilian songs in (two by Jobim), along with Joni Mitchell (whose voice she closely resembles) and Billie Eilish. B [cd]

Angélique Kidjo/Ibrahim Maalouf: Queen of Sheba (2022, Mister Ibé): Afropop singer from Benin, albums since 1989, I've never been very taken with her work, so credit Maalouf -- from Lebanon, based in Paris, his parents and other family are notable musicians -- with raising the musical bar, as well as adding some nice trumpet. B+(**) [sp]

Sam Kirmayer: In This Moment (2021 [2022], Cellar Live): Canadian guitarist, a couple previous albums, this one with tenor sax (Al McLean), piano (Sean Fyle), trombone, bass, and drums. B+(*) [sp]

Lantana: Elemental (2020 [2022], Cipsela): Portuguese group, all women, with trumpet (Anna Piosik), two cellos, violin, electronics, and voice (mostly Maria Radich). I could do without the singing voices, but there's something to the dense string-laden din, even with voiceover. B+(**) [cd]

Ramsey Lewis: The Beatles Songbook [The Saturday Salon Series: Volume One] (2020 [2022], Steele): Pianist, debut album was 1956, had a surprise hit in 1965 with his Trio's cover of "The In Crowd," followed that up with many more light covers of contemporary pop tunes, including several by Lennon-McCartney ("A Hard Day's Night," "Day Tripper," "Julia") -- enough to be collected as Plays the Beatles Songbook. That's what I expected when I first say this, but it turns out these are recent solo recordings (with "Imagine" slipped in). Given how hard it is to jazzify Beatles songs, I expected nothing here. But Lewis doesn't much try, settling for sober, stripped down melodies, and that seems to work. Title suggests there are more volumes like this to come, but Lewis died in September, at 87. B+(*) [cd]

Kirk Lightsey: Live at Smalls Jazz Club (2021 [2022], Cellar): Pianist, long career including leadership of The Leaders, was 84 when this was recorded, and has rarely appeared more sprightly. With Mark Whitfield (guitar), Santi Debriano (bass), and Victor Lewis (drums), all of whom help him shine. A- [cd]

Charles Lloyd: Trios: Sacred Thread (2020 [2022], Blue Note): The tenor saxophonist's third (and final) trio album this year, also plays alto flute and tarogato, joined this time by Julian Lage (guitar) and Zakir Hussain (percussion, vocals). The co-stars get ample opportunities here, often for better but not always. B+(**) [sp]

Jasmine Myra: Horizons (2022, Gondwana): British alto saxophonist, alto plays flute, from Leeds, first album, neatly wrapped up in silky strings, including guitar and harp, plus Jasper Green on keyboards. B+(*) [sp]

Flora Purim: If You Will (2022, Strut): Brazilian singer, started with bossa nova in 1964, moved to New York in 1967 and gravitated toward jazz fusion, singing in Chick Corea's Return to Forever. First studio album in 15 years, did this for her 80th birthday. Remarkably solid work all around. B+(***) [sp]

Hal Smith's New Orleans Night Owls: Early Hours (2021-22 [2022], self-released): Drummer, plays trad jazz, has led a few groups like this one (e.g., Hal Smith's Rhythmakers, Creole Sunshine Orchestra, Swing Central), while being drummer of choice for groups like Silver Leaf Jazz Band, Yerba Buena Stompers, and outfits led by James Dapogny, Ted Des Plantes, Duke Heitger, Leon Oakley, and Butch Thompson. Group here has cornet, trombone, clarinet, piano, banjo, and string bass. B+(**) [bc]

Hal Smith's Jazzologists: I Scream, You Scream, Everybody Wants Ice Cream (2021, self-released): Exceptionally jaunty trad jazz septet, with several members -- Katie Cavera (bass), Clint Baker (trumpet), and John Gill (trombone) -- stepping up for vocals. "Ice Cream" indeed is a screamer. B+(***) [bc]

Hal Smith's Jazzologists: Black Cat on the Fence (2021, self-released): Same group, I'm working backwards, this coming out several months before Ice Cream. Only note is "remote recordings from six U.S. cities." B+(**) [bc]

Wil Swindler's Elevenet: Space Bugs: Live in Denver (2022, OA2): Alto saxophonist (also soprano and flute), came out of UNT, has a previous Elevenet album from 2010. Group is large enough to provide big band complexity, but not risk breaking into swing. Original pieces, aside from one by Regina Spektor, and the never jazzable "Julia/Blackbird." B [cd]

The Dave Wilson Quartet: Stretching Supreme (2017-18 [2021], Dave Wilson Music): Tenor/soprano saxophonist from Lancaster, Pennsylvania; fourth album, quartet with piano, bass, and drums. Starts out by biting off two parts of A Love Supreme (25:03), follows that up with four more stretched pieces (51:21), with two more Coltrane pieces, an original, and "Days of Wine and Roses." Strong player, has a lot to work with. B+(**) [bc]

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: World Record (2022, Reprise): Per Wikipedia, this is studio album number 42, with Rick Rubin co-producing, and the relatively genteel "Love Earth" the lead single. Sounds better when the band gets the feedback going, but doesn't sound essential. B+(**)

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Elton Dean Quartet: On Italian Roads: Live at Teatro Cristallo, Milan, 1979 (1979 [2022], British Progressive Jazz): British saxophonist, perhaps best known for his long tour with Soft Machine, but he had a parallel career in free jazz, as evidenced by the company he keeps here: Keith Tippett (piano), Harry Miller (bass), and Louis Moholo-Moholo (drums). That's one hell of a rhythm section. B+(***) [sp]

Bill Evans: Morning Glory: The 1973 Concert at the Teatro Gran Rex, Buenos Aires (1973 [2022], Resonance): Piano trio, with Eddie Gomez (bass) and Marty Morell (drums). Typically superb, bass solos included. Package reportedly includes 2-CD, extensive booklet. A- [sp]

Bill Evans: Inner Spirit: The 1979 Concert at the Teatro General San Martín, Buenos Aires (1979 [2022], Resonance): Another piano trio, same year, same city, but with a different bassist (Marc Johnson) and drummer (Joe LaBarbera). B+(***) [sp]

Michel Petrucciani: Solo in Denmark (1990 [2022], Storyville): French pianist (1962-99), born with a genetic bone disease which "caused his bones to fracture over 100 times before he reached adolescence and kept him in pain throughout his entire life." Nonetheless, he was a remarkable pianist, as is more than established in this recording. B+(***) [sp]

John Sinclair Presents: Detroit Artists Workshop: Community, Jazz and Art in the Motor City 1965-1981 (1965-81 [2022], Strut/Art Yard): I tend to think of Sinclair as a political figure, but aside from consorting with Yippies and co-founding the White Panthers and the Rainbow People Party, and spending way too much time in jail -- he was notorious enough that a "John Sinclair Freedom Rally" to protest his sentence was headlined by John Lennon and Stevie Wonder -- he's mostly viewed as a poet with a long connection to music (starting with the MC5). Unclear exactly what his role in these groups/tracks is, other than archivist and author of the booklet. Group leaders include Donald Byrd, Charles Moore, and Bennie Maupin. While I'm impressed by the horns, the rhythm is what finally won me over. A- [bc]

Old music:

Brian Charette: Music for Organ Sextette (2011, SteepleChase): Organ player, third album after a self-released debut, probably the farthest he got away from the soul jazz paradigm, with four reeds -- Mike DiRubbo (alto/soprano sax), John Ellis (bass clarinet), Jay Collins (flute, baritone sax), and Joel Fraham (tenor sax) -- plus drums (Jochen Rueckert). B+(*) [cdr]

Jason Moran: Bangs (2016 [2017], Yes): The pianist's third self-released album, after a solo and a live Village Vanguard set with his long-running trio. This is a different kind of trio, with Mary Halvorson (guitar) and Ron Miles (cornet). (Not clear where the drums on some tracks come from.) B+(***) [bc]

Paul Smoker Trio: QB (1984, Alvas): Trumpet player (1941-2016), first trio album with Ron Rohovit on bass and longtime collaborator Phil Haynes on drums, plus "special guest" Anthony Braxton (alto sax). Title cut is where they finally mesh. B+(***) [dl]

Paul Smoker Trio: Mississippi River Rat (1984 [1985], Sound Aspects): Second trio album: trumpet, bass (Ron Rohobit), and drums (Phil Haynes). The upbeat opener is especially impressive, but the album holds up throughout. A- [dl]

Paul Smoker Trio: Alone (1986 [1988], Sound Aspects): Trumpet-bass-drums trio with Ron Rohovit and Phil Haynes, third album together. Bandcamp edition drops the covers of "Cornet Chop Suey" and "Caravan," which offer some useful framework for the improv fury. A- [dl]

Paul Smoker Trio: Come Rain or Come Shine (1988 [1989], Sound Aspects): Fourth trumpet-bass-drums trio album, again with Ron Rohovit and Phil Haynes. B+(***) [dl]

Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn: Lead Me On (1972, Decca): Second duet album, after 1971's We Only Make Believe. Problematic as usual, finding love easier to fall out of than to fall into -- perhaps why "Never Ending Song of Love" feels wrong. B+(**) [dl]

Limited Sampling: Records I played parts of, but not enough to grade: -- means no interest, - not bad but not a prospect, + some chance, ++ likely prospect.

Dick Hyman: One Step to Chicago: The Legacy of Frank Teschemacher and the Austin High Gang (1992, Rivermont): Title could start with George Avakian Presents, referring back to an album produced by Avakian 50 years prior, "transcribed and directed" by Hyman, featuring clarinetists Kenny Davern and Dan Levinson prominently on the cover, but the whole lineup is star-studded, from the cornets (Peter Ecklund and Dick Sudhalter) to the banjo-guitarists (Marty Grosz and Howard Alden). ++ [os]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Rodrigo Amado: Refraction Solo (Trost) [10-28]
  • The Attic [Rodrigo Amado/Gonçalo Almeida/Onno Govaert]: Love Ghosts (NoBusiness)
  • The Chicago Plan [Gebhard Ullmann/Steve Swell/Fred Lonberg-Holm/Michael Zerang]: For New Zealand (Not Two) [11-04]
  • The Clarinet Trio: Transformations and Further Passages (Leo) [11-01]
  • Satoko Fujii: Hyaku: One Hundred Dreams (Libra) [11-09]
  • Lantana: Elemental (Cipsela) [10-16]

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Sunday, November 27, 2022

Speaking of Which

Early in the week, I thought: maybe I won't have to do one of these this week. Later, I thought: well, if either of two weekly pieces I've been linking to -- Connor Echols' "Diplomacy Watch" and Jeffrey St Clair's "Roaming Charges" -- appear, I should at least include them. But it looks like they had the good sense to take the week off, even if the world didn't. Still, I have a few more pieces in tabs that I figured I should note now rather than save for next week. Then a quick round of the usual sources, and I'm close to a typical week's work.

Ukraine: The war grinds on. Connor Echols skipped his usual "Diplomacy Watch" this week, but I'm not aware that he had much to write about.

  • Yehonatan Abramson/Dean Dulay/Anil Menon/Pauline Jones: [11-25] Why are Germans losing enthusiasm for helping Ukraine? It's not just about energy costs, our research finds. Germans have a deep cultural aversion toward military intervention."

  • Fred Kaplan: [11-21] Where Realpolitik Went Wrong: This is a devastating critique of several interviews John Mearsheimer has given about the Ukraine War. Just this week, I looked over the latest and decided it wasn't worth citing here. I've long given Mearsheimer credit for being one of the few foreign policy mandarins to recognize the corrosive effects of The Israel Lobby, but I've mostly followed his "realist" stance through his co-author, Stephen Walt, and found it lacking even if not nearly as bad as the neocon ideologues both usefully criticize. Still, Mearsheimer seems so committed to the inevitabilities of great power rivalry that he thinks the US should drop Ukraine to cultivate Russia as a potential ally for an inevitable war with China. That's not just dangerous and immoral, it's down right stupid.

  • Eric Levitz: [11-22] Should Ukraine Give Peace Talks a Chance? Raises six questions, which he doesn't have very good answers to:

    1. What are Ukraine's odds of making further territorial gains?
    2. How interested is Putin in peace?
    3. How large are the humanitarian costs of appeasing Putin?
    4. How can Ukraine's future security be preserved?
    5. How much more economic damage will Ukraine suffer from a prolonged war?
    6. How likely is Putin to respond to total defeat by deploying nuclear weapons?

    Come to think of it, the questions aren't very good either. The only tangible one is territory, but as long as neither side is able to dictate peace, it's hard to see much value in the possible exchanges of territory: Ukraine might still gain a bit, but nowhere near enough to satisfy their victory goals; similarly, Russia could mount a new offensive, but recent losses suggest they are already overextended. At this point, the only possible agreement on territory is to let the people who live there (or used to live there before the war) vote, and trust the vote to decide. The third point is poisoned by "appeasing," especially with no account of the human costs of continued war.

    The answer to number four is: when Russia no longer sees Ukraine and its alliances, which are significantly deeper now than they were before the March invasion, as a threat. That may require a "leap of faith" Putin is incapable of, but it certainly won't be achieved by integrating Ukraine into NATO. Nor does it seem likely that the US and its allies are going to be making any "leaps of faith" either. One paradox of the war is that it seems to validate the core assumptions of NATO (that Russia is a threat to neighboring parts of Europe) while at the same time proving that the logic of deterrence is itself destabilizing and perilous.

  • Nicolai Petro: [11-25] The tragedy of Crimea: "A history of the region's difficult relationship with Ukrainian rule before 2014 shows why Kyiv's attempt to retake it would be difficult. There are a few things here even I wasn't aware of, helping explain why Crimea revolted in 2014 even before Russia intervened.

  • Robert Wright: [11-23] What was Zelensky thinking? "Last week's false claim about a missile strike in Poland carries two important lessons." Unfortunately, the article cuts off before getting to the meat of the argument, but the two lessons are: "interests can differ among allies" and "the picture we're getting of this war isn't wholly unreliable." It may be possible to portray Zelensky's initial claim that missiles landing on Poland was a Russian escalation to directly attack a NATO member, and more generally that Zelensky's statements that no negotiation is possible until Russia withdraws from all Ukrainian territory (even Crimea) reveal him to be a fanatical warmonger. But it makes more sense to accept that, as Wright puts it, he "was just doing his job." That job entails not only rallying his troops to fight the Russians but also lobbying America and anyone else who'll listen to send him arms and support to carry on that fight. Sometimes that involves shameless flattery, as when he quoted Churchill to the UK Parliament, and sometimes the distortions aren't exactly true. Sometimes he feels the need to stand up as a tough guy, and sometimes he he stresses how vulnerable Ukraine is. And sometimes what he says in public isn't the same thing he's saying in private, although even there it probably depends on who he's saying it to. It's a difficult balancing act, and actually he's proven remarkably skillful at it, but you do need to keep several things in mind: his interests aren't necessarily the same as those of his countrymen, and neither are more than incidentally aligned with the US and/or NATO; because his interests aren't exactly the same, he's not really a proxy (although the US could probably guide him if it's somewhere he's willing to go -- one worries that the Americans don't really know where they want to go, which makes them that much easier to take them for a ride). One should always remember that the news coming out of Ukraine is mostly filtered through the war machine, selected to make Ukrainians appear heroic and sympathetic [see examples below], and thus to rally support for them and opposition to Russia. They've been pretty successful so far, but I worry the distortions will make it harder to actually settle the war.

    Example stories, these from the Washington Post (I'm not saying that these are untrue, but there aren't many counterexamples):

Jacqueline Alemany/Josh Dawsey/Carol D Leonnig: [11-23] Jan. 6 panel staffers angry at Cheney for focusing so much of report on Trump: "15 former and current staffers expressed concern that important findings unrelated to Trump will not become available to the American public."

Kate Aronoff: [11-18] Effective Altruism Is Bunk, Crypto Is Bad for the Planet, and Other Basic Truths of the FTX Crash: "The overarching lesson of sam Bankman-Fried's downfall is that the gauzy philosophical natterings of CEOs are just meant to distract us from their real goal: accumulating cash without interference."

Zack Beauchamp: [11-22] How the right's radical thinkers are coping with the midterms: "The New Right emerged to theorize Trumpism's rise. Can they explain its defeat?" They mostly seem to be doubling down on the idea that the "left" secretly controls many critical institutions in America, making it all but impossible to "save America" by through democratic processes. One even urges the American right to emulate the Taliban: "The Mujahideen fighters who brought the Soviets to their knees in Afghanistan were outmanned and outgunned. And yet they removed the godless occupiers from their land." This is wrong on more levels than I can count, but illustrates the growing paranoia and attendant recklessness of what passes for thought on the far right.

Geoffrey A Fowler: [11-23] It's not your imagination: Shopping on Amazon has gotten worse: "Everything on Amazon is becoming an ad."

Graham Gallagher: [11-25] Elite Conservatives Have Taken an Awfully Weird Turn.

Forrest Hylton: [11-25] A Historian in History: Staughton Lynd (1929-2022).

Eric Levitz: [11-25] One Worrying Sign for Democrats in the Midterm Results: "The gubernatorial elections in Georgia and Ohio suggest that a right-wing Republican could win moderate voters in 2024 merely by not being Trump." A big part of the problem is that Democrats tend to focus on the "MAGA fringe" and ignore the fundamental truth: that virtually all Republicans share the same set of far-right policy preferences.

Dylan Matthews: [11-22] How one man quietly stitched the American safety net over four decades: On Robert Greenstein, who founded the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in 1981. The safety net they came up with is a hodge-podge of often unclear and inadequate programs which nonetheless add up to significant help against poverty. This is part of a Vox Highlight series on The world to come, which also includes:

  • Kevin Carey: [11-21] The incredible shrinking future of college: This starts with a demographic decline in "college-aged" Americans, but isn't the more significant problem that we've given up on higher education as anything more than credentialism for job training? The notion that adults might wish to learn more for their own gratification, and that society might benefit from a more knowledgeable citizenry, has fallen by the wayside, and in some cases succumbed to deliberate political attack.

  • Kelsey Piper: [11-28] AI experts are increasingly afraid of what they're creating.

  • Yasmin Tayag: [11-22] Will America continue to turn away from vaccines?

  • Bryan Walsh: [11-21] Are 8 billion people too many -- or too few? I read Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb shortly after it came out in 1968, so this is a question that has long haunted me, even as history has shown the need for a more nuanced view. The alarm raised by Ehrlich, like that of Malthus in the early 19th century, faded not because population growth was throttled -- although countries that did so have seen their average wealth increase more than elsewhere -- but because it's been possible to find and utilize resources more efficiently. Still, no one (other than mad men and economists) think this trend can continue indefinitely. This continues to interest me because the Earth's carrying capacity depends a lot on social and economic organization, and because hitting resource limits can stress and even break those institutions. Many of the problems we've encountered over the last couple years -- climate disasters, supply chain issues, inflation, even the pandemic itself -- are tied to resource limits, even if only very loosely to population.

Mike McIntire: [11-26] At Protests, Guns Are Doing the Talking: "Armed Americans, often pushing a right-wing agenda, are increasingly using open-carry laws to intimidate opponents and shut down debate."

Ian Millhiser: [11-27] A Trump judge seized control of ICE, and the Supreme Court will decide whether to stop him: "Judge Drew Tipton's order in United States v. Texas is completely lawless. Thus far, the Supreme Court has given him a pass."

Prem Thakker: [11-23] Glenn Youngkin, Who Supports No Gun Control, Is Heartbroken Over Virginia Walmart Shoting; and Tori Otten: [11-23] Glenn Youngkin Blames Virginia Walmart Shooting on "Mental Health Crisis." So What's His Plan?.

Adam Weinstein: [11-23] Six reasons the Afghan government utterly collapsed during US withdrawal: "A new official watchdog report sheds light on what led to the Taliban's rapid takeover last year and implications for America's future foreign policy." The list:

  1. Kabul failed to recognize the U.S. would actually leave;
  2. the decision to exclude the Afghan government from US-Taliban talks undermined it;
  3. Kabul insisted that the Taliban be integrated into the Republic rather than create a new model altogether;
  4. the Taliban wouldn't compromise;
  5. former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani "governed through a highly selective, narrow circle of loyalists" (read: yes men) which destabilized the government;
  6. Kabul was afflicted by centralization, corruption, and a legitimacy crisis.

Given time I don't have, I could nitpick my way around these points. I suspect number 4 has less to do with inflexibility than with the fact that neither the US nor Ghani had any real popular support that needed to be recognized much less compromised with. The other points should be studied by Ukraine, lest they find themselves in a position where the US wants out and that could leave them high and dry. (That doesn't seem to be the case now, but see the Wright comment above.)

Li Zhou: [11-25] The high stakes and unique weirdness of the Georgia Senate runoff, briefly explained.

Found this on Twitter:

The Colorado shooter's dad on finding out his son murdered people: "They started telling me about the incident a shooting . . . And then I go on to find out it's a gay bar. I got scared, 'Shit, is he gay?' And he's not gay, so I said, phew . . . I am a conservative Republican."

For more, here's an article: Kelly McClure: [11-23] "I'm just glad he's not gay," says father of alleged Club Q shooter: article includes Twitter link. Also quotes the father as saying: "I praised him for violent behavior really early. I told him it works. It is instant and you'll get immediate results." It also notes that the shooter legally changed his name to distance himself from this asshole. Steve M. wrote two more pieces about this (more than the story needs, but they observe the political spin): [11-23] National Review: Don't politicize the Colorado Springs shooting. The rest of the right: Well, actually . . . and, more importantly, [11-24] Bad parents are the original stochastic terrorists. [PS: He's been riffing on "stochastic terrorists" lately. For another example, see: [11-21] Republicans sound like stochastic terrorists even when they're (apparently) not trying to. The occasion here is Mike Pompeo declaring that "the most dangerous person in the world" is Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers.]

Also note that Steve M. continues to have his finger on the pulse of elite Republican thinking: see [11-27] Maureen Dowd's brother recites the approved GOP establishment talking opoints. Notice what's not included. In particular, he points out:

If you ever ask yourself, "What does the GOP stand for?," the answer is "The GOP stands for GOP winning elections."

I've been saying for some time now that Richard Nixon was the godfather of the Republican Party, because he taught the party that winning is the only thing that matters, and no scruples should get in your way. The reason many prominent Republicans didn't like Trump when he was running in 2016 is because they didn't think he could win. But they voted for him anyway, and when he did win, he was not only forgiven; he was their hero. That should have lasted only until he lost in 2020, but thanks to the Big Lie, his popular support kept them in check until the 2022 loss gave them an excuse to brand him a loser -- which is really the only thing that they care about, and the one thing they think might work.

However, the polls haven't caught up, in large part because rank-and-file Republicans care much less about winning than about hating the Dems and being hated in turn, which Trump still has a knack for. See: That pro-DeSantis right-wing consent won't manufacture itself.

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