Eight New Pieces of the Musical Good Stuff
Also: what I've been reading and listening to recently, and a check on how my newsletter is doing
Welcome music lovers!
Today is the third in my ongoing series of paid posts. Before the paywall is a run-down of eight excellent new albums I’ve been enjoying (there’s a lot of great new music out there so getting my list down to eight was super-tough) and links to eight excellent pieces from writers here on Substack. After the paywall is a quick update on some of the albums I’ve been enjoying in my record room and a check on how my newsletter is doing.
Next up in early April will be an essay on three amazing archival discoveries dropping on April 12, Record Store Day: Charles Mingus in Argentina from 1977, Freddie Hubbard live at the Blue Morocco from 1967 and (most excitingly) Kenny Dorham live from the same club in 1967 too.
Until next time, may good listening be with you all!
Eight Pieces of the Musical Good Stuff
Not only is there more music than anyone can possibly listen to, there is also so much good new music that there’s not enough hours in the days to listen to it all. On the one hand, this is a good thing. Creativity is alive and dare I say, thriving. On the other hand, finding where all this good new music is can be tough. And there’s also trying to clear away a growing amount of, as Ted Gioia so well puts it, AI slop. So far this year, I have listened to over 125 new albums, including archival releases. In January, I recommended eight of them (read all about them here). I am pleased to share eight more.
One recurring theme I’ve noticed in new jazz releases is the mining of the rock repertoire of the sixties and seventies. In other words, classic rock. Drummers Karl Latham and Jae Sinnett have both recently put out collections that interpret choice cuts by Buffalo Springfield, Led Zeppelin, Rare Earth and Steppenwolf (indeed, both offer a cover of ‘Magic Carpet Ride’). Hearing these well-known songs jazzed up so to speak is a fun prospect. But there has to be some level of originality. By that, I mean there has to be a degree of interpretation beyond taking the original recording and treating the vocal line like a jazz line. It makes for deflating listening, as Latham and Sinnett’s efforts ultimately are, with any excitement long petered out once the album reaches its end.
Thankfully, drummer Richard Baratta has taken a different tact with Looking Back (Savant), released in February. Not only does Baratta branch out beyond rock to include some choice soul and folk standards but he, with pianist Bill O’Connell, transform each of the songs they have selected into settings that go beyond the way most of us have long been accustomed to hearing them.
A taste of the alchemy at play can be found in the interpolation of the pulse from John Coltrane’s intense recording of Mongo Santamaria’s ‘Afro Blue’ from 1963 to Baratta’s transformation of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze.’ With Baratta on the album is O’Connell, saxophonist Vincent Herring, guitarist Paul Bollenback, bassist Michael Goetz, percussionist Paul Rossman and vocalist Carol Scott guesting on a very tasty version of ‘Feeling Good.’
What Baratta does here is ideal homage: taking something old and turning it into something new. That’s the feeling I also get from listening to singer-songwriter Jack Splithoff’s new album, Far From Here (Virgin).
Yacht rock is another thing that is having it’s day in the sun, and certainly Splithoff’s music has that texture that could be labelled smooth, insinuating itself gently yet insistently. And yet, like Baratta, Splithoff is not simply recreating the glories of past days. There’s an edge to the drums on the album and an easing of the need to make everything absolutely perfect.
Far From Here reaches its heights, though, is the exuberance of the moment, like the crest of the refrain on ‘City Days’—there’s always room for another song about the wonders of New York—and the Beach Boys’ like ‘Marooned’ which closes the album.
Providing harmonies on ‘Marooned’ is Maya Delilah, a London singer-songwriter whose debut album The Long Way Round (Blue Note), came out three days ago (March 28). These days are a renaissance of the female chanteuse. Since the beginning of this year, releases by the Weather Station (led by Tamara Lindeman), Sharon von Etten, Japanese Breakfast and Lucy Dacus have all struck me one way or another.
The Long Way Round is a kaleidoscopic whirlwind of styles: the harmonic depth of ‘Jeffrey,’ the fat-back funk of ‘Squeeze’ that suggests the glories of Betty Davis and Larry Graham and the hazy psychedelia of ‘Did I Dream It All.’ It’s an album to spend quality time with. I like it.
I still pinch myself whenever a musician gets in touch with me. It’s a reminder that what the writer/critic does and what the musician does do not simply get pitched into the ether. Lili Añel is a New York singer-songwriter who emailed me in February about her new album, You Have a Visitor (self-released). I’m so glad she did. It’s something special.
With a small group of just Añel on guitar, Samuel Nobles on bass and Jonathan W. Whitney on drums, her music comes through direct and unvarnished. ‘Saw the Light,’ with a looping bass line by Nobles, is startling and addictive. It’s a tip of the hat to Gil Scott-Heron and weaves together a tale of gritty New York, the search for truth and taking pride in oneself. The rest of the album is a triumph of personal songwriting. While Añel has been compared to Joan Armatrading, Joni Mitchell and Nina Simone, I hear the fierce independence of Phoebe Snow, Janis Ian and Norma Tanega laced deeply throughout You Have a Visitor. Check it out.
In March, Kyle Jordon, a guitarist and composer from Ottawa, dropped a line about a release by the group Field Notes of which he is a member. Wonder (self-released) has been out since the end of last year. Inspired by the need of explore, to get outside and to reconnect with the inherent mystery of the world (all impulses I share), the album takes two days of conversations with people about what wonder means to them as its inspiration. The group—in addition to Jordan, there’s Peter Woods on tenor and soprano saxophone, Chris Pond on bass, José Garcia on drums and Rob Graves on percussion—listened to the conversations and improvised music in response to and reflective of them.
It results in a type of jazz that could be called ambient in how it resists the typical construction of a theme statement followed by a series of improvisations on it and then a repeat of the them. It’s instead more about how the music brings forth a feeling of receiving it as a portal to some larger experience. Here, I think it is to tune one’s ears a little more precisely to receive the meditative flow that Jordan and his bandmates have tapped into. Wonder is a beautiful, hopeful listen.
Guitarist Eldritch Priest’s Dormitive Virtue (Halocine Trance) has a similar quality. The opening, feedback-laden barrage of ‘Grave Needs, Rainbow’ gives way mostly to reverb-laden explorations that again reduce the distance between musician and listener. Especially interesting is hearing how Priest teases out of the melody of Wayne Shorter’s ‘Iris’ on his interpretation of it (the only composition on the album not written or improvised by Priest). The album was recorded live at Vancouver’s 8EAST on April 26, 2023 and retains that feeling of an artistic happening. It’s exciting and visceral.
Whispering Winds’ Cosmic Cliffs (Adhyâropa Records) is these things as well. The group as well as the album are tributes to the trumpeter and composer Jon Hassell. Making up Whispering Winds is Aaron Shragge on trumpet, shakuhachi and electronics, Luke Schwartz on guitar and electronics, Damon Banks on bass and Deric Dickens on drums. While I’m not really familiar with Hassell’s music, Cosmic Cliffs also burns with the exploratory, mushy quality of Miles Davis in the seventies. The dominant sound here is Shragge’s custom-made micro-tonal trumpet which smears its notes and creates an almost continuous line.
Cosmic Cliffs is a long album but it’s length does not detract from its other-worldly and bold milieu. Check it out!
Quieter but similar in spirit is a new duet recording by trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and keyboardist Vijay Iyer. Defiant Life (ECM) is a stark, often startlingly alluring work rooted in anger at the state of the world. It is, like the three albums above it in this essay, ambient, music to breath in, atmospheric and full of space. It’s the kind of recording to play over and over in order to unlock its secrets. A tad more superficially, it’s also nice to hear the timbre Iyer gets out of the Fender Rhodes, a sound both soothing and forever futuristic. Defiant Life is one of the best things I’ve heard all year.
Report from My Substack Notes Feed
Even as I find myself stepping further and further away from Twitter, on which I have been active since mid-2017, and even Bluesky, on which I am still a newbie, I try to post regularly on Substack Notes, especially so I can share some of the abundance of incredible writing here. Here are just a few of the pieces I have recently read that are worth your attention (if you haven’t read them already).
John Corcelli of Random Access Music Notes finds some new angles and approaches to write about the Beatles’ true swan song, Abbey Road.
Speaking of the Fab Four, Wayne Robins of Critical Conditions writes movingly about exposing his young grandson to their music, as pure an act of goodness as there is.
Marshall Bowden of New Directions of Music surveys the entirety of Dexter Gordon on record. Herculean, important stuff here.
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong of The Ministry of Pop Culture writes insightfully on the perennial 1965 big-screen adaptation of The Sound of Music.
Wordsworthesq goes in-depth on Anne Murray. Substack is made for this kind of in-depth criticism—not sure where else you would find something of such depth on Murray.
Andrew Hill of The Jazprose Diaries marks the 98th birthday of Leontyne Price, Dan Epstein of Jagged Time Lapse pays tribute to late, great Jerry Butler (the Ice Man) and William Poulos of Cozy Moments puts down some paragraphs on parting with his CD collection.
Report from the Record Room
One thing that is perhaps not surprising about my record room is how as the space in it for records dwindles, I continue to manage to find a little more room for new pick-ups and still have enough space for a path to walk in and out of it. I guess as with any addiction, where there is a will, there’s a way. This is good as I’ve been quite busy crate-digging in February and March.
My local store had a great sale of its dollar-bin albums: three for a buck, and imagine my pleasant surprise that in addition to the de rigueur easy listening (nothing wrong with that) and other delights, there was
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