Special Surprize Throwback Post: The Reverend Wayne Coomers Gives Guilty Pleasure Advice to His Readers in The First Church of Holy Rock and Roll’s “Confessional”

Yep, from 1999 (I think) to 2005 (I think), I was the webmaster as well as the pseudonymal host of The First Church of Holy Rock and Roll, which faded from consistent view in the early 2010s but still can (usually partially) be seen via The Wayback Machine or (as I just discovered) at its old address. It all started when I bought my first real computer, noticed it has web page software on it, thought I would try to learn it, and had the basic site up in a day. The persona—a minister of rock and roll with quasi-Presbyterian madness—spontaneously jumped out of my imagination, and I stole the pseudonym from a band I am proud to have been a member of circa 1984(?)-1986 (see team photo below). No one in the band was named Wayne Coomers, so I felt I wasn’t stepping on anybody’s toes by borrowing it and also tipping my hand a bit regarding my identity.

Today, I stumbled upon one of the many wacky features of the site today: I invited readers to beg forgiveness for their listening sins, then anointed them with tongue-in-cheek forgiveness (we don’t need to be forgiven, and there are no guilty pleasures!). Here’s a sample! It was fun while it lasted, and I don’t know how I found the time to put it together—I was teaching and coaching two middle school sports, practicing teacher leadership, and being an attentive husband and concertgoer at the time….

“The Confessional”

We are all weak. We all make mistakes. We have all caught ourselves singing “What A Girl Wants” softly to ourselves on the drive home. The thing is, don’t keep the secret locked inside, festering and perhaps spreading (to the point where you’re yelling “Backstreet’s Back” in the shower).

E-mail your confession to the good rockin’ Reverend Coomers at wcoomers@yahoo.com and he’ll help you share the taint with his rockin’ congregation. And just to show that it ain’t so hard, the Reverend himself will jump in headfirst!

Reverend Coomers (see above in favorite rock tee preaching at The Academy of Rock): I was weaned on…Cher. Double best-of set of ’60s stuff Mom got through the ol’ record club. She did ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’ I thought it was hers, and learned all the lyrics. Also, she redid the girl group hits (still stuck on ’em, ‘specially ‘Baby, Don’t Go,’ the original of which I still don’t know and which Dwight Yoakam and Sheryl Crow did on his covers album). Combined wth the impact of her belly-button beckoning me on The Sonny and Cher Show, I moved on to such classics as Foxy Lady, Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves, and whatever one had ‘Dark Lady’ and ‘Half Breed’ on it. There was even a Tin Pan Alley one that softened me up for Gershwin and Berlin and Porter 20 years down the line. My first mirror lip-synchs were to her songs, not Alice’s or even Elton’s. I had that sultry, spookily Elvis-like timbre down cold. What lasting effects did she have on me? Not sure I wanna go there…but I did like ‘I Believe in Love.’ And she sure beat Rush.

Ken Shimamoto, scribe ‘n’ guitslinger (see above during Fort Worth drop-in by The Rev): Bless me Father for I have sinned. I have lusted in my heart after the Mysterious Miss Havisham. Even worse, in the last month, I have blown off shows by the Punk Rock Dinosaurs AND Sylvain Sylvain one night (different venues) and the Immortal Lee County Killers and Sons of Hercules another, to watch re-runs of “E.R.” Getting too old for this shit? YOU decide! I’m not even going to SXSW this year (think I wore out my welcome last year when I called my bro. at midnight and asked him if he had a hundred bucks in cash that I could borrow to buy my car out of impoundment). Most shameful, I recently remembered that the very first elpee I owned way back in 6th grade was Simon & Garfunkel’s Bookends, which I might actually buy again since my 17-year-old dtr (my good conscience) AND Jack Rabid from THE BIG TAKEOVER told me it was okay. How can I redeem myself?

The Rev sez: Ohmigod! You need to put yourself in peril–give yourself a little taste of danger–or they’ll be no turning back. ER? S&G? Taking advice from a 17-year-old? Sell whatever’s worthless to you until you can afford a trip to Oz, where in certain locales you know well they don’t stand for folkie bullshit, find Miss H (here you’re picturing your head on Dustin Hoffman’s body in the last part of The Graduate) and make your pitch. Win or lose, it’s more rock and roll than staying in, lighting candles, and singing along to “Punky’s Dilemma”!

Samantha Harrison, insomniac: I can’t think of anything worse than Britney Spears becoming “real.” Ever since that new song came out about how she is a “slave for music,” (I don’t recall it saying anything about music in the song, sounds more sexual to me…) I have seriously questioned her intentions. If you think about it, how can bubble gum pop stars rapidly turn into powerful women that know about life and, what’s this? Another genre of music? Please. But…. I have to admit that I’ve caught myself singing it several times, help me god, even in public. I got a few strange looks and a couple of people to move far away from me, but guilty pleasure or not, I am trying to contain myself.

The Rev sez: This is a tough one, ’cause I knew it was just a matter of time before Miss Spears turned up here, and ’cause I know you’re really too young to have to confess anything yet–hell, Sam, I was listening to that assbag Ted Nugent when I was your age (and–shhhh!–I still have two of his records). But this is serious–the harlot’s giving trash a bad name, and that’s just not tol’able in the rockaroll world. So here’s your penance: go out for cheerleading this year (just don’t make the cut, OK?).

The Mysterious Miss Havisham: You’re a cranky old shit, ain’t ya?! Dunno yet if I like yer preachin or if you irritate the shit out of me. Least yer well informed. Wanted to ‘fess up to the reverand. Bless me father for I have sinned, it’s been 25 years since my last confession. I LOVE “More Than a Feeling” by BOSTON and “Living on a Prayer” by BON JOVI. And I even thought he was cute with that poodle cut. What’s my penance?

The Rev sez: Can’t help you with Bon-Bon Jovi, but I gotta give you credit, ’cause the song idea has a helluva lot of relevance right about now. It’d sure hold my attention. But Boston…hmmmmmmmmmm…wrote my first-ever review about Don’t Look Back (a positive one). How ’bout this? You have to plant a marijuana seed and watch it grow in real time! (Ever hear the urban rock myth that “Foreplay” includes the speeded-up sounds of pot sprouting?)

Mike Rakehell (see above bringing The Rev to his knees with his six-string slashes…may he rest in the rawk!–guitarist of the Jimbobs, Possum Fat, Three Bags Full, The Balls, and the Gilloolys): They don’t get much worse than this, Reverend. Scenario: I’m 16, cradled in the sheltering arms of Camdenton, Missouri. News flash: Kiss’ Love Gun has just been released. I hop on the bike, pedal furiously into town, and snap it up. Kiss Army sweat beads poppin’ from my forehead as I skid back into the home driveway, I zip into my room, whip the vinyl onto the turntable, and…bear witness to the most heinous excuse for rock I had yet heard. This was not KISS–this was some imposter! The Sin: I stomp out into the garage, grab an awl outta Pop’s toolbox, lay a long, deep scratch across the A side, put it back in the sleeve, pedal back to the store, tell the cashier the scratch was there when I removed it from the shrink-wrap, he buys the scam…time for an exchange. I select…Peter Frampton’s I’m in You.

The Rev sez: You got some major cahones to admit that, son (and, to think, in my pre-frocked days you dissed me for diggin’ Technotronic). If you really wanna make it right and not end up frying with Frampton himself, you are to proceed to the nearest high school, carrying your best Johnny Thunders record under your arm, walk in, find the nearest rawkdude holding up the wall in the senior lounge, and trade it to him for the worst pieceashit scuffed CD that’s lying outta case among the taco shell fragments on the floorboard of his pickup (probably the Goo Goo Dolls or Matchbox 20 or even Dave Matthews). That oughtta learn ya!

Eric Johnson: Reverend, there are things that weigh on a man’s mind. I’ve been lucky, though. Some of the guilty, cheezy pleasures of my youth have been namechecked by eminently rawkin’ artists like the Minutemen. So, this is not about Blue Oyster Cult. The big stuff first. The first two songs I ever liked in this world (besides “Puff the Magic Dragon”), in fact, the first two songs I ever called a radio station about and requested were…”You Light Up My Life,” by Ms. Debbie Boon, (actually covered by Patti Smith on a 1977 bootleg called “Teenage Perversity and Ships in the Night”) and “Convoy,” by C.W. McCall. In my defense, I must plead that they both bring bile to my throat today. Unfortunately, there are others that I….still like, in some terrible secret way, including “Downtown,” by…(guilt has clouded my memory, I guess) [Ed. note: Petula Clark??!!?]. I also really liked “Too Shy,” by Kajagoogoo, when it came out, tho’ I never told anyone til now. Thanks for listening, Reverend. I’m certain there’s more, ‘cuz I’m a guilty, guilty man.

The Rev sez: Even half a life curing in that bracing Fayetteville subculture can’t direct some sinners to the Path, huh? Debbie Boon(e…and you spelled her last name like D’s…ouch!) is as low as you can go, then you compund that offense by claiming C.W. McCall as a guilty pleasure (Gawd’s got it on heavy rotation on his playroom juke). Ok–you were a kid. But Kajagoogoo? I don’t care if Uncle Jam called them “the best white funk (???) band in the world” in Uncut Funk back in ’91.You’re gonna have to actually pay me…with a tape of that Patti Smith boot. And I better have it by 2002 or you’re going to Hell.

Dimitri Monroe (of the Naked Flames) (click the link to hear his masterpiece “Nostalgia Kills”; I was honored to write for his fanzines “Anorexic Teenage Sex Gods”—see pic above—and “Ready to Snap” in the ‘90s: I like an awful lot of records I’m not supposed to, but I don’t even view, say, old Van Halen as a guilty pleasure,”cool” or not. It rocked like a motherfucker, period. But two records I would feel unburdened by confessing my love for are….
DON HENLEY’S “Building The Perfect Beast” I know, I know–I’m sorry! But I am absolutely HAUNTED by the “Boys of Summer” and shamefully, really identify with all those sentiments, as well as with “Not Enough Love In The World”, which in my weakest hour I’d even considered COVERING (fer Stiv’s sake), but Mariah or Cher or maybe both beat me to the punch. (Sorry,MOJO!!!) Allegedly, this record also featured an appearance by….
CHARLIE SEXTON “Pictures for Pleasure” In junior high, I attended a series of excrutiatingly Reaganesque,mean-spirited suburban schools, including Shawnee High School in Lima, Ohio. Shawnee had one token artschool-punk-doll/Madonna Wannabe named Michelle Briggs, a pretty blonde who dressed in black, had pin-ups from SMASH HITS magazine all over her locker, wore a zillion bracelets, and knew about bands like Doctor & the Medics and Sigue Sigue Sputnik and We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Gonna Use It. This was back when we called cheezy new wave “post-modern,” and I wanted desperately to befriend her, but she was a few grades older, and the one time I mustered up the courage to approach her in her Charlie Sexton t-shirt, she said something along the lines of “Dimitri,Like,you are SOOO queer!” Later, she ended up pursuing my once & future sideman, BRIAN MURDER, romantically! Anyways, this record was expected to be an impressive guitar-storm. Everyone was hyping the young Texas badass who co-wrote tunes with the Stones for The Wild Life soundtrack and had garnered praise from Stevie Ray Vaughan, but, instead, it was awash with Keith Forsee’s Billy Idol/Simple Minds generic mid-’80’s synth-saturated production,and junior-league Steve Stevens wankery. The Michelle Briggs’ of the world were all just lookin’ for a guy with perfect cheekbones in black who wore skull t-shirts with big hair, cuz they were all almost ready to graduate from their obligatory John Taylor infatuations; but his BOWIE/PRESLEY croon is still undeniable, and I still to this day love the “So Lonely” chorus of his lone hit, “Beat’s So Lonely”. I bet he rocks nowadays! If someone wants to put him in touch, he can audition to play alongside me and MURDER in the NAKED FLAMES!

The Rev sez: Get yerself a crewcut! I mean what I say!

Jennifer Lazo: I must confess my secret love for a 70s song called “Run, Joey, Run.” My big brother, Don Lazo, ALWAYS listened to it. Since I was just the little kid sister who looked up to her big bro, I became addicted and occasionally burst into it’s lyrics, “daddy please don’t, it wasn’t his fault, he means so much to me…Daddy please don’t we’re gonna get mar…ried.” I also listened to the Cheryl Ladd album and found myself singing one of the songs the other day when I was with a group of people! I won’t blame that one on Don, though. Please forgive me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I’d love to withhold my name, but I must expose my brother’s wrongdoings and therefore, must expose myself.)

The Rev sez: Sister, it takes some doin’ to throw such a monkey wrench in The Confessional Machine–no picture of offending artist (perhaps a measure of the total offense)! Figures the insaniacs at Rhino would provide a refuge for such a teen-angst mudslide. However, since your brother is going to Rawk Hell (where, like a true ChiSox fan, he’s gonna be blowing up vinyl at Satan’s right hand) for concealing this heinous crime, you get a pass for that one. Cheryl “I Don’t Sing Quite as Well as Cindy Crawford” Ladd is another matter: you’re gonna have to go to the upcoming Charlie’s Angels movie, which I’m sure is as close to hell as you can likely get–and you have to pay to get in.

“Art Howe”: I heard the song “Soundchaser” off [a Yes album]…when I was on mushrooms once in college and loved it. The guy playing it got real deep about it and was telling me how Patrick Moraz was the keyboardist on this album, having replaced Rick Wakeman, and how that made the group tighter and more integrated (as opposed to saying…grating). I rushed out and bought the tape a couple of days later and listened to it sober and decided it was the biggest piece of crap I’d ever heard in my life…I guess anyone who enjoys Yes must be under the influence….

The Rev sez: You don’t sound contrite enough, sonny boy. Looks like you might just bite down on the hook on the upcoming Asia reunion tour. If you wanna save your own soul, you need to sit down stone-cold sober with some tracing paper and reproduce–in fanatical detail–the cover of Tales of Topographical Oceans. Then, affix it to your bathroom wall so it’s at eye-level when you’re “sitting.” Keep it there for exactly one month–and don’t take it down when company’s over–or as long as it takes for the association to take.

Manthon (of THE RAWK) (see above, middle of the front row with The Good Reverend directly behind him, being bashful during Wayne Coomers—I was NOT Wayne, I just stole it for this website—and the Original Sins team picture): …forgive me rev.c for i have sinned….as a 15-year-old boy i committed an unthinkable act. i’m ashamed but i feel i must share so no kids out there have to deal with such a thing when they reach adulthood and (hopefully) will keep control of their senses.
it was the summer of ’76 and i was living with my grandmother in downey,ca. she was not a wealthy woman but did ok enough and on occasion we would play poker (she taught me!). well, one friday night, gammy (that’s what we called her) was 2/3 of the way through a gallon of wine and the game was getting old (playing for pennies will do just that). i had been on a roll and had a huge pile of copper in front of me when gammy brought up the idea of an all or nothing last hand. except for me the nothing was losing my cents…for her it was $50!! well, three jacks later i was a rich-ass 15-year-old! hmmmm….what to do with my new found wealth? i know….i’m going to knott’s berry farm! in case you don’t know, knott’s is (or at least was…it’s been a long long time) a kick ass amusement park with the best rollercoaster around…the corkscrew! (again…was). so…8am saturday morning, i hopped on a bus for the 45-minute ride…by myself i should add…a sad sight but i was fresh into ca from southern arkansas. so…i rode everything (some a couple of times) until it was time. time for the show! the show was in the small theatre they had there. usually it was used for “flintstones on ice” or some such thing but today it was for rock and roll…my very first rock show! to make a longer than necessary story shorter…the band that burst my live rawk cherry was none other that hamilton, joe frank, and reynolds, a good 5 years past their “don’t pull your love out on me baby” prime. honestly…i dug it! i’m sorry for my indescretion rev. o…it won’t happen again. please be fair in naming my penance.

The Rev sez: One hour in the dark listening to the Hellacopters on headphones with the stereo cranked to 10, son! But at least it wasn’t Hamilton, Joe Frank, and Dennison.

“Lil’ Nik”: Please cleanse me of my musical sins, Reverend. My sorted musical past began and (thankfully) ended my senior year of high school. Of course, I’m blaming it all on a friend. Two of my girlfriends and I used to cruise the boulevard on Friday nights. Since I didn’t have a car, I was at the mercy of my friend’s music selection. Needless to say, she had horrible taste. It started with Bon Jovi, which isn’t too terrible a confession since most people in the mid to late 80’s listened to them. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there. Starting with Bon Jovi, the music selection progressed (down hill) to Ratt and Slaughter. I still have the Slaughter tape I bought (although it is never played) as a reminder to not let friends control my musical selections.

The Rev sez: Even though love is “slippery when wet,” you must do some penance, sister. Advance directly to the nearest record shop (such as quaint term now), purchase the Minutemen or Replacements LP of your choice ((although, regarding the latter, you better skip Don’t Tell a Soul (but This Album Sucks) and All Shook Down)). That’s where you should have been spending your money, time, and hearing in the mid- to late-’80s. Then send that Slaughter tape to me–I’m presiding over a little melting ceremony later this week.

Sammy D: Oh, my, I was weened of my parents music, most of which was good. Then, one night, I found some old tape of Sting’s work with Branford, and I loved it. I went out and bought his greatest hits, and I loved it, too. (Ouch!!!) Not only did I make my friends listen to it constantly, I listened to it constantly. Then, I heard of the Rembrandts, the little band who did the theme song for Friends (OOOF!), and I loved it, too, so I bought the album. I listen to it now, and wonder, where did I go wrong?? Please forgive me, father, for I have sinned.”

The Rev sez: You have truly been to heck and back already. And dragged innocent youth along with you. (Hope you didn’t eat any Tantric Rainforest Yoga Crunch along the way.) Stink and the Fiends soundtrack? You sure know how to make it hard on a man of the cloth, buddy! If those comrades of yours are still speaking to you, you are hereby ordered to preach the gospel of Sonic Youth (pre-Washing Machine, and I know that’s gonna hurt you) to them upon contact (before hellos and howyadoins) for the next year.

Don Lazo: Forgive me, Reverend, for I have sinned, and the guilt and shame have weighed down upon my soul for too long now. I’ve prayed for years that there would be no statute of limitations on my musical sins, but I now know better. The scene: three friends enjoying a road trip from Chicago to San Antonio. The locale: somewhere deep inside that hellish dustbowl known as Oklahoma. The sin: the three of us burst into singing….”Your Love Has Lifted Me Higher” by Rita Coolidge. I blacked out soon afterwards, and details are sketchy, but I remain haunted, both by the fact we engaged in this little sing-a-long as well as the frightening amount of lyrics we all knew. The three of us had quickly vowed never to tell anyone about this “incident” but I cannot join my friends in hell. Help me, Reverend…..

The Rev sez: Sheesh. “Blacked out” my ass. You and Leon Russell (wrote one helluva song about her: “Delta Lady,” best done by Joe Cocker on Joe Cocker!). And Kris Kristofferson (not only married the broad by sang duets with her with the tape rolling…if you’d have confessed to listening to those albums, I’d have nothin’ in my bag o’ tricks to help you). So, brother Lazo, at least you ain’t alone. This is gonna be tricky: at all costs, locate Jackie Wilson’s original version of “Higher and Higher,” a righteous up if there ever was one, and make a 90-minute tape of it–and only it, just for driving to work. Then, if you’re gonna confess to having listened to lethargic bad female pop singers, you need a dose of exalted good-bad female semi-pop singers. Polystyrene (best sampled on X-Ray Spex’ s Germfree Adolescents), Patti Smith (get Horses if you haven’t already), yam-queen Karen Finley (The Truth is Hard to Swallow), gutter-queen Lydia Lunch (Queen of Siam), or even that target of all Beatlemaniac hatred, Yoko Ono (her cuts on Double Fantasy or her great widow’s concept album Season of Glass). You go to those lengths, Donny Boy, not only are you forgiven but you better come save me.

“Skip”Call me ‘Skip.’: I have a confession to make, but am saddened by some of the confessions on your page. It seems that many of your followers want to put their dark sectets off to narcotics, friends, family or other influences. My confession comes from me and I don’t have anybody else to blame.
I am not Catholic and don’t understand the whole confession thing, but it seems that most of the confessions on your page are moments of weakness that the confessors have already put in the past. My confession still haunts me whenever I hear it.When in high school, a horrible song by someone named Bonnie Tyler came out called “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” I instantly fell for the song, even though my friends hated it and reminded me how horrible the song was every time it came on. However, I persisted and remained adamant that the song was great. The worst part is that I still like it when I hear it today. When it comes on the oldies station as my radio is scanning, I must listen to the rest of the song. Even some of the lyrics haunt me: “I don’t know what to do/I’m always in the dark. Livin’ in this powder keg/And givin’ off sparks.” As stupid as those verses are, they stay with me and I find myself humming them at work or when getting ready for bed.
This feels more like a meeting with The Big Man at the Pearly Gates rather than a confession, because I have tried to lose this song from my mind, but when I hear it two years from now, I will still like it.
Please help me!

The Rev sez: Well, first of all, you have some serious spiritual guts to toss off all influences, because what are “influences” but slaps in the face to our most precious gift, free will. I humbly bow to you; you don’t need me. Secondly, well–you don’t need any absolution, either, my friend: the fiery (woops: wrong image) terms with which you describe your listening–then emotional–experience makes clear that the song is inside The First Church, not without. We’d claim it if, through your compulsive attraction to it, it hadn’t already claimed us. So…keep listening like you listen.

An Aural Portal to Here: Preferred Albums, January 1-February 28, 2026

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This month: I’ve begun my very basic asterisky rating system, now that most of the following records have had a chance to sink in, plus I’m continuing to share my lists of carelessly forgotten, underappreciated, or simply “new to me” records from January-November 2025 (December’s children are being counted as ‘26ers since they barely had a chance to be aurally dandled), my return to older records (stimulated by a great oral history of Texas punk rock—see below—Mardi Gras, the Miles Davis Centennial, and PBS’ nice Sun Ra documentary), my bibliobiography (lotsa music books therein)—and a Record of the Month.

Notable Top 10: 1) The two best jazz records I’ve heard this year, from Work Money Death and Dave Adewumi (that one hasn’t yet been released for public consumption). Hot on their heels is one by Chad Fowler and Art Edmaiston that was recorded in Memphis and which makes yet another case for the southern roots of free jazz. 2) A refreshed Van Morrison. 3) Charli XCX refusing to be dismissed. 4) More evidence that, if bassist/composer Ingebrigt Håker Flaten is involved with your project, you will greatly benefit. 5)A legendary P-Funk guitarist thrilling you solo. 6) A six-hour box set of trio interpretations of Morton Feldman compositions (classical music—eek!) (recommended to me by my reliable source at Burning Ambulance) that can calm your afternoon. 7) One rap record to soothe the Golden Agers’ breasts, another one that breaks through my resistance to live rap records. 8) A terrific Floridian singer-songwriter inspiring us over-sixties to finally learn to play and start writing. 9) South African Nandipha808’s can’t-stop-won’t-stop YouTube mixtape. 10) Some Colombian cumbia from the Analog Africa vault!

If you enjoy what I’m doing here, please check out my IG feed ( displaying a quadrant of records that each day thrill my earhole), my Substack newsletter (it purports to deal with my long career as an educator but I squeeze music in whenever possible—as I did in the classroom), and my education blog, “The Overeem Farewell Tour,” , a deeper educational dive that includes both a daily diary from my last year as a full-time public school teacher and a Spring ’20 to Spring ’21 COVID “cloister commentary.”

To the lists!

SPOTLIGHT ALBUM OF THE MONTH

KEY:
# = Archival release
***Very Good! ****Really Good! ****C’est Magnifique
Bolded entries are new to the list!

NEW ALBUMS

Dave Adewumi: The Flame Beneath the Silence (Giant Step Arts) **** (out March 27)

Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore: Tragic Magic (In Finé)

Charli XCX: “Wuthering Heights” (Charli XCX Inc. / Atlantic) ***

Cimota: [ˈkɪmɔtɑː] (Sonic Transmissions) ***

Claire Dickson: Balance (New Amsterdam) (out March 27) ***

Dry Cleaning: Secret Love (4AD)

Art Edmaiston & Chad Fowler: Memphis Mandala (Mahakala Music) ****

fakemink: The Boy who cried Terrified . (EtnaVeraVela EP)

Fanfare Ciocarlia: Devil’s Tale (Asphalt Tango)

femcels: I Have to Get Hotter (self-released) ***

GBSR Duo & Taylor McLennan: Morton Feldman–Trios (Another Timbre) ****

Al Green: To Love Somebody (Fat Possum EP)

Grupo Um: Nineteen Seventy-Seven (Far Out Recordings)

Michael Hampton: Into the Public Domain (self-released) DECEMBER ‘25

Javon Jackson: Jackson Plays Dylan (Solid Jackson/Palmetto)

Mark Lomax II: The Unity Suite (CFG Media) JANUARY’S SPOTLIGHT ALBUM ****

Lord Jah Monte Ogbon: As of Now (Lex) ***

Mandy, Indiana: URGH (Sacred Bones)

Joyce Manor: I Used to Go to This Bar (Epitaph)

The Messthenics & James Brandon Lewis: Deface the Currency (Impulse!) ****

Van Morrison: Someone Tried to Sell Me a Bridge (Exile Productions) ***

Nandipha808: No Vocal Album (self-released) DECEMBER ’25 ****

The Outskirts: Orbital (Aerophonic) (out April 7th)

Grant Peeples: Code to Live By (self-released) DECEMBER ’25 ****

#Ranil y su Conjunto Tropical: Galaxia Tropical (Analog Africa) ***

Tomeka Reid: dance! skip! hop! (Out of Your Head Records) ****

Ren: Vincent’s Tale (self-released…I think)

Ren: Sick Boi Live at Dead Wax (self-released) ***

Ratboy: Singin’ to an Empty Chair (New West) ****

Steve Roach: Sentient Being (Soundquest) ***

Talibah Safiya: Eternal (self-released…I think) ****

SAULT: Chapter 1 (Forever Living Originals) ***

Noé Sécula & Jorge Rossy: A Sphere Between Other Obsessions (Fresh Sounds) ***

#Alan Silva Celestrial Communication Ensemble: 2000-06-24 Amherst (Eremite) ****

Slutworld: Slut Intent (self-released EP)

Harriet Tubman & Georgia Muldrow: Electrical Field of Love (Pi Recordings)

Twisted Teens: Blame the Clown (Jazz Life) ***

Work Money Death: A Portal to Here (ATA) ****

2025: Gone But Too Cool for Me To Have Forgotten

#Kelan Phil Cohran & Legacy: African Skies (Listening Position)

Blanco teta: La Debacle de las Divas (Les Disques Bongo Joe) (pictured above)

Kathleen Edwards: Billionaire (Dualtone) Thanks for your patience, Kenny Wright!

Tav Falco: Desire on Ice (Org Music)

Rois: Mo Lean (self-released)

Vintage Albums I Deeply Enjoyed this Month

Louis Armstrong: Louis & The Big Bands

Big Boys: no matter how long the line is in the cafeteria there’s always a seat

Nick Brignola: On a Different Level

Butthole Surfers: PCPPEP

Joe King Carrasco and The Crowns: s/t + Synapse Gap

Ornette Coleman: Beauty is a Rare Thing

The Cramps: URGH! The Complete Show

Miles Davis: The Complete Concert 1964 + Highlight from the Plugged Nickel + Get Up With It

The Dicks: These People

Fela: The Best of the Black President 2

Sinead O’Connor: The Lion and The Cobra + I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got + “Famine”/”All Apologies” CD Single + Throw Down Your Arms (killer reggae, seriously)

Pylon: Chomp

Sun Ra: The Nubians of Plutonia + The Singles + Cosmo Sun Connection

Hey! I Read, Too-and So Should You!

Martin Amis: Money (Penguin)

Pat Blashill: Someday All the Adults Will Die—The Birth of Texas Punk (University of Texas Press)

Judy Cheeks: Love and Honor—The Life of Reverend Julius Cheeks

Liadan Ni Chuinn: Every One is Still Here—Stories (Stinging Fly Press) (these short stories are astounding)

Byron Coley, Mats Gustafsson, and Thurston Moore: NOW JAZZ NOW—100 Free Jazz and Improvisation Albums (1960-1980) (Ecstatic Peace Library)

Jozsef Debreczeni (trans. Paul Olchvary): Cold Crematorium—Reporting from the Land of Auschwitz (St. Martin’s Press)

Alysson McCabe: Why Sinead O’Connor Matters (University of Texas Press)

Flannery O’Connor: The Violent Bear It Away (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux)

Orlando Reade: What in Me is Dark—The Revolutionary Afterlife of “Paradise Lost” (Astra House)

John Szwed: So What—The Life of Miles Davis (Simon & Schuster)

Paul Youngquist: A Pure Solar World—Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism (University of Texas Press)

A Moment of Silence for January 2026—Then Let It Blast! Some Records (and Books) That Kept My Head Up During the Horror

Version 1.0.0

I retreated into music and books this month. The books I chose to help me find answers and a path forward; the music I explored to stay connected.

As usual with Januaries past, new so-called pop (and semi-pop) music oozed out slowly. Jazz, as is its wont, continued to issue forth like a live Sonny Rollins calypso solo. You will see evidence of such in my list, though maybe my perception is due to my leanings (jazz has been a more reliable stimulant to me than anything as I’ve grown suddenly into my sixties).

Also as usual, I am restless when it comes to formatting this blog, and this year, along with tracking my favorite new releases, I’ve decided to return to documenting older purchases I’ve recently returned to and the books I’m currently reading. In this post, I shamefacedly shine light on a few albums I should have pushed harder last year, especially one by the great Memphis singer of bluesy rhythm and blues (the blues? what are those?), Talibah Safiya. She has a new one in the February chute that I paid for the privilege of sampling early—see below. Verdict: it, too, is terrific—she has a gift for soft grit, something like legendary trumpeter Clifford Brown’s tone of “soft fire” (can’t remember what musician described it thus). The other most notable “coming soon” release is the product of the ever-sublime, ever-simply complex music partnership of bassist.cellist Tomeka Reid and guitarist Mary Halvorson.

I will always supply links to my recommendations. I would post a playlist, but I am not thrilled with the connections of any streaming platform, and, if the recommendation has a Bandcamp link, you can play tracks from there.

If the urge strikes you, check out my education Substack, The Overeem (Failed) Farewell to Teaching Tour, which almost always makes contact with the world of music even though I can’t play an instrument and I’ve taught English for the last 42 years. My other WordPress blog, the original Overeem Farewell to Teaching Tour, has deeper and broader reaches, especially as it traces every day of my final year of public school teaching (2012-2014) as well as my wife Nicole’s and my winding trek through peak COVID (March 2020-March 2021). For rock and rollers, it also includes school-related pieces on Dead Moon (played at my school), Bobby Rush (housed the audience at my school), and Chuck Berry (provoked a parent to question my principal about my morals).

Keep your eye on the ball, don’t turn away from life, and don’t panic. Freedom is a constant struggle, but it doesn’t have to be this horrible. Be the opposite of what they are. And get your feet in the street if the situation calls you to it.

SPOTLIGHT ALBUM OF THE MONTH

Mark Lomax II: The Unity Suite (CFG Multimedia)

Dr. Lomax and his combo continue to deliver spiritual jazz of considerable power—you can meditate to it, but it hits your body as well. His music is disciplined and devout, yet it celebrates and inspires freedom, not to mention the title adjective—we need all of that right now.

Other Favorite New Albums, January 2026

Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore: Tragic Magic (In Finé)

Dry Cleaning: Secret Love (4AD)

Art Edmaiston & Chad Fowler: Memphis Mandala (Mahakala Music)

fakemink: The Boy who cried Terrified . (EtnaVeraVela EP)

Fanfare Ciocarlia: Devil’s Tale (Asphalt Tango)

Al Green: To Love Somebody (Fat Possum EP)

Javon Jackson: Jackson Plays Dylan (Solid Jackson/Palmetto)

Joyce Manor: I Used to Go to This Bar (Epitaph)

Tomeka Reid: dance! skip! hop! (Out of Your Head Records)

Ren: Vincent’s Tale (self-released…I think)

Talibah Safiya: Eternal (self-released…I think)

SAULT: Chapter 1 (Forever Living Originals)

Noé Sécula & Jorge Rossy: A Sphere Between Other Obsessions (Fresh Sounds)

Alan Silva Celestrial Communication Ensemble: 2000-06-24 Amherst (Eremite)

Slutworld: Slut Intent (self-released EP)

Harriet Tubman & Georgia Muldrow: Electrical Field of Love (Pi Recordings)

Twisted Teens: Blame the Clown (Jazz Life)

2025: Gone But Too Cool for Me to Have Forgotten

C-MAT: Euro-Country (CMATBABY)

Griot Galaxy: Live on WUOM 1979 (Two Rooms)

Anthony Joseph: Rowing Up the River to Get My Name Back (Heavenly Sweetness)

Talibah Safiya: a lil’ more Black Magic (High Water)

Vintage Albums I Deeply Enjoyed

79rs Gang: Fire on the Bayou (Urban Unrest / Sinking City)

79rs Gang: Expect the Unexpected (Sinking City)

Collocutor: Continuation (On the Corner)

The Killer Shrews: The Killer Shrews (Enemy)

Donal Lunny: Donal Lunny’s Definitive Moving Hearts (Warner Ireland)

The Supreme Angels: If I’m Too High (Nashboro)

The Supreme Angels: The Supreme Angels (Nashboro)

Hey! I Read, Too!

Adam Morgan: A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls—Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature (One Signal)

Sivina Ocampo: The Promise (City Lights)

József Debreczeni: Cold Crematorium (St. Martin’s Press)

Orlando Reade: What In Me Is Dark—The Revolutionary Afterlife of Paradise Lost (Astra House)

It Will Not End Here: My 25 Favorite Records of 2025 (if you don’t give me any more time to think about it)

It’s New Year’s noonish, and I have to come to a conclusion about the records that got me through this growing mess. 2026 ain’t gonna be much better, I’m afraid—maybe in the music universe, but not on the ground, so to speak. I may have short-changed December; if you didn’t see my December 1st long-list, it’s here. A few December releases did make my Top 25 line-up.

If you have followed this blog for awhile, you’ve already noticed I am a bit restless about formatting. This year, I just alphabetized records most of the year and used an asterisk system to indicate my level of enthusiasm (I am not a critic; I am merely an enthusiast who measures records by the degree to which my short hairs stand up while playing an album). I also did not separate out archival digs or reissues. I vote in the Francis Davis Memorial Jazz Critics Poll, but below, I did not weed out jazz (however, I will share my poll ballot, which would change if I resubmitted it today). To paraphrase Duke Ellington, there’s only two kids of music: good and bad. Seldom this year did I write at much length about albums; if I mentioned them at the top of the post, that indicated that I really cared. Also, my perspective about ordering records is very subjective: my life experiences, prejudices, 42-year-career as an English teacher, my 63-plus years hanging out in the middle of the country, my commitment to being a married man but also to seeking new aesthetic territory to open my mind—those are the determiners, and I respect yours, as different as they may be. Finally, I’m a hardcore Heraclitian (?): you can never step in the same river twice, because you are mutating by the moment and the river just keeps on running. Apply that to a piece of music you’re listening to for, say, the 157th time; I have Professor Longhair’s Crawfish Fiesta on right now, two days after hearing the combo’s unique drummer Johnny Vidocovich play live 40-some years after that record got waxed, and damn right I’m different than I was at 19 and my ears are way better after that show. Anyway…the point is, I’m not asserting that these are rankings that you should mind, my friends.

Thoughts: I have been invulnerable to Americana / folk / alt-country whatever since, oh, 2016. To be honest, even though many artists categorized as such are en resistance, and even though I am a Midwestern white guy one generation removed from the family farm, I just have not wanted to hear what those white (mostly) guys have had to say. Childers (intense vocals conjuring Gary Stewart—read Jimmy McDonough’s new bio of that one), The Delines (really downbeat and sharp writing from off the grid or hanging by the fingernails from it), Tommy Womack (a lifelong struggler apparently indomitable despite not being in denial), and I’ll throw in octogenarian Irish folk legend Christy Moore (fighting his own fight at home but aware of the threats to the world at large) changed that. [ahmed], Los Thuthanaka, and a vintage Hüsker Dü live set were aural fists in the face to creeping (ok, faster than creeping) repression. Among my peers, few have sung the praises of Colombian folk goddess Karol G but that album outjukes Bad Bunny’s. If Danny Brown can get his whole health together, so can I. Death was a constant presence in my personal life in ’25, so Brotzmann’s stunning final live sessions of autumnal free jazz—if he was ever too much for you, this is where to get on board—empowered me. I liked woods’ and Fanon’s reimagining of woods’ original version way more, because it seemed to deliberately tackle the problem folks occasionally have with woods’ tracks. And I’ll stop with a big plug for Natural Information Society’s perfectly-titled album: I saw the group perform the piece (on the album, in multiple versions) live and was completely mesmerized by their militantly disciplined minimalism across nearly an hour’s playing (36 minutes in its long version here). Apologies to Sudan Archives, Lil’ Wayne, C-MAT, and maybe-just-maybe Geese for not giving your work the time it very likely deserved

Living to Listen’s Top 25 for ’25

Tyler Childers: Snipe Hunter (RCA / Hickman Holler)
The Delines: Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom (Jealous Butcher)
[ahmed]: Sama’a [Audition] (Otoroku)
Los Thuthanaka: Los Thuthanaka (Studio Pankara)
Hüsker Dü: 1985—The Miracle Year (Numero Group)
Karol G: Tropicoqueta (Bichota)
Sabrina Carpenter: Man’s Best Friend (Island)
Bad Bunny: DeBI TiRAR MaS FOToS (Rimas Entertainment)
Danny Brown: Stardust (Warp)
Peter Brotzmann: The Quartet (Otoroku)
August Fanon & billy woods: Gowillog (reimagined) (BackwoodzStudioz)
Steve Lehman: The Music of Anthony Braxton (Pi Recordings)
Christy Moore: A Terrible Beauty (Claddagh) (11/2024 release in Ireland, so I’m counting it)
Natural Information Society: Perseverance Flow (Eremite)
Mary Halvorson: About Ghosts (Nonesuch)
Amina Claudine Myers: Solace of the Mind (Red Hook)
Ale Hop & Titi Bakorta: Mapambazuko (Nyege Nyege Tapes)
Sharp Pins: Balloon Balloon Balloon (K / Perennial Death)
Various Artists: The Bottle Tapes (Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Cosmic Ear: TRACES (We Jazz)
Lily Allen: West End Girl (BMG)
Tommy Womack: Live a Little (Schoolkids)
doseone & Height Keech: Wood Teeth (Hands Made EP)
Dijon: Baby (R&R )
De La Soul: Cabin in the Sky (Mass Appeal)

My Jazz Critics Poll Ballot (FWIW)

Best New Jazz Albums of 2025

[ahmed]: [Sama’a] (Audition) (Otoroku)
Peter Brotzmann: The Quartet (Otoroku)
Cosmic Ear: TRACES (We Jazz)
Mary Halvorson: About Ghosts (Nonesuch)
Steve Lehman: The Music of Anthony Braxton (Pi Recordings)
Amina Claudine Myers: Solace of the Mind(Red Hook)
Deepstaria Enigmatica: The Eternal Now Is the Heart of a New Tomorrow (ESP-Disk) 
William Hooker: Jubilation (Org Music)
OTHERLANDS TRIO: Star Mountain (Intakt)
Joe Chambers, Kevin Diehl, Chad Taylor: Onilu(Eremite)

Rara Avis (reissues and/or music recorded in 2015 or earlier)

Various Artists: The Bottle Tapes (Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Rahsaan Roland Kirk: Jump Up & Down Fast—Vibrations in the Village, Live at the Village Gate (Resonance)
Cecil Taylor / Tony Oxley: Flashing Spirits (Burning Ambulance)
Marco Eneidi Quintet: Wheat Fields of Kleylehof (Balance Point Acoustics / Botticelli)
Shamek Farrah & Sonelius Smith: The World of the Children (Strata-East)

Best Jazz Vocal Albums

Silvana Estrada: Vendran Suaves Lluvia (Glassnote)
Laura Ann Singh: Mean Reds (Out of Your Head)
Lena Bloch: Marina (Fresh Sounds)

Best Latin Albums

Roger Glenn: My Latin Heart (Patois)
Miguel Zenon: Vanguardia Subterranea (Miel Music)
Aruan Ortiz: Creole Renaissance (Intakt)

Perseverance Flow (You Can Make It If You REALLY Try): My Favorite Albums, January 1st to November 1st

I shoulda had this up Friday, I shoulda had this up Sunday, but life, love, collegiality, The Pitt, stress, goodbye services (see a few ‘graphs below)—oh, shut up and get on with it, dude.

It’s truly been a bounteous year for music, and October helped. I was able to witness Natural Information Society’s “Perseverance Flow” live (it’s my single of the year at 35+ minutes) so I am a little biased about the studio recording, which will likely land in my Top 10. Right about when I was grumbling to myself about wondering if I would ever like fresh reggae-like stuff again, crafty veteran Hollie Cook dropped a nifty neo-lover’s rock album on Mr. Bongo. The thrilling but no longer living guitarist Pete Cosey makes a fascinating appearance on Melvin Gibbs’ second early-‘oughts extraction of his group Amasia’s work, and Tyler Keith, “The Richard Hell of the Deep South” (though now his leaning more toward Charles Willeford) also unleashed an intense recording from earlier days. Citric Dummies knocked out a brief but furious and funny hardcore album with my favorite title of the year. Robert Finley followed up a run of tough soul albums on the Easy Eye label with a defiant gospel recording. Sweden’s Sound Asleep label gifted us a collection from the archives of Springfield, Missouri’s The Morells (never forget Shake and Push!) featuring a heaping helping of Donnie Thompson guitar and gloriously corny songs—he is in rock and roll’s top five living plectrists—as a sweet a capella cover of a doo wop classic where he overdubbed himself as a street corner group. The magical Finnish guitarist/oudist (?) Jussi Reijonen released his second terrific album of the year, a live one in more ways than one. Sharp Pins, riding a wave of new power-pop bands, easily topped their earlier 2025 album with a kind of flowing river of catchy compositions (the structure and flow reminds me of Imperial Bedroom, though not the writing). R. A. P. Ferreira, a mic controller and writer who’s records are always interesting but sometimes a bit scattered, waxed his best slab in years. CupcakKe and Princess Nokia are back. Vernon Reid (last spotted on Swamp Dogg’s bluegrass record) still has plenty to say and play. If you dig the multi-national jazz improvising group [ahmed], you are gonna want to check out their pianist Pat Thomas’ new solo record. That’s just some of the nice new stuff to check out. Oh, and if you get a chance to see Swamp Dogg live (or take in his fantastic new documentary Swamp Dogg Gets His Pool Painted), do not make excuses: go. My wife, my friends, and I recently did both (I was privileged to have been asked to interview him post-film—a trip!) and it was unforgettable.

Allow me a brief tangent. One of my rock and roll brothers-in-arms, Bryan Stuart—we played together in each other’s first band and wrote a lot of songs that never got recorded—passed away in September. He was one of the most intense, most alive human beings I’ve ever been around—he challenged you to be in the moment. He’d been battling some demons for over a decade and they sadly got the best of him. If you’re a fan of garage rock or a long-time resident of the American Southeast, you may have seen or heard the bands he slung razor-sharp guitar and wrote for: The Angry Inches, The Ex-Impossibles, The Strychnines, The Ditch Diggers, Motor 76, and I think there were more (um, he also flew a copter in Desert Storm, an operation he had reservations about). I could not make it to Atlanta for his celebration of life, but his fellow guitarist and another of my best friends (all three of us were members of each other’s wedding party) read a tribute to him I’d like to share here. The structure may seem weird, but it was designed to parallel the insistence of Bryan’s presence, if that makes sense:

Reflections on Stu-Man

“What I remember best about Bryan Stuart is his intensity. Being in his orbit meant having a gauntlet thrown down before you. “Can you desire this moment of living as much as I do,” Bryan would seem to wordlessly ask you, almost bodily, vibrating with energy. His eyes, boring holes into you, seemed to declare the answer: “I know that you can’t.”

“Whether it was existing aimlessly with him in a dorm room with no plan (“Let me show you these nunchucks!” and feeling one whip so closely to my face my bangs flew up)—

or nervously heading out to find a party with him on a Friday night (“Tonight, I’m not taking shit from anyone and we are going to have a blast!”)—

or, completely broke, coming to his apartment for dinner—Bryan could be very selfless if a friend was in need—and having difficulty with his homemade spaghetti sauce, where he had split the difference between being a domestic and an outlaw by adding a healthy portion of Jack Daniels to it and you knew you had better not gag (“SO???!! How IS it??? How IS it???) (He actually turned out to be a great cook.)

or playing in a ragtag band in front of a ragtag house-party audience (“Hey, go put on that nightgown and come back and fellate my guitar! They’ll love it!”)—

or on an otherwise lonely New Year’s Eve night, drunkenly making up beer commercials straight from “Springsteen’s USA!” and throwing dead soldiers at the wall (“More pretty chords HAHAHAHA!!!!!)—

or talking music with him late into the night after he arrived by surprise at my parents’ house where I was staying for the summer and they hadn’t yet met him (From my parents’ room, 3 am, morning before my dad’s weekday work, my mom: “You guys need to shut up and go to sleep!” Then Bryan, practically yelling to me while lying on the floor with just a pillow in the strip of space between my bed and the wall: “No! Let’s listen to some more of these mix cassettes and make fun of Bob Dylan some more!”)—

or watching him challenge a fellow groomsman—East Coaster vs. St. Louisan with an East Coast attitude—to a Johnny Thunders jam-battle at 2 a.m. in the hotel room next to ours after my wedding reception (“Give me the guitar and tell me the song and let’s DO IT, man!”)—

or, just stopping by his house in northern Atlanta on our way to Tybee Island for the night to discover he had secretly arranged a partial reunion of our first band—Wayne Coomers and the Original Sins—complete with studio recording (he also, the next day, forced upon me—you could not say no to him—a VHS titled The Pirates Live at Dingwalls that’s still one of the shit-hottest live rock and roll videos I’ve ever seen, and it seems he did not leave it behind when he stepped on a rainbow)–

or arguing with him about existence on the phone for hours (“Name me one book, right now, we’re fifty-five years old, that’s gonna tell me one thing that I don’t already know that I need to know! Name me one!”) (He never did let me answer)….”

Bryan LIVED, a LIVE WIRE.

I don’t intend these memories as a critique. He upped the ante of the moment, and I was very seldom equal to the task, and he would be disappointed in me. That is not a bad reason to be disappointed, and upon reflection, given the stakes of life, perhaps I should have striven harder. Intensity in a person for living is a gift. And it is not easy, always, to be in that person’s company. They leave a mark.

Robert Frost’s epitaph is “He had a lover’s quarrel with the world,” and I think Bryan expected more of our world, sometimes, and that was not easy for him. I am always going to remember Bryan for his intensity, his upping the ante, and his explosive laughter and unspoken love on those very rare occasions when I was able to meet the ante.

I never raised it, that’s for certain.”

New Year’s Eve, ’88, Stu “showing me” an Iggy biography, probably saying, “Here, read this now, man!”

Our shared favorite bands when we were together: Dolls, Thunders, Stooges, Thee Michelle Gun Elephant (especially), Stevie Ray, early Thorogood (Bryan learned to play GREAT guitar faster than anyone I have ever seen), Stones.

On with the music–keep livin’, and look out for folks who may be struggling:

MY LIST OF AURAL PLEASURE
January 1 – October 31, 2025
BOLD = New to the List
ASTERISKED* to ***** = Damn good! to Holy SHIT!
ITALICIZED: Excavations from the Past / Reissues

Sorry, no sampler because eff Spotify—buy physical and digital media, new or used!

Aesop Rock: Black Hole Superette (Rhymesayers) **** 
Africa Express: …Presents…Bahidora (World Circuit Limited) ****
Amarae: Black Star (Golden Angel) ***
Amasia: Anamibia Sessions 2 (Archetext)
Zoh Amba: Sun (Smalltown Supersound) ****
Ale Hop & Titi Bakorta: Mapambazuko (Nyege Nyege Tapes) ***** 
Marshall Allen’s Ghost Horizons: Live in Philadelphia, Volume 1 (Otherly Love Records) **** 
The Ancients: The Ancients (Eremite) ***
Anna Hogberg Attack: Ensamseglaren (fönstret) ***
 Ichiko Aoba: Luminescent Creatures (Psychic Hotline) 
Artemis: Arboresque (Blue Note) ****
Mulatu Astatke: Mulatu Plays Mulatu (Strut) ****
Backxwash: Only Dust Remains (Ugly Hag) ****
Bad Bunny: DeBI TiRAR MaS FOToS (Rimas Entertainment) **** *
Julien Baker & Torres: Send a Prayer My Way (Matador) **** 
Bar-B-Q Killers: The Last Shit, Part 1 (Chunklet 45)
Gina Birch: Trouble (Third Man)
The Bitter Ends: The Bitter Ends (Trouble in River City) 
Black Milk & Fat Ray: Food from the Gods (Computer Ugly / Fat Beats) 
Blacks’ Myths Meets Pat Thomas: The Mythstory School (self-released) *** 
Yugen Blakrok: The Illusion Of Being (I.O.T. Records) *** *
Blood Orange: Essex Honey (RCA)
Booker T & The Plasmic Bleeds: Ode To BC/LY… And Eye Know BO…. da Prez (Mahakala Music)
 Benjamin Booker: Lower (Fire Next Time) 
Christer Bothén: Christer Bothén Donso n’goni (Black Truffle)
Johnny Bragg: Let Me Dream On (Org Music) *** 
Patricia Brennan: Of The Near and Far (Pyroclastic) ****
Brother Ali & Ant: Satisfied Soul (Mello Music) Buck 65: Keep Moving (self-released)
Peter Brotzmann: The Quartet (Otoroku) *****
Master Wilburn Burchette: Master Wilburn Burchette’s Psychic Meditation Music (Numero Group) ***
Joe Chambers, Kevin Diehl, Chad Taylor: Onilu (Eremite) ****
Tyler Childers: Snipe Hunter (RCA / Hickman Holler) ****
Christer Bothén 3: L’Invisible (thanatosis) ****
Citric Dummies: Split with Turnstile (Feel It)
clipping: Dead Channel Sky (Sub Pop) 
Clipse: Let God Sort ‘Em Out (Roc Nation) ***
Common and Pete Rock: The Auditorium, Volume 1 (Casa Loma)
Hollie Cook: Shy Girl (Mr. Bongo) ***
Cosmic Ear: TRACES (We Jazz) *****
The Cosmic Tones Research Trio: The Cosmic Tones Research Trio (Mississippi Records) ***
 Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson: Bone Bells (Pyroclastic) ***
Sylvia Courvoisier & Wadada Leo Smith: Angel Falls (Intakt)
Chuck D: Chuck D Presents Enemy Radio—Radio Armageddon(Soundspeak)
cupcakKe: The Bakery (self-released) ***
Lucrecia Dalt: A Danger to Ourselves (RVNG International) ****
Christopher Dammann Sextet: Christopher Dammann Sextet (Out of Your Head)  ***
Deepstaria Enigmatica: The Eternal Now Is the Heart of a New Tomorrow (ESP-Disk)  ****
The Delines: Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom (Jealous Butcher) **** *
Dial Up: Dial Up (Aerophonic)
DJ Dadaman & Moscow Dollar: Ka Gaza (Nyege Nyege Tapes) 
DJ Haram: Beside Myself (Hyperdub)
DJ Shaun-D: From Bubbling to Dutch House (Nyege Nyege Tapes) 
Big Chief Bo Dollis Jr. & The Wild Magnolias: Chip Off The Old Block(Strong Place)
Doseone & Height Keech: Wood Teeth (Hands Made EP) ****
doseone & Steel Tipped Dove: All Portrait, No Chorus (BackwoodzStudios) ****
Earl Sweatshirt: Live Laugh Love (Tan Cressida) ***
Silke Eberhard Trio: Being-A-Ning (Intakt)
Eddy Current Suppression Ring: Shapes and Forms (Cool Death EP) ***
Marty Ehrlich Trio Exaltation: This Time (Sunnyside) ***
Electric Satie: Gymnopedia ’99 (In Sheep’s Clothing) ****
Marco Eneidi Quintet: Wheat Fields of Kleylehof (Balance Point Acoustics / Botticelli) ****
Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force: Khadim (Ndagga) ***
Silvana Estrada: Vendran Suaves Lluvia (Glassnote)
Ex-Void: In Love Again (Tapete Records)
Shamek Farrah: First Impressions (Strata-East) ***
Shamek Farrah & Sonelius Smith: The World of the Children (Strata-East) ****
Fieldwork: Thereupon (Pi Records) ****
Robert Finley: Hallelujah! Don’t Let the Devil Fool Ya! (Easy Eye)
Craig Finn: Always Been (Tamaric / Thirty Tigers) *** 
FKA twigs: Eusexua (Young Recordings Limited)
 Robert Forster: Strawberries (Tapete) ****
 Satoko Fujii GEN: Altitude 1100 Meters (Libra) 
Satoko Fujii Trio: Dream a Dream (Libra) **** 
Satoko Fuji / This is It!: Message (Libra)
Tomas Fujiwara: Dream Up (Out of Your Head) ****
Karol G: Tropicoqueta (Bichota) ****
Galactic and Irma Thomas: Audience with the Queen (Tchoup-Zilla)
Girl Scout: Headache (self-released EP)
Roger Glenn: My Latin Heart (Patois) ****
Woody Guthrie: Woody at Home, Vol 1 + 2 (Shamus) ****
HAIM: I quit (Haim Productions) ****
Keiji Haino and Natsuki Tamura: what happened there? (Libra) 
Mary Halvorson: About Ghosts (Nonesuch) *****
Hamell on Trial: Harp (for Harry) (Saustex)
Phil Haynes & Free Country: Liberty Now! (Corner Store Jazz) ***
Heat On: Heat On (Cuneiform)
 The Hemphill Stringtet: Plays the Music of Julius Hemphill (Out of Your Head Records)
The Hives: Forever Forever The Hives (Play It Again Sam)
Horsegirl: Phonetics On and On (Matador) 
HHY & The Kampala Unit: Turbo Meltdown (Nyege Nyege Tapes) ****
Patterson Hood: Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams (ATO) *** 
William Hooker: Jubilation (Org Music) ***** 
William Hooker: A Time Within: Live at the New York Jazz Museum, January 14, 1977 (The Control Group / Valley of Search) *** 
Hot 8 Brass Band: Big Tuba (Tru Thoughts) ***
Hunx and His Punks: Walk Out on This World (Get Better) ****
Hüsker Dü: January 30, Parts 1 & 2 (Numero EP) ***** (Numero box on the way….)
Mikko Innanen and Ingebrigt Häker Flaten: Live in Espoo (Sonic Transmissions)
Michael Gregory Jackson: Frequency Equilibrium Koan (moved-by-sound) 
Jeong – Bisio Duo (featuring Joe McPhee): Morning Bells Whistle Bright (ESP-Disk) **** 
JID: God Does Like Ugly (Dreamville/Interscope)
JLZ & GG: Medio Grave (Nyege Nyege Tapes) ***
Rico Jones: Bloodlines (Giant Step Arts)
Anthony Joseph: Rowing Up the River to Get Our Names Back (Heavenly Sweetness) ****
JPEG Mafia: I Lay Down My Life for You (Director’s Cut) (self-released) ****
Tyler Keith: I Confess (self-released?)
Kelela: In the Blue Light (Warp) ***
 KINGDOM MOLOGI: Kembo (Nyege Nyege Tapes) ****
Kronos Quartet + The Hard Rain Collective: Hard Rain (Red Hot Org EP)
Lady Gaga: Mayhem (Interscope) 
Lambrini Girls: Who Let The Dogs Out (City Slang US) *****
Steve Lehman: The Music of Anthony Braxton (Pi Recordings) ***** 
José Lencastre: Inner Voices (Burning Ambulance) ***
Jinx Lennon: The Hate Agents Leer at the Last Agents of Hope (Septic Tiger) *** 
James Brandon Lewis: Apple Cores (Anti-) 
James Brandon Lewis Quartet: Abstraction is Deliverance (Intakt) ***
Jeffrey Lewis: The Even More Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis (Don Giovanni) 
Little Simz: Lotus (AWAL) ****
LOLO: LOLO (Black Sweat) 
Rocio Gimenez Lopez: La Forma Del Sueno (Blue Art) **** 
Rocio Gimenez Lopez: La Palabra Repetida (Blue Art) ***
K. Curtis Lyle, Jaap Blonk, Damon Smith, Alex Cunningham: A Radio of the Body
Jako Maron: Mahavelouz (Nyege Nyege Tapes) **** 
Mahotella Queens: Buya Buya—Come Back (Umsakazo) ****
Mazinga: Chinese Democracy Manifest—Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 (Rubber Wolf) 
Mean Mistreater: Do or Die (self-released)  ***
The Mekons: Horror (Fire) *** 
Ava Mendoza/Gabby Fluke-Mogul/Carolina Perez: Mama Killa(Burning Ambulance) ***
Mexstep & Principe Q: Tráfico (Puro Unity EP)
M(h)aol: Something Soft (Merge) ***
Mac Miller: Baloonerism (Warner Records) 
Billy Mohler: The Eternal (Contagious) 
Moonchild Sanelly: Full Moon (self-released)
MonoNeon: You Had Your Chance…Bad Attitude! (Color Red) **** 
Christy Moore: A Terrible Beauty (Claddagh) *****
Jason Moran/Trondheim Jazz Orchestra/Ole Morten Vågan: Go To Your North (Yes Records)
kelly moran Don’t Trust Mirrors (Warp)
The Morells: You’re Gonna Hurt Yourself (Sound Asleep)
Maria Muldaur: One Hour Mama (Nola Blue)
Matthew Muneses and Riza Printup: Pag-Ibko, Volume 1 (Irabbagast Records) 
David Murray Quartet: The Birdsong Project Presents Birdly Serenade (Verve)
Amina Claudine Myers: Solace of the Mind (Red Hook) ****
Natural Information Society: Perseverance Flow (Eremite) ****
Natural Information Society and Bitchin’ Bahas: Totality (Drag City) 
The Necks: Inquiet (Northern Spy)
Louis Nevins: The Fumes (Cavetone Records) ***
Alick Nkhata: Radio Lusaka (Mississippi Records) ***
NOBRO: Set Your Pussy Free (Dine Alone) ***
Nourished By Time: The Passionate Ones (XL)
Linda May Han Oh: Strange Heavens (Biophilia) ****
Isabelle Olivier: Impressions (Rewound Echoes) 
The Onions: Return to Paradise (Hitt Records) 
Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet: Hauslive 4 (Palilalia) *** 
Organic Pulse Ensemble: Ad Hoc (Ultraaani Records) *****
Aruan Ortiz: Creole Renaissance (Intakt) ***
Kassa Overall: Cream (Warp) ****
Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra Led by Horace Tapscott: Live at Widney High December 26th, 1971 (The Village) ***
Raphael Pannier: Live in St. Louis, Senegal (Miel Music) ***
 Ivo Perelmamn and Matthew Shipp: Armageddon Flower (TAO Forms)
 Pitch, Rhythm, and Consciousness: Sextet (Reva Records) 
Marek Pospieszalski Octet & Zoh Amba: NOW! (Project financed by a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage “Młoda Polska” & Katowice City of Music UNESCO)
Preservation & Gabe ‘Nandez: Sortilège (BackwoodzStudioz) ****
Princess Nokia: Girls (Artist House)
The Prize: In the Red (Anti Fade Records) ***
Public Enemy: Black Sky Over The Projects—Apartment 2025 (self-released) ***
Les Rallizes Denudes: Blind Baby Has Its Mother’s Eyes (Life Goes On) 
Les Rallizes Denudes: Jittoku ’76 (Temporal Drift)
R.A.P. Ferreira & Kenny Segal: The Night Green Side of It (Ruby Yacht / Alpha Pup) ***
R.A.P. Ferreira: Outstanding Understanding (Ruby Yacht)
Vernon Reid: Hoodoo Telemetry (Artone / The Players Club)
Jussi Reijonen: sayr—salt/thirst (unmusic) ****
Jussi Reijonen: sayr-kaiho—Live in Helsinki (unmusic) ****
Jonathan Richman: Only Frozen Sky Anyway (Blue Arrow)
 Adam Rudolph, Dave Liebman, Billy Hart: Beingness (Meta) 
Bobby Rush and Kenny Wayne Shepherd: Young Fashioned Ways (Deep Rush / RAM Records) ***
Sverre Sæbo Quintet: If, However, You Have Not Lost Your Self Control (SauaJazz)
 SAULT: 10 (Sault Global) *** 
Serengeti: mixtape 2 (serengetiraps / self-released) 
Serengeti: Palookaville (serengetiraps / self-released)  
The Sex Pistols: Live in the U.S.A. South East Music Hall, Atlanta, January 5th, 1978 (UME) 
Sharp Pins: Radio DDR (K / Perennial Death)
Sharp Pins: Balloon Balloon Balloon (perennial) ****
Matthew Shipp: The Cosmic Piano (Canteloupe Records) ****
Patrick Shiroishi: Forgetting is Violent (American Dream)
Anthony “Big A” Sherrod: Torchbearer of the Clarksdale Sound(Music Makers Recordings EP)
$ilkMoney: WHO WATERS THE WILTING GIVING TREE ONCE THE LEAVES DRY UP AND FRUITS NO LONGER BEAR? (Lex)
Laura Singh: Mean Reds (Out of Your Head)
Slick Rick: Victory (Mass Appeal) ***
Peter Stampfel: Song Shards (Jalopy Records) ***
Luke Stewart / Silt Remembrance Ensemble: The Order (Cuneiform) *** 
Yuhan Su: OVER the MOONs (Endectomorph Music)
Sudan Archives: THE BPM (Stones Throw)
Ray Suhy / Lewis Porter Quartet: What Happens Next (Sunnyside) *** 
SUMAC and Moor Mother: The Film (Thrill Jockey) 
Sun Ra: Nuits de la Fondation Maeght 5 August 1970 (Strut) ***
Superchunk: Songs in the Key of Yikes (Merge) ****
John Surman: Flashpoint and Undercurrents(Cuneiform Records) ***
Atef Swaitat & Abu Ali: Palestinian Bedouin Psychedelic Dabka Archive (Majazz Project/Palestinian Sound Archive) ****
Masahiko Tagashi: Session in Paris, Volume 1—Song of the Soil (with Don Cherry and Charlie Haden) (We Want Sounds) 
Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’: Room on the Porch (Concord Jazz)  
Taj Mahal & Keb’ Mo’: Room on the Porch for Everyone (UMG EP)  
Cecil Taylor / Tony Oxley: Flashing Spirits (Burning Ambulance)
Ebo Taylor, Adrain Younge, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad: Jazz Is Dead 22 (Jazz is Dead) 
The Third Mind: Right Now! (Yep Roc)
Three-Layer Cake: “sounds the color of grounds” (Otherly Love)
Pat Thomas: HIKMAH (TAO Forms)
Los Thuthanaka: Los Thuthanaka (Studio Pankara) ****
Trio Glossia: Trio Glossia (Sonic Transmissions) **** 
Trio of Bloom: Trio of Bloom (Pyroclastic) ***
The Tubs: Cotton Crown (self-released) ***
Kali Uchis: Sincerely (Capitol) ***
Akira Umeda & Metal Preyers: Clube de Mariposa Mórbida (Nyege Nyege Tapes)
The Untamed Youth: Git Up and Go (Hi-Tide / Nu-Tone)
Various Artists: African Jazz Invites O.K. Jazz (Planet Ilunga) *** 
Various Artists: A Tribute to the King of Zydeco (Valcourt) *****
Various Artists: Democracy Forward (Bitter Southerner) ***
Various Artists: Prisoners’ Day Compilation (Majazz Project / Palestinian Sound Archive) ***
 Various Artists: Roots Rocking Zimbabwe– The Modern Sound of Harare’ Townships 1975-1980 (Analog Africa) **** 
Various Artists: Sweet Rebels—The Golden Era of Algerian Pop-Rai (We Want Sounds) ***
Vibration Black Finger: Everybody Cryin’ Mercy (Enid)
Morgan Wade: The Party is Over (recovered) (Ladylike) ***
The War & Treaty: Plus One (Mercury Nashville) 
Wednesday: Bleeds (Dead Oceans) ***
Wet Leg: moisturizer (Domino) ***
Alfred White: The Definitive Alfred White (Music Makers Recordings) 
Wheelhouse: House and Home (Aerophonic) 
Simon Willson: Bet (Endectomorph Records)
billy woods: GOLLIWOG (x) (Backwoodz Studios) 
Wu-Tang Clan: Black Samson, The Bastard (All Maf / 36 Chambers)
Jeong Lim Yang: Synchronicity (Fully Altered Media)
Hiroshi Yoshimura: Flora (Temporal Drift) ***
Brandee Younger: Gadabout Season (Impulse) ***
The Young Mothers: Better If You Let It (Sonic Transmissions) ****
Miguel Zenon: Vanguardia Subterranea (Miel Music) ***

LATE BREAKING!!!! The Makaya McCraven EPs on International Anthem smoke!

Back To School: Living to Listen’s Favorite Records, January 1st to September 1st, 2025

To my regular readers: As I type, I have already begun my 42nd (consecutive) year as a teacher. This fall, I am teaching two on-line freshman composition classes at Stephens College (one with the school’s Conservatory and built around Sasha Geffen’s alternative pop history Glitter Up The Dark–read it yourself, folks!—and the other with its regular women’s college students, who are reading Octavia Butler’s Kindred. In addition, I will be teaching an in-person 3.5-week, M-F, three-hours-per-block freshman comp class starting in mid-October; they, too, will be reading Butler’s book. Most of you will not need to guess why I’ve chosen those books to build a composition class around; my Missouri readers will have no doubt. Anyway, I’m devoting this post to my students, so I will now proceed to, ahem, address them….

To my students: Welcome to Living to Listen, the longest list of lovely licorice pizza in Blogtown! When I was your age (zzzzz….) in 1980, I could not have made a list of 35 albums I even owned, nor barely 50 I had heard from beginning to end (I was a singles kid then). If I’d been asked to construct my favorites from those, on the list would have been Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces, The B-52s, Bob Seger’s Night Moves, The Velvet Underground’s 1969 Live, X’s Los Angeles, Black Sabbath’s We Sold Our Soul for Rock and Roll, “Rapper’s Delight,” Teddy Pendergrass’ Teddy, Neil Young’s Live Rust, Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, The Clash’s London Calling, The Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks, Cher’s most recent album (serious outlier)…well, I’ll stop there. Today, the year isn’t even over and the following list isn’t numbered, but odds are it will exceed 200 by New Year’s Eve 2026 and those will just be the ones I heard that I liked.

What’s the point? Good question. Often I wonder that myself. What I think I’m doing is helping my readers wade through a perpetual tsunami of new recordings—literally any sentient being can now make a record and make it available to the public—and find something that will transfix, delight, provoke, stimulate, energize, and maybe even transform them from the creatures that they are…because they did one or more of those things to me. What I am probably doing is nearer to yodeling into the Grand Canyon at 2 a.m. What I am sure I am doing at the very least is preparing myself to vote in a couple of year-end “Best of the Year” polls (though I have yet to even pull my Top 10 out of the jungle below) as well as committing to cybermemory a record (make that very plural) of what I was putting my ear to at the time. It may also appear that I am showing off and that may well be accurate, but I’d argue that I don’t spend money or time on much else than listening to music, books, movie theaters, Stephens Conservatory productions, teaching, and my very saintly bride. Oh yes, food. And occasionally drink. I have to be forced to buy new clothes, I would never drive anything if I didn’t have to, one house will do, thank you—in other words, really, music is not only an obsession for me but a lifeline. I am not religious, but sometimes I have argued with friends that every record in the house (yes, I and you should BUY music to keep food on our musicmakers’plates) is like a book of humanity’s bible to me. Seriously.

A quick scan of my 2025 favorites reveals a few things about me: 1) I listen to a lot of music; 2) I am not exactly a poptimist (I really like Olivia, Beyonce, Rihanna, Harry, and Billie, for example, but I merely seriously admire Taylor Swift and have no use for Sabrina—nor a lot of men who make poppy pop music, and I really only like one of Harry’s albums); 3) Looks like I lean hard toward improvisational jazz (especially the Scandinavian variety—they distill the best stuff!), but it frees my mind, goes great with reading, and fits an ideal I hold about living with other people; 4) I am apparently working for Nyege Nyege Tapes out of Uganda as well as the prolific Japanese jazz pianist Satoko Fujii; and—gotta stop somewhere—5) unlike many, many white men my age (63.666), I like rap music. The list does not show that I LOVE country music, but as far as today’s purveyors go, it’s mostly the women that bend my ear. I love Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan because they sing with intensity and they write outside the lines of the stereotypical “rural” coloring book.

So…sample some stuff! I would expect you haven’t heard of a lot of it, but I’ll warn you that that is not because it’s not good—it’s a wide, wide world out there! Each record listing includes a link to a way to get ahold of it or learn about it, a Spotify link (I hate that platform, but I feel I have no choice) for the whole list that follows it, and next you will see the meaning of my typology (?). I hope you find something that lifts you! Also, if something you love from 2025 isn’t on the list, that doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t like it—I might not have gotten to it yet. I also might not have simply gotten it yet. Or it could be it just don’t move me! Students, peace to you unless you have to protect others, then and always may you stay safe, please write so well you’re proud of the output, and talk to me about some of these platters!

MY LIST OF AURAL PLEASURE

January 1 – September 1, 2025

BOLD = New to the List

ASTERISKED* = Damn good!*** to Holy SHIT!*****

ITALICIZED: Excavations from the Past / Reissues

Aesop Rock: Black Hole Superette (Rhymesayers) **** 

Africa Express: …Presents…Bahidora (World Circuit Limited) ****

Amarae: Black Star (Golden Angel) ***

Zoh Amba: Sun (Smalltown Supersound) ****

Ale Hop & Titi Bakorta: Mapambazuko (Nyege Nyege Tapes) ***** 

Marshall Allen’s Ghost Horizons: Live in Philadelphia, Volume 1 (Otherly Love Records) **** 

The Ancients: The Ancients (Eremite) ***

 Ichiko Aoba: Luminescent Creatures (Psychic Hotline) 

Artemis: Arboresque (Blue Note) ****

Backxwash: Only Dust Remains (Ugly Hag) ****

Bad Bunny: DeBI TiRAR MaS FOToS (Rimas Entertainment) **** *

Julien Baker & Torres: Send a Prayer My Way (Matador) **** 

Bar-B-Q Killers: The Last Shit, Part 1 (Chunklet 45)

Gina Birch: Trouble (Third Man)

The Bitter Ends: The Bitter Ends (Trouble in River City) 

Black Milk & Fat Ray: Food from the Gods (Computer Ugly / Fat Beats) 

Blacks’ Myths Meets Pat Thomas: The Mythstory School (self-released) *** 

Yugen Blakrok: The Illusion Of Being (I.O.T. Records) *** *

Blood Orange: Essex Honey (RCA) ***

Booker T & The Plasmic Bleeds: Ode To BC/LY… And Eye Know BO…. da Prez (Mahakala Music)

 Benjamin Booker: Lower (Fire Next Time) 

Johnny Bragg: Let Me Dream On (Org Music) *** 

Brother Ali & Ant: Satisfied Soul (Mello Music) 

Buck 65: Keep Moving (self-released) ****

Peter Brotzmann: The Quartet (Otoroku) *****

Master Wilburn Burchette: Master Wilburn Burchette’s Psychic Meditation Music (Numero Group) ***

Joe Chambers, Kevin Diehl, Chad Taylor: Onilu (Eremite) ****

Tyler Childers: Snipe Hunter (RCA / Hickman Holler) ****

Christer Bothén 3: L’Invisible (thanatosis) ****

clipping: Dead Channel Sky (Sub Pop) 

Clipse: Let God Sort ‘Em Out (Roc Nation) ***

Common and Pete Rock: The Auditorium, Volume 1 (Casa Loma)

Cosmic Ear: TRACES (We Jazz) *****

 Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson: Bone Bells (Pyroclastic) ***

Chuck D: Chuck D Presents Enemy Radio—Radio Armageddon (Soundspeak)

Christopher Dammann Sextet: Christopher Dammann Sextet (Out of Your Head)  ***

Deepstaria Enigmatica: The Eternal Now Is the Heart of a New Tomorrow (ESP-Disk)  ****

The Delines: Mr. Luck & Ms. Doom (Jealous Butcher) **** 

DJ Dadaman & Moscow Dollar: Ka Gaza (Nyege Nyege Tapes) 

DJ Haram: Beside Myself (Hyperdub)

DJ Shaun-D: From Bubbling to Dutch House (Nyege Nyege Tapes) 

Big Chief Bo Dollis Jr. & The Wild Magnolias: Chip Off The Old Block (Strong Place)

Doseone & Height Keech: Wood Teeth (Hands Made EP) ****

doseone & Steel Tipped Dove: All Portrait, No Chorus (BackwoodzStudios) ****

Earl Sweatshirt: Live Laugh Love (Tan Cressida) ***

Silke Eberhard Trio: Being-A-Ning (Intakt)

Eddy Current Suppression Ring: Shapes and Forms (Cool Death EP) ***

Marty Ehrlich Trio Exaltation: This Time (Sunnyside) ***

Electric Satie: Gymnopedia ’99 (In Sheep’s Clothing) ****

Marco Eneidi Quintet: Wheat Fields of Kleylehof (Balance Point Acoustics / Botticelli) ****

Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force: Khadim (Ndagga) ***

Ex-Void: In Love Again (Tapete Records)

Fieldwork: Thereupon (Pi Records) ****

Craig Finn: Always Been (Tamaric / Thirty Tigers) *** 

FKA twigs: Eusexua (Young Recordings Limited)

 Robert Forster: Strawberries (Tapete) ****

 Satoko Fujii GEN: Altitude 1100 Meters (Libra) 

Satoko Fujii Trio: Dream a Dream (Libra) **** 

Satoko Fuji / This is It!: Message (Libra)

Karol G: Tropicoqueta (Bichota) ****

Galactic and Irma Thomas: Audience with the Queen (Tchoup-Zilla)

Girl Scout: Headache (self-released EP)

Roger Glenn: My Latin Heart (Patois) ***

Woody Guthrie: Woody at Home, Vol 1 + 2 (Shamus) ****

Keiji Haino and Natsuki Tamura: what happened there? (Libra) 

Mary Halvorson: About Ghosts (Nonesuch) *****

Hamell on Trial: Harp (for Harry) (Saustex)

Heat On: Heat On (Cuneiform)

 The Hemphill Stringtet: Plays the Music of Julius Hemphill (Out of Your Head Records)

 Patterson Hood: Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams (ATO) *** 

William Hooker: Jubilation (Org Music) ***** 

William Hooker: A Time Within: Live at the New York Jazz Museum, January 14, 1977 (The Control Group / Valley of Search) *** 

Horsegirl: Phonetics On and On (Matador) 

HHY & The Kampala Unit: Turbo Meltdown (Nyege Nyege Tapes) ****

Hunx and His Punks: Walk Out on This World (Get Better) ****

Hüsker Dü: January 30, Parts 1 & 2 (Numero EP) ***** (Numero box on the way….)

Mikko Innanen and Ingebrigt Häker Flaten: Live in Espoo (Sonic Transmissions)

Michael Gregory Jackson: Frequency Equilibrium Koan (moved-by-sound) 

Jeong – Bisio Duo (featuring Joe McPhee): Morning Bells Whistle Bright (ESP-Disk) **** 

JLZ & GG: Medio Grave (Nyege Nyege Tapes) ***

Rico Jones: Bloodlines (Giant Step Arts)

Anthony Joseph: Rowing Up the River to Get Our Names Back (Heavenly Sweetness) ****

JPEG Mafia: I Lay Down My Life for You (Director’s Cut) (self-released) ****

Kelela: In the Blue Light (Warp) ***

 KINGDOM MOLOGI: Kembo (Nyege Nyege Tapes) ****

Kronos Quartet + The Hard Rain Collective: Hard Rain (Red Hot Org EP)

Lady Gaga: Mayhem (Interscope) 

Lambrini Girls: Who Let The Dogs Out (City Slang US) *****

Steve Lehman: The Music of Anthony Braxton (Pi Recordings) ***** 

José Lencastre: Inner Voices (Burning Ambulance) ***

Jinx Lennon: The Hate Agents Leer at the Last Agents of Hope (Septic Tiger) *** 

James Brandon Lewis: Apple Cores (Anti-) 

James Brandon Lewis Quartet: Abstraction is Deliverance (Intakt) ***

Jeffrey Lewis: The Even More Freewheelin’ Jeffrey Lewis (Don Giovanni) 

Little Simz: Lotus (AWAL) ****

LOLO: LOLO (Black Sweat) 

Rocio Gimenez Lopez: La Forma Del Sueno (Blue Art) **** 

Rocio Gimenez Lopez: La Palabra Repetida (Blue Art) ***

K. Curtis Lyle, Jaap Blonk, Damon Smith, Alex Cunningham: A Radio of the Body

Jako Maron: Mahavelouz (Nyege Nyege Tapes) **** 

Mazinga: Chinese Democracy Manifest—Greatest Hits, Vol. 2 (Rubber Wolf) 

Mean Mistreater: Do or Die (self-released)  ***

The Mekons: Horror (Fire) *** 

Ava Mendoza/Gabby Fluke-Mogul/Carolina Perez: Mama Killa (Burning Ambulance) ***

M(h)aol: Something Soft (Merge) ***

Mac Miller: Baloonerism (Warner Records) 

Billy Mohler: The Eternal (Contagious) 

Moonchild Sanelly: Full Moon (self-released)

MonoNeon: You Had Your Chance…Bad Attitude! (Color Red) **** 

Christy Moore: A Terrible Beauty (Claddagh) *****

Jason Moran/Trondheim Jazz Orchestra/Ole Morten Vågan: Go To Your North (Yes Records)

Matthew Muneses and Riza Printup: Pag-Ibko, Volume 1 (Irabbagast Records) 

David Murray Quartet: The Birdsong Project Presents Birdly Serenade (Verve)

Amina Claudine Myers: Solace of the Mind (Red Hook) ****

Natural Information Society and Bitchin’ Bahas: Totality (Drag City) 

Louis Nevins: The Fumes (Cavetone Records) ***

Alick Nkhata: Radio Lusaka (Mississippi Records) ***

NOBRO: Set Your Pussy Free (Dine Alone) ***

Nourished By Time: The Passionate Ones (XL)

Isabelle Olivier: Impressions (Rewound Echoes) 

The Onions: Return to Paradise (Hitt Records) 

Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet: Hauslive 4 (Palilalia) *** 

Organic Pulse Ensemble: Ad Hoc (Ultraaani Records) *****

Aruan Ortiz: Creole Renaissance (Intakt) ***

Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra Led by Horace Tapscott: Live at Widney High December 26th, 1971 (The Village) ***

 Ivo Perelmamn and Matthew Shipp: Armageddon Flower (TAO Forms)

 Pitch, Rhythm, and Consciousness: Sextet (Reva Records) 

Marek Pospieszalski Octet & Zoh Amba: NOW! (Project financed by a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage “Młoda Polska” & Katowice City of Music UNESCO)

Public Enemy: Black Sky Over The Projects—Apartment 2025 (self-released) ***

Les Rallizes Denudes: Blind Baby Has Its Mother’s Eyes (Life Goes On) 

Les Rallizes Denudes: Jittoku ’76 (Temporal Drift)

R.A.P. Ferreira: Outstanding Understanding (Ruby Yacht)

Jonathan Richman: Only Frozen Sky Anyway (Blue Arrow)

 Adam Rudolph, Dave Liebman, Billy Hart: Beingness (Meta) 

Bobby Rush and Kenny Wayne Shepherd: Young Fashioned Ways (Deep Rush / RAM Records) ***

Sverre Sæbo Quintet: If, However, You Have Not Lost Your Self Control (SauaJazz)

 SAULT: 10 (Sault Global) *** 

Serengeti: mixtape 2 (serengetiraps / self-released) 

Serengeti: Palookaville (serengetiraps / self-released)  

The Sex Pistols: Live in the U.S.A. South East Music Hall, Atlanta, January 5th, 1978 (UME) 

The Sharp Pins: Radio DDR (K / Perennial Death) *** 

Matthew Shipp: The Cosmic Piano (Canteloupe Records) ****

Anthony “Big A” Sherrod: Torchbearer of the Clarksdale Sound (Music Makers Recordings EP)

Slick Rick: Victory (Mass Appeal) ***

Luke Stewart / Silt Remembrance Ensemble: The Order (Cuneiform) *** 

Ray Suhy / Lewis Porter Quartet: What Happens Next (Sunnyside) *** 

SUMAC and Moor Mother: The Film (Thrill Jockey) 

Sun Ra: Nuits de la Fondation Maeght 5 August 1970 (Strut) ***

Superchunk: Songs in the Key of Yikes (Merge) ****

John Surman: Flashpoint and Undercurrents (Cuneiform Records) ***

Atef Swaitat & Abu Ali: Palestinian Bedouin Psychedelic Dabka Archive (Majazz Project/Palestinian Sound Archive) ********

Masahiko Tagashi: Session in Paris, Volume 1—Song of the Soil (with Don Cherry and Charlie Haden) (We Want Sounds) 

Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’: Room on the Porch (Concord Jazz)  

Taj Mahal & Keb’ Mo’: Room on the Porch for Everyone (UMG EP)  

Cecil Taylor / Tony Oxley: Flashing Spirits (Burning Ambulance)

Ebo Taylor, Adrain Younge, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad: Jazz Is Dead 22 (Jazz is Dead) 

Three-Layer Cake: “sounds the color of grounds” (Otherly Love)

Los Thuthanaka: Los Thuthanaka (Studio Pankara) ****

Trio Glossia: Trio Glossia (Sonic Transmissions) **** 

The Tubs: Cotton Crown (self-released) ***

Kali Uchis: Sincerely (Capitol) ***

Akira Umeda & Metal Preyers: Clube de Mariposa Mórbida (Nyege Nyege Tapes)

The Untamed Youth: Git Up and Go (Hi-Tide / Nu-Tone)

Various Artists: African Jazz Invites O.K. Jazz (Planet Ilunga) *** 

Various Artists: A Tribute to the King of Zydeco (Valcourt) *****

Various Artists: Democracy Forward (Bitter Southerner) ***

Various Artists: Prisoners’ Day Compilation (Majazz Project / Palestinian Sound Archive) ***

 Various Artists: Roots Rocking Zimbabwe– The Modern Sound of Harare’ Townships 1975-1980 (Analog Africa) **** 

Various Artists: Sweet Rebels—The Golden Era of Algerian Pop-Rai (We Want Sounds) ***

Vibration Black Finger: Everybody Cryin’ Mercy (Enid)

Morgan Wade: The Party is Over (recovered) (Ladylike) ****

The War & Treaty: Plus One (Mercury Nashville) 

Wet Leg: moisturizer (Domino) ***

Alfred White: The Definitive Alfred White (Music Makers Recordings) 

Wheelhouse: House and Home (Aerophonic) 

Simon Willson: Bet (Endectomorph Records)

billy woods: GOLLIWOG (x) (Backwoodz Studios) 

Wu-Tang Clan: Black Samson, The Bastard (All Maf / 36 Chambers)

Jeong Lim Yang: Synchronicity (Fully Altered Media)

Hiroshi Yoshimura: Flora (Temporal Drift) ***

Brandee Younger: Gadabout Season (Impulse) ***

The Young Mothers: Better If You Let It (Sonic Transmissions) ****

Miguel Zenon: Vanguardia Subterranea (Miel Music) ***

Put this SPITify sucker on shuffle and free your ears-–so your arse and mind will follow!

Amerikkkan Top 40: Some New (and Relatively New) Albums That May Help Get You Through the Morning News If You Can Stand to Read It

Hi! I’m early with my 2025 blog update, but I ain’t buying anything Friday anyway (I hope it isn’t Bandcamp Friday). If you happen to be a new reader, what I try to do at the end of each month is highlight the new albums–or recently excavated older works–that I’ve truly enjoyed, that have kept me sane, that have moved me, that have challenged me, etc. etc. etc. A thing about me: I’m the kind of person who always tries to order something different on the menu every time he goes to a restaurant, and I’m even more that way with music. I love a lot of it, I don’t think in genres, I am fascinated as much by pure sound and mood as I am by conventionally structured songs and lyrics, and I see myself as a scout, a finder, a tout (albeit a somewhat inexpressive one, as I’d rather you sample some of this stuff than me try to tell you why it is so attractive to me zzzzzzzzzz). Maybe you should start with the album covers, the album titles, the label names–and recently I’ve been including a boo-hiss Spotify playlist that includes tracks from each work (if possible–I get review copies ahead of time, which I will try to note and which aren’t yet represented in “the stream”–and not everything is on Spotify, in case you didn’t know). Finally, IRL (I’ve always wanted to use that!), I am an English teacher of 41 years’ vintage (a lightly sweet grape Boone’s Farm ’84), and because of my love for reading and teaching novels, I prefer albums to singles–I want to experience an act’s whole world, not just a moment where maybe they got hit by lightning inspiration or just got lucky.

Each month I’ll add to the previous month’s existing list, and bold-face those entries so you know they’re new. Some items may disappear if they fade for me or I just glitch. I’m starting by listing them alphabetically until order of love begins to establish itself, which it hasn’t quite, yet. This month, FOUR asterisks (****) will indicate a few discs I’m really enchanted by, and FIVE asterisks a few discs I’m really really enchanted by. Eventually, too, I’ll separate the list into really new stuff and those excavations I mentioned.

I hope you find something below that makes your day and creates the illusion that we aren’t necessarily facing a barbarian takeover. Take a chance, why doncha?

THE LIST (January 1 – February 26, 2025)

Ale Hop & Titi Bakorta: Mapambazuko (Nyege Nyege Tapes)*****

The Ancients: The Ancients (Eremite)

Bad Bunny: DeBI TiRAR MaS FOToS (Rimas Entertainment)****

Black Milk & Fat Ray: Food from the Gods (Computer Ugly / Fat Beats)

Booker T & The Plasmic Bleeds: Ode To BC/LY… And Eye Know BO…. da Prez (Mahakala Music)

Benjamin Booker: Lower(Fire Next Time)

Brother Ali & Ant: Satisfied Soul (Mello Music)

Sylvie Courvoisier & Mary Halvorson: Bone Bells (Pyroclastic) Note: release date = March 14, 2025

doseone & Steel Tipped Dove: All Portrait, No Chorus (BackwoodzStudios) ****

Ex-Void: In Love Again(Tapete Records)

FKA twigs: Eusexua (Young Recordings Limited)

Satoko Fujii GEN: Altitude 1100 Meters (Libra)

Satoko Fujii Trio: Dream a Dream (Libra)****

Keiji Haino and Natsuki Tamura: what happened there? (Libra)

The Hemphill Stringtet: Plays the Music of Julius Hemphill (Out of Your Head Records) Note: release date = April 4, 2025****

William Hooker: Jubilation (Org Music)*****

Horsegirl: Phonetics On and On (Matador)

Michael Gregory Jackson: Frequency Equilibrium Koan (moved-by-sound)

Anthony Joseph: Rowing Up the River to Get Our Names Back (Heavenly Sweetness)****

JPEG Mafia: I Lay Down My Life for You (Director’s Cut) (self-released)*****

Kelela: In the Blue Light (Warp)***

Steve Lehman: The Music of Anthony Braxton (Pi Recordings)*****

James Brandon Lewis: Apple Cores (Anti-)

LOLO: LOLO (Black Sweat)

Mean Mistreater: Do or Die (self-released)

Mac Miller: Baloonerism (Warner Records)

Jako Maron: Mahavelouz (Nyege Nyege Tapes)****

Isabelle Olivier: Impressions (Rewound Echoes)

Marek Pospieszalski Octet & Zoh Amba (see below): NOW! (Project financed by a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage “Młoda Polska” & Katowice City of Music UNESCO) Note: release date = November 29, 2024

R.A.P. Ferreira: Outstanding Understanding (Ruby Yacht)

Serengeti: Palookaville (serengetiraps / self-released) Note: release date = December 25, 2024

Ebo Taylor, Adrain Younge, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad: Jazz Is Dead 22 (Jazz is Dead)

Trio Glossia: Trio Glossia (Sonic Transmissions)****

Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory: Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory (Jagjaguwar)

The War & Treaty: Plus One (Mercury Nashville)

Jesse Welles: Middle (Jesse Welles Music)

Alfred White: The Definitive Alfred White (Music Makers Recordings)

Simon Willson: Bet (Endectomorph Records)

Jeong Lim Yang: Synchronicity (Fully Altered Media)

The Young Mothers: Better If You Let It (Sonic Transmissions)****

Fetching Recordings from January 2025–For Month 1, Not Too Skimpy!

I am restless. As a teacher, I cannot teach the same lesson twice the same way (nor should anyone, but maybe I’m wrong). Last year, I tried to write more about the albums I loved on this blog but ended up very unsatisfied, plus it was a pain when it came to assembling a complete year-end list. So…I think this year, I’ll go back to my cumulative listing and let y’all follow the links and divine from those whether the records are worthy of your time…unless you just trust me. I wouldn’t. I am going to stick with closing with a Spotify playlist sampler, though I hate Spotify and, since I receive some review copies, songs from those might not yet be available–especially on this one.

New Releases:

Ale Hop & Titi Bakorta: Mapambazuko (Nyege Nyege Tapes)

Bad Bunny: DeBI TiRAR MaS FOToS (Rimas Entertainment)

Booker T* & The Plasmic Bleeds: Ode To BC/LY… And Eye Know BO…. da Prez (Mahakala Music)

Benjamin Booker: Lower (Fire Next Time)

doseone & Steel Tipped Dove: All Portrait, No Chorus (BackwoodzStudios)

Ex-Void: In Love Again (Tapete Records)

Satoko Fujii GEN: Altitude 1100 Meters (Libra)*

Keiji Haino and Natsuki Tamura: what happened there? (Libra)

LOLO: LOLO (Black Sweat)

Mac Miller: Baloonerism (Warner Records)

Serengeti: Palookaville (serengetiraps / self-released) Note: release date = December 25, 2024

Omar Thomas: Griot Songs (Omar Thomas Music)

Simon Willson: Bet (Endectomorph Records) @

Jeong Lim Yang: Synchronicity (Fully Altered Media)

@Features Neta Raanan, a terrific young saxophonist whose debut last year was SHARP.

*Fujii can’t stop, won’t stop–first album out of considerably over 100 (!!) with a string section.

*A terrific free jazz tenor last heard from about 40+ years ago who’s resurfaced.

Old Stuff I Happily Listened To:

Zoh Amba: Every album she’s released and appeared on. We saw her play live and it was a chicken-skin experience! Blazing and dynamically moody free jazz plus surprise acoustic guitar versions of new songs that both rended and expanded one’s heart. Check out the way she finishes out Myriam Gendron’s track on the playlist below!

Bob Dylan’s folk stuff: I was subbing the other day shortly after A Complete Unknown was released and I’d seen it—it sent be back to my favorites of his early period, especially the first album (what writer recently said he was electric from the first, because the electricity was in the way he sang those songs?) and “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” which I’ve always loved and repeat played to the point it was worming my ear all day)—and I casually sidled up to a table of 10^th grade “advanced placement” dudes. Me: “Hey, have you guys heard of Bob Dylan?” Them (in tandem): “He’s dead, right?” I have some issues with the movie but it was entertaining and has a reason for being.

Culture and Burning Spear in the schools: Sometimes if I’m subbing for an old English-teaching comrade, they’ll let me write my own lesson and teach. A recent job was for a guy who teaches classical ideas and world religions and his students are currently studying Judaism; he asked if I could talk about Rastafarian reggae’s connections with Judaism and play some examples. They didn’t know dick about Rastafarianism or reggae, so it was a good call. We studied The Melodians’ “Rivers of Babylon,” sections of Culture’s Two Sevens Clash and aspects of Burning Spear’s Marcus Garvey. I also pushed Safiya Sinclair’s memoir of wrasslin’ to liberate herself from the clutches of her Rasta dad, How to Say Babylon. I’ve listened to reggae every day since.

Sinead O’Connor: Nicole and I watched the SNL Music special ?Love put together (apparently he was ordered by Lorne to exclude any evidence of The Replacements’ TRANSCENDENT appearance, the petty bastard) and got chills revisiting Sinead’s appearance. Listened to her all of the next day (yesterday, as it were) and kept getting chills, though I found myself wondering how much more she could have accomplished without the after-effects of the backlash (as Al Franken said, “She was kind of right,” though I’d say “She was right.”).

Black Female Gospel Warriors All Day on January 20^th. Folks? Put the whole of the armour on.

Not Quite Apocalypse, Yet: OCTOBER ’24–Best Stuff I Heard

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The post title is all I’m saying about the obvious.

If you haven’t had a chance to do so through other portals, you should check out the rock and roll high school story I’d never gotten around to writing since it happened on March 30, 2005: the Hood-Cooley-Isbell Drive-By Truckers playing an unplugged concert at the high school where I was working (I’d only asked their people if one of those guys could talk to our rock and roll club). I have a Substack on top of this (why?), and there you will find Part 1 and Part 2 of the tale. You’ll get a kick out of it, I think.

This seemed a sluggish month for music (I was personally and professionally too busy to be sluggish myself), but then it came on at the tail end. In fact, it’s still coming on as I type this and try to catch up with some last-second drops.

Yep–still trying (and only succeeding via ridiculously adhered clauses) to write one-sentence reviews. I’ve got multiple jobs, people! And I like to read and play with cats when I’m home!

Note: Speaking of work, my popular music-infused Stephens College freshman composition class is reading the great music writer Ann Powers’ alternate history of American pop, Good Booty (please read it and her new and intriguing Joni Mitchell bio Traveling Traveling Traveling yourself), and I talked Ann into an interview for my students’ edification. If you’re interested in hearing it–she ranges widely and always eloquently–click this link (it was a Zoom interview, and since my students could not participate due to the class’ on-line asynchronous nature, I had to record it for them).

OCTOBER 2024 NEW RECORDINGS I HEARD (alphabetically ordered)

BOLDED = Damn good!

Amy & The Sniffers: Cartoon Darkness (Rough Trade) – The Internet seems to be underwhelmed by this record, but I respect punk pizzazz, and this has it–along with humor, shit-smearing, joy, and self-effacement.

The Belair Lip Bombs: Lush Life (Third Man) – For some reason (maybe it’s that I’ve never seen Johnny Depp and Jack White in the same photo), I don’t trust Third Man, but I read “power pop” in one review, and…yeah, maybe.

Church Chords: elvis, he was Schlager (Otherly Love) – Dark horse indie-rock / experimental AOTY candidate, from a label to keep your eye on, featuring wry vocals and sweet-memory-tickling musical stylings fired by these guitarists: Jeff Parker, Nels Cline, and Brandon Seabrook, the latter of whom often drags Dock Boggs into the 21st century.

Day Dream: Duke & Strays (Corner Store Jazz) – Last post I bemoaned my late discovery of the master drummer Phil Haynes, so, though I asked myself if I needed to hear another Ellington/Strayhorn tribute with predictable song choices, I tried it, and its sideways and intriguing interpretations, performed live, dazzled me–very much due to Haynes’ playing.

EELS: Being Dead (Bayonet) – Listened to out of obligation, repeat-played out of fixation, this “joyous and unexpected trip helmed by two true-blue freak bitch besties holed up in a lil’ house in the heart of Austin, Texas” (see Bandcamp) proves indie rock is far from dead.

Flagboy Giz and The Wild Tchoupitoulas: Live from the French Quarter Fest (Injun Money) – I will always investigate Mardi Gras Indians action, I’m thrilled to hear these chants “bounce”d, I’m glad Flagboy’s name is pronounced with a hard “g”…now, if someone will tell me where to get a hard copy (downloads are hard enough to find).

Joe Fonda: Eyes on the Horizon (Long Song) – Master jazz bassist (Fonda) and indefatigable pianist (Satoko Fujii) pay tribute to eminence grise of free improv trumpet, Wadada Leo Smith–who’s on trumpet.

Phillip Golub: Abiding Memory (Endectomorph) – Alternating lightly dancing drum rhythms with moments of composed tension that don’t disrupt the album’s flow, Golub’s writing does justice to the title.

Mickey Guyton: House on Fire (Capitol Records Nashville) – Of course it would have been hard for Guyton to top Remember My Name, which featured about a decade’s worth of songwriting, and there’s always the sophomore slump to consider, but honestly, though it doesn’t have the occasional quiet bite of its predecessor, this one satisfies–pleasurable artistic solidity.

Rich Halley 4: Dusk and Dawn (Pine Eagle) – A time-tested quartet led by a Julius Hemphill-inspired, very underheard saxophonist is worth your time–the expressive balance achieved by the group and the sensitive production make this a treat for the mind’s ear.

High Vis: Guided Tour (Dais) – Sadly, I’d not heard of this London group, because I’m always hunting for living punk rock, and, though I need to listen backwards through their work, along with Amyl & The Sniffers (see above) this album made me really happy and really amped.

Judas Priest: Invisible Shield (Deluxe Edition) (Sony) – This truly enjoyable and deeply admirable album’s inclusion is dedicated to my late brother-from-another-mother Mike Rayhill (The Jimbobs, The Luvhandles, The Balls), who would have loved it (and, to be clear, I do, too–thanks, Chuck Eddy).

Messiah in Glytch: Geisha in the Machine (FPE EP) – I had heard nothing about this explosive, confrontational, complex little record, but the MC’s handle and the album title intrigued me, and FPE takes chances on challenging artists–and MIG is one: highly recommended to hip hop heads needing some socio-political bars, boom-bap, and in-your-face flow.

more ease & kaho matsui: computer & recording works for girls (Full Spectrum) – I dig that title, and it’s more delightful–and calming–than the title portends.

Mount Eerie: Night Palace (self-released) – I’ll be honest: I signed up for the Bandcamp listening party for this album yesterday, had not closely listened to Phil Elverum since he traced his family tragedy on A Crow Looked at Me, and was prepping for an interview (see above) while participating in said party…but the many musical moments and lyrical snatches that caught me up short make this sound like a Top-Tenner

PYPY: Sacred Times (Goner) – I shall quote my best friend of 45 years, my former bandmate, my first and best tutor in punk rock, and former webmaster of The Rawk and current overseer of the Facebook group of the same name, Mark Anthony: “This is kicking my ass today! Stuck somewhere between Pylon and Romeo Void with a healthy dose of skronk and early 80’s techno?”

Walter Smith III: three of us are from Houston and Reuben is not (Blue Note) – A first-class mainstream jazz session by saxophonist Smith, aided and abetted by the always thoughtful, fluent, and interesting Jason Moran on piano.

Tyler, The Creator: CHROMAKOPIA (Columbia) – I have half-followed Tyler since his Odd Fellows days, but at some point–often several points–during each release, he’s put me off–until this one, another record with punk pizzazz (both instrumental and verbal) that doesn’t even need its excellent guest spots to be really good and that drew this comment from my former student, DC resident, and Creator adept Erin Datcher: “He’s wearing the mask on the cover to signal that he’s telling the truth this time.”

2024-RELEASED EXCAVATIONS OF OLD BUSINESS

Arthur Blythe Quartet: Live! From Rivbea Studios, Volume 2 (No Business) – Black Arthur blowing in a loft on fire.

Andrew Hill Sextet Plus 10: A Beautiful Day Revisited (Palmetto) – This very welcome reissue from the fearsome pianist and composer originally earned its title, and now does even more, thanks to Palmetto’s touch.

Charlie Parker: Bird in Kansas City (Verve) – With a few of one foot’s toes in the past and the other’s whole stepping into the future, and thanks to guitarist Efferge Ware’s chopping, Freddie Green-influenced guitar on the closing tracks, Parker is captured here sounding like a 1939 Basie escapee–as fully Kansas City-bred as he ever sounded.

Phil Ranelin & Wendell Harrison: Tribe 2000 (Org Music) – As good a place as any to catch up with an excellent and often-steaming Detroit jazz duo–and scene.

Various Artists: Even the Forest Hums—Ukrainian Sonic Archives 1971-1996 (Light in the Attic) – Beyond keeping the people of Ukraine on your mind, this wide-ranging and surprisingly pop-sounding compilation (LITA advertises it as “folk, rock, jazz, and electronic”) invites you into the country’s music, both pre- and post-Soviet collapse.

JULY 2024: The Best Newish Releases I Lived to Listen to This Month

‘Twas hard to squeeze in extended and deep listening this month, what with a long and much-needed vacation in Dauphin Island, Alabama, and difficult family matters, but I hung in there. The beach, two rounds of fresh shrimp off a Bayou Le Batre fishing boat, ample portions of Blue Moon, tons o’ time spent with my very best friends and my beloved (I was the house DJ but stuck to old favorites from our past for the most part–along with Fox Green’s new album*), two great audiobooks that cut the feeling of a long-ass drive in half [Tommy Orange’s Wandering Stars and James McBride’s The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store (still only 67% finished, so don’t send me any spoilers)], and a late-breaking political surprise have done wonders for my mood. And just finishing Ann Powers’ neat Joni Mitchell book led to that estimable music critic’s possible engagement with an upcoming class of mine, during which the students will read, write, and talk about Powers’ equally sterling tome, Good Booty! I need to quit being so emo on this blog….

OK, to the music: lots of new jazz, a clear-cut AOTY possibility which may surprise my handful of readers (don’t sleep on Corb Lund*!), a face-punch of an envoi from X, a fresh blues/r&b voice from (of all places) Memphis. Dig in!

Recorded in 2024

Note: If listed as “self-released,” know that I tried.

[ahmed]: Giant Beauty (fonstret) – When I came back from vacation, news of this somewhat mysterious multi-national improvisatory unit’s five-disc exploration of bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik’s work piqued me as deeply as I can be piqued, then I discovered they were damned serious about their journey and exciting in making it–then, while prepping this post, I listened to their 2023 Abdul-Malik quest Super Majnoon and it might just be better.

Charles Gayle / Milford Graves / William Parker: WEBO (Black Editions) – Gayle could wail, Graves kept all collaborators on their toes with his nimble mind, feet, hands, and heart (both men have gone to meet ‘Trane), and Parker remains simply the reigning master bassist in jazz, so this 1991 concert–the trio seldom recorded together–is special.

John Escreet: the epicenter of your dreams (Blue Room Music) – The above two records roar, and with everything going on in our world they might be too much; however, the fleet inventiveness of Brit pianist Escreet, who’s worked with players ranging from Dr. Tyshawn Sorey to Floating Points, might be more up your alley, especially with Mark Turner, a kind of 21st century Lester Young, flowing beside him on tenor.

Fox Green*: Light Over Darkness (self-released) – I once yelled in a garage band in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and, if we’d been able to stay together over time, considering what we have otherwise ended up doing with our lives, I’d like to think we could have (only) come within spitting distance of this smart Little Rock Americana-rock unit–and have been proud of that.

Boldy James & Conductor Williams: Across the Tracks (self-released) – I’ve tried with Detroiter James’ last few albums, and they’ve just taken me halfway there, so it’s funny that, among other things, cameos from very young guest MCs put this over for me.

Janel Leppin: Ensemble Volcanic Ash—To March is to Love (Cuneiform) – This is cellist/composer Leppin’s second excellent album of 2024–the first was the wonderfully spacy New Moon in the Evil Age, a duet with her husband Anthony Pirog on which she also sings–and its wide-ranging sounds are anchored by the justifiably ubiquitous bassist Luke Stewart, who along with Leppin is making a run at Jazz Musician of the Year.

Corb Lund*: El Viejo (New West) – This is an AOTY-worthy country concept album about gambling–not simply with a hand of cards–and Lund’s writing (he has occasional assistance) and his band’s living-room playing are astoundingly sharp.

Charles McPherson: Reverence (Smoke Sessions) – Along with Bobby Watson, McPherson is one of the last of the great Charlie Parker torch-carriers, though here he demonstrates that he’s learned plenty of other moves in his eighty-five years on the most recent of a shining run of records…and I get to see him live in a few months!

Moor Mother: The Great Bailout (Deluxe Edition) (Anti-) – Camae Ayewa never takes a historical prisoner, and this is one of two excellent and musically complex Afrofuturism-meets-Europastism records of 2024 (the other being Red Hot Org / Kronos Quartet’s Sun Ra tribute Outer Spaceways Incorporated)–but for that you have to get the deluxe version.

David Murray: Francesca (Intakt) – Twenty years ago, poring over jazz record guides and hunting down a myriad of terrific Murray releases on DIW, I just knew this guy couldn’t keep up such prolific musical fecundity for much longer….

Pet Shop Boys: Nonetheless (Parlophone) – The limited series It’s a Sin, which I took in several years ago, sent me back to luxuriate in the power, wit, and effervescence of the first PSB albums, and, though the world has taken a toll on the last of those, and though “wit” seems too light a word for the wisdom on display here, they remain…unbowed.

Roberto Ottaviano: Lacy in the Sky with Diamonds (Clean Feed) – Jazz fans familiar with the other Steve Lacy probably won’t think that’s a terrible title–the band’s aim in this tribute is to write the mighty soprano saxophonist’s name in the sky, and they nail it, especially the leader.

Red Kross: Red Kross (In the Red) – They definitely still got it, and I really hear prime Raspberries in this one.

Rempis / Adasiewicz / Abrams / Damon (coming in October): Propulsion (Aerophonic Records) – All four of these men are superior improvisors, but Jason Adasiewicz, who last year transformed AACM star Roscoe Mitchell’s compositions into something completely different on an album of his own, is the star, laying a calming bed of imaginative, evocative vibes underneath the others’ blooms of sound.

Chappell Roan: The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess (Atlantic) – Straight outta Willard, Missouri, an unfettered soul that has not a little in common with none other than Little Richard–yeah, I said it!

Christopher Rountree / Wild Up: 3BPM (Brassland) – Though I was a bit disappointed in Wild Up’s fourth volume of Julius Eastman tributes/interpretations, I still buy sound-unheard anything with which they associate their name, and founder Rountree’s debut, enlisting the group’s help, tops it.

Taliba Safiya: Black Magic (self-released EP) – The Memphis blues again–with a vengeance.

SAULT: Acts of Faith (self-released) – Now you’ll have to lean on Soulseek or your pals for it, or wait–I never can with them–and you’ll have to believe me when I say it’s near the top of the group’s pretty solid catalog, thanks to a Mayfieldian streak running through its 32 unbroken minutes.

Ren: Sick Boi (renmakesmusic.com) – Unlike Eminem, Ren’s really ill; also unlike Eminem, Ren’s really ill.

Takkak Takkak: Takkak Takkak (Nyege Nyege Tapes) – It’s hard to keep up with releases from this Kampala label, and I’ve tried, but out of them all, turned up loud, this one thumps so hard and weird I immediately played it twice.

Natsuki Tamura & Satoko Fujii: Aloft (Libra) – Tamura (trumpet) and Fujii (piano) are married in more ways than one; they’ve made several duet albums and their telepathy is well-honed here.

X: Smoke & Fiction (Fat Possum) – The band thanks the original Ramones by first name in the notes, open with what sounds like a tribute, then proceed to say so long to us and their partnership in style: Zoom zooming, Bonebrake cracking the skins hard, and John and Exene harmonizing like yesterday was tomorrow. (The LP version was released early, without a lyric sheet, or I’d comment on those–what I could pick up seems appropriately bittersweet.)

New Archival Excavations (a somewhat paltry selection, but I welcome tips):

Bessie Jones, John Davis, the Georgia South Sea Island Singers with Mississippi Fred McDowell and Ed Young: The Complete “Friends of Old-Time Music” Concert (Smithsonian) – The musical Bessie many know best is Smith, the Mississippi bluesman they may be most familiar with John Hurt, but Jones was one of the greatest folk-gospel singers of all-time, and McDowell, best known as the source of The Rolling Stones’ “You Got to Move,” played spiritual tunes with as much–possibly more–stinging fire than he did blues.

Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre: Rivbea Live! Series, Volume 1 (No Business) – AACM stalwart meets primo NYC Loft-era setting for serious fireworks.

Living To Listen

Compact music commentary about artifacts new and old: I enthuse, I don't accuse, but I do refuse–to review anything lukewarm or colder!

Tag: Music