Tag: Superchunk

I Don’t Feel Tardy. I Don’t Feel Hardy. But I Feel That Wild Loneliness…. (January 1 – March 6, 2022)

Sorry I’m late; life is interfering. Not for the first time has a family (or other loved one’s) health crisis interrupted my much less important obsession with documenting my favorite records of the past days, weeks, months, and years–and with me, it seems, when it rains, it’s like a cow pissin’ off a cliff onto a flat rock. I’m truly multiply occupied (I am also teaching a brand-new class on groundbreaking women in this country’s music that is requiring regular and very exciting hard work), so I am behind in some ways. But I just turned 60, I feel like I’m 35 in a sea of stress, so it must be real love…and the music.

  1. What I’m really waiting for are the new albums by Wet Leg (can the whole album be that good?) and Rosalia (the flamenco touches seem to be wafting away, but on the evidence of the singles, she remains a force). The former’s out soon; the latter will require enduring a multi-month tease.
  2. I often check things out on a whim. Joy Guidry’s new album’s cover and title had me thinking a very interesting rap album–but it’s improvisational jazz, and good stuff at that.
  3. Superchunk’s never been one of my top faves, but their classic What a Time to Be Alive dragged me kicking and screaming into a state of deep admiration and a practice of repeat plays. Their new record is almost a companion piece, but from a completely different and powerful emotional direction–I just listened to it for the first time today and, in the state I’m in, it killed me.
  4. One of the world’s greatest rock and roll deejays, Whitney Shroyer, a longtime friend and advisor, implored me to sample Lady Wray, whom I’d not heard of (it happens–a lot). Though I like its predecessor a little better, from a singing, songwriting, and production standpoint, Piece of Me is a solid pleasure.
  5. Did I tell ya to read Tanya Tagaq’s Split Tooth and check out her new album Tongues? Yes, I did. I was fucking serious. They go together, and they deliver.
  6. It’s not every late winter that you can buy two classic creations by a known wizard reissued from those too-halycon-from-a-preservationist-perspective Seventies. This is one of them. They also call him Hermeto.
  7. High on the “appreciation” scale but wavering on the “diggit” scale: the new offerings by Big Thief and Black Country, New Roads.
  8. Lavender Country is a gay and politically smart-ass country outfit dating back to 1972. Their album in the archival digs category is only three years old, but it might as well have come out today. It is NOT simply a novelty; it’s well-played, wittily sung and written, and will cattle-prod you out of the corner of your ear.
  9. I feel like I’m experiencing an explosion of sharp country music women coming from tantalizingly marginally differentiated viewpoints (JUST IN TIME FOR MY NEW CLASS). Priscilla Block’s the latest, and I’ll let you discover the viewpoint.
  10. Gonora Sounds’ Hard Times Never Kill is a beautiful-sounding album from Zimbabwe.
  11. I wish I had heard Adeem the Artist‘s Cast-Iron Pansexual (like about 20 other 2021 albums) when it came out. Great songs, one of which made me tear up, and he wished me a happy birthday on Twitter!
  12. (Hidden track)(Whispered to avoid having things thrown at me, but…) I’ll say it: Spoon’s never really done it for me. I’ve learned never say never–but my first listen was at 5:15 this morning and it livelied me up. Could have been the Death Wish coffee pods my brother left at my mom’s house, though.

Newbies (new items are bolded):

  1. 75 Dollar Bill: Social Music at Troost, Volume 3–Other People’s Music (Black Editions Group) (left off my original post unaccountably!) 

  1. Tanya Tagaq: Tongues (Six Shooter) 

  1. Superchunk: Wild Loneliness 

  1. Gonora Sounds: Hard Times Never Kill 

  1. Amber Mark: Three Dimensions Deep (PMR / Interscope) 

  1. Javon Jackson & Nikki Giovanni: The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni (Solid Jackson) 

  1. Etran de L’Air: Agadez 

  1. Morgan Wade: Reckless (Deluxe) (Ladylike) 

  1. Lady Wray: Piece of Me 

  1. Mark Lomax II: Prismatic Refractions, Volume I 

  1. Anna von Hausswoolff: Live at Montreaux Jazz Festival (Southern Lord) 

  1. Various Artists: Lespri Ka—New Directions in Gwoka Music from Guadeloupe (Time Capsule Sounds) 

  1. Joy Guidry: Radical Acceptance  

  1. Spoon: Lucifer on the Sofa 

  1. OGJB: Ode to O (TUM) (Note: Band name – O = Oliver Lake, G = Graham Haynes, J = Joe Fonda, B = Barry Altschul / Title – O = Ornette) 

  1. Andrew Cyrille, William Parker, and Enrico Rava: Two Blues for Cecil (TUM) 

  1. Luke Stewart’s Silt Trio: The Bottom (Cuneiform) 

  1. Priscilla Block: Welcome to the Block Party 

  1. Immanuel Wilkins: The 7th Hand (Blue Note) 

  1. Earl Sweatshirt: Sick! (Tan Cressida / Warner) 

  1. Big Thief: Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You 

  1. Fulu Miziki: Ngbaka (EP) 

  1. Black Country, New Roads: Ants from Up There 

  1. Hurray for The Riff Raff: Life on Earth 

  1. Rokia Koné and Jacknife Lee: Bamanan 

  1. Marta Sanchez: SAAM (Spanish American Art Museum) 

  1. Tomas Fujiwara: Triple Double 

  1. Junglepussy: jp5000 (EP) 

  1. Kahil El’Zabar Quartet: A Time for Healing 

  1. Pete Malinverni:  On the Town—Pete Malinverni Plays Leonard Bernstein (Planet Arts) 

  1. Chief Keef: 4Nem (Glo Gang / RBC) 

  1. The Weeknd: Dawn FM (XO / Republic) 

  1. Martin Wind: Air (Laika) 

  1. Space Afrika: Honest Labour 

  1. Natsuki Tamura: Summer Tree 

Archival Digs: 

Cecil Taylor: The Complete Legendary Live Return Concert at the Town Hall 

Albert Ayler: La Cave Live 1966 (Ezz-Thetics) 

Neil Young: Carnegie Hall 1970 (Reprise) 

Various Artists: Summer of Soul 

Lavender Country: Blackberry Rose and Other Songs & Sorrows

Hermeto Pascoal: Planetário da Gávea 

Hermeto Pascoal: Hermeto (not out yet, but fuck it–it’s worth planning for!)

 

There was more than one Reagan youth

In brief, L-R, each row:

Little Richard: The Georgia Peach

Don’t forget: wotta band!!! Especially Lee Allen on bulldozing tenor and Earl Palmer inventing rock and roll drumming.

Sacred Flute Music from New Guinea

The thought of “sacred flute music” gives me the fan-tods, but, lo and behold, but this stuff is not only inventive, but also a little catchy and fairly varied (for folk music).

Rosalía: Los Ángeles

A debut album of uncommon vocal intensity and focus, augmented almost solely by acoustic guitar. It isn’t quite flamenco, it’s not really pop, but it means business.

Hamid Drake & Joe McPhee: Keep Going

The highlight is the title opener, inspired and partially written by Harriet Tubman and offered to the growing number of us who are demoralized. I’d accept; it works. Elsewhere the two fond and familiar free masters make joyful racket with their drum and horn, respectively.

X-Ray Spex: Germfree Adolescents

I’ve been asked to present at a local high school’s seminar on identity, and given my choice of topics. I’m doing the whole hour on my favorite record ever written by a teenager. A teenage prophet, for teenagers 40 years later to discover.

Charlie Parker: The Complete Savoy & Dial Master Takes

Any day’s a great day to listen to Bird, but The Sound of Redemption, a neat documentary on the art and trials of the Parker-inspired saxophonist Frank Morgan, sent me in his direction. The film’s built around a Morgan tribute concert held at the man’s former home: San Quentin.

Superchunk: What A Time to Be Alive

The best rock and roll album of 2018, partly because it nails the time. I played “Reagan Youth” 5 times today–then I played the very best of Reagan Youth.

Parquet Courts: Stay Awaaake

Instrumentally, these guys know every rock and roll move, sometimes constructing a crazy-quilt out of several in one song. Lyrically, like Superchunk, they seem to be taking a necessary piss (both albums have great songs about fights or fighting). But the “dumb,” affected vocals have built a wall between they and me.

Not so brief after all.

Not THAT Thomas Jefferson! (February 23rd, 2018, Columbia, Missouri)

I love old-time New Orleans jazz records–that so many seem to and might actually have been recorded in an empty VFW hall is a charm I cannot resist–and I was pleasantly surprised earlier this week when those nice kids at Hitt Records gave me a copy of Thomas Jefferson’s If I Could Be with You One Hour Tonight. Jefferson is one of the later-period greats of traditional NOLA trumpeting, and he sounds great on this record I’d never heard of (he’s an affecting singer, too); it was actually recorded at The Lord Napier in Surrey, England, and the set list features some warm surprises (“A Long Way to Tipperary”). One of the clerks, Taylor, had had a conversation with me about a similar record I’d found at the store, and said to me, “Y’know, I don’t know much about this stuff–I probably need to get caught up.” He must be wasting no time.

I have been the beneficiary of great generosity this week, and much of it hasn’t had to do with my birthday. My good friend Isaac, with whom I share a constant stream of wonderful music on a regular basis, alerted me to the release of a new record by Hailu Mergia, an Ethiopian pianist of considerable reknown. If you don’t think you need to hear Ethiopian piano-based music, sorry, but you do. Mergia’s Lala Belu combines fascinating searching melodies (Mariam Gebru, his fellow Ethiopian keyboardist, seems to have minted them) with striking, swirling accordian, dark-toned violin, and lightly funky drums. Here’s the whole record:

Finally…about my entry of 2/22/18? I’d mentioned Joyful Noise Recordings’ “White Label Series”? Well, I gave a deeper listen to one of those, the band Berry’s Everything, Compromised, and I think it’s major, one of the best releases of 2018. The album title’s an unfortunately accurate aspersion cast on the state of the nation, and for pop music political statements, especially in the indie rock vein, it’s remarkably subversive, witty, pointed, and weird. If you’re both pissed and bemused, you might want to pick it up if you can find it.

http://berrytheband.bandcamp.com/album/everything-compromised

Short-shrift Division:

More later, I am sure, on this one, but Superchunk’s new and mordant What A Time to Be Alive is also a real killer with a political edge–and does it rock out!