Record Roundup: American Tunes

I'm going to try to deal with the general backlog of music with a "Record Roundup" of quick(er) takes from time to time. Here, the operating principle is to cover number of good American (but not necessarily Americana) releases that have come over the transom in the last few months. From veterans to new blood, there's a lot to feast your ears on if you follow up.

Chris Maxwell - Arkansas Summer Chris Maxwell has been hovering in my peripheral vision for quite some time as a tangential member of the Holly Miranda universe, along with Ambrosia Parsley. Those planets aligned at Hell Phone last month when Chris and Ambrosia opened for Holly's solo set, and also provided some backup as needed, on guitar and vocals. I liked Chris's flexible voice and wry way with a lyric, as well as casual mastery of a variety of rock forms. While Arkansas Summer is his debut solo album, I wasn't wrong about the mastery as Maxwell has been in the game since the 90's, when he was a member of Skeleton Key.

Self-produced, but ably supported by such Woodstock-area compadres as Phil Hernandez, Marco Benevento, Amy Helm, and Parsley herself, Maxwell pursues fun and introspection while channeling Wilco, The Beatles, and other Anglo-American avatars in fresh combinations. His songwriting is honed to a fine point throughout, but standouts such as Have You Ever Killed Yourself, Imaginary Man, the title track, and Devil Song might convince you the most quickly. His smarts are not only musical; check out the lyrics of the acoustic-driven Things Have Changed For Me: "Allies to enemies/Alibis to apologies/I burrow like a bullet in these complicated strategies/I make promises no one could ever keep/I make mistakes I'm doomed to repeat/Never been called lucky, never had a lucky streak/But things have changed for me." They can for you, too.

Ocean Music - Songs From The City When I saw Ocean Music at the Knitting Factory recently, it was an explosive update on Replacements-Pixies-Van Morrison, with interlocking guitars, pummeling rhythms, and songs that were sometimes concise and sometimes took their sweet time. So clearly singer, songwriter, and guitarist Richard Aufrichtig has already shifted from the beautifully atmospheric acoustic folk epics on this EP and the self-titled one that proceeded it in 2014, but they're a place to start. And start you should, because Aufrichtig has lived a few lives already and is more than willing to sing about all he's seen and experienced. Catch up, then catch them live - can't wait for the next show.

Cory Taylor Cox - Extended Play Like Richard Aufrichtig and Ocean Music, Cox has taken a winding road to get to this place, which is a good and gritty spot to be, with soaring guitars, homespun vocals and solid song structures. Americana with the occasional touch of glam, he could tour with Phil Cook and no one would complain. Keep an ear in his direction.

Sonya Kitchell - We Come Apart If you're like me, you took note of Kitchell's protean abilities when her debut was released in 2005, but then lamented how quickly she was absorbed into the coffee house-TV series industrial complex. She's been through changes since then, especially during the eight years since her last album, and We Come Apart feels like a new beginning. She's more willing to push her voice now and is remarkably comfortable in the variety of settings, from embellished folk to torchy soul, she's assembled here. Reintroduce yourself - you'll be glad you did.

Max Jury - Max Jury Just 21, this three-time Berklee dropout is obviously a huge talent. He's put together a set of songs that mine the history of rock, soul, and folk with surprising musical maturity and that are well-served by this expansively produced debut. But there's also a little of a portfolio feel to the collection: "Look what I can do!" Hopefully he'll find the time, like Sonya Kitchell, to fully grow into his gifts. This album will make more than pleasant listening while we wait.

Bob Dylan - Fallen Angels These Great American Songbook collections may be somewhere to the side of Dylan's overall project, but there's still a lot to like in them, not least Jack Frost's sparkling production. When is that guy going to work with some other artists? While last year's Shadows In The Night held a consistent mood (perhaps slightly too consistent), Fallen Angels has both more variety and a bit more wit. The twinkle in Dylan's eye is especially evident on That Old Black Magic - he's finally embodying the "song and dance man" he once claimed to be and couldn't seem more delighted. You should be, too. 

Various Artists - Blonde On Blonde Revisited While Dylan himself is following his nose through the back pages of American song, there's no shortage of other perspectives on his own deathless canon. Mojo Magazine's track record on these multi-artist single-album collections may be varied, but this one, in celebration of the album's 50th anniversary, is a triumph. After the menacing electronica of Malcolm Middleton's take on Rainy Day Women #12 & #35 most of the artists stay in the folk-rock vein while still throwing new light on these familiar songs. 

In fact, if Blonde On Blonde is feeling TOO familiar this is the antidote. Some highlights are the way Thomas Cohen uses a hooky bass line to add mood to his powerful take on Most Likely You'll Go Your Way And I'll Go Mine, or how Peter Bruntnell drains the sarcasm from Just Like A Woman leaving only deep sorrow, or Ryley Walker's wholly owned Fourth Time Around. And I love the way Michael Chapman (also a 75 year old legend) toys with Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat like a kitten with a ball of yarn. Just as they did with their excellent Physical Graffiti tribute last year, Mojo has produced a special limited edition on ("blonde") vinyl, with some sweet accoutrements. If I didn't already subscribe I'd be ordering that now!

Yes, I know, Car Seat Headrest. And Mutual Benefit. More on them next time when we discuss The Best of 2016 (So Far)!

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Space, Time, Guitar: Rupert Boyd

Rupert Boyd is an Australian guitarist of surpassing skill and intelligence with an eclectic ear, all qualities in evidence on his globe-trotting (and time-traveling) sophomore album, Fantasias. By the end of the collection, we have touched down in Argentina, Spain, Cuba, Italy, Hawaii, France, Switzerland, and the British Isles, and moved through 400 years of music. 

When you read "Argentina" your mind probably conjured up Astor Piazzolla, which would be spot on, as it is the neo-tango genius's Otono Porteno, in an arrangement by S. Assad, that opens the record. Like the master himself, Boyd avoids any over-dramatic clichés to deliver a performance that handily deals with the virtuoso requirements of the piece. This sets the tone for what follows, a lively sequence of the tuneful, folky, and exploratory. Boyd's project is enabled by the lighter-than-air, crystal clear sound of the record, which was made in a "centuries old church just outside of London" with John Taylor, a British producer of some renown, especially for his work with guitar and lute players. 

Perhaps it's Taylor's influence, but the Celtic and English folk songs are marvelous here, especially John Dowland's Fantasie, which traverses a few moods in its four minutes. Naturally, Boyd is simpatico with his fellow countryman, Philip Houghton, with whom I was completely unfamiliar. He manages to lay on a bit of mystery, especially in his God Of The Northern Forest - don't be surprised it this one shows up on Game Of Thrones or in the next Peter Jackson fantasy.

I'm especially grateful to Boyd for including two Manuel de Falla pieces, including his own arrangement of Pantomima. Other guitarists should add this to their repertoire and continue bringing attention to this oft-overlooked composer. Leo Brouwer, a Cuban musician who explored everything from Afro-Cuban forms to Bach, The Beatles, and beyond, is also not overexposed. A guitarist himself, his Tres Apuntes takes almost maximum advantage of the possibilities of the nylon-stringed instrument. Speaking of which, my fantasy is that Boyd takes on Luciano Berio's Sequenza XI on his next record - I think it would fit like a glove.

Brouwer's trilogy is one of the meatier pieces on the album, but as expected from the title, Fantasias does not aim to make demands, but to rather provide a bit of smart escapism. We also escape the expected - turns out Boyd covered Granados on his first album so you won't find that guitar-record staple here! I like Boyd's light touch, both on his guitar and in his conception of the album. It's been a great accompaniment to mornings at work and I can imagine it finding a place in your life as well.

If you're in NYC and you want to see Boyd in person, act fast as his album release event is June 16th at the Greenwich House School of Music. All the information is here, including dates in December with cellist Laura Metcalf - they perform together as Boyd Meets Girl and who can resist that?

You may also be interested in:
Cello For All, Part 1: Laura Metcalf
Cello For All, Part 2: Michael Nicholas

Radiohead: The Pool At Rainbow's End

I've been playing a fun little mind game while listening to A Moon Shaped Pool, Radiohead's astonishingly great new album. What if this were a debut album by a new band...how many copies would they sell? How long would it take them to get to 12 million followers on Facebook? Would they fill arenas with 20,000 fans and get them on their feet? In short, would they be one of the biggest bands in the world on the basis of this extraordinarily sophisticated and deeply emotional take on rock music?

Of course, these are all moot points. A Moon Shaped Pool could never be a first album as it is a work of consummate mastery, made by five musicians at the top of their game and working together as one. It feels so completely unified musically that I only rarely find myself thinking about Jonny Greenwood or Ed O'Brien or Phil Selway or Colin Greenway...the sounds are all just there, providing a perfect backdrop for some of the finest singing of Thom Yorke's career. 

Along these lines, one review I heard complained about the fact that they have one of the best drummers around in Selway (and they do) but that he is underused on this record. That completely misses the point, in my opinion, and is a very "rockist" way of looking at things, a hangover from the distant days when Radiohead developed their huge audience with "Modern Rock" songs like Creep. That was a long time ago and the fact that they have maintained so much of their audience would be an interesting thing to study at another time.  

Back to the present. The way I hear it, AMSP is a work by virtuosos who only want to serve the music and not create showcases for themselves. Perhaps their time in the wilderness of The King Of Limbs, their surprisingly ennervated last album (and on which Selway was sorely underutilized) led them to this perfect middle ground between being a rock band and something more futuristic. In some ways, however, this is more traditional music than what they put forth on TKOL, much of which seemed like studies for future remixes. In fact, it was on the remix album, Tkol RMX 1234567, or on stage, that many of those songs found fruition. 

Not so here. Each song is a self-contained gem, layers of guitar and strings and keyboards blending together in an egoless wash of brilliant sounds. AMSP seems in this way to be more of a continuation of where they arrived at on In Rainbows, especially in the direct emotional communication from Thom Yorke. While the album starts on a passionately political note with Burn The Witch, many of the songs are more down to earth. "Hey it's me, I just got off the train," Yorke sings to begin Glass Eyes, "A frightening place/Their faces are concrete gray/And I'm wondering should I turn around, buy another ticket/Panic is coming on strong..." I'm not sure anybody alive couldn't relate to that on some level.

"There's a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in," Leonard Cohen once sang and that seems to be an operating principle here. There's a wonderful variety to Radiohead's approach on AMSP, from lush orchestral settings to seemingly simple, acoustic guitar-led arrangements that harken back to Nick Drake and David Crosby. There's also welcome evidence, if slight, of a sense of humor, such as the tape-warble entry and snores of Daydreaming, or the fact that the album is sequenced alphabetically. While their wheelhouse is still post-Rubber Soul rock, I hear hints of alien R'n'B and soul on Identikit, which fits the lyrical themes of "When I see you messing me around, I don't want to know," and "Broken hearts make it rain." Sade or, even better, Kelela should cover this beauty. Of course, this being Radiohead, Jonny Greenwood's angular chicken-scratch evolves into a math rock solo par excellance before the song stops dead in its tracks - you will, too.

Identikit and the quietly devastating True Love Waits, which ends the album, have both been around a while, with the latter first being played on stage over 20 years ago. This has led to some speculation that Radiohead is reaching the end of the road. I see no reason to think that. Some songs are just not immediately ready to be fixed in the amber of a studio recording. And like Wilco, there's plenty of room in the band for each member to pursue their own interests, from Yorke's electronica to Jonny Greenwood's film scores and orchestral work, and Selway's albums of gently persuasive folk. One imagines that these extra-curricular activities help bring new dimensions to the collective effort when they do regroup. That certainly is the case here, and it's led to one of the finest albums of their career, one that will be near the top of 2016. Take all the time you need, boys. Like true love, we can wait for another masterpiece like A Moon Shaped Pool. 

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John Berry: Wild Incandescence

Incandescent JB

When you start at a school in kindergarten, by eighth grade you pretty much know every single person. So when John Berry transferred in, I spotted him right away. The fact that he had orange hair spiked to a fare-thee-well and charisma that glowed even brighter didn't hurt. But he was so wildly incandescent that many of my schoolmates stayed away from the new kid. I was immediately attracted to him, though, and when I learned he also lived above 96th Street and loved music we were fully bonded. 

John's energy level was so high that I was kind of the straight man, off to the side: "John, are you sure that's a good idea?" I would sometimes ask him when he was about to do something crazy. But most of the time I just basked in the glow and helped pick up the pieces later. 

While we lived only a few blocks from each other, our environments could not have been more different. Mine was a mid-level doorman building where we had a classic NYC apartment on the 11th floor. John's father was renting a duplex loft in a unique old wood-frame building with a diner at street level. John's domain was the whole top floor (and the roof), and the whole space was packed with old stuff, some of which might have come with the place. Even so, I noticed his guitar the first time I visited. Of course, he played guitar - I should've known. 

At the time, I was coming off years of piano lessons and considering the trombone (thanks to Ska, The Specials and A Message To You, Rudy), but I knew a drummer that I thought might want to jam with John: Mike Diamond. Since they weren't friends yet, I hatched a plot to introduce them to each other at a Joe Jackson show, with The Members opening. I don't know how many phone calls it took to arrange but I got it done and we went to the concert. I made the introductions and we took our seats, John in the middle. As soon as The Members blasted into their first song, John was airborne, pogoing in his seat like a madman - as I expected. Mike, however, was taken aback. When John went to the bathroom, the future Beastie Boy leaned over to me and said: "I think this guy's insane!" I assured him that he was cool and not to worry.

Within days, John and Mike were jamming and I had decided to take up the bass. The Young Aborigines were born, so named because we were young and we associated the word "aborigine" with a primitivism that we aspired to have in our music, in addition to the influences of post-punk, disco, reggae and salsa. Listening now to the crude recordings I have, it is impossible to ignore the vitality of John's guitar, slashing at chords or picking haunted arpeggios. He liked a lot of heavy chorus pedal on his guitar, I think for the color it added to the sound. He was totally self-taught and brought the spirit of an action painter to every song.

John Berry, Mike Diamond & Me: the "original young aboriginals"

The band proceeded by fits and starts, never quite finding its place but schooling us all in how to be a group and making us a tight unit, one that we eventually invited Kate Schellenbach to join, to add "primitive" percussion. We got more serious, putting together a 45 minute set of challenging instrumental music (sometimes challenging our own instrumental technique!) that we tried to take on the road. But soon the siren call of hardcore was heard, Adam Yauch came on the scene, and the wheels of history began to inexorably turn toward Cookie Puss, Licensed To Ill, and world domination for the Beastie Boys.

John and I stayed close until I went to college and he began to drift a little, especially after he was cut loose by the Beastie Boys due to chronic lateness and heavy drinking. Frankly, I didn't think hardcore or hip hop was really for him, which was proven later by his turn to folk, country and Americana.

We lost touch until, like so many high school friends, Facebook brought us back together. He had an idea for a book about those early days and wanted to interview me, but it never happened. We finally connected at a show of his amusing and well-executed folk art, appropriately at a bar on Berry Street in Williamsburg. He was still the same John and we had a great time, playing songs from our iPods and talking about everything. But something was off. Occasionally, our conversation just...missed, derailed by non-sequitur. I couldn't tell if he was going deaf, or had had a stroke at some point, but I worried for my old friend. I was right to be concerned, as his illness was beginning to take hold. I never saw him again.

John and I spent hours and hours together, mostly playing music, seeing shows, or trying to make the Young Aborigines coalesce. One of my favorite memories had nothing to do with any of that, however, but rather took place when I invited Mike and John to come on a ski weekend in the Berkshires. We called it the "Fresh Air Fund" for Young Aborigines - not exactly politically correct, but blame it on our youth. On the way to the country, we stopped at a Four Brothers pizza restaurant and squeezed into a corner booth with my parents. While we were certainly boisterous, we managed to give our orders without incident, but when the waitress turned to go back to the kitchen, John got that light in his eyes, raised one finger, and said, "And a booty to go!" Mike and I almost died laughing. 

It was just another moment where John went just that little bit further out, past everyone's comfort zone, and into an ether of his own making. I guess he's there permanently now. So do something silly, play an out of tune guitar like you mean it, make the next person you meet your best friend, and get a taste of what it was like to be the man I called JB. While his light can never be extinguished, it's now up to us to reflect it back into the world.

JB on the mic, reading poetry

Related Post:

Adam Yauch Remembered: A Tale Of Two Bassists

All Photos (c) 2016 Jeremy Shatan

Brian Eno: Spontaneous Hypnosis

My Oblique Strategies card says "Don't break the silence."

My parents were gone for the weekend. Rather than seeing this as an invitation to debauchery, I took it as an opportunity for experimentation of a quite different sort. Not long before, I had invested a chunk of my savings into a major object of desire at St. Mark's Sounds: the Brian Eno box set Working Backwards 1983-1973. As advertised, this magnificent monolith of vinyl contained every Eno solo album from Here Come The Warm Jets to Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks. There were also two bonus discs, Music For Films Volume II and a 12" EP of rarities, including Seven Deadly Finn's and Eno's beautiful cover of The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

On the back of Ambient #4: On Land, there was a description of "An 'Ambient' Speaker System" using three speakers, complete with a diagram. I had read it over many times, intrigued by such descriptions as "...it opens out the music and seems to enlarge the room acoustically." And now, with my parents away, I was going to try it. I disconnected one of their speakers from the living room Hi Fi and brought it to my room. 

I followed Eno's instructions (prescription?) and hooked up both terminals of the third speaker to the left and right positive connectors on my amp, creating a triangular layout in my room. "I arrived at this system by experiment," Eno writes, "and I don't really know why it works. What seems to happen is that the third speaker reproduces any sound that is not common to both sides of the stereo - i.e., everything that is not located centrally in the stereo image - and I assume that this is because the common information is put out of phase with itself and cancels out." Ok, Brian, let's give this thing a test drive...

I put on side one of On Land settled back to listen in my swiveling arm chair. Within a few minutes, before Lizard Point was even over, something happened. I was out. But not asleep. The room fell away and I was truly experiencing the music "from the inside" as Eno had hoped. The sounds assumed an almost physical form around me, with color and shape, and occupied my mind completely. This state of suspended animation continued even after the side ended. The sounds continued in my head for a few moments and I was unaware of the resulting quiet, or even of the needle lifting from the record and the tonearm swinging back to its black plastic holster.

When the room reassembled itself, I realized what had occurred. Fortunately, I had a point of reference because of my father's work with a technique of relaxed concentration in his psychiatric practice. This technique was called hypnosis, or self-hypnosis, and he used it to help people quit smoking, lose weight, or cope with stage fright without using drugs. This type of hypnosis bore no resemblance to the Hollywood swinging-pendulum-hop-like-a-bunny hooey that you might think of when you hear that word. He had taught me the technique a few years earlier to help me master my fear of math, which was causing serious problems at school, and I had never forgotten how it felt.

There was no question. Eno's speaker setup had induced a state of spontaneous hypnosis. I sat for a few minutes, stunned, even a little spooked. "No one will ever believe this happened," I thought to myself, as I quietly dismantled Eno's electronic hypnogogic and returned the speaker to the living room. Eno's system was clearly too powerful to use on a regular basis. I can only imagine what might have happened if I had bought the cassette version, which features all of On Land continuously on one side! Sceptical? Consider the fact that the diagram was omitted from the CD release of the album.

You probably don't have three speakers in your house but perhaps you can find some way to celebrate the unique achievement of Eno, born this day 67 years ago. You could do worse than to listen to his intriguing, theatrical new album The Ship, which concludes with this spine-tingling rendition of I'm Set Free by The Velvet Underground, the first cover he's recorded since The Lion Sleeps Tonight in 1975.

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Cello For All, Part 2: Michael Nicolas

In Part 1 I wrote about Laura Metcalf's excellent First Day, one of two debut albums by cellists being released by Sono Luminus this spring. First Day is a truly lovely album, which introduced me to several unfamiliar pieces that quickly became old friends. The other album is Transitions by Michael Nicolas, and it is a horse (more like a bucking bronco, actually) of a very different, but no less compelling color. Plain truth: it's a wild ride and one that may not be for everyone - but I can't get enough.

Nicolas landed in my inbox a while ago as the new cellist for Brooklyn Rider, their first new member since they began a decade ago. That alone speaks to his technical skill and spirit of adventure, as does his membership in the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE). However, Transitions, which explores the "intersection between technology and humanity," firmly establishes Nicolas as a commanding musician in his own right.

The album opens with a bang: Mario Davidovsky's Synchronism No. 3 for Cello and Electronic Sounds. Written in 1963, this is the oldest piece on the album and a fantastic introduction to what is to come. First off, the sound is extraordinary. I feel like I'm inside the cello, surrounded by the lapidary synthesized sound of the electronics. The playing feels completely natural, musical and involving, with the electronic sounds fully integrated in a way that I haven't heard before. This may be the definitive recording of this piece and I'm glad Davidovsky, who was born in 1934, is still around to hear it.

Nicolas next stakes his claim on Minimalism with Steve Reich's Cello Counterpoint, which required him to record eight different cello parts. It's a fairly late Reich piece, from 2003, and Nicolas plays it with more of a dynamic sweep than the other recordings I've heard. I won't go so far as to say he romanticizes it, but it does feel somehow more emotionally resonant. 

That's it for the classic pieces, though. Next up is a world premiere of David Fulmer's Speak of the Spring, which takes its title from Shakespeare's Sonnet 53 ("What is your substance, whereof are you made...") Aside from some possible double-tracking, I can't otherwise hear the addition of any technology in this work. There is both delicacy and strength to the way the piece unfurls, like fine vines intertwining, and aside from a rhythmic explosion around two thirds into the eight minute piece, the mood is mainly contemplative.

You won't stay in that mood for long after Annie Gosfield's Four Roses starts up. This slamming "duo" for cello and synthesizer was written in 1997 and has some of the dark heaviness of Mario Diaz de Leon's music. It flows seamlessly into a world premiere of ...And A Five Spot, also by Gosfield and composed recently for Nicolas. In both pieces, the cello and electronics are sometimes together and sometimes at odds, creating a fascinating energy that is very distinctive. These two works combined have me very curious about Gosfield - it looks like I have a bit of catching up to do!

The penultimate track is Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Transitions, a solo cello piece Nicolas also recorded for the ICE album In The Light Of Air, which was on my Top 20 for 2015. There's nothing radically different about this new recording except for the context, which makes you realize that the cello itself is "technology," like any instrument aside from the human voice. Nicolas' virtuosity makes the cello an extension of himself, making him the ideal guide by which to experience this fundamentally mysterious music.

The electronics are back, in a big way, on flexura, another world premiere, written for Nicolas by Jaime E. Oliver La Rosa. This is properly a duet between the composer and the performer. While Nicolas is playing the cello, La Rosa plays an instrument he invented called a MANO, which is like a touch panel he uses to manipulate sound, including sampled cello notes. Confused? Check out this video of them performing flexura at NYU in 2015. Whatever is going on, the music is very exciting - simultaneously spooky and light, with a sense of play throughout. La Rosa is definitely one to watch. This is very bold stuff and a stunning way to end Transitions. Michael Nicolas has truly arrived. Bravo!

Transitions will be released on May 27th but you can get a sneak preview when Nicolas performs four of the pieces, including the Gosfield and La Rosa works with the composers on hand, in a free concert at Columbia's Miller Theater on May 16th. I don't know about you, but I'm going to try to get there.

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Buttonholed

Good haul for $35 - and worth an encounter with "Richard"

My Saturday plans changed. I was originally set to go to Brooklyn for the WFMU Record Fair but it turned out I needed to stay close to home. Yet the universe provides: On my way to the C-Town I stumbled on one of those multi-family tag sales and even from a distance I could see there was a lot of shiny silver media on display. My pulse quickened - what would I find?

Quite a bit, as it turned out. The wife of the guy manning the table had recently been laid off by Sony Music so they were culling their collection. I found Hendrix remasters, a nice Legacy Edition of Santana III (with this ace jam), a bunch of Birthday Party albums, Nilsson Sings Newman, Coltrane in Japan, Red Garland, an outré disco collection, and a sealed copy of A Voice On Air, among other things.

While flipping through the discs I noticed a lot of things I already have, including a copy of Live At The Gaslight 1962 by Bob Dylan. This is actually a slightly rare item, as it was sold for a limited time only in Starbucks stores. So when a guy showed up and started looking through the CD's with what seemed to be an appreciative attitude, I pulled the album out of the box and pointed it out to him. "If you're into Bob Dylan, this is a great item, and it's out of print."

"I used to be more into Dylan," he replied, "but then I read this interview." "What'd he say this time?" I asked. The gist of it was that Dylan revealed that he wasn't all that into being a protest singer and was essentially going along to get along in the early part of his career. This led to the man, whom we'll call Richard, feeling that Dylan's potential lack of sincerity made songs like With God On Our Side and The Times They Are A-Changing less interesting. "Yeah, he's always saying stuff like that," I pressed on, "but this is really special. It's Dylan in a small club, playing mostly traditional songs (Barbara
Allan, Cocaine, etc.) but he also does early versions of A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall and Don't Think Twice, It's All Right - songs people in the audience had never heard before! Plus, his guitar playing is brilliant."

Richard said he would consider it and added it to his stack. Then he popped the question: "Who's the greatest singer-songwriter of the 20th century?" I knew it was a trap, but I entered anyway with what is for me the obvious answer: "Bob Dylan." He shook his head. "Really? No, I'd have to say Joni Mitchell." Just the way he said it, I knew I was in for it. Buttonholed.

"Interesting," I said, "I respect her and everything, but something about her voice bothers me, so she's never been a favorite." "But that's just the stuff from the 60's!" he retorted, "Have you heard her albums from the 70's and 80's?" Then I knew I was really in trouble. First of all, she only had two albums in the 60's and one of them was her fairly negligible debut. Second of all, he employed the horrid rhetorical tactic of assuming my ignorance. Of course I've heard Blue and other classics from her canon. Naturally, as a music lover I would want to see what all the fuss is about. In fact, I've revisited her discography more than once, and each time I do, I get stopped in my tracks by vocal flourishes that are like nails on a blackboard to me. Strange, yes, when you consider that I love Marc Bolan to death, but taste is taste. 

I even mentioned that I had seen Joni Mitchell performing Mingus at Tanglewood, with Jaco Pastorius no less, and found it meandering at best, and only tangentially related to Charles Mingus. "Pearls before swine," Richard muttered, before coming out with "Do you read literature?" I admit I couldn't hold back my shock. Did I look like a slob? "Of course I read literature," I replied with a little bite. "Ok, sorry," Richard said, "a lot of people don't. What do you read?" "Lots of different things I said," picturing the stacks of poetry and other books in my apartment, "Phillip Levine, Philip Roth, Shakespeare, Dante, Mary Karr, contemporary stuff, I've read a lot." I should have said, Donald Goines, Suzanne Collins, and Harlan Ellison, DUDE, which would also be true.

Then he starts peppering me with quotes from Joni Mitchell songs, as if hearing a few lyrics would make me completely change my feelings about her. But now I was done. "It's all beautiful word-smithing," I said, "but doesn't really move me, and I don't really think she is as important as Dylan." His contempt was palpable. "Do you like Prince?" he asked then. "You know," I answered tentatively, wanting to be honest but thinking of my many grieving friends, "I've never been a huge fan. Dirty Mind is super-funky and I like the song 1999, but a lot of the production seems dated now. Talented guy, great guitarist, and he died too soon, but he's not really for me." It was as if I'd said nothing. "Prince said The Hissing of Summer Lawns was one of his favorite albums," Richard told me, as if this well-worn fact would also have an effect on me - even though I just said that I didn't like Prince.

This is when I started to back away slowly and head off on my other errands. I noticed he was holding a copy of the deluxe reissue of The Bends. For some reason the whole unpleasant encounter left me cravenly trying to prove that I wasn't a philistine and my departing words were, "But I love Radiohead! Great album!" I do, and it is, but ugh.

I'm relating this story because I never want to be Richard. I seek only to help people find their joy through music. I'm never going to try to convince someone that their favorite shouldn't be their favorite or that they are wrong for liking what they like. Once I know someone has actually listened to something I'm recommending, it's almost a bonus if they take pleasure in it as well. 

While I'm not always championing the seriously obscure, I often feel like I'm going against the music industry power being put behind a few artists - just look at the "New Releases" listed on Spotify or other sites, with each and every spot bought and paid for. I don't think people should necessarily let these musicians define our times. I want people to listen beyond the obvious and take in some of the richness of the musical ferment around us. It may change their lives.

But if I'm ever being Richard, feel free to let me know!

Cello For All, Part 1: Laura Metcalf

Adventurous listening does not always require leaving your sonic comfort zone. Sometimes unfamiliar music can instantly become an old friend, expanding your world without shattering it. And sometimes the opposite is the case - and wonderfully so. Those are the ends of the spectrum of new music explored by two cellists, Laura Metcalf and Michael Nicolas, who will both release excellent debut albums on Sono Luminus this spring. 

First up is Laura Metcalf, who has been on the scene for a number of years now playing in the ensembles Sybarite5, a string quintet mostly known for its Radiohead arrangements, and Break of Reality, a "cello rock band" that does a spirited take on the Game Of Thrones theme, among other things.

Metcalf's First Day is something quite different from her other activities, finding her assaying eight pieces from around the world and through the centuries with the sensitive accompaniment of pianist Matei Varga. The album opens beautifully with Varga's stylish introduction to Graciela y Buenos Aires by José Bragato, an Argentinian cellist, composer and conductor who recently celebrated his 100th birthday. You don't have to know the first thing about Bragato to hear his connection to "nuevo tango" and Astor Piazzola, with whom he in fact played in the 1950's. When Metcalf joins in, her tone is flawless and warm and her rhythmic command is thrilling and almost imperious in the faster portions. Instantly you know you're in good hands with this duo, and the rest of the album does not disappoint. 

If Bragato represents the the modern, urban Argentina, later in the album Metcalf and Varga take a trip to the countryside with Alberto Ginastera's Pampeana No. 2, Op. 21. Full of folky melodies and touched with nostalgia, the Pampeana covers a lot of ground in ten minutes. But first we visit an eastern European past in Bohuslav Martinu's Variations on a Slovakian Theme, with Metacalf's approach mercifully free of schmalz. She seems more invested in the sturdiness of the old melodies than in over-emoting. Martinu's piece is essentially episodic but if you want a sonata, First Day has it with George Enescu's Sonata In F Minor, a recently discovered work written when the Romanian composer was only 17. It may have a youthful energy and sparkle, but it is a fully mature work in the romantic vein and Metcalf and Varga have done a real service by bringing it to light. 

North America and the 21st Century are also well-represented on The First Day, with Phantasie by Caleb Burhans, a founding member of Alarm Will Sound, and Hard-Knock Stomp by Dan Visconti, whose work is often performed by Sybarite5. The first lives up to it's title, with lush cello lines interacting with repetitive and ruminative piano. Visconti's is the more radical work, full of sly, bluesy riffs and some dense knotty passages, all of which Metcalf handles with ease. It's a lot of fun and the levity it injects into the album sequence is welcome. It also leads perfectly into the oldest piece here, Marin Marais' Variations on "La Folia" from 1701, one folly in dialog with another. 

The Marais is elegant, tuneful, and filled with drawing-room dance rhythms - in short, a delight. But Metcalf saves a real delight for another French piece: the closing track, Francis Poulenc's Les chemins de l'amour. This piece, from 1940, is Poulenc's setting of words by Jean Anouilh and asks the cellist to sing along as she plays. Metcalf is pure charm here, playing the waltz with absolute lightness and singing in a clear unmannered soprano. It's a most satisfying ending to a rich and rewarding album, which quickly establishes Laura Metcalf on her own as a musician of real note. Brava!

The First Day is out on April 29th and Metcalf and Varga will be playing selections on April 27th at Subculture on Bleecker Street.

Vinyl And Grit: RSD 16

There is a lot of vinyl in the world, and much of it is by Roy Ayers (and much of the rest is by Willie Bobo). That was one conclusion I came to while flipping through the stacks of wax at Superior Elevation Records in a gritty section of Bushwick this past Record Store Day. I now understand why Ayers called his group Ubiquity. I also now realize that I don't know much of his music, which is a failing I plan to rectify thanks to Spotify. 

Speaking of the streaming service, it has forever altered the way I shop for vinyl. Now I have an ongoing calculation in my head, with some kind of equation of desirability, availability, price, and condition helping me determine how I will ultimately allocate my limited budget of both cash and storage space. The end result of all of this sorting is another dialogue in my head relating to all the records I don't choose to buy, a dialogue that mostly dissipates at the end of the shopping trip. Not this time, though. Using my search terms in Spotify, I reconstructed the trail I followed as I flipped and flipped, creating the playlist below. So now I - and you - can follow up on those tangents. 

But fear not, record stores, I am still interested in buying and my time at Superior Elevation led to some very happy purchases. In fact, my wife declared it my "best Record Store Day ever!" Part of the credit goes of course to the shop itself, which is spacious, well-organized, and friendly. Superior Elevation was my favorite vendor at last year's Brooklyn Flea record fair, so I had been meaning to get out there for a while. Their RSD event was a draw, as they were celebrating their first anniversary with a rotating cast of DJ's, sales, and freebies. I also had a 15% off coupon they had given me at the Flea - good move.

Good vibes and good vinyl at Superior Elevation

Within minutes of entering I had my hands on a copy of Fotheringay's first album, which is something I've wanted for a while. Fotheringay was the band formed by Sandy Denny with Trevor Lucas after she left Fairport Convention and I like it better than anything by that band, with one perfect song after another.It wasn't the original pressing but a nice reissue on Carthage from the 80's, complete with the gatefold cover. Score.

I went through the rest of their rock section but, let's face it, that's the bread and butter of my collection. Superior has a standout soul-funk section, though, so I was elbow-deep in there for a while and finally ended up with Law Of The Land from 1973 by The Undisputed Truth. For some reason, this 70's Motown group has been left behind in the reissue boom, with much of their stuff beyond the greatest hits (Smiling Faces Sometimes, for one) largely forgotten. The thing I love about them is that they were the perfect laboratory for psychedelic-soul genius Norman Whitfield. He just lets every epic, widescreen impulse burst into perfect reality, as on the title track. There's also a great cover of Dave Mason's Feelin' Alright, which is one of those songs I can't get enough versions of. Sold.

Next up was reggae, which was a smaller section but full of interesting stuff, much of it pricy. I was very intrigued with a Gregory Isaacs collection but double checked and found that I already have it with a different cover - saved by the internet! I did find a real gem though, a Jamaican pressing of Derrick Harriott's 14 Chart Buster Hits, which is a stunning retrospective of the seminal singer-producer's biggest songs from 1962-71, including great takes on Close To Me and Have You Seen Her, along with a number of sweet self-penned tunes, many of which should be revived by contemporary singers looking for something new.

While I was looking through the jazz, the DJ was playing a fantastic late disco song that had me dancing. I asked him what it was and it was nobody I had heard of (but wish I could remember!), but he added "It's really a lost Leon Ware album," referring to the singer-songwriter-producer best known for his work on Marvin Gaye's I Want You. Before going to pay, I casually thumbed through some sale items, coming across Nuff Said, which may the great lost Ike & Tina album - coincidentally featuring six Leon Ware co-writes. It was kismet and it was $2.00 for a super-funky and consistent album. Done deal.

Another conclusion I came to before paying was that if you have any vintage Brazilian or African vinyl, you can practically name your price. I will not be cashing in on my Chico Buarque albums anytime soon, however - I like them too much! In contrast to that very expensive stock were the free albums on the sidewalk, many put out to pasture due to their rough condition. One I'm glad I grabbed was Chico Hamilton's El Chico, featuring the great Gabor Szabo on guitar, shining especially bright on a sublime version of People. Some of the album, in original mono, is unplayable - but I might never have heard it otherwise. That's the magic of record shopping, and I got a big hit of it on Saturday. How did you spend the day?



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Top 10 Unlikely Covers

I'm a big fan of artists stepping out of their comfort zone - or maybe it's really our comfort zone - and covering a song that would seem to be out of their bailiwick. Exploiting what could be called the "sincerity gap," wherein a song that seems kind of like a joke is given a new level of emotion, is often a key to success. For exhibit A see number one on my list of Top Ten Unlikely Covers. What are your favorites?

Aztec Camera - Jump Maybe I suck because this is my favorite Aztec Camera recording and I know they are a bit of a sacred cow. I'm a big Van Halen fan (DLR years only!) so I was delighted to hear a completely different approach to the splashy, synth-driven MTV monster that was Jump. The best thing about this was the absolute lack of irony. Something tells me Roddy Frame likes VH as much as I do. Still waiting on that Hot For Teacher cover.

Natalie Prass - Caught Up In The Rapture

As I noted in my review of her show at Bowery Ballroom last year, the Spacebomb chanteuse is a sucker for slinky R&B. On this version of the Anita Baker smash from 1986, she put her mouth where her moneymaker is. Wait, that didn't come out right...just listen.

Sly & The Family Stone - Que Sera Sera
After There's A Riot Going On Sly's rep started going downhill, with blown concerts and "unreliable" behavior alienating fans, critics, and collaborators. He didn't necessarily help his cause by covering a song made famous by Doris Day, sung here by sister Rose Stone. But when he wails on the chorus, it sounds like he means every word. 

The Wailers - Sugar Sugar
While the Monkees were a fake rock group that became real, The Archies, being cartoons, never had that opportunity. They weren't bad, they were just drawn that way. But the songs were real enough and Sugar Sugar was as good as any other bubblegum song. After all, Jeff Barry wrote most of the songs for the real groups, too. But when The Wailers put it to a hip-swiveling rocksteady groove it took on a different connotation. A couple of years later Bob was singing about Marcus who had candy tar all over his chocolate bar in Kinky Reggae - wonder where he got that idea?

Radiohead - Nobody Does It Better
This is firmly in the Aztec Camera camp. You can just tell that Thom Yorke thinks this classic James Bond theme by Carly Simon is a fabulous song. He really gives it his all and it helps that it fits his voice like a glove. I wonder if there's a studio recording of this somewhere in the Radiohead archives.

Emmylou Harris - May This Be Love
We probably have Daniel Lanois to thank for getting Emmylou to explore this deep cut from Are You Experienced? No matter whose idea it was, it is just gorgeous and invites a whole new understanding of Hendrix's songcraft. 

The Isley Brothers - Love The One You're With
By 1970, The Isley Brothers had earned the right to do pretty much whatever they wanted, having had their first hit in 1959. Still, one would not have pegged them to be Stephen Stills fans. One thing that's cool about their version is that they play it fairly straight, adding just a little grit to the original, which was already little funky, and reveling in the harmonies.

Hole - Credit In The Straight World
There is something so self-contained, even precious, about the one album released by Young Marble Giants, that until I heard this it was unimaginable that someone would cover one of their songs. It was a canny choice for Hole, however, as it fit their sound nicely while also providing some more melodic colors to Live Through This. It was also a nice bit of curation and likely introduced many people to the genius of YMG.

Yo La Tengo - Friday I'm In Love
While my favorite Yo La Tengo usually involves Ira Kaplan wailing on his guitar, they do have a nice sideline in covers, exemplified by their lovely folk-rock take on this 90's classic. The original version by The Cure seemed a little unlikely as well, pushing Robert Smith and co. toward the environs of shimmering pop.

The Staples Singers - Slippery People

While the lyrical content of the Talking Heads song might seem a little more oblique than the average gospel song, there was no doubt about the origin of those call and response vocals. The Staples Singers were already legends when they put this out but their cover version reawakened interest in their career for a whole new audience. In any case, Mavis Staples must have really connected with the song as she still performs it regularly.

Bonus Cut:

Freddie Hubbard - Cold Turkey
Here's one from another side of the aisle. Jazz musicians covering pop songs goes back to at least the 30's and we even had folks like Ramsay Lewis giving the treatment to Beatles songs in the late 60's. But hearing hard-charging Miles Davis protege Hubbard take on John Lennon's heroin-withdrawal nightmare of a song has a bit more of a frisson than the usual pop-jazz stylings you would expect. Unlike some other songs in this vein, I doubt this was a bid for pop success!

Unfortunately, even in today's streaming-centric world, there is no one place that I could find that had complete versions of all these songs. This YouTube playlist is the best I could do...What are your favorites?

Merle Haggard: No Stranger To Me

I'm sure Mark Seliger won't mind me borrowing this photo.
He started all of this anyway.

I'm a country music dilettante. There, I said it. All I need is some Hank Williams, Dwight Yoakam - and Merle Haggard. Sure, Johnny Cash is a monolith and I love some of his stuff (check out his My Mother's Hymn Book to get on my wavelength), but he doesn't touch me like The Hag. Something about vulnerability wrapped up in a tough exterior, combined with jazz-inflected phrasing and great taste in songs makes me take him to heart. 

But it wasn't always that way. I used to say "I like all kinds of music, except country and opera." Eventually, opera seduced me but country was still off limits. My college roommate just reminded me that he turned me onto Hag in junior year but I think that only lasted until I graduated. It was actually photographer Mark Seliger who turned the tide, when he handed me a cassette with Big City, Merle Haggard's 1981 album, with Dwight Yoakam's 1986 classic Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc. on Side B.

I fell for the title track of Big City right away, digging the witty lyrics and the tasty update on Western Swing, and soon found myself playing the album regularly. So you can thank Seliger for expanding my horizons - and you can also blame him for the fact that the 80's is my favorite period for the Hag. All Music Guide, I laugh at your 2.5 stars for Out Among The Stars! Any album with Tell Me Something Bad About Tulsa on it is an instant classic, and this one also has My Life's Been Grand and Bleachers. The decade also included such gems as Back To The Barrooms, Kern River and Chill Factor, which in addition to the classic title track also contains Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Star, a song I sang to my daughter for years. 

Sure some of the production gets a little glossy but that contrasts nicely with his increasingly weathered voice and he always makes sure to keep a band feel and shoehorn in a tidy solo on sax, piano or guitar. Like many cultural phenomena, Hag's 80's actually began at the end of the previous decade, on 1979's Serving 190 Proof, which opens with Footlights, surely one of the greatest "it's tough to be famous" songs ever. Check out the astonishing use of the word "nearly" in this killer verse:

I throw my old guitar across the stage and
Then my bassman takes the ball
And the crowd goes nearly wild to see
My guitar nearly fall

Sigh. Sheer brilliance. It was probably jealousy that led Bob Dylan to make those remarks last year. I love Dylan like life itself but he wishes he could nearly have written Footlights. I had the pleasure of seeing the Hag at Tramps in the mid-90's and when he opened with Footlights I knew we were in for a good night. I was there with Hag superfan Robert Marlowe* who had helped me get further into his music. 

Rob confirmed that this was a special show. Part of it was the setlist and the fact that Hag had a full band, including a guy who just played rhythm on an acoustic guitar, which matters so much for texture. Hag also took a lot of left-field guitar solos that always ended up in the just the right place. Just another unexpected thing about a guy I never expected to like.

And now he's gone, another towering musical figure swallowed up by 2016. Remember him tonight with some of my favorite songs and tell me yours.



*The world still awaits Rob's book on Bonnie Owens, who was married to both Haggard and Buck Owens. 

Skylark's Liminal Journey

The world of contemporary classical music, like all music, is full of niches. But it may not get more niche than an album of recent choral music around the theme of "the dream state at the end of life." But that is indeed what the vocal ensemble Skylark has delivered with Crossing Over, their new release on Sono Luminus. Having recently watched a great friend succumb to pancreatic cancer, I was actually completely uninterested, even resistant, to listening to anything that purported to describe what he had gone through. I also wasn't sure that anything other than tuneless primal screaming could express how I felt about the situation. 

But listen I did and found that I had been taking Skylark's concept a bit too literally. Crossing Over is, in fact, a superbly sung and brilliantly sequenced album that makes you think about death about as much as listening to Mozart's Requiem makes you think about death. It's in there, for sure, but despite the booklet's heavy handed subtitles (Denial, My time has come, etc.) there need be no utility to the collection. Overall, it is a meditative and elevating listening experience, with the rich, warm recording seeming to surround you with the perfectly balanced voices of the ensemble.

The composers chosen by Skylark's leader Matthew Guard range from those firmly established in the 20th century canon, like John Tavener and William Schuman, to younger musicians like Anna Thorvaldsdottir and Daniel Elder. It's Elder's Elegy that opens the album with a beautiful evocation of Taps emerging from a cloud of voices. By Elder's hand the overly familiar melody is imbued with a new gravity that may surprise you. 

Tavener is of course the composer Paul McCartney picked to lend a little weight to the releases on The Beatles' Apple Label, which put out his The Whale in 1970. Featured here is Butterfly Dreams from 2003, a short eight-part piece that explores a variety of moods, even touching on the primal scream in No. 6. The Butterfly: My Most Horrifying Nightmare. This is a small but important part of Tavener's legacy and we owe a debt of gratitude to Skylark for this definitive rendering of a rarely performed piece. 

Heyr bú oss himnum á, Thorvaldsdottir's setting of an Icelandic psalm with the key line "We cannot make a joyful song unless we are moved by love," is somber but shot through with shafts of light. I wasn't looking for further proof of her versatility but I'm glad to have it nonetheless. The longest work on Crossing Over is the world-premiere recording of Robert Vuichard's Heliocentric Meditation, which uses text from John Donne's Meditation XVII ("ask not for whom the bell tolls..."). It has some of Donne's solidity to it's structure and covers a variety of emotions from sorrow to raging against the dying of the light. It may never be performed by a glee club, as have some of Vuichard's other compositions, but it is a valuable addition to the contemporary choral catalog, which goes for the album as a whole.

Don't be scared off by the concept - give Crossing Over a chance. If you love the sound of the human voice you will find it a deeply rewarding journey.

Another recent release from Sono Luminus is not quite so satisfying. Everyone knows that a joke that must be explained is not a joke at all and there is a lot of explaining going on in the liner notes to Serious Business by the Spektral Quartet. The idea is to "look at humor" from different musical angles but the results are not always something you want to hear more than once. Many, Many Cadences by Sky Macklay opens the album and drives its point home with a repetition that seems unnecessary rather than clever. David Remnick's The Ancestral Mousetrap has the virtuoso instrumentalists singing in addition to playing, which might amuse in concert but not in my living room.

Hack by Chris Fisher-Lochhead closes the album with many, many (22) short "transcriptions" of comedians, from Lenny Bruce to Tig Notaro. It may be that you had to be there but these just seem like unfocused fragments. There's nothing terribly wrong with it, musically speaking, but there's not enough to engage me either. 

However, there is one saving grace on Serious Business, and that is the Spektral's absolutely masterful performance of Haydn's String Quartet Opus 33, No. 2 in E-flat major, "The Joke." I'm usually the one saying "Do we really need another recording of this?" when it comes to pieces from the classical era but in this case the answer is resounding YES. The recording is pure perfection and the quartet never oversells Haydn's melodies, with playing that reflects the elegance of the period so exactly that listening feels like time travel. The famous tease of the multiple endings still kills, too. Humor that stands the test of 200-plus years? Now, that's serious business.