Best New Records I Heard in December

A day early because I'm not listening to anything else before the New Year comes

Spinning Jenny – The Great Story. Three Merry Widows was one of the most popular bands in St. Louis for several years, but their album released on the TVT label did not take them national, so they broke up. Four members of the band then teamed up with two newcomers to form Spinning Jenny. This time, the instruments would be primarily acoustic, with guitars, violin, banjo, mandolin, even a sitar featuring prominently in the mix. New vocalist Meryl Press (and did she ever do anything else? – she’s great here) and TMW stalwart Sean Garcia handled the front position for the band. There is a folk influence that may not have been so obvious in the previous band, but there is also the particular melodic jumps familiar from Three Merry Widows. At any rate, this demo was recorded back in 1994, and finally remastered and issued so that this short-lived band could be heard. It’s catchy and spirited stuff.

Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Tant Le Monde (Live in Bremen Germany 2005). This was a completely unexpected treat, a live album from two of my favorite singer/songwriters ever. I drove 2000 miles to see them play at the Newport Folk Festival fourteen years before this particular concert was recorded. This show is heavy on material from La Vache Qui Pleure, a then-new European-only release that I never knew existed. These songs, in French with lyrics by sometime collaborator Philippe Tatartcheff, are all as gorgeous as the classics I’ve loved for 40 years since I first discovered the Canadian sisters. They also do a few cuts from their two previous duo albums, Matapedia and Heartbeats Accelerating which allowed me to notice Kate mentioned her daughter Martha when she was 13 and 17 in two different songs. A couple of folk songs and a blues round out the set. I recommend this highly to those who already know how wonderful the McGarrigles can be – if you don’t know, pick up their first two albums, Kate & Anna McGarrigle and Dancer with Bruised Knees, then meet me back here after you proceed through their entire discography.

Hedvig Mollestad and the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra – Maternity Beat. Not content with being the heaviest shredding jazz-influenced metallic KO guitarist in Norway, Hedvig Mollestad put together some complex dynamic compositions with a whole bunch of jazz musicians for an album that gets more and more powerful every time I play it. Mollestad’s guitar is here, especially on the last track, “Maternity Suite,” but it often plays a supportive role to violin or horns, and sometimes disappears completely. There are a few simple vocal parts in perfect English, and some dense wordless vocal parts that float above even the trumpet. Sometimes the tunes are contemplative, sometimes they are taking off into the stratosphere. Presumably some of these songs were inspired by Mollestad becoming a mother – “Do Re Mi Ma Ma” was clearly written around an infant. But you don’t have to have children to love this kind of sharp, dense, and coherent music.

Raven Chacon / Tatsuya Nakatani / Carlos Santistevan – Inhale / Exhale. After listening to this a couple of times, I came to the astonishing realization that at no time are there more than three people making sounds on this record. Two roughly twenty-minute free improvisations between guitarist Chacon (who comes from metal and noise backgrounds), bassist Nakatani (who has played with Eugene Chadbourne), and percussionist Santistevan (whose background is entirely experimental music) are beautiful journeys through a wide array of sonic conceptions. You’ll hear guitar, bass, and drums, but also bowed string instruments, percussion that sounds like dropping wrenches one at a time from a toolbox, and other sources I can’t quite describe. I think I like “Inhale” better because it sounds more dense, but there’s lots to enjoy in both of these pieces.

Adeem the Artist – White Trash Revelry. With songs wrestling with generational politics, complex relationships between trans and straight people, economic suffering, religion and its hold on people, and the straight line through the middle of the heart between guns for sport, the effects of war on fathers, the high cost of college, and a PTSD-influenced suicide, you’d not be likely to expect this album to be so goddam enjoyable. But it is. Adeem the Artist finds hope in telling these tales, in fighting the good fight, in dreaming of changing the way people have been taught to hate. They also sing with passionate conviction, come up with melodically engaging and downright catchy melodies and hooks, and know the power of a good country dance feel. And I haven’t even mentioned the song wherein Adeem is disappointed by the devil, who won’t make a deal to make them a better artist, and who tells them Robert Johnson taught him, not the other way around, because the “white man would rather give the devil praise than acknowledge a black man’s worth.” I hear too many records to say only one would be the album of the year, but I can sure see an argument that this deserves the title.

Lady Aicha & Pisco Crane’s Original Fulu Miziki Band of Kinshasa – N’djila Wa Mudujimo. Coming out of the Congo, this incredibly percussive, vibrant, and in-your-face record is a full body workout. Not speaking the language, my mind shuts down, and I just feel all these rhythms, the call and response male and female vocals (or female and male – the calls come both ways), the percussion instruments built out of street detritus, the occasional power tool sounds, and some limited use of synthetic instruments. It’s a blast to experience every time.

Mt. Joy – Orange Blood. Sometimes, you come across a record that gives pleasure without really being able to explain why. This band, with a couple albums before this one under its belt, has never been on my radar, but there’s something about the way the singer expresses himself, a sort of matter-of-fact laying out of lyrical and melodic content with occasional stabs of rhetorical flourish. The music is there to underpin the singer, with only a couple moments of fuzzed out guitar to call attention to the fact there’s a band working here. I don’t know how long my fascination with this record can last, but I am glad to have discovered it.

Horse Lords – Comradely Objects. You could bust out your slide rules and protractors and try to solve the complex rhythmic equations going on with each instrument. Or you could do what I do, let your body move to the groove, and your head fly into space with the trance-like sensations of the various riffs, beats, and unnameable sounds produced by guitar, bass, sax, drums, and synth. I feel refreshed and all tingly after each listen, like I’ve been in an aural shower at the absolute perfect temperature. I don’t know anybody else making music quite like this, though I suppose King Crimson would be a distant relative.

Lyrics Born – Vision Board. “If the phrase “Fuck around and find out” was a real person, I’d be that guy, pal.” That’s a fun bit of braggadocio, but I think it’s less a threat and more of a promise to keep trying new approaches to hip hop and seeing what happens. This Japanese-American has been rapping professionally since 1993, but he’s never been on my radar until now. His vocal approach seems unique to my ears – he’s got vocal timbres you just don’t hear in this kind of music. Whoever is in charge of the music is equally as creative and exciting. This is pop music, inventive, exuberant, brash. Lots of guest singers provide really catchy hooks, too. This album is just a half hour long, but it feels like a complete explosion of expressive delight.

Montparnasse Musique – Archeology. The combination of an Algerian-French producer and a South African DJ makes for exciting playful takes on a variety of African musics. There is a mix of live instruments and singing with samples and beats, creating a constant swirl of new energy and traditional forms. I don’t know any of the singers who stop by to add their take to the mixes the duo come up with, but they are all good enough to front any southern African band out there. Rhythms, intoxicating polyrhythms, that’s the secret, even when mixed into modern technological takes.

David Crosby & the Lighthouse Band – Live at the Capitol Theatre. Two songs into this live album, David Crosby says something to the effect that he had just broken a major rule of giving concerts. “You’re not supposed to open with two brand new songs.” Technically, those two songs, “The Us Below” and “Things We Do For Love” had been released over two years before this December, 2018 performance, during which time Crosby had put out two more albums of original material. In fact, a case can be made that Crosby’s last five studio albums, released between 2014 and 2021, are the strongest set of material from any 60s icon in the last decade, depending on how you rate Bob Dylan’s smaller number of recordings. The nine of sixteen cuts included here, which also feature Michael League, Michelle Willis, and Becca Stevens as his harmony (and sometimes lead vocal) partners, are memorable, solid, full of harmonic and melodic freshness, and earnestly evocative lyrics. (Not gonna defend the lyrics of “The City,” though, which is just silly, but still beautifully performed.) Crosby is in great voice, and you can feel the joy he gives off just from performing these songs (which also include two from CSNY, one from CN, and one from his first solo record more than 50 years ago). It’s a rare live album that leaves me feeling just as thrilled as if I’d actually been there. (The CD also comes with a DVD, but heck, I’m not sure where my DVD player is these days.)

The Sunset Sound – Dreamtime. This is a mysterious record. I can’t find anything about this band on the internet. I know they put out a record earlier this year with vocalist Billy Valentine, and that three of the seven songs on this album are new versions of songs from that one. This time, the singer is the great Shelby Lynne, which is what attracted me to this album in the first place. After last year’s The Servant found her singing old spirituals, the one-time country singer and long-time whatever-the-heck-she-wants singer gets to show up as a torch singer. These songs sound as though they should have been on pop albums from the fifties, but I don’t recognize any of them. Lynne does a wonderful job in this style, though, and the musicians support her beautifully.

Various Artists – Sowal Diabi (From Kaboul to Bamako). Mixing and matching musicians from Mali, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, and France, this polycultural polyglot band should, by rights, have more difficulty sounding so unified. Most of the players save the French have spent time in exile from their homeland, and there is, perhaps, a hint of longing in much of this record. But there is also beauty, love, peace, hope, and warmth. Somehow, the musicians found ways to mix what they knew of their own background into what others offered from theirs. It all seems natural even though you know you’ve never heard that kind of drum with that kind of saxophone and that sort of violin.

Old Town Crier – You. This is a small batch of short songs, available on Bandcamp, from Jim Lough up in Massachusetts. He plays all the instruments and sings all the parts by himself, except on one live cut where he’s got fellow musicians, natch. It’s good, energetic, and exuberant sort-of power pop, with a vibrant melodic sense as it’s best feature. Best of all, everything is recorded loud.

Aaron Raitiere – Single Wide Dreamer. Kentucky bred professional songwriter hit the jackpot co-writing “I’ll Never Love Again” for that terrible A Star is Born remake a few years back. He’s also had songs written with and/or recorded by half the Nashville hitmakers under the age of 45. All these powerful friends, including Anderson East and Miranda Lambert who co-produced this, came together to help him put out his debut solo record, which is a far more honest and distinctly less radio-friendly batch of classic-styled country songs. Catchy tunes and clever lyrics, what more do you want from this sort of thing? Well, he’s a decent enough singer, but he’s not going to win awards for that aspect of his talent. With songs like “Cold Soup,” which reminds me of Guy Clark, or “You’re Crazy,” which calls to mind Roger Miller, he’ll be just fine.

We Free Strings – Love in the Form of Outrage. We Free Strings is a string and rhythm sextet which has released two albums in the eleven years since it first got together. There’s obviously not a huge market for this sort of thing – I even think it’s entirely possible this is the only extant example of this sort of thing. Two violins, viola, cello – that’s your basic string quartet which has been around for centuries. Add a stand-up bass and a drum kit, and you’ve got something unique. The first cut here, “Baraka Suite” is a 25-minute tour de force of how to use this combination of instruments. I don’t know how much of this is composed, and how much improvised – the way each instrument picks up on the ideas of the others is remarkably fluid, but there is also a strong jazz feel, thanks to the bass and drums. Two shorter cuts strip things down to violin, viola, and bass, and then there’s one big sounding freer cut at the end for the whole ensemble. Very impressive and original.

Kaitlin Butts – What Else Can She Do. This is my first time encountering Kaitlin Butts, but I’m definitely on board this train now. A country singer/songwriter who tells big stories in just a few economical verses, she’s also adept at bringing emotional power to her records. You can feel the frustration in songs like “Jackson” (as in the realization that she and her spouse will never even get to the point where Johnny Cash and June Carter could renew their passion) or “Bored if I Don’t” (as in “Damned if I do / Bored if I don’t” break up with him). The waitress in “What Else Can She Do” sounds worn down by the death of her big city dreams, but also has glimmers of maybe finding something new. This short seven-song album ends with a devastating rendition of the traditional death ballad “In the Pines.”

Shirt – I Turned Myself Into Myself. Shirt is a rapper confident enough to come up with a nom de hip hop that is one of the least imposing of common nouns. Heck, even his fans can’t keep up with everything he does – his Wikipedia page is only up to date as of 2018. Once I was told he had a song called “Dave Chappelle is Wrong (Beef With God),” I knew I had to hear this guy. “The jokes put people in danger,” Shirt says. And to reinforce his point, he has another song deriding people who complain about “Cancel Culture.” In between, he thinks hard about the relationship between art and commerce, about how to be a decent person, and about culture of all kinds. I think I heard a Siobhan Roy reference in there, too, for fans of Succession. Not only does he have things to say and exceptional skills to say them, his collaboration with producer Jack Splash leads to entirely original beats that push the album to a compulsively listenable new height.