Best New Records I Heard In February
A couple more catchups from last year, a bunch of new ones from this year
Robyn Hitchcock – Shufflemania. He put this out last year but I finally got my chance to hear it, and it’s another damn fine Robyn Hitchcock record. He’s been making records essentially like this one for 45 years, and I’ve been listening for more than 40. From the Soft Boys to his solo career, Hitchcock comes up with quirky but undeniable melodies, quirkier lyrics but frequently full of catch phrases, and arrangements which range from frantic to laid back. Sometimes I wonder if his surrealistic lyrics are a bit of a crutch, but when he’s singing all about the fish in “The Raging Muse,” I simply grin and go along for the ride.
Jason Moran – From the Dancehall to the Battlefield. James Reese Europe has always been a legendary figure in the history of jazz, the other giant besides Buddy Bolden who didn’t get his music documented by the recording industry. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered any of his compositions before, but leave it to Jason Moran to put together a tribute album that finds some good ones from his repertoire. He also mixes in some material Europe almost certainly performed with his orchestras. They were orchestras, too – he was known for leading 125 musicians on stage. A couple of medleys throw in some later material from Geri Allen and Albert Ayler, too. Moran leads a ten-piece band in arrangements which combine the precision of proto-jazz of the teens with various modern styles including funk and free playing. The album is tuneful in the extreme, and full of spirit and vigor at all times, even when playing Ayler’s “Ghosts.” I was most pleasantly surprised by “Russian Rag” written by George Cobb, a ragtime composer I’d never encountered before.
Sam Smith – Gloria. Goosebumps every time I hear it, the title track I mean. In between an upbeat dance track about looking for nothing but sex and a heartfelt duet ballad between Smith and Ed Sheeran about the freedom to love who you love, “Gloria” is especially stunning. A choir sings in a medieval style about demons and monsters before Smith soars above them singing about the exhilaration of being yourself. It’s all over in less than two minutes, but it is an essential part of this excellent pop album. Smith, whose voice is incandescently beautiful, even when using light autotune for effect, sings of earthy subjects and self-love, sometimes in the same song. There is a lot of variety in structure, with most of the cuts lasting under three minutes, and none reaching four – this makes boredom almost impossible. The hit single, “Unholy” sounds better and better every time I hear it, but I’m even higher on “Gimme,” in which the hook is built around guest singer Jesse Reyez chanting the title word repeatedly and sounding almost like a human triangle. (Way better than Elton John playing one on that Super Bowl ad.)
Lakecia Benjamin – Phoenix. It’s not every jazz record that opens with police sirens and shots and Angela Davis intoning, “This is not the way things are supposed to be.” Benjamin is a serious musician with serious considerations of love and hope and beauty and spirituality mixed in with an awareness that things are not the way they should be. But her music is the way I like it to be. Backed by a bunch of really talented players – especially trumpeter Josh Evans, pianist Victor Gould, bassist Ivan Taylor, and drummer E.J. Strickland – she blows her tenor saxophone striving for the heavens the way her obvious influence John Coltrane did. But she is no copycat. She writes distinctive tunes, and plays expansive solos, all in her own voice. I missed her debut album back in 2020, but this is a major young force in contemporary jazz.
Joe Chambers – Dance Kobina. Chances are if you collect enough jazz records from the 60s and 70s, you’ll have several with Joe Chambers on drums. He was a mainstay on Blue Note sessions in the 60s especially – his work with Wayne Shorter and Bobby Hutcherson in those days is probably the best connection to what he’s doing on this new record, a return to that label. I’m not familiar with most of the side players here, but pianist Andrés Vial, who also contributes two excellent compositions, is notable. Chambers leads from his drum chair by listening to all his cohorts, and pushing them here or following them there. At 80 years old, he’s lost none of his musical passion or power.
James Brandon Lewis – Eye of I. First, a puzzle. There are clearly two tracks with a trumpet, one track with a bass and what sounds like an electric guitar, but all Lewis’ Bandcamp page credits are his tenor saxophone, the cello and pedals of Chris Hoffman, and the drums and sensory percussion of Max Jaffe. I’d like to know who else is contributing, if only because the record sounds so damn good. Lewis is a heavy sax player, a guy who likes to blow loud and long, whose melodies are often simple but always profound. And, he dips into the Donny Hathaway and Cecil Taylor songbooks, too. Hoffman’s cello is a trip, especially since he distorts it with those pedals so much of the time. You may find yourself thinking of Albert Ayler on some of the slower tunes, but this music is much more controlled. It does have some of that beauty and spirit, though.
Avram Fefer – Juba Lee. This one came out in late November, but I only just found it. Fefer has been around for quite a while, but as with so many excellent jazz musicians, I haven’t encountered him before now. He plays tenor and alto saxophones as well as bass clarinet, and has a distinctive tone and style on each instrument. The quartet featured here has been playing together off and on for a few years – heck, subtract guitarist Marc Ribot (which I would never want to do under any circumstances) and the other three have played together for something like a dozen years. Fefer’s compositions are lively and clever – he and Ribot double up with uncanny precision on the heads. Fefer and Ribot also have multiple impressive solos across the album, as bassist Eric Revis and drummer Chad Taylor support and prod throughout. This record is way too good to be obscure.
Joe Henry – All the Eye Can See. It may look easy to come up with pithy comments about a bunch of new records every month, but I’ve been working on this one for weeks, and I keep coming up short of capturing this one. I’ve been a Joe Henry fan for a couple decades now, and I’m ecstatic that his health has recovered enough to allow for a new record. There is definitely a feeling here of looking life and death squarely in the eye, and relief that the option doesn’t have to be chosen just yet. As with most Joe Henry records, the songs are slow, stolid, melancholy soundscapes with lots of open spaces in the vocals and instrumentation. If a song doesn’t need drums, there are no drums. If it needs a saxophone, there is a saxophone. Everything sounds exactly in the right place, and every time I play this, I feel a warmth and a satisfaction that makes critical thinking obsolete. It’s just beautiful.
CMAT – If My Wife New I’d Be Dead. I sure don’t remember seeing or hearing anything about this record over the last year since it came out until Robert Christgau reviewed it recently in his Consumer Guide. With such a cumbersome artist name and a weird album title, I might have tuned it out anyway, but once again, Christgau steers me to an overlooked gem. CMAT is a young woman with a penchant for tuneful, clever, and slightly off-kilter songwriting. It’s filled with delicious hooks, spritely guitar-based rock rhythms, and her vocals which sit as often as not in the upper register familiar to fans of Kate Bush. (The music is nothing like Bush’s, just the voice.) Perhaps a smattering of song titles will determine your own interest: “Peter Bogdanovich.” “No More Virgos.” “Every Bottle (Is My Boyfriend.” “I Wanna Be a Cowboy, Baby!” I’m sold.
Brad Mehldau – Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles. Like any card-carrying jaded music critic, I was a mite suspicious of this one. I mean, I love Brad Mehldau’s piano playing, and I love the Beatles, but does the world need an album of solo piano versions of Beatles songs? Need may be a strong word, but there is much to be said for the sheer pleasure of Mehldau’s renditions of eight Beatles tunes, most of which I didn’t expect, and a Bowie song thrown in for good measure. “Golden Slumbers” only lasts 1:30 on Abbey Road but Mehldau teases out the melodic elegance for over eight minutes here. “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” gets dissected and stretched like iron under an anvil. “I Saw Her Standing There” reveals its boogie woogie roots. It’s a delight as both a tribute to the originals and a reinvention of tunes I thought I’d completely assimilated.
Amy Ray – If It All Goes South. I’ve never much cared for the Indigo Girls but I always enjoy Amy Ray’s solo albums. It’s a rare instance of a collaboration that tamps down the energy and freedom of half the team. This new record is interesting because she brings in lots of guest stars to provide backing vocals – the likes of I’m With Her, Allison Russell, Brandi Carlile, and Sarah Jarosz all show up. None of them are treated as equal partners; they all lend their voices to Ray’s unique vision. She’s got a lot to say about the state of the world these days, with songs like “Subway” addressing police crimes and “Cowboys and Pirates” facing up to climate change. But she also has time for a ride on the “Joy Train,” which somehow involves dancing with James Brown back in 1963. Strong tunes, strong lyrics, strong playing from her band.
Chris Potter – Got the Keys to the Kingdom: Live at the Village Vanguard. You know you’re going to be in for a great time when the band includes tenor saxophone master Chris Potter, brilliant pianist Craig Taborn, veteran bassist Scott Colley, and monster drummer Marcus Gilmore. I’ve never been to the Village Vanguard, but I can definitely picture myself enjoying an hour of jazz this good in a small club. Opening with “You Gotta Move,” a tune best known by either Mississippi Fred McDowell or the Rolling Stones, but not normally by a jazz combo, the band starts cooking from the beginning and never lets up. Plenty of variety, including a Charlie Parker tune and the gorgeously somber Billy Strayhorn number, “Blood Count.” Potter and Taborn are ferocious here, pushing each other to greater solo heights, and the rhythm section is right there with them.
Lucas Santtana - O Paráiso. At the age of 51, Santtana never knew a world without the examples of the great tropicalismo artists from his native Brazil. He absorbed the lessons of Caetano Veloso, Jorge Ben, and all the rest the way we Americans learned “Old McDonald Had a Farm.” I’m not sure who hepped me to this new record, but it’s a delight. Santtana mixes Brazilian percussion with keyboard orchestration that sounds like horns and reeds. He can go hard, or he can go quiet and soft. There are ten songs, two in English (one a gorgeous version of the Beatles’ “Fool on the Hill” – I love the way he sings “The man with the foolish green is sitting perfect still”), one in French, and the rest in Portugese. He’s good enough to be ranked with the giants that influenced him.
Ron Sexsmith – The Vivian Line. Ron Sexsmith does one thing exceedingly well. He is a master of melody, a man who loves swoops and swirls and unexpected chord changes that lead to the perfect note choices. It took me decades to really understand this. I was looking for bigger hooks or more formal song styles. I missed the gentle joys of his elegant tunes. I admit that even though I played his previous record, the 2020 release Hermitage, quite a bit, I can’t now recall a single song from it. More than many melodic songwriters, Sexsmith’s strengths are as a kind of ear candy. I’ve played the new one a few times, and I recognize all the songs right now, but I expect this will float away at some point, too. Doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it while it’s on my mind.
Joe Louis Walker – Weight of the World. Joe Louis Walker is 73 years old, but he didn’t release his first record until he was 37. Which means I’ve been following along throughout his whole career, though I’ve certainly missed some of his albums. It takes a lot of dedication to keep up with an artist this prolific across multiple labels. At any rate, this new one is another terrific release from this excellent singer/guitarist/songwriter. Unlike many of his contemporaries, you can’t pin down Walker’s approach in just a few words. He draws as much from soul – check out the Hi Records feel of “Don’t Walk Out That Door” – and jazz – “You Got Me Whipped” is a first rate example – as he does blues shuffles and other forms. He’s always intent on delivering the song the best way he can, so he’s not prone to being flashy. He pulls off ten well-written, well sung, well played songs in an easy-going but not empty-headed manner.
Andrew Cyrille – Music Delivery / Percussion. A little more than 30 years ago, Andrew Cyrille performed the most mesmerizing drum solo I ever saw in my life. It was so brilliant that I honestly don’t have distinctive memories of David Murray, the leader of the band that night, though perhaps that’s because I saw Murray at least a dozen times in a variety of other circumstances. At any rate, when I found out Cyrille’s new record was 100% percussion, I figured he was likely the only person who could make me excited about such a thing. It’s fantastic, never boring, always musical. There are eleven cuts, differentiated in tonal colors, time signatures, instruments used, and general feel. Sometimes he uses his trap kit, sometimes just a group of cowbells. On one cut – forgive me if I forget which one is which just yet – he plays his tom toms with his hands while keeping a steady bass drum and hi-hat thump. On another – titled “Metallic Resonance” because that’s what it’s about – he caresses cymbals in spine-tingling delicacy. I don’t have any other records like this one. Nobody else could do a record like this one.