Best New Records I Heard in March, 2024

Next month, we'll get to the one everybody's talking about but which hasn't even been released physically yet

Corb Lund – El Viejo. This Canadian singer/songwriter has been churning out tightly constructed short stories set to music for a couple decades now. I think I’ve only been following him a little less than a decade myself. He’s ridiculously consistent. Every record is going to have songs about losers and cheaters in life, and dreamers and gamblers and maybe a little whiskey. Lund’s vocals are nothing fancy, but he knows how to twist between empathy and irony for his characters (even when he’s singing about himself) with a rhythmic shift or a well timed aching break. He also benefits from a very supportive band that rides country style with a bit of a rock drive – no distortion, though. My fave songs here include “Was Fort Worth Worth It” with a vocal hook that manages the title and a hard groove; “Insha’Allah” told from the point of view of a fighter in the Arab Rebellion led by Lawrence of Arabia over 100 years ago; and “That Old Familiar Drunken Feeling” for its accumulation of details regarding the usage of edibles vs. liquor.

Lola Kirke – Country Curious. Four songs, three of them unforgettable and the fourth still pretty good, in twelve minutes. I loved her in the TV series Mozart in the Jungle but I didn’t even realize this was her until the fourth time through the EP. Here we have “All My Exes Live in L.A.,” playing on the expectation of Texas being the location, as she sings of heading anywhere to get away from the guys who didn’t work out. “He Says Y’All” just makes me smile every time, because even though I live in the Midwest, I kinda like that usage – as she sings, “Saying you all just takes too long.” “My House” is a party song about a woman who has at least for now, until the bills are due, kicked her man out. The fourth song, “Karma,” benefits from a guest appearance by Rosanne Cash, but is just a little less extraordinary than the first three. I’m hoping there are more where these came from.

Mary Timony – Untame the Tiger. Timony has been around for decades playing in bands I’ve somehow never heard – Ex Hex, Autoclave, Helium, and Wild Flag. But I’ve finally made her musical acquaintance and I’m hooked by this album. Friends, it’s her guitar playing that nabbed me. She’s not a flashy player, but a deeply melodic one. She always plays exactly the perfect part that makes the song better. And her tone is exquisite – when she hits certain effects pedals to change up the sound, it’s like an anvil dropping from the sky. On top of all that, she uses an e-bow like no one I’ve heard this side of Richard Barone. The songs are cool, too. I like her vocals, comfortably in the upper part of the alto range and very steady. I think she’s singing about loss and rebirth here, but honestly, I keep getting distracted by the guitars, and sometimes the drums. But it all sounds so good I may figure out the words eventually because I keep wanting to hear it again.

Julian Lage – Speak To Me. At times, this is rock music for jazz fans, though more often it’s jazz music for rock fans. Lage works here with Joe Henry as his producer, and this combination seems to bring out some of the most emotional and potentially commercial music of the guitar player’s career. This is done without ever compromising on Lage’s jazz bonafides. “Hymnal” opens the album sounding like a Joe Henry instrumental, then “Northern Shuffle” takes off on an exciting disjointed blues rock flow. Lage offers expansive melodies which are catchy enough for casual listener to hum, and improvises off them in ways often unexpected and always impressive. He has an especially lovely touch on acoustic guitar, but I also love the times he turns up the volume with electric. This is fast growing on me as one of my fave records this year to date.

Jimmy Montague – Tomorrow’s Coffee. There’s a moment at the very end of the song “Waiting For You” where the electric piano and acoustic guitar are winding down, and then Montague whispers, “Oh shit” acknowledging some mistake he made. He certainly didn’t have to leave that in, especially as I’m not sure that they were trying to make a musical point with those last notes anyway, which seem to follow a firm ending. But I like it’s inclusion. It reinforces the perfection of all that has come before, in this song, and in the other nine on the album. He comes from the emo world, and also from a band described as “rowdy and riff driven.” This record, however, is tightly constructed melodic pop music with occasional nods to the likes of Steely Dan or Ten CC. Montague’s upper register, occasionally falsetto vocals bewail heartbreak or celebrate love, but it’s mostly the tunes that matter, and his delivery of same, along with the infectious and invigorating musical backing. Solos come from saxophones, electric piano, scintillating guitars. Surprises in structure are frequent. Smiles fill up my face every time I hear this.

Norah Jones – Visions. It’s rare for the greatest moment of a record to take place in the first three seconds, but every time I listen to this, the way Jones lets those notes drop down, those words sound firm and final, “All this time” right there at the beginning, gives me chills. Just because nothing else quite accomplishes this same feat of beguilement, though, doesn’t mean it’s not an enjoyable task to keep on listening. Jones has been around long enough that nobody should be surprised by anything she does. She’s no longer worried about genres. This album has r&b syncopation, country and jazz vocal phrasing, pop backing vocals, an occasional horn chart, and indie rock songwriting, sitting comfortably outside any slot you want to put it in. The songs are always strong and seductive melodically, with hooks built on Jones’ vocal abilities, which, as you should know by now, are ridiculously good.

Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage Ensemble – Open Me, A Higher Consciousness of Sound and Spirit. As befits an album led by a percussionist, this celebration of the 50^th Anniversary of the evolving Ethnic Heritage Ensemble lives up to its title not through melody but through feeling. There are tunes here, but even the famous ones – “All Blues” by Miles Davis, “Passion Dance by McCoy Tyner, and “Compared to What” best known by Les McCann and Eddie Harris – are simple in structure, open ended in spirit. El’Zabar plays drums, kalimba, and all sorts of other percussion instruments – there is always a groove. Instead of a bass, Ishamel Ali contributes cello, which means the bottom of the music is much more often on the bass drum or the lower parts of the kalimba. Or in Alex Harding’s baritone sax. He and trumpeter Corey Wilkes and violinist James Sanders provide all the melody and harmony on the record – when the three of them play in unison, it’s exquisite, as witness the aforementioned “Passion Dance.” Each takes solos in turn – this is not a free form record by any means. The music is always deep, always moving (both physically and spiritually).

Chris Potter – Eagle’s Point. Sometimes, all you need is to take four titanically talented jazz musicians, drop them in a room with eight recent compositions by one of them, and turn the microphones on. Chris Potter on tenor and soprano saxophone along with bass clarinet is joined with Brad Mehldau on piano, John Patitucci on bass, and Brian Blade on drums. This is virtuosic modern jazz played at a high level of interaction. Potter’s tunes are catchy and a little tricky, and all four musicians play them and improvise on them as if they’ve been working together for months. Mehldau gets to let loose with some faster and harder playing than he usually does on his own albums. Patitucci and Blade slice and dice the rhythms every which way while always maintaining a sense of swing. And Potter – well, he just soars, a superstar among superstars here. You could say this is just mainstream jazz, but if all mainstream jazz was this exciting to experience, it would never be dismissed with a casual “just.”

Evan Nicole Bell – Runaway Girl. Just three songs here (though one has both a radio edited version and a double-length take), but they are so dang good I have to talk about them. Bell is a triple threat – singer, guitarist, songwriter. She opens with “Catfish Blues,” the classic song you may know as “Rollin’ Stone” by Muddy Waters, with a neat gender reversal which shows a woman just as virile as a man. Then there’s the title track, edited down to just four minutes by taking all the blues guitar out of it, followed by “Burn,” a scorching torch song, and the full-length “Runaway Girl.” The two original songs here make me excited to hear more. Her singing on all three is strong – she’s full-throated but fond of dynamics, and once in a while she reminds me of Amy Winehouse in her combination of vulnerability and strength. Her guitar playing is pretty cool, too, and never flamboyant though she uses power. Give me a full album from this woman.

Kacey Musgraves – Deeper Well. The album starts out with four remarkable songs then settles into being a comfortable love letter to whoever is making her heart flutter these days. But those opening songs all deal with change – the death of a close friend, the beginnings of sobriety, the appearance of a surprising new love, and the departure from a house with all the memories it holds. In each case, something brings mixed feelings, or at least awareness that the past still has a hold on her as she contemplates the future. All those songs about the present have the same nuanced attention to melody, the same cozy vocal approach, the same warm unobtrusive guitar picking and gentle rhythm backing as the first cuts. They just don’t have any conflict – well, maybe “The Architect” hints at questioning the meaning of life. So, it could have been a great album, but it settles for merely being a good one with some great songs. That’s more than a lot of people achieve.

The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis – The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis. The rhythm section – Joe Lally on bass and Brendan Canty on drums – used to play in the band Fugazi. James Brandon Lewis is one of the most exciting saxophone players working these days. And Anthony Pirog, known only from the previous couple of Messthetics records, is kind of a monster on guitar. Put them all together and you get this unclassifiable jazz-infused rock instrumental record. I like the many times Pirog and Lewis play unison melody lines, though it’s also pretty cool when they separate or one sits out and lets the other take charge. The tunes are catchy, the musicianship dazzling, the effect immersive. This is the second album by Lewis so far this year – the two couldn’t be more different in style and approach. Good to know Lewis can stretch outside his normal parameters.

D. Clinton Thompson – Donnie’s Mood. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard new music from Donnie Thompson, the fabulous guitar player in the Symptoms / Morells / Skeletons bar bands from Springfield, MO from the late 70s to the 00s (and an occasional Ozark Mountain Daredevil, too.) Thompson is an encyclopedia of riffs and licks, but more, he has an impeccable touch on the guitar that makes everything he plays fit the occasion perfectly. He can be lyrical, he can be lightning fast, or he can be aggressive, but you always know it’s him playing. Here we have ten instrumentals, and two cuts with vocals. Thompson has lost most of his voice due to medical issues, but the rasp is remarkably effective, especially on a new take on “Guitar Man,” which I remember from all those Morells shows I saw in my youth. The instrumentals are the gems, though. Cool takes on “The Huckle Buck,” “You Really Got Me,” and some early 60s make-out standards like “I Love How You Love Me” and “My Prayer” vie with cool originals (or perhaps ultra-obscure covers – Thompson was always a record collector who dug through crates of 45s). There are two nods to the Paul Henning universe – a little “Green Acres” theme at the end of “Animal Farm” and a song entitled “Pond O’ Cement” which can only refer to the Beverly Hillbillies. Thompson always did have great taste.

Ledisi – Good Life. This r&b singer has been making consistently strong records for most of this century. Though she’s won some Grammys, and been nominated for many more, she hasn’t had much of a commercial presence in at least ten years. Most likely, this is because she committed herself to the styles she learned as a young woman back in the 90s. I happen to love that kind of r&b, the hook filled multiple vocal lines approach that made Toni Braxton, En Vogue, and others so cool. Ledisi’s voice is supple and wide ranging. She delivers her lyrics of love found and lost with appropriate ecstatic joy or confused sorrow. I find myself playing this again and again, and getting lost in the luscious hooks and dreamy grooves.

Charles Lloyd – The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow. Lloyd just turned 86 years old a couple weeks back. He’s been making records for 64 years. And he is still challenging himself, still creating beautiful new melodies and improvisations. This time, he’s working with Jason Moran on piano, Larry Grenadier on bass, and Brian Blade (see the Chris Potter review above) on drums. Most of the tunes are recent Lloyd compositions. All four members of the band complement each other’s playing, and each gets plenty of spotlight time. Of course, Lloyd and Moran take the majority of solos, and I love the way they push each other to dig deeper into the melodic content of the tunes, and the way they fracture the harmonies and rhythms from time to time. This is a double LP, ninety minute release, and time doesn’t seem to move while I’m listening. There is a stillness in this gorgeous music.

The Weeklings – Raspberry Park. A band of record collectors, I’d guess, who’ve been around for a while now. The Beatles are their fave role models, but they have fun mixing and mashing music from the Stones, Buffalo Springfield, Dwight Twilley, and Bruce Springsteen. Lots of people have noticed, for example, that both Twilley and Springsteen had songs named “I’m On Fire.” These guys are the only ones who played the Boss’s song as if Twilley didn’t mind. It would all be just novelty if they weren’t so good at what they do – the version of “I’ve Just Seen a Face” which somehow incorporates “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Help” while sounding entirely fresh and unique at the same time is a great example. They also write a few originals that range from quite good to great. I’m especially enamored of “Brian Jones,” a tribute to the late Rolling Stone, and even more “All the Cash in the World” which sounds like it could have been the follow-up to the Oneders “That Thing You Do.” The only wrong turn is a version of “She’s Leaving Home” in which they inject way too much emotion into the lyrics – the original melancholy is all that song needs.

John Blum / David Murray / Chad Taylor – The Recursive Tree. I was told to expect David Murray playing as hard and fast and intensely as he’s done in years, and boy, oh, boy, did I get that. I hadn’t hear John Blum play piano before, but he and Murray are locked in on this record. Chad Taylor, whose drumming is powerful, too, is almost an afterthought here, as the tenor saxophone and the piano are so much in the forefront. Blum plays these lightning fast runs and thick clusters while Murray matches the runs and then takes off into his own concepts, which inspire Blum to reply and go where he wants to go. It’s a bunch of thoroughly exciting conversations between three musicians whose minds go way beyond what most of us can conceive.