Best New Records I Heard in May
22 Diverse and Exhilarating Albums Covered, and I'm Two Weeks Behind the Calendar
The National – First Two Pages of Frankenstein. It’s been decades since I read Mary Shelley’s novel, but I seem to recall the first couple pages being a framing device telling us how Victor Frankenstein was rescued up in the Arctic where he had obviously been chasing down his monster. So, I guess we are to assume this record isn’t the real story so much as setting us up for something more? Eh, it just sounds like a pretty good National album to me. I never much cared for these guys until Matt Berninger started writing songs with Taylor Swift. That gave me a connection to his approach I’d been missing. Like Craig Finn of the Hold Steady, Berninger speak sings his lyrics in ways which hint at melodies it takes someone like Swift to really delineate. She helps out on the best song here, “The Alcott,” offering up all sorts of contrapuntal lines around Berninger’s deadpan delivery. Sufjan Stevens and Phoebe Bridgers stop by on other songs, but their presence is not so revelatory, just providing ordinary backing vocals. From start to finish, this record keeps enchanting me more and more. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what these guys do, but they do it better than they used to.
Florian Arbenz – Conversation #9: Targeted. Arbenz is a jazz drummer from Switzerland who has been releasing a series of records with completely different ensembles. This is the 9th such conversation, this time featuring the great saxophonist Greg Osby and a less well known but highly talented Dutch organ player named Arno Krijger. The trio connects with precision and exhilaration on the Eddie Harris standard “Freedom Jazz Dance,” lets the organ and drums have a blast with Miles Davis’ “Seven Steps to Heaven,” and comes up with a beautiful abstract take on the melody of Gershwin’s “I Loves You Porgy.” The other three are original tunes which showcase the interactive skills and passion of these three fine players.
Esther Rose – Safe to Run. If you’ve a hankering for singer/songwriter material with insight, passion, melody, and skill, this is the album you should pick up right now. Wikipedia says she’s a country musician, but I’ve never heard that as any more than one influence among many, and I’ve been listening to her since she was married to Luke Winslow-King and being featured on his albums back in the late 00s. Her four solo records have become increasingly assured these past six years. She’s not afraid to sing about not knowing what she’s doing – in one song, she leaves New Orleans where she’s lived for ten years to hang out with a guy in New Mexico, hoping only for pleasure and a song or two. In another, she is blatant about the fears she has in a relationship, singing “I know you love me / Because you buy me shit” before launching into the chorus of “Insecure.” It’s all very tuneful, sharply arranged, and frequently infectious.
Baaba Maal – Being. I had lost track of this major griot-influenced singer from Senegal, so much so that I didn’t even recognize him as a voice in the music of the Black Panther and Wakanda Forever movies. Hearing this new record, especially when the drums pound furiously and Maal’s explosive and wandering vocal lines fly way up above them, it became immediately obvious. Maal has always been fond of mixing traditional African instruments – some stringed, many percussive – with subtle electronic touches, and that is carried on to great effect here. All seven cuts have much to offer, but I’m especially fond of “Mbeda Wella” which sounds like the ur-example of what I described above, with the added power of an African rapper named Paco Lenol taking one verse.
Tim Berne – Oceans And. I discovered Tim Berne back in those heady days of the 1980s when jazz was not only a part of the major label world but when musicians pushing hard at the outside parameters of musical expression could get just as much of a push as a pop singer. It’s been harder to keep up with him since he was dropped from Columbia, but I’m always happy to find something new from the guy. This time he’s got a trio of equals – Berne on alto sax, Hank Roberts on cello, and Aurora Nealand on accordion or clarinet or vocals, depending. They play around with the tones of their instruments, creating moments in which it’s hard to tell who’s delivering what note. Melodies are not exactly hummable, but the music is intensely beautiful.
Natural Information Society – Since Time Is Gravity. First, I have to point out that there must have been something unnatural about the band that had a hit in 1988 with “What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy).” Why else would this Information Society be so concerned with pointing out its legitimacy? What we have here is a ten piece conglomerate that creates a big, full sound and mines repetition to extreme points. With instruments including tenor sax, 2 alto saxes, bass clarinet, 2 cornets, harp, harmonium, bass, conga, and drums, the sound recalls some Sun Ra material, but it’s way calmer at its core. A couple tracks feature solos from the horns, but most of the time, even the 18 minute “Murmuration,” it’s all about the ensemble maintaining a steady groove. Bassist Joshua Abrams has been working variations of this group for quite a few years now, but this is the first time I’ve heard it.
Bill Orcutt – Jump On It. Last year, Orcutt released the highly experimental and fascinating Music For Four Guitars on which he overdubbed himself four times to make dense slabs of melody and sound. This time, it’s just him playing one acoustic guitar, closely miked and highly resonant, with the sound of his own deep breaths the only thing competing with the music itself. His finger picking skills are remarkable. With maybe a nod in the direction of John Fahey’s more expansive moods, Orcutt creates delicate cascades of notes revealing intricate melodic creations. Sometimes he plucks strings harshly, other times he plays gently. Always, the music is moving.
Jessie Ware – That! Feels Good. This record is such an accurate recreation of disco circa 1979 when it was both at its peak and on the verge of mutating into other danceable forms that the vinyl release ought to come with a saw-cut on the spine just for authenticity. Of course, the cut-outs of that time didn’t get recorded with so much compression, but they did have the same intensely propulsive dance grooves and full-throated diva style vocals delivering hooks on top of hooks. “Just remember,” Ware says in the incandescent title track, “Pleasure is a right!” Of course it is, but she reveals later in “Beautiful People” that “So many nights / With tears in my eyes / Dancing myself to sleep.” It’s the yin/yang of exhilaration and sadness that keeps this album on my personal dance floor of the mind.
Ali Farka Touré – Voyageur. When Ali Farka Touré died way too young in 2006 (he was only 66), he left behind not only the vast legacy of released recordings, but also some pretty great stuff we hadn’t had a chance to hear. The Malian guitar legend’s library has finally been opened with the release of this solid hodge podge of material from several sessions. As always, his guitar vies with his vocals for the role of most compelling – heck, sometimes they do the same notes, which proves that they are actually in a tie. Another wonderful Malian singer, Oumou Sangare, sings with him on a couple tracks, and takes lead vocals on a third. For my money, the first half of this collection stands with the best of his classics from the 80s and 90s, while the second half is merely damn good.
Ian Hunter – Defiance Part 1. I’ve quoted him elsewhere, and I’ll do it again – my friend Steve Scariano says this is “the greatest rock album by an 84-year-old you’re ever gonna hear.” He’s absolutely right, and not just because the list of 84-year-olds trying to make a rock album is very, very short. This record doesn’t need any age-related qualifiers, though. Ian Hunter settled long ago, while he was still in Mott the Hoople and then on the majority of his many solo records, into a comfortably aggressive, hook-filled propulsive rock’n’roll style. And, with the aid of a veritable who’s who of veteran musicians – Ringo Starr, Jeff Beck, Mike Campbell, Todd Rundgren, even relative baby of the bunch Jeff Tweedy – he’s made a new record that stands with his best work. “I Hate Hate” is the catchy centerpiece, even to the point of being included in two different versions. Every other song here stands proudly along side it. I hope there’s a Part II coming.
Rodney Crowell – The Chicago Sessions. Hey, there’s Jeff Tweedy again, this time singing instead of playing crunching guitar. When I met him while he was in high school, neither one of us could have imagined how many of our favorite musicians he’d wind up getting to work with one way or another. And Crowell is a fave, for sure. Some 45 years into a career with his worst material never falling below a solid level of enjoyment, Crowell has come up with ten excellent songs. Expressions of never ending love from the back end of the idea, concerns about trying to push friendship into something more, the delights of one Miss Claudia, and the onslaught of feelings and events – the man knows how to make pearls out of whatever is on his mind. The music is classic country mixed with rock’n’roll, i.e. what he’s been doing for the majority of these 45 years. He’ll never make another record as perfect or as personal as The Houston Kid, but he’s still one of our best troubadours.
The Lemon Twigs – Everything Harmony. These two brothers, still well under 30, have managed to absorb an awful lot of music from the 1970s while rejecting virtually everything that has happened since. Echoes of Todd Rundgren, 10CC, Paul McCartney, Big Star, Gilbert O’Sullivan, and many more purveyors of rich melody fly into my ears whenever I hear the Lemon Twigs. This new album might be my favorite by them – I’m not sure these songs could have been hits back in the day, but they sure could have developed a cult following that would have made them heavily influential on some random 20-somethings in our time. Incadescent sounds here.
Selma Savolainen – Horror Vacui. At first glance, I thought this might be some sort of goth revival thing, but nope. Savolainen is a Finnish jazz singer who probably does lean to the dark side a bit, but who has made a remarkably effective debut album. Backed by five top flight Finnish musicians on clarinet, trumpet, piano, bass, and drums, Savolainen uses her vocals as another instrument. Mostly she sings lyrics, but she can go wordless, too; either way, she sounds like no other jazz singer I know. Her own tunes can shift between elastic melody and intense screams. And then she deconstructs Billy Strayhorn’s “A Flower is a Lovesome Thing” and treats Kurt Weill’s “Speak Low” as a mournful rite of passage. She will haunt you.
Asher Gamedze – Turbulence and Pulse. This young South African drummer is a deep thinker and a heck of a jazz force. I think this is just his third record as a leader, but you’d swear he’s been doing this for decades. Sitting somewhere on the fence between progressive mainstream and free approaches to jazz, this record features a tight quartet ensemble, with Robin Fassie on trumpet, Buddy Wells on tenor sax, and Thembinkosi Mavimbela on double bass. All four musicians shine, playing ensemble passages and then playing off each other with solos. The first cut, “Turbulence’s Pulse” serves as something of a thesis statement, as Julian “Deacon” Otis reads Gamedze’s thoughts on time keeping and history, on the ways people effect change, and the ways musicians work together in a group.
Eilen Jewell – Get Behind the Wheel. Eilen (rhymes with “stealin’”) Jewell has been making strong roots-based Americana records for almost 20 years now but it had been a while since her last one came out. With Will Kimbrough producing and playing several instruments, and the incredible Fats Kaplin on steel guitar added to her core band (featuring Jerry Miller, one of the greatest guitar players working today), this new album is, if anything, even stronger than her oeuvre to date. She writes songs which mix melancholy with adoration, fifties imagery with twenties panic, and insistence with pleading. She has a plain voice which delivers conviction and determination, occasionally skirting to the edges of a young Lucinda Williams without the accent. Covers in the middle of the album include a Van Morrison song from his Them days, and a Jackie DeShannon song made famous by Irma Thomas.
Josie Cotton – Day of the Gun. For years, people used to randomly ask me if I went to Webster College (since made into a University) back in the early 80s because I was at so many parties there. I had enough friends going there to keep me around the dorms quite often. And, there was one stretch of a couple months when you couldn’t walk around those hallways without hearing Josie Cotton’s “Johnny Are You Queer” blasting out open doorways. You see, Webster had a large theatre department, and a lot of young women were crushing on boys who weren’t available. Anyway, I always liked that song, and was glad to find a couple years ago that she’s back in the music game, and still sounding remarkably like the effervescent New Wave she was making in 1982. The new one is bouncy and bubbly in all the right places, with hooks aplenty and melodic delights.
Billy Woods & Kenny Segal – Maps. “We’re gonna need more weed.” These are the first words spoken over the spooky inviting beats of “Houdini” on this album. Of course, these words have probably been spoken in many a recording studio over the years. Woods and Segal do live up to the mellow haze of weed consumption on this, their second collaborative effort. I got hooked on Woods with last year’s Aethiopes album, but I’ve never heard Segal’s production skills before. Woods can rap cleverly and calmly over any beat, and Segal gives him plenty of challenges, from frenetic jazz to hopped up r&b to slow, grinding grooves.
Parker Millsap – Wilderness Within You. I’m trying to work out some comparison in my head that equates Millsap to a JJ Cale for the Wilco generation. It’s not completely a fair comp, but Millsap can pick guitar quite nicely, and he leans towards mellow, uncomplicated songs occasionally interrupted by or converted to noisier, heavier rhythms and sounds. He sings loud and clear the way Jeff Tweedy does, not the lower key way Cale did. But Cale would be more likely thanTweedy to sit around “Front Porchin’.” Oh, well, it’s just a stray observation that shouldn’t be overemphasized; these songs are good, the performances exquisite.
The Boxmasters – ’69. Billy Bob Thornton doesn’t make as many movies as he used to, but he sure does pump out albums with his band. This one pretty much jettisons all the country and Americana influences in favor of a straight ahead post-pub rock sound. You know, hard strummed acoustic guitars, snarling electrics, melodicg bass lines, swirling keyboards, and pseudo-Ringo drums. Thornton knows how to come up with hooks, even if his melodies tend to fall into two or three effective patterns. It’s all very upbeat, all very energetic, and all very pleasant. I get a nice jolt every time I hear it.
Tommy Emmanuel – Accomplice Two. Emmanuel is one of the most technically accomplished acoustic guitarists in the world. The man can play any style of music and bring something to it nobody else has done. Which is not to say I listen to many of his records – his versatility has been known to lead him down some overly broad paths. However, with the exception of one song here (sung by Michael McDonald), this set of collaborations with people who can match his technique is a pure delight. Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle, and Jorma Kaukonen on guitars; Sam Bush, Sierra Hull, David Grisman on mandolins (and fiddle in Bush’s case); Jerry Douglas on dobro. The great thing is all of these brilliant talents are pushed by playing with a guitarist this skillful. This isn’t just an album of technique, though – these songs are just plain fun to hear, whether we’re talking about a Townes Van Zandt number (sung here by Tuttle) or one originally recorded by Bing Crosby (sung here by Raul Malo).
Buck 65 – Super Dope. “I’m basically like Kenny Lofton over here / Not a Hall of Famer but an interesting career.” There’s no question that Buck 65 is not a Hall of Fame-level rapper, though he certainly does spit out ridiculously great rhymes almost faster than you can hear them. I would argue that he might be right up there with the greatest producers of the genre, especially those who worked back in the late 80s and early 90s before samples were ruled too expensive and off limits. I don’t know how he gets away with using all the ones I recognize – there’s a 2-second drop of the word “magnificent” taken from “Double Barrel” by Dave and Ansel Collins which made me sit up and take notice even if most listeners to this never heard the original in 1971 when it was a very rare reggae crossover minor hit in the US. This album is a little less hyper than last year’s King of Drums but it’s still plenty thumping good. St. Louis Cardinals fans (like me) will note mentions of Albert Pujols, Nolan Arenado, and in a deep cut from the 70s, Bake McBride.
William Bell – One Day Closer to Home. Quite possibly the best soul album by an 84-year-old you’re ever gonna hear. William Bell wrote and recorded his first and biggest hit record, “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” way back in 1961. He’s had a full career as a writer and recording artist ever since, and he holds on to the verities of soul music he helped invent back in the 60s. Simple, solid, hook-filled songs about adult relationships and other life events, sung with passion while retaining control, and backed by a hard-hitting crack band. Me, I’m 20 years younger than Bell is, and his first song, “I Still Go to Parties,” seems somewhat aspirational to me, even though honestly I haven’t been to one in ages. This is my fave song on an album of winners by a man who doesn’t seem interested in slowing down.
Totally fantastic list and reviews, Steve! Glad someone else still has an interest in Josie Cotton, that's a really fun record. Looking forward to checking out the Selma Savolainen, which is totally new to me.
I have been thinking a lot about Finnish people and whether there is a Finnish "type." I'm currently writing about Sibelius, a fascinating composer who helped define what Finnishness meant. And does it have anything to do with why he spent the last 30 or so years of his life not only not composing but also burning unpublished scores. While drunk, of course.