Best New Records I Heard in October

Holy moley! There remains so much to Enjoy!

Cave States – Liminal. We in St. Louis know that if a band or recording includes either Danny Kathriner or Chris Grabau, it’s well worth hearing. For the last ten years, these two exceptional singer songwriters have been working together in this band, along with bassist Todd Schnitzer. This is their third full-length release, and it is gorgeous. Whether Kathriner or Grabau is singing lead, the songs are warm, open-hearted, delicate treats. The arrangements make everything better – with piano and/or guitar holding down the harmonic forts, incandescent vocal harmonies dropped in here and there, a bit of electronic manipulation thrown in at times, maybe a trumpet or a violin brought in for effect. Everything works perfectly together, and this album is like a musical warm blanket.

The Comet Is Coming – Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam. If Shabaka Hutchings is on board, I’m ready to listen. This third album from the hyper-rave-jazz trio is as incandescent as their previous releases. Hutchings blows his tenor sax hard and furious, often sticking to insistent little riffs before reaching an intense climax near the end of the tunes. Synthesizers in the hands of Danalogue underscore, overscore, and comment on the saxophone, helping to the music to ebb and flow like a great EDM DJ is supposed to do. And drums played by Betamax are all over the place, chopping rhythms into furious and fast syncopated patterns, or slowing things down into a quasi-metal sludge. This record takes you places that kind of feel hyper-dimensional.

Vieux Farka Touré & Khruangbin – Ali. This is a pure collaboration between four highly inventive and intuitive musicians from two different worlds. Khruangbin’s reputation has grown in recent years with the records they did with soul singer Leon Bridges, but they cut their teeth making really cool psychedelic groove instrumentals. Touré has followed in the footsteps of his legendary father Ali Farka Touré making trance-like music in Mali. I don’t know how these guys got together in the first place, but it is a powerful combination. Touré’s guitar is clearly in the lead – Mark Speer either follows him, echoes him, or plays slightly behind the groove in counterpoint. The rhythm section of bassist Laura Lee Ochoa and drummer Donald DJ Johnson, Jr. throw all sorts of rhythmic tricks that never phase Touré as either a singer or guitarist. It’s all mellow grooves with just enough bite to make it either danceable or chill.

Charles Lloyd – Trios: Ocean (Live). Lloyd has been making records for 58 years now, yet he sounds in the prime of his career. This album has four cuts in the nine-to-twelve minute range, and features Lloyd on tenor sax or flute with Anthony Wilson on guitar and Gerald Clayton on piano. The three are acutely tuned in to each other. The first track, “The Lonely One” is a melancholy amorphous piece wherein each soloist takes turns sounding wistful together. “Hagar of the Inuits” starts off with some lovely solo tenor playing before the other two join in tentatively at first until eventually it becomes a sort of avant-boogie woogie thing. “Jaramillo Blues” is a relative of Miles Davis’ “All Blues,” and “Kuan Yin” is probably as lush as this trio would ever get.

The Brothers and Sisters – Dylan’s Gospel. Take ten random Bob Dylan songs from the first eight years of his career, let some highly developed Gospel choir arrangers develop settings for them, and bring in a couple ringers like Merry Clayton and Gloria Jones in between a whole bunch of other great singers to sing up front. Somehow, this came out in 1969, and I can’t quite wrap my ahead around how these church people thought “Lay Lady Lay” would fit in their world. But, boy, I’m glad they didn’t care, because this is a stunning record. It’s high point after high point with mostly the Sisters taking the lead in the call and response arrangements. “Chimes of Freedom” though has a fantastic Brother taking the lead in one channel with a Sister in the other. I don’t know who is the genius responsible for resurrecting this record to our modern world, but I hope there’s more obscurities on that person’s radar.

Dan Israel – Seriously. If I’m reading things right on his website, this is the 16th album in just over 20 years from this hard working Minneapolis pop/rocker. (Some quotes on the website say folk-rocker, but I’m not hearing anything of that sort on this record, anyway.) It’s meat and potatoes hook-filled exuberant rock’n’roll, and a particularly tasty batch. Israel’s voice tracks somewhere in between Paul Kelly and Tom Petty, but his melodies are his own. Two guitars, bass, drums, very occasional piano are all it takes to get these songs revved up. It’s always impressive when somebody can be this prolific and this catchy after a long career.

The Harlem Gospel Travelers – Look Up! I’ve heard plenty of soul revival records these past couple decades, but not so many gospel revival groups. The Harlem Gospel Travelers began as a quartet a few years back, but this record finds them as a trio, with Eli “Paperboy” Reed in the production seat. Reed is a perfect complement to these young men, as he is immersed in the sounds of early 60s music just as they are. Some of these songs could easily be early soul numbers if the subject matter was switched a little bit. One male singer reminds me of a young Mavis Staples, another crosses Sam Cooke with Otis Redding as his inspiration, while the third certainly spent some time aping Smokey Robinson. Beyond the usual gospel subjects, this album also includes “Fight On!”, an anthemic Black Lives Matter song.

The Cowsills – Rhythm of the World. The heyday of the Cowsills was just a year or two before I started paying attention to pop music. In fact, my gateway drug at the age of 11 was the ersatz Cowsills Partridge Family TV show. But, I’ve come to appreciate the sunshine pop/rock of this family band, and in the last thirty years, Susan Cowsill has been a part of some of my favorite records – most notably in the Continental Drifters and the Psycho Sisters. I highly recommend the documentary Family Band: The Cowsills Story to get a real sense of the depth behind those catchy pop songs and their subsequent lives. Barry and Billy Cowsill have passed away, as did their mother Barbara. John Cowsill is working with the Beach Boys and/or Billy Mumy in other bands, leaving Paul, Bob, and Susan to make this enjoyable record. My guess is a number of these songs have been lying around for years, even decades in the case of “Nuclear Winter.” But they’re good tunes, and the sibling harmonies and intricate arrangements make them well worth your time. “Katrina,” the final song here, tells the tale of Barry’s last days in the aftermath of that New Orleans hurricane back in 2005. It’s a haunting and yet beautiful tribute to a huge part of their lives.

Tyler Childers – Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? Childers is jumping the gun, issuing a deluxe version of his new album right away, rather than waiting for some future tenth or twentieth anniversary. There are three LPs in the package, with three distinct versions of the same eight songs. Now, me, I would mix and match between the first two LPs and put together a really tight single record. Mostly, the first album breathes more, but in two cases, it breathes so much he leaves off the words, and on a record that’s really filled with speculation about the afterlife, instrumentals don’t make as much sense. The second album adds strings and horns to make for a much denser, and sometimes more exciting mix. The third album is kind of fun to hear once, sort of a southern country rock version of dub, but I don’t expect it to call me back to play it again. If this sells enough, that third record will be to used LP stores what the Apple Jam disc is on All Things Must Pass – the one super clean record in a package accompanied by two much more worn ones.

Buddy Guy – The Blues Don’t Lie. Guy is 86 years old and sounding as fantastic as he ever has. As he says in the first song here, “I Let My Guitar Do the Talking,” Guy left Louisiana more than 60s years ago to become a fixture in the Chicago blues scene. He’s now the last man left standing from that incandescent set of stars playing around that city in those days. But he’s not just taking a victory lap (though he is apparently doing one last tour). These are powerful songs in this collection, with strong performances both vocally and on the guitar. Guest appearances from Mavis Staples and Bobby Rush give him a chance to match his equals. Elvis Costello does a good job singing backup on one song, but as much as I love EC, I’m not sure Guy couldn’t have just overdubbed that part himself. (Update: The last time I listened to this, just as “Gunsmoke Blues,” a duet with Jason Isbell about gun violence, came on, reports started coming in about school shootings about one mile from my home. Music shouldn’t have to be that relevant.)

El Khat – Albat Alawi Op. 99. Did you know there was an expatriate Yemeni community living in Israel? I had no idea. Nor did I have any idea what Yemeni music might sound like. El Khat is a band whose first album updated traditional Yemeni songs, but this time around is doing all original music in a style heavily influenced by same. Eyal el Wahab is the leader of the outfit. He builds his own instruments out of discarded tin and wood to mix in with strings and horns, electric guitar, bass, and piano. To our ears over here, it’s all gloriously strange, but I gather this band is even rather outside the norms in its own community. This music can blow your mind, and possibly your sacroiliac, if you try any Western dance moves on the crazy-quilt complex rhythms on this record.

King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard – Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava. This band breaks all the rules of modern consumerism. They have been known to release five albums in a calendar year and counting a live album and a collection of demos, they’ll be topping that by one in 2022. To my shame, I couldn’t stand them the first time I heard them, some six or seven years back, but their persistence in releasing records combined with my friends’ persistence in making me hear them wore me down quickly. Now, every new record is a delight. Sometimes song-oriented, sometimes heavy metal, sometimes jazzy, they never stay in one pocket. This time it’s long jams, but without the insufferable soloing that is the downfall of so much of that style. Instead, you’ve got short riffs, melodic ideas jumping from instrument to instrument, constantly churning syncopated rhythms, and occasional vocals that, I’ll be honest, I never pay attention to. Seven songs in just over an hour, and not a moment of boredom to be had.

Dungen - En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog. The first album in six years from this beloved (by me, anyway) Swedish band was a little confusing upon first listen. There were only hints of the great cosmic instrumental forays that made them so exciting so often. Further investigation, however, proves that they still have rich melodies, and they have expanded their approach to include a wider variety of ways to reach transcendence. Sure, they still have all those guitar effects pedals to darken up the sound, but then they also have quieter numbers featuring piano in the foreground. I don’t want to forget the singing, either. Just because I can’t understand a word doesn’t mean I don’t greatly appreciate the depth added to the overall sound by the sound of those vocals.

Falling Fences – The Wild Sea. For some absurdly high number of years now, singer/songwriter Joe Stickley and guitarist Sean Canan have been holding court every Sunday night at the popular St. Louis Irish bar and restaurant John D. McGurks. Yeah, they play Irish folk songs, but they have a lot of time to fill, and Stickley’s original songs get workshopped in this duo setting until they are ready to be recorded by his increasingly confident and composed band Falling Fences. Stickley is a strong tunesmith, with lyrics that play around with hearing TV on the Radio on the radio, or some idea about watching ponies ride, which he likes enough to put in two songs here. He also gives us a song called “Valerie,” which joins masterpieces by the Monkees, Richard Thompson, and the Zutons / Amy Winehouse to prove that this particular name is an unstoppable muse.  Canan is a very tasteful and imaginative guitarist – his short solos are all in service of the songs yet are good enough to call attention to themselves. There’s a hot horn section, and keys/bass/drums of extraordinary talent, too.

The Heavy Heavy – Life and Life Only. Will Turner and Georgie Fuller do the kind of harmonies you don’t hear much any more. At moments, it’s like hearing one Mama and one Papa, or maybe a pair of Cowsills. They offer up only six songs on this debut release, but they are all winners. Lots of sixties references, but all put into a sound that fits with contemporary indie rock. Hooks abound, and some neat little guitar parts crop up now and then, too. This is definitely a duo to watch.

Buck 65 – King of Drums. Just a few months after I first discovered this guy, who’s been rapping and dj’ing for more than 30 years and has a ridiculous number of records to his name, I find another release from this year. This one’s more of a mix tape than Flash Grenade was. Twenty-one cuts, all built on samples powered by break beats, a zillion or so spoken word parts, musical intrusions, and Buck 65’s remarkably clever rhymes. I always mean to try to write some down just to give examples, but they go so fast and by the time I’ve got one in my head I’ve missed two more. There is this, though – “I’m top chillin’ / Beyond killin’ / Like if Bob Dylan was a Bond villain.” Every time I want to have an hour-long party in my brain, this record hits the spot. Bonus – he samples Captain Beefheart saying “Fast and bulbous.”

Plains – I Walked With You A Ways. Over the last decade or so, Waxahatchee has to be the most improved musical artist whose name is familiar during the course of her career. Her early records are timid, not particularly developed as a singer or a songwriter or an arranger. She’s gotten better and better with each release, and now, teamed up with someone she considers a peer, Jess Williamson, in this new duo, she emerges as a supremely confident, musically adept performer. Williamson is, I think new to me, though I’ve been told I may have heard her last solo album a couple years back. Her songs here are every bit as well rounded as those of Katie Crutchfield. While the latter’s voice is more familiar to me, and her Texas accent is a dead give-away, there is a communion of musical spirit between these two collaborators that makes it easy for either to harmonize with the other.

The Claudettes – The Claudettes Go Out! The musical shape- and personnel-shifting Claudettes out of Chicago have never been easy to pin down, but they’re always easy to like. Built upon the rollicking piano of Johnny Iguana, the band has eased away from its instrumental blues roots to become some sort of wry but urgent rock’n’roll combo. Ever since Berit Ulseth joined on vocals, she has become the focus, with her dry delivery of off-kilter lyrical content set to distinctive melodies. Who else could take a verse like this – “I could see giving up music / But drinking, drinking / Why would I quit something so divine / I could survive in a world of no eighth notes / If I had fifths and I had wine” – and make it neither pathetic nor joyful, but instead a matter-of-fact entertainment? This is probably their strongest record to date, and they’ve never been anything like slouches.

Bill Callahan – YTILAER (but imagine those letters actually printed backwards). First under the rubric Smog, and in the last fifteen years under his own name, Bill Callahan has been pursuing his completely original muse for over three decades now. I’ve been up and down on his recordings now and then, but this new one has somehow captivated me more than what I’ve heard in the past. His stentorian baritone can drop into a whisper as it barely glides into musical notes, creating something that’s right on the border of singing and speaking. Sometimes it’s like Leonard Cohen singing Vic Chesnutt melodies with a hint of Joni Mitchell chording. And the musicians he works with are remarkable – there are jazz, folk, rock, avant-garde bits all organically welded together into backings which do much more than half the emotionally expressive work of the songs. Callahan’s lyrics are smart and inventive, too.

Lucrecia Dalt - ¡Ay! I’ve only just discovered this intriguing singer/composer/musician who was raised in Columbia and who brings some of the music she grew up hearing into a modern and more wide-ranging context. There is a lot of wide open space in her music, with many songs led by a richly plucked acoustic bass as she sings in Spanish and occasional percussion or horns dance around. This record has ten cuts, each one a perfectly shaped little Latin roots-based creation. It’s all very warm, very inviting, and very mysterious.

Surprise Chef – Education & Recreation. Here we find five young men from Australia serving up twelve tasty instrumentals which, according to their Bandcamp page, “touches the legacies of” David Axelrod and Isaac Hayes. I haven’t heard enough Axelrod to know, and Hayes was constantly evolving, but there is definitely something different about this band. Syncopation is always present, but it’s not the standard funk or soul rhythms conjured up by so many who look back to that era. There is guitar, bass, drums, and keyboards, but also extra percussion, vibraphone, and the occasional flute (the latter played by a guest musician, the rest by members of the band). Nothing is predictable, as befits the first half of their moniker. It is, however, quite entrancing.

Sun Ra Arkestra – Living Sky. The last time I saw Sun Ra was a year or two before he passed away, which means he was probably 77 years old. He was definitely slowing down a bit, not being as much of a showman, and relying more on his love of old-time big band charts than of his obsessive need to create something vibrantly brand new. Alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, then maybe 64, was as explosive as ever – the two times I saw him with Ra, his flamboyant approach to the alto saxophone, with his hands flying and bouncing off the keys faster than the eye could follow (just as the notes jumped out faster than the ear could distinguish, especially since he played many notes in between the ones we know in our Western scales), and his body bending backwards and sideways as he played, remains a potent memory. The man is 98, and still playing as hard as ever!!! He is now the leader of the Arkestra, and if this album is more or less straight-forward than you’d expect from this band, it’s still got Allen shouting to the gods of Saturn, it’s still got a richer and denser sense of harmony than almost anybody else, it’s even got a kora in the midst of a jazz big band. This record is gorgeous, and a fitting carrying on of the legacy of one of America’s greatest musicians.

The Airport 77s – We Realize You Have a Choice. As near as I can tell, there are exactly two lyrics on this album which reveal in any way that this music was recorded after 1979. One song references “Don’t Go Back to Rockville” by R.E.M. Another refers to “texting all your girlfriends.” I guess the virtual lacking of sexism in songs about girls might be another clue. In the late 70s, power pop was just getting its act together. All these different bands, most of which didn’t sell a bit, were united from my point of view by mentioning that they liked Big Star, a band which, at the time, was completely unavailable in any record store I ever visited. Nobody actually sounded like Big Star, but they all had a love for catchy and inventive melodies, gigantic hooks, jangling guitars, tight harmonies, and a general sense of delight in making music. The guys in the Airport 77s are older than a lot of musicians in new bands nowadays – this is their debut album after a stunning EP a couple years back – but I don’t know if they were playing their instruments back when Shoes, 20/20, the Paul Collins Beat, the Knack, the Sinceros, and the Cars were laying down templates for what this band is doing. It’s purely delightful to this old man who snapped up all those records back in the day.

And some good stuff I just never got around to hearing enough to put in this post:

Ashley McBryde - Ashley McBride Presents: Lindville

Caleb Cardle - Forsythia

Sleeping Dogs - Blunt Razor

Sloan - Steady

Joe Ely - Flatland Lullaby

Whit Dickey Quartet - Astral Long Form: Staircase

There are two records I want to listen to some more and write about next month, but you’ll have to wait to find out what I think of them.