Best New Records I Heard in September

Trying my best to keep up with the deluge

I listen to as much new music as I can find, but more and more stuff seems to come my way lately. Acknowledging that I’m almost two weeks behind on most new releases, I still have plenty to recommend right now.

Ezra Furman – All of Us Flames. “Broken hearts your ticket so be ready when this train comes through.” That’s a line from the first song. “Lord come close to the broken hearted / Stub out your cigarette and come close to me.” That’s from the last song. Ezra Furman doesn’t come off as broken-hearted, most of the time. Instead, she is connected to people, mostly the people hidden in plain sight, the ones who need to be brought into the light. She came out as transgender last year and that fact, never blatantly referenced in song, informs her desire to have a “Book of Our Names,” “None of us missing / None exactly the same.” Furman has always been a good tunesmith, working with a thorough knowledge of traditions without calling attention to it. She uses noise and sonic obfuscation some times, but never loses sight of her goals of communication.

JD Allen – Americana, Vol. 2. It takes almost three and a half minutes before he comes in to his own record. Bassist Gregg August and drummer Rudy Royston are joined by the always welcome guitarist Charlie Hunter as they tease out a bluesy groove, just waiting for tenor saxophonist JD Allen to blow those big solid notes which he sometimes lets fade down to wispy melodic tones. This is apparently Allen’s third straight album of bluesy Americana tunes, but I haven’t heard the previous ones. For my money, Hunter’s presence makes this the one to start with, since he and Allen bounce off each other before and after they slide in together on these largely folky numbers. I especially like the traditional “This World Is a Mean World,” in which Allen sets the vibe by singing the words before Hunter starts playing with the tune, and then Allen builds up the rhythm with handclaps before Royston and August take it further, and then comes the sax. Also, the three cuts without Hunter are exquisite, less groove-filled, but somehow deeper in feel.

Valerie June – Under Cover. Of course I wanted to hear this because A) I’ve enjoyed her previous albums quite a bit, and B) I’m a sucker for song interpretations. From Nick Drake to Nick Cave, June’s got an exceptional ear for finding great songs from the past to perform here. (The rest of the line-up includes Mazzy Star, Gillian Welch, Frank Ocean, John Lennon, Joe South, and Bob Dylan). June may not be the most adept at enunciation sometimes – it’s particularly interesting since I’ve always had trouble understanding the lyrics to Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” when he sings it, so I’m not losing anything here). But, she nails the emotional content of all her songs, and she has an increasingly adept talent for arranging, with multiple overdubbed backing vocals from the only person who can really match her – herself. This is now the second time I’ve heard somebody do Cave’s “Into My Arms” (the first being Shelby Lynne & Allison Moorer), and it’s become obvious this is one of the greatest love songs of our time. Here, June limits her arrangement to just piano and soft organ behind her simple, elegantly yearning vocal. It’s an exquisite ending to a solid little record.

Kimberly Kelly – “I’ll Tell You What’s Gonna Happen”. Album titles don’t usually have quotation marks on the cover, but this one does, so I assume somebody somewhere must have said this before she made the record. There’s a phone message from Billy Joe Shaver tacked on to the end of the album – maybe he said it to her once. Oh, well, it doesn’t matter, because this is one whip-cracking, lip-smacking collection of honky tonk moderna. Kelly has a big voice, capable of punching through the up-beat dance songs and growing intimate on the occasional slower ones. A crack team of Nashville songwriters came up with this collection, leaving few country tropes off the table. You’ve got a couple out on the dance floor, a woman leaving her cheating man, memories of classic country songs heard during teenage highlights, a divorce song, a refusal to fall for another man’s tricks song, and other assorted relationship high and low lights. The music is bright enough to get on the radio while traditional enough – there are steel guitars, a baritone guitar, and plenty of classic sounds – to please those who don’t listen to the country mainstream.

Panda Bear & Sonic Boom – Reset. I heard just a little bit of Animal Collective some fifteen years ago and it sent me running away screaming in agony. Spacemen 3 was a band I hated with every fiber of my being back when they first appeared. So, now, here I am enjoying a collaborative effort between members of those two bands. Interestingly, it took me two listens to realize that what I thought were blatant homages to the likes of “Peggy Sue” by Buddy Holly or “Save the Last Dance For Me” by the Drifters were actually samples of the originals. In fact, all the songs here include samples from late 50s / early 60s pop. Somehow, they manage to take these bits of old songs and turn them into new material that doesn’t sound dated. They come up with pleasant new melodies, and put them into a collage of sounds which reveal new bits of information every time.

Tumi Mogorosi – Group Theory: Black Music. Mogorosi is a South African drummer, apparently quite well respected in his home land, but not very well known here in the States. This is a spectacularly good jazz record, mostly a quintet effort with trumpet, alto sax, electric guitar, bass, and drums. Piano drops in here and there, and most of the tracks are augmented by a ten-piece choir. On first listen, I admit the choir was a distraction – the thing about massed vocals in jazz is they can’t improvise, can’t comment on what the soloist is doing. But, after hearing it all the way through, I came to embrace the intriguing sonic background element they add to the mix. Besides, they drop out at key points to give the solo instruments more space. There are also two different versions of “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” sung in one case by a man, in another by a woman, with very different results. And the album concludes with a fairly abstract piece with spoken word by Lesego Rampolokeng, a literary cool-down after an explosive album.

Freedy Johnston – Back On the Road to You. Johnston had that one hit back in the 90s with a song that’s fairly typical for what he’s been doing his whole career. He doesn’t exactly pump out the records any more, but this new one is just as melodically rich as ever. Johnston’s voice may be his weakest point – there’s nothing wrong with it, mind you, but he doesn’t have a distinctive quirk that makes him stand out from a lot of other male singers mining similar territory. But, he does the job of getting those tunes and those love and love-lorn lyrics into our heads. This is bedrock pop/rock.

Dylan Triplett – Who Is He? To answer the title question, he’s a 21-year-old kid from right here in my home town of St. Louis who could sing anything he wants to sing and chooses to sing the blues. But not just the kind of blues you could stumble into in any bar, but an expansive blues that has room for songs by Bill Withers, Marvin Gaye, and Miles Davis. He writes his own songs, too, and nods to the likes of Bobby Rush or Albert Collins come up in that regard. My fave, though, is an eccentric blues number called “She Felt Too Good,” which has a nonsense hook that could make this one a blues standard some day. His vocals are exceptional, grounded in a great sense of pitch and rhythm, and flying with expressive capability.

Sunny Sweeney - Married Alone. If I were on the writing staff of the latest terrible TV series about Nashville - it's called Monarch, and it wants to be like Empire for white people, though it's based on the completely unbelievable premise that a 45-year-old woman actually has a chance to finally become a country legend after her beloved superstar mama dies - I'd have created a character with a name like Sunny Sweeney. It's the most goddam perfect country music name since Minnie Pearl. I haven't followed all of her career, but since her 2006 debut, Heartbreaker's Hall of Fame, I've always had a soft spot for what I've heard from her. The new record is about what she's always been about - there is heartbreak, largely caused by men who don't know what they've got, and there is just enough hot guitar picking to keep the toes tapping between the ballads. She's a more than solid singer, using what could be a light voice in a fairly heavy manner. She holds her own in a duet with Vince Gill! B+ Pick: Tie Me Up

Bill Orcutt – Music For Four Guitars. I’ve not encountered Orcutt before, but he’s been out there on the experimental music scene off and on for thirty years, except for the time he took to make experimental films. This album would have been perfect for the quadrophonic sound that never caught on back in the early seventies. Orcutt overdubs four solo electric guitars – the effect is sort of like Tom Verlaine crossed with Robert Fripp on some miniature intense riff and improv trip. Only a couple cuts break the two minute mark, which means he gets your foot tapping to a riff and conjures up a wild sense of space with the other guitars and then gets out before you can be tired of it. I highly recommend playing this on headphones – it will send your mind to places it doesn’t normally visit.

Parker Gispert – Golden Years. I was always glad to hear the Whigs when they’d release a new album, though I rarely played them more than a month or two after release. Gispert was the lead singer and chief songwriter for that band, but I didn’t recognize his name when this came out until a friend recommended this to me. Apparently I missed a previous solo record, too. It’s a lot harder to remember the names of every band member than it used to be when I read all those rock magazines cover to cover. Anyway, Gispert has an amiable approach to rock’n’roll. He's tuneful, he can push things hard and loud when he feels like it, or he can play softer while still sounding like a rocker. I like the guy, and I like this album quite a bit. The real test will be if I recognize his name in a year or two when he releases a follow-up.

Jockstrap – I Love You Jennifer B. Take the violin player from Black Country New Road (Georgia Ellery) and an electronic dance producer (Taylor Skye) and give them free reign to let their imaginations run wild. The result is this collection of assorted art songs, pop songs, dance songs, and unclassifiable songs. Ellery sings her slippery melodies full of unexpected lunges and plunges towards notes far from where you’d expect her to be going. Skye puts them in all sorts of surprising contexts, letting sonic textures dance around her vocals, even when there’s suddenly an acoustic guitar strumming behind a hook-filled tune. Definitely beyond category.

Florian Arbenz / Tineka Postma / João Barradas – Conversations #5: elemental. A European jazz quartet (filled out with bassist Rafael Jerjen who doesn’t get his name in big letters) led by drummer Arbenz and featuring alto / soprano saxophonist Postma and accordionist Barradas. You read that right – accordionist. I’m not familiar with any of these players, but this is cool stuff. The nine cuts here give plenty of range for each instrumentalist to shine, but it’s the melodic and harmonic interplay between Barradas and Postma (especially when she’s on soprano) that really stands out. Arbenz has been releasing several of these Conversations records with a variety of co-stars. He’s obviously a terrific drummer, and I’m curious to hear what he does with other players.

Dylan Hicks & Small Screens – Airport Sparrows. A singer/songwriter who’s also a novelist, or a novelist who’s also a singer/songwriter. Either way, I’m encountering him here for the first time with an album of depth and intelligence. His songs are orchestrated, with jazz influences (or at least chords) brought out on piano, saxophone, and in the rhythm section. His vocals are nuanced and delicate, bringing images and melodies into sharp relief before letting those instrumentalists take over. Heck, the title track doesn’t have any vocals at all. I’m gonna single out “I Ain’t Forgotten You” as the high point here, even if it isn’t typical of the rest of the cuts. It's a short song with lots of words, almost Dylan-like as he runs down all the things he can’t remember but ending with the modern-day Proustian phenomena of opening the shrink wrap on a Prince album.

Iara Rennó – Oríkì. Rennó is a Brazilian musician who seems to have moved around in a lot of other artistic realms as well. This album has taken her thirteen years to put together. The idea is to pay tribute to various Orishas, spirits in the Candomblé religion. I only know that because that’s what it says on her Bandcamp page for this record. Here’s what I know from listening to the music. This is powerful Brazilian music with more than a little African influence beyond the norms of what has always been there in that country. I can recognize elements from Brazilian styles I’ve heard before, but this is ultra-modern stuff. She also brings in lots of guest stars, and stands toe to toe with all of them (though only Carlinhos Brown is familiar to me). Electronic sounds meld in with the guitars and percussion on many tracks, too.

Joshua Redman – Long Gone. I’m old enough to remember when Joshua Redman (tenor sax), Brad Mehldau (piano), Christian McBride (bass), and Brian Blade (drums) were each up and coming young whippersnappers on their respective instruments. I saw all but Mehldau play in the early 90s, and I’ve seen him a couple times since. This, then, is a comfortable jazz record by four now-veteran musicians who have known and played with each other many times before. Five studio and one live cuts are all presented with all the grace and support bred by familiarity with the possibilities of each player. These guys aren’t breaking any new ground, but they are masters of the ground on which they trod.

Enrico Rava & Fred Hersch – The Song Is You. Eighty-three year-old Italian trumpeter Rava and 68 year-old pianist Hersch make for a terrific pair on this album of duets. There is a Jobim tune, two Monk tunes, and a classic from the Tommy Dorsey songbook mixed in one tune each from Rava and Hersch and an intoxicating improvisation credited to both. Rava’s trumpet tone is somehow delicately firm, if that makes any sense, while Hersch plays piano here with a light-stepping, luscious tone. Each shines on their solos, while the arrangements on the familiar tunes show a willingness to dive deep into the compositions and find fresh ways to look at these old songs.

Charley Crockett – The Man From Waco. I wonder how Crockett plans his concerts. Since he seems to come up with roughly fifteen new (always good) songs every few months, and since he’s released eleven albums in the last seven years, he must be overwhelmed with choices. It’s not as though he has obvious hits to fill out the set, either. Oh, well, maybe he just plays all the ones from the latest album and mixes in a bunch of new ones destined to be released in a short while. This album is more of what makes Crockett so good – sharp story songs in the country honky tonk tradition, at least the part of it that runs from roughly 1960 to 1970. I like the songs here best that move towards a Muscle Shoals-influenced style, but there’s nothing not to enjoy on this album.

The Beths – Expert In a Dying Field. I love the tension here between the melodic sensibilities of vocalist Elizabeth Stokes and the high energy punk rock roots of the whole band. Stokes sings with a glorious ebullience, sometimes augmented by angelic harmonies from the boys. The title track here, which was released as a single a few weeks before the album, and thus has had more time to imprint itself on my mind, is as good an example of pop/rock delight as I’ve heard this year. But the whole record is terrific. And I don’t mean to imply the Beths play nothing but loud and fast – they can certainly make some noise with the best of them, but they always do so knowing it’s just one arrow sitting in their sonic quiver.

Madison Cunningham – Revealer. A few years back, a friend and I were gobsmacked by a unexpected and then unknown singer/guitarist/songwriter, the opening act for Punch Brothers. Madison Cunningham worked well opening for that band, because she has a quirky melodic sense and loves to play in a variety of guitar tunings. But, despite a number of fine solo youTube videos, she sounds even better with a band backing her up. It gives her a chance to put her guitar figures in context, and puts even more emphasis on her clear and bold vocal choices. Every song on this new album is ridiculously strong in structure, melody, and performance.

Tim Finn & Phil Manzanera – The Ghost of Santiago. You have to credit Phil Manzanera for obviously being a part of this record (or his name wouldn’t be on the masthead) without obviously being a part of this record (as far as hearing any identifiable guitar part that makes you think of anything he’s done before). This is a Tim Finn record through and through, but even that isn’t something you can always know what to expect from, except in terms of quality. The man has always been a master songwriter, and these are some excellent new additions. He’s been listening to some Latin music here and there, too – Two of these songs are in Spanish, and a third has a Spanish chorus.

A few other good ones I didn’t have time to review:

Richard Thompson - Live From Honolulu

Bala Desejo - Sim Sim Sim

Son Little - Like Neptune

Wayne Shorter / Terri Lynne Carrington / Esperanza Spalding / Leo Genovese - Live at the Detroit Jazz Festival

The Murlocs - Rapscallion

The Proclaimers - Dentures Out

Steve Turre - Generations

Forrest McCurren - Oh Me, Oh My

Florence Dore - Highways & Rocketships

Dr. John - Things Happen That Way

Thanks for reading Steve Pick's Writing Place! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.