I Came Home and Put The Record On - July 2024
Records that moved me this month and musicians that mattered to me that passed recently
This piece of the newsletter grew out of the Playlist posts on my previous blog (I still expect the year-end lists to be housed there). At frequently 8,000 words, they consumed too much time for one piece of writing and they got more and more unwieldy, and, not coincidentally, later and later.
With apologies to Lilly Hiatt for taking the title from her excellent ode to the power of the record as a balm and a kick in the ass, “Records,” from still my favorite record of hers so far, Trinity Lane, this column is a way of shining light on records that made me want to talk about them to anyone who’d listen (or at least anyone I think is into what that artist is throwing down), with little thought to if I’m going to see it live soon (if I think an artist is coming to town in the near future, I’m more likely to include my thoughts and a link in the “Hey, Fred!” blurb). If there’s no Bandcamp link, I’ll include some kind of purchase link. It’s also my spot where I’m going to give a couple of sentences on a few artists who really meant something to me in the time since I wrote the previous column.
To keep this sustainable, like “Hey, Fred!” it’ll be between 2 and 5 capsule reviews, no more than 5 “People who died,” and a link to the larger sprawling playlist I use throughout the month to help organize my thoughts. And usually it’ll be stuff that was released in the month in question and people who passed in that month, but it’s always “I heard” the record or the person left us in the month (with a little wiggle room in this first one to cover June and July).
Playlist
https://tidal.com/browse/playlist/1ea5a2a3-3058-41e6-a588-77229c55524c
Favorite Records - July 2024
Mourning [A] BLKstar, Ancient//Future
Cleveland’s Mourning [A] BLKStar, the ever-shifting avant-funk collective founded and led by poet RA Washington, have made maybe their best record yet with Ancient//Future, a tight seven-track explosion and investigation - opening track “Literary Witches” literally announces itself with a blood-curdling scream - of a world on fire. Begun after a tour with spiritual mentor Lonnie Holley - their collaborative performance is the single set from Big Ears 2023 that comes up in my memory most often - this is every strength of the band on full display. Favorite moments include: propulsive, ear-worm horns riding a fiery guitar riff on “Along the Red Rim, The Sun Settles” disrupted by group vocals bursting through the backdrop with “I wish a motherfucker would;” vintage ‘70s Isaac Hayes meet Carnatic classical music strings over a throbbing groove and one of my favorite LaToya Kent vocals on “Her Song;” the disorienting, melting quality of the miniature “Do Over Flip” I want to hear a DJ extend for an hour. But every time I go back to it, I find a new favorite moment. A just-about-perfect record.
Melissa Carper, Borned in Ya
I got hip to Arkansas-raised singer/songwriter/bassist Melissa Carper when I heard she was working with Kelly Willis and Brennen Leigh - both of whom I was already a fan of - in the supergroup that came to be called Wonder Women of Country. I had to check out who the third member of this heavy triangle was, and her 2021 record Daddy’s Country Gold blew me away initially but also continued to burrow itself into my brain and expand in my consciousness. She brings contemporary - and sharply honed - singer-songwriter tools into the fiery mid-southern American dance form of western swing, bringing a deeply personal and modern perspective to bear while also bringing the genre back to the timeless songs it was once known for (with writers like Cindy Walker, the team of Bob Wills and Tommy Duncan, etc).
Much as I loved Daddy’s Country Gold and Ramblin’ Soul, Borned in Ya takes that appreciation to a new level. Teaming again with production team Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Sunny War, Hurray for the Riff Raff) and Dennis Crouch (Candi Staton, Allison Krauss, Diana Krall, Bob Dylan), it’s a gorgeous patchwork of styles, forms, and shapes that feels incredibly cohesive. From the opening ars poetica title track with a growling gut-bucket preacher growl of a vocal and simmering bari sax courtesy of Doug Corcoran, through the wistful 2 am seduction of “Let’s Get Out of Here,” a Leigh cowrite that features Jeff Taylor’s piano waltzing with Chris Scruggs’ pedal steel, and the lone cover, a time-stopping, close-up read of Cole Porter’s “Every Time We Say Goodbye,” there isn’t a dull track here. My after-closing-time and also my sunrise record of choice at the moment.
Jihye Lee Orchestra, Infinite Connections
Jihye Lee’s sophomore big band record, co-produced like the debut by Darcy James Argue, deepens and enriches her command of the form in writing and bandleading, working in the rhythms and textures of her native Korea while also using every color of the big band as we jazz heads know it. She zooms in and out from personal histories - “Born in 1935” is a splashy, vibrant tribute to her grandmother; “You Are My Universe,” featuring one of two stellar Ambrose Akinmusire features, deals with mothers and daughters - to grappling with the wider world and philosophy like “We Are All From the Same Stream” and the meditative closer “Crossing the River of Grace,” with some of the best players in the world (including Carl Maraghi, Mike Fahie, and Keita Ogawa) in compositions that are as hard and clear as diamonds.
Parting Gifts
Kinky Friedman
Kinky Friedman loomed larger in my personal imagination from adolescence on than maybe I’d like to admit - partly because his records came back into print around the time of a stunning tribute record Pearls in the Snow that featured country heavyweights like Dwight Yoakam (finding the perfect levels of distance and wistfulness on the early pro-choice country song “Rapid City, South Dakota”) and Willie Nelson (crafting John Ford-sized landscapes on Friedman’s holocaust ballad “Ride ‘Em, Jewboy”) alongside outliers like Tom Waits (perfectly conjuring a fraying sepia photograph on “Highway Cafe”). And the very funny, ghostwritten by Ron Goulart mystery novels around the same time.
But like a lot of my vintage singer-songwriter knowledge, I really came to it through the illicit corner of the science fiction fandom world called filksinging. Indiana’s Michael “Moonwulf” Longcor had a version of “Wild Men of Borneo” on what I think is his best record, Dangerous Heroes, that came out when I was 16 - I heard him do that song in a conference room at the Columbus convention center during Marcon and it broke my heart.
I’m highlighting another of my favorite examples of Friedman’s ability to balance formal rigor, wry humor, and heartbreak here, “Western Union Wire” off his 1973 record Sold American. The principal conceit is a telegram, and the chorus uses the physical elements of the telegram to drive a knife into the listener’s chest. It was one of my first and best lessons in the way you can use enjambment and double entendre to generate more emotion, not less. “It read, ‘From: Billy,’ at the bottom. ‘To: Baby’ at the top. ‘Western Union Wire / Don’t leave me - stop / Western Union Wire / Please help me - stop.”
Irene Schweizer
The Swiss pianist Irene Schweizer is one of the eternal heroes of free jazz in its purest but also most expansive form on the piano. The wide-ranging record label Intakt was founded - by Patrik Landolt - in part because she hadn’t been recorded as well as she deserved. From her solo records - my favorites include Chicago Piano Solo (my gateway drug, it came out when I was 20, and the roiling, circular rhythms beguiled me) and To Whom It May Concern to wide-ranging collaborations with so many great artists (like the two Chicago legends in the clip below, Fred Anderson (also sadly RIP) and Hamid Drake). She never made music that wasn’t worth hearing.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
I'm not sure exactly when I discovered Bernice Johnson Reagon's a capella group Sweet Honey in The Rock, but I think mid-’90s WCBE, either Pat Testa’s or Maggie Brennan’s show, which turned me onto so much music I wouldn't have found otherwise. I started with Still On The Journey and it set me down a rabbit hole that included Reagon’s daughter Toshi, her earlier group the Freedom Singers, and deep into their catalog. It expanded and deepened what I knew about gospel and choral music, rooted in what I’d heard from my Grandmother’s collection, but also connected to the wider world of the African diaspora. Her work as a composer, historian, and bandleader equals her talent as a powerhouse singer. I only saw them once when I was in high school - Weigel Hall? King Arts Complex? - but it reverberates in my bones to this day. Never be the likes of her again, as I think the saying goes.
Abdul “Duke” Fakir
I’m a Temptations partisan, but I’ve always thought the Four Tops—led by Levi Stubbs (also sadly RIP)—had the strongest collection of songs, pound for pound, of any Motown artist. And now the final original member, Duke Fakir, has gone on. I chose Holland-Dozier-Holland’s grappling with the influence of Bob Dylan, who cast a shadow over black music in a way that doesn’t get brought up these days as much as maybe it should, “Bernadette,” in a clip from their mid-’60s prime, but I could have chosen any one of a dozen other stone classics.
James Chance
One of my favorite compliments I’ve ever received was showing up to Cafe Bourbon Street for the first New Year’s Eve Anne and I spent together in a black velvet jacket, black jeans, black button-up shirt, and black patterned tie, to be greeted by my pal Chris Lutzko with “Very James Chance, man.” I loved the No New York tunes but didn’t fully grasp his work until that marvelous box set Irresistible Impulse came out when I was 22 - he merged everything I loved in that era: snappy disco, deep funk, screaming free jazz, New York post-punk, and adolescent insouciance. The best memorial I’ve read of his is -no surprise - from the great New York chronicler Lucy Sante for The Baffler. I got to see him once in Brooklyn, still a bright flame of possibility even in diminished state, but the era like the clip I included below (backed by most of Defunkt) is one of the biggest boxes of my if-I-had-a-time-machine bingo card.