Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches: Hank Shteamer

Showing posts with label Hank Shteamer. Show all posts

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Best of 2019: Jazz

Here, via Rolling Stone, is a rundown of some of the 2019 jazz releases I enjoyed most. I'm not remotely able to keep up with everything these days, so I'm grateful to The New York City Jazz Record; Downbeat; Jazz Times; The Wire; Phil Freeman's monthly Ugly Beauty column at Stereogum; Giovanni Russonello's regular coverage at The Times; the work of writers such as Seth Colter Walls, Piotr Orlov, Andy Beta, Marcus J. Moore, Matthew Kassel and Mark Richardson at Pitchfork and other outlets; some of the same writers and others at Bandcamp Daily; and The Free Jazz Collective; as well as the artists and publicists who send me music directly, for helping me keep up.

The 2019 top 10 I submitted to Francis Davis' annual critics' poll, the results of which should be online before too long, is as follows. Each of these titles is discussed at least briefly in the RS piece; there are also links there to my prior coverage of some of the artists/albums, and links to hear/buy the music via Bandcamp, where applicable. Two notes on the selections:

1) Categories ultimately mean very little to me, but yes, I do think the Messthetics album could reasonably be called a jazz record; I argue the case a bit in the aforementioned article.

2) The 10³²K album did in fact come out in 2018, but it emerged late in the year, and I was not really aware of it till this year. Regardless, I think it's fantastic, and I stand by its inclusion here. This process remains very much an inexact science!

New Releases

1. Angel Bat Dawid, The Oracle (International Anthem)
2. Branford Marsalis Quartet, The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul (Okeh)
3. The Messthetics, Anthropocosmic Nest (Dischord)
4. Gard Nilssen Acoustic Unity, To Whom Who Buys a Record (Odin)
5. 10³²K, The Law of Vibration (self-released)
6. Joel Ross, KingMaker (Blue Note)
7. Chris Lightcap, SuperBigmouth (Pyroclastic)
8. Blacks' Myths, Blacks' Myths II (Atlantic Rhythms)
9. Steve Lehman Trio & Craig Taborn, The People I Love (Pi)
10. JD Allen, Barracoon (Savant)

Reisisues/Historical

1. Eric Dolphy, Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Studio Sessions (Resonance)
2. Horace Tapscott With the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra and the Great Voice of UGMAA, Why Don't You Listen? Live at LACMA 1998 (Dark Tree)
3. Masayuki Takayanagi New Directions Unit, April Is the Cruellest Month (Blank Forms Editions)

Thursday, December 27, 2018

Best of 2018: Digest

*Jazz list.

*Metal list.

*All-genres-in-play list.

*Live list.

*All-genres-in-play top 10 list archive, 2005 through the present.

*Jazz-only top 10 list archive, 2008 through the present.

Thank you as always for your kind attention. Cool things are afoot for 2019 — stay tuned and take care!

Saturday, December 01, 2018

Year-end top 10 lists: 2005 through the present

The below is an un-annotated survey of Hank Shteamer's all-genres-in-play "Albums of the year" top 10 lists, stretching back to 2005, compiled for various publications and polls. Jazz-only lists from 2008 on can be found here.

Highlighted titles are ones that have really "lived on" for me beyond the year in question — each is an album I feel comfortable calling a modern classic.

Best albums of the decade: 2010–2019.

2024

1. The Jesus Lizard, Rack
2. Gouge Away, Deep Sage
3. Pearl Jam, Dark Matter
4. The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis
5. Upright Forms, Blurred Wires
6. Tyshawn Sorey Trio, The Susceptible Now
7. Chat Pile, Cool World
8. Tarbaby, You Think This America
9. Luke Stewart Silt Trio, Unknown Rivers
10. Dirty Three, Love Changes Everything

J. Robbins, Basilisk [2024's year's customary late-breaking add]

Read more.

2023

1. Richard Inman, Inman
2. Scream, DC Special
3. Foo Fighters, But Here We Are
4. Queens of the Stone Age, In Times New Roman…
5. Mendoza Hoff Revels, Echolocation
6. Khanate, To Be Cruel
7. Jeromes Dream, The Gray in Between
8. John Zorn, Full Fathom Five
9. James Brandon Lewis, Eye of I
10. Tomb Mold, The Enduring Spirit

+ Metallica, 72 Seasons [late but necessary add…]

Read more.

2022

1. Gospel, The Loser
2. Fleshwater, We're Not Here to Be Loved
3. Chat Pile, God's Country
4. Meshuggah, Immutable
5. Faetooth, Remnants of the Vessel
6. The Bad Plus, The Bad Plus
7. Messa, Close
8. Afghan Whigs, How Do You Burn?
9. 40 Watt Sun, Perfect Light
10. Zoh Amba, O, Sun
11. Hammered Hulls, Careening

[couldn't narrow this down to 10, or more accurately, saw no reason to!]

Bleed, Somebody's Closer [favorite release of the year but left off above b/c it's an EP and technically came out first in 2021]

Read more.

2021

1. Turnstile, Glow On
2. Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra, Promises
3. Mastodon, Hushed and Grim
4. Assertion, Intermission
5. Matt Sweeney and Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Superwolves
6. Willow, Lately I Feel Everything
7. Jason Moran, The Sound Will Tell You
8. Amyl and the Sniffers, Comfort to Me
9. Leo Nocentelli, Another Side
10. Carcass, Torn Arteries

Bo Burnham, Inside (The Songs) [honorary inclusion]

Thursday, December 07, 2017

Best of 2017: Metal

[Updated 12/26/17: Added Power Trip's Nightmare Logic, which I recently went back to and loved, to the albums list below. Also added a short list of metal-related sites/publications I dig, and a link to the RS 100 Greatest Metal Albums list, at the end.]

Rolling Stone's year-end metal round-up is now live. Happy as always to help put this one together with my colleagues Chris Weingarten and Kory Grow. It was an interesting year for the genre in that there weren't quite as many mainstream/-ish tentpole releases to consider (like, for example, the Metallica album that rightly topped last year's RS metal list), so we were able to make room for a good amount of fringier picks like Oxbow, Pyrrhon and Krallice.

Likewise, my own listening ranged a little farther afield (emphasis on "a little"). Some of my favorite underground bands put out new records this year, including longtime DFSBP faves Suffocation, Immolation and Incantation, but these albums didn't really grab me like I was expecting or hoping. Same goes for the new Cannibal Corpse album, Red Before Black, though it wouldn't surprise me if I have a real moment with this one somewhere down the line, as always seems to happen with their LPs.

This set of circumstances opened up the field a bit, so I spent a good amount of time with Code Orange's Forever, for example, an album that represents a sub-scene I really don't follow closely (I guess I'd call it metalcore, for lack of a better term?). The band's over-the-top machismo often borders on the corny, but their obvious skill as players and writers — and, just as importantly, as overall architects of texture; the album is filled with industrial/ambient interludes that make the whole thing flow together like one long song — wins out. They really take the craft of extremity seriously, and conversely, they seem to think hard about the way their moodier, more dynamic elements only make the punishing climaxes hit that much harder. Speaking of those moody elements, the album's obvious crowning jewel to me was this extraordinary track, a song that nailed a sort of 1994–alt-metal sweet spot for me and rarely left my brain all year:

I certainly wouldn't have minded if all of Forever had sounded like that (if I'm remembering correctly, guitarist Reba Meyers only sings lead on one other song, the awesomely eerie closer "dream2"), but the fact that the track felt like an odd, alluring detour only made it stand out more.

Another album I blurbed for the list, Morbid Angel's Kingdoms Disdained, has been making me giddy since I first heard it a month or so back. We may never know the real backstory of this record, as Morbid Angel mastermind Trey Azagthoth isn't doing anything but goofball email interviews this time around (I tried hard to line up a feature based on a phone or in-person chat, to no avail), but the band's saga over the past few years (an almost universally reviled reunion-ish album that they all but ignored on tour, Azagthoth's subsequent parting of ways with classic-era frontman David Vincent and reunion with mid-period growler/bassist Steve Tucker, etc.) has been the stuff of a death-metal soap opera. Amid all the drama, I'm honestly shocked at how quickly Trey and Steve were able to right the course; in the absence of a return to the band's Vincent-era glory, which, it now seems clear, was never going to happen anyway, Kingdoms is better than any fan could have hoped for, a vicious, efficient and suitably batshit record that might just be stronger than any of the three albums from Tucker's initial tenure in the band. This track in particular is, as far as I'm concerned, a new Morbid classic:

(Check that nasty, writhing waltz riff that starts around :32.)

Moving on to metal's retro-prog, neo-gatefold wing, which seems to be really booming at the moment, thanks to high-profile bands like Mastodon and Pallbearer, Elder's Reflections of a Floating World was the one that really did it for me this year. Mastodon's Emperor of Sand is a very fine record, though a somewhat predictable one, proceeding in orderly fashion from their last couple LPs; in my opinion they still haven't quite figured out how to balance their sprawling-prog inclinations with their streamlined-FM-rock ones in a way that feels really wholesome and fully satisfying. And like their last record, the new Pallbearer LP didn't fully grab me the way I was hoping, considering how much I loved 2012's Sorrow and Extinction, though I admit I need to spend more time with Heartless.

But that Elder record is just pure majesty, total class. It's very rare to hear a fundamentally throwback-ish band whose channeling of various vintage sounds comes across as so natural and ingrained. It's like they've steeped themselves so thoroughly in the song- and riffcraft lessons of the past that they're able to just speak the Tongue of Epic Rock with utter fluency, almost as if these sounds and textures originated with them. Behold:

Speaking of pure majesty and total class, what to say about the no-nonsense creative dynamo that is Krallice, which released two more staggering statements within the past couple months? Doug Moore, a fellow writer and musician (and onetime DFSBP contributor), whose own band Pyrrhon made the RS list with the excellent What Passes for Survival, a mind-shreddingly intense and complex album that I feel like I'm just beginning to get some kind of firm grasp on after a few pleasurably bewildered listens, recently summed up Krallice's singular position in the metal underground in this sharp essay for the November edition of Stereogum's "Black Market" metal round-up. And it's a singularity that deserves to be celebrated, that of a group operating in essentially, to use Doug's phrase, "hobby band" fashion but producing such a great volume of rich, high-quality work that they put most "career" metal bands to shame.

Krallice's albums are, simply, oceans of content. I have become such an ardent fan that when they put out something new, it typically prompts me to trawl back through their entire, now pretty sizable catalog so that I can properly place the latest release in context. (I did this when Loüm, the first of their 2017 albums came out, and even kept a list of my favorite "holy fuck" moments from throughout the discography, of which there are many.) There is simply a grandness of scale to their music, coupled with a resolutely unbounded aesthetic, that I find deeply inspiring. They frankly make the idea of metal subgenres (and even the now-familiar "extreme" tag) seem deeply idiotic. It's clear from these two new albums, specifically Go Be Forgotten — at the moment I'm ever-so-slightly more in awe of this one, with its mystical, trancelike, often synth-bathed aura, than the gruff, frenzied, dauntingly technical Loüm, which features Neurosis member Dave Edwardson, though I stress that both are towering works that might take years to process — that they're simply making visionary art, period, with the style (and maybe even the very medium) being essentially incidental. In an attention-starved world, these exquisitely detailed, marvelously transporting sounds are a blessing to get lost in, and I can't wait for the next dispatch.

("Ground Prayer" is a phenomenal track, but make sure to hear it at some point in its proper album context, coming after the lengthy ambient piece "Quadripartite Mirror Realm.)

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, in aesthetic but not quality, is Unsane's Sterilize, which, like pretty much all their records, is a lean, brutally efficient smack upside the head. As discussed recently on DFSBP, I simply cannot stop playing this thing, along with Wreck, Visqueen, Occupational Hazard and the rest.

Though I didn't have quite as much of a prolonged moment with Obituary's self-titled LP, pretty much the same principles apply: This veteran band does one thing extremely well and their late-career, "cavemen of metal" cruise-control stage, which I wrote about for Rolling Stone, is a joy to behold in either its live or studio manifestations.

Other 2017 metal (and related styles) I liked a lot, had a moment with, etc.:

Oxbow, Thin Black Duke
Luxurious and unsettling. Haven't even begun to reckon with this band's decades-long legacy, but this one (and the live show I saw) really pulled me in.

Converge, The Dusk in UsEven having really dug Converge's prior LP, All We Love We Leave Behind, as with Oxbow, I still feel like an outsider with these guys because I'm a late convert: That legendary early stuff (Jane Doe, etc.) just isn't in my blood the way I know it is with many people. But I find their recent output, this new record very much included, remarkable in its poise, power and effortless variety. Kory Grow's write-up for the RS list really nailed it.

Mutoid Man, War Moans

A party-time spazz-prog-thrash blast. Lead track "Melt Your Mind" is an absolute stunner and one of
my favorite metal tracks of the year.

Memoriam, For the Fallen

Rumbling, elegiac U.K. death metal from former Bolt Thrower frontman Karl Willetts, who helped invent that style, and friends.

Loincloth, Psalm of the Morbid Whore

A second, and sadly final, full-length helping of obsessive math-doom wizardry from an American underground treasure. (Can't wait to hear what's next for longtime DFSBP favorite Steve Shelton, also of Confessor.)

Mayhem, De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas Alive

Honestly, this one got more play time from me than the original ever did. I love being able to hear these gnarled and creepy epics in something resembling higher fidelity. Read Kory Grow's essential feature on the band and the album. (Note: This one came out very late in 2016, but what can you do.)

The Lurking Fear, Out of the Voiceless GraveSort of like the Memoriam of Sweden: proudly regionally flavored death metal (in this case, cold, nasty, unrelenting) from At the Gates' Tomas Lindberg and other dudes who have been around the block.

Husbandry, Bad Weeds Never Die I wrote the bio for this one, FYI — you can read that on the Aqualamb website — but I was already a huge fan. This band sounds like no one else in NYC right now and I hugely admire their unabashed ambition to write badass, fearlessly eclectic post-hardcore that's as catchy as it is jarring.

Couch Slut, Contempt

Friends of mine and another one of the best bands in town. Seething, explosive and sicker than just about any other music on the planet right now.

Quicksand, Interiors

This is a strange one. One of the most treasured bands of my youth finally returns (sans their vital lead guitarist Tom Capone, who ran into some personal issues that kept him from participating), with mixed results. I admire how Walter Schreifels, Sergio Vega and Alan Cage pushed their sound into newly reflective areas here, but I admit that this record's sometimes sleepy, downbeat, almost post-Radiohead-ish vibe — in light of the taut fury of their classic work — left me a little stumped. Still, I'm glad it exists and I'm curious to see if it'll bloom a little more over time. (Wrote a few words on this one for a November new-release round-up at RS.com.)

Power Trip, Nightmare Logic
I may have snobbishly underattended to this one in light of all the praise it got, which I fully admit is just plain stupid. As you may have heard, this record completely smokes. An unabashedly unoriginal sound — thrash meets hardcore in the 1980s; retro to the point that its almost cosplay— done extremely well. Gorgeously full, crisp, monolithic throwback production and killer songs, especially "Executioner's Tax (Swing of the Axe)." Rock!

/////

Shout-out to some outlets and writers that keep me inspired and informed:

Last Rites
Stereogum's Black Market
Revolver
Decibel
Metal Bandcamp
Invisible Oranges
Andy O'Connor
Kim Kelly
Adrien Begrand
Burning Ambulance
Ian Christe

Lastly:

So glad I got to work with Kory Grow and various other folks on this dream project. And that I finally got to see Iron fucking Maiden live.

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Radical convention: Winter Jazzfest 2013

Some quick thoughts about Winter Jazzfest 2013, which is wrapping up as I type this in the wee hours of Sunday, 1/13. This is by no means intended as any sort of comprehensive review of the fest—I'm sure we'll read many smart ones in the coming days—but merely as a distillation of my own (very enjoyable) experience of the event. Some from-the-field impressions can be found on my Twitter page.

I heard a lot of, for lack of a better term, high-tech music at WJF 2013: groups that used samples, groups that focused on proggish, daredevil precision, groups that nodded to funk, hip-hop and electronica, groups that foregrounded their now-ness, their distance from a conventional notion of what jazz is. I enjoyed several of these groups very much; I look forward to hearing more from, e.g., Marcus Strickland's Twi-Life (trombonist Frank Lacy was the MVP here) and Rafiq Bhatia's group.

But my favorite sets at the festival had nothing to do with any of that. They were unadorned, acoustic, lacking in any particular eye-catching hook. They were just about sensitive, in-the-moment interaction; they were about listening; they represented very different aesthetics, but they all, in one way or another, conformed to some relatively well-established, historically proven way of playing jazz.

1) The trio of pianist Kris Davis, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Andrew Cyrille (pictured above) at Zinc Bar on Friday. An extraordinarily sensitive set, that built from a hush to a subtle dance then back to a hush. It seems silly to say that the appeal here was the sound, but that's the only way I can think to put it. All three players were considering the sounds they were producing in relation to the sounds the others were producing. It's an obvious idea, but less commonly illustrated in practice than you'd think. Cyrille, master of timbre and touch dictated the pace (unhurried) and the focus level (extreme), but no one was really the star; or in another sense, everyone was. It was free jazz, but without any of the chest-thumping or catharsis. It was "out," but it was not self-consciously weird. It moved along as it pleased, but with real narrative intrigue. I would love to hear this band again soon. This is a moment for Andrew Cyrille: last year's Bill McHenry and David Virelles records, for example—the first of which Revis also appears on. I very much look forward to seeing Cyrille w/ Virelles at the Vanguard at the end of the month, and hopefully w/ Ethan Iverson, Tim Berne and Sam Newsome at Smalls the week before. (He's also playing a free big-band show at Lincoln Center next Thursday!)

2) The quartet of reedist Andrew D'Angelo, trumpeter Kirk Knuffke, bassist Ben Street and drummer Nasheet Waits, known collectively as Merger, at Culture Project on Saturday. On Twitter, I pegged what this band was playing as freebop. I'm not sure if that's the correct term, but I'm referring to a sort of inside/outside thing, part vanguard mid-’60s Blue Note, part late ’50s / early ’60s Ornette, part ’90s downtown. Jazzy, but also abstract, noise-embracing. Each player has an extremely distinctive voice on their respective instrument, and all those voices came through b/c each player made it his business to complement his bandmates' voices. Again, a "duh" idea, but to see it really happening, live, is special. Super-quiet moments, like a minutely detailed unaccompanied Knuffke solo, and aggressive ones, where D'Angelo was frothing in post-Zorn fashion. The rhythm section knew what to do with all of it, and that didn't necessarily mean rise up and meet the frontline; it just meant, "Find what's complementary, even if it's counterintuitive." Nasheet Waits is a poet of his instrument. He gets me closer to the bliss I get from primo Tony Williams than just about any other living drummer. The tempos are fluid, but the looseness does not signify slackness. There's such authority, whether the beat is explicit or left in the rearview. Nice thematic material in this set too. Merger needs to make a record, probably a live one.

3) The quartet of reedist Don Byron, pianist Aruán Ortiz, bassist Cameron Brown and drummer Rudy Royston at Le Poisson Rouge on Friday. I don't know Don Byron's work very well, but I do know that he has a penchant for the conceptual hook, the project devoted to a specific historical repertoire or genre, the kind of thing artists such as Dave Douglas and Ken Vandermark have often engaged in. Nothing against that approach, but this set was so, so not that. I didn't get to see the full performance, but what I did see was capital-J Jazz. Long solos, band swinging incredibly hard, each musician playing with serious flair and flash. No sense of "We need to get past this fossilized format." No. Merely a sense that what we need to do is play our asses off in a well-established mode, a mode that's well-established because it works. This was probably the most conventional set I saw all weekend, and interestingly, because of the context described at the top of this post, it also felt like one of the most radical. (Honorable mention in a similar vein: James Carter's Organ Trio at LPR on Saturday.)

P.S. Almost exactly 10 years ago, I interviewed Andrew Cyrille and wrote this profile.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Best of 2012: Open season

Top 10 albums of 2012 (all genres in play):
Time Out New York (annotated, with Spotify playlist)
Pitchfork (unannotated, with top 10 singles list)

Top 10 jazz albums of 2012 (with many honorable mentions):
Jazz Journalists Association, plus annotated breakdown, part I (plus intro), II and III

/////

I participated in a few different year-end polls this season, each with its own parameters. I tried to keep my picks consistent across the various platforms, but inevitably, a bit of imprecision crept in. Below you'll find a list of my top 50 records of the year, as submitted to the Pitchfork contributors' poll. (My final list may have differed very slightly in terms of order, but I'm 99 percent sure that these 50 records are the ones I ended up voting for; it's hard to say because I entered my picks via an online voting portal that's since disappeared.) The first 10 constitute the same top 10 I submitted to Time Out New York and the Village Voice's Pazz and Jop poll, and the 15 jazz records found here constitute the top 15 jazz records I listed over at the JJA site, with the top 10 of those making up my Jazz Critics Poll ballot.

Below, I link to my prior coverage where applicable, discuss any strays and provide listening samples for albums 20–50 (via a playlist apiece for each grouping of 10, including a track from every selection that's available on Spotify). Hat-tip to Seth Colter-Walls—who's got a great all-genres list over at the Awl—for the formatting suggestion.

Thanks for reading. As always, comments/feedback welcome, especially re: records I might have missed!

/////

1. Christian Mistress Possession
2. Japandroids Celebration Rock
3. Converge All We Love We Leave Behind
4. Pallbearer Sorrow and Extinction
5. Propagandhi Failed States
6. fun. Some Nights
7. Loincloth Iron Balls of Steel
8. Frank Ocean Channel Orange
9. Billy Hart All Our Reasons
10. Corin Tucker Band Kill My Blues

A rock- and male-heavy top 10, yes. I've been a little bothered by that in recent days, thinking I should've mixed it up a bit more, but (A) I sort of believe that top 10 lists make themselves, i.e., these are the albums that chose me over the past year, not the other way around (to put it another way, these are records I played and played and played, in both professional and personal contexts), (B) this list is much less monochrome than it looks on the surface and (C) I've done my best to shout-out at least a sampling of all the other great albums I heard in 2012 below and via the jazz-only list linked above. The narrowing part was tough; there are albums in the 30s and 40s below that were in serious contention for the top 10.

To comment a briefly on the unlinked above:

Possession is a magical album. As I suggested in my TONY list, this record both epitomizes and transcends the recent retro-metal trend. Yes, its basic palette is an old one, but its emotional content is so not mere pastiche; in the mold of the best of Dio-fronted Sabbath (Mob Rules, The Devil You Know), it's at once tough and badass, and also crushingly sad, qualities embodied in Christine Davis's scratchy-throated vocal turn—somehow both majestic and humble. And the riffs and structures go way beyond post-Sabbath-ism—so effortlessly, stylishly progressive, full of twists and sudden set changes. Spend time with this album, enough time to listen past its surface retro-ness and on to its timeless rewards. Metal is not something donned, assumed for Christian Mistress; this is real communion with the past—the ’70s and ’80s, yes, but also more ancient eras. Possession is so damn earthy it almost feels pagan. A big salute to this one.

Damn, is fun. ever fun. Some Nights speaks to the part of me that loves the pomp of Elton and Queen, but as with Christian Mistress, this isn't mere retro. This band's gift is updating that sound with a very modern kind of wryness—it seems almost too perfect that one of the dudes in the band is dating Lena Dunham. This is the kind of record that takes a subculture (the modern NYC hipster) and makes it into a kind of super-stylized Broadway-style tragicomedy. It's over-the-top and self-deprecating but it's also deeply touching. And the songwriting and arrangements are just stellar. I love this kind of pop, the kind that respects old-school craft but finds a way to say something contemporary.

/////

11. Nude Beach II
12. The Smashing Pumpkins Oceania
13. Asphyx Deathhammer
14. Rush Clockwork Angels
15. Prong Carved Into Stone
16. Steve Lehman Trio Dialect Fluorescent
17. R. Kelly Write Me Back
18. Darius Jones Quartet Book of Mæ'bul (Another Kind of Sunrise)
19. Dysrhythmia Test of Submission
20. How to Dress Well Total Loss

Re: Nude Beach, again with the retro. The entire album is not quite this good—if it was, it might've been my album of the year—but, dear God, "Radio" and a few more…

The Rush album is solid, solid, solid. Snakes and Arrows was a decent record, but they are back in the driver's seat with this one. The real story here isn't the recent Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees' (ahem) return to concept-album-dom; it's that that they've written probably their strongest set of songs since 1993's Counterparts.

R. Kelly is still on his own backward-looking tip, and he seems to be having a hell of a time. There's plenty of cheese on this record, but also pure, post–Barry White gold, e.g., "Lady Sunday."

The Dysrhythmia record is crammed with their own brand of "hits." As I've written before, these are Dysrhythmia's catchiest songs to date. Went through a period of could-not-stop-listening-to-this re: Test of Submission a month or so back, due largely to "In Secrecy" and three or four others.

/////

21. Serpentine Path Serpentine Path
22. Van Halen A Different Kind of Truth
23. Jim Black Trio Somatic
24. Cannibal Corpse Torture
25. Federico Ughi Songs for Four Cities
26. Henry Threadgill Zooid Tomorrow Sunny / The Revelry, Spp
27. The Men Open Your Heart
28. Say Anything Anarchy, My Dear
29. Neurosis Honor Found in Decay
30. Dr. John Locked Down

What a puzzle Open Your Heart is. This album blindsides you in at least four different ways. Individual tracks make perfect sense, but as a whole, it's inscrutable in a way I very much enjoy. "Rock" sticks, but any subgenre tag you might try to pin on it slides right off.

I think Anarchy, My Dear is the best Say Anything album since the frankly untouchable …Is a Real Boy. Max Bemis is one of our great songwriter/bandleaders.

Locked Down is essentially a perfect example of the "re-branding" album, i.e., one of these increasingly common efforts where an older artist whose career has slowed or perhaps even stalled teams up with a sharp, savvy producer who can reconnect him or her with the kids/critics. Sometimes these efforts can smack of crass strategizing, but this one is simply a great Dr. John album that happens to have been abetted by a famous young musician (Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys). This material sounded every bit as good live, when I heard it at BAM earlier this year.

/////

31. Joel Harrison / Lorenzo Feliciati Holy Abyss
32. Behold… the Arctopus Horrorscension
33. David Virelles Continuum
34. Tim Berne Snakeoil
35. Incantation Vanquish in Vengeance
36. The Cookers Believe
37. The Howling Wind Of Babalon
38. Matt Wilson's Arts and Crafts An Attitude for Gratitude
39. George Schuller's Circle Wide Listen Both Ways
40. Aaron Freeman Marvelous Clouds

A glorious return for Behold, which marks the BtA debut of Weasel Walter on drums. It's only fitting that this project should rev up again just as the Flying Luttenbachers endeavor was concluding. Extraordinary, inspiring extended composition first; great metal second.

Doug Moore's Invisible Oranges write-up of Vanquish in Vengeance was spot-on. This record (A) sounds very little like the murk-fi masterpieces (Onward to Golgotha, Mortal Throne of Nazarene) that established Incantation's sterling reputation, and (B) really isn't surprising in the least. It's simply an excellent genre-obedient effort by a band that helped define the genre—in other words, the death-metal analog to the Cookers' Believe.

Man, is Of Babalon ever heavy. An excellent companion to Serpentine Path, another 2012 effort featuring former Unearthly Trance member Ryan Lipynsky. This one is both more diverse stylewise and more vicious in its mood. Lipynsky isn't a revolutionary, but the degree to which he really and truly means it when he makes metal makes him a standout figure in the underground.

/////

41. Cattle Decapitation Monolith of Inhumanity
42. Dr. Lonnie Smith The Healer
43. Napalm Death Utilitarian
44. Sam Rivers / Dave Holland / Barry Altschul Reunion: Live in New York
45. Jozef Van Wissem / Jim Jarmusch Concerning the Entrance Into Eternity
46. Death Grips No Love Deep Web
47. Leonard Cohen Old Ideas
48. Bob Mould Silver Age
49. Unsane Wreck
50. Eri Yamamoto The Next Page

Monolith and Utilitarian are blistering new albums by long-running bands I've never truly loved in the past; these efforts woke me up. (In Napalm Death's case, an incredible Maryland Deathfest set helped too.) Both records impressed me with how catchy and diverse they were—dig those theatrical chorus hooks on Monolith, esp.—demonstrating that grindcore has come a long way from its super-primitive roots.

The hype surrounding Death Grips (Epic, not Epic—yadda, yadda) was a little wearisome, but I still found No Love Deep Web to be worthy of its title. It's a chaotic yet focused negative-vibe spew that's hard to tear yourself away from.

I'm a big Leonard fan in general, but the past couple LPs haven't grabbed me. This one seems stronger, aiming for the midpoint between solemn and wry. Like his current live show (I caught him at the Beacon a few years back), Old Ideas feels warm and connected but not hokey. In contrast, I don't know Mould's post–Hüsker Dü work well, but Silver Age grabbed me immediately, as I expect it would anyone who enjoys aggressive, tightly composed melodic rock. "Descent" is an incredible song. Speaking of, I meant to include that in my top 10 singles list…

/////

P.S.

As indicated at the top of my 2012 jazz round-up, Ravi Coltrane's Spirit Fiction was an album I enjoyed greatly throughout the year and unintentionally overlooked when it came time for year-end voting. I'm bummed about that; if I had my Jazz Journalists Association / Jazz Critics Poll top 10 and Pitchfork all-genre top 50 to do over, I'd include it in both. In any case, one happy side effect of the omission is that I became re-enthralled by Spirit Fiction over the past couple weeks. It really is outstanding, start to finish.

Another two I woke up to too late to consider them for these polls:

Bill McHenry La Peur du Vide

I loved the quartet on this record—with Orrin Evans, Eric Revis and Andrew Cyrille—when I heard them at the Vanguard last November. But I didn't warm up to La Peur (recorded at the same venue this past March) on a first listen. Something about it sounded straighter, less mysterious than what I'd remembered. Turns out I just didn't sit with the record long enough. The first track, "Siglo XX," is indeed pretty conventional post-Coltrane sax-quartet jazz, but things get so deep/surprising as the album continues. Such an absolute pleasure to hear Andrew Cyrille featured so prominently and in such unpredictable ways, and Evans and Revis are in bruising form here as well. This record is a subtle killer, every bit as essential as McHenry's earlier collaborations with Paul Motian.

The Bad Plus Made Possible

Another strong Bad Plus record. For me, this one doesn't quite reach the level of the sublime Never Stop, but there's some extraordinary stuff on here, particularly Reid Anderson's two latest triumphs: the hushed-then-ecstatic epic "In Stitches" and the plainspoken, melancholy-pop-ish "Pound for Pound." (File the latter of these alongside the Eri Yamamoto and Federico Ughi records discussed here.)

Also, Xaddax and Feast of the Epiphany made great records this year—in Feast's case, several great records; I especially endorse Solitude—which were out-of-bounds for me pollwise due to friendships with the parties responsible. Visit Xaddax here and Feast here.

/////

Bonus:

Time Out New York's full year-end Music package—including a list of top concerts, with a few of my entries—as well as top 10 lists by my colleagues Steve Smith and Sophie Harris.

Friday, September 16, 2011

The Big 4 at Yankee Stadium

After jumping through many hoops, I scored tickets to the Big 4 at Yankee Stadium. Hassles abounded—absurdly expensive parking, rowdy fans spilling beer on my wife and me, interminable bathroom lines—but this was still a magical show. Here's my review (with slideshow) on the TONY blog.

Addenda:

1) Before the whole Big 4 hype cycle began, I knew next to nothing about Anthrax (just a few vids from late-’80s/early-’90s MTV). Now I'm fascinated by them. Their new album, Worship Music, is addictive—it satisfies my appetites for both chewy thrash and super-melodic Dio-esque wailing. Their back catalog is great too; I love the weird mix of technicality and cartoonishness. As I suggested in the review, it was easy to be psyched for them at Yankee Stadium.

2) Slayer, man. I'm not sure I've ever seen a band perform with such sustained intensity and sheer obnoxiousness. Of course the records are great—at least the old ones; was checking out World Painted Blood yesterday, and the thin-sounding production was bumming me out a little—but I had always taken these guys for granted a bit. Never again. Serious dedication to craft plus blitzkrieg energy.

3) Just about any Metallica set list would feel like a greatest-hits compilation. They can pull out a relative obscurity like the Master of Puppets instrumental "Orion" late in a stadium set and not risk losing anyone's attention. Question: Is Metallica the greatest large-scale rock band currently performing? I can't think of another with a deeper or more varied catalog. I think I'd even put them ahead of Rush, given how well they balance chops and muscle with sheer sing-along-ability. If you have a chance to see them, go—they are currently on devastating form.

4) To me, Megadeth's set was the least engaging of the day, but as with Anthrax, I'm very happy to have reawakened to Mustaine & Co. recently. I was a big fan of Countdown to Extinction growing up, and I saw the band twice in the ’90s (once with—are you ready for this?—Stone Temple Pilots opening!). For whatever reason, though, I never delved into the back catalog. That was lunacy, because Rust in Peace is a total monster. The ruthless tightness and giddy progginess of this record add up to pure smiles for me. It's unsettling, demented, uncompromising music—like a more grotesque, off-the-wall …And Justice for All.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

On "Do jazz critics need to know how to play jazz?"

Roanna Forman, over at bostonjazzblog.com, recently incited a provocative discussion by posing the simple question "Do jazz critics know how to play jazz?"

This is a fascinating inquiry, and one that gets at the heart of why this profession (I tend to avoid the word "critic" in favor of "thinker-about-music" or similar) is so strange. Basically you have this whole class of people who do not do a thing professionally and yet they are considered to be the utmost authority on that thing, sometimes even more so than the people who do do it for a living. In jazz criticism, the separation between the doers and the commentators—whether literal, i.e., social, or philosophical—is far less pronounced than it is in, say, professional sports, but there's still a divide there. Moreover, anyone in or around a certain art form, whether it's a player or an enthusiast, certainly has the right to ask of any writer who's paid to opine on said art form, "What gives you the right?"

So it's a matter of credentials, and it should be said outright that, in jazz criticism at least, there simply aren't any. I have friends who went to school for three years so that they could pass the bar exam and become lawyers. As far as my career writing about jazz goes (though, as I've stated here before, that's only a part of what I do as a thinker-about-music) I have no such formal training. If someone were to ask me what qualifies me to write about jazz, I would simply have to answer, "I love it."

As far as knowing how to play jazz, I can definitively say that I don't. I have played drums for about 17 years at this point, and I regularly rehearse, perform, record and compose music, mainly for a band called STATS that I'd broadly classify as "metal." I've taken a few lessons here and there, but for all intents and purposes, I'm self-taught as a musician. I have worked hard on my craft, though; there's roughness in my playing, but where it crops up, it's largely intentional.

In terms of my self-instruction, it's almost always been directed toward some sort of rock-based idiom. I have mainly performed rock (and related styles such as metal), so that's what I've studied. My influences as a drummer, those I can often feel myself channeling as I play, are musicians such as John Bonham, Levon Helm, Dale Crover, Neil Peart and Bill Ward. I'm not as good as any of these masters, but on some level, I understand what it is that they're doing; I could break it down for you, whether in technical or plainspoken language, and in some cases duplicate it on the drum set. If I'm a true authority on anything musical, it's the way drums work in a rock context.

As far as jazz drumming, I'm absolutely obsessed with it. Two of my favorite sounds in the world are those of Elvin Jones and Tony Williams interacting with a drum kit. I can definitely say that these musicians have influenced the way that I play—especially Elvin, who is in many ways the John Bonham of jazz, in terms of sheer mass and swing—but in no way could I duplicate what they do, except in some sort of sketchlike fashion. In short, I am not a jazz drummer. I have performed in free-improvisation contexts before, and I can convincingly fake my way through a bebop tune, but my palette is severely limited. When I speak jazz as a musician, I'm doing an impression—it is not my native tongue.

I've been discussing drums here, but the same goes for any of the other main instruments in jazz: Hand me a saxophone or a bass, or sit me at the piano, and I'm not going to be much help to anybody. I have experimented quite a bit with the piano over the years, and even performed on it—again in a free-improv setting—but I'm not a pianist. My knowledge of music theory is rudimentary. I can read rhythm notation, but I would need many hours of concentration in order to make sense of, say, a piano score.

I do write music, though—quite a bit of it. Basically what I do is sing guitar riffs in my head, record them on a dictaphone and then bring them to my bandmates to figure out. Often, these are more rhythmic figures than anything, but I do have melodic movement in mind. It's not a stretch to say that I am in some sense a songwriter; I just do it all mentally/orally rather than on paper. All of the composing that I do has been specific to the specific musical context of STATS (which was formerly known as Stay Fucked). It would not work in a vacuum, in the abstract sense of composition. It works because I have (and have had) friends/bandmates (Joe, Tony, Tom and many others) who are patient enough to sit there and help me realize the ideas that are swirling around in my head. For that I thank them.

Anyway, I've gotten completely off track here. All I really mean to say here is that I am not a jazz musician. If someone wants to take that statement and use it to disqualify my opinions on jazz, that's totally fine. I understand that for some, that might be a dealbreaker. On the other hand, I would have to say that I do feel qualified to comment on jazz. And again, I hesitate to use the word "criticize." When it comes to a given instrument, criticizing someone (whether in the positive or negative sense) ups the ante a bit. That is to say, it would be pretty ballsy of me to peg someone as a crappy saxophone player when I myself could barely summon a single note on a saxophone. Maybe I would have slightly more clout if I were dissing a drummer.

My main point, though, is that it has never been my interest to call anyone out. My entire reason, and perhaps justification, for writing at length about jazz, and researching the music exhaustively through oral history and dedicated listening, is that I am absolutely in love with it.

I view myself as authoritative only in what I am authoritative about. I'm not going to sit here and pretend to know ALL of jazz. I'll be the first person to admit that, just as with movies, I have a problem relating to some of the older jazz styles. I'm a huge fan of late-’30s Ellington, for example, but stretch back one decade, to Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives, and I have a hard time relating. I can understand what makes this music great, but I don't feel it in my bones.

Where jazz really starts to get interesting for me is the mid-’60s. My true canon of jazz centers around the Blue Note catalog of this era, records like Andrew Hill's Point of Departure, Wayne Shorter's The Soothsayer and Jackie McLean's One Step Beyond. (It's no coincidence that all these albums have Tony Williams on them!) My tastes beyond that are vast: I love both the classic Benny Goodman quartets with Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa, and I love Henry Threadgill's Air. I love Kind of Blue and I love Interstellar Space. I love Billy Cobham's Spectrum and Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth.

These are all just off the top of my head, but what I'm really trying to say is that the main thing that qualifies me to write about jazz is that I am devoted to educating myself about it constantly, not because I feel obligated to as a professional, but because I feel compelled to as a fan. Jazz is like food to me. Some weeks, I'm off on rock jags, poring over the Black Sabbath catalog, say, but many weeks, I'm glued the jazz discographies, trying to get a handle on a particular artist or period. I'm giving myself homework basically, homework that is purely pleasure-based. Sure, if I'm preparing for an interview or something, listening can occasionally become a chore, but on a day-to-day basis, it's rarely that. What it is, is pure joy.

I guess if I have a credential, it's that: That I do in fact derive a more or less daily joy out of the phenomenon of jazz. And this is a joy that transcends time, in the sense that I'm often obsessed with current jazz (Branford Marsalis and Joey Calderazzo's Songs of Mirth and Melancholy has brought me great pleasure this year) as well as older jazz that just happened to appear on my radar. This "just happened to appear" part is pretty mysterious to me. (I wrote a bit about it here.) I'm sure many hard-core music fans experience the same thing, but I just get into these extremely intense phases, listening-wise, where I need to hear one particular player, or period, or style, or all three at once, and I will absolutely not stand for one note of anything else to voluntarily enter my ears. As you can probably tell from the last two posts, I'm currently ensnared in a Mal Waldron obsession, set off by searching for Ed Blackwell on Spotify and stumbling across the marvelous Seagulls of Kristiansund.

So just to be clear, I do not know how to play jazz in any true practical sense. I cannot speak objectively as to whether or not that disqualifies me from commenting on it in print with authority. That will be up to my readers to decide. I have definitely struggled with this question myself, and I will admit that yes, sometimes I have felt that I simply lack the terminology or the framework with which to analyze or evaluate or even simply appreciate a given performance. But what I don't lack, though, is a kind of addiction to the music, a desire to embed the sounds of all my favorite players in my head. It's almost a synaesthetic thing. I can conjure Paul Motian, or Andrew Hill, or Tony Williams, or Joe Henderson, or Booker Little, or Jimmy Giuffre, or Fred Anderson in my head, the way I would a taste or a smell. I often think of players as "flavors" in some weird, abstract sense.

I am tirelessly devoted to knowing jazz in this way, just through constant contact with the art form, both through recordings and live shows. And in a way, I think that is the chief responsibility of the "critic": to love an art form so much that learning about it is like breathing. So much that if you weren't being paid to do it, you'd still do it just as fervently. With regard to jazz, this is me, and if I have any real qualification, it is that.

////

P.S. Many prominent critics, including Ben Ratliff and Ted Panken, weighed in on the original post. Right after completing the piece above, I noticed that Patrick Jarenwattananon had weighed in as well. Going to check out the latter as soon as I hit "Publish."

P.P.S. [Updated Monday, 8/29/11] Phil Freeman has contributed a sharp essay on this topic. See here.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Book it: Chocolate and Cheese

I've spent the last 19 months or so working on a book about Ween. The result, focusing on and named after the Chocolate and Cheese album, comes out March 17, 2011 via the 33 1/3 series. You can read an excerpt—on the infamous "HIV Song"—at the 33 1/3 blog and you can preorder a copy at Amazon.

I loved working on this project and I can't wait for other people to check it out. Ween is a beloved, baffling and hugely influential band—not just on music, but on comedy too, and on any form of entertainment that wantonly ignores boundaries of good taste in the name of, yes, humor but also truthfulness and emotional intensity. I tried to do justice to all those qualities in the book—pleading Ween's case, as it were—while at the same time providing a ton of juicy documentary-style behind-the-scenes info. I interviewed many people for the book, including Gene and Dean Ween, Spike Jonze (who directed the "Freedom of ’76" video), Andrew Weiss (Ween's longtime producer), Josh Homme (whose old band, Kyuss, toured with Ween) and just about everyone who had a hand in making Chocolate and Cheese. If you're a Ween fan, I sincerely think you'll love this book. If you're a casual Ween appreciator, I think this book will reveal that there's a lot more going on underneath the surface than you may have thought. If you flat-out hate Ween… I'm not sure I can help you there.

Anyway, I can't wait to hear what people think of my take on Chocolate and Cheese, so please do drop a line via the comments or the e-mail address at the top of this blog if you get a chance to check out the book. Or say hello at one of the following release parties [full details forthcoming]:

Sunday, March 20, 2011 at WORD in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Saturday, March 26, 2011 at Farley's Bookshop in New Hope, Pennsylvania [Ween's hometown!].

Thursday, April 7, 2011 at Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. This one is a joint appearance with fellow 33 1/3 authors Daphne Carr (whose book deals with Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine) and Christopher "1000TimesYes" Weingarten (who focused on Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back).

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

2010 jazz top ten

A list of my ten favorite jazz CDs from the nearly bygone year is now posted at the Jazz Journalists Association website. An annotated log of my choices is below. Links lead to various locales (labels, artists, CD Baby, Amazon, iTunes, etc.)—in each case, I simply chose the site with the most previewable music.

1. Dan Weiss Trio - Timshel (Sunnyside)
I reviewed this record for Time Out New York back in March, and I still don't feel like I have a handle on it, which, to me, is a great thing. You can know a lot about Weiss (that he used to moonlight in the doom-metal band Bloody Panda and that he has adapted tabla techniques to the drum set) and still not scratch the surface of what makes Timshel special. This is music—jazz, I guess, but that's beside the point—of stillness and mystery and rapturous beauty. I hope I never get to the bottom of it.

2. Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth - Deluxe (Clean Feed)
There's a picture of a schmancy old car on the cover of this record, which might lead you to believe that the music inside would be gaudy. Instead, Deluxe is all subtlety: Taut, vampy rhythms undergirding a mist of saxophones. Craig Taborn's keyboards and Gerald Cleaver's drums provide lift and color. It's a lush, pillowy sound, but full of mood and intrigue. Again, I need way more time to wrap my head around this one and I can't wait to do so.

3. Harris Eisenstadt - Woodblock Prints (NoBusiness)
Drummer Harris Eisenstadt made my favorite jazz record of 2008, the West African–inspired Guewel. I think this new one—a limited-run LP release and download—is even better. Like the Lightcap, this is an extremely lush record and a tender one. It's not even close to a "drummer" record—it's basically a chamber outing, marked by a carefully chosen instrumental palette, featuring clarinet, bassoon, French horn and tuba. Eisenstadt knows exactly what he wants out of the players and he gets it—a deep sense of stateliness and composure in the ensemble passages (and there are a lot) balanced with gutsy passion from the soloists. To me, Eisenstadt is easily one of the finest young bandleaders in jazz and Woodblock Prints testifies to that fact. (P.S. I saw this entire album performed live and it was gorgeous.)

4. Jason Moran - Ten (Blue Note)
This album is bulging with magic and mastery. Over the past few weeks, I put together a lot of iTunes playlists, culling all my 2010 top-ten candidates, jazz and otherwise, for shuffled consumption. Every time a track from Ten came up, I'd stop whatever I was doing and marvel at Moran and his Bandwagoneers—their ability to convincingly express both the core of the blues and the flurry of modernism within the same piece is breathtaking. If ever an artist has done right by his teacher, Moran is making the late, great Jaki Byard proud.

5. Mike Pride's From Bacteria to Boys - Betweenwhile (Aum Fidelity)
As I noted when contributing to this invaluable From Bacteria to Boys video roundup at (((unartig))), I'd primarily understood Mike Pride up to this point as a connoisseur of the jarring gesture. Betweenwhile offers something quieter, a place to really get lost. Airy jazz filled with smoke and funk and fire and simmer. The whole album plays like a loving showcase for the talents of Pride's sidemen: the bite of altoist Darius Jones, the sumptuousness of pianist Alexis Marcelo, the patience of bassist Peter Bitenc. There's so much sublimated deep feeling in this record that no sudden movements are necessary. It's corny to talk about artists "maturing," but you can't hold Betweenwhile up to Pride's back catalog and not feel that he really and truly has.

6. The Cookers - Warriors (Jazz Legacy Productions)
There's a lot of glitz, and even cockiness, in the work of this all-star band, a pack of hardbop lifers. Billy Hart was the draw for me, but I grew to love what they all had to say: Billy Harper, Eddie Henderson, George Cables and the rest. This is about taking what went on in, say, the early- to mid-’60s and really getting inside it, luxuriating in the tried-and-true forms and the warmth of modern recording and digging into some absolutely fantastic original tunes that stick with you just like your old Blue Note favorites. This is PRO jazz, conventional jazz, but jazz driven by a pulsating heartbeat. Besides, a record that features Billy Hart is disqualified from the realm of boringness.

7. Weasel Walter Septet - Invasion (ugEXPLODE)
In a past DFSBP post, I praised the evolution of Weasel Walter's improv chops. But to make a great, replayable record, you've got to offer something extra and the Weas has done that here. Each of the five tracks has its own identity, from bouncy Mingus-gone–No Wave ("Flesh Strata") to disarmingly sensitive Company-style free play ("Cleistogamy"), and most importantly—as with the Pride record—all of the performances flaunt the gifts of Walter's supporting cast. Henry Kaiser is an absolute star here. I've never been a huge fan of his before—or, to be fair, dug too deep into his catalog—but he's spellbinding on Invasion, offering a crackly electric zone-out on "Nautilus Rising (part 1)" and eerie distended folk on "Cleistogamy," his contribution to the latter sounding more to me like Robbie Basho than Derek Bailey, Kaiser's avowed "sensei." Overall, Invasion is a great example not just of experimental music-making but of experimental RECORD-making. The compositional (yes, there is bona-fide writing/direction/structure at play here) variety, the excellent recording quality and the brilliant auxiliary musicians all add up to an album you want to hear again when it's over.

8. The Bad Plus - Never Stop (E1)
One thing I love about the Bad Plus, and about this album in particular (definitely the TBP record I've enjoyed most) is how little the band's output squares with Ethan Iverson's unfailingly perceptive and eloquent jazz criticism. After reading Iverson, you might think his band might fixate so much on its jazz-history obsession that it would have a hard time forging ahead and developing its own vibe. That is so not the case, though, and you really hear that on Never Stop. It's just a record of MUSIC, so disarmingly alive and emotive and hard-grooving and fun to listen to. The band's image has a certain archness to it that again can be misleading. You might even take a track like "Never Stop," with its pounding disco groove and twinkly melody, as a slice of ironic nostalgia. But you listen harder, to that track and to the full record, and you realize you're entirely mistaken. The Bad Plus goes straight for simplicity and directness and feeling, and if it often ends up sounding more like pop or indie rock than jazz at a given time, then so be it. For all of Iverson and his bandmates' obsession with jazz, they're thrillingly game for jettisoning its baggage (traditional swing, say, as Iverson pointed out in an interview I read or listened to but can't re-locate now) whenever it suits their compositions. A piece like "Beryl Loves to Dance" here could move anybody—it truly doesn't matter what you call it, and that's rare. It's that wide-open quality that made Never Stop one of the year's most refreshing listens.

9. Jon Irabagon - Foxy (Hot Cup)
I've spilled an insane amount of ink on this record, and Jon Irabagon in general, in 2010. A Time Out profile is here, and a much more in-depth piece is on the way via Burning Ambulance. The salient fact is that Jon Irabagon shocked me in 2009 with I Don't Hear Nothing but the Blues, and then he turned around and shocked me in a whole different way with Foxy. Instead of expressing his perverse, almost maniacal improvisational idiosyncrasies on their own weird terms, as he did on Blues, he decided to apply them to straight-ahead jazz here, and the results are, in their own way, ten times weirder. Sure, Foxy something of a gimmick, something of an endurance test, but it's also an absolute joyride. Just ask Barry Altschul.

10. Chicago Underground Duo - Boca Negra (Thrill Jockey)
Like the Moran, another album that grabbed my attention every time the iTunes roulette wheel landed on it. Like the Bad Plus, another album that orbits jazz without using it as a crutch. Like the Walter, another extremely weird release—the handiwork of an ensemble that's as resolutely unconventional as the Cookers are by-the-book—that nonetheless invites repeated listens. Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor are going for mood, for soundscape, and they've got that part down, down, down. There's a late-night murk to this album—surely inspired by Bill Dixon, Mazurek's frequent collaborator in the years prior to his recent sad passing—that you just want to live in. But there's also that now-classic Chicago post-rock vibe, executed as appealingly as I've heard it done in quite a while. Boca Negra is a surprising blend of the stylish and the substantive.

/////

My list also included ten honorable-mention releases, many of which nearly made the top ten:

Newman Taylor Baker - Drum Suite Life (Innova)
Solo drums: unadorned and extremely tasty. Time Out preview.

Amir ElSaffar and Hafez Modirzadeh - Radif Suite (Pi)
Loosey-goosey, Ornette-ish freebop, some of the best I've heard that doesn't involve Ornette or his right-hand men. Time Out blog post.

John Escreet - Don't Fight the Inevitable (Mythology)
State-of-the-art inside/outside jazz with a good-kind-of-ridiculous supporting cast.

Tomas Fujiwara and the Hook-Up - Actionspeak (482)
A shrewdly uncategorizable statement: too elegant and meticulous for "outside"; too thorny and restless for "inside." Instead, just really good.

Fred Hersch Trio - Whirl (Palmetto)
Impossibly delicate and songful piano jazz.

Sam Newsome - Blue Soliloquy (self-released)
Ear-bending sound experiments, but with tons of feeling.

Mario Pavone: Orange Double Tenor - Arc Suite t/pi t/po (Playscape)
Another inside-outside winner, brimming with vigor and constructive quirk.

Kurt Rosenwinkel and OJM - Our Secret World (Word of Mouth)
Postfusion concertos, sleek and radiant.

Rova Sax Quartet and the Nels Cline Singers - The Celestial Septet (New World)
Draped in Rova's edgy finery, the Singers sound handsomer than I've ever heard them.

Greg Ward's Fitted Shards - South Side Story (Nineteen Eight)
Happy, hyperambitious prog-fusion-funk-jazz, spiced with charmingly ’80s-ish synths.

Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches

Thursday, December 12, 2019

Best of 2019: Jazz

Thursday, December 27, 2018

Best of 2018: Digest

Saturday, December 01, 2018

Year-end top 10 lists: 2005 through the present

Thursday, December 07, 2017

Best of 2017: Metal

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Radical convention: Winter Jazzfest 2013

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Best of 2012: Open season

Friday, September 16, 2011

The Big 4 at Yankee Stadium

Thursday, August 25, 2011

On "Do jazz critics need to know how to play jazz?"

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Book it: Chocolate and Cheese

Wednesday, December 08, 2010

2010 jazz top ten

my website

DFSBP archives

elsewhere

Blog Archive

With respect to:

About Me