The Heavy Metal Bebop Podcast

Some reading this may be familiar with Heavy Metal Bebop, the online interview series I launched back in 2011 dealing with the intersections of jazz and metal. I'm happy to announce that Heavy Metal Bebop is now a podcast. Go here to learn more and to stream or download the first episode, which features a conversation with Bad Plus drummer Dave King. Or just hit play below:



I've had more fun conducting these interviews than I have in just about any other journalistic endeavor to date, so I'm enormously happy to unveil this latest chapter of HMB. The other HMB Podcast episodes I've recorded so far have been a blast, and I can't wait for you to hear them.

Hope you enjoy! And stay tuned for episode 2 sometime in March.

Update: You can now hear and subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

Best of 2018: Jazz

I was thinking it might be fun to dissect this whole year-end process a bit, for anyone that might be interested in the extremely unscientific, whim-driven process behind the various lists, polls and reckonings I participate in each year around this time.

Let's take the general topic of jazz first. So this year, I both published a top 20 list on behalf of Rolling Stone and also submitted a top 10 list to Francis Davis' annual Jazz Critics Poll, the full results of which I expect will be online soon the results of which can be found here, with the annual round-up essay located here and the full ballot tally here. For me, the RS list — the first time that I know of (though I could be wrong) that the publication has run a year-end list devoted exclusively to jazz — was an attempt to unify my own, often idiosyncratic tastes with a more general-purpose portrait of the "year in jazz," which, at least to some degree, took into account intangible factors like "reach" and "impact" (relevant factors, in my mind, given Rolling Stone's fundamentally mainstream-oriented purview) not to mention the perspective of the publication as a whole. (For example, Kamasi Washington, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Makaya McCraven, the Bad Plus, and the London vanguardists like Shabaka Hutchings and Nubya Garcia are all artists that other writers — including Chris Weingarten, Natalie Weiner, David Fricke and Will Hermes, among others — have covered/championed at RS in recent years, and given that jazz is still more or less a niche genre within the larger scheme of RS coverage, that kind of "track record of support" with regard to a particular artist matters, at least in my estimation.) Again, it's an inexact science, but I wanted this list to feel institutional, i.e., representative of the aggregate RS perspective, while at the same time — especially given that it was, in the end, written solely by me — inclusive of my own opinions.

As an illustration of the above principles, here is the RS 2018 jazz top 20 (again, the full annotated list can be found here), followed by the personal 2018 jazz top 10 that I submitted to the Davis poll. You'll note that the rankings do not correspond exactly, and that some titles that ranked highly on the RS list are absent from the Davis one. With the Davis list, there's of course no attempt made to represent anything other than my own tastes, and more specifically, the albums that I spent the most time with this year— specifically/ideally, time that felt purely pleasurable, non-"work"-driven; this is an elusive idea, because the two can absolutely blur together, but over the years, I've come to really privilege and take note of the new music that attains true "escape velocity" within the sphere of my listening, that is to say, becomes part of my collection, as it were; I've found that only a couple of albums a year, if that, really satisfy this criterion in a given year, let alone continue to do so after the year in question has passed. Put another way, my private, purely for-pleasure listening rituals are sacred to me, often centering on old favorites, or lesser-known releases by artists I already love, and it's simply not that often that new music really worms its way into that company. (Not surprising, given how much of this for-pleasure listening centers around artists I've loved for years, if not decades; currently, for example, I'm cycling through the Cannibal Corpse discography for the umpteenth time, apropos of nothing other than that I love the band and "celebrate their entire catalog.")

Anyway, here goes…

Rolling Stone's 20 Best Jazz Albums of 2018:

1. The Bad Plus, Never Stop II (Legbreaker)

2. Cécile McLorin Salvant, The Window (Mack Avenue)

3. Wayne Shorter, Emanon (Blue Note)

4. Makaya McCraven, Universal Beings (International Anthem)

5. Brötzmann/Leigh, Sparrow Nights (Trost)

6. Charles Lloyd & the Marvels + Lucinda Williams, Vanished Gardens (Blue Note)

7. Various Artists, We Out Here (Brownswood)

8. Dan Weiss, Starebaby (Pi)

9. Ray Angry, One (JMI)

10. Houston Person and Ron Carter, Remember Love (HighNote)

 11. James Brandon Lewis and Chad Taylor, Radiant Imprints (Off)

12. Harriet Tubman, The Terror End of Beauty (Sunnyside / Early Future)

13. Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas Sound Prints, Scandal (Greenleaf)

14. Kamasi Washington, Heaven and Earth (Young Turks)

15. JP Schlegelmilch, Jonathan Goldberger and Jim Black, Visitors (Skirl)

16. Hailu Mergia, Lala Belu (Awesome Tapes From Africa)

17. Anteloper, Kudu (International Anthem)

18. Kris Davis and Craig Taborn, Octopus (Pyroclastic)

19. Andrew Cyrille, Lebroba (ECM)

20. Joshua Redman, Ron Miles, Scott Colley and Brian Blade, Still Dreaming (Nonesuch)

My personal 2018 jazz top 10, plus supplementary categories, as submitted to Francis Davis' annual Jazz Critics Poll:

New Releases

1. The Bad Plus, Never Stop II (Legbreaker)

2. Wayne Shorter, Emanon (Blue Note)

3. Dan Weiss, Starebaby (Pi)

4. Peter Brötzmann / Heather Leigh, Sparrow Nights (Trost)

5. Ray Angry, One (JMI)

6. Charles Lloyd & the Marvels + Lucinda Williams, Vanished Gardens (Blue Note)

7. James Brandon Lewis / Chad Taylor, Radiant Imprints (Off)

8. Makaya McCraven, Universal Beings (International Anthem)

9. Cécile McLorin Salvant, The Window (Mack Avenue)

10. Houston Person and Ron Carter, Remember Love (HighNote)Historical

1. Charles Mingus, Jazz in Detroit / Strata Concert Gallery / 46 Selden (BBE) 
[see review here]

2. John Coltrane, Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album (Impulse)
[see review here]

3. Beaver Harris/Don Pullen 360° Experience, A Well-Kept Secret (Corbett vs. Dempsey)
[see tweet here and related post here]
Vocal

Cécile McLorin Salvant, The Window (Mack Avenue)Debut

Ray Angry, One (JMI)

/////

A few notes on the above. Just to drive home how arbitrary this whole year-end-list process is, how governed by moods, whims, memory lapses, etc., I'm already wishing I could revise the Davis list above, to bring it more in line with my actual "year in music," i.e., to make it just a bit more reflective of that "listening for pure pleasure" concept I cited above. To be clear, I very much enjoyed all the albums I listed above, but there are others from the RS Top 20 pool that probably hit me harder on a personal level, one being the Schlegelmilch/Goldberger/Black disc (see RS entry here) and another being the Harriet Tubman (see RS entry here). Don't quote me on this, but I think at the time I submitted the Davis list, I was feeling some compulsion to get a little stricter re: what I did and didn't consider to be "jazz," though now I realize that deeming both of those albums — which, very much to their credit, don't fit comfortably into any kind of genre-centric reckoning — to be "jazz" for RS purposes and not for Jazz Critics Poll purposes seems flat-out absurd.

Oh, well! Again, I can't stress how make-it-up-as-I-go-along this whole process is, and in a way, I celebrate that fact, as it only drives home how ultimately subjective and, in a certain sense, pointless these kinds of reckonings are. The one sense in which they aren't pointless, I'd argue, is that they actually do allow for some kind of spotlighting of great/worthy music made during a given time period, which, given how short everyone's cultural memory is these days, can't really be viewed as a bad/detrimental thing.

Anyway, yes, those two albums are outstanding, and if I had the opportunity to resubmit the Davis poll, I'd probably find a way to include them. While we're on the subject of exclusions, I ought to mention that two of the albums on my all-genres-in-play top 10, which I'll discuss in a subsequent post, were made by artists who have been known to work in the "jazz" field but who, in these particular cases, seemed to transcend it to the point that labeling these records "jazz" just didn't feel right to me. I'm referring to Esperanza Spalding's 12 Little Spells and Tyshawn Sorey's Pillars. I think that my reviews of each, linked in the prior sentence, give a pretty good idea of why I think these records transcend not only jazz but any kind of idiomatic thinking. (If pressed, I'd call the former some kind of baroque art pop — honestly, I'm not sure there's a single moment of improvisation on it, which, to me, is maybe a dealbreaker in terms of it being labeled "jazz" — and the latter some kind of long-form ambient trance improv?)

That said, this is just one writer's opinion; I've seen these albums popping up on many jazz lists thus far and expect to see both represented somewhere in the Davis poll, to which I say, cool! However anyone wants to classify them, they're worthy of celebration, and to sweat the details seems, again, petty and absurd. I just feel compelled to mention them here by way of explaining why these titles, both of which I loved, are nowhere to be found on the "jazz" lists that I personally compiled.

There's a lot of music cited above, so I'm not going to get too deep into an exhaustive honorable-mentions list this time around. But I will say that I wish I had been able to spend more time with Jon Irabagon's Dr. Quixotic's Traveling Exotics, an outstanding, suite-like album of long-form compositions for "postbop" quintet (maybe something like the 2018 version of Wayne Shorter's All-Seeing Eye?) that, like, pretty everything Jon does, reveals new facets of his border-less, frequently revelatory art. If the chips had fallen just a little differently, this could easily have ended up among the titles named above. Listening back to it now, I'm remembering how compelling and compulsively listenable this record really is. Related: Do not miss this fascinating interview with Jon on Jeremiah Cymerman's invaluable 5049 Podcast, in which he discusses this recording in some depth.

P.S. Speaking of the whole categorization question, I'm not sure I'd call Middle Blue's Love Chords and Brandon Seabrook's Convulsionaries "jazz records" either, but I really dug both!

The Bad Plus: Can't stop, 'Never Stop'

Here, via Rolling Stone, is my take on the new Bad Plus album, Never Stop II. The short version: I think it's goddamn great, and I've been playing it on repeat for the past week.

It's been a little weird watching the Bad Plus go public about their recent personnel shakeup. (In addition to these authoritative accounts from Nate Chinen and Giovanni Russonello, don't miss Pamela Espeland's equally vital feature for the Star Tribune, as well as the full transcripts of her conversations with the band members and some of their key Twin Cities allies, which live at her bebopified blog.) Weird because a) there simply aren't that many jazz bands out there who are stable and longstanding enough for their membership changes to qualify as noteworthy news and because b) it's not often that you read about behind-the-scenes interpersonal discord — or even interpersonal dynamics, period — in jazz. (One example that stands out, ironically, is departed TBP pianist Ethan Iverson's remarkable 2009 interview with Keith Jarrett, in which the latter discusses life on the road with his classic American Quartet in disarmingly candid fashion: "If I hadn’t had Paul [Motian] as an ally, I’d probably be in a mental institution," etc.)

And because c) for a long while, TBP seemed like a collective you could really rally behind, a true all-for-one band, both on and offstage. (I wrote in 2010 about how the Iverson/Anderson/King lineup's collective identity only made the music feel that much richer and more distinctive.) I was not an early adopter when it came to these guys, but once I really took notice, appropriately around the time of the first Never Stop, I was firmly On Board.

But, you know, things change, and it sounds like in this case, with Reid Anderson and Dave King continuing on in the group and Iverson setting out on his own, it's absolutely for the best. On a pure fan level, I was a little worried there for a second — not least re: what would become of the other fine projects new TBP recruit Orrin Evans is involved in, most prominently the outstanding Tarbaby — but having heard Never Stop II, the whole thing makes a lot more sense. And by that I mean, and I tried to get at this in my review, this is still the Bad Plus you know and love. (To an immediate and almost comically extreme degree — I fully agree, for example, with Nate Chinen's statement re: the album-opening Anderson composition "Hurricane Birds" that "...anyone who has followed The Bad Plus over the years would be able to identify it after hearing the first chord of the song." From where I'm sitting, Anderson's compositional voice is indeed the heart and soul of the group, and it's sounding sturdier than ever on this record.) And if Reid Anderson and Dave King are still deeply engaged with this aesthetic and Ethan Iverson isn't, then mazel tov to all of them to figuring that out before the whole enterprise derailed. As a fan, also, of Iverson's outside work — with Billy Hart, Albert "Tootie" Heath, etc. — I'll absolutely be keeping an eye/ear out for whatever he's got coming down the pike, not least that Mark Turner duo album on ECM.

As bright as the future looks, I'm really glad I got to see TBP Mark 1 one last time, last month at the Vanguard, just two nights before Iverson's final bow with the group. Honestly, despite any lingering background tensions, the set I caught played out like pretty much all the other Bad Plus gigs I'd seen at the Vanguard and elsewhere in recent years, which is a decent amount. The set, filled with classic (to me, at least) songs like "My Friend Metatron," "You Are" and "1979 Semi Finalist," reminded me that this band transcends "jazz" in the way that any great band transcends its context. You're there, hearing them, and all that matters are the songs. That I can envision hearing Orrin Evans, Reid Anderson and Dave King play the Never Stop II songs in that same room and feeling that same way is one happy notion.

2015 in review

This year, I often felt like I was sneaking new music in. I started a new job, put out a record and saw a two-decade obsession finally bear fruit. Honestly, there wasn't all that much room for anything else. But as I look back through the year's releases, I see quite a few that made an impression.

Genre pretty much went out the window, which is the way it ought to be. Last night, my wonderful girlfriend, Alex, and I spent some time sharing our current pop obsessions, which seem to be everyone's current pop obsessions. I love all the songs making the rounds: "Hotline Bling," "The Hills," "Here" (the latter is probably the single of the year for me). Bieber's "Sorry" is another in-the-air favorite that will not leave my brain. I did file jazz, metal and general-purpose year-end lists for various polls, but looking back, none of them feel definitive to me. That orderly, fenced-off approach doesn't reflect how music fits into my life. The other night, some friends and I sat around spinning vinyl ranging from the latest Sheer Mag 7" (my album of the year, even though it isn't an album) to the new Fleetwood Mac Tusk reissue, the stellar Laddio Bolocko box set and, just because, Bob Dylan's Infidels. It's all sitting by my turntable, along with a ton of other records that captivated me at one point or another recently: Sonny Rollins's The Bridge, the Eagles' One of These Nights, Keelhaul's Triumphant Return to Obscurity, Pat Metheny's 80/81, Blue Öyster Cult's Tyranny and Mutation, Roky Erickson's The Evil One, Joni Mitchell's Hejira, the Stooges' Fun House, etc. (I'm proud to say that the craw set and STATS LP are there too.) Music.

It's all in play at all times. It has to be a free space. In that spirit, here are some of the records that I enjoyed this year, that happened to come out this year, in no particular order—10 of them will eventually make up my Pazz and Jop ballot. Links to Bandcamp only, because that's where online music really lives

Krallice Ygg Huur (self-released)
This record to me is pure astonishment. It's my favorite thing Krallice has ever done—and that's saying a lot because I love much of their prior work, especially the self-titled debut and 2011's Diotima—and one of my favorite things that either Mick Barr and Colin Marston have ever done, which is saying even more. (Close call with Annwn and Skullgrid, respectively.) The amount of musical information here is staggering, as is the confidence and majestic flair with which it is rendered. This is art music, plain and simple, the vanguard of contemporary composition, that happens to be transmitted in a format we might refer to in shorthand as metal.

Sheer Mag II (Wilsuns/Katorga)
Probably the release I really and truly felt the most of any that came out in 2015. It's a four-song EP, but as an aesthetic statement of purpose, it's as weighty as any album I heard this year. The soul, the smarts, the wounded swagger. This is just pure rough rock-and-soul attitude filtered through an at times dauntingly complex sophisto-pop aesthetic. And vocals to melt your heart and cut through whatever distraction might be unfairly monopolizing your spirit on a given day. This just kicks so, so, so much ass.

Henry Threadgill Zooid In for a Penny, in for a Pound (Pi)
Zooid just keep pushing. One of the most insular bands on earth, and one of the most fascinating to stand outside of and cast one's listening gaze upon. I heard this music at Roulette a year ago, and it seemed like a new high bar for the group. The album completely does the set justice. So much beautiful detail, either when the band is cooking in its trademark oblique-chamber-funk mode or stripping back for mini sonic dioramas of curious detail and staunch refinement. Oddities and wonders abound, and they're only amplified by heightened attention. When you put on a Zooid record, you listen, and you listen to the members of Zooid listening, each playing their part in Threadgill's imaginative wonderland.

Mayday Parade Black Lines (Fearless)
Not a new band, but a new one to me. Mainstays of the Warped Tour scene and exponents of an emo offshoot that's near and dear to my heart and probably best exemplified by Say Anything's 2004 masterwork, …Is a Real Boy. Hugely passionate and anthemic pop-oriented rock music with a belt-to-the-rafters theatrical bent and an undercurrent of showy self-laceration. This album is totally, knowingly over-the-top and, if you're as into this sound as I am, eminently replayable.

Milford Graves and Bill Laswell Space / Time • Redemption (TUM)
I saw these two play duets at the Stone last year, and the chemistry was lacking. They find a groove on this album simply by coexisting. This is basically an ambient release, elevated above the mundane by the primeval thump of one of the mightiest and most mysterious percussionists on earth, and Laswell's melodic and textural know-how, which can blur into wallpaper-ism but here seems subtle and right and soothing and benevolent. To me, this is a logical sequel to Sonny Sharrock's Guitar (one of my very favorite records of all time), and not just because a) there's a track named for Sonny here and b) Laswell produced Guitar. Mystical, swirling, churning tone baths. 

Jeff Lynne's ELO Alone in the Universe (Columbia)
I'm not an ELO completist, but I aspire to be one someday. Jeff Lynne's lifelong project, i.e., crafting Beatlesque pop music of limitless accessibility that doesn't apologize for its sly surreality and lyrical eccentricity, is a worthy one, and judging by this album, and by the outstanding live show I saw at Irving Plaza last month, he's still operating at a very high level. There are a handful of songs here ("When I Was a Boy," "One Step at a Time") that feel like future greatest hits, which, given the depth the ELO greatest-hit pool, is really saying something.

Stanley Cowell Juneteenth (Vision Fugitive)
I spent a fair amount of time with this one but it didn't feel like anywhere near enough. I hear Juneteenth as a cousin of Dave Burrell's breathtaking 1979 solo-piano version of Windward Passages, one of those albums where a pianist translates the vast orchestral universe inside their head to the keys. This feels like a magnum opus for Cowell and an important reminder that this giant continues to do great, vital work. Further thoughts here.

Voice Coils Heaven's Sense (Shatter Your Leaves)
Another EP that delineates an entire sonic world. This, like the Krallice record, seems to me to be a state-of-the-art example of not exactly where music is at this moment, because nothing else really sounds like Heaven's Sense, but of a sort of speculative future of music, where pop could end up if diligence and wisdom and higher instincts prevailed. Demanding, yes, but so sensuous and pleasurable and coherent at the same time. There are hooks in "An Atrium" that have run through my head for days. If you consider yourself a fan of so-called progressive music of any kind, or of pop that aims at a kind of ethereal complexity and sweeping and refined emotional heft—I'll throw out Kate Bush and Yes as two inadequate touchstones—you must, must, must hear this. The descriptor "haunting" has been drained of most of its meaning, but it applies here.

Mary Halvorson Meltframe (Firehouse 12)
Another release with a kind of fierce beauty and interiority to it, but while the Voice Coils EP is all about high-wire ensemble dazzlement, this is stripped back and close to the bone. A simple description of what Meltframe is—meditation on and deconstruction of melody—feels way too clinical. This is an album that sings with emotion. A personal language on a common instrument, spoken plainly—sort of the rule for how all jazz ought to feel but rarely does. All the approaches to the gorgeous and carefully selected source material work equally well: harsh, subdued, dense/effects-heavy, sparse/unadorned or one melting gradually into the other.

Tau Cross Tau Cross (Relapse)
A debut album that sets forth a strikingly well-formed band concept. Shades of Killing Joke, Motörhead, recent Prong and, yes, mid-to-late-period Voivod (that band's Michel "Away" Langevin is Tau Cross's drummer). Gloom-painted postpunk–meets-thrash-meets–hard rock with outstanding hooks and tons of variety; surprisingly, the folky tracks work as well as the ragers. Rob "The Baron" Miller's impassioned delivery brings real grizzled pathos. Further thoughts here.

Black Star Riders The Killer Instinct (Nuclear Blast)
The group that began life as the Band Once Again Known as Thin Lizzy but Without Phil Lynott is now, thankfully, rolling up their sleeves and doing it the hard way: forging ahead and making new music. This album sounds like it could have been made anywhere from about 1983 through 1989, but no one for whom music like this—hook-forward, arena-scaled, cheese-oblivious hard rock—holds any appeal is going to care about its "relevance." This album completely, wholeheartedly rocks. The Riders pay homage to Lizzy, yes, but really they're just honoring the tough-guy songwriting tradition in general; there's just as much Bon Jovi in here, and that's fine by me. Fantastic songs—well, on the first half of the album, at least—and a frontman, Ricky Warwick, who's easy to believe and root for.

Title Fight Hyperview (ANTI-)
There's apparently some sort of subgenre-oriented skin-shedding going on with this record—hardcore-gone-shoegaze, I believe—but since I'm not familiar with Title Fight's past work, I'm taking this at face value. Hyperview is simply a lush and enveloping melodic indie-rock album, undergirded with post-hardcore muscle and glistening with a melancholy emotional mist. The color field of guitars and the raw-throated cries that burst out from beneath them lead to a kind of mood-drunkenness that's a pleasure to get lost in. It helps that the songs themselves are as strong as the atmosphere.

Jack DeJohnette Made in Chicago (ECM)
As I indicated here, the quintet heard on this album has evolved considerably since they recorded this album at the Chicago Jazz Festival in 2013, but Made in Chicago still holds up as a supergroup effort that capitalizes on every bit of its enormous potential. The stars here, and I think Mr. DeJohnette would agree, are Muhal Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill, and the presence of a master drummer-leader who also happens to be one of the best listeners in jazz only makes their contributions—both as composers and improvisers—sound that much sweeter (or nastier or more otherworldly, depending on the moment). Not just great artists sharing the stage, but the sound of a group aesthetic crystallizing, and the stage being set for future wonders.

Laddio Bolocko Live and Unreleased 1997–2000 (No Quarter)
Post-hardcore colliding with funk, free jazz, sound collage and psychedelia in a totally organic way. The prog impulse channeled into fiercely danceable body music, fueled by one of the greatest drummers of our time, Blake Fleming, who I first came to know through the illustrious and incredible Dazzling Killmen. I'd always felt that I hadn't quite gotten the complete picture regarding this band from its earlier No Quarter compilation, The Life and Times of…, and this release confirms it. A heady barrage of archival material, some quizzical and fragmented, some gorgeously dialed in and fleshed out. (I adore the groove-science "Afrostructure" series, which falls somewhere in between these two poles.) The final stretch of this sprawling set, with the studio version of the two-part cosmic-groove-prog opus "How About This For My Hair?" and a live set from Slovenia that's so intense it feels like it could leave scars (but is also wonderfully subdued and sensitive in spots), is the reason why archival releases like this are essential to the musical ecosystem: to bring to light bygone marvels you never knew existed.

Sonny Rollins Quartet With Don Cherry Complete Live at the Village Gate 1962 (Solar)
Speaking of bygone marvels. We maybe had a clue with this one in the form of Our Man in Jazz, but did we really know the enormity of what went down until now? 

Blind Idiot God Before Ever After (Indivisible)
BIG share Laddio Bolocko's NYC-via–St. Louis trajectory, as well as their wide-open conception of what rock-based post-hardcore music can sound and feel like. Another Laswell production, and a balletic, rumbling behemoth of a comeback album. Everything about Before Ever After sounds to me like an improvement on the already-intriguing formula that BIG advanced on their late-’80s/early-’90s work. Can't wait to see where they go from here.

Revenge Behold.Total.Rejection (Season of Mist)
J. Read is like a gigantic mutant rat that leaps out of the darkness, chomps on your leg and refuses to unclench its jaws as you flail about in agony. The man is a driven psychopath behind the drums and one of metal's truest, most original underground voices. On days when I lose faith in the idea of metal, grow weary with its self-straitjacketing conventions, I can still reach for a Revenge album—and specifically this, which is easily the band's most compelling record to date—and feel something. Pure, seething soul and fire, and the deft commingling of chaos and precision. Just when you think this album is a total blastbeat blur, it snaps back into focus with a skull-rattling rawk breakdown or cave-prog precision attack. If you want to know my "metal album of the year," it's a tie between this and Ygg Huur—despite what my ballot says below; again, feelings change and evolve, which is why polls are just arbitrary snapshots in time—albums that represent two very different extremes of "extreme metal" that actually feel, you know, extreme. Further thoughts here.

The Bad Plus and Joshua Redman The Bad Plus Joshua Redman (Nonesuch)
This album didn't top my 2015 jazz ballot, but if I were casting said vote right now instead of a few weeks back, it probably would. The Bad Plus Joshua Redman is a near-perfect record, an exemplary illustration of everything we already know the Bad Plus does well—at this point, their sonic fingerprint is as instantly recognizable as that of, say, the Who—given a smart tweak/kick-in-the-ass via the presence of a contemporary tenor-saxophone master. This quartet was already great four years ago, but here, there's a sense of shared purpose that feels hard-earned through hours and hours spent together onstage. Instantly memorable compositions, performances that move with convincing emotional purpose and with utmost concern for the musical material at hand, whether it's crisp, refined and determinedly melodic or sprawling, choppy and, well, determinedly melodic. Jazz always needs more song-focus, more band-focus, and the Bad Plus keep showing us how handsomely those philosophies can pay off. Here, they have some very able assistance. Not really measuring by length here, but this is the 2015 "epic" for me.

Interlude:
So yes, maybe I'm getting in a small dig at Kamasi Washington's The Epic there (and also, more explicitly, in the Stanley Cowell blurb linked above). The Epic certainly wasn't an album I disliked, but nor was it was one I connected with on any deep level. I heard glossy, tastefully updated retro bombast with strong melodies, some truly ass-kicking post-Coltrane/turbo-bop moments and long stretches of not-much-happening. I'd hold up any of the jazz albums listed above as far better examples of "where jazz is at" than The Epic any day. But then again…

Kendrick Lamar To Pimp a Butterfly (Top Dawg / Aftermath / Interscope)
The Kamasi-wave wasn't really about Kamasi. It was about Washington's role in this thorny masterpiece, which topped every poll both because of its sociopolitical urgency in a year where the topics Lamar dealt with on To Pimp… were not only impossible to ignore but impossible not to despair over, and because, well, it was an enthralling LP, period, a searing self-interrogation that balanced every menacing boast with a choked-up sniffle. Everyone seemed to want to tell me that the album I just described was actually D'Angelo's Black Messiah. I didn't quite connect with that one, either, but I believed every last second of this.

Iron Maiden The Book of Souls (Parlophone/Sanctuary)
Same goes for this. I like Iron Maiden, which seems weird to say, since they're a band beloved by their fan base in an uniquely rabid way and ignored by pretty much everyone else. Honestly, I just don't know the catalog that well, but The Book of Souls was an instant "yes, please" for me. I love the way the visceral, bottom-heavy production sound combines with Bruce Dickinson's heroic yet endearingly strained-sounding vocals, and I love how itself this band remains, how committed they sound to this thing called metal that is really, for them, simply Iron Maiden Music. Like the Black Star Riders album, The Book of Souls rocks in a timeless way. I didn't once make it through the entire LP in a single sitting, but whenever I checked in with it—from archetypal single "Speed of Light" to that hammy yet genuinely touching 18-minute finale, "Empire of the Clouds"—I felt uplifted and inspired.

Weather Report The Legendary Tapes 1978–1981 (Legacy)
This hits me in a similar way: a supremely confident band, doing its thing. As a group, Weather Report had a strange magic—virtuosic daredevilry, yes, but also festive melody and childlike wonder and a certain kind of zany party-prog verve. None of the truly great acts that we label as "fusion" (ahem…) really sounded anything alike, and this release helps us see Weather Report for the style-transcendent anomaly that they were, and adds to the welcome hoopla surrounding the Jaco documentary release (and my own private hoopla surrounding a recent deep immersion in the Jaco–Joni Mitchell collaboration).

Morgoth Ungod (Century Media)
Deactivate brain. Rage. Repeat. (For those who related to this, as well as my Obituary and Asphyx gushing over the years, you need to hear Ungod.)

Kirk Knuffke Arms and Hands (Royal Potato Family)
This cornet specialist continues to record in all kinds of interesting contexts, bringing fresh ideas to each situation. I agree with the core mission statement of Arms and Hands—that bringing together Bill Goodwin and Mark Helias was a fantastic idea. (Lamplighter, another 2015 Knuffke session featuring Goodwin, is also well worth your time, and from what I've read and the samples, this sounds awesome.) Another example of jazz-as-personal-sonic-signature, in personnel, mood, repertoire.


Update, 12/28/15:
David S. Ware / Apogee Birth of a Being (Aum Fidelity)
Heart-burstingly passionate trio music—perhaps the single most convincing document of post-Ayler free jazz I've heard—from 1977, reissued here with extra material. Apogee, a working band with Cooper-Moore (then Gene Ashton) on piano and Marc Edwards on drums, is, to me, every bit as compelling as Ware's later, better-known quartet with Matthew Shipp, William Parker, etc. Massive.

Update, 12/29/15
Killing Joke Pylon (Spinefarm)
The only reason this one wasn't on here before is that I hadn't yet had a chance to spend good time with it. As with ELO, I'm not a Killing Joke completist, but I aspire to be one. I adored KJ's 2010 album, Absolute Dissent, but sort of slept on 2012's MMXII. I need to go back and remedy that, because this new one is another monster. Menace, beauty, relentless momentum, enthralling texture. Few bands can conjure such a pervasive, well-shaded sensation of gloom.

Update, 12/30/15
Elder Lore (Armageddon Shop)
Whoo boy, does this thing kick ass. A few people (one being my friend and former colleague Steve Smith) had tipped me off to Lore during the course of the year, but I didn't really dig in till just now. I'll reprise a line I just tweeted, because it sums up my thoughts well: This is like recent Mastodon gone full prog, with vastly better production. I'm still digesting this, but it seems to me that the quality of the songwriting on Lore matches the enormous ambition on display here, which is sort of insane given how high these guys are clearly aiming.

Jaco 
A documentary that aims for and achieves definitive status via its smart balance of the personal and the musical. Watching this, you feel like you're seeing Jaco from all sides. Moving and insightful testimony from collaborators (Peter Erskine, Joni Mitchell, Wayne Shorter, et al.) and confidants (Bill Milkowski's contribution is particularly valuable). Breathtaking footage. A complicated life, dealt with sensitively yet unflinchingly.

Update, 12/31/15
Napalm Death Apex Predator — Easy Meat (Century Media)
Namechecked below but deserves a special shout-out. What I love about newer Napalm Death is, paradoxically, how clean it sounds. The current incarnation of this band is miles away from state-of-the-art extremity; by comparison, the Revenge album above makes 2015 Napalm (at least the recorded version) sound like Chuck Berry. But I'm fascinated by the way they've refined their craft for maximum accessibility and coherence, while remaining committed to speed and abrasiveness, and a genuine sense of purgative rage, embodied by Barney Greenway. You can hear everything that's going on in this music, and there's great care taken in the composition, pacing, mood. Extremity isn't really the issue: Napalm Death is, at this point simply, a great, adventurous rock band.

P.S. Phil Freeman's guide to the ND discography is essential for those of us who know bits and pieces of the band's long, complicated history but not the whole thing.

*****

The nitty-gritty

2015 Jazz Ballot (with regard to this poll)
1. Milford Graves and Bill Laswell Space/Time • Redemption (TUM)
2. Jack DeJohnette Made in Chicago (ECM)
3. Henry Threadgill Zooid In for a Penny, in for a Pound (Pi)
4. Mary Halvorson Meltframe (Firehouse 12)
5. The Bad Plus and Joshua Redman The Bad Plus Joshua Redman (Nonesuch)
6. Stanley Cowell Juneteenth (Vision Fugitive)
7. Wadada Leo Smith and John Lindberg Celestial Weather (TUM)
8. Kirk Knuffke Arms and Hands (Royal Potato Family)
9. Jon Irabagon Behind the Sky (Irabbagast)
10. John Zorn Inferno (Tzadik)

2015 Metal Ballot (with regard to this list)
1. Revenge Behold.Total.Rejection (Season of Mist)
2. Black Star Riders The Killer Instinct (Nuclear Blast)
3. Iron Maiden The Book of Souls (Parlophone/Sanctuary)
4. Tau Cross Tau Cross (Relapse)
5. Blind Idiot God Before Ever After (Indivisible)
6. Krallice Ygg Huur (self-released)
7. Morgoth Ungod (Century Media)
8. Royal Thunder Crooked Doors (Relapse)
9. Napalm Death Apex Predator — Easy Meat (Century Media)
10. Embodied Torment Liturgy of Ritual Execution (New Standard Elite)

10 Best Shows I Saw in 2015
1/13 - Celebrating Charlie Haden (The Town Hall)
2/13 - John Zorn, Steve Coleman, Milford Graves + Marc Ribot, Trevor Dunn, Tyshawn Sorey (Village Vanguard)
2/26 - Xylouris White (Bowery Ballroom)
3/15 - Charles Lloyd Quartet (Village Vanguard)
5/10 - Morpheus Descends (Saint Vitus)
6/11 - Feast of the Epiphany + Travis Laplante (IBeam)
6/20 - Dead Moon + Borbetomagus (Pioneer Works)
6/29 - Rush (MSG)
8/21 - Krallice (The Stone)
10/5 - Jack DeJohnette’s Made in Chicago (Cornell University)

With a special honorable mention for Ayahuasca, Godstopper, Couch Slut and Pyrryon at BRIEFCASEFEST 2015.

SONGS/2015

Songs of themselves: A Tribute to Paul Motian

Tribute concerts, or themed musical gatherings of any kind, come lugging a lot of baggage. What you hope is that they achieve some sort of lift-off, that at some point, you can set aside the "significance" of it all and just listen. That the musicians can get carried away, so that the same might happen to you, the listener.

I'm tempted to throw out a superlative (ahem, "Best tribute concert I've ever seen"), but that means less than to say that there are moments from last night's Paul Motian tribute concert at Symphony Space that I don't think I'll forget. Here are some of those:

Billy Hart and Andrew Cyrille's duet. As a drummer, I generally disdain mult-drum-set situations. A lot of the time, I just don't think they sound very good. This, though, was just poetic. On the surface, its appeal had very little to do with Paul Motian. I think that is completely okay. Hart and Cyrille are peers of Motian; they know that "tribute" doesn't always signify some sort of obvious allusion to. What the two drummers did, is they got up there and played together, for about eight minutes or so. It was tremendously exciting, not just because it was forceful, kinetic, sometimes loud, but because it was all those things and also an uncanny feat of listening. Cyrille sat down at his set first; Hart walked onstage and gave him a little shoulder squeeze from behind, speaking into his ear. They were both smiling. We don't know what was said, but since we heard what came next, we more or less did know. What I remember about the duet is how crisp it was, how clean and just deadly precise each drummer's ideas were. They overlapped, they traded; sometimes, for brief flashes, it was sort of a soloist and accompaniment thing, with Hart marking texture on the hi-hat while Cyrille went off. It was "free" but it wasn't jarring in the slightest. It just cohered, like a good short story. These two just sat down and did it, both players sounding exactly, unmistakably like themselves. Two master drummers, taking care of creative business. It was at once so graceful and completely ass-kicking. If there was anything Motian-y about it, I guess it was that—the willfulness of it, the authority, the license to just stand up and make something.

Masabumi Kikuchi's solo turn had something similar. Most of the pieces on the program were Motian favorites, identified in the program. Above the line announcing Kikuchi's unaccompanied appearance, though, it just said "TBA." Much like Hart/Cyrille, he just walked out there and did it, but in his own strange, quietly luminous way. My God, who is this man? My sense is that many were asking each other the same question during the sort of stunned applause that followed his performance. I wish I had a more exact recall of exactly how his improvisation sounded, but then again, that wouldn't be very Motian-y. It was a ripple, a stirring, a twinge. The thing that I loved about it was, while it was essentially a "ballad"—quiet, sparse, at certain moments heartbreaking—it was not merely pretty. It had a searching feeling that was real. There was other gorgeous "chamber"-style playing that went on last night. (The Matt Mitchell–Tim Berne duo was a killer in this vein) But none captured that innate Motian mystery more than this, that sense of ear-caressing beauty combined with the uncertainty that you're not on steady footing, that the going is rough, that the sensation of serenity is going to have to be somehow earned. Kikuchi's growly vocalizing was all a part of this. It was hard to imagine the performance without it. What was easy, was to understand why this man was, in many ways, Motian's pianist of choice. I've been listening a lot to Sunrise, but I can't wait to listen more, and to really dig into to the Tethered Moon material. (Ratliff's profile and Iverson's interview are essential, btw.)

Of the more orthodox performances—and I don't say that dismissively; I just mean to say "The performances where the musicians more or less played Motian's music in a Motian-influenced style"—my favorite might have been the Bad Plus with Bill Frisell, Joe Lovano and Ravi Coltrane. Frisell and Lovano were, please understand, the heart and soul of this evening. They were onstage a lot, together and separately, and they were always gracious—at the ends of pieces, you'd see Frisell beaming and bowing toward his collaborators, as if to say, "Thank you for doing this—with me but for Paul"—and always (especially in the case of Lovano) going for it. During this particular turn, the matter at hand was "Abacus," played in that sort of classic, drunkenly marching, smeary-parade-music style that some Motian work gets at, where everyone is stating the melody together while at the same time gleefully coloring outside of the lines. This was a tribute to the songfulness of Motian, to the aspect of his pieces that, to paraphrase something Joe Lovano told me, made you want to play them for hours, just trance out on them, cycling the melody over and over, decorating it a little, maybe, but mostly just living with it, letting it roll off your tongue. The Bad Plus were perfect for something like this, because, as I have written before, they are true stewards and connoisseurs of melody. Dave King approximated that sort of stumbling Motian free time without sounding slavish, and Reid Anderson and Ethan Iverson laid out this sumptuous carpet—the song, or a version of it, waving and billowing. I remember that Frisell was loud—not aggressive, but far from the delicate-ness he displayed during a lot of the other sets. I remember that Lovano was, as usual, completely inside the song, yet completely in control; authoritative, brawny, but listening, not just letting it fly. I remember that Coltrane was more reticent, but almost more stunning. His control over the horn was something very special, but beyond that, it was really the sense he projected of humbly serving the music that impressed me. He was there for the song, as were all the rest of the players.

I would say the same of so many of the others who were there. I loved watching Joey Baron and Matt Wilson play, sensing that they were simultaneously having a blast and were maybe just very slightly awed by the occasion, by the act of occupying the chair of someone who projected such authority, effortlessness and style. Both of them found their zone and lifted off, Baron in a version of "Dance" with Frisell, Lovano, Billy Drewes and Ed Schuller, and Wilson in spectacularly entertaining "Drum Music" finale, during which the 20 or so musicians onstage seemed at times bewildered but then rallied for a sublimely together group theme statement. Again, just celebrating the song, letting it blare out.

Or letting it diffuse into the room like a scent, as was the case during a Frisell-led guitar choir, with Jakob Bro, Steve Cardenas, Ben Monder and Jerome Harris. This was a little mini meditation or seance. "Paul loved guitar so…," Frisell said by way of introduction. It's a cliché to say of these tribute events that the subject in question "would've loved" such and such a bit, but I say that of this performance without hesitation. It was a tribute to the aspect of Motian's music that was a sort of license to be okay with just texture, just atmosphere, to not feel the compulsion to officially "begin playing"—that thing that happens in jazz right after the head is over and the solos begin, which can sometimes make you feel almost dejected that the "song" part of it all has, for the time being, evaporated—but to just commune. Frisell and Lovano's duet on "It Should've Happened a Long Time Ago" was another one in this vein. What I admired about that was how brief it was. These were the stars of the evening; they could've rightly stretched out if they'd wanted to, but they just went in, paid their respects to the piece (one of Motian's real heartbreakers), living with that melody one more time, and exited gracefully.

Other sets kicked up a lot of dust, and this made sense too. Marilyn Crispell and Ben Monder were the unleashers of the evening, each making a pretty glorious racket during their respective performances with Cyrille. (The groups were, respectively, Crispell, Lovano, Gary Peacock and Cyrille, and Monder, Bill McHenry, Anderson and Cyrille.) I got the sense from Crispell that she got completely carried away, not necessarily by the whole "spirit of Motian" thing, but by the chance to be up there slaying alongside Andrew Cyrille; you could not mistake the inherent Cecil-ness of what was going on. It was wild and really fun to watch. Monder, on the other hand, snuck up behind McHenry—sounding, typically, eerily authoritative while maintaining that very Motian-y unknowability of his, that sense that he knows exactly what he's aiming for and that he isn't going to hold your hand while he goes there—conjuring this poison-cloud wash and then, when it was his turn to solo, dropping the incendiary shred as only he can. Both of these turns (the Crispell, the Monder) seemed just a little bullish to me, which again, was perfectly appropriate for the occasion. Motian's playing could often be that way too.

Petra Haden projected the opposite attitude. She was nervous, as she admitted. She read a beautiful note from her father, in which he identified Motian as his heartbeat. It was one of those sentiments that would've sounded cliché in almost any other case but this, i.e., there's an insane amount of wonderful recorded evidence to support Haden's claim. Petra Haden's performance of "The Windmills of Your Mind" was clear and yearning, not explicitly elegiac but definitely nostalgic. It was right to have only Frisell there to accompany her, so that the song could take on that sort of disembodied quality that Motian always seemed to be aiming for.

Like pretty much all of what went down last night, this performance eventually took flight, transcended the occasion, meant something more than mere reverence. Motian shone through in a lot of it, but what it was really about were all these great personalities—and I haven't mentioned Geri Allen, Greg Osby, Larry Grenadier, maybe a couple others, all of whom shone in their own ways—moving through the material and into a personal space, singing Motian, which in turn let them sing themselves.

The Billy Hart Quartet: A portrait

Here's my new TONY profile of the Billy Hart Quartet, based on an interview with Hart and Ethan Iverson, conducted back in February at Birdland. The occasion is All Our Reasons, the long-awaited (by me, anyway) follow-up to 2006's Quartet.

Hopefully it's not too evident in the writing, but I struggled a bit with this piece, mainly because I had so much I wanted to do justice to in such a confined space, not to mention a ton of exposition, aimed at the jazz novice. I also had an insightful, wide-ranging joint interview to draw on. I hope the subjects will pardon me if, in the end, I used less of their verbatim thoughts than I'd expected to. As I was working, I realized I was after a portrait more than a photograph, a way to convey the special camaraderie shared by Billy Hart and Ethan Iverson (and by extension, Ben Street and Mark Turner).

I hope to see the band live next week at Birdland (they're there from Tuesday, 4/3 through Saturday, 4/7). I've got my fingers crossed for the more meditative material from All Our Reasons, e.g., the sprawling mood piece "Song for Balkis" and the superbly unflashy drum feature "Wasteland." Nothing against the upbeat stuff; it's just that, to my ears, the band's sweet spot is a dusky sound space, like the distant rumble of an oncoming storm.

/////

*Here's Ethan Iverson's interview with Billy Hart, which I mention in the piece.

*Here's a nice promo video dealing with the new record.

*Here's Nate Chinen's take on All Our Reasons. I'll heartily second "the dark shimmer of [Hart's] cymbals and the raspy catch of his snare."

*And here's a new Jazz Session interview with Mr. Hart. Haven't gotten a chance to take this one in yet, but I can't wait.

The Bad Plus and Joshua Redman: Opening the airlock

I have seen probably 20 or more free-jazz performances that quickly ramped up to a blaring peak, stayed there for a half hour or so and petered out. As a listener, it's hard not to grow numb to this kind of thing after a while.

Last night's 10:30pm Blue Note set by the Bad Plus with Joshua Redman climaxed with an expressionist freak-out, but crucially, it was brief and strategic. The band was playing Reid Anderson's "Silence Is the Question." They gradually climbed from sparse placidness to a shrieking, stampeding summit—two to three minutes long, I'd say—that was maybe the most concentrated blast of intensity I've ever heard at a live jazz performance. (Redman, especially, was merciless, easily holding his own among my collected memories of witnessing players like Brötzmann or Mats Gustafsson.) It was quite honestly shocking on a straight-up visceral level, as though the quartet had suddenly opened an airlock and let the terrible void of deep space rush in. The perfect sneak attack: not beating an audience over the head for a hour, but taking them on a long, varied, generally pleasant tour (the rest of the set was good—with Redman, overall, coming off as deeply engaged and thrilled to be there—especially versions of Ethan Iverson's "Guilty" and Anderson's "You Are," but the finale was on a whole other level) and then depositing them without warning at Satan's feet. I looked around the club, feeling almost sorry for any tourists who had accidentally stumbled in.

A quick, steady decrescendo, and the set was over. "That was the one," I saw Dave King say to Anderson, which I hope means they were recording. "That last part was perfect jazz," said Laal. Yes, it was.

The Bad Plus vs. Sideman Syndrome at the Village Vanguard

The Bad Plus opened at the Village Vanguard last night (they're there through Sunday) and I caught the late set. As expected, it was great. The trio was tight, energetic and—crucially—engaged.

With respect to the latter quality, I couldn't help but think back to the last performance I witnessed at the Vanguard. I'll not name names, but it was one of those jazz shows we've all attended way too many times: professional yet perfunctory. Even with a deeply idiosyncratic bandleader, the show just felt depressingly normal, plagued—as jazz so often is—by Sideman Syndrome. There are a few too many players onstage, and for most of the set, they are standing around, waiting to solo. Your ears prick up during the heads, and once they're over, the thread is lost and the energy dips. Round and round go the solos, and even if you didn't just see one of the waiting-his-turn horn players check his watch, you might as well have.

It is often pointed out, by the members of the Bad Plus and by their fans, that the Bad Plus is a BAND, a trio with steady membership (going strong for ten years now, a fact celebrated on Never Stop, my No. 3 album of 2010 yet a surprisingly low finisher in the 2010 Voice Jazz Critics' Poll). That this is an obvious fact doesn't mean it's a negligible one. It's a fact I remember noting the last time I saw the band (in September of ’08), but last night, I couldn't keep my mind off it.

It's impossible to understate the appeal of performers who are very obviously INTO what they're doing, who—in contrast with the Sideman Syndrome scenario—have something at stake. That's how it felt last night: all three men alert and emotionally attuned, passing the energy back and forth, hanging on every detail of the lovingly detailed compositions (all originals, about half drawn from Never Stop, plus an encore version of Aphex Twin's "Flim"). There was none of that standing-around-waiting-to-play nonsense. When pianist Ethan Iverson dropped out near the end of the set to let bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King tussle as a duo, he watched them attentively. It was clear he still had something invested, and it wasn't just that he wanted to make sure he re-entered at the right time. It was that he was performing as part of a BAND (really a composers' collective, if you want to get heady about it, since all three Bad Plus–ers write for the group), not simply a group of musicians playing a gig. The GIG-hood of a performance is, I really think, what people mean when they refer to the death of jazz, that depressing, let's-take-turns-soloing formality that plays itself out night after night after night. I'm not saying that magic can't occur in a conventional pick-up-group format, but I feel that ultimately, what really draws people to this music are BANDS. It's the same in rock: Think of Rush, the classic LEADERLESS trio, all players engaged at all times.

One thing that's great about the BAND-dom of the Bad Plus is that they're not one of those "You have to see them live" outfits. Admittedly, I didn't become a bona fide fan until after I saw them in ’08, but that may have just been because I hadn't spent good time with their recordings. I have spent good time with Never Stop, and I can now say that it's a really wholesome document, totally representative of where the band is at right this minute. I'm not saying "Don't see them live"—if you're in or around NYC, by all means, go this week. What I'm saying is that if you do go, your experience will only be enhanced if you know the band's catalog.

You know that feeling you get when a band you love has recently come out with a new album, and you've listened to it a whole bunch in anticipation for their live show, and they bust out one of the tracks from the record onstage and you feel this ecstatic happiness, this delight in fresh familiarity? (I remember experiencing that sensation at this past April's Ludicra concert.) It was like that last night. Pretty much the whole set grabbed me, but the pieces that shook me to the core were my favorites from Never Stop. King's "My Friend Metatron," with its dancing hyperintricacy, resolving into a folky backbeat groove; Anderson's "Never Stop," a righteous disco-as-object-of-beauty anthem; and "People Like You" (also by Anderson), an extended, elegantly trudging ballad that has to be the single most drop-dead-gorgeous composition of 2010.

All these sounded fantastic last night, and their flawless execution, allowing me to experience these familiar pieces loudly and live-ly, is what I'll take away from the show. In that way, the Bad Plus encourages you to listen to their music like you might listen to your favorite pop or rock, attuning your ear toward the SONG rather than the chance moment of improvisational wizardry. Again, I'm not trying to discount jazz that privileges the latter; I'm just saying that to me, jazz is under no less pressure than any other music to provide outstanding MATERIAL. To provide true songs—HITS even, in the purely aesthetic sense—that aren't just grist for improvisation. Last night, "People Like You" definitely opened up between the bookend theme statements, as I believe "Metatron" did as well, but "Never Stop" featured no solos, just a pure, righteous THEME. All three members of the Bad Plus can—and did last night—solo their asses off, but where they shine most is when they're humbly, self-effacingly PLAYING THEIR MUSIC.

It shouldn't seem like such a novel concept, but it does, applying the solidarity and non-every-man-for-himself-ness (as well as the SONG-forward-ness) of rock to jazz. People notice, believe me. Laal—who, like me, prefers her jazz deep and rapturous (please ignore the ridiculous portrait that adorns that YouTube stream) and has little tolerance for either the blandly conventional or the taxingly abstract—accompanied me to last night's show as well as the aforementioned Sideman Syndrome–afflicted gig. The latter had her rolling her eyes, but of the Bad Plus, she said simply, "I thought it was awesome." What a difference a band makes.

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.

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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.

Ten strong 2010 jazz releases

I can't tell if it's an unusually great year for jazz albums, or if I'm just making more of an effort to survey what's out there. Either way, I've heard some killer recorded jazz in 2010. Here are a few full-lengths I'm really feeling. Obviously we've got a few months to go before year-end-poll time, so just consider this as an informal "Don't sleep on these" list, in no particular order apart from the fact that No. 1 is a clear favorite. (One or two of these—the honorable-mentioned Sam Newsome, e.g.—may be late-2009 releases that didn't make their way to me till after the new year.)

Anything crucial that I'm missing?

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1. The Cookers Warriors (Jazz Legacy Productions)

2. Weasel Walter Invasion (ugEXPLODE)

3. Harris Eisenstadt Woodblock Prints (NoBusiness)

4. Jason Moran Ten (Blue Note)

5. Geri Allen Flying Toward the Sound (Motéma Music)

6. The Bad Plus Never Stop (E1 Music)

7. Mike Pride's From Bacteria to Boys Betweenwhile (Aum Fidelity)

8. Jon Irabagon Foxy (Hot Cup)

9. John Escreet Don't Fight the Inevitable (Mythology)

10. Mario Pavone Arc Suite T/Pi T/Po (Playscape)

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Honorable mention:

Jeff Davis We Sleep Outside (Loyal Label)

David Weiss and Point of Departure Snuck In (Sunnyside)

Vijay Iyer Solo (ACT Music)

Louis Sclavis–Craig Taborn–Tom Rainey Eldorado Trio (Clean Feed)

Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green Apex (Pi)

Paul Motian Trio with Jason Moran and Chris Potter Lost in a Dream (ECM)

Newman Taylor Baker Drum-Suite-Life (Innova)

Sam Newsome Blue Soliloquy (self-released)

James Moody 4B (IPO)

Chris Lightcap's Bigmouth Deluxe (Clean Feed)

Amir ElSaffar–Hafez Modirzadeh Radif Suite (Pi)

Rova and Nels Cline Singers The Celestial Septet (New World)

Stéphane Furic Leibovici with Chris Cheek and Lee Konitz Jugendstil II (ESP-Disk)

Mike Mainieri Crescent (NYC)

Kurt Rosenwinkel and OJM Our Secret World (Word of Mouth)