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!

Best of 2017: Jazz

[Updated 12/26/17: Added Harriet Tubman's Araminta, which I recently went back to and loved, to the albums list below. Also added Brad Cohan and the Free Jazz Blog to the shout-outs at the top.]

I always look forward to the results of Francis Davis's annual Jazz Critics Poll. I admire the way he's kept it going for years now, despite several shifts in the hosting outlet and the constant uncertainty that faces any arts-media endeavor. And I look forward to participating for years to come, even if I don't feel like I can currently claim any full-time jazz beat beyond my own native enthusiasms.

In that regard, I'd like to send a shout-out to fellow scribes/podcasters/etc. like Nate Chinen, now holding it down with customary authority and class at WBGO; Seth Colter Walls, who's been doing exemplary work for Pitchfork and many other outlets; Phil Freeman, who launched a vital new monthly jazz column at Stereogum this year, as well as a smartly curated, often jazz-oriented podcast; all the folks at The New York City Jazz Record, which remains a joy to pick up and peruse each month; Clifford Allen, who in addition to his typically strong NYCJR work co-produced a lovingly researched new reissue of a pair of private-press '70s albums by Michael Cosmic and the Phill Musra Group; Natalie Weiner, whose tweets, takes and live coverage for various outlets offer a refreshing perspective on the scene in NYC and beyond; Jeremiah Cymerman's profound, singular 5049 Podcast; Evan Haga and the consistently engaging, comprehensive JazzTimes; Marcus J. Moore and the open-eared, deeply committed crew at Bandcamp Daily; Peter Margasak, a passionate fixture at the Chicago Reader; Giovanni Russonello, who's been churning out sharp, opinionated pieces for the Times; Adam Shatz, who wrote that incredible Craig Taborn profile for the NYT magazine; Ben Remsen, who hosts the thoughtful Now Is Podcast; Brad Cohan, whose new Jamie Saft conversation at Burning Ambulance is one of the better interviews I've read this year, and who has been doing solid work over at Bandcamp as well (including comprehensive catalog features like this one on Damon Smith); plus Ethan Iverson's ever-stimulating Do the Math (can't wait for sister site Do the Gig, launching next year); Steve Smith's robust, illuminating Log Journal (don't miss Lara Pellegrinelli's recent piece on women in jazz); everyone at Downbeat, The Wire and the indefatigable Free Jazz Collective; and others I'm surely forgetting.

And cheers as well to Brad Farberman, who contributed excellent, historically minded features on Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane to RollingStone.com this year, as well as an authoritative review of the new Pharoah Sanders reissues.

And to behind-the-scenes folks like Matt Merewitz, Stephen Buono, Seth Rosner, Yulun Wang, Steven Joerg, Tina Pelikan, Ann Braithwaite, Patricia and Todd Nicholson, and others who ensure that the work (and the good word) gets heard.

In terms of my own jazz-related work this year, I had a blast putting these together:

*An Interstellar Space deep dive.

*The latest installment of Heavy Metal Bebop, featuring Matt Mitchell (whose new album you'll see on my year-end list below).

*An in-depth feature on the immortal John McLaughlin.

So, yeah, that aforementioned 2017 jazz poll! I did submit a ballot (you'll find it sorted w/ the others here), which I assembled and then hastily revised roughly 15 times in the week or so leading up to the deadline. I enjoyed all the records I voted for, but looking back at the list now, I don't feel a terribly strong allegiance to the order I settled on. Here are those 10 records, plus a couple more near-misses or titles I just plain overlooked when assembling my "official" top 10, presented in Ratliff-ian alphabetical order. (I only link to Bandcamp, always my preferred source for trying and buying.)

Tony Allen, The Source (Blue Note)
A gorgeous jazz-meets-hardbop showcase for one of the most potent rhythmatists alive. Pure buoyancy.

Borderlands Trio, Asteroidea (Intakt)
The latest flight of obsessive, texture-minded, new-piano insanity from Kris Davis, heard here as part of a brilliant collective trio.

Jaimie Branch, Fly or Die (International Anthem)
Immersive ambient-jazz textures meet sprightly avant-funk. Really hope to catch this band live soon.

Ornette Coleman, Celebrate Ornette (Song X)
Thoughts here and here. A commemorative feast for the master.

Kate Gentile, Mannequins (Skirl)
Sprawling, dauntingly complex and, approached with the right focus, completely enthralling. Don't feel like I have my head even halfway around this one yet, but that's part of the appeal.

Harriet Tubman, Araminta (Sunnyside)
Not explicitly a tribute, but I hear this an enveloping spiritual sequel to Electric Miles in all its depth and splendor, from "He Loved Him Madly" to "Rated X" and beyond. A murky jazzdubfunkrock sprawl that feels expansive but not indulgent. Guest Wadada Leo Smith sounds as at-home and inspired here as he does in his own bands.

Vijay Iyer Sextet, Far From Over (ECM)
Review here. Some of these pieces already feel like standards.

Matt Mitchell, A Pouting Grimace (Pi)
Some thoughts in HMB 13 here. One of the year's wildest, most colorful rides.

Roscoe Mitchell, Discussions (Wide Hive)
Free improv turned exacting orchestral translation. A map of Mitchell's never-back-down ambition and continued cutting-edge aesthetic quest. (See also: that Art Ensemble gig.)

Jason Moran, Thanksgiving at the Vanguard (Yes)
Write-up here (scroll down). This band remains absolutely thrilling. No other jazz musician on earth combines avant-garde and populist impulses as seamlessly as Moran.

Chris Pitsiokos Unit, Before the Heat Death (Clean Feed)
Write-up here. Electrifying and insane. Don't miss this.

Charles Rumback, Threes / Tag Book (eyes and ears)
A drummer and Chicago scene fixture who leads a poetic and understated "inside/outside" piano trio with Jim Baker on keys and John Tate on bass. No obvious "angle" here other than an air of patience, intrigue and faint melancholy, clearly informed by DFSBP favorites Andrew Hill (one of his pieces, "Erato," appears on Threes) and Paul Motian. A band that invites you to lean in for a closer listen.

Chris Speed Trio, Platinum on Tap (Intakt)
Speed's oaky tenor: probably the most appealing and distinctive instrumental texture I heard on any record this year. A sly retro-meets-now sound that doesn't sound like anything else out there.

Craig Taborn, Daylight Ghosts (ECM)
Two thirds of the Platinum on Tap band is here too (Speed and drummer Dave King), helping Taborn to realize his latest set of stealthily advanced progressive jazz. "New Glory" has been lodged in my head semi-permanently since I saw a Taborn-led quintet perform it in September.