Darcy James Argue's Secret Society

Every now and then we hear our song

 

MP3: Warning Song -- Ted Hearne
MP3: of minutiae and memory -- Paula Matthusen

A sharp double inhalation, then silence. Another breath masks the attack of a plucked string, distorted and warbling, as it morphs into a bowed long tone. We hear slight pulses and clicks lingering in the background, and then, out of nowhere, a close-mic'd voice begins -- "A clockwise... " -- and is promptly, emphatically shhh'd.

This is the beginning of Anna Clyne's pensive "paint box," the opening cut off of Jody Redhage's debut CD, all summer in a day. For this record, cellist and singer Redhage -- who you may have heard in new music projects like Pulse, Tactus, Capital M, Ensemble Pamplemousse, or performing her own music at coffeehouses and other singer-songwriter venues -- commissioned eight composers to write new works specifically for her. For the title track, Jody also contributes her own driving, rustic setting of lines from Ray Bradbury's short story.

Each composer represented takes a very different approach to the challenge of writing for cello and voice. Electronic processing and in-studio manipulation often comes into play, everything from simple overdubs and a judicious use of reverb to the apocalyptic soundscape of Wil Smith's "Crushed," which drives relentlessly towards a full-core meltdown, then allows the five words of Josh Chapman's text -- "i have crushed and shattered" -- to blow in the air like floating fallout.

Other composers opt for a more traditional "art song" approach -- David Hanlon uses the music to accent the quirkiness of his chosen text, Davey Volner's "The Egg," while Derek Muro's setting of Frank O'Hara's "Did You See Me Walking" uses a bed of city sounds and folk-like melodicism to bring out the poem's wistfulness, while downplaying the ironies of lines like "Did you see me walking by the Buick Repairs?" Jacob Cooper's "Postlude," with words by Yuka Igarashi, is circling and elliptical, like the poem's "glad abandoned orbit."

Judd Greenstein's "Corrupted" takes a somewhat fragmentary approach -- the composer's short text is stretched out by repeating  words and phrases, while the music's rising figures are constantly rebooting themselves, ascending for short groupings of 3, 4, or 5 notes before dropping back down again. Paula Matthusen's "of minutiae and memory" (click to listen/download) is an elegiac-sounding Norwegian prayer set amidst fluttering bursts of clicking electronics, bowed tremolos, and harmonics.

The most gripping performance is of Ted Hearne's "Warning Song" (click to listen/download), based on a text by Meghan Deans. The piece gradually assembles an additive groove from plucks, pulls, slaps, and fragmentary bowed double-stops, before abruptly shifting into a sustained bed of slow-moving low-register glisses over a repeated, unanswered question. Jody's playing is especially gritty and impassioned on this cut, and her normally clean, clear voice keens and wails with intensity.

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The CD release show for all summer in a day takes place tonight at Galapagos. The event kicks off at 7 PM with a set by guitarist Marc Dancingers (who I saw not long ago at the Chelsea Art Museum with Soundbook One), followed by it's not you, it's me (Caleb Burhans, violin and Grey McMurray, guitar), and then Jody will close with live performances of all of the music from the CD. Cover is $5 (suggested).

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A copy of this recording was provided by the artist for review purposes. MP3s are posted with the permission of the artist.

Pretty good year

Best wishes to all for 2007. Thanks for your patience during the holiday hiatus -- regular(-ish) blogging will resume soon, but in the meanwhile I thought I'd open up comments for those who want to have the traditional "Best of 2006" discussion. I didn't hear nearly enough records this year to make any grand pronouncements, but over the next month I will try to squeeze in a few words about some notable 2006 recordings that I either didn't have time to review at the time of release, or didn't get around to snapping up until just now.

I usually take advantage of Vancouver's post-Boxing Day sales to stock up on CDs. The prices are still the best in North America, even with the weak US dollar, but it's getting harder and harder to find the records I'm interested in in brick-and-mortar CD stores. The once-mighty A&B Sound, whose densely-packed aisles I haunted practically every weekend when I was growing up, is now open and spacious, unencumbered by either CDs or customers. I'd been planning on picking up Ornette's Sound Grammar, Vijay Iyer's Raw Materials, the Reich Phases box, and The Hold Steady's Boys and Girls in America, among others -- but the Seymour Street flagship store didn't stock any of them.

Meanwhile, I thought I'd throw this open to the commenters -- what did you think of this year's crop of recordings? Did blogdonia's darlings, like TV On The Radio's Return to Cookie Mountain and Joanna Newsome's Ys, live up to the hype? What about Beck's (apparently) Scientology-inspired (seriously, now, WTF???) The Information or Yo La Tengo's anthemic I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass?

On the big band front, Jim McNeely put out three notable records this year, one each with the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, the Swiss Jazz Orchestra, and the Danish Radio Big Band. And in addition to Ornette's widely praised Sound Grammar, there were notable '06 jazz releases from Bob Brookmeyer, Andrew Hill, Keith Jarrett, Randy Weston, Joe Lovano with Gunther Schuller, Jason Moran, Branford Marsalis, John Hollenbeck, Dave Douglas, Don Byron with Bang on a Can, and many others. I'll be sharing my thoughts on some of this stuff in the days ahead, but feel free to get the ball rolling in comments.

Putting it together

Jason Moran - Artist in Residence (Blue Note)

Piano players have a not entirely undeserved reputation for being nerdy even by jazz musician standards. Evidence is not hard to come by -- Brad Meldhau pens epic liner notes in the form of Socratic dialogues, Vijay Iyer has an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in music and cognitive science from Berkeley (that's Berkeley, not Berklee), and, of course, Ethan Iverson is a notorious Smarty McSmarterson. (And he blogs.) Jason Moran fits nicely into the pianist-as-intellectual paradigm. His music is often inspired by the works of Basquiat, Rauschenberg, and Kurosawa, and he has a wide-open conceptual approach to writing that embraces pitch-rhythm transcriptions, set theory, and Schillinger. Moran's latest CD, Artist in Residence, is (as you might expect) his most self-consciously artsy to date.

The strongest track is "RAIN," a twelve-minute, ring shout-inpired work originally comissioned by Jazz at Lincoln Center. Here, Moran's Bandwagon rhythm section, Tarus Mateen (bass) and Nasheet Waits (drums), are joined by Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Marvin Sewell (guitar), and Abdou Mboup (kora, djembe, talking drum), as well as a recorded sample of Moran's own shuffling footsteps. The almost-pentatonic trumpet melody keeps looping back on itself like a Mobius strip, with supporting (and, sometimes, undermining) harmonizations and commentary from the rest of the group.  Moran eventually joins Alessi on the theme while the sound of the footsteps becomes more rhythmic and insistent. An additive groove builds underneath, slowly picking up steam. Moran's fleet lines and inistently rising left-hand figures take over, eventually transitioning into a release section with a driving backbeat and a soulful variation on the trumpet theme. Two-thirds into the track Alessi finally gets to break away and blow, over an increasingly refracted pedal section that culminates in full-group improv. The piece closes as the players give way to the sound of mutliple sets of footsteps looping against each other in circular syncopation, not fading out as expected, but abruptly stopping. With its relentless momentum and monomanical pentatonic cycles, "RAIN" reminds me a bit of Rzewski's "Coming Together." It's followed by an earthy romp through "Lift Every Voice," in deliberate contrast to the preceeding track.

Four additional tracks are excerpted from Jason's multimedia collaboration with video and performance artist Joan Jonas, called The Shape, the Scent, the Feel of Things. Two of these are character pieces for solo piano -- "Arizona Landscape" -- which prominently features the "Happy Trails" bassline (played straight-faced) -- and "He puts on his coat and leaves," an effective bit of exit music based primarily around a two-chord vamp.  "Refraction 1" is actually a duet with Jonas herself, who gamely accompanies Moran with an asynchronous rustle of assorted noisemakers. "Refraction 2" is the Bandwagon version of the same piece -- less abstracted and more groove-oriented, with playful and conversational timekeeping from Nasheet Waits.

The remaining four selections give a taste of a theatrical piece, Milestone, premiered at Minneapolis's Walker Art Center in April 2005, and is based on Adrian Piper's The Mythic Being: I/You (Her). "Break Down," the album's opening track, uses a cut-up recording of Piper's voice as a source for pitches and rhythms -- a technique that will be familiar to longtime Moran fans, although on this cut, the use of spoken-word samples is more hip-hop, less "The Dangerous Kitchen."

"Artists Ought to Be Writing" features a much longer sample of Piper lecturing on the responsibility of artists to communicate their processes and intentions to the general public. The first time through the loop, Moran introduces a harmonization of Piper's spoken "melody." When the loop comes around again, his right hand lines reinforce Piper's voice, and on the third cycle, the voice is subtracted and we hear the melody and harmonization without the words, which Moran uses as a jumping-off point for improvisation. The effect is actually quite beautiful and, in the spirit of Piper's words, communicative.

[You can listen to "Artists Ought to Be Writing" via NPR's Song of the Day.]

The version of Weber's "Cradle Song" included here is a dedication to Moran's recently departed mother, who used to audit her young son's piano lessons, scribbling notes throughout. For most of the track, we hear the close-mic'd sound of a pencil scratching insistently against paper -- when it abruptly stops, Moran is left to finish unaccompanied.

"Milestone" was written by Jason's wife, Alicia Hall Moran, and opens with her classically-trained voice and a straightforward piano accompaniement, but when the Bandwagon jump in on Alicia's last note,  the track abruptly shifts direction, eventually heading towards a rhapsodic coda.

Artist in Residence is an ambitious and diverse project, a reflection of Moran's restless intelligence and wide-ranging aesthetic interests. Because of this, it necessarily lacks the cohesion of earlier outings like Facing Left, The Bandwagon, or his amazing solo piano record, Modernistic. Listeners who are not already familiar with Moran's work may prefer to start with those more focused albums.  On the other hand, for those of us who have followed Moran's career with interest -- and for those who share his  passion for interdisciplinary collaboration -- Artist in Residence is a gallery full of provocative, thoughtful, and rewarding works.

Also recommended: Jason's podcasts for SIM.

Artist in Residence is in stores Sept. 12. Jason Moran's Bandwagon is at the Blue Note Sept. 12-17. An advance copy of this recording was provided by Blue Note Records for review purposes.

Corey Dargel - Less Famous Than You

Corey Dargel is compared to Stephin Merritt with almost inevitable regularity. His laconic, deadpan vocal delivery and his music's transparent electronic textures make the reference irresistible, although truth be told, neither Dargel's distinctive songwriting voice, nor, for that matter, his actual voice, are all that similar to Merritt's. However, listening to his first official release, Less Famous Than You (which drops May 1), I kept thinking of someone else entirely... Randy Newman, circa Sail Away and Good Old Boys.

No, wait... seriously, stay with me here.... The songs on Less Famous Than You are all internal monologues delivered by emotional cripples -- fanboy stalkers, media-whore parents, detoxing addicts, hydrophobes, agnosia patients, and self-loathers of all stripes. Of course, Dargel's music sounds absolutely nothing like Newman's (then or now), but his uncanny ability to get deep inside the heads of the characters he portrays, combined with the confessional lyrics, delivered with absolute sincerity but inviting equal parts empathy and repulsion, are very much in the spirit of classic Newman songs like "Marie" and "Guilty." And the idea of a relatively unknown (albeit rapidly rising) figure like Dargel making his recorded debut with a collection of songs about famous people (and the people who love them) isn't that much different from RN singing "Lonely At The Top" in front of 12 people at the Bitter End back in the day.

Dargel's tunes are full of vintage-sounding electropop timbres. He overlays deceptively simple patterns and fragmentary beats to create subtly shifting rhythmic undercurrents. What might initially feel like a stable, comforting musical foundation usually turns out to be a thing in constant internal flux, with parts being passed around and added or subtracted from the overall texture. The bass might draw down so a barely audible midrange figure can come out, or the beat might melt away to allow a subordinate rhythmic pattern to take over. The melodies are often fragmentary and the phrasing lands in unexpected places, giving the tunes a conversational ebb and flow that perfectly compliments Dargel's lyrics.

The second track on the record, "I'll Drown," has the exact kind of descending bass line that always slays me, overlaid with crystalline high-register figures that become increasingly blurry as the song goes on, setting the scene for the narrator's plea to his lover that he not be made to set foot on a cruise ship.

Listen to an excerpt from "I'll Drown".

"Gay Cowboys" is the only song on this album I was previously familiar with. The album version of this track is now available as a freebie download from Dargel's site, so I recommend you go get. This is one of Dargel's most autobiographical-sounding songs, and also one of his wittiest -- "the gay-affirmative Starbucks / has lost its charm" still makes me grin every time.

"Withdrawl" continues in the lineage of Dargel's series of songs about pharmaceuticals -- he name-checks buphrenorphine, a methadone-like opiod often given to recovering heroin addicts. Sadly, it's stopped working for the self-pitying, Chekhov-reading narrator, who still has sixty hellish days of detox left. In fact, the only thing holding him together seems to be the fantasy that he and his lover will "get back together like we were never apart / and as my nerves get better, so will my heart." The music is all electronic pinpricks, with Dargel's voice floating forlornly over top.

Listen to an excerpt from "Withdrawal".

The opening phrase of "The News" sees Dargel breaking out of his usual midrange deadpan, shooting up into a clear falsetto at the climax of the line. This sets up a bit of uncomfortably personal media criticism from someone so enthralled with a journalist that he desperately wants all the news to be about the object of his desire.

Listen to an excerpt from "The News".

Dargel's whole aesthetic expresses so much personal vulnerability, it may seem unfair (sadistic, even) to ask for more, but nonetheless, about three-quarters of the way through the album, I found myself thinking, "You know, the vocal doubling/thickening effects are all subtle and cool and effective, but I would like to hear just the straight sound of Corey's voice before the record's out." Sure enough, the album's tenth track, "Change The World," gave me exactly that -- unadorned voice plus acoustic piano and acoustic drums, an aural counterpoint to the refrain "my heart is not a metronome."

"Like A Ghost" is a skittish, disorienting track, opening with a brief, searing lead synth bit that suggests feedback-driven guitar, followed by an active bass line accompanied by a stuttering drum machine pattern. Of all the songs on Less Famous Than You, this is the one most explicitly about celebrity, artifice, and the toll of fame-driven power imbalances. The anthemic chorus "I watched you conceal / everything I loved the most about you" seems like it could be an encapsulation of the whole record.

Listen to an excerpt from "Like A Ghost".

By rights, Less Famous Than You should put Corey Dargel on the map as a prodigiously talented, entertaining, and original singer-songwriter. He's scheduled to open for Owen Pallett (aka Final Fantasy) in London, Nottingham, and Manchester in May, but you can hear him in NYC this Friday, April 28, 8:30 PM at the Listening Room of Bruckner Bar in the Bronx, along with Dan Fishback, The Lisps, and Ching Chong Song.

The official NYC CD release for Less Famous Than You, though, is May 22, 8:30 PM at the Cornelia Street Café -- save the date.

[FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: This is the first review copy of a CD I've ever gotten for this blog. Surely you noticed how this review was all extra-professional and objective-like? And, hey, anyone else wants to send me review copies, you know how to reach me.]

Dave Douglas on The Cellar Door Sessions

Yeah, um, what Dave said.

Oh mister time will you ever unwind

Anti-Social Music's collaborative project with the Gena Rowlands Band -- a "post-punk opera" called The Nitrate Hymnal -- reviewed in PopMatters.

If you mooks haven't checked out Anti-Social Music yet, click here and all (well, some... ) will be revealed.

Fuck cowbell

And who knew that Bruce Springsteen would be the one to remind American record buyers they need more tuba in their lives?

From Jody Rosen's review in Slate.

New Dave Douglas, Donny McCaslin

Paul Olson reviews them for All About Jazz.

Dave Douglas - Meaning and Mystery:

Potter’s frontman role in this band was a significant one, but McCaslin’s much more than adequate here. His show-stopping solo on “Buleria, Solea y Rumba” on Maria Schneider's Concert in the Garden (ArtistShare, 2004) may have cemented his reputation as a tenor solo fireworks technician, but there’s always been more to his playing than building lead-horn drama, and it’s all on display on Meaning and Mystery. Throughout the recording, his lines entwine with and dance around Douglas’ trumpet so deftly that he seems a wizened veteran of the group.

That said, his solo on “Culture Wars” is stunning. But then, so is the tune. Built around a simple horn phrase and eschewing Douglas’ trademark mixed-meter predilections in favor of a more straightforward groove—seldom has Douglas done so much with so little—it’s the best jazz performance this year. Douglas’ trumpet intro, which carries on two minutes into the piece before the theme is even stated, seems to investigate and limn the possibilities of what’s to come and is, like all his playing on this album, deft, sly and full of his trademark crispness and wit. Caine bravely follows McCaslin's solo with one of his own that, without resorting to grandiosity, somehow builds even more momentum as it negotiates the song’s simple but elegant harmonic landscape. It’s a fantastic song.

Donny McCaslin - Soar:

“Be Love,” “Push Up the Sky,” “Soar,” and “Laid Bare” are extended pieces. Their length, coupled with cynicism-free optimism (just glance at those titles) and epic yearning—plus sweetening touches like Souza’s vocals and the hardly dry production values—could have led to disaster. Records like Soar are often toothlessly bland or annoyingly precious.

Soar is neither. It's very good. This is an important year for McCaslin.

Jackie Mac and the New Thing

Jackie McLean changed the face of Blue Note Records in the 1960's, and, by extension, changed the face of jazz. He created a synthesis of propulsive hard bop, atmospheric modal progressions, and the experimentalism of early free jazz. This is the sound that would be called the "New Thing" and brought forth a wave of creative renewal at Blue Note, and in the 1960's jazz scene. Jackie set the stage for artists like Andrew Hill, Eric Dolphy, Sam Rivers, Larry Young, and even Ornette Coleman to be signed to Blue Note and make challenging, progressive, and hugely influential records for the label.

Jackie Mac proclaimed his allegiance to the New Thing with 1962's Let Freedom Ring. At the time, it might have seemed heretical for one of the burningest chord change players of all time to announce that he was taking Ornette Coleman's side in the jazz wars, and more importantly, that free jazz wasn't fundamentally incompatible with mainstream hard bop. Jackie was king of the hard-swinging standards-fueled blowing session, and he even released an entire record of blues (Bluesnik), but he also knew that jazz could aspire to more than just spang-spang-a-lang on Tin Pan Alley song forms and 12-bar blues. (He played on Pithecanthropus Erectus back in 1956, after all.) Let Freedom Ring promised great things to come, and it's Jackie's next three records for the label that make good on that promise.

More than just a followup to Let Freedom Ring, One Step Beyond is a great leap forward. For one thing, it marks the recorded debut of a 17-year old kid by the name of Tony Williams. I'll let Jackie tell that story:

In December 1962, I left New York for Boston to do a week at Connelly's. It was the week before Christmas to be exact. Again it was a local rhythm section and again it was the rush to get in town early on the first day to rehearse the section and get some originals set up. It was already dark when I arrived at the club.

When I hit the door, a young man gave me a hand with my bags. I thanked him and sat down to catch my breath. After a few minutes, the young man returned and informed me that the musicians were up by the bandstand and waiting. Looking at this youngster and thanking him once more, I assumed that he was a young jazz enthusiast waiting to listen to a band rehearsal before going home to his studies. At this point I stood up, and having no idea with whom I was going to play, I turned and asked the kid if he knew who the musicians were. He immediately answered "yes" with a certain look of excitement in his eyes. "Who's on bass?" I asked. "John Neves," was the reply. "And on piano?" "Ray Santisi."

"What about the drums?" I inquired. "ME! -- Tony Williams -- and I am very happy to meet you, Jackie." "You?" I said with amazement and some doubt seasoned with a little worry all mixed together. "Damn -- you'll have to excuse me, Tony, but you look so young! How old are you?" "Seventeen," he answered with a big, happy grin that I was to get to know very well in the weeks and months that followed. [N.B. Tony had just turned 17 the week before, on December 12 - DJA] We had a lot of musical fun that week; the whole rhythm section was good. John Neves and Tony had played together quite a bit, and in Tony I heard and felt a fresh inspiration that made me want to play.

Tony is legendary for playing like Tony Williams right from the very start, and it's no lie -- listen to Tony's solo on the opening track, Jackie Mac's "Saturday and Sunday." (And of course, Tony's incredibly creative and ballsy playing on all subsequent excerpts.)

But Tony wasn't the only one to make waves with this record. Grachan Moncur III -- who incidentally, is appearing this Saturday and Sunday in a not-to-be-missed stand at the Iridium -- was familiar to fans of the Art Farmer-Benny Golson Jazztet, but no one had ever heard him write music like this before. His two contributions to the record -- the loping, time-shifting waltz "Frankenstein" and the darkly atmospheric "Ghost Town" -- are absolutely brilliant, both as tunes unto themselves and as vehicles for liberated improvisation. "Ghost Town," especially, slayed me when I first heard it, and has slayed me every time since. The space, the pacing, the development, the vibe -- everything is so bracingly original, fully realized, and utterly unlike anything else going on in jazz at the time. Grachan, like Booker Little, ranks among the truly great, criminally unrecognized jazz composers.

Listen to an excerpt from "Frankenstien."

Listen to an excerpt from "Ghost Town."

Bobby Hutcherson didn't make his recorded debut on One Step Beyond -- he had recorded several times already in his native Los Angeles -- but was still new in New York and an almost complete unknown at the time the record was released. (Grachan had played some sessions with him after hearing Bobby play at Birdland with Billy Mitchell and Al Grey, and recommended him for the band.) Moreover, in 1963, the vibraphone seemed like an old-fashioned instrument at best, an anachronistic novelty at worst. Milt Jackson could pull it off in the MJQ, but it was not an instrument most people wanted in their bands. That is, until they heard what Bobby could do with it. His bracingly cool sound, prodigious technique, modern harmonic sensibility, and innovative four-mallet voicings made him the go-to guy for the New Thing. He caught the ear of Eric Dolphy and Andrew Hill, and in 1965, he recorded his brilliant debut as a leader for Blue Note, Dialogue. (I am convinced that Bobby Hutcherson's contributions to all these cutting-edge Blue Note recordings led directly to the prominence of the vibraphone in 1970's minimalism.) But it all started here.

Listen to Bobby's solo on "Ghost Town" -- clearly one of his greatest recorded solos. Also, Bobby's comping on this date is just as impressive and vital as his blowing.

Bassist Eddie Kahn is not someone I know much about. He was Max Roach's bassist at the time of the recording, and was apparently a former West Coast tenor player, who had switched to the bass only recently, though (as Jackie says in the liner notes) you'd never know it from his playing here. He went on to make some great records with Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, and Charles Lloyd, among others. He plays admirably on One Step Beyond, despite often being thrown into uncharted territory. Go back and listen to the way he plays behind Tony's solo on "Saturday and Sunday" -- not any easy thing to do, by any means. In fact, this is the earliest recorded example I can think of of a bassist playing an improvised accompaniment to a drum solo, and Eddie pulls it off admirably.

Of course, there's Jackie's own playing. Every solo here is a gem, but if I had to pick, I'd go with his blowing on the alternate take of the opener "Saturday and Sunday" (more adventurous than the issued version). I've included the head in this excerpt, which is notable for its alto-under-trombone voicings ("Saturday") and chromatic, rubato middle section ("Sunday").

The blowing changes are "So What"-derived modalism (in fact, they are essentially an inverted "So What"), and Jackie's searing solo is a terrific example of his ability to apply his trademark hard bop intensity and Colmanesque freedom to this kind of chord progression.

Here's what Jackie Mac wrote about this tune in his liner notes:

This composition consists of 32 bars for the solos; the form is again modal. E-flat minor for 16 bars in the first section. Then moving to D-flat minor for one and D minor for seven and finally repeating E-flat minor for eight. The melody sections are in two segments, the first "Saturday" a section which is bright and moving in contrast to the "Sunday" section, which is directed as opposed to being felt or counted. Sundays were always too long and too eerie when I was a kid growing up. Two hours of Sunday School followed by three hours of Church afterward. After four hours, everyone in church began to look like Frankensteins with wigs and dresses. Finally, after the Sunday section, we revert back to Saturday and get off into the solos with a happy bright feeling.

Jackie's next Blue Note session, Destination Out, continues in the same vein, albeit with a different rhythm section. Miles had stolen Tony away by this time, so he was replaced by Roy Haynes, and Larry Ridley takes over from Eddie Kahn on bass. But Tony would return two months later on Grachan's Evolution, along with Bob Cranshaw on bass, and with the fortuitous addition of Lee Morgan on trumpet, playing some of the best music of his career. These records, recorded in late 1963, are both just as happening One Step Beyond, and they both deserve more attention. I promise to give them their due soon.

Meanwhile, the best way for the uninitiated to get these albums -- plus with Grachan's second BN record Some Other Stuff (with Wayne, Herbie, Tony, and Cecil McBee) and Jackie's late 60's BN's Hipnosis and 'Bout Soul -- is Mosaic Select's limited-edition Grachan Moncur set.

Virtually everyone playing today owes this Jackie McLean-Grachan Moncur-Bobby Hutcherson outfit a tremendous debt. We are all the inheritors of their "New Thing" legacy.

Return to Margin

New Coldcut record reviewed at PopMatters.

The Montreal gig where More & Black unleashed Let Us Play! was a transformative moment for me, and probably the most fun I've ever had at a live show.

What I Say

After all the delays and controversy and general hoo-hah, I admit I could scarsely believe my eyes when I walked into the record store yesterday, but I'm very happy to report that the Miles Davis Cellar Door Sessions box set was, in fact, released on December 27, just as Bob Belden said it would be. More thoughts on the set as I digest the music contained therein, but for now, I'm just relieved this music has finally seen the light of day.

Calexico | Iron and Wine, In The Reins

As you can see from the prominence they get in my sidebar, I'm a huge fan of the Arizona-based^[1] indie rock band Calexico. They are often saddled with that pretentiously awful label "post-rock," but what they do is actually better described by another much-maligned label: "fusion." Their particular alchemy of stripped-down lo-fi rock, moody textural subtleties, country folk, surf guitar, film noir soundscapes, and straight-up mariachi seems like it would be almost impossible to pull off without falling into dilettantism, or worse, sneering hipster pastiche, so it's something of a minor miracle that Calexico manage to make it all come together so seamlessly. Of course, it helps that their core members, drummer John Convertino and bassist/guitarist/singer Joey Burns, worked for years together in Giant Sand, and also as a rhythm-section-for-hire.

I'm not sure why Calexico aren't more popular or better known amongst jazz musicians and fans. For starters, the seasoned Burns-Convertino hookup is exceptional, and Volker Zander (who has now mostly taken over on bass, freeing up Burns for frontman duties) meshes seamlessly into the group's southwestern grooves. Convertino is an incredibly versatile and inventive drummer who, in Calexico, plays predominantly with brushes, giving the subtle textures a lot more room to breathe (and, incidentally, helping to prevent their live show from becoming stupidly loud). There are lots of interesting and evocative coloristic touches courtesy of multi-instrumentalists Jacob Valenzuela and Martin Wenk, including lots of mallet percussion (vibes and marimba), accordion, vintage keyboards and synths, and trumpet -- their dual-trumpet sound is key to some of the more mariachi-influenced songs, of course, as well as the harmon-muted, jazz-inflected tracks. Paul Niehaus's pedal steel guitar grounds the proceedings in rootsy country-folk authenticity. While Burns does sing on some tracks, the band's focus -- and its strength -- is instrumental tracks, and they have a cinematic sense of mood, structure, and musical narrative that I find very appealing. (And how can you not love a band that named themselves after the seedy border town where Touch of Evil was filmed?)

This September, they released a critically acclaimed collaboration with Florida singer-songwriter Sam Beam, who records under the name "Iron and Wine." The seven-song EP, In The Reins, has been the best-selling record either one has released, cracking the Billboard Top 200 and being hyped on NPR and MSNBC (whose reviewer apparently called it the best CD of the year). There's a good PopMatters interview with Convertino about this collaboration here.

A while back, I'd promised to review the record for the blog, but I kept putting it off. Because frankly, on first listen, I was kind of underwhelmed. Right out of the gates, I absolutely hated the sound of Sam Beam's voice, which never once rises above a tender whisper. Apparently, lots of people find this incredibly appealing, but I found it infuriating -- at least at first. (It's since grown on me -- but only a little.) The playing (from Burns, Convertino, and co.) is typically strong, of course, but I felt they were constrained by Beam's more standard song structures and and the challenges of accompanying such a limited vocalist. The little oddball moments that I love about Calexico's own records are few and far between -- in fact, the only really memorable one comes early in title track, where mariachi singer Salvador Duran momentarily takes over for Beam. (I want to hear them do an entire EP with that guy!)

Even the predominantly instrumental number, "Red Dust," is hampered by a gradually accelerating groove. Songs whose hook is that they gradually speed up (like MMW's supremely annoying "Bubblehouse") have always struck me as a cheap trick, like the Truck Driver Modulation. Granted, "Red Dust" is a lot more subtle than "Bubblehouse," but still. This is manifestly not what I wanted to hear from one of my favorite bands.

After some repeat listenings, though, I've grown somewhat more fond of the record. Whatever Beam's shortcomings as a vocalist may be, I have to give it up for him as a lyricist. "Prison on Route 41" is a great cowboy waltz about selfishness masquerading as self-righteousness:

There's a prison on route 41
A home to my father, first cousin, and son
And I visit on every weekend
Not with my body
But with prayers that I send

I've a reason for my absentee
And no lack of love for my dear family
And my savior is not Christ the lord
But one named Virginia
Whom I live my life for

Cause I owe mine to her
And I'd rot in that prison for sure
If she'd tossed me aside
And not shown me the way to abide

"A History of Lovers," which gets a fun but kinda generic California pop-R&B backing, is a great story of a sensitive Nice Guy type in well over his head -- and in this case at least, Beam's voice is perfect for the part. "Sixteen, Maybe Less" relies a bit too much on mawkish nostalgia for my taste, and it's maybe a little too obvious a nod to Yo La Tengo, but I gotta admit, it's a very pretty, intimate little song. "Burn That Broken Bed" is probably the closest thing to a track from a Calexico solo record, with harmon-muted trumpets intertwining over a Convertino groove. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the band, the two-chord vamp never really goes anywhere. The closer, "Dead Man's Will," flirts with weepy sentimentality, but is ultimately redeemed by gorgeous vocal harmonies and and undulating marimba+vibes tremolos. The blend of Calexico's usual musical territory with Beam's introverted folkie persona is most satisfying on the opening track, "He Lays In The Reins," which benefits from a propulsive groove as well as the aforementioned out-of-nowhere mariachi relief vocals.

It seems odd that for a band so adept at musical alchemy, whose core is made up of seasoned accompanists like Convertino and Burns, they would fall short of their usual brilliance in this disappointingly conventional and sleepy collaboration. For the yet-unitiated, I recommend getting your Calexico undiluted -- try 1998's moody The Black Light or 2003's scorching Feast of Wire.

Then again, it does seem like I'm the only one to be underwhelmed by In The Reins, so you might want to take my reservations with a grain or two of salt. And some Herradura and lime. Then you can post a drunken, pugnacious rebuttal in the comments. (Please. It ain't no blog without comments, y'know.)
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1. Although, ironically, Convertino and Burns hail from Long Island and Montreal, respectively.