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In terms of surprises, not much tops popping a James Blackshaw CD in the player and immediately hearing solo piano, as is the case here. But since he plays that piano in a way that fits perfectly into his style, it’s more an expansion of his sonic possibilities than a change in direction, and he plays 12-string guitar on the rest of the disc until piano returns on the final track, helped out by Fran Bury on violin and viola for a bit more sonic variety. Most of the time this is a bit more stripped down and intimate than his other recent releases, but it always offers the quietly meditative flow Blackshaw’s so good at. Comparisons to other guitarists are now besides the point: Blackshaw has established himself as a one-of-a-kind artist.
Flaherty has become one of my favorite saxophonists; his increased profile over the course of this decade is one of the bright spots on the free jazz scene. Whether on tenor or alto sax, his imaginative deployment of a broad range of tones and timbres is always stimulating. Colbourne, after a long hiatus from drumming to devote himself to clarinet, returns to his kit with a more subtle and sensitive approach. To listeners new to the style, it may seem chaotic at first, but really they are spontaneously shaping chunks of chaos into order, and their energy is so great – even though Flaherty’s 59 years old and Colbourne’s 60 – that rock ‘n’ rollers may be a more natural audience for them than jazz fans who might get hung up on the absence of chord progressions, melody, and a steady pulse. This reunion will undoubtedly rank among the finest albums of free improvisation to appear this year.
It’s been a six-year wait between Notwist albums (fortunately we’ve had member Markus Acher’s work in Lali Puna to tide us over), which is practically a generation in pop music terms, so it’s not surprising that there have been some changes. Nothing that alters the trio’s core values, though: insistent yet gentle beats, like mellow Neu updated for indie-rock; friendly, unpretentious vocals; an immediately identifiable mix of electronic production and song structures, sometimes with jangly guitars, sometimes without. The changes are largely in their array of sounds, much wider on some tracks thanks to collaboration with The Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra and a few other guests. Often beautiful, always addictive, The Devil, You + Me was worth the wait.
One of the great outsider obscurities of the ‘70s, Gary Wilson’s first album, You Think You Really Know Me, is a bizarre mix of DIY, prog, pop, new wave, electronica, and lounge jazz – and lyrics of freakishly awkward fantasies of lust and romance. (Anybody who is not made uncomfortable by listening to “6.4=Makeout” probably needs psychological help.) The awkwardness and outsiderness is accented by Wilson’s stiff whoops and gasps, probably meant to sound hip and spontaneous, but more like unintentional parody of soul singing, an ungainly collection of vocal tics bordering on Tourette’s. Here the album comes packaged with a DVD containing a 74-minute documentary by Michael Wolk, titled You Think You Really Know Me: The Gary Wilson Storyalong with 39 minutes of experimental films Wilson made in the ‘70s. By next week I’ll have a full review.
In 2006 I wrote about the 1982 LP Fields (originally released by Plexus), “with everything early-’80s NY being hip right now, a reissue would be welcome.” Here it is, finally, along with their 1981 Aquamarine EP and a bunch of bonus tracks. The Individuals were Glenn Morrow (later of Rage to Live, and founder/owner of Bar/None Records), Janet and Doug Wygal (later of, naturally, The Wygals), and Jon Light Klages (who made an underrated solo album). They should’ve been stars; their angular, occasionally dissonant indie-rock still sounds great. The “hit” was “Dancing with My Eighty Wives,” but this is the sort of album where fans love pretty much every track and each is distinctive. Anybody who dug the Pylon reissue should check this out too.
Twenty years on, they still kick ass, seeming reinvigorated for the past few years. Mark Arm’s trademark smart-ass lyrics are at their best (with occasional forays into serious darkness). His witty wordplay on the opening track, “I’m Now,” manages within the space of a few lines to reference Robert Johnson (“the black light was my baby and the strobe light was my mind”) (perhaps via the Rolling Stones), Captain Beefheart (“the past made no sense, the future looks tense”), and The Beverly Hillbillies. Does it rock? As viciously and rawly as they have in a long time, from start to finish, with no letup. The horns heard on the past couple of albums are gone, perhaps exiled because Steve Turner has come up with a batch of fuzz-riffs so brutal and monumental that nothing else is needed beyond the solid beats of Dan Peters and the fat bass of Guy Maddison. Grunge lives!
Nirvana had the breakout hit, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden had the major label success (and sales), but it was Mudhoney that was the heart and soul of grunge. To do a two-CD deluxe edition of a six-song EP may seem odd; what we really have here is a comprehensive look at Mudhoney’s first year. Disc one has the epochal “Touch Me I’m Sick”/“Sweet Young Thing Ain’t Sweet No More” single, Superfuzz Bigmuff, the “You Got It”/“Burn It Clean” single, Dicks and Bette Midler covers from the Superfuzz session that showed up on various SubPop compilations, three demos, and one outlier, a July 1989 cover of Sonic Youth’s “Halloween” for a split single. Disc two has a pair of short 1988 concerts. We hear “Mudride” four times and a few other songs three times, but I’m not complaining!
A two-CD set topping 139 minutes, this contains the January 23, 1978 concert at the Teatro Cilak in Milan, Italy. Of course, there’s plenty of live Sun Ra available, but what makes this special is that it’s not his big-band Arkestra, just him (keyboards), John Gilmore (tenor sax, drums), Michael Ray (trumpet), Luqman Ali (drums), and occasionally singer/dancer June Tyson. And as sax fans and Ra followers know, any setting that gives Gilmore lots of room to blow is to be treasured. Gilmore is one of the great tenor soloists in jazz history, but because he devoted his talents to Ra’s band for most of four decades instead of pursuing the stardom he could easily have earned, his place in the sax pantheon is know only to cognoscenti. I think all of this material came out on various LPs, mostly rare; to have it all available in one place is wonderful, and even at import price it’s a relative bargain.
At first my reaction was “ho-hum, more post-punk revivalists,” but there are so many unusual touches that this is not more angularity-by-numbers. Sometimes it’s a little like Akron/Family chanting Franz Ferdinand songs, sometimes it’s more like the Rapture playing TV on the Radio. There are quirky horn charts, and the twirling, percussive guitar lines sometimes sound like they were transcribed from African 45s (say, Thomas Mapfumo’s chimurenga), or, when drenched in effects (“Red Socks Pugie”), like shoegazers dropped into the middle of a disco-punk-ska party band. There are two bonus tracks to attract fans who already have the English edition.
