Top Ten Albums I Reviewed for the Next Print Issue of The Big Takeover
Mulatu Astatke/The Heliocentrics – Inspiration Information, Vol. 3 (Strut)
Mulatu Astatke (born 1943) is a multi-instrumentalist pioneer of Ethiopian jazz and a great arranger. Reputedly the first African student at Berklee, he has blended jazz, Latin, and Ethiopian music into a truly distinctive, personal style. Earlier work was compiled on volume 4 in the great Ethiopiques series; now comes a brilliant collaboration with Los Angeles groovemeisters The Heliocentrics, who give Astatke some of the funkiest beats of his long career. At the London recording sessions, Ethiopian masters who live there were also called in to make this multi-cultural creation even more authentically amazing. This darkly modal music just might be the best album of 2009 in three genres: funk, jazz, and world music.
Castanets – Texas Rose, the Thaw & the Beasts (Asthmatic Kitty)
see review here
Polvo – In Prism (Merge)
These pioneers (some might say gods) of math rock returned to action after a ten-year layoff with a performance at the 2008 All Tomorrow’s Parties festival, and now with this spectacularly good studio album. The intervention of a dozen years since 1997’s Shapes, and having switched to their third drummer, left no noticeable difference in their sound, which pretty much picks up right where they left off. True, the first track sounds more like heavy metal than their past norm, but after that their familiar darkly chiming riffs take over and they are the complex, brooding powerhouse of old. There have been a lot of comebacks in recent years; few have been as artistically successful as this one.
Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band – Between My Head and the Sky (Chimera)
It’s funny, Ono was doing stuff like this 30-40 years ago and it was considered unlistenable; now it fits snuggly into the current scene. Of course, she’s been trying to connect to current trends for years, not always with success; too often they seemed like shotgun weddings or compromises that found her taming her edgier impulses to fit in. Finally a scene has evolved that has caught up to what she was doing all those years ago, so here she can unleash her full power and imagination in appropriate settings. Even the quiet tracks that dominate the last third of the album are sometimes a little edgy, especially the masterpiece “Feel the Sand.”
Blank Dogs – Under and Under (In the Red)
Hey, all In the Red bands aren’t lo-fi garage rock, this one’s mildly electronic lo-fi post-punk. The cracking snare beats, throbbing bass lines, darkly insistent guitar riffs, nagging synth hooks, and distant vocals sound totally late ’70s/early ’80s and rather English, but are the work of one mysterious man (though Vivian Girls add backing vocals and members of Crystal Stilts guest on a few tracks) working in Brooklyn. His talent and devotion to perfecting this sound more than make up for the lack of innovation; this is a favorite sound I’m thrilled to hear someone reviving so well. “The New Things” and “Falling Back” are two of the best songs I’ve heard this year.
Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle (Drag City)
After the somewhat rowdier turn taken on Callahan’s first album under his own name after two decades as Smog, here he returns to the largely acoustic intimacy of Smog, but buttressed by intricate, cushy arrangements by Brian Beattie. He is still the master of the low-key vamping groove, but a little fancier here; strings and horns make “All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast” soar especially high. At other points, he’s just a step away from particularly ruminative lush ’70s folk-rock, notably on the spectacular closer “Faith/Void,” where he repeatedly proclaims, “It’s time to put God away.” A beautiful album full of dark sentiments expressed warmly.
Eddy Current Suppression Ring – Eddy Current Suppression Ring (Goner)
Ever wondered what the Buzzcocks would sound like if they were Australian and played garage rock? This quartet formed at a record pressing plant’s Christmas party, and sounds as enamoured of old vinyl and as celebratory as that implies. Brendan Suppression sings like Pete Shelley, but the band plays with more abandon and edginess than the Buzzcocks have shown recently. This is their 2006 debut finally getting U.S. distribution, its 11 songs recorded in four hours (aside from “the odd extra guitar and tambourine”). Thankfully, this has nothing of the current garage rock trend of being so lo-fi as to be nearly noise, but instead is clear and hard-hitting. While the lyrics are sometimes far from happy, the group’s energy makes for a joyous listen.
The Flatlanders – Hills and Valleys (New West)
Yes, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock, and Joe Ely are three of the best Texas country songwriters, guys who never play to the lowest common denominator (Ely proclaiming “Love must be free from love’s own chains” is as Zen as country gets). But what makes Flatlanders albums so great is that alternating vocals and co-writing songs offers delicious variety in vocal timbre and styles. The special ingredient on their third album since their reunion is producer Lloyd Maines, who’s an ace pedal steel and lap steel guitarist; he adds his magical sound to several tracks. Every Flatlanders album is a must-buy for country fans, but this one’s especially fine.
Illachime Quartet – I’m Normal, My Heart Still Works (Fratto 9 Under the Sky)
Jazz musicians face the questions of how jazz can avoid becoming museum music, and how far it can evolve before it’s no longer jazz anymore. This Naples-based trio – yes, despite the name – of keyboardist Fabrizio Elvetico (who also handles the samples and adds electric bass occasionally), cellist Pasquale Termini, and electric guitarist Gianluca Paladino (three guest drummers alternate) really stretches the definition. “Discentro” sports samples, electronic touches, a hard-edged forcebeat, and a Mark Stewart (Pop Group) vocal, while “Ballrooms (Vivify)” finds Graham Lewis (Wire) contributing vocals and digital treatments over texture-shifting music that includes pop sampling and a classical quote. But Rhys Chatham guests on two tracks as a trumpeter, “Bottom Sea Engines” samples Miles Davis’s “He Loved Him Madly” and features legendary Italian jazz pianist Salvatore Bonafede, and “Flying Home” is a clear outgrowth of Davis’s mid-‘70s music. Stick around after the last listed track; there’s a hidden bonus track.
John Matthias & Nick Ryan – Cortical Songs (Nonclassical)
This is almost more fascinating to read about than to listen to. The co-composers base the timing of events in the four-movement Cortical Songs on the rhythms of neurons firing during brain activity. They used a 24-neuron computer brain to signal the pieces’ 24 string players when to perform their musical activities (a note, a phrase, etc.), mixed with melodies from two songs and improvised violin (played by Matthias). That piece, successful on its own terms though a bit ragged in performance (by Trinity College of Music String Ensemble), was then, as is the norm on the Nonclassical label, used as raw material by a bunch of remixers. Thom Yorke (Radiohead) leads off, but the most successful efforts IMO are by label head Gabriel Prokofiev, Jem Finer (ex-Pogues), and John Maclean.
