Grateful Dead – Madison Square Garden, New York, 3/9/81: After discovering this concert last August, I planned to use some airplane time this week to dig into the In and Out of the Garden box set. Instead, I took a deep dive into the 3/9 show. The first set blows me away: the tempo is laid back but the energy is irrepressible, and they create a foundation for the entire night. The second set doesn’t flow as seamlessly for me, but the interactions between the instruments are captivating and the high points are insanely high.
Keith Fullerton Whitman – Playthroughs | Hollie Kenniff – We All Have Places That We Miss: The room I stayed in wasn’t well soundproofed but these two albums helped mask the ambient noises (Ha! See what I did there?) while creating a space where I could decompress from a stressful trip. These are both still new to me but they’ve already become indispensable.
Chelsea Wolfe – She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She: I still haven’t resolved my ambivalence toward this record, but I really like about half the songs and the rest annoy me. The outro on “Whispers in the Echo Chamber” is a highlight, but I imagined what could have happened if Wolfe and David Sitek had recognized its potential as a bridge into a transcendent catharsis instead of an outro into, well, nothing. Frankly, that’s becoming my feeling toward the record: it could’ve been transcendent, but it’s not.
Old friends who made it into rotation this week: Tyshawn Sorey & Jennifer Curtis: Invisible Ritual; Grateful Dead: Saint of Circumstance 6/17/91;