Jessie Ware – Devotion: Upon spending a lot of time with this record, I understand and agree with comparisons to artists like the Blue Nile and Sade. This is such a good album!
Jlin – Black Origami: I like glitchy, unexpected electronic music, but I doubt I’ll listen to this again. Which raises a question: Why not? This is intense and emotional without tapping into experimental cliches, so it should be an easy win for me. The best I can figure out is that the frantic and frenetic nature of Black Oragami feels like a manic episode. William Basinski’s guest spot on “Holy Child” opens like a deep breath in the middle of the episode, which only makes the rest of the music more unsettling. Kudos to Jerrilynn Patton for capturing this feeling, but I’m happy to leave behind the sensations on this record.
Laufey – Bewitched: I’m listening on a cold evening as a dusting of snow gathers outside my window, and it’s the perfect atmosphere. The title track is the rare modern vocal jazz composition that warrants being added to the songbook; it is, indeed, bewitching.
Bill Evans Trio – Sunday at the Village Vanguard: I watched Laufey’s “What’s in My Bag” and realized I haven’t properly listened to Bill Evans. I found a used copy of Sunday and finally paid proper attention after weeks of letting it drift in the background. I have a lot of thoughts:
- I’m questioning if I’ve ever really listened to jazz. Which is crazy, because I’ve been listening to jazz since I had a breakthrough moment with Coltrane’s Crescent in the wee hours of a December night in 1988. But I’m hearing things—not just notes and phrases, but concepts and approaches—that I swear I’ve never heard before. For example, Scott LaFaro hardly ever plays a traditional walking bass line but instead creates a foundation of sound that is feels completely new.
- The musicians don’t simply share a stage, they deeply communicate with each other. Their interplay feels like an interactive, spontaneous conversation between three friends. There are times I cannot tell who is soloing because each instrument is playing so much, but it works because they’re interconnected. It’s something the Grateful Dead did incredibly well, where the instruments that are supporting the soloist are so compelling that you lose track of the solo.
- This is my first time knowingly hearing Scott LaFaro. I’m sad that I didn’t discover him when I was an active bassist. He was incredible. The fact that he died 10 days after this show is heartbreaking.
- Liner notes rule. Reading the essays from Ira Gitler and Orrin Keepnews helped me to understand this record on levels I wouldn’t have discovered without their help. This is one of the many reasons I still buy physical copies of music.
- Sunday inspires me to hear audience noise in a different way. The muted conversations, the glasses clinking, the people moving around, it all speaks to the different experiences that every person in the club had on that June Sunday in New York. Some of them were enraptured, some were there on a date or for a drink, and some were bored or confused by the music. The ambient noise from the audience adds a layer of humanity that transports me to 1961 and makes the record even better.
Lenny Kravitz – Let Love Rule: For reasons that are (thankfully) mostly lost to me, I decided I disliked Lenny Kravitz before I ever heard his debut. I managed to go another 35 years without listening to it, but this week I corrected that. The album is inconsistent, but the first half is stellar. I often dismiss 1989 as being a terrible year in music (Batman: enough said) but Let Love Rule is a reminder of how many musical alchemists were cooking up old ingredients in new ways that would transform a world dominated by New Kids on the Block and Motley Crue.
Grateful Dead – 10/17/72 (St. Louis, MO): I’m going on 18 months of being in the Dead rabbit hole, but I’ve slowed my pace and am now spending about 4 – 6 weeks on each “new” show. When I started playing this one, the anticipation of a new show made me feel like a kid opening a present by the Christmas tree. The opening track, “Promised Land,” isn’t typically a song I like but this version fueled my excitement. I’m looking forward to spending some time with this show.
Old friends who made it into rotation this week: HAAi: Baby, We’re Ascending
Record store finds this week: A trove of out-of-print Grateful Dead releases from the Dick’s Picks and Dave’s Picks series.