Carlita – Fabric Presents Carlita: After missing the boat so badly with the Chaos in the CBD mix from Fabric, I jumped on this one. On first listen, it’s solid through and through, and it shines in the last third.
Gracie Abrams – Good Riddance: Abrams’ voice on “Amelie” has a touch of roughness that hit me hard. It’s totally different than the slight flutter and waver on “Where Do We Go Now,” which also hit me hard. Her voice on this album haunts me, in the most amazing way.
Tom Waits – Swordfishtrombones: For decades, I’ve believed Tom Waits is the musical companion to Raymond Carver and Edward Hopper. They’re all superb storytellers who create snapshots of mundane desperation with ominous forces just out of the scene. As I revisit Waits’ first Island album, though, I think I’m only half-right. Yes, the parallels with Carver and Hopper exist, but Waits also tells stories in which those ominous forces are front and center. As I really listen to Swordfishtrombones for the first time—it still amazes me that you can play an album dozens of times in your life but never listen to it—I hear those stories of mundane desperation (like “In the Neighborhood” and “Johnsburg, Illinois”). However, I also hear the stories where danger is front and center, particularly stories where soldiers come home from a war with their sanity shattered. I’m tempted to reject Swordfishtrombones because it doesn’t fit inside the box I built for it 30 years ago, but maybe I just need to build it a bigger box.
Jason Isbell – Here We Rest: Following Tom Waits with Jason Isbell means this was a week for story songs, though very different types of storytelling. This is my first journey into Isbell as a solo artist, and his storytelling is everything I hoped and expected. “Alabama Pines” is an early bright spot, and “Codeine” is an early low point.
Sly & the Family Stone – Small Talk: I’m guessing Small Talk got a bum rap when it came out, the same way artists often get a bum rap after a string of great albums. It’s more laid back than Stand! or There’s a Riot Goin’ On, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad record. If nothing else, the title track is worth hearing for how it captures parents’ love for their child, and I’ll take it over Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” any day.
Barker – Stochastic Drift: Last time I listened to this, I heard something fragmented yet compositionally interesting. This week, I heard what I can only describe as an electronic version of dodgy ‘80s fusion. Not my thing at all, and I’m letting this one go.
Marvin Gaye – What’s Going On: I’ve tried this album a few times over the years but it’s never clicked. I listened again this week, eyes closed, head back, music loud. And holy Marvin, I’m finally hearing the perfection in this record. The whole is so much greater than the parts.
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd: I don’t typically focus on drums but Robert Burns’ playing is stellar. He drives the dynamics, and the two songs that strike me as filler—“Mississippi Kid” and “Poison Whiskey”—are the songs where his rhythms are the flattest. (Interestingly, those are the only two songs not written by some mix of Rossington, Collins, and Van Zant.)
Grateful Dead –10/18/72 (St. Louis, MO): The first set is pretty much perfect, and as I mentioned a week or two back, those 14 songs fly by in the blink of an eye. The second starts with a “Playin’ in the Band” sandwich—Playin’ in the Band followed by a drum solo, then Dark Star, then Morning Dew, then a reprise of Playin’—that is glorious and weird and all the things I’ve learned to love about the Dead. The bass solo and jam at the end of Dark Star is like punk a few years before punk existed.