Gard Nilssen’s Supersonic Orchestra: If You Listen Carefully the Music Is Yours
This tremendous feat of ego management—sixteen soloists play tight without stepping all over each other—is probably only possible if all participants are from some kind of social democracy; they thought they could organize freedom, and they did! (“Premium Processing Fee”, “Botteknott/Elastic Circle”)
Per Texas Johansson, Torbjörn Zetterberg, & Konrad Agnas: Orakel
Primary composer Zetterberg’s senses of groove and melody are major fun even when he’s only playing a few notes; his structures give Texas J just the right amount of space to play in—sometimes he blows harder than the Scandijazz norm, but he’s polite about it (“Var Är Storken?”, “Torbjörn Monk”)
Don’t know whether it’s the artist’s or the artist’s generation’s misapprehension that “punk” means Napster-era fidelity, but for “but the songs are good” types, the songs are good and sometimes punk (“Evening Prayer aka Justice”, “My Teeth Hurt”, “I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend”)
Hidden Masters: Of This & Other Worlds (2013)
Only album by a Scottish power trio throwing back to proto-prog acts of the late ’60s, primarily notable for one of the great rock drum performances of recent years by one John Nicol, who’s like if Keith Moon somehow became precise without losing his Mooniness; anyway, he runs a digital marketing business now (“Perfume”, “Last Days of the Sun”)
Metal-level dexterity and riffs and catchphrases that hook the fjuck out help get across that Accorinrin is annoying you because she’s annoyed (“Bakuro Book”, “Datsu. Hikage No Onna”)
Art Ensemble of Chicago: We Are on the Edge: A 50th Anniversary Celebration
Studio disc unusually dramatic, with many of the most telling contributions from women, including expressive cello from Tomeka Reid and trenchant poetry from Moor Mother; live disc’s pleasures are more measured, but not absent (“We Are on the Edge”, “Mama Koko”)
Drive-By Truckers: The Unraveling
Once I made peace with them only being good at political songs now, I began to enjoy the moral urgency these Southern dads (even if Hood lives in Portland now) bring to Trump-era and ongoing atrocities that us northern non-dads sometimes fail to keep central when we’re yelling at the DNC or whatever (“Thoughts and Prayers”, “Babies in Cages”)
Nostalgia as dirge, and vice versa: the best lines that aren’t explicitly self-referential—“when we got to the Twin Cities, I said, man, I know some songs about this place,” hoch hech—recognize that some features of late 20th century bohemia have persisted into the early 21st, like a bathtub in the kitchen (“A Bathtub in the Kitchen”, “Blankets”)
Lil Nas X: 7 EP
Miraculously, not only the smash (here in only two versions, in a show of restraint) but the follow-up and the Cardi rental are hit-worthy: that’s over nine minutes of good music (“Old Town Road” (remix), “Rodeo”)