Irène Schweizer & Hamid Drake: Celebration
High-creativity piano-drums duet album with Drake grooving funkily and anti-funkily, Schweizer demonstrating both R&B and Henry Cowell exploratory surgery on her instrument, and plentiful time outs from the kiss kiss bang bang to think think (“Song for Johnny”, “The Good Life”, “Blues for Crelier”)
Three tracks: the breakbeat-powered “Goddess Calling” is in the vein of Resonant Body; “Find Your Way Home” throws the kitchen sink at a house beat, which shrugs it off; and “Spell for Nature” about as good as its title (“Goddess Calling”, “Find Your Way Home”)
Jaimie Branch: Fly or Die Live
Reprising both studio Fly or Dies for the people of Zürich doesn’t reveal many previously undiscovered nuances of the compositions, but her rhythm section (with Chad Taylor hitting the snare particularly hard) brings groove consistently, and Branch taking the responsibility of the vocal on “Prayer for Amerikkka” herself helps unify the record (“Nuevo Roquero Estéreo”, “Theme 001”, “Prayer for Amerikkka Pt. 1 & 2”)
For Those I Love
Dublin producer David Balfe’s mourning and celebration of a lost bandmate might be admired more than felt by those whose grief routines are more private, but there’s genuinely much to admire here: most of all, the bravery in his expressions in Platonic love and his ability to evoke how a certain kind of young Irishman lived over the last decade, way out of anybody's spotlight (“I Have a Love”, “Birthday/The Pain”)
Charles Webster: Decision Time
Seniors Tour house from a veteran who hasn’t stopped paying attention, not least to Hyperdub’s output—there’s a Burial remix of “The Spell” not on the album but worth hearing (“This Is Real”, “We Belong Together”)
Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert, Jon Randall: The Marfa Tapes
That the arrangements are boring as fjuck isn’t too high a hurdle if you’re one of the finest singers in country music; the other two guys have to rely on sheer strength of songwriting, and considering they wrote Tin Man they do better than I expected (“Waxahachie”, “Am I Right or Amarillo”, “Anchor”)
Largely lacks the solid bulk of Silver Bullets or the sheer beauty of Snow Bound, but with fetching throwbacks to their keyboard-pop past (“The Walls Beyond Abandon”, “Safe and Sound”)
Archie Shepp & Jason Moran: Let My People Go
His lung capacity slightly diminished (as tends to happen in your eighties), Shepp figures out how to do if not more then just as much with less on soprano, though his most moving moment is his vocal turn on “Go Down Moses”; Moran does somewhat less (“Go Down Moses”, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”)
Despite switching to gauzy synthpop, they’re almost exactly as kinda catchy, kinda spunky, and kinda appetizing as they were when they were punk, though the lesson here is less “punk isn’t always best” than “gauzy synthpop isn’t always worst” (“Maybe Chocolate Chips”, “Donuts Mind If I Do”, “Nobody Knows We Are Fun”)
Too Much Joy: Mistakes Were Made
Since they’re so smart they know what a flux capacitor is, they could’ve stood to lower the pH a notch (not on the verse about the cardiologist, that guy’s cool), though I guess having an ex-NYPD officer in the band is a limiting factor (“Uncle Watson Wants to Think”, “Something to Drink About”)