Odds & Ends 144

I know you have good judgment, I know you have good taste

AALY Trio: Sustain

Swedish vets best known for their collaborations with Ken Vandermark a quarter century ago make what some Nordijazz experts called album of the year; as a listener with simple tastes, I like this best when Mats Gustafsson goes nuts on sax, though going nuts on flute is quite entertaining as well (“Why I Don’t Go Back”, “Your Prayer”, “Egypt Rock”)

The Chisel: What a Fucking Nightmare

Brit politipunks cramming sixteen songs into 36 minutes: inevitably someblend into each other, but they know how to withhold their third and fourth chords for an occasional relatively anthemic chorus, and if they’re angry all the time, there’s variety to their anger, from disdainful to defiant (“Living for Myself”, “Cry Your Eyes Out”, “Fuck ’Em”)

Nick Lowe & Los Straitjackets: Indoor Safari

Straight ’70s rock by straight 70-something guy, despite which I don’t hate it: all the requirements of the form are satisfied, and there’s interest in Lowe’s old man high end sliding up to the reliable minor iv (“Trombone”, “Jet Pac Boomerang”, “A Quiet Place”)

Sierra Ferrell: Trail of Flowers

Not bad as far as albums to win four Grammys go—she sings and fiddles good, she makes music with undeniable care and love, and she writes at least as well as Zach Bryan, so more power and a billion streams to her (“Fox Hunt”, “Money Train”, “I’ll Come Off the Mountain”)

Idit Shner & Mhondoro: Ngatibatanei: Let Us Unite!

Zimbabwean percussionist John Mambira and the University of Oregon’s jazz faculty get together for fun fusion that’s best when guest mbira player Taffie Matiure gives them a sense of place that isn’t Eugene (“Lunar Curve”, “Henceforth”, “Ngatibatanei”)

Wussy Duo: Cellar Door EP

Three good songs accompanied by Lisa’s Beatmaking 101, which on the title track is highly effective at holding together her occluded emotional states and Chuck’s cemetery obsession; the other two songs await the Other Three (“Cellar Door”, “The Man Who Walked Around the World”)

Drug Church: Prude

Unlike most midcore bands that claim both Black Flag and Black Francis, they really roar on occasion and their commitment to tunes and dynamics is evident, and if the hit single is about how fairground games are scams and have you thought about how SOCIETY is like that too, the songs often have at least the form of something clever (“Business Ethics”, “Hey Listen”)

A-Tweed: Riot Disco Punk EP

Mostly disco actually, but none the worse for that: Italian producer has enough countercultural inspiration to keep things from going down too easy, with rattle and squeak sequences and everybody clapping not quite in sync (“Dusty Rumble Fish”, “Riot Disco Punk”)

Kim Deal: Nobody Loves You More

Maturing into horns, string arrangements, and not singing very loud to get across her mother’s big big love for her, and her own rather smaller affection for Rose Byrne vehicles (“Nobody Loves You More”, “Disobedience”)

Father John Misty: Mahashmashana

Bold to lead off with the nine minute one, yet the rest of this is modestly tickling—the string rent-a-quartet and the Viagra Boys are well-used, and the songs of sweetnesses turned acidic are nearly as vivid and coherent as “MacArthur Park”—at least until the eight-and-a-half minute one (“Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose”, “She Cleans Up”)

And you thought you could avoid it: Favorite wrestling of 2024

It was the year I gave up on trying to keep track of everything. Three of my favorite American wrestlers, from three phases of my fandom, retired in highly characteristic ways. Sting went out on top in front of 17,000 people, after his partner did most of the actual work and falling off of ladders through glass panes. Daniel Makabe went out in front of a few hundred close personal friends in a technical showpiece that degenerated into sheer love of violence, as happens sometimes. And Bryan Danielson symbolically died in the ring (it hardly matters that since this is wrestling, he’ll recover.) To conclude the 2021–24 run that elevated him from maybe to probably GOAT, old school guy Danielson tried to put over every single one of his old rivals before going back to his chicken farm; fortunately Tony Khan convinced him to at least have one big win on the way out (his best match of the year, as it happens, and extremely uncoincidentally, Swerve Strickland’s career match.)

Once he was gone, however, I was left with little desire to follow let alone watch any wrestling promotion from week to week—not for the first time, but this time feels permanent. Apart from AEW pay-per-views, my remaining stake in American wrestling comes in shows pandering to people who at least lurked on message boards in the 2000s—by which I mean Action DEAN~!!!, non-AEW show of the year, and more generally shows that book the people who were on Action DEAN~!!!.With my interest in New Japan down at WWE levels, my main attention to puroresu went to Mutoha shows (purchaseable from itako18jp in the only reason to still have a Twitter account), plus the odd quasi-shoot featuring Pride legends and guys famous for wrestling for wrestling with a sock on their hand (not that sock.) Britain is hardly worth mentioning (sorry Christian), which leaves lucha, and even in Mexico one of the two major companies is near an all-time low of product comprehensibility.

So it’s extremely fortunately for my 36-year interest in the graps that CMLL is as watchable as anything’s been in a long time—true, it can get samey if you watch it week to week, but I haven’t consistently viewed anything from week to week since I was young and thought I had time. The runaway match of the year, and the best big match since Cena-Punk ’11, was the Aniversario real main event (pace Místico, no pace for Jericho). Nothing is better than a mascara contra mascara (contra mascara contra mascara) match, and after years of trying, this was the first to successfully adapt the framework to the contemporary big moves/near-falls style without losing the spectacle and the emotion. Still, as someone who thinks that the old ways were better in wrestling (and in wrestling only), the Blue Panther vs. Hechicero match from June was at least half as impressive. The kids (and Hechicero’s about my age) still have a lot to learn.

Matches of the year:

1. Hechicero vs. Euforia vs. Valiente vs. Esfinge, CMLL Aniversario 9/13

2. Demus vs. Mad Dog Connelly, Action Wrestling DEAN~!!! 4/4

3. Bryan Danielson vs. Swerve Strickland, AEW All In 8/25

4. Dekai Ichimotsu vs. Shoji Ono, Mutoha 12/1

5. Blue Panther vs. Hechicero, CMLL 6/11

6. Sting/Darby Allin vs. Matt & Nick Jackson, AEW Revolution 3/3

7. Daniel Makabe vs. Kevin Ku, Scenic City Invitational 7/12

8. Bryan Danielson vs. Eddie Kingston, AEW Revolution 3/3

9. Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Santino Marella, GCW Bloodsport Bushido 6/22

10. Jon Moxley vs. Bryan Danielson, AEW WrestleDream 10/12

Wrestlers of the year:

1. Bryan Danielson

2. Hechicero

3. Blue Panther

4. Darby Allin

5. Demus

6. Zack Sabre Jr.

7. Daniel Makabe

8. Mad Dog Connelly

9. Dekai Ichimotsu

10. Katsuhiko Nakajima

11. Yasushi Sato

12. Shoji Ono

13. Jon Moxley

14. Akira Jo

15. Swerve Strickland

16. Vírus

17. Timothy Thatcher

18. Euforia

19. Kenichiro Arai

20. oh fine, Will Ospreay