Semipop Life: But you didn't do anything

Kris Davis, Kiana Ledé, Confidence Man, D.Silvestre, and more!

Kris Davis Trio: Run the Gauntlet

Sometimes a group just jells. Avant-Canadian Davis takes on Robert Hurst from the mainline and Johnathan Blake from in between; the long opener takes a while to settle, then from the time Davis reduces the tune to two bangin’ chords, the rest is simpatico. I’ll leave the mapping of compositions to influences (Carla Bley, Marilyn Crispell, Geri Allen et al.) t professional diagram-drawers and instead simply note the variation in Davis’s piano, with her trademark discrete lines only one tool in a kit that also allows for vamping, glissandi, and ker-plonks—often two at once (one with each hand) and sometimes somehow three. Blake lets his drums get all misty on us on his own comp “Beauty Beneath the Rubble” and the subsequent “Meditation”, and Hurst has no trouble keeping up when things get abstract, pawing at his bass like a cat. Then when it’s time to get advanced-degree funky on “Knotweed”, they swing hard, with Davis whipping those discrete lines like jump ropes. A deserved high finisher on the Francis Davis Jazz Poll.

Grade: A MINUS (“Heavy-footed”, “Knotweed”, “Beauty Beneath the Rubble Meditation”)

Kiana Ledé: Cut Ties

A veteran of Kidz Bop, Idol, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, and the Scream franchise, now three albums into an R&B career. If her career path wasn’t natural, I believe her when she says her pussy is, as are the prettiness-over-power pipes with which she oxygenates her slow burners. To her chagrin, she finds sex and love difficult to separate, fluttering about in her upper register for both. Flings create strings, and she makes herself vulnerable against her better judgment; she’s hardly surprised when her partner’s promises turn out empty. The peak is “Space and Pussy”, two things she offered up to no return. That song, chorus aside, takes the form of so many breakup anthems before it, but Ledé performs with a discretion the lyrics avoid; when she hits the chorus’s breathy high notes, you can tell her anger comes from her head, not down there. Though in the end it’s unclear she (fictional she, I hope) has learned anything, the album’s too much fun not to play again and hope for a happier outcome.

Grade: A MINUS (“Space and Pussy”, “Natural”, “Too Many Strings”)

Confidence Man: 3am (La La La)

The old story: Brisbane band with chart ambitions moves to London, and since it’s too wet to do anything else, gets hammered nightly. What’s zeitgeisty is that the very good record they got out of it is dance-pop. They don’t get any more ambitious than hiring Gorillaz’s reggae guy; the music is all very professional. Random syllables and lyrics that one’s free to treat as non-verbal become hooks; synths sweep across bars with enough texture that you’d know where the beat is without the near-incessant boom-clap and oonst-oonst. Listen up and the songs voiced by one Janet Planet often celebrate the effervescence of youth while being mindful that it could end without having done anything. “Too many days of wasting my life” goes one chorus, which the backing tries to contradict; “the higher I get, the harder I fall” goes another, with undisputed truth. Maybe they’ll rue it all when they’re middle aged and studying for their accounting diplomas; until then, having mates who, upon your asking for a breakbeat, will cook one up for you without asking for so much as a pill is the dream overseas experience for some Down Under youngsters.

Grade: A MINUS (“3am (La La La)”, “So What”, “Who Know What You’ll Find”)

D.Silvestre

The Brazilian (né-baile) funk collection that’s broken through with tastemakers, landing for instance on Pitchfork’s year-end. Well, sometimes you do have to hand it to them, even if this doesn’t have anything as pretty as his biggest hit “Onlyfans”, featuring Bibi Babydoll (the Paris Hilton of funk, according to Dave Moore, which makes sense to me, though to my knowledge Paris never pleasured herself with a circular saw); it’s all no-girls-allowed hardness. Silvestre makes the most out of minimalism with sounds that border on grotesque, including bass that my $50 speakers may never forgive me for and sirens that alarm manufacturers might consider too cruel to car thieves. Yet unlike so many northern noise merchants, Silvestre remains musical: amidst the extremity, there’s still room for dynamics and tasteful judgment, like delaying the explosion of a video game dive bomb for just the right time. Rappers add the faintest of colors, half-heartedly throwing syllables into the void before the night subsumes them. It’s all over in 24 minutes, which means in theory you can listen to it at 97 decibels without hearing damage, but I wouldn’t want to test that.

Grade: A MINUS (“Bolhas Makiavélicas”, “2 Beat Noia (Muito Emocionante)”, “Mal Criado”)

Thumbscrew: Wingbeats

Thumbscrew have become one of jazz’s most reliable bets, making records that are more consistent than those under Mary Halvorson’s name, though without the extreme highs. They’re at their most listenable when Halvorson’s guitar isn’t overwhelming and Fujiwara participates in the Year of the Vibraphone. On the well-titled “Irreverent Grace”, this cedes Michael Formanek most of the chord to work out a bass melody, while Fujiwara and Halvorson match tone qualities so that the former stabilizes the latter’s electrobending. On “Somewhat Agree”, they take an already-prog tune and prog it up even more with bonus notes, then take a break and return with Fujiwara holding the center amidst Halvorson’s stereo effects. They’re also nearly at their best the rest of the time, with Fujiwara getting tappity on drums and Halvorson doing Halvorson. The closing Mingus cover gives them something bluesy and singable to deal with, and since it’s Mingus they play along. They could use a little more of that, but one shouldn’t kvetch much about an hour of constant imagination.

Grade: A MINUS (“Irreverent Grace”, “Somewhat Agree”, “Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk”)

Mike Cooley, Patterson Hood, Jason Isbell: Live at the Shoals Theatre June 15 2014 (2020)

Three amigos go acoustic; it’s as rewarding as you’d expect, and your expectations should be high. Unplugged, Cooley retains his dependable idiosyncrasy, Hood his fine banter and better songs, and Isbell “Outfit” and his star quality. Since I paid closest attention to the Truckers in the 2000s, the most revealing material to me is from outside this period, however familiar it may be to diehards: Cooley’s “Eyes Like Glue”, an anti-“Outfit” in its belief in the futility of parental advice; Isbell’s “Cover Me Up”, a let’s stay in bed all winter love song; and Hood’s early “The Living Bubba”, about a musician with AIDS who “can’t die ’cuz I got another show to do”. But it’s also gratifying to hear them revive Decoration Day and Dirty South material, harmonize it, and go for the Big Ending; they love those songs as much as we do.

Grade: A MINUS (“Outfit”, “The Living Bubba”, “Eyes Like Glue”)

Origami Angel: Feeling Not Found

Fifth-wave emo band, and there are plenty more signifiers of “annoying” where that came from even if you don’t object to songs named after Pokémon items. And yet their third full-length cruises upstream like a well-equipped Lapras, and is, at times, heartening: “I hated myself for so long/Just to figure out that it was never my fault”. Primary credit goes to their ability to fit tunes to their words and themes. Standout “Wretched Trajectory” has an anxious guitar riff and is one of several songs that repeats small melodic units to represent trajectories it’s all too easy to get stuck in. When it’s time to rock out, they do so credibly (for Sum 41 values of credibly), with producer Will Yip making the strums and drumbeats crisp and distinct. Nothing here will be startling to those who have been fans of emo and Pokémon for as long as the band has been alive, but watching young people learn it’s okay to sometimes not be okay, and do so in harmony, doesn’t get old.

Grade: B PLUS (“Wretched Trajectory”, “Underneath My Skin”, “Living Proof”)

Rempis/Adasiewicz/Abrams/Damon: Propulsion

Three tracks running twenty-six, fourteen, and twenty minutes. “Divergence” is a standard Dave Rempis extended tenor outing, with his longtime vibes collaborator Jason Adasiewicz tinkling along. Rempis starts “Eggression” with five minutes of virtuosic arpeggios and not much breathing, before the band joins in and he can focus on melodic extraction, with Adasiewicz making things a little magical. Longertime bass collaborator Joshua Abrams gets his bow out to underscore the sax brrrs and wails before plucking loud for the finale. Rempis gets out his gutsy baritone for “Ephemera”, while Adasiewicz clinks chimes, Abrams meanders up and down his range, and shorter-time collaborator Tyler Damon gives directions with his drums, pointing Rempis towards the exit, which he goes all the way out.

Grade: B PLUS (“Eggression”, “Ephemera”)

MC5: Heavy Lifting

The first hard rock band with legible songs and left-populist politics, and give or take Sheer Mag maybe the last. Wayne Kramer grabs producer Bob Ezrin’s KISS/Alice Cooper cred, assembles a pick-up band of studio lifers starting with Don Was, and enlists guests from Tom Morello to Vernon Reid to prevent anyone less clueless than Paul Ryan from getting the wrong idea. The most kick-ass solo comes from well-known philanthropist Slash enlivening “The Edge of the Switchblade”, Kramer’s revival of rock as masculine rebellion (the good kind.) Since none of the originals are as catchy as the “Twenty-Five Miles” cover, the number of Boomers this album retrieves from Murdoch Brain can be precisely estimated at zero. But though Wayne may be gone now, he reminds those of us remaining that we just can’t lose our stride.

Grade: B PLUS (“Twenty-Five Miles”, “The Edge of the Switchblade”, “Blind Eye”)