Dolly Parton: Rockstar
Yes, a 2:21 covers-mostly album is too long: duh. Cut the dubious centrism and problematic people; cut four of the more turgid classic rockers; cut the ones that you’d think might work but fizzle—shouting for “Free Bird” is all well until you get it for eleven minutes. That leaves eighteen-odd tracks; plenty of Dolly. Inasmuch as rockism remains a problem among our distinguished elders, this is a sly blow against it from the moment she plays Dolly B. Goode, to her pre-rockist parents’ chagrin, on the title track. She’s been singing in public since before Elvis recorded “That’s All Right”, and she uses her seniority and her extant ability to belt for finite durations to poke gentle fun at younger peers (take that, Joan Jett) who might’ve taken the Hall of Fame thing a little too seriously. If what’s annoying about aging rockers is their indulgence in nostalgia—worse, often for rebellion—who better to parody it than Dolly, who didn’t experience the first time around and who still has the versatility and comic timing she learned in her variety show days. Her phrasing on syncopation is a little weird, as on “Every Breath You Take”, until you hear Sting on the same song and realize she could’ve aged worse. She gets solemn once (maybe twice counting a “Stairway” that lets those of us without the vinyl make out the lyrics on the loud bit, a mixed blessing), on “Purple Rain”, and it’s as miraculous as throwing your guitar into the sky and it never coming down. After all this, it’s easy to forgive her one indulgence in nostalgia: digging up Elvis to chastely flirt with his corpse.
Grade: A MINUS (“Purple Rain”, “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”, “I Hate Myself for Loving You”)
Buck 65: Punk Rock B-Boy
I like this final entry in his back-to-basics/oh-shit-I’m-fifty trilogy about as much as classicist-one King of Drums and a little more than hardest-to-dance-to one Super Dope, and if that’s hair-splitting, I wouldn’t be surprised if Rich Terfry had won a Canadian hairsplitting championship to go with his one in seniors’ baseball. The rhyme-above-all lyrics (“psilocybin”/“Phyllis Hyman”, c’mon) are optimized for the old school popcult fanatics who can anticipate exactly what the follow-up to “wham bam gigolo” is going to be; for the kids, he’s the first to get “Dildo of Consequence” off the Internet and on to cassette. Interspersed is a disquisition on the state of rap—the rappy kind of rap, that is; Terfry gives no recognition that he and Playboi Carti are in the same universe. Of course he’s skeptical of the mindlessness of much of it, he’s been a curmudgeon since his twenties, and with no sign of decline in dexterity or cleverness, we’ll let him kvetch. Oh yeah, there’s music: “chopping up breaks until they sound like a drum machine”; pastiches of late old/early middle school producers from Scott La Rock to DJ Moe Love; a downtuned Woody Guthrie digging his life away-o.
Grade: A MINUS (“Morgana”, “Shiny”, “Front Now”)
Myra Melford’s Fire and Water Quintet: Hear the Light Singing
An improvement over For the Love of Fire and Water because the musicians are more comfortable within the ensemble, and perchance because the tracks are longer. Within each of five “insertions,” a quintet member gets to embellish one of Melford’s heads that this time trend more Im- than Expressionist: the immediate inspiration is the Mediterranean that inspired the Twombly drawings the group is named after. Tomeka Reid’s cello takes a leadership role, setting an elegiac tone introducing “Insertion Two” and keeping the harmonic basic clear elsewhere, giving Melford more room to improvise. In turn, this grants Ingrid Laubrock’s saxes freedom to either play off her or to wander freely: her ascending runs (which seem underused these days; people do like to go down) are impressive. Lesley Mok takes over on drums and is unimpeachable, getting the most space on the dreaded Long One yet commanding attention. Mary Halvorson remains the sore thumb, with her idiosyncratic pet tones and bent notes sometimes threatening to turn this into a Halvorson record, but her individual brilliance through all eight minutes of “Insertion Four” means there’s no questioning why she’s there.
Grade: A MINUS (“Insertion Two”, “Insertion One”, “Insertion Five”)
Ratboys: The Window
A fifth album that feels like a debut, perhaps because Julia Steiner and Dave Sagan involved the rest of their band in songwriting for the first time. They don’t match fellow 2023 breakout alt-power-couple-band Wednesday in pure chops terms, though this hardly matters except on the long one. At the prevailing five-minutes-and-under, their collegiate grunge and lower Midwestern alt-country jangle suffice as bases for Steiner/Sagan’s specificities about location and emotional states. The meet-cute-in-the-heartland (well, within driving distance of Notre Dame) “I Want You (Fall 2010)” could be an indie-rock Hallmark movie. They burned each other CDs! Awwww <<vomits>>. The title track is the only song I know to recognize that 2020 was tragic beyond COVID itself, without ceding an inch to culture war bullshit. Regardless of whether this is a peak or they can keep this up, it’s a hell of a statement of purpose to call their opener “Making Noise for the Ones You Love”. That’s a pursuit they can make a life out of. <<vomits again>>
Grade: A MINUS (“The Window”, “Making Noise for the Ones You Love”, “I Want You (Fall 2010)”)
Emmet Cohen & Houston Person: Masters Legacy Series Volume 5
Previous entries in this series by pianist Cohen (b. 1990) have featured Jimmy Cobb, Ron Carter, Benny Golson/Tootie Heath, and George Coleman. Person’s soul jazz presents a different challenge, and he adapts admirably, not going full H. Silver but toying with rhythmic motifs and long, fluent right-hand runs that only stretch for the martini glass a few times. Yasushi Nakamura’s bass and Kyle Poole’s drums are modest in support, guaranteeing shape. Person (b. 1934) is who they and I are here for. He can blow a standard with the smoothness of a tenor with lungs a third the age of his, getting gruff in his lower register without honking, and sounding voice-like while deploying note-by-note volume adjustments that aren’t possible for singers. Highlight that perhaps shouldn’t have been so unexpected: “Just the Way You Are”. Billy Joel is one of the major melodists of the last half-century; don’t make me admit it again.
Grade: A MINUS (“Just the Way You Are”, “Isn’t It Romantic”, “Why Not”)
Grrrl Gang: Spunky!
Inevitably a little less spunky than Here to Stay!—the guitars are more polished, the bass more ambitious. Their viewpoint, however, is no less singular. This sounds like a lost turn-of-the-Nineties Flying Nun record, which is not a bad place to settle down. With substantial help from touring drummer Muhammad Faiz Abdurrahman, the trio rock harder than before, while leaving space for Angeeta Sentana to expound upon what it’s like to be an independent woman in a patriarchal society (which, need it be said, still covers about every society.) She gets the band to singalong-rhyme “she never shaves her pits” with “she’ll swallow your whole spit”, yet she longs to be a “cool girl”, which shows how cool she is. Living up to its title is “A Fight Breaks Out at a Karaoke Bar”: “you’re never gonna be this young ever again.”
Grade: A MINUS (“Blue-Stained Lips”, “A Fight Breaks Out at a Karaoke Bar”, “Better Than Life”)
Bounaly: Dimanche à Bamako
To enjoy this shredding and more shredding, you’ll have to put up with the lo-fi, especially of the vocals: it’s is a live recording where only Bambara-Songhoy guitarist Bounaly and to a lesser extent drummer Sangho are well-mic’ed, because, I presume, they’re who both the displaced northern Malian wedding guests and the international vinyl-buying audience most want to hear. Bounaly’s piercing timbre could stand out over a much larger ensemble as well as it does over any number of Bamako partygoers. In the Niafunké tradition, he strings together small repeated units into much longer patterns that ebb and flow over the course of seven or nine minutes. Sangho doesn’t get the luxury of tone quality; he just bangs away with efficiency. This’ll suffice until someone going all out for their wedding reception flies him over here; if you do, send me an invite.
Grade: A MINUS (“Mali Mussow”, “Ma Chérie”, “Wato To”)
IVE: I’ve IVE
These punctuation troublers have grown into one of the four or five K-pop girl groups that functioning adults who nevertheless have a penchant for ear candy might pay attention to. Less interested in innovation than NewJeans or Aespa, they nevertheless keep pace with beat fashion. The songwriting credits include reassuring Nordic names like “Guldbrandsen” and “Bwanasi-Tømmerbakke” as well as some of their own. Though the hook on one of their nine-digit YouTube hits is “kitsch, kitsch, kitsch, kitsch, kitsch, kitsch”, they have a sense of cool: songs are sweet but don’t always dissolve into syrup, the rapping is underplayed, and leader Yujin gets spots to show off her genuinely impressive vocal range. Other catchphrases like “that’s my life” and “na na na na not your girl” correlate to a confidence befitting functioning adults.
Grade: B PLUS (“I Am”, “Kitsch”, “Lips”)
Ana Frango Elétrico: Me Chama De Gato Que Eu Sou Sua
Despite not quite being as consistently fun as a blatant pop sellout could be, it’s gotten them some deserved international attention. While Brazil Beat Blog mourns the lack of guitar, there’s decent funk underlying the reeds-and-pizzicato embellishments. The lyrics remain a bit weird—can’t imagine any American indie-popper making “electric fish swimming in my mouth” their lead single’s chorus (or if they did, they’d make it sound like a bad thing.) Still, as much as I admire their brio and their blurring of gender boundaries, this doesn’t bloom into full perversity. Ana claims to be “the boy from Stranger Things”; I presume they mean Mike. Who’s a good kid, but is, you know, Mike.
Grade: B PLUS (“Electric Fish”, “Boy of Stranger Things”, “Insista em Mim”)