Author Archives: Joseph Neff

The Glasgow-based The Gracious Losers are nine members strong, but for their second full-length, the lineup burgeoned to 15 bodies, and across the set’s 11 tracks, it often sounds that way. Categorized as Celtic folk/ Americana, the sound is much broader than the designation might suggest, with rock heft of a rootsy stripe in welcome evidence as they execute the impressive songwriting of Jonathan Lilley. Six Road Ends is out now on black and yellow galaxy vinyl (and standard black) through the label Last Night from Glasgow.  

Kicked up dust isn’t the first thing that springs to my mind when considering the prospects of another contemporary folk and/ or Americana record, but such a thing is possible. In an era when the objective is too often politeness and finesse, spark and edge are welcome qualities. The sheer number of Gracious Losers increases the likelihood they will deliver a record infused with grit, heft and energy, and Jonathan Lilley, Amanda McKeown, Gary Johnston, Heather Philips, Rory McGregor, Monica Queen, Johnny Smillie, Celia Garcia, and Erik Igelstrom don’t disappoint in this regard.

But the real joy of Six Road Ends derives from how it reaches far beyond the folk/ Americana baseline, and from how its rock moves eschew the hackneyed, partly through Lilley’s songs, which are well-rounded yet focused. Likewise, the playing is broad without faltering into a patchwork of styles. It’s really with repeated listens that the territory they cover is effectively driven home.

Not that the full-bodied vocal harmony in opener “Till I Go Home” isn’t striking, particularly as it’s combined with some rock thud. Now, I don’t want the reader to misapprehend the Gracious Losers as being in league with the likes of Dinosaur Jr., though come to think of it, they do share an affinity for Crazy Horse, an influence that surfaces at length during 2018’s The Last of the Gracious Losers.

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Birmingham, UK’s The Nightingales are an important and somewhat underrated entity in post-punk’s early 1980s scheme. Indeed, for connoisseurs of the form, procuring a vinyl copy of their debut Pigs on Purpose hasn’t been easy, and the same goes for their first few 45s. In a delightful turn of events, Call of the Void is reissuing the album and those singles as a 2LP set on blue wax (also 2CD and digital) with demos and live tracks completing the package. It’s an essential addition to any full-bodied post-punk library, out April 16 and coinciding with the release of King Rocker, Michael Cumming’s documentary on the life of Nightingales’ lead singer and sole constant member Robert Lloyd.

To absorb the full story of The Nightingales, one must reckon with first-wave UK punkers The Prefects. An act as amateurish (in the best sense) as they were inspired, The Prefects are entrenched in punk history for their role in the White Riot tour of The Clash (you may have heard of them), and for additionally sharing stages with The Slits, The Damned, The Buzzcocks, and The Fall.

The Prefects’ entire discography postdates the band’s existence, with their first release a 1980 45 for Rough Trade. Comprised of two songs, “Going Through the Motions” b/w “Things in General,” was sourced from sessions recorded for John Peel. The scoop is that the single’s existence is directly related to a stipulation that Rough Trade arrange a recording of Lloyd’s then new outfit, these very Nightingales.

This gifted the world with “Idiot Strength” b/w “Seconds,” The Nightingales’ 1981 debut (technically, it’s a split label release shared by Rough Trade and Lloyd’s own Vindaloo imprint), as the band featured Lloyd on vocals with Joe Crow on guitar and former Prefects Eamon Duffy on bass and Paul Apperley on drums.

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Celebrating Herbie Hancock on his 81st birthday. —Ed.

The short description of Herbie Hancock’s gorgeous 1965 LP Maiden Voyage, is that it’s the ’63-’64 Miles Davis Quintet with Freddie Hubbard subbing on trumpet. But as nicely as that reads, it’s actually much more. Hancock’s fifth and best record as leader, to this point it was also his most ambitious, and was additionally something of a rarity in jazz terms; a wildly successful and delightfully peaceful concept album.

Herbie Hancock has had a long and illustrious career, and in tandem with his contribution to the groups of Miles Davis, Maiden Voyage is probably his finest moment. As a look at the personnel relates, the disc is closely tied to Miles’ ‘60’s work, but as a standalone document Hancock’s masterful session equals anything Davis produced in the decade with the exception of the live material from the Plugged Nickel.

Some will disagree and a few will downright scoff at the notion of Maiden Voyage being rated so highly, in part because of its lack of edginess and decidedly refined sensibility. This circumstance extends to the considerable influence Hancock’s record wielded upon subsequent endeavors in the jazz and rock fields, byproducts that span in quality from mediocre to flat-out awful.

But that’s okay. What Maiden Voyage lacks in bluesy grit or fiery abstraction is greatly made up for by boldness of aspiration and a beautifully sustained mood, and as the title track and “Dolphin Dance” have both become late-period jazz standards, a certain percentage of underwhelming interpretations is basically inevitable.

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Coultrain is the one-man project of Los Angeles-based poet, filmmaker and musician A.M. Frison. His work includes the “mythological cross-genre artist book” Wet Grass, its accompanying musical score The Bluest Blue (under the moniker Noble Metal), and a collaboration with Ben Lamar Gay and Tommaso Moretti as Bottle Tree. His latest as Coultrain is Phantasmagoria, a combination of Soulful stylistics and layered electronics that’s as smooth and warm as it is boundary-stretching and eclectic. It’s out April 9 with a vinyl-only bonus track via Positive Elevation, the newest sublabel from the indefatigable 577 Records of Brooklyn.

Tersely described by 577 as being dedicated to electronic experimentation and avant soul, the Positive Elevation imprint feels almost tailor made for Coultrain’s Phantasmagoria, a record that hits a sweet spot between a progressively lush mid-’70s Soulfulness and an electronic sensibility that places the contents firmly outside the mainstream but without undercutting the engaging, extroverted quality that’s inherent to soul music’s formal equation.

Much of Coultrain’s success as it pertains to the accessible is directly due to Frison’s singing, which might seem like a no-brainer, since a vocalist navigating varying degrees of the passionate is a crucial soul ingredient. But with that said, the enduring examples of the style’s greatness from its 1960s-’70s heyday combined rich vocalizing with an instrumental component of uncommon richness and verve, often honed by house bands (Stax, Motown, Hi).

Grit, either vocal or instrumental, was a variable element, welcome in the recipe but not integral and never dominant. When soul music declined in the hands of technology-wielding producers, grit all but evaporated, but that wasn’t the problem. Instead, it was a lack of imagination, as the new tools were too often used to merely contemporize old strategies, rather than to pursue fresh possibilities.

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Celebrating Merle Haggard on the date of his birth. —Ed.

Merle Haggard is a man who needs no introduction. His music, however, is best served by a thoughtful entry-point that reflects his emergence as one of country music’s truly singular figures. As the first LP he recorded with his estimable backing band the Strangers, it’s not the only Haggard record you’ll need, but it does establish the beginnings of a very fruitful period and essays with precision the attributes that make him such a valuable artist.

Along with Buck Owens, Merle Haggard was a principal architect of the Bakersfield Sound, a strain of country music rooted in the ‘50s that broke big in the following decade, providing an alternative to the Nashville Sound that was dominating the C&W charts during the era. Calling it the original Alt-Country will make many folks wince, but it’s not that far off the mark. For in eschewing the syrupy string sections, overly polite backing singers and general pop slickness of the Nashville Sound, a production-driven style that later morphed into a movement called Countrypolitan, the Bakersfield musicians were retaining the glorious essence of Honky-Tonk (a form derived from the work of Jimmie Rodgers, Western Swing-man Bob Wills, and Hank Williams) that prevailed on the C&W charts during the ‘50s.

Classic Honky-Tonk was exemplified by such major cats as Ernest Tubb, Webb Pierce, Hank Locklin, Lefty Frizzell, and a little later on George Jones, and it was a band music that flourished on the stages of the very clubs that named it. While the early years of the Bakersfield Sound overlap that of Honky-Tonk, by the ‘60s and its national breakout through Owens and Haggard, it was appropriately assessed as a reaction against the pop sensibilities of a city that in 1960 was designated as the USA’s second biggest record producing center.

If the Nashville Sound developed into Countrypolitan, the Bakersfield thing also continued to thrive, influencing contemporaneous work from important artists like Johnny Paycheck and setting the stage for the Outlaw movement of the ‘70s. It also touched both The Beatles and The Stones and was a crucial ingredient in the creation of both country-rock and the stuff we now indeed categorize as Alt-Country.

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When you combine pianist Christopher Parker, alto saxophonist Chad Fowler, trumpeter Marc Franklin, vocalist Kelley Hurt, drummer Brian Blade, and bassist William Parker, the result is the Dopolarians, whose new CD is The Bond, out now through Mahakala Music. Now, those familiar with the group’s prior effort will notice a couple shifts in personnel, but we’ll tackle those below. Of foremost importance is the high standard of quality maintained across a disc that takes many chances as it covers a wide spectrum of textures and emotions. In short, it’s a recording of distinction.

Released in 2016, the Dopolarians’ debut Garden Party was also the final recording to feature the great (and somewhat undersung) drummer Alvin Fielder, a charter member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) who can be heard on Sound, the essential 1968 LP by Art Ensemble of Chicago saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell.

But more germane to the record under review here, Fielder played extensively with Edward “Kidd” Jordan, whose tenor saxophone is crucial to Garden Party’s sustained worthiness. For The Bond, Marc Franklin and Brian Blade complete the new lineup of Dopolarians. That duo, along with Chad Fowler, are fresh from the septet heard on Christopher Parker and Kelley Hurt’s No Tears Suite, its music composed in honor of the segregation-defying Little Rock Nine, released on CD last September by Mahakala and presented by the long running literary magazine Oxford American.

Given No Tears Suite’s subject matter, the relationship with the Little Rock, AR-based Southern-themed Oxford American makes total sense. It’s a connection, a bond of you will, that extends to Dopolarians, as every member in both lineups save for NYC free jazz cornerstone William Parker hails from the Southeastern USA, Jordan from New Orleans, Fielder from Meridian, MS, and Blade from Shreveport, LA with extensive time spent in New Orleans. Fowler, Christopher Parker, Hurt and Franklin are from Little Rock with all four having studied music in Memphis.

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It may seem paradoxical, but when it comes to duo exchange, there is more than one way to skin a cat. On Made Out of Sound, released this week by the Palilalia label, drummer Chris Corsano and guitarist Bill Orcutt make clear that skinning a cat isn’t even required, which is good news, frankly. Instead, the creation of this LP began with rhythmic expressiveness captured on one coast as the guitar was added later on the other side of the country. The seven tracks finalized by Orcutt on his desktop, totaling under 30 minutes, present not an approximation of immediacy but illuminate how musical inspiration can overcome, if not entirely negate, the obstacles of distance and time.

I mention duo exchange in relation to this fine record partly due to the savvy musing of Tom Carter (he of Charalambides and other activities) that accompany Made Out of Sound, specifically his thoughts regarding the accuracy of the record’s contents as belonging to the form of musical expression known as jazz. To elaborate, the term duo exchange serves as the title of a landmark LP cut in 1973 by Frank Lowe (sax) and Rashied Ali (drums), an album that followed (by date of recording though not chronology of release) Ali and John Coltrane’s higher profile Interstellar Space (recorded in ’67 and issued in ’74).

As it plays, Made Out of Sound radiates a sustained commonality with the outer reaches of jazz, so that it’s clear the observation comes down to where the moldy figs are positioned. That is, in a nutshell, the views of conservative sticks-in-the-mud who bray that anything not inherently swinging isn’t jazz. However, the jazz/ not-jazz rumination also pertains to the record’s baseline mode of creation.

Forget overdubbing (Orcutt does multitrack his guitar on this set) and editing (as said, the LP was built on a computer), as both have been part of jazz since the 1950s. No, the question is, can jazz be made by two individuals who, for the purposes of recording, weren’t in the same room at the same time? “Who cares?” is surely the reaction of some readers, so please allow me to reframe it as an inquiry into the spark of spontaneity.

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Long-loaded with jazz aficionados, Japan has also produced some high quality players, a list that includes drummer George Otsuka. While he recorded a bunch, including with pianist Hampton Hawes and fellow drummer Jack DeJohnette, of particular distinction is the 1975 LP by his quintet, Loving You George, which documents a night in performance at the Nemu Jazz Inn. Offering four selections launching from modal jazz into fusion, the record bypasses expectations through inspired group interplay and energetic, occasionally even wild, execution. It’s out March 26, reissued on vinyl for the first time since the decade of its original release, with an OBI strip and remastered audio through WEWANTSOUNDS.

While still mostly appreciated by aficionados of the style, the jazz history of Japan has resided outside the shadowy realms of insider knowledge for quite a while now. Just recently for instance, the BBE label has unveiled the third volume in their series J Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz From Japan. As the navigation of jazz history is, to put it mildly, a labyrinthine endeavor, curatorial efforts like BBE’s can be simultaneously illuminating and daunting, especially when covering territory beyond jazz’s native soil.

The title track from Sea Breeze, the George Otsuka Quintet’s 1971 debut, is featured on the first J Jazz volume, but only on the 3LP vinyl, which is sold out (it was issued in 2018). And Sea Breeze was cut by a completely different band save for Otsuka, so comparisons are fairly limited, though there are some similarities and a few interesting contrasts.

It’s easy to hear, if not screamingly obvious, that Loving You George is a drummer’s record, with Otsuka handling the foreground with grace, a la Blakey or Roach, rather than acting the showboat. But on Sea Breeze, he isn’t as consistently upfront, with the set much more of a mixed bag stylistically and in terms of value, ranging from the late ’60s-Blue Note-style of the opening title track (Shunzo Ohno’s trumpet inspiring thoughts of Lee Morgan), to a Beatles interpretation (“Fool on the Hill,” better than expected) to a serving of soul jazz (“Potato Chips”) that would’ve made for a nice single on Prestige.

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Celebrating Jon Hassell on his 84th birthday. —Ed.

Originally released in 1981 on Editions EG, Jon Hassell’s Dream Theory in Malaya: Fourth World Volume Two was a groundbreaker in its merger of ambient, experimental, and global sounds, but as the decades unfurled it came to be inexplicably overlooked, in part due to a lack of reissues since getting placed on compact disc in the late-’80s. Well, that scenario has changed, as it’s been given a LP and CD release courtesy of Glitterbeat Records’ new sub-label Tak:Til; that its often surreal yet meticulously crafted rewards are back in the bins is a fine circumstance indeed.

Regarding Jon Hassell’s early catalog, 1980’s Fourth World Vol. 1: Possible Musics is much better known, even before it was reissued by Glitterbeat in 2014, largely because it has Brain Eno’s name on the cover. Eno plays on and mixed Vol. Two as well, but co-billing eludes him, specifically due to Hassell’s distress over his partner running with the Fourth World musical ball and spiking it directly into David Byrne’s backyard.

Hassell apparently viewed Talking Heads’ Remain in Light (’80) and the Eno/ Byrne collab My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (’81) as part of “a full-scale appropriation.” This may sound like an atmosphere of hostility, but Hassell actually contributed to Remain in Light, and as said, ol’ Bri wasn’t locked out the studio for Vol. 2; in retrospect, Hassell has said he “probably under-credited him.”

If a bit harsh at the time, Hassell’s caution over the usurping-weakening of the Fourth World, a concept expanded upon by Hassell as “a viewpoint out of which evolves guidelines for finding balances between accumulated knowledge and the conditions created by new technologies,” wasn’t exactly unjustified, as a stated goal was to imagine a musical landscape where assorted global musics, with Hassell citing Javanese, Pygmy, and Aboriginal forms as examples, had been as influential as the Euro-classical tradition.

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Celebrating Lee Scratch Perry who turns 85 tomorrow. —Ed.

Of records, legendary Jamaican producer Lee “Scratch” Perry has released a ton; setting aside the singles and EPs, his non-compilation album total is hovering near 100, and for an artist outside the jazz realm, that’s a considerable achievement. Of course, the number of individuals who own a copy of every one of those full-lengths might fit comfortably into a four-door sedan, a possibility illuminating that Perry’s prolificacy doesn’t equate to his prime. 

When you make as many records as Lee Perry has, they can’t all be brilliant. Hell, the majority of them are unlikely to resonate with more than moderate levels of personal investment. I say unlikely because I’ll confess that haven’t listened to more than half of his output; Discogs lists 87 full-length albums and 97 comps, and I’ve a sneaking suspicion there are scads of releases that haven’t been logged, plus beaucoup stray singles and EPs (to say nothing of the dodgy gray-market stuff).

Succinctly, after hearing a fair portion of Perry’s later material I realized I should cease investigating those more recent progressions and just hang with the canonical stuff. If all this seems poised to besmirch the guy’s rep as a dub innovator-auteur, I will counter that fluctuating personal investment isn’t the same as lacking a recognizable stamp; if the majority of his post-’70s work is far from essential, I’ve never heard anything that faltered into anonymous hackery.

Lee Perry very much fits in with certain cineastes from the early days of auteurism. Specifically, like numerous directors who worked under studio contracts and would begin another film almost immediately after their last one was finished, Perry has created, if not incessantly, then at a clip that has insured a diminishment in his masterpiece percentage, a downward plummet to what some folks might consider journeyman levels had the man’s achievements not been integral to the growth and longevity of Jamaican music.

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Celebrating Clare Grogan on her 59th birthday. —Ed.

Altered Images are basically remembered today for being one part of the early-‘80s influx of the New Wave, one that never broke big in the States. Featuring the unique vocal talents of Clare Grogan, the group’s early material provides a very interesting collection of melodic yet appealingly edgy post-punk that should satisfy fans of the later-‘80s c86 movement, and by extension the partisans of ‘90s indie pop that was issued via labels like Slumberland. The best place to start with Altered Images is with their first effort “Dead Pop Stars” b/w “Sentimental,” a gem of a single that never got its due.

A band’s debut record can serve a variety of different functions. At the time of release these documents will reliably stand as a tangible marker of achievement for the musicians involved, indicating that they’d transcended the realm of the practice space and low-to-no paying local live gigs to actually produce something permanent.

So many records have been issued over the years that the steady flow of bands announcing their existence with yet another 45, EP, or album can frankly not seem anything even remotely like a big deal, but the reality is that only a percentage of groups have what it takes to make it beyond the initial stages of formation to deliver something concrete, and only a portion of those actually possess the collective inspiration to deliver music that can withstand the test of time. Yes, the debut record delivers permanence (“We did it!”), but it’s far from a given that what’s contained in those grooves will cut through the haze of subsequent activity to attain the stature of the truly lasting.

The debut record also serves as a calling card for the bands that produce them, combining with a healthy impatience from the participants, who’ve surely practiced those songs dozens of times and are eager to unveil fresh material as a springboard of legitimacy for further activity. Hopefully the releases that follow will reveal a rewarding progression of ideas and a rise in quality. Indeed, very often the music that’s produced brings a level of refinement and assurance and with this an increase in polish and professionalism.

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