Author Archives: Joseph Neff

Mary Lattimore is known for collaboration; if the scene were jazz, she’d be rated as a first-call harpist. Mac McCaughan is noted as the singer-guitarist in Superchunk, a band that has thrived in four decades; it sorta goes without saying that collaboration is in his skill set. Still, the prospect of a duo record from these artists came with a tinge of uncertainty, as the team-up didn’t seem a natural fit. New Rain Duets, out on clear or black vinyl and digital March 22 through Three Lobed Recordings, exceeds expectations. One reason why: McCaughan isn’t slinging guitar but helming an array of synths. Meanwhile, Lattimore is plucking like a champ. The results are appealingly celestial, but also more.

I haven’t listened to everything Mary Lattimore’s recorded, but to varying degrees, I’ve liked everything I’ve heard. Her own stuff, either solo or in collaboration (she’s released records with Jeff Zeigler and Meg Baird and played with many others) displays an admirable range and comfort with experimentation while avoiding falling back onto the baseline cascades of lushness that are associated with her chosen instrument. If I see the name Mary Lattimore in the credits of someone else’s album (as I did with Sharron van Etten’s Are We There or Marissa Nadler’s For My Crimes) I note it as a sign of promise.

Of course, no artist is infallible, and I was unsure over what exactly New Rain Duets held in store. This is not to suggest that I don’t hold Mac McCaughan’s work in high regard. To the contrary, Superchunk was amongst my most-played bands of the ’90s, in part because they consistently delivered hooky songs with punk energy and edge while never coming off like a bunch of hackneyed doofuses.

I really dig his other bands Portastatic and Bricks, as well. Same goes for his 2015 solo LP Non-Believers. But a common thread in McCaughan’s work is pop, though it’s far from one-note. Over the years, he’s expanded from early Superchunk’s post-hardcore Buzzcocks-zone into lo-fi melodicism and power-pop-shaded singer-songwriter territory, and later augmented his sturdy strum with vivid baroque flourishes. On Non-Believers, he even productively integrated New Wavy synths into the scheme.

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Today we remember Andre Williams who passed away on March 17, with a look back from our archives. —Ed.

Zephire Andre Williams has packed a lot of living into his nearly 80 years on this planet, and along the way his name has been attached to a whole lot of records. In the second half of the 1950s he cut a slew of smolderingly low-fi platters for Detroit’s Fortune label, with “Bacon Fat” b/w “Just Because of a Kiss” growing into a national hit. The a-side is amongst the most potent R&B of its era, and it rightfully stands as a classic.

Specifically due to its scarcity, Andre Williams’ early work was once the stuff of legend. Not just his run of singles for Fortune, but his subsequent motions for ventures of differing size and longevity such as  Wingate, Sport, Avin, Checker, and Duke. He was also noted for his role behind the scenes at Motown during the first half of the ‘60s and as a co-writer (with Otha Hayes and Verlie Rice) of “Shake a Tail Feather,” the original of which was recorded in Chicago by The Five Du-Tones for the One-derful imprint.

The waxing of that ludicrously swank monster occurred in 1963 during one of Williams’ absences from Motown. It’s now well-established that he and Berry Gordy’s relationship was a highly volatile one, and by ’65 the two men had parted ways for good. His biggest post-Motown success came at Checker, one of the numerous subsidiaries belonging to Phil and Leonard Chess. Hooking up with Ike Turner in the early-‘70s sent Williams’ life into a downward spiral, mainly due to the steady availability of copious amounts of cocaine.

And Williams’ frequent label-hopping combined with his overall lack of national hits to basically insure difficulty and neglect in the anthologizing of his discography, even after he’d made his comeback. In ’84 Fortune Records, still in business against seemingly insurmountable odds, issued the compilation Jail Bait, but by the point of his ‘90s resurgence copies of that slab were long gone.

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Today we remember Surf Guitar legend Dick Dale who passed away on March 16 with a look back from our archives at the genre he pioneered. —Ed.

The Western Hemisphere has just entered prime beach season, which of course means swimming, soaking up rays in the sand, sipping upon cold beverages to help counteract the swelter, and for beings of adventuresome and athletic nature, the riding of major waves. But if one is faced with landlocked circumstances a perfectly acceptable alternative is cranking up Anthology Recordings’ reissue of the OST to Stephen Spaulding’s surf film Bali High. Gills-drenched in appropriate vibes, it also spotlights the ingenuity of musician-composer Michael Sena. 

Whilst enduring my teenage years a steady rise in clumsiness unfortunately became tangible, and thusly skateboarding, skiing, and surfing essentially got lumped together as activities best avoided in the safeguarding of physical health. However, I did enjoy skate and surf rock (I know not of a corresponding mountain genre of the slopes), though gradually clear was that a lot of surf music didn’t actually impact the listening diets of those having shaped up the subculture.

A whole bunch of real estate spreads out between the coasts of the United States, and a significant portion of surf rock served that market in a manner kinda similar to Exotica; residing closer to the root of true surf was Dick Dale, The Ventures, The Chantays, The Surfaris, and more so scads of obscure regional acts, a high number of them hailing from Southern California, but surf music’s reality was undeniably somewhat messy. For instance, many quickly adapted to hot rod themes in hopes of expanding audiences instantaneously snatched away by the tsunami of the British Invasion.

So the story goes, anyway. In 1966 The Endless Summer appeared, giving voice to a legitimate way of life amid the death throes of faddishness. Scored by The Sandals (or Sandells, who curiously went on to contribute the soundtrack to Dick Barrymore’s ’67 skiing doc The Last of the Ski Bums), Bruce Brown’s documentary is the obvious starting point of any tour through surf culture’s audio-visual component.

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Although he’s noted as a painter and conceptual artist, Terry Allen also writes songs, sings them and has recorded albums that have earned him an enduring cult following. This music has sometimes found him lumped into the subgenre of outlaw country, a designation that short-shrifts the man to an almost ridiculous extent. At no time will this be more apparent than while listening to Pedal Steal + Four Corners. Collecting Allen and the Panhandle Mystery Band’s long-form narrative audio works onto one LP and three CDs with an info-loaded 28-page color booklet, the set defeats tidy stylistic categorization and presents the artist as truly one of a kind. It’s in stores March 22 via Paradise of Bachelors.

Art continues to accumulate at such a rate that the impulse to time-manage and only engage with an artist’s best or most noteworthy work is stronger than ever, even as evaluations over which examples are the greatest evolve over time. Make no mistake; Terry Allen, an artist of multiple specialties born in Wichita, KS and currently residing in Santa Fe, NM who’s been long-associated with the non-conformist country music scene of Lubbock, TX, is amongst our greatest artists. Pedal Steal + Four Corners takes the idea of abbreviating his body of work to one or a few examples and blows it completely to smithereens.

For decades, folks looking to become knowledgeable about Allen’s music were almost always urged to check out Lubbock (On Everything), his sophomore double-album masterpiece from 1979. Circa the late 1990s and into the new century, if someone was eager to go a little deeper, the recommendation was often Human Remains from ’96, in part because it was easily available (or easier to find, anyway) and also because it retained a similar vibe to Lubbock; call it singer-songwriter. The two albums even shared personnel in Joe Ely and Lloyd Maines (the latter’s steel guitar is all over Pedal Steal + Four Corners).

Back in 2016, Paradise of Bachelors’ vinyl reissue of Allen’s ’75 debut Juarez threw a major wrench into the works. It had hit CD for the second time in 2004 through his longtime label Sugar Hill, though I don’t recall much fanfare during that period. And by much, I mean hardly any at all, probably in large part because it was a rough time for physical releases of any kind.

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For a guy just releasing his third full-length, Los Angeleno Dexter Story’s credits and experiences are wide-ranging, with this depth of background vividly reflected in his work and nowhere more than in Bahir, his second LP for Soundway. Having spent extensive time in Africa, Story combines a variety of styles from that continent with jazz, funk, and contemporary production techniques. It’s not his first time tapping into the sounds of Africa (and Ethiopia in particular), but the music here expands rather than retreads, and it delivers consistent rewards. It’s in stores on vinyl and digital March 15.  

Vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and arranger Dexter Story’s prior two records under his own name are Seasons, which came out in 2012 on the Kindred Spirits label, and Wondem from 2015, his first for Soundway. Prior, he was part of Life Force Trio, an outfit featuring Carlos Niño (who has co-produced all of Story’s LPs) and a “floating” third member; they released Living Room on Plug Research in 2006.

Life Force Trio came into being through Niño recruiting Story as instrumentalist for vocalist Dwight Trible’s 2005 set for Ninja Tune, Love is the Answer. The endeavor went so swimmingly that Life Force Trio are co-credited on the album. It’s all unsurprising, as Story’s strengths as a player are considerable, having backed LA alt-hip-hop group Sa-Ra Creative Partners and taken part in (alongside Niño, Trible and many others) the ensemble Build an Ark.

A pervasive characteristic of Story’s music is a sort of advanced soulfulness, though during Bahir’s opener (too brief, but understandably so, as it serves as a sort of prelude) the cascading harps travel into the realms of spiritual jazz a la Alice Coltrane. It heralds the arrival of “Biba,” where a flurry of elements in Story’s execution get solidly asserted, the first being a thorough connection to the contemporary as heard through pitch-shifted vocals. Rather than feeling grafted on, the singing coheres productively with the bold African-derived joyousness of the tune.

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With the release of her self-titled 1988 album, the career of singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams experienced a definite upswing. Roughly a decade later her fifth record arrived, and she really broke out. However, she was on the scene a decade prior to cutting Lucinda Williams with a pair of releases on Smithsonian Folkways. In accordance with Women’s History Month, the second is getting freshly reissued on vinyl by the label. It’s a strong LP that considerably predates the Alt-country upsurge; indeed, Williams had a major role in defining the style. Happy Woman Blues is in stores now with the original sleeve art and lyric booklet.

My introduction to Lucinda Williams came through her “Passionate Kisses” 12-inch back in 1989. It was a casual buy, though not exactly a whim, as I was attracted by the Rough Trade logo on the back, particularly as not long before I’d been impressed by another US signing to the label, specifically Souled American and their debut Fe.

Upon taking it home and disposing of the shrink-wrap, I dropped needle and was immersed in a bright sound with chiming guitar and pretty vocalizing. It was quite far afield from the punk affiliated stuff that was typical of my listening diet at the time. Still, something kept me coming back to it. Well, a few somethings, like that guitar, and how the whole cohered into an exceptional piece of songwriting; a few years hence and “Passionate Kisses” would win her a Grammy through the hit version by Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Overall, I was impressed more by the four tunes on the flip side, three of which were from a radio performance on WPFK, and one cut in New York City in 1983, the bunch underscoring Williams’ aptitude with bluesy material. It was a twist that connected quite nicely to the blues and roots stuff I’d been listening to prior to taking that offramp into punk.

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As we exit Black History Month and enter Women’s History Month, how about a new release that’s in direct dialogue with both sides of the transition? That recording would be trumpeter-composer-multitasking bandleader Wadada Leo Smith’s Rosa Parks: Pure Love. An Oratorio of Seven Songs, out now on CD through TUM Records. It offers Smith with vocalists Min Xiao-Fen, Carmina Escobar, and Karen Parks (distinguished here as the Diamond Voices), the RedKoral Quartet (contributing strings), the BlueTrumpet Quartet (featuring trumpets, natch) and the Janus Duo (consisting of drums and electronics), creating a work that’s approach to history is imbued with contemporary relevance.

Rosa Parks: Pure Love. An Oratorio of Seven Songs is an achievement of considerable ambition. Unsurprisingly so, as Wadada Leo Smith has become well-known for grandly-scaled works on topics of equal size. 2012’s 4CD Ten Freedom Summers, 2014’s 2CD The Great Lakes Suites, and 2016’s 2CD America’s National Parks are amongst his best-known recent thematic releases in a voluminous discography.

Grand of scale but eschewing sprawl and steeped in disciplined, focused intent; upon learning of this set’s imminent release, I had no doubts that Smith would engage in a suitably robust manner with the lasting significance of Rosa Parks, who he describes in his liner dedication as “a person of exceptional courage and wisdom, who made the right move of resistance at the right time.” Frankly, Smith consistently brings the goods, meaning his latest work would be something far greater than a tepid appreciation of “Rosa the tired.”

In his booklet essay, Franz A. Matzner usefully clarifies that Parks’ civil protest differed from how it is often remembered and sometimes still taught to children, specifically that it was just a spontaneous act by an exhausted and frustrated woman after a hard day’s work. Instead, Matzner makes clear that Parks was the secretary of the Montgomery, Alabama NAACP.

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A native of Spain’s Basque region, Elena Setién has just released her third album, and across ten songs it highlights her strengths as a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and songwriter. Her sound is layered and inviting, an example of art-pop that doesn’t favor one side of the hyphen over the other, and while she’s quite attentive to the lyrical side of Another Kind Of Revolution’s equation, the playing, nearly all of it executed by Setién herself (guitarist Steve Gunn is a notable guest contributor) never takes a back seat. The album is out now on LP with a limited amount on red vinyl, on CD in a four-panel mini-LP gatefold package, and of course digitally through Thrill Jockey.

Thrill Jockey’s promotional bio for Another Kind Of Revolution, Elena Setién’s debut for the label (and it appears, her first release on wax) mentions that she has extensive experience as an improvisor. It’s stated without elaboration in support of her musical depth in a setting that’s decidedly pop, but the bio on her website (written around the time of her 2013 solo debut Twelve Sisters) relates appearances at over a half-dozen Euro jazz festivals (including Moers) and extensive touring in a duo Little Red Suitcase.

I’m not exactly sure how that twosome connects to Setién’s terrific singing on the self-titled 2012 CD by Little Red Big Bang, a nonet with much to recommend combining avant-jazz with tangibly straight-ahead big band action, but connect they do. Again, it’s a scenario broached but not belabored by Thrill Jockey, and it’s expanded upon in this review to make a point about what Elena Setién is not.

Sometimes, when improvisors/ jazzers elect to tackle pop, the results can come off as arrogant (as in “lemme show you how it’s done”), slumming (often manifested by an absence of the heartfelt), or a damaging air of the fancy-pantsed (which can detrimentally combine with the presence of ego cited above. Setién succumbs to none of it.

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Prior to his passing in 1980, the New Orleans pianist Professor Longhair reliably delivered the goods to club and festival audiences far and wide. For evidence, please consult Live in Chicago; cut at the University of Chicago Folk Festival on February 1, 1976, it offers a fine dose of the man’s immediately recognizable sound.

Professor Longhair’s 1970s renaissance is one of the sweeter late acts in the whole of 20th century American music; throughout the decade Henry Roeland Byrd was knocking out crowds on festival stages across the USA and Europe, but before the Alligator label’s 1980 release of Crawfish Fiesta the pianist was still primarily known on home stereos for his ‘50s work as collected by Atlantic on their classic ’72 LP New Orleans Piano.

Amid his newfound fortune new Fess material was largely approached with disinterest; as detailed in John Sinclair’s notes for Live in Chicago, he did record with Snooks Eaglin circa ’71-’72, but the results languished on the shelf until Rounder put them out in ‘87 as House Party New Orleans Style (Rhino followed suit four years later under the tile Mardi Gras in Baton Rouge).

Rock & Roll Gumbo paired the Professor with the guitar and violin of Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, but it was contemporaneously issued only in France on the Blue Star imprint, and other than Live on the Queen Mary, a ’78 album capturing a performance at a party hosted by Paul and Linda McCartney, there was basically nothing else.

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As Black History Month nears its conclusion for 2019, the opportunity arises to spotlight seven coinciding jazz reissues made available by ORG Music. Stylistically wide-ranging, including a few masterpieces, some overlooked gems, and a plethora of historical value from Bunk Johnson and Leadbelly, Ben Webster, Milt Hinton, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Cecil Taylor, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and Albert Ayler and Don Cherry, all seven are out now.

Black history encompasses so much more than just music, of course. But there’s also no denying that music provides a fertile landscape of African-American achievement; even when limiting the scope to jazz, the body of high-quality work and noteworthy accomplishments is large enough that it can seem inexhaustible.

The pool only widens when considering examples that might fall short of the earth-shaking category but are still very much of interest, as history does not consist of an uninterrupted sequence of masterpieces and artistic breakthroughs; there’s a whole lot of interest in between, which is where At New York Town Hall 1947, a live recording on double vinyl featuring New Orleans trumpeter Bunk Johnson & blues-folk singer-guitarist Lead Belly, resides.

In a sense, the recording’s strongest attribute is history. Pressed to vinyl for the first time after hitting CD in 1993, it’s a document of one event from a series put on by an organization called the New York Jazz Club. In addition to Bunk and Leadbelly, this association rounded up an interesting band including trombonist Jimmy Archey, banjoist Danny Barker, clarinetists Omer Simeon and Edmond Hall, pianist Ralph Sutton, drummer Freddie Moore, and tubist-bassist Cyrus St. Clair.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the greatest night for many in the assembled crew, including Bunk, and even after being mastered for vinyl by Dave Gardner, the limitations and flaws of the source recording are still quite evident. Leadbelly only performs on three cuts, none of them near the peak of his powers, and one being “Yellow Gal” (yellow meaning bi-racial, a problematic but not uncommon term in vintage blues recordings).

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