All the People Who Died

Jim Carroll was a poet and rocker who penned a 1980 punk classic whose heartbreak was nearly disfigured by its thrash.  Carroll, now dead himself, recalled those lost too soon:

                  Those are people who died, died
                  They were all my friends and they died.

As I thought about this list of remembrances, Carroll's words made me aware of what's so sad about this list of those lost in 2016 -- these were all our friends.

David Bowie
1947-2016
Inexhaustible reinvention meant I didn't love it all, but the stuff that worked lasts.  And for me, "Ashes to Ashes" was his most enduring songcraft, fresh and surprising more than 25 years later.

Leonard Cohen
1934-2016
In 1967, "Songs of Leonard Cohen," scared the shit out of me and made we worry about the cousin who introduced it to me.  It was years before I found the savage beauty in Cohen's music, and when I did, I couldn't get enough of the poetry and salvation offered by songs like "Famous Blue Raincoat."

Glen Frey
1948-2016
I was not an Eagles fan, but 1975's "On the Border," was the soundtrack to a magical, hazy summer spent in the Rockies perched on the rim of adulthood.  "Lyin' Eyes" was its essence and it's Frey's signature sound.

Pfife Dawg (Malik Taylor)
1970-2016
Together with Q-Tip, Pfife created the sound of A Tribe Called Quest, brilliant rapping, inspired sampling and a fresh sense of humor that took hip-hip in a whole new direction in 1990.  "Can I Kick It" captures Pfife's genius.

Prince
1958-2016
One? I have to pick one from the guy who put on the best performance I have EVER seen?  Okay, then "Kiss."

Leon Russell
1942-2016
Like most of us, the sprawling 1970 mess of"Mad Dogs and Englishman" was my introduction to Russell even though he had played on dozens of hits I knew by heart.  I'm not going for the obvious here;  "Hummingbird" is my Russell favorite.

Maurice White
1941-2016
White, the frontman for Earth Wind & Fire, had initial success as the drummer for the Ramsey Lewis Trio ("The In Crowd," "Wade in the Water").   But for most of the '70's, EW&F with him at the helm was the sound of slick R&B at its zenith.  To this day, I wouldn't even think of having a party where I didn't play "September."

"Now cracks a noble heart.  Goodnight, sweet prince
and flights of angels sing thee to they rest"

Best Songs of 2016

Desperately seeking distraction in 2016, these songs were big league distractions.

Mac Miller, Dang -  With Anderson Paak.  Dang is right!

Young Gun Silver Fox, You Can Feel It - The sounds of Lite FM made new.

Solange, Cranes in the Sky - Break my heart, little sister.

Father John Misty, Real Love Baby - James Taylor, you're done.

Karl Blau, Fallin Rain - This Link Wray cover is spellbinding, even if every note in the melody is cribbed from Jimmy Webb.

exmagician, Place Your Bets - Maybe "ex-", but still working his magic.

Justin Jay, Let Go - Simmers, then boils.

Gabriel Garzon-Montano, The Game - Soul single of the year.

STRFKR, Never Ever - Putting this on the jukebox in my imaginary bar.

Jim James, The World's Smiling Now - This spooky track by MMJ frontman James is wicked good.

Beyonce, Daddy Lessons - C'mon, she kills it.

Cleopold, Not Coming Down - This song is why I listen to KCRW.

Yuck, As I Walk Away - The slow dance at the headbangers' ball.

Boxed In, Jist - Supercharged electropop

Rufus Du Sol, Say A Prayer for Me - I wore the hell out of this deep house keeper.

Drake (with Rhiana), Too Good - You knew I would love this one best of all.

P.S. - This works pretty well as a playlist, folks.

Best Albums of 2016

This year I stopped being the last man in America to buy music by the song and crossed over to streaming.  Duh.  My rate of music consumption increased dramatically and, with it, my rate of discovery.  The fruits are here on this year's longer list.

The Avalanches, Wildflower

Those crazy Australians were at it again after a 15-year absence from electronica, making irresistible music from samples and found sounds.  "Subways" will make clear why this was the trippiest music of the year.

Bibio, A Mineral Love

I listened to a lot of electronic music this year.  Nothing was as consistently satisfying as this disk. "Light Up the Sky" is its beautiful centerpiece.

Blood Orange, Freetown Sound

Michael Jackson's most brilliant heir was back with a more accessible follow-up to Cupid Deluxe.  Flawless neo-soul, this music lives in the world and aches for its brokenness. One word: "Augustine"

Black Marble, It's Immaterial

Imagine that New Order and the Cure are young again, or you are or I am, or something.  It's all so deliciously confusing when old pop sounds are new again.   Proof positive: "Iron Lung":

DIIV, Is the Is Are

Jangly rock music from Brooklyn, bounced off Planet Claire straight from 1983.  Dreamy stuff you can pogo to, beginning with "Under the Sun."

Jaguar Ma, Every Now & Then

Jagwar Ma offer rich surprises, mixing genres and sounds the way Talking Heads, Beck and Gomez do.  And ooh, so fresh:  "OB1"

Maxwell, BlackSUMMERs'night

I'm a sucker for soul crooners and Maxwell's latest offers the smooth seduction of Prince, Teddy Prendergass and Marvin at their peak, as "1990X" demonstrates.

James Vincent McMorrow, We Move

I love James Blake and his moody electro soul but McMorrow beat him at his own game, like some  peppier, more extroverted younger brother.  Better dancer, too, I'll bet.

Frank Ocean, Blonde

Could Frank be the Nick Drake of hip-hop?  Blonde, with its rich melodies full of misery, says  "absolutely!"  "Pink + White" is his "Pink Moon."

Anderson.Paak,  Malibu

Paak was everywhere this year all on the considerable strength of this disk that perfectly captures the sound of pop music right now.  His heritage of classic R&B and roots rap are on display in tracks like "Am I Wrong".

Parquet Courts, Human Performance

Whatever happened to snark and snarl in indie rock?  Here is its smart embodiment.  Turn up "Dust" really loud and wake up Jonathan Richman.

Poom, 2016

This was the soundtrack of my summer and it's just as good by the hearth in early winter.  Vivid pop produced like vintage Hall & Oates with every word in French (which would have made Darryl and John sound a while lot smarter).

Allen Toussaint, American Tunes

Toussaint is the author of what you think of as the New Orleans sound and on this, his posthumous release, he reinterprets his own classics and Big Easy standards at the piano. Covering Professor Longhair on "Big Chief" kind of sums it up.  G'night Allen.

Still to come -- singles and remembrances.

Riding Shotgun Down the Avalanche

The Avalanches, Wildflower

All the way back in 2000, a little bit of weirdness called "Frontier Psychiatrist," was a favorite track at my house with me and my variously aged adolescents.  A novelty pastiche of samples, horse whinnies, and movie clips over an irresistible beat, every time it played I said (sometimes aloud), "Who ARE these guys."

Now these guys -- an Australian trio called the Avalanches  - have produced a wondrous and long-awaited followup that is full of giddy joy.   Remember that feeling you got when you first heard "Rapper's Delight "and realized it was made from Chic's "Good Times"? Wildflower will light you up in the same way, marveling at the sonic foundation of these dance and ambient tracks.  For its use of sampled sound, it's in a class with De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising.

These two tracks, "Subways" and "Colours," will give you an idea of what these wizards turn out.  Listen, and then go stream this baby.   

Bonus:  The track that hooked me on the Avalanches:

Vive la deep house français

Poom, 2016

Let's play a game.  I say, "French Pop"and you say...? Serge Gainsboro? Air? Plastic Bertrand?  Nice try.

Today's answer is "Poom," a French duo making the sweetest pop music of the summer.  This French electro-pop duo have a sound that recalls the bands HAIM and Sunny Levine. "Qui es-tu?" and "Sous l'orate" are as crisp as a Provence rosé.

 

The perfect soundtrack for your Bastille Day party. 

Archeology: Miracle Legion and Mark Mulcahy

Fatherhood in the early 90’s brought with it the special pleasure of Nickelodeon, then a brand new television network for kids.  Their offerings were by turns sentimental or irreverent, sometimes both at once as with their priceless comedy, “The Adventures of Pete & Pete.” The Petes were two middle-school aged brothers both named -- wait for it – Pete, who struggled to make sense of the goofy adults who populated their world and the mystery of growing up.

Each episode began with with the rave-up “Hey Sandy,” credited to a band called Polaris that never appeared in my record store.  Believe me, I searched.

Two decades later in the iTunes era, I found this track again, this time digging deep enough to unearth the man behind Polaris, Mark Mulcahy, and the band which was his primary vehicle in that era,  Miracle Legion.

While never truly “famous,” beginning in the early 80’s ML had a decade long run as college radio favorites, gained indie rock cred with the likes of Oasis, Jeff Buckley and Radiohead, and were regulars at New Haven’s Toad’s Place (sigh).  They did it with an Athens, Georgia sound that recalled REM and whip smart lyrics that went them one better.  Consider “All for the Best”: 

Or “The Backyard,” which could just as easily have been the “Pete & Pete” theme song.

By the late-90’s Miracle Legion would disband and Mulcahy would embark on a fitful but quietly celebrated career making music that defies categories.  His sonic palette is not as varied as Paul Simon’s (Mulcahy is a rocker at heart) but he shares with Simon a rare ability to take the stuff of adulthood (the good, the bad and the difficult) and fashion it into convincing, captivating pop music.

I saw Mulcahy perform for the first time not long ago.  Now middle-aged, he reminded me of Pete.  

Lighting Up June

Bibio, A Mineral Love

I’m fresh from a college reunion where the twenty-something DJ was spinning decades-old tunes that must have been sourced from a Wikipedia list of what was hot back in the day.  Shoot me now.   As if your musical tastes get stuck on “REPEAT” when they hand you your diploma.   Not mine.  I’ve been gorging on the sound of right now ever since and this disc couldn't be fresher.

Bibio is Steve Wilkinson, a British music producer and guitarist who makes percolating, R&B-influenced electronic music with a warm human gloss.  His guitar style is slightly reminiscent of John Mayer but a closer listen reveals a deep debt to Brazilian Joao Gilberto.  Wikinson's falsetto recalls Barry Gibb’s “Stayin’ Alive” vibe (in a good way!).  But the star of A Mineral Love is the intricate, liquid melodies that take a wide step away from the sound of current EDM and radio pop, but are completely inviting all the same. 

 “Light Up the Sky” and “Town & Country” will draw you in and make this guy’s special talent plain. 

My new rule of thumb is to seek out anything that's among the monthly picks of any two or more KCRW DJ’s (http://www.kcrw.com/music/dj-picks);  I’ve had this one on repeat since I spotted it there.   It’s going straight to my own “Best of 2016” list.  (Thanks to Jake for tipping me off to Bibio a couple of years back.)

Diggin’ You, Like An Old Soul Record

Back in the day, albums by Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire, the Isley Brothers or Marvin Gaye were more than just 40 minutes of musical distraction.  They were incantations producing altered states of joy and pain.  This was the pinnacle of R&B – free from the church and the constraints of radio air play.  The best products of this era (think Wonder’s Fulfillingness First Finale) had the sweep and ambition of the White Album.  

Shangri-La, gone forever, right? No way. Here are four old school classics -- all made in the last dozen or so years -- that deliver on that R&B promise. Listen up. 

Jill Scott, Who Is Jill Scott, Words & Sounds, Vol. 1

This millennial release was Scott’s debut and it established her as R&B royalty with a debt to Gil Scott Heron and spoken word artists like The Last Poets.  This is the sound of “Neo-Soul” before it got swept up in the tidal wave of hip-hop, but it’s gritty all the same.  “Getting’ In The Way” has this classic refrain: “You better back down before you get smacked down; you better chill.”  Don’t mess with Jill.

Angie Stone, Black Diamond 

Black Diamond dropped a year before Scott’s debut and while it is steeped in hip-hop (think TLC’s Waterfalls from the same era), there’s not a rapper in sight.  Ironic, since Stone broke out first as a rapper, but here she’s a damn soul queen singing her way through this set of tightly produced R&B gems and a brilliant cover of Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man.” You’ll get the idea from “No More Rain In This Cloud,” which would have been at home on Ann Peebles’ 1974 classic I Can’t Stand the Rain.

Betty Wright & The Roots, Betty Wright – The Movie

Fast forward to 2011 and the album that Betty Wright, the “Clean Up Woman,” made with The Roots.  Ignore the title; there’s no movie, just “grow folks’ music” (as she calls it) to luxuriate in.  But what music!  By now the rappers are ubiquitous (Lil Wayne and Snoop drop by here), but Betty more than holds her own with tracks that have the deep groove of her original Miami hits.  Check out "In the Middle of the Game." There’s no “neo” about this soul.

Robert Glasper Experiment, Black Radio

 I saved the best, most adventurous, for last. Glasper is a jazz pianist with an impeccable pedigree (outings with Blanchard, Hargrove and McBride) and a conviction that “jazz needs a big ass-slap,” to re-energize it.  And in 2013, this Grammy winning disc did some of the same ass-slapping that Herbie Hancock and Donald Byrd did with Headhunters and Black Byrd. Start with “Afro Blue” with Eryka Badu sitting in.  But don’t stop there; stream the whole ass-slapping thing. 

Rewind: Tourist Class

St Germain, Tourist

Jazz happened for me in 1970 with Miles Davis' weird electric experiment, Bitches Brew.  It baffled me, with John McLaughlin's staccato guitar, Wayne Shorter's otherworldly sax and, everywhere, Davis' echo-plexed trumpet. This was Davis' fusion masterpiece and it would be another four years before I heard and fell for the "cool jazz" that had won Davis reknown in the '50's.

For a time I was mesmerized by Bitches; I loved its shifts, from dark to light, from stillness to

motion. If there was story here -- hinted at by John Berg's Afro-psychedelic cover -- I never cracked the code.  But it forever changed how I listened to music.

Fifteen year-old Tourist sounds nothing like Bitches Brew; by most lights, it isn't a jazz record at all.   But in its shiftiness and indecipherability, it reminds me of Davis' record. Now a "lounge music" classic, Tourist is a rapid fire journey through genres and world music styles from the changing collective that producer Ludovic Navarre calls St. Germain.


Tourist plainly touched a global nerve;  I've heard its tracks in shops and bars from Williamsburg to Amsterdam to Johannesburg.  A homebrew of dub, some deep house, gospel sounds, a little French-fried pop, Grover Washington- and Latin influenced jazz, it never lets you rest.  It's aural caffeine.

We now live in a world where this kind of disruptivness is celebrated.  Tourist invites you to go with it on tracks like this down-tempo classic, "Sure Thing":

Or on "So Flute," which starts like Herbie Mann on speed -- in a good way:

Pack your bags.





Coachella To Go



A weekend in the Palm Desert is not in the cards for me just now, but that doesn't stop me from daydreaming about Coachella and the wide ranging lineup there.  Which makes the perfect excuse for this playlist of new favorites from their performers list, and a celebration of a sooner-than-expected reunion among last weekend's sets.

James Bay, Let It Go - A folky and soulful young Brit, Bay sounds nothing like Van Morrison but recalls him all the same.

Chris Stapleton, Tennessee Whiskey - There's room at Coachella for old school country and Stapleton -- son of Kentucky coal miner -- is as real as they come.





HÆLOS, Dust - Straight outta East London with a debt to Bjork.

Låpsley, Silverlake - It just isn't fair to have your shit this much together at 19. 

DJ Koze, Cicely - German techno, there's a novel idea.  This percolates like an overboiling pot.

LCD Soundsystem, I Can Change - Who believed James Murphy would stay "retired"?  This gem was from his "final" effort.

R.I.P.





January Gems

Deep winter is a time for crackling fires, rich food, and red wine.  For me, the ideal musical accompaniment are songs that weave a spell with a narrative or mood that commands attention.  Like these four new tracks.








Anderson.Paak - Am I Wrong - Because Mardi Gras is coming and your Stevie Wonder albums are all scratchy and stuff.

 

Raury, Friends - An irresistible hook and a stutter straight from "m-m-m-my generation."

Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Can't Keep Checking My Phone - Someone you care about needs to hear this beat and this advice.

Elaquent, Far Away - Chill people.