Misc. Music: Allison Miller & More

1. Everyone in the world has heard of the band Pussy Riot but no one has heard their music.

2. Sometimes when it comes to popular music I have to check my sanity and figure out if it's me or if in fact the whole world is hallucinating. Case in point: Kacey Musgrave's poll-topping, record-of the-year gathering 2018 release, Golden Hour. Reading all the raves, I pulled it up on iTunes, hit play, and waited for the genius to blow me a way. But, no. After about three songs in I was bored -- not shitless, but enough to stop listening. My verdict? The record is . . . nice. It's highly professional and polished, and it isn't stupid. But that's hardly enough to make it a classic, which is pretty much what a year-end best record should be. Thus mystified, I went online looking for dissenting critical opinions. There are virtually none; I think I found one or two, as opposed to thirty or more raves. If the record is so obviously (to me!) lacking, shouldn't more people hear it that way? It feels to me like an emperor-has-no-clothes type of thing. I'll go back and listen again, though. Maybe it will kick in for me.

3. It's been a while since I've been as enthusiastic about a jazz recording as drummer-composer Allison Miller's new release, Glitter Wolf. Which is not to say that there aren't tons of current jazz records that I like a lot. The state of jazz is quite strong; it ain't nowhere near dead. But Glitter Wolf is special. It hits that sweet spot where complexity coexists (seemingly) effortlessly with accessibility. In other words, it doesn't strive to prove its artiness by arbitrarily inserting a bunch of noise, or some other maneuver like that. (I do like noise jazz, but I won't reach for it as often as a do this record.) Another good sign is that the solos make me perk up enough to want to confirm who the player is. That kind of thing used to be a no-brainer, since all the credits were on the record jacket or in the CD booklet. Now you have to look it up. At any rate, I have been especially taken with the contributions of cornetist Kirk Knuffke, but all the players (collectively called Boom Tic Boom) are excellent with clear identities. All in all, the recent Jazz Times review was correct when it observed that Glitter Wolf has an uncommonly high level of tonal and textural and compositional coherence. That combined with the evident high-spiritedness almost makes it come across like a pop record, if an especially sophisticated one. Oh, and Miller drums her ass off. Check out the really nice promotional video above.

4. Speaking of jazz, I was listening to Coltrane's late 50s recording Blue Train. This was one of those Blue Note dates where they made the album in a single afternoon. They were able to do this because each tune amounts to everyone playing the head, followed by everyone taking solos, and concluding with instruments trading fours or something like that and then a repeat of the original theme. This is a pretty banal formula. It only works when the soloists are on fire. And on Blue Train they are. I mean these guys came loaded for bear, especially the nineteen year old Lee Morgan, whose contributions are ear-popping to put it mildly. Trane, of course, never played a bad or boring note in his too-short life.

5. I've been listening to some Bob Dylan collections, the kind that have like fifty songs on them. Here's the thing, every one of those fifty songs is excellent, and one could easily think of another fifty or, yes, one hundred that could be added without diminishing the overall quality even a scosh. Holy shit, what a catalog.

6. Speaking of catalogs and collections, if you want to listen to more classical music I recommend listening to recital-styled recordings. I search for these by artist, not composer. I especially like the old recital collections from people like Heifetz and Fritz Kreisler. Call it light or popular classical if you wish. For me, it's a far more accessible and pleasurable way to listen to classical than, say, plopping oneself down to listen to an hour-long Mahler symphony.