Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

I’m home alone for the first time in thirty years.  The members of my brood aren’t going to burst through the front door at any moment and my wife is exploring a distant island.  I feel jarringly isolated no matter how high I crank the volume on the latest albums by Brockhampton, Rapsody and Taylor Swift.

That’s why the new release from Shannon Lay hit me like a ton of bricks.  I intended to give August just a cursory listen, but bleak songs like “Death Up Close” and “Nowhere” directly address my newfound solitude.

Lay is best known for her affiliations with Ty Segall and Kevin Morby, but August is superior to anything I’ve heard by either indie-rock mainstay.  Of the multitude of recordings by the Nick Drake and Sandy Denny facsimiles currently clamoring for attention, only Bill MacKay’s Fountain Fire and Lay’s August are worthy distractions from blockbusters like Ginger, Eve and Lover.


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I commend the Kansas City jazz musician Brian Scarborough at Plastic Sax.

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Miniature reviews of the aforementioned albums: Taylor Swift remains intensely unlikeable on Lover, but her craftsmanship is impeccable.  The sound field on Rapsody’s Eve is atrocious. I demand a remix.  Brockhampton’s Ginger is a glorious mess.  Sad songs (say so much).

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I knew Carl Jefferson.  I can say with complete confidence that he’d be horrified by most of the music currently released by the straight-ahead jazz record label he founded.  That said, you can’t argue with success.  The absurdly revisionist The History of Concord Jazz video feature is worth a look.

(Original image of Iceland by the life partner of There Stands the Glass.)