Whoa

I watched surfers from a beachside dive while on vacation in San Diego yesterday.  The soundtrack was similar to the sounds I’d heard at multiple Southern California establishments this week.  Rather than irritating me as they do when I encounter them in my Midwestern home, new millennium reggae songs from the likes of  Rebelution, Sbid, Iration and Damian Marley tickled my ears in an unfamiliar way.  Otherwise subdued barflys banded together for a hearty singalong when the 311 hit “Amber” popped up on the playlist.  I may have joined in.


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I shared tracks by Deborah Brown, Matt Otto with Ensemble Ibérica, Samantha Fish, Lee Ann Womack, Future and Alejandro Fernández on a KCUR program titled “From Kansas City And Beyond, The Best Music Of 2017”.  Bonus: I made a case for Rich the Factor as my favorite Kansas City artist.

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I write weekly music previews for The Kansas City Star.

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I reviewed Lonnie McFadden’s Live at Green Lady Lounge at Plastic Sax.

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Denise LaSalle has died.

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“Fast” Eddie Clarke of Motörhead and Fastway has died.

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Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries has died.

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The crossover gospel artist Edwin Hawkins has died.

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The press materials for Suss’Ghost Box imply that the New York group’s “ambient country” concept is groundbreaking.  It’s not.  Calexico, Bill Frisell and B.J. Cole are among the artists that have previously explored the Ennio Morricone-influenced terrain.  That observation doesn’t mean that I don't take enormous pleasure in Ghost Box.

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The albums Jack Antonoff produced for Lorde, Taylor Swift and his band Bleachers provided satisfying pop kicks in 2017.  Børns’ Blue Madonna offers a similar sort of immediate gratification.  Here’s “I Don’t Want U Back”.

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I intended to bail on Anderson East’s Encore until I recognized the opening lyric of the album’s fifth song.  His surprising cover of Ted Hawkins’ “Sorry You’re Sick” is a nice surprise.  Even so, does the world need another painfully sincere blue-eyed soul singer in the vein of Ray LaMontagne, Allen Stone and Amos Lee?  Here’s
“Girlfriend”.

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”Do you like it hardcore?” Yes, Fools Gold and Masayoshi Iimori, I do.

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Listening to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s Wrong Creatures is the rock and roll equivalent of rewatching the anodyne John Hughes movie The Breakfast Club.  RIYL: the Black Angels, vinyl reissues of the Velvet Underground, the Kills.  Here’s “Little Thing Gone Wild”.

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The video for Inara George’s lovely chamber-pop song “Young Adult” is charming.

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New Stravinsky!  The world premiere recording of the recently rediscovered “Chant Funébre” by Riccardo Chailly and the Lucerne Festival Orchestra on Stravinsky: Chant funŠbre; Le Sacre de Printemps is a swirling mind-bender.

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Umphrey’s McGee’s It’s Not Us is a typically frustrating affair.  The jam band is best during noisy freakouts that evoke King Crimson’s Discipline.  The group is intolerable when it sounds like a third-tier version of the Police.

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I’m invariably delighted on the rare occasions when I encounter a music enthusiast who is even geekier than I.  Cole Cuchna pores over every note and lyric of Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy on the second season of his Dissect podcast.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)