March Recap

Top Five Performances
1. The Big Ears Festival
My capsule reviews of 30 sets.
2. Leikeli47- Encore Room
My Instagram clip.
3. Metallica- Sprint Center
My review.
4. Ryan Keberle & Catharsis- Mod Gallery
My review.
5. Eric Church- Sprint Center
My review.

Top Five Albums
1. Solange- When I Get Home
I no longer pine for new music from Erykah Badu.
2. Little Simz- Grey Area
A true boss.
3. Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom- Glitter Wolf
Delirious chamber jazz.
4. Willie Clayton- Excellence
Take me to the river.
5. Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah- Ancestral Recall
Generational brilliance.

Top Five Songs
1. Townes Van Zandt- “Sky Blue”
Buried treasure.
2. 2 Chainz with Kendrick Lamar- “Momma I Hit a Lick”
I want it, I want it, I want it.
3. The Wild Reeds- “Moving Target”
Garage-rock perfection.
4. Zara McFarlane- "East of the River Nile”
New life for an Augustus Pablo gem.
5. Nick Lowe- “Love Starvation”
Pure pop for old people.

I conducted the same exercise in January and February.

(Original image of Dwight Andrews and Leo Wadada Smith at the Big Ears Festival by There Stands the Glass.)

Album Review: Leikeli47- Acrylic

Appreciation of laudable art is often hard won.  I almost gave up on Leikeli47’s Acrylic when references to high fashion on the eighth selection “Post That” and Greek life at H.B.C.U.s on the sixth track “Roll Call” (a knockoff of T.I.’s 2003 hit “Rubber Band Man”) irritated me the first time I played the album.  The mind-bending production compelled me to stick with Acrylic.  My perseverance paid off.  Repeated plays of the wide-ranging album revealed that the extremely bright, audaciously funny and vigorously feminist New York rapper is as wonky as Dessa, as accessible as Brandy and as deliriously unhinged as Cardi B.  Yet it’s the consistently surprising sonic textures that include pure pop, murky grime, lovely R&B and spare footwork that make Acrylic one of my favorite albums of the year, even if it took some time to get my head around it.   Here’s “Girl Blunt”.


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My review of Ernest Melton’s The Time of the Slave Is Over is at Plastic Sax.

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I write weekly concert previews for The Kansas City Star.

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Roy Clark has died.  Not only was Hee Haw a big part of my cultural education, I recall seeing a few of his albums in my dad’s collection.

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Alec Finn of De Dannan has died.  (Tip via BGO.)

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The Hawaiian slack key guitarist Cyril Pahinui has died.  (Tip via BGO.)

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Anderson Paak’s astounding Oxnard is a throwback to the Death Row era.  Paak delivers SoCal
gangsta rap with a knowing wink.  RIYL: Doggystyle, coming to terms with horrendous misogyny, The Chronic.  Here’s “Tints”.

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Even though the Rubberband EP consists of five remixes of a single Miles Davis track from a suppressed 1985 session, the repetition never becomes stale.  Context for the oddly compelling project is available here.

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The most surprising aspect of Rudy Royston’s Flatbed Buggy is that the drummer’s frequent collaborator Bill Frisell doesn’t make an appearance.  Even so, the worthy project fits squarely in the instrumental folk-jazz realm associated with the guitarist.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)