Album Review: Sly & Robbie and Nils Petter Molvaer- Nordub

I’m at the center of the tiny target audience for Nordub, an unlikely collaboration between the reggae innovators Sly & Robbie and the jazz trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer.  There can’t be more than a few thousand people who appreciate deep Jamaican dub and experimental Norwegian jazz.  Yet Nordub deserves an audience beyond a handful of oddball music obsessives.  The album’s colossal sonic landscape would appeal to admirers of Miles Davis’ electric bands as well as to intrepid listeners eager to hear the sound of tomorrow today.


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I reviewed a concert by Bill Frisell, Thomas Morgan and Rudy Royston at Plastic Sax.

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Proper appreciation of most Kool Keith-related projects requires being in the right frame of mind.  Dr. Octagon’s Moosebumps: An Exploration Into Modern Day Horripilation is no different.  Here’s the gloriously absurd “Flying Waterbeds”.

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I didn’t care for the 2014 duet album by Nels Cline and Julian Lage, but bassist Scott Colley and drummer Tom Rainey add enormous excitement to the guitarists’ Currents, Constellations release.  Here’s “Imperfect 10”.

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Sarah Shook & the Disarmers’ Years is a modest alt-country album that could have been released by Bloodshot Records in 1998.  RIYL: the Bottle Rockets, bottom shelf whiskey, the Meat Purveyors.  Here’s “Good as Gold”.

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Dave Douglas & Joe Lovano Sound Prints combine their enormous talents on Scandal, a post-bop quintet date that I wish was just a couples notches further outside.

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Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy rivals Migos’ Culture II as my favorite party album of 2018.

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Rafiq Bhatia’s Breaking English is a worthy progressive noise album.

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The Aruán Ortiz Trio’s Live in Zurich provides additional evidence that the pianist is a genius.  RIYL: Thelonious Monk, giants hiding in plain sight, Craig Taborn.

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While Kurt Elling’s performances never fail to impress, his albums have never done much for me- until now.  The adult pop effort The Questions is like a marriage of Joni Mitchell and Frank Sinatra. 

(Original image at There Stands the Glass.)

Album Review: The Mavericks- Brand New Day

Regrets, I’ve had a few thousand.  Like Frank Sinatra, I did it my way.  It hasn’t always been easy.  I was reminded of one missed opportunity while listening to the Mavericks’ new release Brand New Day.

An unsolicited CD by the then-unknown Miami based band crossed crossed my desk when I was the sales manager of a beleaguered music distribution company in 1990.  Even though I loved the music, I had to pass.  As a one-off, unproven project in the pre-internet era, I knew that timely payment to the band for shipped units would be impossible.

Having recognized the music’s potential, however, I should have offered to assist the Mavericks in a different capacity.  I would have loved to have been a part of selling and promoting What a Crying Shame, Music for All Occasions and Trampoline, three of my favorite albums of the 1990s.

The band was marketed as a country act at its commercial peak, but Brand New Day continues the band’s drift into an alternate universe in which Roy Orbison, Johnny Otis, Pérez Prado and Phil Spector are in the same band. It’s gloriously preposterous.  Here’s the title track.


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I reviewed the sixth of Garth Brooks’ seven sold-out concerts at the Sprint Center.

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I reviewed a concert by Soundgarden and the Dillinger Escape Plan on Sunday.

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I honored Ensemble Ibérica with the KCUR’s Band of the Week designation.

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I didn’t attempt to hide my inner fanboy in my extended concert preview of Chance the Rapper’s return to Kansas City.

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I write weekly music previews for The Kansas City Star and Ink magazine.

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I extol Bobby Watson’s Made in America at Plastic Sax.

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Bruce Hampton has died.  I first heard the jam band pioneer perform at a festival in a field outside of Lawrence, Kansas, in the early 1990s.

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Patti LaBelle performs a Broadway-style version of jazz on her florid new album Bel Hommage.  It’s hammy, cheesy and entirely delicious- and I love it.  LaBelle pitched the project on QVC.

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The combination of Avishai Cohen, Manfred Eicher and Nasheet Waits lights up several of my pleasure centers.

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Smino’s invigorating Blkswn is recommended if you like Chance the Rapper, St. Louis, Frank Ocean.  Here’s ”Anita”.

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Trombone Shorty courts the mainstream on Parking Lot Symphony. RIYL: Allen Toussaint, artists with staying power, Fred Wesley.

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Sarah Shook & the Disarmers’ Sidelong doesn’t quite do it for me.  Even so, I hope to catch the group in 2017. RIYL: Grisly Hand, boozin’, Bottle Rockets. Here’s ”Dwight Yoakam”.

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Don Bryant’s Don’t Give Up On Love is an unexpected treat.  RIYL: Otis Clay, soul survivors, Syl Johnson.  Here’s ”How Do I Get There?”.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)