Yesterday, I went to the chiropractor—my first time ever. Despite having decades of back issues, I’ve been skeptical of the whole “science” of chiropractic, but I know enough people who swear by it that I figured it was time to give it a shot.
(Quick context: I throw out my back about two or three times a year, usually from something as mundane as sneezing)
A friend recommended a certain place, and I researched them. The two people who run it are licensed chiropractic doctors, married to each other, and part of the statewide and national chiropractic associations. They’ve been in business for years. I researched their doctorate. They both went to (and met at) Life University.
Life University? Really? First red flag.
So I researched the university. It’s struggled for years with its accreditation, but it currently has it.
Okay, it’s accredited, which reduces the red flag to a yellow flag. Plus, I have two (relatively) closed-down colleges on my resume, so who am I to judge? Besides, my friend swore by the place.
I made the appointment, and yesterday, I headed down.
I checked in and was sitting in the waiting room. Everything seemed good. There were good vibes in the place, and it looked professional.
About three minutes after I walked in, some dude in gray sweatpants and a gray hoodie came in. He went to the front desk and said, “Kyle Callahan.”
(If you don’t know, that’s my name).
The receptionist greeted him like she knew him and told him that one of the doctors would be with him in a minute.
So he sat a couple of seats down from me. I didn’t say anything, but my mind was like, “Who the hell is this dude, and why does he know my name?” My first thought was that maybe they had part-time contracted chiropractors who came in and did the preliminary work, kind of like dental hygienists. Maybe?
The doctor came out of his office and invited the dude in. They shut the door. Three or four minutes passed, and the dude came out and sat down again. I thought, “Okay, that was kind of the consult so the doctor could tell this dude what to do with me.”
Then the other doctor came out and called for me to come back. She led me into an exam room where I watched a five-minute video about spines, nerves, and chiropractic medicine. Then she returned, and we reviewed a history of my back problems. She then used a wand to measure my vertebrae in a few different ways, told me she’d get the data back at the end of the day, and that I needed to come back later in the week for a diagnosis and possible treatment plan.
She led me back to the receptionist so I could pay the bill and schedule my next appointment. During the walk to the front, I thought, “Okay, but who the hell is that dude?? Why does he know my name?!” My next thought was that this was all a scam, and the doctors had hired this dude to dig into my finances and insurance and find the best way to get all of my money out of me.
With my mind kind of freaking out, I made the appointment and stood at the desk, typing the information into the calendar on my phone. The doctor came back into the front, leaned out to the dude in the waiting room, and said, “Kyle, we’re ready now.”
At that point, I kind of exploded. I was like, “Hold up! Dude, what’s your name?” The doctor started laughing and said, “I know, right!” The dude was confused and said, “Kyle?”
The Boston Celtics have clinched the #1 seed in the Eastern Conference with 11 games remaining on their regular season schedule. Boston’s 57-14 record has been enough to secure the feat with an 11 game cushion over the Milwaukee Bucks, who are still fighting to secure the second seed with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Joe Mazzulla’s team is also in the driving seat to secure the best record in the NBA. As such, they should have a home-court advantage if they make it to the NBA Finals…
These are the albums I added to my music library in February 2024. I am not including any “singles” I added — just the EPs or full-length albums (neè, LPs).
All told, there were 12.
Bewitched
By Laufey
This beautiful album blends classic jazz vocals with contemporary lyrics. Each song explores a young woman falling in and out of love with one-night stands she wishes had become something more. Laufey’s voice is gorgeous and rich, and her lyrics feel contemporary, even if the music does not (“I didn’t call you for sixteen long days, and I should get a cigarette for so much restraint”).
Only The Strong Survive
By Bruce Springsteen
Did the world need a Springsteen album full of covers of timeless soul songs from the Commodores, Franki Valli, the Four Tops, the Temptations, Ben E. King, and Diana Ross?
No. No, it did not.
Will it send it back now that it has it? No. No, it will not.
Natty Dred & Exodus
By Bob Marley & The Wailers
With the Marley biopic One Love arriving in February, I noticed that these two classic albums were missing from my library. I quickly corrected the oversight.
Cazayoux
By Cazayoux
Imagine taking fourteen musicians who were raised in different parts of the world such as Japan, Mexico, West Africa, and the United States. They play instruments such as upright bass, drums, electric bass, keys, trumpet, baritone sax, flute, djembe, balafon, guitar, percussion, trombone, alto sax, and tenor sax. Add a little bit of Austin, Texas flavor, and you give them to a band leader named Forest Cazayoux. What do you get? Some funky, soulful, and high-energy worldwide jazz. This is probably my favorite new discovery of the month.
Troupeu bleu
By Cortex
At the beginning of the month, a buddy of mine sent me this album, telling me it was some of the best French jazz he’d heard in a long while. On my first listen, the bass player rocked my world, and I was in.
The band formed in Paris in 1974, broke up in 1981, and reformed in 2009 with rotating members. This particular album is from 1975, and it blends jazz, bossa nova, samba, and mood-generating French vocals that mean who knows what.
Welcome
By Don Glori
Another album that fuses jazz, world music, samba, and soul, Welcome, by Melbourne bassist Don Glori (a pseudonym, apparently, for Gordon Li), provides cathartic instrumental jams, addictive grooves, and a swirl of worldless vocal harmonies balanced atop a spectrum of keys, vibraphones, and other melodic percussion instruments. Its laid-back sound rewards both close and background listening.
West
By Lucinda Williams
While waiting for the next episode of True Detective: Season 4 to air, my wife and I rewatched Season 1, and the opening track to this album appeared on Episode 4.
I’m a sucker for Lucinda’s weathered voice, and every track on this album has her pain, grief, and smoke-sung blues. Plus, this album has Bill Frissell on guitar, and he’s one of my favorites.
City of Gold
By Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway
Recommended to me by my brother-in-law, Molly Tuttle was the first woman ever to be named Guitar Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Association. This album lets her skills shine, backed by the solid pickers of her live band, Golden Highway.
Tuttle and her band recorded this album after playing the songs at over 100 dates on the road, and it shows. The notes are fast and tight, while the playing is lively and loose. Everything hits where and when it should.
And for those of you who like your duets to include famous folk, she’s got a road-trip breakup song that she sings with Dave Matthews. This is bluegrass done right.
Burn
By Sons of Kemet
If you read about the albums that I added to my library in January 2024, you might remember me mentioning a band named Sons of Kemet. While writing that post, I found a couple more of their albums I didn’t have in my library, so I added them in.
Four band members: one plays tuba; one plays saxophone and clarinet; the other two play drums. Yet, the sound is as full as the universe.
Burn, released in 2013, led to them receiving Best Jazz Act from the Music of Black Origin Awards. It was also named Album of the Year by The Arts Desk. One critic said it contains “one of the most beautiful and haunting ballads in any genre this year.”
Lest We Forget What We Came Here to Do
By Sons of Kemet
Released in 2015, this follow-up to Burn feels more sparse than its predecessor without losing a hint of its drive.
If you’re not nodding your head, tapping your toes, and swaying your hips and shoulders to this album, then I dare say you’ve forgotten what we came here to do.
Singularity 06: Anchor Dragging Behind
By 75 Dollar Bill
This nearly nineteen-minute EP contains one song that starts out with about five minutes of droning caused by pulling a bow against a string. Austere percussion joins the drone around the six-minute mark, and by minutes eleven and twelve, more punctuative noises join the mild fray, and you begin to see that the album title is about as perfect as it can be, and the realization is noted with relaxed dueling guitars around thirteen minutes in, a semi-melodic reward for persevering with that anchor around your neck for as long as you have, and by the fourteenth minute, you might even mistake what you’re listening to for avant-garde jazz or the bloody hands of a zombified rock and roll pulling itself out of the grave the culture has dug for it, dragging its body behind it like an anchor.
By running again—despite his age, despite his low approval ratings, despite his poor showing in the polls against Trump—Biden could be engaging in one of the most selfish, hubristic, and potentially destructive acts ever undertaken by an American president. If he winds up losing, that’s all anyone will remember him for. Bill Maher has said Biden could go down as the “Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the presidency.” Or of democracy.
Some people wonder whether copyright law, fundamentally unchanged since the late 1700s, can handle generative AI. Its basic unit is the “copy,” a concept that’s felt like a poor fit for modernity since the launch of music and video streaming in the 1990s. Might generative AI finally bend copyright past the breaking point?
There comes a point in the history of a society that has become pathologically rotten and soft, when it even sides with its attacker, the criminal, and indeed, in a genuine and serious way. Punishment: that seems unfair to it somehow, – what is certain is that it hurts and frightens society to imagine ‘punishment’ and ‘having to punish’. Is it not sufficient to render the criminal undangerous? Why punish as well? Punishment itself is terrible! – with this question, herd morality, the morality of timidity, draws its final conclusion. Assuming one could completely get rid of the danger, the reason for being afraid, one would have got rid of this morality at the same time: it would no longer be necessary, it would no longer regard itself as necessary any more! – Whoever tests the conscience of today’s European will always have to draw out the same imperative from a thousand moral folds and hiding places, the imperative of herd timidity: ‘our desire is for there to be nothing more to fear some time or other!’ Some time or other – the will and the way there is called ‘progress’ everywhere in Europe today.
This year, I will try to write a short post somewhere near the beginning of every month that highlights the albums I added to my music library the previous month.
The debut post for this series is (typically) late, but it’s not like the post changes because it’s late. Regardless of what day it is today, January still ended on January 31st, so this list does too.
All told, I added 11 albums to the library last month. Here they are, in reverse order of preference:
11. the record, by boygenius
Winning Best Alternative Music Album and Best Rock Song from the Recording Academy, boygenius’s the record was also nominated for Best Album of the Year and Best Engineered Album – Non-Classical, and includes songs nominated for Record of the Year, Best Rock Performance, and Best Alternative Performance.
And yet, I’m ranking it #11 out of 11 in the albums I added to my library in January. To be fair, the singing of the three talented women on this album — Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus — is gorgeous, the songwriting is top-notch, and the instrumentation creates exactly the right mood for each song.
I’m only ranking it #11 because the moods they create on the record are not moods I often want to find myself in. They are mostly dreamy, mellow, and folky…all good things, just not particularly my things.
**UPDATE: 2/22/24**
I’m an idiot.
I was able to take a couple of long-ish car rides over the past week or two and really listen to this album the whole way through without distractions. It’s sooooo good.
Yes, it’s mostly dreamy, mellow, and folky, but there are some real rockers too — and it has one of the most mind-worming lines I’ve heard in a while (“In another life, we were arsonists!”) — and, frankly, I’m madly in love with this album now. It deserves all the accolades it has received. If you haven’t listened to it yet, get it, get in a car, and drive.
10. The Lost Mystique of Being in the Know, by Rising Appalachia
Recommended by my brother-in-law, Rising Appalachia offers an intriguing form of multi-instrumental Appalachian folk music by two sisters with beautiful, sultry voices, Leah Song and Chloe Smith, each of whom is gifted on a wide variety of instruments, from banjos and fiddles to percussion and didgeredoos.
The predominance of female voices in generally mellow moods naturally compares to boygenius, but the world-music influence in Rising Appalachia’s sound makes it much more intriguing to my ear. The albums’ instrumental tracks, such as “Ngoni” and “Tempest,” have also found their way onto my “Writing Tunes” playlist (which is where at least half of all the music I listen to each month is played).
If you enjoy The Be Good Tanyas, Iron & Wine, or Paul Simon’s more mellow stuff, I think you’ll enjoy Rising Appalachia.
9. Highway Butterfly: The Songs of Neal Casal, by Various Artists
You probably don’t know Neal Casal. Before hearing him play with Circles Around the Sun, I hadn’t either, even though I’d heard his guitar on albums from Todd Snyder’s rock band, Hard Working American, and with the Chris Robinson Brotherhood.
His work with Circles Around the Sun catapulted him into my consciousness, however. The band formed after Justin Kreutzmann, son of the Grateful Dead drummer, Bill Kreautzmann, hired Casal to compose the intermission music for the Dead’s (never gonna happen) final tour, Fare Thee Well. He found the guys in the rest of the band and record five hours of jams. Well, it turned out people really enjoyed the intermission music, and they received an offer from a label to make an album: Interludes for the Dead.
Following his death, 130 musicians came together to record 41 of his tunes, a fitting tribute to this underground influence. Proceeds from the album, and a live concert, provide instruments and music lessons to students from New Jersey and New York state schools, as well as to mental health supports for musicians.
The album contains performances by artists such as Marcus King, Billy Strings, Circles Around the Sun, Hiss Golden Messenger, Jimmy Herring, Phil Lesh & The Terrapin Family Band, Susand Tedeshi & Derek Trucks, Oteil Burbridge, Steve Kimock, Duane Trucks, Bob Weir, Dave Schools, Warren Haynes, Steve Earle, Joe Russo, and the Allman Betts Band.
Not every song is a winner on this 3-CD set, but if you’ve never heard of Neal Casal, it’s a decent look at the influence this incredible guitarist had on his community.
8. Equalizer, by Tauk
A regular on the jam band circuit, Tauk fuses jazz, funk, prog rock, and instrumental jams featuring guitar, keyboards, bass, and drums. I defy you to listen to these folks and not nod your head.
I’ve ranked it #8 for the month because, while I enjoy it, it doesn’t break any new ground for the band. You could intermix this album with 2014’s Collisisions and not know which song belongs on which album.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, I dig their sound. I just happen to tend towards seeking out what’s new.
7. We Are Sent Here by History, by Shabaka & The Ancestors
A few years ago, I fell in love with the album Your Queen is a Reptile by Sons of Kemet, a UK-based jazz band with musicians from all around the world. The group was led by Shabaka Hutchings, a saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer from the Carribean.
Your Queen is a Reptile is a powerful album, with each song named after a black female leader (e.g., “My Queen is Harrient Tubman,” “My Queen is Angela Davis,” and “My Queen is Nanny of the Maroons” — taken together, the list of titles is a fantastic curriculm for Black History Month).
That sense of power, pride, and history follows Hutchings to this album, Shabaka & The Ancestors’ We Are Sent Here By History, an octet comprised of Hutchings and seven South African musicians, fusing African influences into modern jazz modalities. The saxophone matches with jungle calls, vocal chants, dazzling piano and drums, oaths, prayers, lectures, and song, leading to soul stirring crescendos that connect even this white man to black history.
6. Uncle John’s Band, by John Scofield, Vicente Archer, & Bill Stewart
Do you like smooth electric guitar played with a sharp focus that is influenced by everything from rock to jazz? Can you imagine that guitar, accompanied by bass and drums, performing instrumental interpretations of classics such as Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” Neil Young’s “Old Man,” Leonard Bernstein’s and Steven Sondheim’s “Somewhere,” Miles Davis’s and Bud Powell’s “Budo,” and the Grateful Dead’s “Uncle John’s Band,” with original songs interspersed between?
This is a rainy day album, but not a sad day album. It rewards focused listening, but allows itself to become background music, the familiarity of the classics calling back your attention in between incredible flights of jazz fancy.
5. Odd Times, by lespecial
Recommended by my drummer brother-in-law, Odd Times is an interesting mix of heavy rock played with a jam band’s sensibility. The introductory notes on the album opener, “Lungs of the Planet,” followed by the driving drums and guitars, will have you think you’re listening to a band that would put three skulls on the cover of their album (which indeed, you would be).
But about two minutes into the tune, everything slows down and we get this haunting voice singing about how “the lungs of the planet are currently burning” and “leaders ignoring the man in the conference hall,” and you look at the album covers burning forest on the left, healthy forest on the right, clock in the center, and the skulls dripping oil onto a flat plate.
“The fungal species / and old growth we must protect. / It is a matter of national defense. / We have enough here / to feed and clothe everyone. / Harness vibration, / achieve equilibrium.”
And you realize you’re listening to a bunch of tree-hugging hippies who are rightfully angry, and they’ve discovered a fantastic blend of metal and jam to convey the complexity of hope and despair in the 21st century. They call their genre “.”
That’s just the opening tune. But have no fear: the rest of the songs from this prog-tronic power trio will not disappoint.
If you dig Primus, I think you’ll dig lespecial.
4. Wood / Metal / Plastic / Pattern / Rhythm / Rock by 75 Dollar Bill
This 2016 album, created by the duo of Che Chen and Rick Brown, is a mood that contains everything in its title. It is instrumental music comprised of wood, metal, plastic, pattern, rhythm, and rock. The percussionist generally uses a wooden box. The guitarist drones in a West African kind of way. It presents world music through a brain that seems in the grip of a fever dream while simultaneously tripping on acid, all while sitting in their tent in a dark African jungle, with the cacophanous song of insects chirping mixing with the urban sounds of car alarms and street musicians.
It’s freaking glorious. Half the time you don’t know what instruments you’re listening to. Is that a guitar or an electric violin? Are those horns or a bow drawn across a cello hooked into a sythesizer? What the hell is happening? And why do I love it?!
3. Power Failures, by 75 Dollar Bill
Remember how I said above that you could interweave tracks from Tauk’s 2014 and 2023 albums and not be able to tell the difference?
Well, you could try that with 75 Dollar Bill’s 2016 and 2020 albums, and while you wouldn’t doubt that they came from the same band, 2020’s Power Failures feels more mature, with the sounds layered on top of one another in a strategic manner rather than dropped atop one another like aural pick-up sticks. The songs seem like they know where they’re going more than their predecessors, even if, in reality, they did not.
The album is a collection of rehearsals and jams for a 2019 tour that was cut short by the pandemic. The duo are joined by guests such as Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan, but they remain true to themselves here.
The Guardian described the sound of 75 Dollar Bill as “placeless, gripping grooves,” and I don’t think I can improve on that description.
2. Trust in the Lifeforce of Deep Mystery, by The Comet Is Coming
In an interview with M magazine, one of the founders of The Comet is Coming, the drummer of the band, who goes by the name “Betamax,” explained how the band came together.
Me and Danalogue the Conqueror play as a psychedelic electro synths and live drums duo called Soccer96. We began to notice a tall shadowy figure present at some of our gigs. At some point, he appeared at the side of the stage with his sax in hand. When he got up on stage to play with us, it created an explosive shockwave of energy that stunned us all. A couple of weeks later King Shabaka rang me up and said, ‘Hey, let’s make a record.’
“King Shabaka?!” you say. “As in Shabaka Hutchings of Shabaka & the Ancestors? The band you mentioned above?”
That’s right! Way to pay attention! You win a cookie!
I actually found my way to Shabaka & The Ancestors after falling head over heels for The Comet is Coming.
If Shabaka & The Ancestors and Sons of Kemet highlight Hutchings’ incredible ability to channel African history through his saxophone, The Comet is Coming gives him an outlet for getting butts out of seats and onto the dance floor.
Despite its ability to shape compelling dance grooves from heavy synths, tight drums, and repetitive horns, The Comet is Coming is not just a dance party. There’s a message there if you have the ears to hear. As the poet Kae Tempest recites over their instruments, “There is a scar on the soul of the world and it needs you to look.”
1. Hyper-Dimensional Expansion Beam, by The Comet is Comin
Once again, I defy you to interweave 2019’s Trust in the Lifeforce… and 2022’s Hyper-Dimensional… and not tell the difference. It had only been three years between the two albums, but Hyper-Dimensional… feels more “of this time.”
It’s probably because the electronic elements are out in full force here, making the whole thing feel more modern, as does the way the sound of King Shabaka’s horn seems to fill the entire recording studio. If 75 Dollar Bill is “placeless, gripping grooves,” Hyper-Dimensional… is very much place-based, except that its place is between the wires and in the infinite expanse of the aethernet.
The last four albums have been essentially the soundtrack of my writing life for the past month, but it’s this album that often forces me to stop typing, nod my head, and just listen.