Category: reviews

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

I’d love to say, “And they all lived happily ever after,” but on August 26, 2019, Neal Casal died by suicide at the age of 50. He played at the Lockn’ Festival the night before with Oteil & Friends, his last performance before taking his life.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?!

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.

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.”

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.

I never regret it.

According to Apple Music, I listened to 49,181 minutes of music this year. That accounts for 4,873 songs across 420 albums by 1,376 different artists. Most of those albums were not recorded in 2023 — 840 minutes of my listening time, for example, came from Django Reinhardt, who, while being one of the greatest guitar players of all time, has also been dead since 1953.

That said, out of the 1,525 songs I added to my music library this year (as of Dec. 5, 2023, anyway), 421 of them, spread across 43 different albums, were released in 2023. The Apple-Music-defined genres of those albums included Alternative, Contemporary Blues, Country, Funk, Fusion, Indie Rock, Instrumental, Jazz, Metal, Pop, Psychedelic, Rock, and Singer-Songwriter.

It is an eclectic group that does not include some of the year’s most celebrated albums but does include popular artists such as Miley Cyrus, Wilco, and Feist, as well as niche artists such as Bill Orcutt and the Whatitdo Archive Group.

Without further adieu, I present my Top 5 Albums of 2023.

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (KGLW) are perennials on this list, not only because they seem to release at least two albums per year, but because every album they release is incredible.

The band never fails to surprise me. When discussing them with friends, I often compare KGLW to Ween. KGLW is a thousand times more talented than Ween, but they have Ween’s ability to adopt the stylings of virtually any genre. Where Ween switched it up song by song, KGLW does it album by album.

This year, KGLW released PetroDragonic Apocalypse…, which is as about as heavy a metal as I’m able to stomach (or as they described it on Twitter, “heavy as fuck”). They also released The Silver Cord, which they created entirely on synthesizers. Petrodragonic Apocalypse… appears on this list because it came out first (I’ve had longer to listen to and love it) but you won’t go wrong listening to The Silver Cord instead.

Petrodragonic Apocalypse…continues the thrashing exploration KGLW started with 2019’s Infest the Rat’s Nest, except where the older album rages at the realities of the world (“There is no planet B,” they scream on the opening track, only to follow it with lower-class rage at a “red mars for the rich” and fear at a “superbug”), the newer album attempts a more mythic theme, a kind of this is what will happen if…

The suite of songs opens with a summoning of the “Motor Spirit” — “Summon forth thy motor spirit, drink the fuckin’ gas and killeth! Light the fuel, propagate oxygen and heat, deify motor spirit, kiss goodbye the weak!” — and goes on to explore the apocalypse soon to be delivered unto us by the continuous burning of fossil fuels and the rise and convergence of supercell storms — “the elements rage in wild excess” — until the people reject the modern world and turn back to witchcraft, performing an unholy ritual to unleash “a reptile thinking in terms of only a lizard brain.”

“Anon, a giant monster roams,” KGLW sings in “Gila Monster,” “I am gila, blood spiller, witch killer….growing immensely and vastly in size.” The monster promises to bring “annihilation of planet earth and the beginning of merciless damnation.”

This brings us to the song “Dragon,” where the monster’s “petrodragonic apocalypse” is unleashed upon terra firma. The humans scramble jets and launch ballistics to fight the dragon, but it’s no use: “pilots shriek, cities weep,” as the monster lays humanity to waste, “killing all in its path…until the dragon stands triumphantly high-lone.”

The music that accompanies this dark fantasy matches the vibe of the lyrics: dark, fast, and monstrous. The band gives it everything they have. Guitars scream. The drum beats mercilessly fast. The lyrics are belted from deep in the throat.

I am not now nor have I ever been a metalhead. But this album kicks ass.

My brother introduced me to Todd Snider about six or seven years ago. He sent me a video of a dude on a small stage with an acoustic guitar. The video was about ten minutes long. Most of it was the dude telling the story of how he came to write that particular song, and it was freakin’ hilarious. The dude combines incredible charisma with a laid-back, stoner attitude, and he delivers every punchline in the story with perfect timing.

But the best part was the song the story led up to. The music was simple. He’s a folk singer who knows his strengths aren’t on the guitar, and he doesn’t pretend otherwise (though he is sneaky good, make no mistake). So instead of trying to wow you on the fretboard, he wows you with his words.

The song he eventually sang, “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” is a non-stop, fast-sung plea to live a life of joy and harmony, to hell with what the Lord might want you to do.

“Any kind of heaven everybody doesn’t get in / won’t seem like heaven to me. / Well, they tell you that the Garden of Eden was perfect, but you couldn’t even eat off the apple tree. / And for heaven’s sake / you had to watch that snake / lying to your woman / constantly. / Adam must have scratched his head, looked up and said / ‘Lord, eh…this isn’t doing it for me.'”

I loved it, and I needed more. So for the next several weeks, I dug into the nearly thirty years of Todd Snider’s catalog. How had I never heard this guy before?! He was like Jimmy Buffett, if Buffett was a couch-surfing, stoner hobo instead of a wave-surfing, pirate billionaire. He was Nashville if Tennesee were a blue state.

His newest album, Crank It, We’re Doomed, is actually an old album. He recorded it in 2007 and then decided to shelve it. As he posted on Facebook:

“I felt like not only did I have all these story songs, sort of normal songs, there also were all these protest songs. And really that is where I lost the plot. I had too many scenes in the movie, and I had too many songs. It was all over the map. But I also remember feeling like it wasn’t done either. Like it needed more songs.”

Nearly twenty years later, with his health deteriorating and his body wracked with pain, he’s decided the album catches him in the prime of his playing and needs to be heard.

It’s a solid collection that contains studio versions of songs he’s played live since first recording them, including “America’s Favorite Pastime” (which is about the day in 1970 when Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates while tripping on LSD) and “West Nashville Ballroom Gown” (a cover of an early Jimmy Buffett song).

But my favorite song is one I hadn’t heard before: “Handleman’s Revenge.” It’s a series of rocking complaints from a middle-aged man:

1. His enemy at work, “that goddamned kiss-ass Handleman” has received a promotion at work
2. His daughter “can’t stand the sight of the car” her bought her
3. His wife and daughter spend his money nonstop because “they want everyone up and down the street to think” the family is rich
4. His son is “an unrepentant radical” who is “unimpressed by the plaques” in the father’s cubical

The father finally loses it when a kid at a drive-thru window asks if that will be everything. The dad couldn’t handle the question and nearly jerked the kid through the window in response.

As he sings in the chorus, “I’m stuck on the corner of sanity and madness. I’m looking them over. I can’t see a difference.”

If you enjoy folk singers who have been influenced by early Bob Dylan, the best of Jimmy Buffett, and the Nashville outlaws, and then added a 21st-century left-wing common-man sensibility atop of it, then you’ll love Todd Snider.

The Circling Sun is a New Zealand super-group comprised of jazz musicians, DJs, and producers who have, apparently, been wowing audiences in Auckland for nearly twenty years. The sound they make is Afro-and Latin-infused big band music, with heavy brass, trilling woodwinds, enlivening piano and keyboards, and a rhythm section that doesn’t quit.

Every song on Spirits delivers, which is why I’ve been proselytizing for these folks everywhere I go. It’s the kind of music that rewards deep listening but is perfect for background ambiance too. I listen to it when I’m cooking, writing, reading, and working on the computer.

My favorite tune on the album is “Bliss,” a five-minute demonstration of musical brilliance improvised atop a repetitive theme, with the rhythm players going nuts, piano solos that take you up and down the keys, and a saxophone that comes in the end and just wows ya.

I recently began digging into Alice Coltrane’s music, and The Circling Sun seems to fit right into her line of exploration. They both create similar atmospherics in their songs, using harps, woodwinds, keyboards, etc., but the Circling Sun’s Afro-Latin rhythms add a lot more fun to their version. Coltrane’s music (or at least, what I’ve heard of it so far) seems to come from a deeply religious place, and I don’t get that sense with The Circling Sun.

But what do I know? They named their album Spirits after all.

In “Masterpiece,” the final song of Grace Potter’s newest album, she provides a short autobiography of how she became who she is. Here’s the Cliffs Notes

Somewhere in the middle of the seventh grade / I realized everyone my age was an asshole…

I was the long lost kid in the middle / of the long lost American dream/ so I picked up my paintbrush and started on my masterpiece…

In my klepto phase / I stole my way across the deep blue sea / went looking for my dignity / stamp my passport / if you please…

He was wearing eyeliner, had a funny name … and he made me a woman / in the middle of the ocean…

I had a brand new head on my shoulders / and a nice pair of little titties / I said goodbye to the virgin and hello to my masterpiece…”

For the sake’a my story, I’m gonna skip ahead / past the part about the Grateful Dead / Straight to Booker T / (don’t forget the MGs) / I danced holes through my wooly socks / I felt a funny little tickle / ’cause I had pop rocks / in my pussy….”

Now I don’t shoplift and I don’t blackout / I have a handle and I have a spout / I’m a grownup / yeah, yeah, yeah / But I’m still painting and fucking and climbing trees / and dancing with my devils and my darling beasts / and every single ugly part of me / is just a color in the pallette of my ever-lovin’ never-done’in vagabond masterpiece!”

The story is accompanied by a repetitive rocking piano, laid-back yet dramatic drums, backing singers, the sprinkling of guitars adding emotional catharsis, until finally, we hit the bridge and it all comes to a screaming head before settling back into the verses. Great stuff.

I just love this tune.

The whole album is fun. My wife thinks a couple of the songs are on the corny side (“Lady Vagabond” especially), but I’m a sucker for Grace Potter, and what my wife calls corny feels to me like a musician playing with genres — “Lady Vagabond,” for example, plays with cowboy-movie tropes in a way that reminds me of Jon Bon Jovi’s “Blaze of Glory“. As you’ll see in what I chose for my #1 Album of the Year, I’m a fan of musicians exploring the possibilities of genres.

Mother Road is nearly a concept album focused on the lifelong voyage of a woman whose livelihood is tied to the highways and byways of America, an artist who is as familiar with hotel rooms as she is with the wide-open sky of craters and canyons, where the people in her life include truck stop angels, little hitchhikers, and all of her ghosts “tripping on LSD and sniffin’ glue.”

I’ve listened to this album while riding the straight lanes of the Interstate and hugging the night-time curves on rural dirt roads in Vermont. It’s the perfect soundtrack for a life on the move.

I don’t even know where to begin with these guys.

First, they’re from Reno, Nevada. Second, they seem to be driven by three individuals, but they recruit some of the finest jazz musicians in the region to help them realize their visions.

Here’s how this album’s sound is described by one magazine: “mid-century exotica and library music—from the Tropicalia-steeped Amazon to the minor key tonalities of the far-out Near East.”

Their record label, meanwhile, describes them as a “recording collective [that] focuses solely on curating, performing and preserving esoteric soundtrack, library, and deep-groove collections.”

On their second LP, Palace of a Thousand Sounds, the collective, comprised of the three composers and over 20 musicians, leads the listener through a tour of the palace, creating a deep exotica-infused album using vibraphones, pedal harps, minor key grooves, ’70s Spanish Gypsy Rock, violins, Ethiopian-influenced brass, classical guitars, flute, Turkish baglama saz, eastern psych rock, grand pianos, and the recreation of a misheard found-melody as played one afternoon by a street musician near the recording studio.

(For the record, I’ve taken that list from an article where one of the main composers discusses the album track by track)

It is an album that rewards repeat listening. The songs are familiar sounding without being familiar. You’ve heard their like in your dreams, snatches of non-existent songs your brain meshed together from our culture’s collective memory of the soundtracks of imaginary 1970s movies set in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

You’ll hear it and think, “Oh, this is from Tarantino’s next movie.”

It’s an album you didn’t know you needed, but you very much do.