SPEW

Here we are, at No. 8. I first fell for this album on a drive home from Topeka on Stull road on a rather crisp, but sunny and lovely Saturday afternoon. I don't hate Topeka. Not at all. I don't live there either. They do have a Barnes & Noble, where you can buy magazines no longer available in dear old Lawrence. But enough about that. Here's the review I wrote shortly after that invigorating drive. Sorry is Gone  wore well as the year wore on. And I stand by my comments from this October review. Enjoy!  https://spewrocks.blogspot.com/2017/10/jessica-lea-mayfields-unapologetic.html

When I was a kid reviewer, I prided myself on my range. Yup, the nineteen year-old wunderkind who reviewed the Kinks and the Modern Jazz Quartet. Used to flash some of my music theory class chops. Ooh-ah. Once I might have been able to tell you when i heard the dorian or the mixolydian. Not any more. I now embrace that I'm a rock 'n' roll singer who appreciates jazz. I’d like to think that I’ve listened carefully and conscientiously enough to know shit from shinola. Put in my 10,000 hours … or whatever.  So here's where I testify for an artist named Bill Frisell. He is a guitarist who can play almost anything. He’s performed or recorded with an amazing variety of artists, from the traditional to the avant-garde. His touch, tone, and technique are immediately recognizable, but he never descends to schtick or branding.  Thirty-three years ago, Frisell teamed with tenor man Joe Lovano in a trio led by the exquisite drummer Paul Motian. They made three recordings t...

I t’s a big, blustery sound south London’s InHeaven make. A sound sonically descended from the buzz of the late Eighties, sometimes like Jesus and Mary Chain, sometimes Nirvana, or even Smashing Pumpkins and all that shit.  What I mean is, you can’t imagine this particular sonic blast, given aesthetics and technology, before the late Eighties. It’s already dated, right? At least in this age of indie retro-twee and hip-hop. But that’s part of its audacity. Brazen in its’ sheer rock-is-bloody-king quality. Suck on it.   Julian Casablancas likes them. He released their “Regeneration” single on his Cult Records label.   A proper RAWK band - look at them! Little Steven likes them. He’s been blasting their bracing, horn-adorned track “Baby’s Alright” on the Underground Garage.  When I first heard "Baby's Alright" on the radio, I thought - wtf … is this some strange lovechild of the Small Faces and Cheap Trick? It is, sorta. And it’s also rocking to the m...

If you know who Alan Vega is we can move along.  Alan Vega with one of his installations. But maybe some of you don’t.  Alan Vega was part rockabilly hiccup, part electronic futurist. He was a poetic minimalist. Whether as musician, either with his partner Martin Rev in the band Suicide or solo, or as visual artist (his gallery shows were infrequent, but legendary), Vega was uncompromising and unwilling to play the game. He was interested in energy, in process, not in creating a portfolio. One romanticizes artists at one's peril, but Alan Vega didn't have time for bullshit, and his work shows it.  Alan Vega died in 2016; he was seventy-eight years old. Much of his life he’d been a bit cat and mouse about his age, not wanting to let his Seventies “punk” peers at Max's and CBGB's know he was fifteen years older than them. He needn’t have worried. Nothing dated Alan Vega.  His posthumous swan song It i(the back half of a New York 'exit...

12.     EMA – Exile in the Outer Ring (City Slang)   I had this to say when this album came out … https://spewrocks.blogspot.com/search?q=ema I would still say pretty much the same.   13.     Kendrick Lamar – Damn (Top Dawg/Interscope) Hip-hop. I know what I like. It’s impossible not to like Kendrick. Named for the Temptations’ Eddie Kendricks, Lamar is straight outta Compton, section 8 housing, the life. He’s also an artist unafraid, not reluctant to mix genres and sounds or to speak his truth, plainly and poetically. His last, To Pimp a Butterfly, was universally, justifiably acclaimed. Damn is harder, more personal, and just as impressive. ‘Duckworth’ (Lamar’s real last name) is a lyric tour de force of black millennial life. A story too good to be true, but that don’t matter,   because it says what it says so powerfully.   14.     Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile – Lotta Sea Lice ( Matador) Barnett has, along wit...