New Music from Annie Gosfield

January 20, 2009—New York based composer Annie Gosfield could be considered my neighbor. I live just outside Manhattan and so am a part of the NY Metro sprawl. Since my tightened budget does not allow for cultural events or all but the most necessary commuting I don’t get into the heart of the city often and it is probably not likely I will make face-to-face contact with her in the near future. Nonetheless we both belong to an invisibly connected universe of cultural workers and, whatever it means, a New York sort of outlook on it.

Ms. Gosfield’s music is well represented on the Tzadik release Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites. Now I find myself responding to her music almost instinctively. Is it the shared aural and cultural values of this metropolis that make that possible? It could have something to do with it. But most importantly Ms. Gosfield has absorbed the vocabulary of modern music to speak it fluently and with originality, and that sounds a chord of resonance with me.

Her short quartet “Lightheaded and Heavy Hearted” comes off skillfully and sincerely as something that comes after late Bartok and brings a personal touch to the genre. The title cut, “Lost Signals and Drifting Satellites” is perhaps the most captivating of the pieces, combining thoughtfully constructed solo violin passages with washes of gongs, percussion and electronics. In its own way it reminds me of my youth and the local hours I spent listening to the family short wave for the sorts of static and bleeps that I believed were raw audio satellite transmissions. I don’t know the truth of that but this music reminds me of what has become of local sectors of outer space in the years following the heyday of the space program and those sessions I had with the radio. Parts of our above-earth space vacuum must be like certain abandoned industrial sectors of Passaic, NJ (I am thinking of Robert Smithson’s photoessays on the latter topic, done in the late ‘60s). No longer functioning as intended (the satellites drifting, perhaps long since out of service), they exist now emptied of their original meaning, there as a symbol of time passed.

The remaining two pieces further explore the sound poetry of where we are now through prepared piano writing of style and earthiness, effective string writing with gongs and percussion, as well as electronically processed sounds of nameless machines and power tools. Gosfield’s music is not exactly casual, but it certainly isn’t formal either. There is a wondrous, restrained expressiveness and interesting juxtaposition of sound classes, none of which wear out their welcome on repeated hearings. I do recommend this disk for anyone who would like to know something of where new music is right now. It’s here, looking backwards to the ended century and the close of the American Machine Age as well as forward to tomorrow and what that will bring. That’s somehow appropriate music for the beginnings of a new epoch.

The Mountain Goats, The Sunset Tree

January 19, 2009—I took a look at the Mountain Goats’ site before sitting down to pen these lines. They have a bunch of releases and it appears that bandleader/singer John Darnielle put his most personal thoughts and experiences into the lyrics on the CD up for consideration, The Sunset Tree (4AD), recorded in 2004. Now as an outsider to band lore this doesn’t mean anything to me, other than that he spills his guts obliquely and there are those who will care. Not that I don’t, but hey it’s like listening to a stranger on a train confessing details of his life that you're not really sure what to do with. All I can say is “bully” for this guy.

There are 13 songs of a folksy-songwriter sort, Erik Friedlander plays some nice cello arrangements and the rest is pretty much all Darnielle. His voice doesn’t appeal to me much. It has a chipmonky rasp. Now I can’t say THAT is enough for me to turn something off, physically or mentally, so I didn’t. In fact I listened five times, the fifth as I write these words. It’s an acquired taste, but I’m afraid I haven’t quite acquired it yet. He feeds his kittens, dons or doffs his earphones, wants some lady to kiss him on the mouth. As a youngster I used to overvalue the appeal of my everyday life for others. Perhaps early adulthood makes you feel that way. Now I’m not so sure. This guy has something to say, but I’m not certain that it’s something so urgent you must rush out and pick up this CD. And it's ultimately all in the telling. I don't believe that this particular telling quite reaches the level of "art."

Sweeney Todd: The Broadway Revival CD

January 16, 2009—There was a time when the latest Broadway hit show conquered the musical world with songs that were whistled by the population at large; those tunes were in the repeating memories of people everywhere. Both pop and jazz artists looked to them as a large part of the repertoire. They were all-pervasive. Then came the rock revolution and the sort of harmonic sophistication latent in the song forms of such shows became rare. It was harder for songwriters to think in those terms, harder for the listening public to assimilate a style that was essentially in its declining stages, identified with a pre-rock generation that began to lose its central status on the media scene. Up until then Broadway was Columbia Records’ chief moneymaker and a key part of American musical culture. The peak of the phenomenon probably coincided with Bernstein’s wonderful West Side Story, to be followed by Hair and a gradual decline. How many people knew and recognized the songs from Cats or Phantom of the Opera? Not so many. How many artists covered the songs? Again, few.

The situation seems to persist. And so we turn to today’s music, Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd (Nonesuch) as performed by the revival cast. Here’s a show that has at least a few songs that have entered the mainstream, with performances by various jazz and pop concerns—notably “The Ballad of Sweeney Todd,” “Not While I’m Around,” and “Pretty Women.” I have heard versions of these by various artists; some come off better than others. But the musical quality of the show is pretty high and there’s a kind of provocative Three Penny Opera vibe in the street theme, the chamber instrumentation, and the off-color, crime oriented story.

This particular cast is very good and the two-CD format gives you a generous dose of the score, seemingly most all of it. It has a vaguely operetta-like feel, and that's not such a bad thing. Both the sound of the music and the plot look backward as they proclaim their contemporary relevance. It is rather enjoyable, no matter what your musical background may be. And perhaps it marks the return of the Broadway hit as part of our overall musical vernacular, or the beginnings of it. Who can say? It’s very decent music regardless.

Composer Chris Dench: Chamber Works

January 15, 2009—Modern concert music remains vividly alive and filled with a healthy vitality. The rigid formalism of the serialist and post-serialist days seems to be gone, the wacky eccentrisms of later Stockhausen and Cage are perhaps not as central now as they were around 1985. What has happened can be looked at on a number of levels. There seems to be a more informal, music-first, words-about-the-music second approach. Innovation is perhaps downplayed for various sorts of sonority. Much of the acoustic-electric and instrumental language is of a flow, a lucidity that communicates with a directness. The sound of jazz-derived free improv and the modern concert piece can be similar on the surface. Both camps have learned something from one another. The improv folks have gotten something of the use of space and sound from the concert people, the latter have been influenced by the spontaneous fluidity and timbre pallet of the improv people. This is a drastic simplification, but good enough for the purposes of this morning’s blog. And in the realm of electro-acoustic and minimalist musics, there are other factors in play too.

With all that in mind we turn to British ex-pat, Australian based composer Chris Dench and his CD of chamber pieces, Beyond Status Geometry (Tzadik). This is a welcome addition to the repertory. Four pieces are represented. The earliest piece (1985-6), a percussion quartet that gives the title to the disk, has a delightful bombastic quality. The two later chamber works, “Light-Strung Sigils” and “Permutation City” have a more conventionally concert oriented sound but are marked by solid invention and inspired levels of performance. The final piece, a solo piano excursion, has a wistful yet robust expressionism that somehow manages to suggest and transcend the piano sounds of Ives and Cecil Taylor while remaining in a world of its own. Dench is well worth your attention and I look forward to hearing more from him.

Neil Young and Some New Protest Music

January 14, 2009—With the presidency of G. W. Bush now ancient history, it’s probably high time to bring up Neil Young’s CD of several years ago, Living with War (Reprise). One thing I appreciate about the course of Young’s long and interesting career is that you can never be sure what he is going to do next.

Now I am not here to tell you what to think about politics (or anything else), but surely Neil spoke to a large segment of the public that had become increasingly certain that the Bush regime was a failure. The CD is filled with anthems expressing the despair of the time. Obviously with a new presidency upon us, these issues begin to be a part of the historical past. But of course issues raised on this album are still with us in a number of ways. Living with War is by no means Neil Young’s best record. It captures a moment, with musical high points that include a rousing version of “America the Beautiful.” May Americans continue to be worthy of those words with a renewed dedication to what is good and great about their legacy. So we go forward to a new chapter in the history of the present.

Reconsidering NRBQ

January 13, 2009—I never paid a lot of attention to NRBQ. They were to me one of those bands who were around, but I never thought to listen very closely. Then I reviewed a recording by NRBQ’s Terry Adams and Marshall Allen, the irrepressible Sun Ra alumnus and now director. It was full of adventure and whacky good humor. My thinking altered, I checked out NRBQ’s Greatest Hit compilation, and that was OK but not especially overwhelming to me. Then I grabbed today’s recording, NRBQ’s Message to the Mess Age (Aardvark). This one had the irreverence and tang that attracted me to the later duet album. On this recording NRBQ has the dada humor of some of Steely Dan, a little of the wryness of the Police, but it is only as a reminiscence, not a copycatting. It’s musical music and it has a variety of moods and grooves. “Girl Scout Cookies” has a sublimely ridiculous lyric that might tickle you. It’s something to hear if you have not.

What’s coming up? A few more Tzadiks, jazz from Cadence and other sources, more rock known and unknown and the beginning of a series on creative commons jamband downloads for those who are curious but limited in funds.

Over the Top with Brown Wing Overdrive

Originally posted on January 12, 2009

Enter the world of Brown Wing Overdrive’s CD ESP Organism (Tzadik) and you find yourself on an electro-acoustic planet that transforms the jaw harp, vocal sounds, percussion, kalimba. electronic tones and world noise into a 45 minute collage that is over the top. It’s a trio of electro-acoustic sound weavers. The transformations of the organic sounds can be pretty simple—echoes, loops, filters, distortion, abrupt splices. It is not a virtuostic kind of sound tapestry. It is rather nutty, though, and there seems to be a certain sense of humor involved.

Disks like these are not for those seeking the peace and solace of cosmic tones. It can be jarring and it does not aim to provide a soporific backdrop to a new age cocktail party. Far from it. It’s a kind of “bad boys play with noise” music, and that can have its attractions. In the dismal season of storm and flood their refusal to cover it all up with pleasantries fits in with the harshness of the climate. Well so it is. Try this one if you want something that participates ever so slightly in another mad world, perhaps not this one. Or perhaps it is, if you follow the news (there's never a shortage of issues to cause concern). Perhaps they are a creative transformation of what is insane in the world right now.