Big Harp, Chain Letters

OK, so here's something that came out in January and what took me so long to review it? My only excuse is that I've had a lot on my plate this year. Something worth talking about months ago is still worth talking about now, I figure. Either that or we exist in such an ephemeral world that the blur of its passing makes it difficult to nail down impressions for once and all. I will go with the first option, the only one I can comfortably exist inside.

So here goes. Big Harp is the conjunction of Chris Senseney and Stefanie Drootin-Senseney. Chain Letters (Saddle Creek) is their second effort, a rather unusual melange of solid singer-songwriting, indie rock, sometimes with a slight country accent, and a harder-edged feel. There's some formidable guitar playing, good rocking arrangements contrasting with some more gentle-sounding things, and lyrical content that has depth and a storytelling directness.

Chris has an appealing, twangy lead vocal presence that has a laid back quality. Stefanie sounds fine as harmonizing vocalist.

This is one where the songs are good and they carry the day, whether it is January or September.

The Uncluded, Hokey Fright

The Uncluded is the unusual pairing of rapper Aesop Rock with singer/songwriter Kimya Dawson. Their debut, Hokey Fright (CD or 2-LP, Rhymesayers) is so peculiarly expressive of a younger generation I am not a part of that it grabbed my attention.

It's somehow a combination of articulate rap/hip-hop, slacker chick indie rock, nouveau folk and ice cream truck music...somehow. There is a sort of disarmingly innocent nursery rhyme this-is-it quality conjoined with an all-too-knowing and insightful world weariness here.

And there are interesting instrumental touches that set this apart too.

It's something about frustration and courage in the face of a self-alienation, sandwiches, candy, hitting rock bottom and yet realizing it's becoming a common thing, that it's what needs to be gone through. And it's all that in a real-poetical way, with blunt sophistication. Hey. And it's about prevailing because that's what you must do. So it's not just a generation thing either.

I found I could get with this, though it's not my usual thing. I'm not sure I'd want to hear it another 1,000 times, but it's about right now. Right now.

Zs, Grain

If you are looking for something so electric and off-the-wall that it sounds like it's from another planet, seek no further. The group Zs, together since 2000 and now thriving as a trio, will blow your head off with Grain (Northern Spy).

The lineup is Sam Hillmer (tenor sax), Patrick Higgins (guitar), and Greg Fox (percussion). Live onslaughts of sound and some pretty phenomenal Higgins guitar alternate with some very evocatively bizarre loops of the band. The entire whole ends up as a matrix, a web of out sound that starts in and goes to places you might not recall visiting before.

I dare you to get this one. Not because I am being cocky. It's because some may hate it--but it may also speak to you as a long lost and very out Dutch Uncle. Stockhausen and Hendrix always seem to me to be different ends of an entire spectrum of things that have not stood still since the two genius's unfortunate demises. Here with Zs you get part of where it has gone. And a wonderment of sounds to baffle and enlighten, quite often at the same time.

Ceramic Dog, Your Turn, with Marc Ribot

Ceramic Dog is guitarist Marc Ribot's trio. Your Turn (Northern Spy) is their album and it kicks up plenty of dust.

Of course as you'd expect there is a treasure-trove of opportunities to hear the unparalleled skronk guitar of Mr. Ribot here and he sounds great. But it is situated in a set of full-fledged trio music that hits hard but also has musical substance which stays in your head, so you get the full hit of goodness.

It's hard-edged, it kicks, the group takes no prisoners, and then they throw some unexpected curves at you, too, that break it up, like a nice version of Brubeck's "Take Five" (RIP Dave). And the quasi-mid-eastern "Masters of the Internet" is a corker.

It's an album that has the excitement of a live date when a band is completely on it. They are.

Great guitar, great band, great music for the seeker of brains inside the brawn! Listen and love this one if you will. I do.

J=J, 2013 EP

Ms. Joanna Duda and J=J come at us with a 30 minute EP today. She's from Poland, plays synths and piano and is aided and abetted by Jan Emile Mlynarski on drums and voice, and a couple of guests.

Jan has a very cool way of playing additive and subtractive beats which geometrically frees the frame; Joanna gives us a kind of electronic soundscape that sometimes riffs, sometimes sound-sculpts. It's a sometimes uncanny sort of DIY thing that you have to hear several times at least to get with.

But once you do you enter an odd sort of world and make yourself at home. One cut is a bit pedestrian in a radio-friendly sort of way; the rest makes for fascinating listening. Check it out.

Steve Tallis, ZOZO

Steve Tallis has evolved over the years to become an artist of inimitable qualities, a true original. There's a bluesy underpinning, a vocal delivery uniquely his but in an early Dylan-Beefheartian lineage, a tribal folk-swamp-rock ensemble sound with his acoustic guitar, Gary Ridge on percussion and Dave Clarke on violin, mandolin, etc. All this and songs with a set of lyrics that evokes the sky and the earth, plus loops of ethnic music (percussion and tribal-vocal, from Africa, often enough) to work against.

This is what you hear and hear well on his ZOZO (Zombi Music). Steve's Australian homeland of open spaces, bright light, clear air come though on this album.

It's one of his very best and one to start on if you don't know about his music. Good stuff!

Terra Guitarra, Dragonfly

Nueva-flamenco in an instrumental, not-quite-jazz zone is the deal on Terra Guitarra's fourth album Dragonfly (Earthsign 0015). Bruce Hecksel and Julie Patchouli are the Spanish-guitar wielding protagonists and a tastefully tuneful lot they are. They get rhythm backing in their nicely turned set of originals and standards.

If the Ventures were reborn as nueva-flamencologists they might sound like this. Terra Guitarra have enough in the chops department that they please, without exploding into 32nd-note runs or setting their guitars on fire.

It's the kind of disk you can put on at any time and it feels welcome. It's not heavy and not supposed to be heavy, but it brings pleasure.

Pleasure in plenty.