Chuck Bergeron, Bass & Face: Duets With Ten Premier Vocalists (Summit Records)
The ever-polite All About Jazz describes bassist Bergeron as “one of the most active and innovative musicians working in the field of jazz,” not that I’ve ever seen a review from them that went something like, “Boy, this lazy putz should just quit polluting the airwaves,” you know? I mean, I kid, he’s assembled, as described, an elite group of jazz singers that includes Manhattan Transfer’s Janis Siegel; Deborah Silver, who was Grammy-nominated for her 2025 collaboration with the Count Basie Orchestra, and the appropriately named Kevin Mahogany, whose rich, knurled baritone positively floats over Bergeron’s deftly bowed acoustic bass interpretation of Duke Ellington’s “Sound of Love.” Overall this record feels like a comfortable, casual pair of socks, not a novelty release aimed at bass wonks; the funnest moment is Nicole Yarling’s unapologetically urban rendition of “Audubon Zoo/Iko-Iko,” which anyone with ears will recognize as the Mardi Gras singalong from the 1988 film Rain Man. Plenty to like here. A+
Alden Hellmuth, Tether (Leiter Verlag GmbH Records)
Just to reassure regular readers, no, I’m not turning this into an all-jazz column; fact is, over the past few months I’ve been absolutely buried in new jazz releases — physical copies too, not just empty-brained emails with links to confounding whiz-bang download pages that require a master’s degree in IT just to get to the part where one actually listens to stuff — and at this point I’m feeling guilty that I haven’t been able to get to many of them (there are so few music publications covering jazz nowadays). I wasn’t going to let that happen with this imported 12” vinyl LP, which was Fedexed to me from Germany (do you have any idea how much that costs?); its subject is an avant garde saxophonist with a casual fetish for noise. Ipso facto, this one’s obviously from the more experimental space, but New Yorker Hellmuth is as interested in brain-dazzling melody as she is in Mingus bonking; she goes into a deep, center-of-midtown reverie in “Witness,” the best on board here. Fascinating album. A+
PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases
• July 10 would be a great day for some new albums to appear, and lo, thus it shall be, unto us, and yadda yadda. Yikes, look at all the albums that are coming out this week, I wonder if any of those albums will do something more than get on my nerves, let me look. Well, at least the 80-year-olds are still “rockin’ out,” like they say in Kansas, given that The Rolling Stones have a new one, called Foreign Tongues, which isn’t a strictly bad thing I suppose. I mean, they did turn the studio into a giant party, with people like Robert Smith, Steve Winwood, Paul McCartney and the drummer from Red Hot Chili Peppers dropping in to help out, not that the Stones need any help. For example, on “Rough and Twisted,” a loud, loutish blues-rawk tune that name-checks Muddy Waters in the band’s most Muddy Waters-ish tune ever, the Stones’ singer, whatever his name is, plays harmonica, and it doesn’t suck. I don’t know, I’ve never really cared about the Stones but never actively disliked them either, like, my high school friends who liked them were all confirmed druggies, so I just associate the band with drugs, which is what rock ’n’ roll is supposed to be about, or at least it was until it became a distinctly un-fun genre in which Berklee-dropout guitarists showed off the scant few jazz chords they’d learned in school and sang songs about Trump and being awkward around their exes or whatever everyone’s deal is now. I mean, yes, there’s literally no need for a new Rolling Stones record, but at least they’re singing about cocaine and one-night stands at that age, where most people would just be singing about adult diapers. That’s a good thing, isn’t it? I don’t know, you tell me, America.
• I always get a nice short burst of Facebook un-friendings when I mention that I always hated Queen, like when I state that their News Of The World album was a low point in arena rock that will never be matched. I only mention that because Adam Lambert, Queen’s kind-of-replacement for singer Freddie Mercury, has a new album streeting this week, cleverly titled ADAM, in capital letters, because wouldn’t you if you were him? OK, I wouldn’t either, but whatever, we shall talk about this new album, from the one-time American Idol runner-up, because if we didn’t, the 10 people who’ll be buying the stupid thing might feel abandoned, and I wouldn’t want that. O, what horrors will be on this record, OK, at least it isn’t a bunch of covers like the last one, the first single is titled “UNDER THE RHYTHM,” in capital letters, see what he did there, but it isn’t bad if you like Michael Jackson/Bruno Mars-type singing; it’s very busy and well-done, and this is without a doubt the last time you’ll see this album mentioned in any media outlet, ever.
• Release the kraken of hamburger jokes, because it’s a new album from famous burger-eating human Jack White, called Frozen Charlotte! Now, my guess is that the music on this album will be Led Zeppelin-esque, because isn’t it always, but this human Ronald McDonald is at the “One Never Knows What I’ll Try Next” stage of his career, so this may just be heavy metal versions of 1930s polkas, so let’s just do the dutiful and find out. Yup, nope, “Dollar Bill” pilfers the drunken guitar noodling of Zep’s “In My Time Of Dying,” you get the idea, right, let’s move on.
• And finally it’s fashion model/actress/singer/future ex of Robert Pattinson Suki Waterhouse, with Loveland, her third album. Single “Back In Love” regurgitates the breathy, amateurish sound of Aughts bands like Au Revoir Simone, I don’t care for it.
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