Vaux Flores, Dawn Chorales (Audiobulb Records)
My 2024 Word Salad Of The Year award goes to this person for their unintelligible PR one-sheet, and I quote: “Travis Johns is a sound artist residing in Ithaca, N.Y., whose work includes performance, interactivity, installation, and printmaking, often incorporating eco/bio-based themes and electronic instruments of his own design.” That’s just the first paragraph, but what this all tells me is that this “Vaux Flores,” aka Johns, is a musical experimentalist with a serious case of OCD, not that one could tell by the compositions themselves, which are Tales From Topographic Oceans-style exercises in self-indulgence. Not that that’s a bad thing, of course, particularly if your jam is movie soundtracking, for which this stuff would work (think Arrival), and the synth work is indeed pretty deep, which is of course half the battle. And besides, he does go off on some EDM-ish tangents, producing beats that are almost danceable. It’s interesting, let’s leave it at that. A-
Kris Davis Trio, Run The Gauntlet (Pyroclastic Records)
On this new LP, Grammy-winning jazz pianist Davis pays tribute to six of her heroes, pianists who’ve inspired her over the years. In specific we’re talking Geri Allen, Marilyn Crispell, Angelica Sanchez, Sylvie Courvoisier, Renee Rosnes and, in no-brainer news, Carla Bley. This new trio features bassist Robert Hurst and drummer Johnathan Blake, both of whom have plenty of room to stretch out. I got quite a jolt out of this one; if you compare jazz albums to scotch, this is no drinkable-enough, off-the-shelf Johnnie Walker special blend; it’s the top-dollar stuff, mathematically and physically ambitious, darkest-possible-roasted art that challenges the senses. Davis bonks, pounds, diddles and stress-tests the keyboard as if she’s trying to get it prepped to start its Ph.D. dissertation. In that, it’s obviously not for jazz-heads who just want to feel good that they’re listening to basic genre stuff; it’s enormously brainy while not indulging in an academic exercise. Yowza. A+
PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases
• Aug. 2 is the next Friday on which you will feel pressure from your Spotify to remain plugged into our horrible excuse for an arts zeitgeist! The record companies will unleash terabytes of new-album spam, and it’ll be everywhere you look, and you will feel pressure to listen to many songs that have no redeeming aesthetic whatsoever to them. But you will be assimilated, and before you know it you’ll be part of the problem, like my boomer friends on Facebook, who enjoy arguing with me about how I should be listening to and publicly praising 60-year-old albums from the likes of Cat Stevens and Harry Chapin, artists that I ignore for no other reason than to trigger easily triggered people on the Facebook! Yes, I am a rascal, I was born this way, stop being intolerant of rascals, it’s not nice. In fact, let’s just drop the whole subject of my personal taste in music (regular readers will recall that when last we left the subject of my musical taste it had shifted to 1950s greaser-rock like Sha Na Na and Eddie Cochran, which is still current) and focus on the here and now, starting with the new album from endlessly irritating ’90s band The Smashing Pumpkins, titled Aghori Mhori Mei, a phrase whose actual meaning is being argued over by Pumpkins fans on Reddit as we speak, that is when they’re not complaining about Rick Rubin sticking his big fat nose into one of the album’s singles. It is basically a nonsense phrase, unless we interpret it as a purposely idiotic misspelling of the Latin phrase “agori mori mei,” meaning, as one r/SmashingPumpkins redditor explained, “I am about to die” or “I am working on my death.” OK, and with that, my real friends can tell by now that I already hate this album, but regardless, I will go through the motions and mention that the band hasn’t released any of the new songs to the public at this writing, so there’s nothing for me to report, and they are touring with Green Day this year. The internet has decided that the presence of an orchestra in one promo shot is evidence that there will be a symphonic angle to this rock ’n’ roll music album, while other folks are hoping that the band will go back to the rockin’ roots of their early days, when they inspired such wannabe acts as Live. I ever tell you about the time Petunia and I mooched passes to see Blues Traveler open a show with Live and Collective Soul and we left before Live came on to ruin everything? It’s true, we barely escaped in time. Anyway.
• Yow, L.A. punk legends X have been around for 47 years, guys, Forty. Seven. Years. Smoke & Fiction is their upcoming new LP, and I heard a live version of the title track, which is appropriately awesome in a Loreena McKennit-meets-Hole manner. Thankfully, Exene sings off-key through the mellow parts, who would want it any other way? (Side note to new punk-music listeners: Unlike Smashing Pumpkins, X will not be opening for Green Day, because they are still actually relevant.)
• Activist and two-time Grammy winning singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello releases her zillionth full-length record on Friday! It is called No More Water: The Gospel Of James Baldwin, and the first track, “Love,” is a cool, laid-back, bass-driven soul track with a ton of harmonizing and some 70s steez. Full, thick, wide sound, good stuff here.
• Last but not least (depending on factors, of course) on our list this week is Stampede, the new album from country singer Orville Peck, whose gimmick is that he never shows his face, a stunt no musical artist has ever pulled, save for Kiss, Deadmau5, The Residents, Clinic and millions of others. His new tune is a cover of Ned Sublette’s 1981 Texas waltz joke song, “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other,” an ode to, well, gay cowboys, which is always a timely subject.