Sana Nagano, Smashing Humans (577 Records)
Hey man, if I have to get introduced to an avant punk-jazz record by the most sterilized, LinkedIn-style jumble of words I’ve ever read, you do too: You see, on this album, the “compositions are naturally motivic with grid-like melody lines underpinned by relentless rhythmic intensity.” What does this mean? It means that the music of this NYC-based band (i.e. Smashing Humans), as led by Nagano, is probably the most interesting — even agreeable — cacophony to which I’ve ever been exposed, not that I ever honestly seek out avant jazz (it’s more like that stuff finds me). I d_)on’t believe this is actually improvisational; “Humans In Grey,” unhinged and spazzy as it is, goes on a long tear that bespeaks progressive head-drug jazz from the ’80s, and like the designated genre would indicate, the sax, guitar, drums, bass combine with Sana’s battered violin to render pure, raucous expressionism that you could actually groove to. Like the impulsive eight-bit cover art hints at, it’s perfect for clearing your head of any stupid but manageable frustration du jour. A+
Yoko Miwa Trio, Songs of Joy (Ubuntu Music)
At this writing, Jazz Times hasn’t weighed in on this (by my count) fifth LP from the long-time Berklee college instructor’s trio, a pianist who’s been touted by the legendary Ahmad Jamal and has been a regular fixture at festivals and Boston jazz clubs (if you’re a regular visitor to that scene, Les Zygomates Wine Bar & Bistro in Boston closed as a casualty of Covid last year). With regard to her last album, 2019’s Keep Talkin’, the Jazz Times guy noted that Miwa’s work possesses a certain prettiness that jazz snobs tend to snub (“even some of Oscar Peterson’s work was dismissed for being too beautiful”). She won’t get that sort of nonsense from me; not that I’d ever pretend to be a Mingus-head, but I find stuff like this album’s intricately woven rub of Richie Havens’ “Freedom” really just cool. Like Havens’ original Woodstock-hippie outcry, it rushes to say a lot, but in this case Miwa’s expansive wanderings are slowly counterpointed by Will Slater’s upright bass in a boss move. This ain’t lounge stuff, no, it’s way too bold, but it wouldn’t be out of place at one. A
Retro Playlist
Let us go back, friends, back to the year 2013. Do you even remember what it was like before Covid and the Q-Shaman guy who’s part yak and part human, back when everything wasn’t so messed up that you had to hold Zoom meetings with your friends in order to get some semblance of communal togetherness? Oh, wait, for young people, that was how most interpersonal relationships were maintained anyway, so what’s all the fuss about, again?
Anyway, warping back to late February 2013, one of the new releases that week was What About Now, by Bon Jovi. As I noted that week, the title track “starts out with an ’80s-new-wave shoegaze sort of guitar line” and then it devolves into the usual epic throwback radio-rawk fail to which his fans have long been accustomed. That’s nice and all, but one of that week’s column’s main focus points was Flowers, a solo record from Seabear leader Sindri Már Sigfússon, under the stage name Sin Fang. Naturally, since it’s by an Icelandic dude, someone from Sígur Rós had to be involved, in this case their producer, Alex Somers. The album, thankfully, wasn’t the expected Slushie mix of Animal Collective and Raveonettes; some OK Go-style rocking out was present, and so I didn’t just whip out my handy bag of insults when I talked about it.
That week there was also the album The Fire Plays from Ari Hest, whose approach is, in general, stripped-to-the-hooks radio-folk a la Paul Simon. I don’t think I’ve so much as mentioned the guy in the eight years that have passed since my review of TFP, so you probably know more than I do, but regardless, on this album Hest did a decent Seal impersonation on “Set In Stone,” but otherwise it comprised things like hayloft indie (“All Because”) and halcyon-cowboy haze (“Couldn’t Have Her”), which automatically got my approval because Hest mostly sounded like Warren Zevon. Man, does the world need another Zevon, seriously.
PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases
• The first thing I see in this list of new CD releases for Feb. 26 is Willie Nelson’s That’s Life, and of course I can’t resist putting in my two cents, because it’s always fun to make fun of 87-year-old dudes who drive Cheech and Chong vans powered by nothing but pot smoke! What’s interesting is that he is 5’6” tall, which, as his Wikipedia entry specifically notes, is the same height as Patsy Cline. I hope that if I ever get an actual Wiki entry instead of the stupid “Wikipeople” thing or whatever it is, they will make note that I am the same height as George W. Bush. I think it’s important to know that about me, so that you won’t ever mistake me for Danny DeVito. Anyway, with all the important stuff out of the way, we can proceed to the contents of this new album, one that consists solely of covers of Frank Sinatra songs. I sort of don’t blame Willie for doing a victory lap for having lived so long, like, he totally dunked on James Dean and the dude from Nirvana and all those guys, so really, he does have every right to imprison a few musicians in a studio while he warbles old Rat Pack songs in his hoarse grandfatherly tenor. This is actually the second time Willie’s done an album of Sinatra tunes, but unlike the last one, this new album features a cover of “Luck Be a Lady” as well as a duet with none other than famous jazz singing lady Diana Krall (“I Won’t Dance”). OK, I know this has been a lot to unpack and wrap your head around, so let’s move to the next thingie after you gulp down some Pepto Bismol in order to settle your stomach, which got violently upset over my use of the buzzspeak word “unpack.”
• Ha ha, speaking of albums from old and crazy rock stars, look there fam, it’s famous Halloween decoration Alice Cooper, with Detroit Stories, just when we needed it, or at least I did! OK, I know Alice grew up in Detroit, so these tunes are probably about the times he used to play pranks with Jack White? No, Jack White’s young enough to be Alice’s great-grandson, so maybe it’s about the old days with another Detroit guy, Iggy Pop? Nope, Iggy is way cooler than Alice, so they probably never hung around either. In that case, I’ll just ditch this exercise, bite the bullet and go listen to the new Alice single, “Rock & Roll!” Nope, it’s not the Led Zeppelin song, it’s the old Velvet Underground song, so apparently the album title refers to Alice’s favorite songs that have the word “Detroit” in the lyrics. Say, guess who plays guitar on this? That’s right, it’s Joe Bonamassa! This rocks so hard, like, if you had just arrived from another planet and this was the first rock ’n’ roll song you’d ever heard, you’d be like, “Ha ha, wow, dig this crazy music!”
• Blub blub blub, I’m drowning in awful music that never should have — wait, belay that order, leftenant, it’s a new Melvins album, called Working With God, we’re saved! One of the songs, “Brian the Horse-Faced Goon,” is part joke song and part early Ministry, I love it so much I’d marry it if I were single.
• To close the week out, it’s one-man U.K.-based electronic-drone-whatnot project Blanck Mass, with In Ferneaux, his fifth album! The single, “Starstuff,” is just fine I suppose, if you like krautrock and ’80s sci-fi soundtrack music mixed together. I don’t, but then again, I have become biased against music that sucks, so don’t mind me.
