Night After Night

Fond farewells.

Over the weekend, I learned in a post by Kyle Gann that composer James Tenney had succumbed to lung cancer. I don't know the bulk of Tenney's music as well as I might, but I have a healthy respect for the recordings that I've heard, foremost among them the Frog Peak compilation on New World that Alex Ross mentions in his short but typically eloquent eulogy, and an ambitious set on the hat[now]ART label that combined Tenney's Form 1-4, from 1993, with works by Varèse, Cage, Wolpe and Feldman, the dedicatees of Tenney's four pieces. I also have vivid memories of a remarkable concert that pianist Jenny Lin mounted at the Whitney Museum's midtown space at Altria, across the street from Grand Central Station, last summer. Lin and a group of local luminaries filled the tall, resonant space with a dizzying swirl of furtive sound. Composer and NewMusicBox maven Frank J. Oteri conducted an endearingly rambling live interview. I was particularly taken by the fact that, unless my eyes were deceiving me, there was a sizeable pocket knife sheathed on Tenney's belt -- a detail that seemed in keeping with Tenney's maverick aesthetic.

From an e-mailed press release received at the TONY office this afternoon, I learned that Jesse Pintado had died on Saturday night in a Dutch hospital, of causes as yet undisclosed officially. A Mexican-American guitarist who'd been a founding member of the seminal death-metal band Terrorizer, Pintado bravely uprooted himself to join the British extreme-metal band Napalm Death in 1990, and was a crucial element in that group's maturation from crusty grindcore roots to earth-shaking death-metal profundity. Pintado vanished from the Napalm Death lineup in 2004 -- not officially commented upon until last year, in which it was revealed that he'd been fundamentally absent since 2002. Pintado turned up on a Terrorizer "reunion" CD, Darker Days Ahead, issued last week on the Century Media label. Disappointing on any number of levels, the disc is still notable for the guitarist's dense, dark tone and mechanistic chug. His best work, however, is to be found elsewhere, most notably on Napalm Death's crowning glory, the 1992 album Utopia Banished.

Later, Mwanji thoughtfully e-mailed the sad news that Pip Pyle had also died in Amsterdam over the weekend, reportedly of natural causes. This seemed nearly unbelievable, given how youthful, healthy and spry the Canterbury-prog scene's house drummer seemed when he played with a reformed Hatfield and the North at the Bowery Poetry Club in June (about which I posted here -- scroll down). During the show, as on those cherished Hatfield records, Pyle demonstrated his enviable knack for playing rock music in complex time signatures without grandstanding. A consummate team player, Pyle also penned some of Hatfield's most memorable lyrics, full of whimsical wordplay and self-referential blank verse about not taking the rock 'n' roll life too seriously.

You don't expect my life's a mess
You prob'ly think it's groovy
Meeting people every day
See some place abroad
And I admit that when the time is right
It can be quite a laugh
But you know, that's not often
Eventually, I think that you will agree
I'm only putting lines out
And shifting gears, missing years disappear.

(From "Fitter Stoke Has a Bath," Hatfield and the North, Rotter's Club, Virgin, 1975)

Angels and devils.

The New York Grand Opera in Central Park - Suor Angelica and Pagliacci
The New York Times, August 29, 2006

Wunderkind.

CD review: Jay Greenberg - Symphony No. 5; Quintet for Strings
London Symphony, conducted by José Serebrier; Juilliard String Quartet; Darrett Atkins, cellist.
Sony Classical 82876-81804-2; CD
The New York Times, August 27, 2006
(ArkivMusic, Barnes & Noble)

Saxophone colossus.

I'm willing to grant, in accordance with Darcy James Argue's recent list of the "Top Four Tolerable Rock Sax Solos of All Time," that Sonny Rollins's contribution to the Rolling Stones song "Waiting on a Friend" might not make the grade. (I'm on the fence about it personally, but I see Darcy's point in the comments following the post.) Still, I can't think of any other sense in which this great American artist has ever really fallen short. Tonight, under overcast skies and occasional drizzle, Rollins held forth for a solid two hours of music making in Lincoln Center's Damrosch Bandshell that was not merely exceptional for a 75-year-old, but exceptional, period.

The passage of time is apparent when you see Rollins these days; hunched over slightly, he's not the imposing colossus he once was, and his walk could be described as a determined wobble. Once he got to the front of the stage and planted himself, however, he might have been 20 years younger.

I've never had a knack for distinguishing Rollins's various calypso tunes, I sadly confess, but one of them got tonight's show off to a lively start. Clifton Anderson, the saxophonist's nephew and longtime trombonist, sounded slightly tentative at first, but settled in quickly. The rhythm section of guitarist Bobby Broom, bassist Bob Cranshaw, drummer Victor Lewis and percussionist Kimati Dinizulu provided a firm springboard from which Rollins could launch in any direction he could imagine. In his first solo of the evening, Rollins atomized the melody, chasing fragments into oblique keys, then calling them home with a nasal, snake-charming sequence.

A ballad followed: "Someday I'll Find You," the Noël Coward tune covered on Rollins's new CD, Sonny, Please, on his own Doxy Records label. (You'll find more information about that CD, as well as a really nice 10-minute documentary video in which Rollins talks about the band and the tunes, right here.) As raindrops spattered down, a few umbrellas went up, followed by cries of protest that saw them lowered again. Broom's solo was a long, lanky tumble of notes; Cranshaw followed with rolling lines and sliding tones. Anderson's muted solo was a marvel of subtlety, like a whispered aside at a crowded party. Instead of stretching alone, Rollins engaged Dinizulu in the first of several witty dialogues that punctuated the evening. If this was his way of compensating for lacking the stamina of 20 years ago, it was an agreeable one.

Rollins soloed at length on "Nishi," a boisterous blues from the new album, blowing knotty whorls of notes paced ever so slightly behind Lewis's propulsive beat. He wandered into minimalist snake-charming mode once again, worrying a melodic cell over and over again, then suddenly pulling the head from out of nowhere. In another tune from the new disc, "Serenade" (from a ballet score by Riccardo Drigo, an Italian composer active in St. Petersburg, Russia at the beginning of the 20th century), Anderson soloed with a rich, burnished tone over the steely twang of Cranshaw's electric bass strings; Rollins once again engaged with Dinizulu in lieu of an outright solo.

Mortality is presumably on Rollins's mind lately; his beloved wife and manager, Lucille, passed away in 2004, and one of the original tunes on the new album, "Remembering Tommy," salutes another recently deceased friend and colleague, Tommy Flanagan (although the tune was actually written as an intended collaboration with the pianist). Tonight, Rollins unveiled another tribute, a brief ballad dedicated to trombonist J.J. Johnson. An opening reminscent of a Monk ballad unfurled into a generous melody, the saxophonist filling the gaps between phrases with wisps of smoky elaboration.

Approaching the 90-minute mark, Rollins approached the microphone for his closing remarks. "Don't forget...," he trailed off, then brightly offered, "Don't forget to don't forget!" The band launched into another happy calypso, probably an obvious one I should be embarassed not to have recognized. The song segued into another rich ballad, during which Rollins reintroduced his band. Having dismissed his listeners, he accompanied them down the aisle with a generosity of spirit and fecundity of imagination that seemed utterly unquenchable.

Cutting short his own attempt to leave the stage at ten minutes to 10pm, Rollins launched an unaccompanied solo bulging with new concepts. Like James Brown's handler approaching with the cape to signal the night's end, Rollins's band crept in behind him; like that other soulful Godfather, Rollins shugged them off, uncorking another unaccompanied stream that included references to every song you've ever heard and twice as many you haven't. It was almost as if he was shuffling through an endless iPod playlist, looking for just the right song to close the night. Finally, he chose. The band joined him in "They Say It's Wonderful." And it was.

Walking down Central Park West on my way to the subway stop at 57th and Seventh, I had Sonny, Please on the discman. The streets were as clear and quite as ever I've seen them before 4am, and the thick air and rain-slickened streets refracted the lights from the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle into a hazy shimmer of impressionistic color. It was one of those mysterious, magical moments that occasionally catch you by surprise in this city, and Rollins was the perfect companion.

Playlist:

Christina Aguilera - Back to Basics (RCA)

Cee-Lo - Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections (Arista)

Sonny Rollins - Sonny, Please (Doxy) and The Bridge (RCA Bluebird)

Supergroup.

Ears still pleasantly buzzing, I'm just in from a powerful triple-header at the Mercury Lounge downtown. The headliner, Red Sparowes, is one of those bands that gets lumped under the heading of "post-metal," which I just learned tonight via an entry at Wikipedia. Before now, we've been using the equally unspecific but somewhat more descriptive term "instru-metal" around the TONY offices...since, um, Wednesday, I think?

The difference between the two terms, it seems, is that post-metal is broad enough to take in both bands that use vocals (Neurosis, a wellspring of this particular scene, as well as Isis and Cult of Luna) and those that don't (Pelican being the most highly touted). Given that particular taxonomy, Red Sparowes is something of a "supergroup," since it was founded by guitarist Josh Graham, who creates the visual effects for Neurosis's live shows, plus Isis guitarists Cliff Meyer and Jeff Caxide. The last mentioned has since left the band, replaced by Andy Arahood; bassist/pedal-steel guitarist Greg Burns and drummer Dave Clifford complete the group's current lineup.

The term "post-metal" also takes into account a blurring of the lines between the heavier wing of post-rock -- Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai and Mono, as opposed to Tortoise or Sigur Rós -- and certain new instrumental metal bands. I mulled this over in a review of a split-LP by Pelican and Mono for Decibel, in which I also likened Mono's contribution to the music of Gavin Bryars. (What would you expect from someone who evoked Bruckner in a Neurosis review?) And, reminded by Wikipedia of the definition of "post-rock" offered by Simon Reynolds, who coined the term -- "using rock instrumentation for non-rock purposes, using guitars as facilitators of timbres and textures rather than riffs and power chords," I'm also rather startled to note a glancing affinity with certain of the composers that Kyle Gann includes under his "totalist" umbrella, particularly Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham and Lois V. Vierk.

Enough with the deep thinking, or I'll be up all night. Anyway, with Cliff Meyer currently on the road in Isis opening stadium shows for Tool, Red Sparowes conscripted Pelican guitarist Trevor de Brauw for its current tour. At the Mercury Lounge, the band played a dense, hypnotic set largely drawn from its soon to be released second album, Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun (due on September 19 from Neurot, the label run by Neurosis). Prodded by Clifford's solid beats, the group constructed massively heavy yet shimmering walls of guitar tones and overtones. I'd never before quite noticed how loquacious a bassist Burns can be, and his pedal-steel guitar added a sensuous whine to several numbers.

Filling the communicative void that might have been consumed by a gregarious frontman, the band projected video on a backdrop throughout the set, offering images of emotionally blank faces; a caricature of the Statue of Liberty as a wizened, drooping hag; headlight-illuminated automobiles rushing through city streets in time-lapse photography like corpuscles speeding through arteries; and, in a feedback-drenched finale, delapidated buildings imploding into rubble.

In the middle slot tonight was Daughters, a Rhode Island quintet as spastic and noisy as that state's name has recently come to imply (Lightning Bolt, the Load label). On disc, the band's tumultuous blurts and fractured lyrics convey an odd poetry, despite subject matter solidly locked into modes of nihilism, self-loathing and lust. The group's music sounds a lot like that of the Locust or the late Lickgoldensky, and the instrumentalists made their dizzyingly complex parts sound natural. But vocalist Alexis Marshall -- part swaggering Jim "Dandy" Mangrum, part scabarous Gibby Haynes -- verged on incoherence, and seemed most interested in plopping into the front rows of the audience.

Versoma, the opening act, has played only a handful of gigs, yet it, too, has been tagged a supergroup since it includes former Anodyne singer-guitarist Mike Hill, former Lickgoldensky (that name again!) guitarist Jamie Getz, former Orchid bassist Brad Wallace and current Hot Cross drummer Greg Drudy. Despite the presence of two indie-label owners in the group (Hill with Black Box Recordings, Drudy with Level-Plane), the band's initial five-song EP was issued on the Richmond, VA-based Robotic Empire. Having not heard it before the show, I wasn't sure how Hill and Getz would mesh: Anodyne was all about post-Hüsker Dü melodic hardcore, while Lickgoldensky was, as I once described it in TONY, a writhing sack full of angry, snapping ferrets.

Versoma's sound, huge and somewhat indistinct, is not so far removed from Anodyne's end point, but with Getz's frenetic spurts of guitar noise and frantic vocals adding an extra layer. Given how busy Drudy is elsewhere, I don't expect to see the group frequently -- although I could be wrong -- but based on the EP and tonight's live set, I'm convinced that this is already a very important underground band, with the potential for greatness.

This triple bill plays again on Sunday night at Northsix in Brooklyn. And Versoma will also be at Sin-é on September 9, sharing a bill with the enigmatic Kayo Dot, about which I posted here, and Made Out of Babies, whose debut album, Trophy, was number four on my Top Ten list last year. (Continuing to connect the dots in a scene as tightly knit as it is diverse, Kayo Dot's latest also came out on Robotic Empire, while Made Out of Babies's first and forthcoming second releases are both on Neurot.) Hmmm...I'd been nostalgically planning to catch a very different supergroup that night, but my datebook may have changed just now.

Playlist:

César Franck - Symphony in D minor; Ernest Chausson - Symphony in B-flat - Orchestre Philharmonique de Liège / Louis Langrée (Accord)

Anodyne - Lifetime of Gray Skies (Level-Plane)

Lickgoldensky - Lickgoldensky (Level-Plane)

Daughters - Hell Songs (Hydra Head)

Versoma - Life During Wartime (Robotic Empire)

Red Sparowes - Oh Lord, God of Vengeance, Show Yourself! (self-released)

True confessions.

"The first time that I met her, I was throwing up in the ladies' room stall."

Tim Kasher has a way with tossing off lines that sound like personal reminiscences, but which trigger a reflexive "I've been there," or at least an "I can imagine that." The phrase above opened Album of the Year, a disc by Kasher's Omaha, Nebraska-based band The Good Life. Kasher is probably still better known as the leader of another group, Cursive, one of the first and best of the so-called "emo" bands. In both settings he combines confessional lyrics like the one I quoted with catchy hooks that linger well after the record ends. In an article I wrote for Time Out New York in July 2004, I described the effect as "candy apples filled with shards of broken glass."

Kasher's work was a relatively late discovery for me, but both Album of the Year, which details a failed relationship from reckless start to wracked finish, and Cursive's The Ugly Organ, which depicted the cheap one-nighters and alcohol-drenched oblivion that flooded into the wake of a nasty divorce, are among my favorite recent rock records. (They're both on the Saddle Creek label, founded by former Nebraskan and fellow overachiever Conor Oberst.) In shorthand, Cursive favors dense, ornate arrangements while The Good Life prefers leaner textures. Both bands have lately delivered records that could be called concept albums, but might once have been deemed song cycles.

The Ugly Organ was understandably a hard record to follow, although for me Album of the Year was just as strong. This week, Cursive finally delivered a follow-up, Happy Hollow. Talk about conceit: Kasher practically demands that the disc's 14 tracks be reckoned as parables rather than songs...which is probably to be expected, given that the Red State grip of organized religion bubbles at or near the surface throughout much of the disc. In my review, which appears in the current issue of TONY, I wrote, "On Happy Hollow, Kasher turns his gaze outward, offering a fractured-mirror repudiation of Our Town bonhomie in 14 songs that depict a community stifled by shattered dreams and religious repression." (The complete review is here.)

I caught Cursive at the Bowery Ballroom during my unintended sabbatical from blogging this summer (although I did post a few thoughts about the show near the end of this post), and was thrilled to discover that the group really can duplicate the emotional impact and instrumental force of its records onstage. Between songs, Kasher was gabby, loopy and slightly awkward, in an incredibly endearing way. The devotion of the audience was understandable, but impressive in its specificity: With the release of Happy Hollow still a month away, fans called out for favorite songs from the disc throughout the show.

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I might be fighting that same urge myself on Friday, September 1 at Joe's Pub, when Album, the Monterrey, Mexico-based quartet that I've raved about here several times, plays its first-ever New York City show. I feel an almost paternal sense of pride that this group was selected to participate in this year's Celebrate México Now! festival. (Which also has me pondering my role as a now-highly visible advocate for musicians of various stripes in this city, but let's not go there right now.)

With every bit of objectivity I can muster, I'll state once again that, like Tim Kasher, Album has been among my most deliriously happy discoveries of the past several years. But I don't really feel any need to further urge my fellow New Yorkers to attend; I can simply point you to the band's website, from which you can download pretty much everything they've ever recorded, free of charge, and let them do all the work themselves. Start with "Es Facil" from their latest album, Microbricolages, and don't miss their first album, Eureka Sön, which I hyperbolically yet unabashedly once suggested might be Mexican alt-rock's "Paul's Boutique or OK Computer -- maybe both."

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But enough about me: Mwanji Ezana of be.jazz renown has posted a spectacular review of artsongwriter Corey Dargel's debut CD, Less Famous than You -- a thoughtful, colorful and detailed analysis I'd be giddy to have written. Do not miss it.

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Playlist:

Red Sparowes - Every Red Heart Shines toward the Red Sun (Neurot; due Sept. 19)

Giacomo Puccini - Suor Angelica - Victoria de los Angeles, Fedora Barbieri, Orchestra del Teatro dell'Opera di Roma / Tullio Serafin (EMI Classics)

Isis - In the Absence of Truth (Ipecac; due Oct. 31)

Bob Dylan - Modern Times (Columbia; due Aug. 29)

Melvins - (A) Senile Animal (Ipecac; due Oct. 10)

Butthole Surfers - Double Live Bootleg (Latino Bugger Veil)

Squarepusher - Hello Everything (Warp; due Oct. 17)

Ruggiero Leoncavallo - Pagliacci - Lucine Amara, Franco Corelli, Tito Gobbi, Orchestra e Coro del Teatro alla Scala Milano / Lovro von Matačić (EMI Classics)

The grassy knell.

The Metropolitan Opera in Central Park - La Traviata
The New York Times, August 24, 2006

Lisztomania.

Bard Music Festival, weekend two
The New York Times, August 22, 2006

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Yes, well. I did promise -- way back on July 24, to be precise -- that just because I'd been afforded the privilege of observing things in an official capacity for the Times didn't mean that I was abandoning this blog. And truthfully, that hasn't been the case. But with the good Dr. LP temporarily in residence for the summer, I simply spent less time hitting concert halls and clubs... though I did see her off with a truly rockin' Central Park concert by Gnarls Barkley and Peeping Tom.

Eraritjaritjaka and Zaide, as well as Hazel Dickens and Will Oldham, went unremarked upon; blame me, not her. But now, school is now in session down south and everywhere else. Alone again, naturally I turn to you for company. And while the Times has provided an exceptional platform from which to observe classical music, I've got dates with Album, Shakira, Asia, Celtic Frost and Iron Maiden penciled into my now-solitary dance card. Assuming those encounters take place, this is where I'll be sounding off about them.

I don't want to sound like I'm complaining; far from it, in fact. Having spent an unforgettable stretch of Tuesday afternoon in conversation with Ornette Coleman at his midtown loft, with the art that provided cover images for Dancing in Your Head and Body Meta hanging on the walls nearby, I'm more than ever reminded that -- despite a workload that's pushed me to the edge of panic for more than a few days now -- I am leading a life that can only be described as "blessed," and I plan to continue talking about it.

So I'm back... and I hope you're still here, too.

Playlist:

Ornette Coleman - Sound Grammar (Sound Grammar)

Giuseppe Verdi - La Traviata - Anna Netrebko; Rolando Villazón; Thomas Hampson; Carlo Rizzi conducting the Vienna Philharmonic (Deutsche Grammophon); and Anna Moffo; Richard Tucker; Robert Merrill; Fernando Previtali conducting the Rome Opera Orchestra and Chorus (RCA Victor)

Benjamin Britten - Peter Grimes - Peter Pears; Claire Watson; James Pease; Benjamin Britten conducting the Orchestra and Chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (Decca)

Hats off.

Ingrid Fliter at the Caramoor International Music Festival
The New York Times, August 14, 2006

Pop rocks.

CD review: Marc Mellits - Tight Sweater
Real Quiet; Cristina Buciu, violin; Chuck Meyer, cello; Tom Kolor, percussion
Endeavor Classics CD 1016
The New York Times, August 13, 2006
(ArkivMusic, Barnes & Noble)