#^d 2016-12-06 #^h Music Week

Music: Current count 27403 [27386] rated (+17), 369 [362] unrated (+7).

I lost track of how many days of listening I lost due to cooking last week. In fact, I lost track of almost everything else, only remembering that I needed to publish November's Streamnotes column when I saw the calendar had turned to December (fortunately, that was soon enough after the moment I was able to backdate the post). That pattern continues here as I'm trying to finish my usual Monday Music Week column well into Tuesday evening.

My Jazz Critics Poll ballot was due on Sunday. I gave up trying to find new things and/or fiddle with the order sometime Saturday, when I dashed off the following:

New releases:

  1. Aly Keita/Jan Galega Bronnimann/Lucas Niggli: Kalo Yele (Intakt)
  2. Houston Person & Ron Carter: Chemistry (HighNote)
  3. Henry Threadgill Ensemble Double Up: Old Locks and Irregular Verbs (Pi)
  4. Murray, Allen & Carrington Power Trio: Perfection (Motéma)
  5. George Coleman: A Master Speaks (Smoke Sessions)
  6. Roswell Rudd/Jamie Saft/Trevor Dunn/Balasz Pandi: Strength & Power (Rare Noise)
  7. JD Allen: Americana (Savant)
  8. Gary Lucas' Fleischerei: Music From Max Fleischer Cartoons (Cuneiform)
  9. Dave Rempis/Joshua Abrams/Avreeayl Ra + Jim Baker: Periheleon (Aerophonic, 2CD)
  10. Rodrigo Amado Motion Trio: Desire & Freedom (Not Two)

Reissues or Historical albums:

  1. Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra: All My Yesterdays (1966, Resonance, 2CD)
  2. Peter Kuhn: No Coming, No Going: The Music of Peter Kuhn, 1978-1979 (NoBusiness, 2CD)
  3. William Hooker: Light: The Early Years 1975-1989 (NoBusiness, 4CD)

Best Vocal album:

Best Debut album:

Best Latin Jazz album:

This mostly follows my EOY Jazz List -- the main exception being that I skipped over a Coleman Hawkins compilation I had heard on Rhapsody in favor of three comps that publicists had sent me. On the other hand, I included no less than three records that I didn't get physical copies of in my new releases list (Murray, Coleman, Lucas). I don't recall ever doing that before.

My list strikes me as more mainstream, or more specifically less avant, than usual. No idea whether that represents a mellowing of my taste or just how the cookies crumbled this year. Thus far I haven't gotten any of the ballots back from Francis Davis for my website, and I've only seen two ballots posted on the net (Ken Franckling, Tim Niland). In previous years JJA published member lists that lined up (and in some cases expanded from) critics' lists, but I haven't yet found anything there.

I'm actually not all that curious about how the JCP turns out. OK, I do have a hunch that Henry Threadgill's Old Locks and Irregular Verbs (Pi) will win, but not much faith -- but not much faith. It's more that I can't imagine what the competition can be. (Mary Halvorson? Dave Holland? Vijay Iyer? Steve Lehman? Sonny Rollins? Wadada Leo Smith? Those should all finish top-20, but I don't have more confidence than that.) I've started tallying EOY lists for my own EOY List Aggregate file, but at present I don't have enough jazz to predict anything. (I will go out on a limb and say that the current leader, Canadian crossed-over band BadBadNotGood, won't finish top-40 in JCP -- nor, I hope, will Snarky Puppy.)

On the other hand, the non-jazz lists are starting to take shape (understanding that the early lists skew Anglo and miss out on late-breaking hip-hop). Current top-ten: David Bowie, Radiohead, Beyoncé, Frank Ocean, Nick Cave, Angel Olsen, Leonard Cohen, Bon Iver, Anderson Paak, Car Seat Headrest. I figured Beyoncé to win, and she still might (and probably will dominate the Village Voice poll), but right now Bowie's lead is solid (92-61-58-53-52), and he's regularly finished top-5 in US as well as UK lists. Cohen has never polled especially well before, so I figure he and Bowie are riding a rarely-tested dead legend boost. Bowie, Radiohead, and Cave also benefit from the current UK skew, with Cave the most likely to slip on later lists.

Second ten (11-20): Chance the Rapper, Solange, Anohni, Kanye West, A Tribe Called Quest, Mitski, Blood Orange, Kaytranada, Sturgill Simpson, Danny Brown. Tribe is this year's late-breaker (released Nov. 11), rising lately but hard to project how much more. I expected Chance to do better, maybe Brown also. Some of the more promising names further down: Parquet Courts (24), PJ Harvey (27), Kendrick Lamar (29), Drive-By Truckers (34), Rihanna (38), Miranda Lambert (86, but released 11/18).

Speaking of Lambert, you'll noticed that I nudged her grade up a notch from my Streamnotes review. I was sitting on the fence anyway, and what pushed me over was a Greg Morton review, which I'd rather quote here than try to link you to Facebook:

Miranda Lambert: The Weight of These Wings. I hope Bob [Christgau] does a long form on this since the songs aren't just consistently great, but consistently interesting as well. Worthy of thorough track-by-track analysis. I'll give you "Good Ol' Days" as filler and "Covered Wagon" as one road metaphor too many but other than that it sounds to me like a 90-minute song cycle about caring, from the perspective of a modern young women who turns out to be more articulate, successful, and worldly than her raising taught her she could be. Your mileage may vary dependent on how interested you are in that perspective, but my evidence is two days of the album on shuffle. Where no matter the sequence, an hour and a half later you're listening to a song that was as good (and as interesting) as the one that started it. At least an A.

Of course, before committing I did give the record(s) another spin. Seven cuts in I was reminded how long it took me to realize Exile on Main Street was the Stones' best. But fourteen cuts in I killed that line of thinking and settled for a solid A-.

New records rated this week:

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

Also got a batch of Clean Feeds on Monday which I'll list next week.