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Monday, May 18, 2026

Music Week

May archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 45961 [45922] rated (+39), 12 [18] unrated (-6).

Good news is I'm back on a Monday Music Week schedule. Bad news is my brain is mush, and I have virtually nothing to say.

I suppose I could reiterate a couple things from last week:

  1. I completed my ballot for DownBeat's Critics Poll, and wrote up my notes. I thought I might write some more about that, but I haven't.

  2. I've been working on putting Robert Christgau's Deans List: 2025 up on his website, split into two chunks: essay and list. I have finished with these latter files, but I haven't updated the website yet. I thought I might write some more about this, but I haven't.

  3. I was also thinking about writing some sort of exec summary of my recent Loose Tabs file, but all I have so far is this lousy stub file.

  4. I have collected a few notes for some future Loose Tabs file. Even when my brain is mush, inertia still functions.

  5. There was probably something else I was thinking of, but I can't recall, other than that I'm unlikely to remember it either.

One thing I can note is that we have a substantial storm headed into Wichita soon. And I just had a premonition when the electricity clicked off. Back right now, so may be I'll just post this.

New records reviewed this week:

Steven Bernstein/Scotty Hard: ResoNation Trio/Ultra Resonance (2025 [2026], Royal Potato Family): Two LPs on one CD, the first a trio of Bernstein (trumpets), Scott Colley (bass), and Nasheet Waits (drums); the second where the same music was reprocessed by the producer ("all instruments replayed, rearranged, and redeployed by Scotty Hard"), with Jeremy Gustin credited for extra percussion. Both are interesting on their own, but a bit underwhelming run together. B+(***) [cd] [06-05]

Jane Ira Bloom/Brian Shankar Adler: Once Like a Spark (2025, Adhyâropa): Soprano saxophonist, steady stream of albums since 1980. Adler plays "a hybrid drum set that includes North Indian tabla, Argentine bombo legüero and an array of found objects. Seems like a perfect match. B+(***) [sp]

Dawn Clement: Dear Ms. Dearie (2025 [2026], Origin): Pianist, sings often, obviously the point on a tribute to Blossom Dearie (1924-2009, dropped her first name, also a pianist of some note, wrote four songs here). With Steve Kovalcheck (guitar), John Clayton (bass), and Jeff Hamilton (drums). B+(**) [cd] [05-22]

Braxton Cook: Not Everyone Can Go (2025, Nettwerk): American saxophonist, several albums since 2015, sings some, also plays guitar and keyboards. B+(*) [sp]

Chick Corea: Forever Yours: The Farewell Performance (2020 [2025], Candid): Pianist (1941-2021), debut 1966, early on played fusion with Gary Burton and Miles Davis, and continued with his popular Return to Forever and later with his Elektrik Band, but did much more, including the avant-garde Circle group (with Anthony Braxton), and a lot of conventional solo and trio work, which serves as a reminder that no matter what you think of his choices — and I've panned a lot of his records — he was unquestionably an extraordinary pianist. This collects two solo concerts from three months before his death. This offers a good summary, including a set of his "Children's Songs" and reflections on Monk and Powell (and Evans and Ellington and Mozart). B+(**) [sp]

George Cotsirilos: In the Wee Hours (2017-25 [2026], OA2): Guitarist, half-dozen albums since 2003, mostly trio or quartet. This one is solo, two originals and various standards (two from Ellington), recorded on nylon string acoustic guitars. B+(*) [cd] [05-22]

Sylvie Courvoisier Trio: Éclats - Live in Europe (2025 [2026], Intakt): Swiss pianist, debut 1997, mostly plays duos, this just her fourth Trio per Discogs. With Drew Gress (bass) and Kenny Wollesen (drums), picked from four sets in Germany and France. B+(***) [sp]

Theo Croker/Sullivan Croker: Play (2023 [2025], ACT Music): Trumpet and piano duo, young American players, one piece composed by Croker, the rest improvised. B [sp]

Amalie Dahl's Dafnie Extended: Live at Moldejazz (2025 [2026], Sonic Transmissions): Danish saxophonist, based in Oslo, group Dafnie comes from a 2022 quintet album with trumpet, trombone, bass, and drums, "extended" here to 12 pieces, adding baritone sax and flute, but mostly filling the middle with piano, accordion, and synths, and doubling down on bass and drums. B+(*) [bc]

Daoud: Ok (2025, ACT Music): French trumpet player, Discogs lists him as a hip-hop producer, last name Anthony, and shows one previous album. Lots of synths and percussion. B+(*) [sp]

Django Festival Allstars: Evolution (2026, Motéma): Group originally organized for the Django Reinhardt NY Festival in 2002, have released a couple previous albums, back for a 25th anniversary reunion, led by Dorado Schmitt (guitar), with Ludovic Beier (accordion), and Pierre Blanchard (violin), with a drumless rhythm section of Antonio Licusati (bass) and Francko Mehrstein (rhythm guitar). B+(*) [sp]

Gabriel Espinosa: The Brazilian Project (2022-25 [2026], Origin): Mexican bassist, not listed as playing here but is the composer, with arrangements by Rafael Rocha (trombone) and Bruno Santos (flugelhorn). Recorded in Rio de Janeiro, "enhanced by the Tallinn Studio Orchestra." B+(*) [cd] [05-22]

Christine Fawson: It Could Happen to You (2025 [2026], self-released): Standards singer, also plays trumpet. Has at least two previous albums, as well as a credit in Diva Jazz Orchestra. Great songs, done well. B+(***) [cd] [06-01]

Michael Formanek: New Digs (2025 [2026], Intakt): Bassist, own albums started appearing in 1990, as well as many groups and side-credits. One of his most successful groups has been Thumbscrew, a trio with Mary Halvorson (guitar) and Tomas Fujiwara (drums). They're the core here, augmented by John O'Gallagher (alto sax), Chet Doxas (tenor sax/clarinet), João Almeida (trumpet), and Alexander Hawkins (organ). This starts to get real interesting seven cuts in, which has sent me back to the beginning several times. B+(***) [sp]

David Friedman & Tony Miceli: Glow (2019 [2026], SteepleChase): Two vibraphonists, as was Samuels (1948-2019). Friedman's discography goes back to 1975, Miceli's nearly as far but picks up around 2005. Duets, a mix of standards and originals, including one song credited to Samuels and Friedman, another to Samuels alone. B [sp]

Gordon Grdina: Martian Kitties (2025, 577): Canadian guitarist, also plays oud, prolific, duo here with the drummer also on electronics. B+(**) [sp]

Gordon Grdina/Russ Lossing: Turnpike (2026, Attaboygirl): Oud and piano duets. The oud has a distinctive sound that dominates here. B+(**) [sp]

Gordon Grdina's Nomad Trio: Ash (2026, Attaboygirl): Third group album since 2020, with Matt Mitchell (piano) and Jim Black (drums). B+(**) [bc]

Sven-Åke Johansson With Pierre Borel/Seymour Wright/Joel Grip: Two Days at Café Oto (2025, Otoroku): Swedish drummer (1943-2025), recorded this April 8-9, shortly before his death on June 15. First album was 1972, Discogs credits him directly with 88 albums, 168 performance credits. Five pieces, one short and four in the 23:05-31.45 range. Grip (bass) and Johansson play on all five, Wright (alto sax) on four, Borel (alto sax) also on four (so three tracks have both). B+(***) [bc]

Aubrey Johnson: The Lively Air (2025 [2026], Greenleaf Music): Jazz singer, from Wisconsin, niece of Lyle Mays, studied in Boston, based in New York, fourth album since 2020, Mays' bandmate Steve Rodby produces (both were in Pat Metheny Group). Group includes Tomoko Omura (violin), Alex LoRe (woodwinds), Chris McCarthy (keyboards), bass, and drums. I should note that sometimes I'm blown away by the amount of technical skill, and even the breadth of creativity, even in albums I don't especially like. One cut I do love is her Joni Mitchell cover ("Help Me"). B+(**) [sp]

Audrey Johnson/Helen Sung/Dave Douglas: Lives of the Saints: Portraits in Song With Words by David Hadju (2025, Sunnyside): Voice, keyboards, and trumpet, also credited for the music along with Renee Rosnes. Hajdu has been music critic at The New Republic and The Nation, and has seven books, starting with a biography of Billy Strayhorn in 1996. His texts honor ten women: Ada Lovelace, Angelina Napoitano, Lena Hornse, Bessie Hall, Sophie Scholl, Hyapatia, Hedy Lamarr, Vivian Maier, Leonore Carrington, and his sister Barbara Ann Hajdu. The band I associate mostly with Douglas: Chet Doxas (clarinet/tenor sax), Marika Hughes (cello), Simón Willson (bass), Rudy Royston (drums), Samuel Torres (percussion). B+(*) [sp]

David Lord: Way Over the Rainbow (2025, Cloud Ear): Guitarist, from Wichita, four previous album since 2018 all volumes of Forest Standards. Mostly trio with bass (Dale Black) and drums (Charles Rumback), with guest spots for Jeff Parker (guitar on three tracks) and Sam Hake (vibes one). B+(*) [sp]

Andrew Moorhead: Mirage (2025 [2026], OA2): Pianist ("and mathematician"), has a previous album from 2023, this a trio with François Moutin (bass) and Ari Hoenig (drums). Original pieces, presented as "a suite of etudes," often rhythmic drills with considerable thought and appeal. B+(***) [cd] [05-22]

Azuka Moweta and His Anioma Brothers Band of Africa: Kenechukwu (2026, Palenque): Nigerian singer and bandleader, from Asaba in the Delta State. Sounds like near classic highlife. A- [sp]

Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra: Ellington Masterworks (2024 [2026], MCG Jazz): Charlie Young is conductor and artistic direction, for "a live program of rare Duke Ellington compositions from 1940-68" — the only titles I recognize are "Jack the Bear" and "Ad Lib on Nippon," and few of the musicians ring a bell, but the Ellingtonia is unmistakable. B+(***) [cd] [06-12]

Vaiano's Paisanos: Vaiano's Paisanos (2026, Jalopy): Rachel Meirs (violin) and Van Burchfield (guitar), who have a previous duo album, expanded their Louisville-based folk ensemble here, to play a set of tunes from the NYC melting pot of the 1920s and 1930s, some from Europe, others from the Caribbean. B+(***) [sp]

Vaiano's Paisanos: Vaiano's Paisanos Presents Rachel Meirs & Van Burchfield (2025, Jalopy): Violin and guitar duo, their group name already conceived without the extra players of their eponymous group album. Same basic idea, a bit more minimal. B+(**) [bc]

Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble: Groove in the Face of Adversity (2025, Mack Avenue): Don Fagenson, took the name Don Was when founding the Detroit duo Was (Not Was), which released four albums 1981-90 (a fifth appeared in 2008; David Weiss performed as David Was). By then, Was had developed a reputation for producing records, winning six Grammys, and working around the industry, including as president of Blue Note Records. Band here includes saxophonist Dave McMurray and vocalist Steffanie Christi'an. Includes a cover of Curtis Mayfield's "This Is My Country." Nothing else that obvious, but if these aren't all funk covers, they're pretty classic. (Documentation sucks. Seems to be live.) B+(***) [sp]

Rich Willey: Laid Back Vol. 1 (2025 [2026], Boptism): Trumpet player, early credits go back to 1993 (with Mel Tormé, on trombone), has more recently released albums as Rich Willey's Boptimism Big Band and his Boptimism Funk Band. Splits the difference here, with a featuring credit for John Swana (EVI) and arrangements by Wally Minko. B+(*) [cd] [05-30]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Ray Charles: No One Does It Like . . . Ray Charles! (1962-65 [2025], Tangerine): A restored "lost album" from the mid-1960s, or alternatively a collection of "mid-1960s singles, B-sides, and non-LP tracks." I count six non-album singles here ("Hide Nor Hair," "No One," "Don't Set Me Free," "My Baby Don't Dig Me," "My Heart Cries for You," "Without Love"). None were really big hits, but several will be familiar from his comps, and they keynote a pretty consistent album, with touches of, yes, genius. A- [sp]

Duke Ellington: Copenhagen 1964 (1964 [2026], Storyville): After a few bars of "Take the 'A' Train," opens with a medley of early tunes, followed by a 14:52 "Harlem Suite," and new material from the then-unrelesed Far East Suite. Lots of good stuff, especially "Kinda Dukish," an intro for the piano player that explodes into "Rockin' in Rhythm." A- [bc]

Bill Evans: Portraits at the Penthouse: Live in Seattle (1966 [2025], Resonance): One of many recently unearthed live shots of the pianist and his trio, here with Eddie Gomez (bass) and Joe Hunt (drums). B+(**) [sp]

Benny Golson: Gone With Golson (1959 [2025], Craft): Tenor saxophonist (1929-2024), fifth album since 1957, three original compositions plus two standards, quintet with trombone (Curtis Fuller), piano (Ray Bryant), bass, and drums. B+(***) [sp]

Morphine: Bootleg Detroit [Deluxe Edition] (1994 [2025], Rykodisc/Rhino): Rock band formed 1989 in Massachusetts, principally Mark Standman (2-string bass) and Dana Coley (sax, mostly baritone, sometimes two at once), with one or two sets of drums. Five studio albums 1992-2000, the latter released after Standman died and the group disbanded. At that time, Rykodisc also released this live tape (2000), expanded here from 40 to 65 minutes. I like the sound. Not so sure about the songs. B+(**) [sp]

Lester Young: Lester Leaps In: Live at Birdland 1951-1952 (1951-52 [2025], Liberation Hall): Eight previously unreleased tracks from four "Jumpin with Symphony Sid" radio shots, with various piano, bass, and drums, plus some trumpet (Jesse Drakes). B+(***) [bc]

Old music:

Azuka Moweta and His Anioma Brothers Band: Ekobe Global (2025, Palenque): Nigerian singer and bandleader from Asaba, on the delta of the Niger River, second (of three so far) albums on this Colombian label (ignoring singles and remixes). Ekobe refers to a style with traditional Igbo instruments, and global is where they're headed. Hard to choose between the albums without spending a lot more time. B+(***) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Ballister + Luke Stewart: Clocking the Wheel (Aerophonic) [07-10]
  • Maya De Vitry: All My Faith (Mad Maker Studios) [07-24]
  • Charles Downs Quartet: Inner (ESP-Disk') [05-15]
  • Entropic Hop: The Quest for the Normal Is the Death of the Self (ESP-Disk') [05-15]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Thursday, May 14, 2026

Music Week

May archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 45922 [45881] rated (+41), 18 [14] unrated (+4).

I blew through Monday working on Loose Tabs. By the time I was done, I had accumulated 331 links, with 23,402 words. It covers 28 days, so I continue to be almost monthly. I think it's getting better organized and edited, but it's still pretty scattered. I wish I had an AI genie that could read this and generate a plan to outline 6-8 more purposeful Substack essays. I don't even care that much about recycling the words, as that part comes easy enough. It's formulating the plan and sitting down to tackle it that's the hard work.

While I was wrapping it up, I had the idea that my next Substack post would be some sort of "executive summary" of this Loose Tabs. I opened a draft file for that purpose, but didn't put anything into it (yet). I do think that my digressions on gerrymandering and bankruptcy are worth elaborating on as standalone essays. That could still happen, but I still have plenty more fish to fry.

After posting Loose Tabs on Tuesday, I figured this Music Week would be next. I did the cutoff early Wednesday, the extra two days pushing the rated count up from an anemic under 30 to a robust over 40. Then, before I got into writing an introduction, I decided that I should knock out my DownBeat Critics Poll Ballot. I always get a laugh when I read the invite, which admits "this is a LONG ballot" then adds it "will probably take a little less than an hour to complete." The ballot has 51 questions, and each one asks you to allocate 10 points (usually 5-3-2) among a list of nominees that runs from 30-80 individual names (sometimes more for albums: this year's "Album of the Year" listed 158 titles). It took me 8 hours yesterday, plus six hours today, to get it all filled out. Of course, part of the problem was that I took notes. Still, I did very little writing along the way. Most of what I did was copy the nominee lists, then sort them into two tiers, then pick three votes from the upper tier. I wrote in votes very rarely:

  1. Reut Regev under Rising Star Trombone (3rd after Kalia Vandever and Natalie Cressman. I only recognized two other nominees, with no firm opinion on either, but had written Regev's name in before.
  2. Dave Liebman, 3rd for Soprano Saxophone (dropped from ballot, and also dropped from Tenor Saxophone, where I would probably have listed him 15-25; I like his tenor more than I like his soprano, but the competition is much stronger; Liebman does still appear on the Flute list, but I can't remember hearing him play flute).
  3. Rising Star Baritone Saxophone: after Charles Evans and Jonah Parzen-Johnson, I didn't recognize anyone on the nominee list, but I had recently enjoyed Leigh Pilzer's album, so I wrote her name in at 3rd.
  4. I wrote Maria Muldaur in at 1st in Blues Artist or Group. I've been doing that for some years now (this year ahead of Robert Finley and Taj Mahal).
  5. Blues Album: I had only hears two of the 34 nominated albums: Buddy Guy at B+(***), and Eric Bibb at B+(**). I gave Guy my 3rd place vote, behind Muldaur's One Hour Mama (a full A) and Finley's Hallelujah (an A-). I also had Mavis Staples' Sad and Beautiful World at A-, tagged as "B" in my 2025 tracking file but I decided it was less narrowly blues (it was actually nominated under "Beyond"), and Guy's lower-rated album would suffice.

One could save time by not taking notes, but then you would also not have reminders from the previous year. I often wind up voting for the same people this year as last year, trusting my previous judgment over having to rethink everything again. But to get down to one hour, you'd have to answer each and every question in just over one minute. I'm a slow reader, so I can't even read every line in the list in that time, let alone mull it over. Of course, you could save time by skipping questions, or by not using all of your votes. That's allowed, and they don't make the ballots public, so who will know? Or care?

I started writing notes on the DownBeat polls in 2003, way before I got invited to vote, and wrote about them every year through 2009 (see index), so those pieces are all after-the-fact commentary. It's always interested me what other people are thinking, perhaps as a sanity check on my own thought (which is often quite different). I skipped 2010, which was in the late, declining days of Jazz Consumer Guide, although that may have just been a coincidence. I resumed in 2011, when I was invited to vote, so all the subsequent notes are structured differently. Even so, I wrote more commentary back then than I have in recent years, as the whole process has seemed more and more like a lot of work for little value.

Still, it might be interesting to take a couple days and write an essay about what I've learned about jazz and polling over the last 23 years. That's on my mental list of things to think about writing. Another possible item is a comment/response to Robert Christgau's belated Dean's List: 2025, where his list of "the 61 best albums of last year (or so)" came up well short of his actual review log (Joe Yanosik figures 23 albums short) and rather skewed (6 of his top ten albums were originally graded A-, while one full A album wound up at 51, with others at 49, 43, 42, 39, 29, 28, and 27). It's possible that part of the reason is my own fault, in that I'm way behind updating the Consumer Guide database on Christgau's website. I started to work on correcting that before I got sidelined with Loose Tabs and so forth, and got caught up to September. I'll get back to work on that soon. Once I have the database up to date, I'll have a better idea what's going on, and then I can write something up.

I'll save speculation on details here, but note that my first thought was simply to write up a feature on the albums in my The Best Non-Jazz Albums of 2025 that Christgau didn't review, for whatever reason. I do make a point of listening to everything I can find that he's reviewed, so I can offer second opinions within the limits of my taste and analysis, and I try to place that within the context of everything else I listen to. He listens as broadly as I do, but only writes about things he has something substantial to say about, so it's never clear what he knows about what he hasn't written about. I don't want to get into an argument about methodology, but as someone with historically similar tastes, I think his readers might find my takes on albums he hasn't written about to be of some use. That's all.

Some of what I've listened to below comes from working on the Dean's List and his CG database. I reexamined four of his top six albums, but only bumped the grade of one up. I already had the other six of his top ten at A-, which was good enough for me. Only two of the next ten I have at less than A-: Jeff Evans Porkestra and Dingonek Street Band; same for two more from 21-30: Ale Hop & Titi Bakorta and Marshall Allen; the differences of opinion swell to four in 31-40, three in 41-50, seven in 51-61, including the bottom 5. Overall, 65.5% of his Dean's List albums rated A- or higher for me. On the other hand, where he came up with 84 albums (counting Yanosik's +23, I have 107 (counting 2 late 2024 finds): 54 of which he has yet to review, or maybe even to hear (half are by artists he's never reviewed); the other 11 are albums he reviewed with lower grades than I came up with.

I should note that while I've been writing quite a bit recently, I'm also thinking more about doing some website work. I'll write this up when I get serious, but main thing I could use help on is to come up with some sort of design template that I can use for the Christgau website, and eventually for mine and possibly some other projects I have in mind. My problem is settling on a visual model. I can figure out how to implement whatever design appeals, but getting to the design has been an obstacle.

In this vein, I'm also thinking about running another mid-year Jazz Critics Poll. It will just be up to 10 new albums and up to 5 reissue/vault jobs. I'm less certain about running an end-of-year poll. One key consideration may be how easy I can make it. The last few years have been a lot of work, leaving me drained and frazzled afterwards.

New records reviewed this week:

أحمد [Ahmed]: Play Monk (2025 [2026], Otoroku): British quartet of Pat Thomas (piano), Joel Grip (bass), Antonin Gerbal (drums) and Seymour Wright (alto sax), formed in 2017 as a tribute to Ahmed Abdul-Malik, seventh album, really came into their own with the 5-CD live box Giant Beauty (2024). Just six tunes, five running over 20 minutes, an extrapolation which can leave their models deeply buried. But they continue to impress, mightily. A- [sp]

J. Cole: The Fall-Off (2026, Cole World/Dreamville/Interscope): Rapper Jermaine Cole, opened with a mixtape in 2009, seventh studio album since 2011, all charted at number one, billed as his final album (he's 41), supporting a world tour with 73 dates running from July to December. I've followed the studio albums, impressed by his flow and beats, put off the N-word intensity, but I paused when I saw the size (24 tracks, 101:17) of this effort. Turns out it wasn't much effort. B+(**) [sp]

Mikaela Davis: Graceland Way (2026, Kill Rock Stars): Singer-songwriter from Rochester, third album since 2012. Cover shows her in western wear including a white hat, instructing us to "file under canyon country," and title makes a connection to Elvis Presley and Memphis, but neither is very clear in the grooves. Her main instrument is reportedly harp. B+(*) [sp]

Alabaster DePlume: Dear Children of Our Children, I Knew: Epilogue (2026, International Anthem): British saxophonist, spoken word poet, actual name Angus Fairbairn, half-dozen albums since 2015, counts this as an EP (5 songs, 26:02), styled as an epilogue to his 2025 album A Blade Because a Blade Is Whole, and a bookend to his 2024 EP Cremisan: Prologue to a Blade. Also plays synths, sampler, and guitars, backed by bass (Shahzad Ismaily) and drums (Tcheser Holmes). B+(**) [sp]

Friko: Something Worth Waiting For (2026, ATO): Indie rock band from Chicago, principally Niko Kapetan (vocals, guitar) and Bailey Minzenberger (drums), second album after a couple of EPs. Has the sound, not that I much care. B [sp]

The Ghost Wolves: Consumer Waste (2024, Saustex): Austin Texas garage/punk band, principally Carley Wolf (guitar, vocals) and Jonny Wolf (drums, synth, vocals), seventh album since 2011, 12 songs in 26:16. B+(**) [sp]

Hang on the Box: Spiritual War (2025, Beijing Modern Sky Cultural Development): All-female Chinese punk rock band, formed 1998, debut album 2001, Wikipedia lists seven albums through 2017, Discogs has four of them plus a 2020 live cassette and a 1998-2008 2-CD compilation. I was clued to this by a stray reader comment, but I haven't found anything about the album, other than that it is on streaming. Some punk edges, but mostly post, with new wavish vamps, and an interesting ballad/ambient break. B+(**) [sp]

Jasper Høiby's 3 Elements: Conversations of Hope (2026, Edition): Danish bassist, based in London, third album with this trio with Xavi Torres (piano) and Naima Acuña (drums). B+(**) [bc]

Peter Holsapple: The Face of 68 (2025, Label 51): Singer-songwriter, started in a 1970 band with Mitch Easter and Chris Stamey, founded the dB's with Stamey, and has several duo albums with Stamey (starting with Mavericks in 1991). Only has a couple albums under his own name, with this one produced by Don Dixon. Not much interesting here, until "That Kind of Guy" reveals his Rolling Stones collection. B [sp]

David Janeway Trio: Live at Blue LLama (2024 [2026], SteepleChase): Pianist, debut album 1986, but not much more until 2021, when he landed on SteepleChase. Third album there, trio with Robert Hurst (bass) and Billy Hart (drums), playing two originals and a bunch of standards. B+(*) [cd]

Ingrid Jensen: Landings (2025 [2026], Newvelle): Trumpet player from Canada, debut 1995, seems like her recent efforts have been lost in collaborations (including Artemis) and exotica, but this one focuses on her trumpet, backed by Gary Versace (organ), Marvin Sewell (guitar), and Jon Wikan (drums). B+(***) [dl]

Kneecap: Fenian (2026, Heavenly): Hardcore hip-hop group from Belfast, "political" is an understatement, as they've been banned from touring in countries like Hungary, and one member was charged under UK's "Terrorism Act" for "expressing support" for a banned group. Title refers to reuniting divided Ireland. One song features Palestinian rapper Fawzi; another Kae Tempest. I'm not following the words very closely, but the beats and sounds hit the mark. A- [sp]

Loveseat: Our Way (2025, Reckless Pedestrian): Married duo from Effingham, Illinois, Bill and JJ Passalacqua, only album, they tend to trade verses, Bill often opening up with his best John Prine impersonation, playing 12-string acoustic guitar. She finishes them off with aplomb. Ends with a Tex-Mex dance number, a real bonus. A- [sp]

Brian Lynch: Torch Bearers (2024-25 [2026], Holistic MusicWorks): Trumpet player, started in a group with Charles McPherson (1980-81), moved on to Horace Silver, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Art Blakey, and especially Eddie Palmieri, with his own string of albums starting in 1986. He's reunited with McPherson (alto sax) here, along with Boris Kozlov (bass), various pianist and drummers, and singer Samara Joy (2 tracks). Has an old bebop feel, especially with McPherson. B+(***) [sp]

Doug MacDonald: Tribute to South Central (2026, Dmac Music): Jazz guitarist, first record 1982, second a decade later, gradually picked up the place and has become quite prolific of late. Five originals, covers from Ellington, Jobim, and Wes Montgomery, comes with trumpet (Wayne Cobham), keyboards (Richard Turner Jr.), bass, and drums/percussion. B+(**) [cd] [06-01]

Jennifer Madsen: Girl Talk (2026, SingBaby Productions): Jazz singer, Discogs lists one previous album from 1983, website suggests she has more since then. Has a large band (12 instrumentalists listed, plus 7 guest artists), with pianist Brent Edstrom arranging. Standards, the title song preceded by "Besame Mucho" and followed by "You Turn Me On Baby." Good singer, good band, more or less according to the songs. B+(**) [cd] [06-26]

Media Puzzle: New Racehorse (2026, Impressed): Australian post-punk (or egg punk?) group, first album (if you credit 12 songs, 23:19), group named for a race horse (winner of the 2002 Melbourne Cup), led by Tom Peter (vocals, guitar, bass, synth, sax, percussion), includes other singers and bits of trumpet and violin. B+(*) [sp]

Melanie C: Sweat (2026, Red Girl/Virgin): Former Spice Girls singer Melanie Chisholm (Sporty Spice, or Mel C), ninth solo studio since 1999. Pretty good. B+(***) [sp]

Michaela Anne: These Are the Days (2026, Georgia June): Country singer-songwriter, surname Neller, sixth album since 2011. B+(**) [sp]

Kacey Musgraves: Middle of Nowhere (2026, Lost Highway): Country singer-songwriter, seventh studio album since her breakthrough hit in 2013. B+(***) [sp]

Octo Octa: Sigils for Survival (2026, T4T LUV NRG): American house producer Maya Bouldry-Morrison, several albums since 2011, beats steady here with minor frills. B+(***) [sp]

Sergio Pereira: Colors of Time (2025 [2026], Sergio Pereira Music): Brazilian guitarist, sings some, moved to New York in the 1980s, fifth album, recorded in Spain, Norway, and the USA, with a large but seamless cast. B+(***) [cd] [05-15]

Leigh Pilzer: Keep Holding On (2025 [2026], Strange Woman): Baritone saxophonist, DC native, teaches at University of Maryland, seems to be her first album, original compositions, trio with Paul Bratcher (organ) and Greg Holloway (drums), starts with a "hard bop tribute" and keeps swinging. B+(***) [cd] [06-19]

Jefferson Ross: Low Country Wedding (2026, self-released): Folkie singer-songwriter, moved to Georgia after years in Nashville, Discogs lists four previous albums (since 2008), and I should check them out. (Spotify has nine.) I didn't like his voice at first, but "Livin' in a Red State Blues" got my attention — my main complaint there is that I'm not fast enough to quote it (and the internet isn't hip enough to recount the lyrics), so I'll quote the closer instead: "I won't dwell on the liars and the haters, and all the despicable things they do; I just thank God for peaches and tomatoes." A- [sp]

Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Big Band: Arsenio and Beyond: Live at the Bronx Music Hall (2026, Jazzheads): Drummer, from the South Bronx, started with Mongo Santamaria in 1983, recorded an album in 1993, and many more since 2000, adopted Multiverse in 2012, has several big band tributes to prominent Afro-Cuban figures, including Arsenio Rodriguez here. A mind-boggling tsunami of vocals, horns, and percussion. B+(*) [cd]

Christopher Sánchez: Latin Jazz Meets Opera (2026, Zoho): Dominican "baritone singer," you know he's serious when the range is specified, based in New York, seems to be his first album. Nothing I've received this year looked less appealing, but he hid the Bizet and Mozart arias behind a tango, and followed them with a deliciously torchy "Unforgettable." The Latin rhythms grease the skids, and I'm duly impressed by the voice, even though I normally put little weight on pure skill. Appeals to me as grand camp. Your mileage may vary. B+(***) [cd]

Joe Syrian Motor City Jazz Octet: A Blue Time (2023-25 [2026], Circle 9): Drummer, third group album since 2015, personnel varies over sessions, but Adam Birnbaum (piano) and Doug Beavers (trombone) are constants, and help with arrangements (which also draw on outsiders, like John Fedchock and Rich DeRosa). All standards, including a Jobim and a Lennon-McCartney, with feature spots for Paul Bollenback (guitar) and Lucy Yeghiazaryan (vocals). B+(**) [cd]

Adia Vanheerentals: Taking Place (2025, Relative Pitch): Belgian soprano saxophonist, solo here, limited appeal. B [sp]

XG: The Core (2026, Xgalx): X-pop vocal group, identified as Japanese but based in South Korea and mostly rap and sing in English, first album after two EPs, 10 songs, 29:46. I'm not going to think about the lyrics beyond "if you don't like it, fuck you." As snappy as anything I've heard this year. Follows the most infectious song with a ballad, which works nearly as well. A- [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Fight the Fire: Digital Reggae, Conscious Roots and Dub in Nigeria 1986-91 (1986-91 [2026], Soundway): Reggae has had a niche role in West Africa since the mid-1970s, with Alpha Blondy perhaps the best known exponent. No names I recognize here, but these 14 pieces are remarkably steady. B+(***) [bc]

The Oscar Peterson Trio: At Baker's Keyboard Lounge: The Complete Recordings (1960 [2026], Verve): With Ray Brown (bass) and Ed Thigpen (drums), five full sets, in the order performed, from a single Friday in a two-week engagement, recorded for a live album that never got released. At best, this is what you expect from jazz piano c. 1960, fast and sparkling. B+(***) [sp]

This Is Lorelei: Box for Buddy, Box for Star [Super Deluxe] (2022 [2026], Double Double Whammy): Nate Amos, the tunesmith behind singer Rachel Brown in Water From Your Eyes, released this solo album in 2024, followed by a "Deluxe" edition (+3 songs) in 2025, and now this "Super Deluxe" (+10 songs, all covers by others). Variety is nice, but doesn't make a lot of difference. B+(**) [sp]

Mike Westbrook Orchestra: The Cortège: Live at the BBC (1980 [2025], Cadillac): One of the British composer's major works, with a later studio recording released in 1982 and reissued by Enja in 1993. The piece was commissioned in 1979, and recorded here in the BBC studios in London on Oct. 25, 1980, with a 17-piece orchestra, counting vocalists Kate Westbrook (who also played tenor horn and piccolo) and Phil Minton (who also played trumpet). I didn't care for the studio album — often the vocals are a personal peeve in albums like this, but while dramatized I don't particularly mind them here. The band, of course, is often terrific. B+(**) [bc]

Old music:

Barbara Carr: The Best of Barbara Carr (1997-2001 [2003], Ecko): Blues/soul singer from St. Louis (1941-2026), released some singles on Chess (1966-72), but didn't get to albums until 1989, with this compilation from five albums the core of her output. By the 1990s, neo-soul was floating off in the pop ether, while vintage soul singers were being revived on blues labels. This starts risqué, with "Bone Me Like You Own Me" and "If You Can't Cut the Mustard" ("don't go sniffin' around the jar"), then slips in a disco joint, before coming up with titles like "If the Lord Keeps the Thought of You out of My Head, I'll Keep Your Booty out of My Bed." B+(***) [sp]

Justin Golden: Golden Country: Volume 1 (2024, Vocal Rest): Richmond-based singer-songwriter, plays guitar, claims roots in the Mississippi Delta and Chicago, nothing on Discogs but Bandcamp has a 2022 album, folowed by this set of 8 songs (25:16). Tags for blues and folk, mostly covers, some old-timey twang to the picking. B+(**) [bc]

Justin Golden: Golden Country: Volume 2 (2024, Vocal Rest): Eight more songs (25:51), starting with "Sitting on Top of the World" and "Sixteen Tons," including a "St. James Infirmary" and a "Diving Duck Blues." B+(**) [bc]

Hang on the Box: Yellow Banana (2001, JingWen/Scream): Chinese punk rock band, four women, first album, Scream seems to be the name of a club in Beijing. Most titles in English, like "No Sexy," "For Some Stupid Cunts at 'BBS,'" "Kill Your Belly," "and "Ass Hole, I'm Not Your Baby." Another scene I know nothing about, but they're clearly plugged into a familiar world. B+(**) [sp]

Jefferson Ross: Azalea (2008, Deep Fried Discs): First album. Songwriting solid, including one about "Stillwater Oklahoma," one about "The Prophet Elijah," and one mentioning peaches and tomatoes." He's right about "Lucky Now & Then." B+(***) [sp]

Jefferson Ross: Hymns to the Here and Now (2011, Deep Fried Discs): Second album. Starts with the assertion, "there's no such thing as ordinary people." Title track is the odd one out, a cappella where most of this veers between bluegrass and Western swing. The more it swings, the better. B+(***) [sp]

Jefferson Ross: Isle of Hope (2013, Deep Fried Discs): Third album, runs 16 songs (53:48), recorded by Thomm Jutz. Seems like both the songwriting and the music have gotten subtler, which may well pan out in the end, but is less obvious at first blush. Or maybe this is just "easy listening"? B+(**) [sp]

Jefferson Ross: Dogwood Cats (2015, Deep Fried Discs): Fourth album, thirteen more songs (52:22). B+(*) [sp]

The Mike Westbrook Concert Band: Celebration (1967, Deram): British pianist (1936-2026), started with this debut album, leading a 12-piece group, where young saxophonists Mike Osborne and John Surman were soon to become famous. This is regarded as a classic of the British avant-garde. It could be. B+(***) [yt]

Grade (or other) changes:

S.G. Goodman: Planting by the Signs (2025, Slough Water/Thirty Tigers): Folk singer-songwriter, from Kentucky, third album. Surprised to find this soft, unassuming album ranked 5th on the 2025 Dean's List. Sounds plausible at first, slips a bit, two duets don't exactly help, but the 8:59 closer ("Heaven Song") is transcendent. [was: B+(**)] A- [sp]

Rechecked with no grade change:

Body Type: Expired Candy (2023, Poison City): Australian rock group, number 4 on 2025 Dean's List, half the songs hold together beyond reproach, so I'm not surprised that someone could latch onto them, but multiple plays leave me not quite caring. B+(***) [sp]

Margaret Glaspy: The Golden Heart Protector (2025, ATO, EP): Idiosyncratic Dean's List top pick, hard for me to figure why let alone concur. Seven songs (25:23), all covers and most duets, the more familiar the more touching. B+(***) [sp]

Rhett Miller: A Lifetime of Riding by Night (2025, ATO): Eighth solo album, many more in Old '97s, as noted before "easy to listen to, and not without merit." A couple of songs touched me, but not enough to upgrade. B+(**) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Wayne Alpern: Varieties & Extravaganzas (Henri Elkan Music) [04-17]
  • Kenny Barron/Ray Drummond/Ben Riley: So Many Lovely Things: Live in Brecon (1995, Elemental Music) [06-12]
  • Chuck Bergeron: Bass & Face: Duets With Ten Premier Vocalists (Summit) [06-05]
  • Steven Bernstein: ResoNation Trio (Royal Potato Family) [06-05]
  • Adam De Lucia: The Man Who Would Be King (self-released) [08-07]
  • Armen Donelian: Inquiry (Sunnyside) [06-05]
  • Christine Fawson: It Could Happen to You (self-released) [06-01]
  • Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra: Ellington Masterworks (MCG Jazz) [06-12]
  • Rich Willey: Laid Back Vol. 1 (Boptism) [05-30]
  • Zen Zadravec: New Paradigm (Marmite) [06-26]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

Loose Tabs

I'm posting this on May 12, after initially hoping for May 10. The delay will push Music Week out a couple days. Elapsed time since my previous one is 28 days, so I'm still close to monthly, but not on any formal schedule. Still, these are falling into a monthly pattern, even when (as this time) I think I should be kicking something out after 2-3 months. Slowing down in old age is my initial excuse, but one could also say being overwhelmed by events. And even with massive paywalling, I'm still finding many more reports and opinion pieces than I can handle. I'm less and less worried about the world going to hell due to ignorance. But more due to stupidity, for lack of a better word to describe the tendency to view issues and problems through one's own narrowly biased focus, with an inability to even imagine looking at them from some other perspective.

Needless to say, this state of the world has found its ideal in Donald Trump, who is not only a victim of this stupidity, but also a tireless spreader. One can only hope that, as disasters mount, this triggers some massive reflex reaction to undo everything he has done. Still, I worry that some aspiring Democrat is going to look at the polling, and decide that the sure path to power is to campaign on lower gasoline prices.[1] Because the problem here is not just the platform plank, but the whole thinking around it.

One could easily solve the supply problem by ending Trump-Biden wars, unblocking the Persian Gulf, and putting Russian and Venezuelan oil back on the market. But what about also working on the demand side? For instance: by pitching more solar and wind as ways to free up cheaper gasoline. Same for electric cars. Mass transit would also help out, as it allows people to move around efficiently without the congestion and pollution of cars. Do all that and gas will get so cheap you should start increasing taxes to discourage people from wasting it. I'd argue that taxes should gradually increase over time, as setting the expectation of future expenses will help move people away from fossil fuels, without clobbering them right now. A car is typically a 5-15 year investment. You don't want to obsolete current cars immediately.

But most importantly, explain to people that Trump is not only costing them at the pump, his whole worldview is making their lives more precarious, and more miserable.

[1] Looks like this Democrat is Graham Platner, the Maine Senatorial candidate much celebrated recently by left-leaning Democrats for driving centrist Janet Mills. Platner wants to end the federal excise taxes on gasoline and diesel (18.4 and 24.4 cents per gallon, respectively, earmarked for funding roads and bridges; there are also state taxes, which in many cases are higher than the federal tax). This tax hasn't been raised since 1993. It is much less than it should be, for lots of good reasons (and not just inflation).

This is an occasional collection of newsworthy links and comments, much less systematic than what I attempted in my late Speaking of Which posts. The new name comes from my extensive use of browser tabs. When I get around to cleaning up, I often find tabs opened to old articles I might want to comment on and/or refer back to. So these posts are mostly housecleaning, but may also serve as a very limited but persistent record of what 20+ years ago I started calling "the end of the American empire" and nowadays feels more like "the end of civilization." I collect these bits in a draft file, and flush them out when periodically (12 times from April-December 2025). My previous one appeared 28 days ago, on April 15.

By the way, I've been trying to write some more in-depth pieces on major issues (and/or personal peccadillos), using Substack as an email agent. I call this series Notes on Everyday Life. Here's a list of recent ones, plus a couple of older ones I've pinned because they still seem relevant here, in LIFO order:

  • [05-05]: The Real Road to Serfdom: Tim Wu explains how monopoly power leads to fascism.

  • [05-02]: Lookback: Iraq 2003: Why does the Iran war story sound familiar? (with allowances for tragedy repeating as farce)?

  • [04-27]: Explaining Inflation: AI treats us like 5-year-olds. They leave out a few things.

  • [04-05]: Iran War: The Big Question: How does it end? Or does it end at all?

  • [04-03]: Iran War: The Three Questions: Why is this happening?

  • [03-13]: Days of Infamy: "Franklin Roosevelt knew how to sell a war." Donald Trump doesn't. He only knows how to start one.

  • [2025-10-21]: Making Peace in Gaza and Beyond: "Looking beyond the Trump points toward a peace we can all live with."

  • [2025-10-17]: Gaza War Peace Plan: "Twenty Trump points, for better or worse."

  • [2025-08-10]: Four Stories: My first post, which sets out the basic ideas behind my effort, and takes its title from a very wrong-headed Vox piece that offered some teachable moments. One sample quote I buried in parentheses:

    There is no problem that Trump is the solution to. But his slogan, "Trump will fix it," suggests that some people thought we had problems he could fix. I think Trump's slogan was very effective, especially as Harris made little or no effort to show how very ridiculous the boast was.

I also have a Notes feed there. While I've done very little with it so far, it occurs to me that I might be able to use it to publish Loose Tabs items and Music Week reviews as I write them, instead of having to wait for a long compilation post.

Table of Contents:

New Stories

Sometimes stuff happens, and it dominates the news/opinion cycle for a few days or possibly several weeks. We might as well lead with it, because it's where attention is most concentrated. But eventually these stories will fold into the broader, more persistent themes of the following section.

Last time: Cuba, No Kings, Viktor Orbán, Fascism.

Cuba: While I don't doubt that Trump would like to "do Cuba next," aside from reinforcing the world's view of America as a cruel and petty bully, I doubt the military has (or can come up with) a viable attack plan. So his threats mostly are diversions, meant to distract from the war in Iran, while reinforcing Trump's madman cred (which, and this reveals something, he values as part of his "art of the deal."

  • Peter Kornbluh [04-20]: 65 yrs after the first one, Trump's 'Bay of Pigs' may take many forms: "'There were sobering lessons,' JFK said after the failed invasion of Cuba in 1961. There is still time for the current president to learn them." Kennedy does seem to have learned some lessons from the Bay of Pigs fiasco, but not the important one of resigning to live with an independent Cuba. Whether Trump is capable of learning any lessons at all, ever, is doubtful. I will say that I'm skeptical that the specific litany of mistakes made in 1961 are likely to be repeated now (both Cuba and the US are very different now). On the other hand, the idea of invading another country just because you think you are entitled to run it (for whatever reason) is as bad as ever. Nor is there any reason to think that, given the chance, the US would allow Cuba to choose their own democracy. The election processes the US set up in Afghanistan and Iraq were shams, and the one in America isn't much better.

  • Lee Schlenker [04-23]: Despite Trump's threats, a US-Cuba deal is taking shape: "Talks in Havana are starting to deliver results even as Washington prepares for the possibility of war."

  • William Leogrande [04-26]: In Cuba a deadlock is more likely than a deal: "Trump wants something that the government in Havana is just not willing to give."

  • Blaise Malley [04-28]: Senate kills effort to stop Trump war against Cuba: "By 51-47 vote, Senate blocks debate due to 'US troops not being engaged in hostilities,' despite ongoing blockade."

  • Joshua Keating [05-01]: Trump says Cuba is "next." What does that mean? "But it's not clear what the plan is." Or what the goal is, other than another feather for Trump's cap. Regime change in Venezuela "worked" because the next up was willing to play along. It didn't work in Iran when the next-in-line leaders refused to play along. In neither case did the long-suffering people revolt, but Trump isn't exactly a grass roots democracy kind of guy, so that's not something he really cares about. Cuba is more like Iran than Venezuela. There is reason to believe that lots of Venezuelans really were unhappy with the Maduro government, even if they were unable to do anything about it. That simplified what was basically a cosmetic change. How unpopular the Cuban government is may be hard to gauge. The reporting here is very myopic, with one quotable Cuban dissenter packed in with an armada of the usual anti-Cuban propaganda (there's a whole section called "In Marco we trust?").

Jerome Powell, David Warsh, and the Fed: Trump originally nominated Powell for Chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2017 (term starting in 2018), figuring he would be more reluctant to raise interest rates than the other candidates he was offered (John Taylor and Kevin Warsh). Biden, following the precedent of Clinton and Obama, gave the Republican-appointed Fed Chair a second term — a big political mistake, considering how much power the Fed Chair has over the economy that Democratic presidents will be blamed for. Powell ultimately disappointed Trump, so much so that Trump ordered the DOJ to investigate Powell in an attempt to turn him out of office early. That effort has failed so far, but Powell's term ends on May 15, and he's appointed Warsh to replace Powell. The Senate has yet to confirm Warsh, who for now has to walk a fine line between professing loyalty to Trump and vowing to maintain the independence of the Fed.

  • Claudia Sahm [04-20]: Fed Chair Apprentice: Written in advance of Warsh's Senate confirmation hearing, with sections on Fed independence, Warsh's understanding of inflation, and financial market deregulation (which Warsh favors).

    Warsh accuses the Fed of being stuck in the past: "the tyranny of the status quo." But he is the one resurrecting Milton Friedman's monetarism of the 1970s and Alan Greenspan's productivity studies of the 1990s. Neither fits the current moment well, and they don't even fit together.

  • Mike Konczal [04-27]: Cherry-picking the wrong inflation measures with Kevin Warsh: "Kevin Warsh's favorite inflation metrics ar exactly the ones that failed us during the inflation wave."

  • Dean Baker [04-28]: Jerome Powell ends his career as Fed Chair: Baker offers a generally favorable review of Powell's two terms as Fed Chair, including why Baker favored giving him that second term. I felt then, and now, that Biden had missed an opportunity to appoint someone better, as had Obama and Clinton before him.

White House Correspondents' Dinner: Where a supposedly fun evening was interrupted by a gunman, who was apprehended. Everyone else went home early.

  • Margaret Sullivan [04-23]: Why are White House journalists partying with Trump? "The White House correspondents' dinner has always been a questionable affair. It's even more worrying under an anti-press administration." That's a good question, one I've had since I've heard there even was a White House Correspondents Association, let alone their gala dinner. I've always assumed that the default stance for journalists viz. their subjects is critical and, when necessary, adversarial. I don't doubt that schmoozing with your subjects can yield insights and lead to stories that one otherwise might have missed, but I also have doubts that journalists who get too close to their subjects can still do their jobs. My own experience is mostly in the low-stakes field of music journalism, where I have always thought of myself as a critic, and almost always avoided personal contact (or limited it to publicists, who work for their clients, but have usually shown me courteous respect; after all, not every bridge is worth burning). I recall Bill James writing a piece on the advantages of his outsider status, as opposed to nearly all sportswriters. But covering politics is relatively high-stakes, and we depend on journalists to get the real stories, and not just to parrot what the PR flacks want them to say. The WHCD has always struck me as not just corrupt, but proud of it. I'd go so far as saying that I take offense to the very idea of there even being a White House Correspondents Association. Isn't there a need for all political journalists to be able to trace their stories all the way to the White House? Why should there be a club of insiders controlling access? Except, of course, that their dependence on access makes them so much easier to control.

    Of course, Sullivan also goes into some specific concerns about this particular president.

  • Benjy Sarlin [04-26]: What we know about the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. The suspect arrested was Cole Thomas Allen, who released "a manifesto" before the attack, condemning Trump's wars and policies. Trump and his minions are apoplectic that anyone would contemplate doing unto them what they've so carelessly enjoyed doing to others.

  • Francine Prose [04-28]: Shrugging at calamity: America is reacting in strange ways to our chaotic times: "The reaction to the Washington DC shooting shows that Americans are swinging between outrage, exhaustion and numbness."

  • Elena Moore [05-11]: New poll finds a majority of Americans unsure if attempts on Trump's life were real. "One in four respondents believed the attempted attack . . . was staged. The same was true for Butler. [24%] I don't have an opinion on the WHCD event, but the Butler event during the 2024 campaign reminds me strongly of an Agatha Christie story where the killer cuts her ear to make it look like she was the intended victim (the ear bleeds dramatically, without actually posing much risk; the story appears to be A Murder Is Announced). My main reason for not believing that's the event was staged is that it seems like it would be very difficult to keep the plot under wraps, but it likely had significant impact on the election — it certainly help Trump sell a ton of merch.

Gerrymandering Around Voting Rights: I originally filed this along with the other Supreme Court cases, but the case itself was caused by an attempt in Louisiana to sink a Democratic House district, and the same idea has been floated elsewhere, and as Republican prospects grow worse, their desperation has only increased.

A Cure for Gerrymandering: Representative Democracy: By the way, I have figured out a pretty good solution to gerrymandering, which I call Representative Democracy. With this, every candidate running for Congress that receives more than a low threshold (for sake of argument, let's say 10%) is elected to Congress, able to cast the same number of votes the candidate received. You can still have primaries for candidates who belong to political parties. Jungle primaries and ranked-choice voting could help to fairly narrow down the number of candidates. But the key things are that: winner-take-all districts are gone (nearly all districts will have multiple representatives, which means that nearly everyone in each district will have elected a representative to Congress); precise apportioning of districts is not necessary (but there can be guidelines). This means that every state, including every major city, will have at least one representative in each party. Also, by getting rid of winner-take-all, the value of winning a close race will go way down, which should also drain a lot of money from campaigns — which, of course, could be made cheaper still by limiting fundraising and expenses, and providing basic funding for all candidates, which would in turn make elections much less corrupt than they are now (and would allow people to run who have no chance under the current system). This could be a boon for third parties and/or independent candidates, or not, depending on how you deal with primaries, funding, and voters who don't vote for any elected candidates. (I have some ideas there. For instance, unaligned voters could assign their votes to at-large candidates through petitions, or in the most extreme case could represent themselves.)

I've written this idea up roughly a half-dozen or more times. I should give it a proper essay, but it seems bigger than any outlet I can offer. I have dozens of ideas like this: worth presenting, but someone else needs to pick them up and run with them. I've often thought about compiling them into a book borrowing Paul Goodman's title: Utopian Essays & Practical Proposals. (The utopian end would include ideas for escaping from capitalism. Representative democracy is more on the practical end, although as far as I am aware it's never been discussed. The technology to add up the votes is pretty trivial these days. By the way, there's no need for all voters to show up in person to vote, or for the hall to seat all of them.)

To kick things off, I've thought about a Wikiplans website, which I could seed with my rough sketches, and hope others would flesh them out. I need to figure out how to set up Mediawiki anyway.

Spirit Airlines Bites the Dust: And the industry contracts, competition is reduced, and prices will rise.

  • CK Smith [05-02]: Spirit Airlines collapses after bailout efforts fail.

  • Caitlin Dewey [05-05]: Every airline is Spirit Airlines now.

    And if there's anything positive to be said about Spirit, it's that the company's bottom-barrel fares have forced other airlines to lower their prices. One 2017 study found that fares were roughly a fifth cheaper in markets where Spirit or another low-cost airline had a presence. The airline industry even has a name for this: "the Spirit effect." . . .

    With Spirit out of the game, which airline will inherit the ignominious title of most-hated airline in America? Among large carriers, the title passes to American Eagle, a network of regional flights operated by American Airlines, according to YouGov. If you're looking at all US airlines, then Allegiant — a low-cost carrier that mostly services vacation destinations — was already less popular than Spirit was.

    Don't underestimate the airline industry's ability to give you new reasons to hate it, though. Some analysts predict that Spirit's closure will push other airlines' fares up: CBS found average fares rose roughly $60, or 23 percent, when Spirit exited a route.

  • Dan Primack [05-04]: Spirit Airlines blame game is going strong. One argument is that Biden should be blamed for blocking a merger between JetBlue and Spirit. "It is impossible to know if a JetBlue-Spirit merger would have saved Spirit in the long term, or saddled the combined carrier with so much debt that it too would be liquidating as jet fuel prices climb."

  • Alex Kirshner [05-05]: Who killed Spirit Airlines? "The abrupt collapse of the ultra-low-cost carrier ignited a big, misleading blame game in Washington." Interview with Jan Brueckner.

  • Dave Schilling [05-09]: Air travel was already miserable. Now we get to pay more for it!: "Spirit Airlines helped turn flying into a fee-based nightmare. Now it's gone, and fuel prices are soaring."

  • John Cassidy [05-11]: Why Spirit Airlines failed while European budget carriers thrive: "Loved for its cheap seats and derided for its extremely low-frills flights, the American company was arguably a victim of its own success."

How to Save Bankrupt Companies: By the way, another idea I have is to revamp the bankruptcy laws, to reduce the power of creditors, and allow companies to survive and reorganize under employee ownership. At present, the previous owners' equity is generally wiped out, but creditors can force liquidation to recover what they are owed. Each reorganization would have to be negotiated separately, but I expect that most debt will be written down, the employee shares will be held within the company with an initial $0 value, and any capital needed will be provided as long-term, low-interest loans secured with equity.

By the way, another way to promote employee ownership would be to allow stock distribution to employees to bypass estate taxes (which should be raised high enough to make that seem like a good deal). In general, I believe that most companies should be employee-owned, as this facilitates labor and management working in harmony, and tends to keep companies more responsible to their communities and nation. I'd also add a couple public interest board seats, devoted to customers, clients, and/or the community. This could also be applied to non-profits. (Much more could be said about them.)

Major Threads

War on Iran: Trump's war is in a muddled state, as he flip-flops between apocalyptic rhetoric and caution, while allowing no concession that might actually lead to a negotiated solution. Meanwhile, Iran's leaders — who despite all aspersions of religious fanaticism appear to be the relatively sane ones in this conflict — seem confident that time is on their side. The quality of reporting makes it impossible to know.

  • Michael Arria [04-14]: Understanding the Iran war in the context of US imperialism: Interview with Afshin Matin-Asgari, author of Axis of Empire: A History of Iran-US Relations, which came out in January 2026. His analysis of the war is pretty much same as mine, but he provides some info on early US-Iranian encounters I wasn't familiar with: 19th century Presbyterian missionaries had a similar role there as they did in Lebanon and Egypt; the US was shut out of the oil industry by the UK, but wound up stationing 30,000 troops in Iran during WWII to facilitate supply of the USSR. Then there was the 1953 coup and the 1979 revolution(s): he sees a second one which kicked off with the US embassy occupation, which Khomeini exploited to concentrate clerical power over the many other anti-Shah factions. I've been making a similar point, as my reading of events is that the anti-Americanism of 1979 was instrumental for Khomenei, and could easily have been shelved as early as 1981 (when the hostages were released to a new American president, Reagan), but have since festered due to America's propensity to hold grudges.

  • Jared Sacks [04-15]: How Zionism's anti-Jewish logic led Israel to bomb an Iranian synagogue: "Israel bombed Tehran's Rafi-Nia synagogue in the middle of the Jewish holiday of Passover. The attack revealed, to a shocking degree, Zionism's willingness to treat Jewish life as disposable in the service of its ideological project."

  • Mitchell Plitnick:

  • Maryam Jamshidi [04-17]: Only one side has clearly broken the law in the Strait of Hormuz: "And it isn't Iran." On closer examination, it turns out that Iran actually has an international law legal case for regulating commerce through their own territorial waters (as does Oman).

  • Lauren Aratani [04-18]: Traders placed over $1bn in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war. What is going on? Pretty obviously, someone is making money on inside information. Quite a lot of money. Whether Trump is personally getting his vig isn't clear, but that's something reasonable people will investigate sooner or later.

  • Ian Proud [04-28]: Iran and Russia are gaming the United States, and winning: "Is Trump running out of time to end the war before the American economy catches up?"

  • Kate Aronoff [05-01]: Trump's Iran war is smashing his fossil fuel dreams: "The president wanted to ensure American hegemony and global energy dominance. Instead, he might be torpedoing both." This may be the "silver lining" in the war. Of course, there were better ways to move away from fossil fuels, but when you elect the wrong people, inadvertent disasters may be the best you can hope for. I'm tempted to write a piece on the ten worst things Trump has done, plus five more bad things he's done that may eventually turn out for the better. Of course, there are hundreds of options to choose from, and rebounding is a tricky concept.

  • Trita Parsi: Author of three important books on Iran, Israel, and the United States (e.g., Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, from 2007). He's been all over media of late, and his early warnings of how Iran would respond to the attack have been spot on.

    • [05-02]: Trump's Iran blockade snatches defeat from the jaws of victory: "Washington's search for a 'silver bullet' to defeat Tehran has made it all but impossible to secure a deal."

    • [05-02]: Trump's war has destroyed the illusion of US military supremacy.

    • [05-03]: A few observations on Iran's latest proposal to Trump.

    • w/Brandon Carr [05-06]: 'Christmas bombings' worked in Vietnam but won't drag Iran to the table: "The military and diplomatic situation in the Persian Gulf bears virtually no similarity to that in 1972." "Worked" is a funny word to use in this context.

    • [05-08]: Iran war marks the end of American primacy as we know it: "For states that had opted to depend on US protection, this should be a wake-up call." While obviously true, this piece is sorely lacking in specifics, possibly because primacy was never anywhere near what it was cracked up to be. It always depended on consent of the weaker powers, perhaps because they didn't feel like testing their weakness, while it was easy and not too expensive to humor the American egos. I suppose you could say that the US moved to protect Berlin in 1948 and South Korea in 1950, but since then the US has achieved little, mostly beating up on small and poor countries, and having little to show for their efforts. But while the US is increasingly frustrated by minor gestures (like disallowing use of bases and air space for launching wars), that consent has yet to crack let alone break in a big way. While the US military gets little respect, the American market (and US support for global capital) is still a big enough deal to tread carefully. The Persian Gulf states could shut the Iran war down almost instantly, but they need the West (and especially the US) to launder their oil profits. A break by Europe could be an even bigger deal. Ironically, while Trump's madman act is breaking up the old world order, it makes other nations reluctant to be explicit.

  • NBC News [05-06]: Trump's abrupt U-turn on a plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz came after backlash from allies: "Saudi Arabia, a key Gulf ally, suspended the US military's ability to use its bases and airspace to carry out the operation, sources say."

  • Stavroula Pabst [05-06]: Five shameless moments of Iran war opportunism & grifting: "War brings out the best — and worst — in Americans, especially in industril Capitol Hill and Wall Street."

    1. Lockheed Martin CEO: wartime Trump Pentagon a "golden opportunity"
    2. Trump sons roll in the drone industry dough
    3. Defense-contractor funded think tanker: Iran war is a bargain!
    4. Literally gambling on war
    5. Political influence blitz

  • Ishaan Tharoor [05-06]: How the Iran war is shifting power toward China: "As the US's credibility and military capacity are tested abroad, China has gained leverage by staying out of the fight and learning from it."

  • Chas Danner [05-06]: Trump still thinks his confusion can crush Iran.

    It has been more than nine weeks since President Trump started his war with Iran, and somehow he's still keeping everyone guessing — about whether he has any idea what he's doing. Less than two days after launching his latest strategy for the very unpopular war, "Project Freedom," he's already pausing the operation.

  • Juan Cole:

    • [05-09]: How the Iran war is changing the Middle East: Interview with Tafheem Kiani. Most interesting thing here is the dynamic between Muhammad bin Zayed (head of Abu Dhabi and president of UAE) and the much better known Muhammad bin Salman (Saudi crown prince). I think the war will ultimately turn on those two countries, and possibly on the fates of those two monarchs. Both are in way over their heads, with an enemy in Iran that could do they a great deal of damage, and allies in Trump and Netanyahu who could hardly care less about them, but ultimately depend on them to sustain their war. Of course, what makes prediction impossible is that both (or really, all four) are wack jobs — we're used to Iran's leaders being depicted as fanatics, but compared to their adversaries, they are paragons of reason and sanity.

    • [05-10]: Iran threatens to kidnap data cables as well as oil; Trump warns of nukes: His nukes, not theirs.

    • [05-08]: China grows 5% — but fears a Trump-caused Hormuz shock.

      Still, China has some cushions with regard to petroleum. It produces about a quarter of the oil it uses. It can increase imports from Russia. It has six months of oil reserves, and anyway 53% of new car purchases are electric, a percentage that is likely to rise substantially this year.

  • Dave DeCamp [05-11]: UAE has secretly launched attacks against Iran: "The attacks included the bombing of Iran's Lavan Island after the ceasefire was announced."

Israel: After Israel reluctantly agreed to Trump's ceasefire plan in Gaza, Netanyahu escalated his search for other targets, not just because his perpetual war machine always needs live bait, but by ensnaring Trump into his Iran adventure, and opening the Lebanon front much like 1982, he's avoiding scrutiny in Gaza and the West Bank, where something akin to genocide proceeds apace (given the goal of eliminating or substantially marginalizing the political and/or economic viability of a group of people, does it matter how fast you actually kill people?). This section deals with military and political matters within Israel. A second section follows, dealing with the propaganda front.

Israel-America-World Relations: I used to try to separate out Israel-related pieces into several bins. The Iran war has its own news section. The Israel section above pertains to security operations in Gaza, Israel/Palestine, and Lebanon, as well as internal Israeli political affairs. This one deals with America's relationship to Israel, and possibly with the world's.

  • Philip Weiss:

    • [04-15]: The Israel lobby is fracturing as young Jews abandon Zionism: "A revolution is underway within the Jewish community as youth abandon Zionism following the Gaza genocide. While the community scrambles to respond, the Israel lobby is being fractured in the process."

    • [04-29]: The mainstream media is finally beginning to echo Americans' outrage at Israeli slaughter: "Over the past two years, Israel has lost the support of the American public and is now losing one of its last bulwarks in the political arena — prominent voices in the mainstream media."

    • [01-15]: J Street is the new AIPAC in the Democratic Party: "AIPAC is suddenly unwelcome among Democrats, but there's a new sheriff in town to enforce the pro-Israel orthodoxy. J Street aims to make liberals 'love Israel again,' but most Democrats are looking to distance themselves due to the Gaza genocide." Older piece I think I missed. I haven't followed Jeremy Ben-Ami or his organization, but they used to be a more decent (but still passionately Zionist) alternative to party-line advocates like AIPAC, so I think it's less likely that they've become "the right-wing Jewish establishment here" than that some of said establishment have moved in search of a less toxic organizational identity. This refers to a piece by Ben-Ami [2025-12-07]: How can I get my kids to love Israel? He's asking the wrong question. It should be: how can we get Israel to be worthy of our kids' love? (I would have preferred "respect" here.) Otherwise, you're just attacking your own kids, while ignoring the problem. Not that I'm sure anyone can (or should) try to change some other country. But the only hope I still have for Israelis to change is by realizing that their blind support in America is lost. Maybe that will trigger some self-examination. (After Shamir's obstinate refusal to even talk about peace alienated the first Bush admin, Israel's voters replaced him with the more flexible and diplomatic Rabin. I suspect that much of Netanyahu's appeal in Israel is due to his reputation as a Trump/Biden whisperer.) Related here:

  • Michael Arria:

    • [04-16]: In historic Senate vote, over 75% of Democrats vote to block arms sales to Israel: "In a historic vote, 75% of Senate Democrats backed an effort to block weapons to Israel. The resolutions failed, but the vote was the latest sign of Democrats' growing consensus against aid to Israel, as support for the country hits an all-time low." I suspect that most of them still want to help Israel, but have come to the conclusion that sending Israel more arms right now is just pouring gasoline on a fire, which is bound in the end to hurt Israel as much as anyone else.

    • [04-16]: Senate Democrats' vote to reject weapons for Israel reveals an out-of-touch party leadership: "Senate Democrats supported two measures to block weapons shipments to Israel in record fashion, but they were not joined by party leadership, who suddenly appear very out of touch with the party's base."

    • [04-23]: Unpacking the liberal Zionist sleight of hand on military aid to Israel: "While it may appear that pro-Israel politicians and organizations are finally embracing calls to end military aid to Israel, a closer look reveals they are simply trying to maintain the status quo."

    • [04-24]: How the corporate media helped fuel Israel's genocide in Gaza: "Mondoweiss speaks with media critic Adam Johnson about his new book detailing how cable shows, newspapers, and online news sites helped build support for the mass killing of Palestinians." Johnson's book is How to Sell a Genocide: The Media's Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza. Johnson is also interviewed here:

      • Current Affairs [04-24]: How the media sold a genocide. Long interview with Adam Johnson, with a lot of detail. Here's Johnson on The Atlantic:

        Well, they really are one of the most high-leverage, along with The New York Times, of what I call soft genocide denial for the tote bag set. Their interventions were consistent. They were genocidal. They were racist. They promoted the beheaded babies trope and never retracted it. They published Eliot Cohen's "these people are barbaric" kind of outright racist screeds. They published Hillary Clinton with her "Hamas must go" headline. They didn't have any pro-ceasefire arguments at all. They constantly scolded and demagogued against a ceasefire. They did genocide denial with respect to body counts. Graeme Wood's interventions were really disgusting — his infamous "it's permissible to kill children legally" line. Pretty much every intervention they had was genocidal, and to the extent to which they allowed some hand-wringing, there was no real call to action. No mention of child deaths in any meaningful, rigorous way. No mention of the dozens of journalists who were killed by Israel. No mention of Hind Rajab. Just an obsession with fake college antisemitism. Dozens of articles about Claudine Gay alone, again, without mentioning any other major moral crisis in the context of Gaza.

        Just bottom-rung Zionist propaganda by a former IDF prison guard. But it's all done in this kind of highbrow trappings. It has the aesthetic of serious reportage and the aesthetic of intellectual and academic seriousness. But again, if you read a lot of what I call the "move along, nothing to see here" genre, they would have these multiple rebuttals to claims about genocidal statements by Israelis. They're very unrigorous. I'm sure you've come across this because you're obviously very rigorous when you do this. But they'll sort of say, "Israel didn't mean to be genocidal when they said that." And you're like, "Well, why?" And they don't even say; they just kind of move on. Because it has the trappings and the aesthetics of rigor and think tanks and academic kind of credibility, but it's really just third-rate, sloppy, racist, dehumanizing arguments meant for upwardly mobile liberals who could have maybe been swayed towards the anti-genocide camp.

    • [04-30]: Biden official says Israel committed genocide in Gaza, but the US must keep supporting it: Wendy Sherman, former US Deputy Secretary of State.

  • Aaron Gell [04-21]: What went wrong in Israel? A genocide scholar examines 'what Zionism became': Omer Bartov, who has a new book on this, Israel: What Went Wrong?.

  • Alison Glick [04-26]: Latest polling paints dire picture for Israel in US politics: "Israel's plummeting popularity has been driven by the Gaza genocide and Iran war, but it has been building for decades. We are now finally seeing the political results." Picture shows a Pew poll of Democrats, showing that net favorability of Israel has dropped from -26 to -74 among liberals, +3 to -55 among "not liberal" Democrats (self-described moderates as well as conservatives).

  • Eric Cheyfitz:

    • [05-02]: Understanding the shared ideology behind settler colonialism in Native America and Palestine: "Both the United States and Israel were founded and exist on land taken during ongoing genocides. Settler colonialism drives these genocides, and both nations share an ideology that justifies the theft and rationalizes the killing." The question of whether (or how) the repopulating of America from 1500-1900 fits into the legal concept of genocide is rather academic, not that you can't find interesting insights from the exercise. My own interest in viewing Israel through the prism of settler colonialism has focused on the demographic tipping point: colonialism has only been successful if the immigrants outnumber the natives, usually by a large margin (US, Australia, Argentina); otherwise they have failed (South Africa, Vietnam, Algeria, Malaysia). There is a secondary factor having to do with the degree of segregation, which was extreme for English colonies, much more muddled for Spanish. Israel has always been marginal (the 1950-67 period, where Jewish Israelis held a 70% majority, had started to stabilize, but the conquests of the 1967 war brought a return of British-style colonial rule). Ethically, of course, settler colonialism has been a disaster, as with every attempt of one group to overpower another. Nor is the disaster limited to the victims, as such power eventually corrodes the humanity of the oppressors as well.

    • [03-31]: Zionism and the Iran War.

  • Amra Lee [05-09]: Israel's atrocities in Lebanon are normalizing war crimes. UN Humanitarian Chief Tom Fletcher says: "1,000 dead humanitarians in three years — when did that become normal?"

The Crutch of Anti-Semitism: By the way, I originally wrote this up to follow the author's article on Roger Marshall (R-KS), below, but it fits better here, along with a couple counterpoint articles that I had been sitting on. But I didn't feel like slotting it chronologically above, either.

  • Gary Blumenthal [04-27]: When did anti-semitism become acceptable again? "Will there ever be peace, mutual respect and an end to reciprocal hate?" Blumenthal calls his newsletter Heartland Cynic, but he can't see past one of the hoariest myths of our age: that any criticism of Israel is an attack on all Jews, a revival of two millenia of anti-semitism. Sure, he might take exception to my summary, as he is critical of "the Trump-Netanyahu war of choice," and he opens with photos of both Israeli Jews and Palestinians in mourning. But he insists that "more than half of American Jews say they've experienced anti-Semitism in just the past year" (something I've neither seen nor heard any evidence of, but most of the Jews I know are critical of Israel). He goes on to claim, "People of my faith have heard this crap, throughout recorded history, that Israelis and Jews are aggressors, oppressors, and outsiders." Just because some statements are crap doesn't mean they all are. Let's skip over all of recorded history, and just focus on the last 50-100 years.

    Before 1947, there were Jews, self-consciously divided between the Yishuv and the Diaspora. Before 1880, there were Jews in Palestine, but no Zionists. Diaspora Jews may have been outsiders, but there is no record of them as aggressors or oppressors. But Israelis are a different story. Every war from 1946 on was aggression by Israelis, and every time they gained power over Palestinians, they oppressed them. Some of the early wars (1947 and 1973 are the best cases) could be characterized as defensive, but in 1947 they seized territory beyond what the UN partition plan had offered them, and they drove some 700,000 Palestinians into permanent exile, while subjecting all of the remaining Palestinians to military rule and second-class status. Israel has continued such discrimination and oppression to the present, and since 2023 have flaunted their power more harshly than ever.

    I have considerable sympathy for people (many Jews, but also others) who originally developed such an emotional attachment for Israel back in the days when the holocaust revelations were fresh and the anti-colonial movement threatened (as happened in Algeria in 1962). But the world changed since then: anti-semitism faded in the west, in favor of tolerance, diversity, and human rights. White Afrikaners in South Africa gave up apartheid power, without being displaced. Since the 1990s, most Palestinian leaders based their aspirations on universal rights. But Israel has failed to meet them. Instead, Israel has doubled down on colonial control, drawing from British law and violence, while adding their own innovations.

    But few Americans seem to fully appreciate how extreme Israel had become, even well before November 2023. Since then, you really have to bury your head in the sand not to notice the depths of Israeli malevolence. You also have to completely ignore that Palestinians have long offered peace deals for coexistence, and that Israel could have peace on very favorable terms, but has chosen war and oppression instead. I shouldn't have to explain Jews in America and Europe shouldn't be blamed for what Israel does. But by not holding Israelis responsible for their crimes against humanity (most simply refused to acknowledge them), and not trying to use whatever influence they have to get Israel to change, their neglect can be seen as support, opening themselves up to blame — especially as Israel's supporters, more than anyone else, are the ones insisting that criticism of Israel is plain old antisemitism. It's almost like they want for Jews in the diaspora to pay for failing to heed the call to immigrate to Israel.

  • Moti Rieber [04-08]: Israel breaks people's brains: Post by a Kansas rabbi who when I first encounted him was as gung-ho on Israel as Blumenthal has ever been. I'm not sure where Blumenthal lives, but that he is commenting on Kansas politics suggests he may be a neighbor.

  • MJ Rosenberg [03-03]: Jewish organizations are setting Jews up for antisemitic attacks: "With the help of Brett Stephens, Bari Weiss, and other Dershowitz successors." Let me quote some of this:

    Because once you sell the country on the idea that Jews and Israel are interchangeable, once you insist "we are one" — you don't just stain every Jew with Israel's crimes. You also paint a target on our backs. And then, when the backlash grows, these same organizations act shocked, pass the hat, and use the fear to recruit and fundraise. Oh how they fundraise!

    I think they like seeing antisemitism spike — not because they want Jews harmed, but because panic is their business model. Fear is their fuel. And the grotesque irony is that they help manufacture the very conditions they later monetize. . . .

    So let me be clear, keep us out of it. We are not "one" with you. We are not "one" with Israel. You don't get to launder state violence through my identity, and you don't get to draft my family into your propaganda let alone turn American Jews into human shields for Israel's war crimes.

    You are not the solution to antisemitism. You are the problem.

Ukraine, Other Hot Spots, and World Politics:

  • Wenjing Wang [03-26]: On energy, China can sit this crisis out. "'Green energy' here isn't a slogan or abstract aspiration. It's economical and geopolitical survival."

  • Harrison Stetler [04-20]: The honeymoon is over between Trump and Europe's Far Right: "Viewing an alliance with Trumpist America as a liability." JD Vance stumping for Orbán didn't save him. Elsewhere, reports are skeptical. But it's never made much sense to me that rabid nationalists should band together, because their nations are by definition not just separate but in conflict with each other. I suppose that could change if they wanted to get serious about their flagship issue: blocking immigration. The only real way reduce migration is to join with other countries to counter the driving forces: war, economic dislocation, and climate change. But the idea of international (or any other kind of) cooperation is inimical to the right, while their instincts of chauvinism and repression are fundamental.

  • Elfadil Ibrahim [04-25]: UAE's dollar swap threats show how brittle these US alliances can be: "The Emirates don't need the money but they are laying down a market: if we take fire because of Washington, we want something in return."

  • Karthik Sankaran [04-28]: UAE leaves OPEC: what it means for the US, oil markets & Saudi: "The Iran war is certainly exposing a lot of long festering wounds, with this rupture certainly stunning Wall Street today." Chart here suggests that UAE can afford to sell oil much cheaper than Saudi Arabia can (breakeven at $49/barrel vs. $90; that has less to do with production costs, which do vary between oil producers, than with other government expenses funded by oil).

    [PS: Yanis Varoufakis commented: "So what that the UAE is leaving when it cannot send a single barrel of oil through the Hormuz Strait!"

  • Pavel Devyatkin [04-10]: Japan's new long-range missiles put US-China on collision course: "Ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, Tokyo is making moves that could stoke tensions between the two powers." Japan's constitutional embrace of pacifism should have been a model for the world, but the US started pushing for Japan to rearm in the 1950s, and now the war lobbyists seem to have a breakthrough. There's even a note her that Japan's Prime Minister "Takaichi also signaled a willingness to abandon Japan's 1967 pledge not to produce, possess or host nuclear weapons." Takaichi also "said that a Chinese blockade of Taiwan could lead to a Japanese military intervention."

  • Umud Shokri [05-09]: Can China use its huge economy to break US sanctions? In 2021, China issued something called "Rules on Counteracting Unjustified Extraterritorial Application of Foreign Legislation and Other Measures" ("China's Blocking Rules"):

    The order bars the recognition, enforcement, or compliance inside China with U.S. sanctions imposed on five Chinese refineries accused of buying Iranian crude: Hengli Petrochemical (Dalian) Refinery, Shandong Jincheng Petrochemical Group, Hebei Xinhai Chemical Group, Shouguang Luqing Petrochemical, and Shandong Shengxing Chemical.

    This was not just another diplomatic complaint from Beijing about U.S. "long-arm jurisdiction." It was the first formal use of China's Blocking Rules and marked a sharper legal response to Washington's secondary sanctions. By invoking the measure, Beijing signaled that it is prepared to defend its energy trade with Iran not only through rhetoric, but through domestic law, court remedies, and regulatory pressure. . . .

    In the long run, China's legal shield against U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil may be remembered less as a single dispute over five refineries and more as an early sign of a multipolar sanctions order, one in which economic coercion is increasingly met by legal counter-coercion. The age of sanctions was already messy. Now it is becoming institutionalized on both sides, because apparently global governance needed more paperwork and fewer exits.

    While South Africa showed that widespread adoption of sanctions can sometimes persuade a government to change course and redress internal injustices, the US sanctions regime has more often been used simply for power projection, and often just for spite (which has usually been the case viz. Iran). Two things Americans don't seem to understand here are: sanctions can only have widespread support to advance political goals rooted in common morality — such as opposition to South African apartheid, or to Russia's war against Ukraine; and that sanctions need to be reversible once the underlying problem is resolved. The attraction of sanctions is that they're one way to express one's feeling and to do something potentially effective without resorting to armed violence — which attacks sovereignty, hardens resolve to resist, can escalate, and produces collateral damage, effectively abandoning one's claim to moral high ground. Of course, the targets of sanctions may regard them as "acts of war," but their credibility is something for others to judge. Also, one should be sensitive to the likelihood that the burden of sanctions will largely fall on people not responsible for the offense. There are ways around this, like allowing "humanitarian" relief supplies to get through, but they are rarely good ones.

    I should note here that the one case where sanctions were most clearly justified has been Israel. Indeed, had the BDS movement been more successful, it's likely that the 2023 Gaza revolt and Israel's genocidal response, including spreading war to Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran, could have been avoided. But the world's sanctioner-in-chief, the US, actively sided with Israel in resisting BDS, and as such bears substantial responsibility for Israel's atrocities. I'll also note that sanctions against Russia preceded the Ukraine invasion, with two major effects: they led Putin to view the US as an aggressive foe, and they pushed Russia to figure out ways to work around them, making them less effective. Promiscuous use of sanctions can cause more problems than they solve. By the way, one of those problems is that ineffective sanctions, especially combined with diplomatic sloth, ultimately weaken America's standing in the world. (Cuba and North Korea have resisted US sanctions for 65-75 years, making the US look cruel, vindictive, and ineffective.)

    China is the one country that seems to be able to face down American sanctions directly. Tariffs are a prime example: Trump has tried to use them to express American power and to punish other nations he dislikes, and with China he has mostly had to back down — not least because China is proving they too can play this sanctions game. But while other countries, even Russia and Iran, may chafe when faced with American bullying, China has the wherewithal to create a viable alternative to America's global power. China has opened doors with trade, and with relatively generous direct foreign investment. They are willing to work with everyone, and show no interest in the internal politics of other countries (except perhaps Taiwan, which for them remains a sore point). And they're using the UN, while building alternative organizations to America's increasingly politicized ones. As a strategy, it reminds me of what the US did viz. European imperialism: the Open Door strategy meant to undermine colonial exploitation, the Good Neighbor Policy. The US generated enormous good will around the world up to 1945, after which they squandered it on rabid anti-communism, but even as they sought global hegemony, they at least allowed more autonomy than the UK and their ilk did. As Trump drives the US into his peculiar combo of autarky and global terror, China will increasingly be seen as a way out. Of course, that will depend on them not being as stupid as the American order (not just Trump but Biden and Obama and Bush and Clinton) has been.

    • Robert Wright [05-08]: China bites back: Some more details here, including a story about a China-subsidized Singapore-based AI company, Manus, that Meta tried to buy, but China vetoed.

  • Ziyad Motala [05-09]: Fatal friendships: Gulf monarchies and the price of American patronage: "For decades, Gulf rulers mistook access to America for influence, but now, with the Iran war, they finally see they are viewed as disposable on the front lines of the US empire."

  • Evan Robins [05-11]: The UK's far right is on the march — thanks to Keir Starmer: "How the Labour Party's catastrophic prime minister paved the way for fascists to dominate British politics."

  • Dan Sabbagh [05-11]: Why is Putin now talking about the war in Ukraine 'coming to an end'? "Drone strikes, mounting casualties and a distracted US president means a slow-motion victory is in doubt." It sounds like the stalemate has only gotten staler.

Trump's Wars: And the Department Thereof, and its associated graft and malice. I set this section up to deal with Trump's threats, but we're obviously beyond that now, so see the sections on Iran and Cuba for more on on those specific fronts.

Trump vs. Law: The latest from the Courts, and sundry other matters involving the so-called Department of Justice, although the Supreme Court decision on gerrymandering has been moved elsewhere, along with its political fallout.

  • Ian Millhiser:

  • Nia Prater [04-23]: ICE will reportedly curb some of its most aggressive tactics.

  • Elie Honig:

    • [04-24]: Trump seems to be planning ahead for losing the Senate.

    • [05-08]: Why the Jim Comey prosecution is about to fall apart (again): While the charges are ridiculous, and should be laughed out of court the moment they appear, I do appreciate this paragraph:

      Let's stipulate up front: Comey is a legendary blowhard, an inveterate fibber, and a pretentious prig whose guiding principle is that he alone has access to some mystical code of morality that conveniently justifies his outrageous conduct over the past decade. The former FBI director's arrogant defiance of core DOJ policy likely swung the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump and earned excoriation from the DOJ's nonpartisan inspector general and a bipartisan procession of former AGs. Comey then launched a sneak attack on the incoming Trump administration and later chortled publicly about how he broke ordinary FBI protocol in the process. Comey leaked to paint himself as a hero to undermine Clinton (in 2016) and to undermine Trump (in 2017). Afterward he claimed that even though he arranged for sensitive FBI information to be released through a personal friend to the media, it somehow wasn't a leak. Nobody likes the guy, and everyone has got their reasons.

  • Cameron Peters [04-28]: James Comey gets indicted (again): "Trump's revenge ploys are getting kookier." How kooky? "prosecutors allege that a 2025 social media post Comey made, showing seashells arranged to read '86 47,' was a threat to take the life of, and to inflict bodily harm upon, Donald Trump."

  • Kelli Wessinger/Noel King [04-29]: This is what it takes to become Trump's attorney general: "Who is acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, formerly Donald Trump's personal lawyer?"

  • Rachel Rebouché [05-02]: The Fifth Circuit seeks to unilaterally reimpose an outdated abortion pill protocol: "What comes next is shifting terrain. The drug manufacturer has asked the Supreme Court to intervene, but the Food and Drug Administration could also step in."

  • Andrew Duehren/Alan Feuer [05-12]: Justice Dept. officials consider settling Trump suit against IRS: "One of the settlement terms under review is for the IRS to drop any audits of the president, his family members and businesses." The ostensible reason for the suit is that someone at IRS leaked some of Trump's tax returns (which, once upon a time, he had promised to release himself, as has been customary for all other presidential candidates, at least in recent years). As a tweet linking to this put it: "This would constitute one of the most brazen, most appalling acts of corruption in US history." For more on this:

Trump's Administration: Trump can't remake America in his own image (i.e., destroy the country, its culture and civilization) just by himself. He needs help, and having largely purged the government of civil servants and replaced them with his own minions, this is what they are doing (whether he's paying attention or not):

  • Center for American Progress [2025-10-23]: The Trump Administration is erasing American history told by public lands and waters: "Through a series of executive orders targeting place names, signage on, and access to public lands and waters, the Trump administration is erasing important chapters of American history." I should follow this website more closely. For instance:

  • Whitney Curry Wimbish [04-16]: GOP food stamp work requirements hit just as jobs dry up: "Millions of people will lose food stamps, according to early estimates."

  • Caitlin Dewey [04-22]: Another Trump official exits in scandal: "Lori Chavez-DeRemer's resignation underscores a familiar pattern in the Trump administration." She was Secretary of Labor.

  • Merrill Goozner [04-22]: RFK Jr. and the perils of peptides: "The Health and Human Services Secretary's push to deregulate unapproved peptides will inevitably lead to worse health outcomes.

  • Pratik Pawar [04-29]: What really happened after Trump slashed HIV funding: "The official numbers are finally here." Well, we're not all dead yet, but they're working on it.

  • Adam Federman [04-30]: Trump bulldozed a 1,000-year-old archaeological site to make room for a second border wall.

  • Gregg Gonsalves [05-01]: The rise of the Vichy scientists: "Too many scientists are willing to collaborate with Trumpism in the mistaken assumption that obedience will save their own necks." Again with the Nazi analogies, because once again they seem to be the only historical precedents that come close to the gravity of the current situation. Focuses on anti-vaxxers currently in vogue at NHS. Refers to a piece on similar opportunism in the law schools:

    • Steve Vladeck [01-29]: Legal scholarship and the dual state: "A few thoughts on the responsibilities of legal academics in a time of increasing governmental lawlessness." While I've mostly been following Ian Millhiser at Vox, Vladeck also has a newsletter, One First, "aiming to make the Supreme Court's rulings, procedures, and history more accessible to all." It looks to be worth following.

  • Jack Healy [05-04]: Home on the range no more: Trump wants bison gone: "The Trump administration is evicting bison herds from federal grasslands, in Montana, siding with ranchers and Republican leaders over environmentalists and tribal leaders."

  • ProPublica [05-04]: 8 things you should know about Trump's effort to "take over" the midterm elections: "Trump is gutting federal agencies and installing allies who supported his claim that the 2020 vote was stolen."

  • Nia Prater [05-08]: ABC takes the fight to Trump administration over FCC's View probe.

  • Timothy Noah [05-08]: It's no longer safe for civil servants to be good at their job: "If you're an effective federal worker, don't let Trump find out — you might not be one for much longer." This remind me that I had never heard the word kakistocracy before Trump (definition: "government by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous people"), although it evidently was used as far back as 1644 (in reference to Roman Emperor Nero, who famously "fiddled while Rome burned"). Most of the examples given strike me as misapplied, suggesting it's already turned into a generic but meaningless slur, but the Trump administration is chock full of such people, not just incompetent themselves but intent on exporting their incompetence to everyone around.

  • John Feffer [05-08]: Trump's ostrich policy on climate change: "The president has downgraded the threat of climate change to the point of non-existence. Like Stalin, Trump now stands alone."

    The administration's campaign started with the scrubbing of all references to climate change from federal websites. It has encouraged more widespread self-censorship: anyone who wants to keep their federal job or apply for a federal grant has tactically removed anything Green-related from their descriptions and applications. This animus toward anything climate-related has also shaped many of the administration's latest budget cuts: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget halved, $1.6 billion cut from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the $4 billion Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program eliminated, $449 million in renewable energy funding slashed. . . .

    The administration's approach can also be seen in the carrot side of the equation. It has approved pipelines like the recent Bridger Pipeline Extension, green-lighted deep-water oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil companies, and tried to prop up the dying coal industry. The administration has paid out $2 billion to companies to cancel their wind power projects and invest instead in fossil fuels. Deregulation and lack of enforcement — of pollution standards, of safety and health requirements, of environmental permitting — have been huge gifts to companies spewing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

  • Mark Olalde [05-10]: Trump exempted some of the biggest polluters from air quality rules. All it took was an email: "Admin set up an EPA address where companies could get compliance pause simply by sending an email."

Donald Trump and His Cult: While his administration implements malign policies crafted by lobbyists and right-wing think tanks, the news is so dominated by his cult of personality that it seems like a full-time job just to resist the rising tide of vanity and stupidity.

  • Margaret Hartmann: She also handles the British royal family beat, which I have even less interest in than I do Melania (or her idiot husband).

    • [04-22]: Trump hiding ballroom donors for secret, non-corrupt reasons: Or so they say. While the donations look like bribes in the short term, further out they're just likely to be embarrassing.

    • [04-25]: Is Melania Trump a US citizen? Her immigration story, explained.

    • [04-30]: Amazon mulls Apprentice reboot absolutely no one needs: "Trump is making money from reruns, Don Jr. doesn't need a hosting gig, and Amazon has already done plenty of groveling. So who is this for?"

    • [05-01]: Don Jr. has incredible excuse for putting wedding on hold: "While Bettina Anderson just had her bridal shower, the latest rumor is that the couple won't wed until the Iran war is over."

    • [05-05]: Surprise! You're paying $1 billion for Trump's ballroom: "The White House insisted the project wouldn't cost taxpayers a dime. A new GOP bill includes $1 billion in public funding for ballroom 'upgrades.'"

    • [05-07]: Gold 22-foot Trump statue definitely isn't a false idol. Thus spake Pastor Mark Burns, before anyone even asked.

      It says a lot about our current president that in response to the news that a giant gold statue of Donald Trump was dedicated this week, you have to ask, "Which one?" . . .

      Today, we're focusing on a statue dubbed Don Colossus, which now sits outside the Trump National Doral Miami golf course. The statue, which depicts Trump with his fist raised, was commissioned by the $PATRIOT cryptocurrency group shortly after the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt. Artist Alan Cottrill finished it before Trump's second inauguration, as the New York Times reported earlier this year. But then Don Colossus was held hostage in a payment dispute between Cottrill and the crypto bros. The disagreement was resolved this spring when an anonymous donor stepped in and paid the artist the remainder of what he said he was owed.

      So in late April, the 15-foot statue was placed atop a seven-foot pedestal on the grounds of Trump's Miami golf course. And on Wednesday, the statue was formally unveiled at a dedication ceremony presided over by Pastor Mark Burns, a friend of the president who helped organize the project.

      The "not a gold calf" line came from Burns, lest someone mistake "gathering to praise a giant golden status [as] textbook idolatry."

  • Stephen F Eisenman [04-24]: How Fascism works now: A note about Trump as the Healing Christ: "By attending to obvious outrages — the supposed blasphemy of an image of Trump as Healing Christ — the public is more likely to overlook bigger, but less promoted ones, like weakened pollution standards, cuts to disease research, and of course, war. But there's another, equally important communication strategy at work, and it's hiding in plain sight: insipidness or kitsch. That's the language of fascism now."

  • Andrew O'Hehir [05-03]: An arch bigger than the Arc de Triomphe? Hitler wanted that too: "Tyrants and dictators often dream of building gigantic monuments to themselves."

  • Hafiz Rashid [05-11]: Trump turns White House UFC cage match into massive cash grab: Of course. You hear about TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome), but there's also a TBS (Trump Bewilderment Syndrome): the inability lots of us have to see any attraction whatsoever in most of the things Trump claims to value. I've never once, even out of morbid curiosity, been tempted to watch The Apprentice. Similarly, UFC is something I lack even the slightest interest in ever attending or viewing. Very little that he does or says has any interest whatsoever — aside from the many cases that are purely repulsive, but they only matter because for some reason he is president. TDS is often cited by his supporters as way to ignore the possibility that anyone might have cause for taking exception to him. TBS is less useful to them, because it is clearly subjective.

Other Republicans:

  • Gary Blumenthal [03-02]: Is Roger Marshall the worst US Senator in Kansas history? If you want an argument, I'd note that Sam Brownback didn't even get a mention here. I'll also note that I never forgave Bob Dole for his dirty campaigns against Bill Roy, who came within a hair of becoming the best US Senator in Kansas history. But Marshall is pretty bad, and not just for his extraordinary suck up to Donald Trump. Blumental misses the most glaring example: during Covid, while he was still a US Rep running in the Senate primary, as a MD he prescribed Ivermectin for his whole family. Certainly proved he's not the sort to let science or professionalism get in the way of political expediency. By the way, I looked some more at Blumenthal's blog, and responded at some length here to a piece he wrote on Israel.

  • Naomi Bethune [04-02]: The far-right cash machine: "There's money in bigotry, and specialized crowdfunding platforms are where to get it."

  • Ed Kilgore:

    • [04-23]: Trump's average job approval hits new second-term low: As far as the mid-terms are concerned, the interesting numbers are the "strongly disapprove" (47.5%) and "strongly approve" (22.8%), as mid-term voter turnout always slumps, which makes strongly-held opinions loom even larger.

    • [04-23]: Why the GOP's new midterms strategy won't work: The "new" strategy is actually just the old one: to bash the Democrats, blaming them for everything that's gone wrong under Trump. This is largely because they've convinced themselves that most Americans hate Democrats as much as they do, and for the same reasons (you know, that they are radical communists who will take your guns away, promote abortion and atheism, and convince your children that they'd be happier as another sex). That's never been remotely true, but somehow Democrats manage to look guilty by denying such nonsense. This reminds me of the advice given to lawyers when they neither have facts nor law on their side: pound the table. Given how thin Trump's margins have been, and how disillusioned many people have become since "Trump Will Fix It!" proved a hollow promise, it shouldn't be hard for Democrats to tip the balance. Still, until Democrats show some actual skill at campaigning, we should all be nervous.

    • [04-30]: DHS shutdown finally ends with an exhausted whimper: After 75 days, Republicans decided to get what they wanted through some kind of future "budget reconciliation" which they could pass on a straight party line vote.

    • [05-05]: Republicans' second 'Big Bill' isn't beautiful at all.

    • [05-06]: Trump's polling is getting into George W Bush territory: "Disapproval of his performance as president is now pervasive across nearly every issue, and he's particularly unpopular with independents."

    • [05-08]: Trump's Big Ballroom could tank GOP's 'skinny' ICE bill: "After the WHCD shooting, it seemed like a good idea to market Trump's ballroom as a security imperative. Now it's a politically dangerous boondoggle."

    • [05-08]: Trump's affordability agenda barely exists anymore. Did he ever have one?

  • Sarah Jones [05-07]: JD Vance and the rise of the Catholic right: I have zero interest in reading Vance's Communion, but my hunch is that his conversion was a calculation based on the newfound prominence of Catholics on the right (including a majority of the Supreme Court). Sam Brownback is an earlier example. I wondered about his lord and master Peter Thiel, and was informed that he was raised evangelical Christian, with "somewhat heterodox" views, but also "he is known for his deep interest in Catholic theology and in 2026 was hosting lectures on the Antichrist near the Vatican."

Democrats:

  • Ross Barkan [04-23]: Chuck Schumer used to be popular. Now he's stuck. Quotes the D-NY Senator as saying (at an AIPAC conference): "We say it's our land — the Torah says it, but they [Palestinians] don't believe in the Torah. That's the reason there is not peace. They invent other reasons, but they do not believe in a Jewish state, and that is why we in America must stand strong with Israel through thick and thin." Because we Americans, with our separation of church and state, and constitutional guarantees of equal treatment under the law for all, belived that a foreign country that mocks our values should be able to quote a line from the Torah and use it to justify killing, torturing, and otherwise discriminating against and harming a large segment of the people who live there?

  • Eric Levitz [04-27]: Democrats' latest critique of Walmart is wrong — and dangerous: "No, Medicaid is not 'corporate welfare.'" Filed here because the author is calling out Democrats explicitly, although the general complaint is applicable to Republicans as well, who differ mostly in omitting the word "corporate" before attacking "welfare."

  • Zack Beauchamp [04-29]: This billionaire could be California's next governor — and he wants to arrest Stephen Miller: "Tom Steyer talks to Vox about using state power to fight the Trump administration." It takes a lot of ego to run for president, and that's something billionaires have in spades. When Steyer ran for president in 2016, he had the ego (and the money), but he didn't have a campaign that actually appealed to anyone. He seems to have found one now, on the left, which as I've long said is where the answers come from. He's picked up an endorsement from the Bernie Sanders-founded group Our Revolution. Reminds me that Ralph Nader wrote a novel back in 2009 called "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!". JB Pritzker, in Illinois, is another example. (Mike Bloomberg is not.) Sometimes you have to take what you can get. Or as Steyer puts it several times here, that's the world we live in.

  • Eoin Higgins [05-01]: Graham Platner handed centrist Dems a bruising defeat in Maine: "After throwing their support behind Gov. Janet Mills, party leaders are left doing an about-face on the insurgent candidate."

  • MJ Rosenberg [05-01]: Death to end stage capitalism: Time for Dems to be the Social Democratic Party: 20 points about capitalism. I could use this as scaffolding for commentary, grouping some things, discarding (or revamping) others. I still see a place for capitalism going forward. It's just not the only place, and it's one that becomes progressively unimportant as we get on to better things.

The Economy (and Economists): Also see Dean Baker.

Technology (Including AI):

  • Susannah Glickman/Amba Kak/Sarah Myers West [04-08]: The great AI grift: "Tech leaders want you to believe that AI is the key to a new golden age. The reality looks more like a bold, government-backed heist."

  • Ryan Cooper [04-23]: Meta is a monopoly even if TikTok can compete: "It is foolish to suggest that competition anywhere proves that a company isn't a monopoly." Still, he doesn't make the case as clearly as it should be. Any company that owns a patent (or other exclusive intellectual property) has a monopoly right, at least to the extent that it is able to collect rents beyond what competition allows. Pharmaceutical companies don't compete with each other so much as they exercise and exploit monopolies over individual drugs. HP has a monopoly selling ink for the printers it manufactured. Perhaps at some point words like "monopoly" and "antitrust" should be recognized as antiquated, in that they are really just extreme forms of much broader (and in some cases subtler) behavior. Unfortunately, our "antitrust" laws limiting anti-competitive behavior were mostly passed in the 1880s, leaving us playing catch up with 140 years of rent-seeking innovation (not that the most common and effective means, bribing politicians and officials, is a new development). One monopolistic innovation that has become increasingly prevalent is network effects, which even more than IP is the source of Meta's monopolistic power.

  • Timothy Noah [04-23]: How the tech world turned evil: "Once upon a time, they were counterculture idealists bringing power to the people. Today they're greedy monopolists who'd sooner destroy our democracy than be reined in by government in any way — and they have to be stopped." This is stuff I've been reading a lot of recently, including notes from recent books by Corey Doctorow and Tim Wu. For what it's worth, I think the shift toward evil has more to do with money than tech. And the shift to Trump is due to their shared perception that nothing else matters.

  • John Herrman [04-25]: The downgrading of the American tech worker: "Meta is laying off more stuff — and monitoring the rest to train AI."

  • Jasmine Sun [04-30]: Silicon Valley is bracing for a permanent underclass: Seems like an important article (I haven't delved very deeply into it yet), but one thought I have is that industry estimates of the economic effect of AI are likely to be very tailored not to what the tech can or cannot do, or what the public does or does not want, but to the opportunities to jack up their stock prices, which right now is the main thing AI has going for itself. Since most of the target customers are looking to save money on labor, that's a major angle. What happens to people out of jobs isn't going to impact their bottom line, at least directly, so can be ignored. That they might all wind up in a permanent underclass is, well, at first approximation also not their problem. Granted, those people may eventually be driven to revolt, but the leading wave of AI tools are being designed to surveil and control dissidents, and to lock them out of political channels and otherwise shut them up. As for the problem of who do you steal from when all the wealth is held by the super-rich, AI should help there, too, creating a cycle of cannibalism as sport.

  • Astra Taylor/Saul Levin [05-08]: The fight against AI datacenters isn't just about tech — it's about democracy: "Claims of nimbyism are a misunderstanding: the movement is about whether regular people have a say in fundamental decisions." I don't really get the whole data center issue, but I do understand that new tech can be good and/or bad, and leaving it to the big companies drives it toward bad, so slowing them down makes sense. But the answer probably has more to do with the companies than with their tools.

  • David Futrelle [05-11]: How prediction markets are taking control of everything: "We have seen the future, and it is Polymarket and Kalshi processing insider bets on mayhem, chaos — and celebrity-wedding guest lists." I grew up with an intense hatred of gambling. (I got it from my mother, but it's probably the only one of her prejudices I kept.) I don't want to criminalize it, because I don't like banning things just because they're bad for you. But I also don't think we should go around advertising and promoting it, because it's not only bad for individuals, it warps society, especially our apprecation of the value of work. While Republicans have pretty much kept with their old prohibitionist impulses, the one exception is gambling, which they have embraced with gusto. They seem to get off on folks playing with their money, and not just because that makes it easy to separate it from them. But also because they promote an ethic of pure gain for no work, a dream which beats even fraud. Stripped of all the other bullshit (and there's a fair amount of that here), prediction markets are just gambling, but elevated to a massive scale, tied to real world events that insiders can manipulate at will.

  • Sam McAfee: I was forwarded a PDF by mutual friends, and started to quote it before I tracked it down.

    • [03-23]: The reality behind the singularity: I'm not especially up on this discussion, but found this interesting. He attributes the "singularity" concept to Ray Kurzweil (The Singlarity Is Near, 2005), then notes:

      What this framework inherits, without much examination, is a fundamentally Cartesian view of mind. Cognition, in this model, is computation. The brain is hardware. Intelligence is a function that runs on it, and can in principle run just as well, or better, on different hardware entirely. The substrate, in other words, does not matter.

      This is a position that several decades of neuroscience research have given us good reasons to question.

      Antonio Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis, developed across a series of influential works including Descartes' Error (1994), demonstrated through careful clinical study that emotional processing is not incidental to rational decision-making but constitutive of it. Patients with damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, the region most associated with emotional integration, did not become more rational in the absence of emotional interference. They became incapable of making decisions at all. The implication is significant: what we commonly describe as reason is not separable from the affective systems that the singularity framework is inclined to treat as noise.

      Lisa Feldman Barrett's more recent work in How Emotions Are Made (2017) extends this argument further, presenting evidence that emotion and cognition are not merely intertwined but that the distinction itself may be a useful fiction. The brain, in Barrett's account, is a predictive organ constantly modeling the body's internal state and its relationship to the external environment. Feeling and thinking are different descriptions of the same underlying process.

      The implications for the singularity argument are not trivial. If intelligence in any robust sense requires embodiment, a body whose states are continuously integrated into cognition, then the prospect of disembodied computational intelligence reaching or exceeding human cognitive capacity is not simply technically difficult. It may be the wrong description of what intelligence is.

      The broader framework known as 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended) further develops this position across a range of disciplines, arguing that cognition emerges from the dynamic interaction between organism, body, and environment rather than from computation occurring within a bounded system. On this account, the question of whether a machine could be more intelligent than a human is a bit like asking whether a map could be a better traveler than a person. The category does not transfer cleanly.

      And then there is the social dimension, which the singularity framework tends to underweight to a degree that borders on negligence. Human cognitive capacity is not simply individual. It is distributed across relationships, institutions, cultural practices, and accumulated knowledge that has been refined across tens of thousands of years of collective life. The organizational intelligence that allows human societies to coordinate at scale, to build and maintain institutions, to sustain trust across generations. This is not separable from the embodied, emotionally regulated, socially embedded creatures who produce it.

      The latter point risks some fuzziness, and I suspect will prove hard to pin down. It's much easier to train AI to quantitatively approximate intelligence than qualitatively, not just because we have a pretty good idea of the former but not the latter, but also because quantities are by definition measurable, whereas qualities are not.

    • [2025-12-27]: The risk of AI writing is leadership without judgment: This earlier piece, which appeared as the title in the PDF I was sent, is styled as management advice. Indeed, the most prominent word is "leadership," which means that the sales pitch starts with a bit of flattery. McAfee turns out to be a "technology and product leader, author and coach" for a management consulting company called Humanize (or maybe that's their product and/or service? he is one of 14 members of their "personal board of advisors," where "coach," "strategist," "expert," "facilitator," and "storyteller" are the most common occupations). Some interesting things here, but I'm often unsure whether meant to solve problems or just inadvertently expose them. For example:

      Generative AI doesn't just help the CEO write faster. It changes when the CEO stops thinking. It offers coherence early, before ambiguity has done its work. It makes conclusions feel available before judgment has fully formed. When a medium removes friction from thinking, leaders don't just move faster — they skip the moments where responsibility normally takes shape.

      Tools don't merely speed work up. They define what counts as work in the first place.

      Human writing started to sound like this long ago — safe, optimized, detached from real stakes.

      AI doesn't create this problem. It removes the last excuses for ignoring it.

      This led into a section called "We Were Already Drowning in Bad Writing."

Regular Columnists

Sometimes an interesting columnist writes often enough that it makes sense to collect their work in one place, rather than scatter it about.

Dean Baker:

  • [03-22]: $200 billion for Trump's Iran "Excursion" is real money: First thing I did when I saw this was flash on Everett Dirksen's quip — back from the 1960's, and nowhere in evidence here, so all I'm doing is showing my age — that "a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money." Baker offers other examples of much smaller things one could spend money on, but aside from "Minnesota fraud" the more significant difference is that they're things that generate positive value. Most of them will even result in long-term positive paybacks (although child care and health care may seem nebulous to accountants). The Iran War will only result in negative paybacks, which is to say the massive expenditure now is only a down payment on future inevitable and irrecoverable costs. Even when people talk about burning or blowing up cash, they're showing the limits of their imagination. Reality is far worse.

  • [04-14]: Inflation is a process: Notes the return of "anti-inflation hawks" arguing for "a structural break" causing persistent post-pandemic inflation. Baker argue for an alternative "bad breaks" theory, where the baddest of breaks was Trump becoming president, feeding price rises with tariffs and war (and I would add lax constraints against anti-competitive behavior, including price gouging). By "process" he means that inflation is something that takes time to develop, as higher prices raise costs which get fed back into even higher prices (he cites the "wage-price spiral" of the 1970s). He doesn't go much into what the current process is (after all, he's arguing against any such thing), but what I think is that the supply disruptions by and after the pandemic kicked off a general psychology where businesses discovered they could get away with price gouging (in common discourse described as "inflation") and took advantage of decades of anti-competitive consolidation. The wars and tariff shenanigans just added to the pile of excuses, but another big motivation (for business) was that under Biden workers got a bit of real income gains, and businesses were desperate to claw that back.

  • [04-15]: Are the Republican killing you? "Americans in Republican-led states live significantly shorter lives than those in Democratic states, highlighting major health disparities." The difference in life expectancy is 8 years longer in Hawaii than in West Virginia. "Even moving away a few notches from the extremes, a person living in California can expect to live 5.5 years longer than a person living in Tennessee." Only one of the top ten states is nominally Republican (Utah), while only one of the bottom ten leans Democratic (New Mexico). Baker has fun with his cart by adding some foreign countries, showing not only that Japan and South Korea are way ahead of Hawaii (the top US state), but so are Albania and Costa Rica. Cuba scores higher than Idaho (12 in US), Iran (pre-war) better than Florida (19), Mexico better than Indiana (40), and even Russia beats out Kentucky (49, ahead of India, which also beats Mississippi and West Virginia).

  • [04-17]: The stock market is not your friend: "Stock market gains driven by higher profit shares benefit a minority of investors, while most workers would be better off with higher wages instead." Sadly, many people regard the stock market as measuring the health of the economy, whereas a big part of what it really measures is how much business owners are at screwing everyone else over. (It also factors in real growth, so it's not simply wrong. And it also, more sensitively, not just measures but exaggerates investor panic, which has made it an easy mark for Trump's war machinations.) I suspect much of its allure is that it is reported daily, whereas most other economic measures come out monthly, quarterly, or annually. But that it mostly serves to inflate the importance of the investing class is also part of why corporate media pushes it so hard. (And why it matters to Trump.)

    In principle, the stock market reflects expectations of future after-tax corporate profits. Expected profits can rise because the economy is expected to grow more rapidly, and corporations will get their share as profits rise along with the economy. But that has not been the case over the last quarter-century.

    The after-tax profit share of national income has nearly doubled, going from an average of 6.6 percent in the 1990s to 12.5 percent in the last quarter of 2025. This explains most of the soaring stock market over this period, although the ratio of stock prices to corporate earnings is also near a record high, leading many of us to argue that we have a stock bubble.

    It is hard to see why the bulk of the population, who own little or no stock, should be celebrating the redistribution from wages to profits that provides most of the basis for the run-up in stock prices in the last quarter-century.

    Two further notes:

    There is one other point worth noting in this respect. As I said, the price-to-earnings ratios in the stock market are near record highs. That is also not something most of us have cause to celebrate.

    The run-up in house prices has far exceeded the run-up in rents over the last decade. This is likely at least in part attributable to people with big gains in the stock market bidding up house prices. Many of the big winners in the market have two or three homes.

    The common denominator here is that because rich people have more money than they can productively invest (let alone spend), they're driving up asset prices, possibly to bubble levels. In the case of house prices, this can have a major impact on affordability.

  • [04-18]: A $600 billion increase for the military is a ton of money: "Trump's massive military budget proposal highlights how enormous spending increases often go underexamined without meaningful context." Again, he's comparing this waste to other more sensible possible expenditures. Even I find the figure so mind-boggling I'm not sure where to start. The $900 billion the old Department of Defense spent each year was almost totally wasted. Sure, it produced a jobs program for contractors and indolent youth, and provided some degree of a socialist safety net for the soldiers (and veterans, who had their own budget, as did the nukes and the supplementals for unplanned wars). But it subtracted from the productive economy, and shipped a lot of that money abroad, so jobs and education for Americans could have been handled much more efficiently. Still, when you take an enterprise which is already pretty close to worthless, and throw 60% more money at it, what happens? You're going to hire more soldiers, but you're going to get somewhat less than 60% more: not that many people want to waste their lives "in service," so maybe you bump up the pay and perks and get 20-30% more people (probably less qualified and trained; the recent expansion of ICE hiring is worth studying). And you can buy more stuff, but again you have too much money chasing too little value, so you'll wind up paying more to get anything of value, and since value is so hard to evaluate in war, you'll probably wind up with a lot of no value at all. Some of the latter will be pure fraud. Much of it will be software, especially AI, where the gap between sales pitch and reality may turn out to be infinite. Of course, you could just buy a lot of bombs and bullets, but that's just going to build up pressure to use them. Given that management has already renamed Defense to the Department of War, the worst possible outcome seems destined.

  • [04-20]: We don't need billionaires, and we can structure the market so we don't have them: "A critique of claims that billionaires are essential to innovation, arguing that policy choices, not individuals, create extreme wealth." As Baker points out, there is no reason to think that "the innovations [billionaires] are associated with would not have taken place otherwise." (I'd add that many billionaires, including Trump, are responsible for no worthwhile innovations whatsoever.) But the bulk of the piece argues that "capitalism can be structured differently, with sections on:

    • Government-granted patent and copyright monopolies
    • Let the financial industry enjoy the free market: as opposed to repeatedly bailing them out
    • Whack private equity: The structure of bankruptcy laws is not intrinsic to capitalism
    • Make non-compete agreements unenforceable
    • Capitalism needs to be restructured to produce less inequality

    These are old themes for Baker (see his book, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer), and much more can be written both about the problems and the solutions. I'd like to see bankruptcy laws changed so that companies can be restructured under employee ownership, which would preserve competition and jobs.

  • [04-21]: Trump hits a home run for the green transition: "Trump's war-driven energy shock may unintentionally hasten the global shift to clean energy while weakening US dominance." This is more like a Wrong Way Corrigan touchdown than a home run for anyone, but it does underscore how right Chinese leaders were when they shifted focus from coal in the 1980s-90s to wind and solar, and moved their fledgling automotive sector from gas to electric. Roughly up to 2000, the Chinese saw emulating the west as the definitive development strategy, but since then they've dared to find their own way, starting with avoiding the warmongering the US succumbed to after 2001.

  • [04-24]: Bad vibes and the Trump betrayal: "Consumer pessimism may stem less from economic fundamentals than from polarization and Trump supporters feeling betrayed by unmet promises." The partisan shift is certainly good for a few points swing, especially in the absence of sensible information. Trump's reliance on magical thinking may also have set unreasonable expectations, at least for the hordes of voters inclined to believe him. But isn't it also possible that the fundamentals measurements that Baker follows and touts don't seem to have a lot of relevance to most people's lives. The unemployment rate hits very hard on its edge, but until you get fired, it doesn't have a lot of impact. The felt impact of wage changes depends on how close it impacts you, at which point it seems to be more personal than macroeconomic. Rising prices have a broader and more immediate impact, so one might feel them without appreciating as much that your own wages have outpaced them. Then there are vibes that are measured very imperfectly, like precarity and enshittification.

  • [04-25]: Trump's ignorance could kill millions: "Trump's apparent disregard for the predictable consequences of striking Iran could drive energy shocks, food crises, and widespread suffering that put millions at risk worldwide."

  • [05-01]: Five bit takeaways from the first quartet GDP report: "The Q1 GDP report shows modest growth masking deeper weaknesses, including fragile demand, rising inflation, declining manufacturing investment, and no sign of an AI-driven productivity boom."

  • [05-08]: The Trump corruption tax on the oil industry: "Perceived insider trading tied to Trump's oil-related announcements could distort futures markets and increase costs across the oil industry." Baker tends to use the word "tax" broadly, to refer to any extraneous cost imposed by an external source, usually but not necessarily a government. Insider trading is an example, as it extracts money from a series of stock trades, leaving everyone else (on average) poorer. Over time, it also undermines trust in the markets, as participating in them opens you up to depredation from people who know things you cannot know. This rot eventually carries over into futures markets. Those where originally set up as a means of risk management. That way you could secure future costs, instead of just waiting to see what happens. That usually cost you a small premium, but reduced the risk that you might get screwed. The problem is, once the market has been tainted by manipulations, no one knows how to set that premium, so the futures market also rots, and risk multiplies.

  • [05-09]: Trump Accounts are a sick joke, not a threat to Social Security: "Trump accounts are unlikely to replace Social Security, offering limited benefits while Republicans simultaneously cut programs many families rely on."

  • [05-11]: Citizens United, Buckley v. Valejo, and media ownership: Turning money into power: "Billionaires maintain political power not just through campaign spending, but through growing control of media and social media platforms." I suppose if you're familiar with William Randolph Hearst, you can't use the word "unprecedented" to describe the way media moguls like Rupert Murdoch, Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos are imposing their politics on the media they own, but in my lifetime at least it's never felt like this much of an imposition. Baker advocates for using defamation suits against right-wing liars. I've gotten to where I hate defamation suits, but he may have a point:

    The Dominion lawsuit against Fox News was an enormous public service. In addition to many damning e-mail exchanges that were revealed in discovery, the $787 million settlement was effectively an admission by Fox that it spread lies about the 2020 election being stolen from Trump.

    One thing I've learned from reading Thomas Geoghegan is that the sue a company is a big equalizer, as you can obtain relevant documents in discovery, and compel them to answer depositions under oath. They still have huge structural advantages in our lopsided "justice" system, but it does even the playing field a bit, making it harder to hide from the truth.

Current Affairs/Nathan J Robinson:

  • Ben Burgis/Matt McManus [04-15]: Steve Pinker doesn't know anything about Marxism: "Bill Gates' favorite writer keeps spewing out lazy clichés about Marxism being a 'disaster' whenever it's 'implemented.' But he's way off-base, and Marx deserves better critics." I think it's a little late in the day to care much whether people give Marxism proper respect, although I will point out that people who do will learn a lot of things that might otherwise escape them. Some time ago, I bought a copy of Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, because I'm sympathetic with its thesis, and I think that our sympathy with and desire for violence has in fact declined over recent centuries. But I never got around to reading the book, or anything else by him. But even if his thesis is valid over the long term, it's hard to deny that there is still a lot of violence in the world, and that there are periods (including the "30 years war of the 20th century" that so disturbed Adorno, and the current period where Netanyahu, Trump, and Putin are on the warpath seems to qualify) where violence has at least temporarily intensified.

  • Nathan J Robinson [04-21]: The Bezos Post editorial page has become a mouthpiece for pro-billionaire propaganda: "Jeff Bezos said The Washington Post would no longer publish opinion pieces critical of free markets. Recent editorials show just how seriously the paper has taken this mandate."

  • Nathan J Robinson [04-23]: In praise of "virtue signaling": "Signaling our convictions to one another is an important part of the push for moral progress." Ok, but not a point I really feel like making. He wants to map "virtue" onto "morality" and "signal" onto "expression," so what he's really defending is expressing your views of morality. The reason they call it "virtue signaling" is that they don't want to talk about morality; they want to talk about the superior airs you seem to be taking on when you assert that your moral views are better than theirs. That's almost always a caricature of what's actually going on, but does it really help your case to fight them on their terms?

  • Adam McKay [04-27]: Staring at the pointing hand: "How do we actually get people to pay attention to the crises unfolding around us? As corporate media fails, we need to build a mainstream consensus against fascism and climate collapse."

  • Nathan J Robinson [05-06]: The Democratic establishment can be defeated: "It's not 2016 anymore. We can throw out the party's sclerotic leadership."

  • [05-08]: Why "progress" is a dangerous idea: "In his new book, Samuel Miller McDonald argues that progress is one of humanity's deadliest illusions." Interview with the author of Progress: How One Idea Built Civilization and Now Threatens to Destroy It. I don't particularly get the arguments here, although, sure, focusing on progress skips over a lot of history/pre-history that is interesting and possibly useful, and it's a mistake either to assume that anything new will be better, or that nothing new will ever be lost. I have a narrower political quarrel with people who call themselves "progressives": they are suggesting that change is inevitable, and we need to just go with it. The former may be true, but the latter needs to be mediated by political judgment. And for now, change is happening so fast and thoughtlessly that I wouldn't mind slowing down a bit, and thinking more. I don't know that McDonald and/or Robinson would disagree, but they don't exactly say so.

Jeffrey St Clair:

  • [04-24]: "A picayune detail": Nazi science heads west. An updated chapter from the book Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press.

  • [05-01]: Roaming Charges: Bad citizens: Starts with a section on WHCD "shooter" Cole Allen, suggesting that he didn't shoot, but was shot at (five times) by the Secret Service (who may have hit one of their own).

    + One of the inevitable problems with leading a conspiratorial movement, as Trump has done, is that your paranoid, conspiracy-minded followers will ultimately come to turn those conspiracies against you, as has happened in the Butler, PA shooting and already just a few hours after the shooting (if there was a shooting) in the hallway of the Washington Hilton . . .

    + Pete Hegseth: "The one institution that should win the Nobel Peace Prize every single year is the United States military."

    + Financial Times: "The number of white-collar prosecutions in the US has fallen to its lowest level in at least 40 years, leaving many white-collar criminal defence lawyers facing a major problem: they have nothing to do." Grift, graft and greed are good again!

  • [05-08]: Roaming Charges: Pity, the poor billionaire: Ted Turner, Steve Roth a piece by Kyle Smith called "Billionaires Rock" ("We ought o build statues of them, not chase them from state to state").

    + According to the National Association of Realtors, the average age of a first-time home buyer in the US has climbed to a record high of 40. Meanwhile, the average age of a repeat buyer has reached a record high of 62.

    WSJ: More and more people are selling their cars, even though they still owe more money than the car is worth.

    + We keep being told that the US doesn't need foreign oil, yet as this chart from analysts at JPMorgan shows, the spiking gas prices in the USA in response to Trump's Iran war are higher than any region in the world, except Southeast Asia, which is the most dependent on oil from the Persian Gulf States.

    + Trump's top economic advisor Kevin Hassett finding (inventing) the good news about soaring gas prices: "Credit card spending is through the roof. They're spending more on gasoline, but they're spending more on everything else too."

    + Trump: "4 or 5 snipers way up high on buildings killed 42,000 Iranian protesters." (He went on to describe in graphic detail how the snipers, who allegedly killed 10,000 protesters apiece, aimed at people's heads, which then exploded, making these gruesome remarks in front of pre-teen children.)

    + In April, the level of atmospheric hit a new record high, averaging carbon dioxide detected in the atmosphere, averaging about 431 parts per million (ppm).

    + Dr. Tyler Evans on the hantavirus outbreak aboard the cruise ship MV Hondius:

    There is a pattern that has repeated across every major outbreak I have worked on, from HIV in sub-Saharan Africa to COVID-19 in New York City. The acute event commands attention. The structural lesson does not. Cruise ships, whether they carry six thousand passengers or one hundred fifty, are mobile communities that move pathogens across borders faster than any public health system can track them.

    + I don't know what kind of people enjoy going on these floating Petri dishes after outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease, Norovirus, Covid and now Hantavirus . . . but they should all be nominated as a class for the Darwin Awards.

    + Of course, the Trump/RFK, Jr. CDC wasn't just MIA, it was gone, baby, gone, as in eliminated.

    Jonathan Reiner: Last year half of CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program staff were fired. This is the group responsible for investigating cruise ship outbreaks. The cuts were made despite the fact that US taxpayers don't pay for this team. The cruise ship industry does.

    Under his "Booked Up" section, I was pleased to see John Berger: The Moment of Cubism and Other Essays. Originally published in 1969, it is one of the most brilliant books I've ever read. I could also say that about his 1972 Ways of Seeing, which I think is different from the also newly reprinted 1960 book, Permanent Red: Essays in Seeing. I also recall reading The Success and Failure of Picasso (1965) and Art and Revolution: Ernst Niezvestny and the Role of the Artist in the USSR (1969).

  • [05-12]: A force for a livable planet: Mitchel Cohen's unwavering sense of direction.

TomDispatch:

  • Tom Engelhardt [04-21]: "You dirty ORANGE maniac! You blew it all up! Damn you to hell!": The editor appears to be blowing a gasket, but actually just scraped this title off a No King's Day protest sign. This makes me wonder what a truly unhinged screed against Trump might look like. I'm reluctant to guess, but it shouldn't stop mid-way to lament, "And the worst thing is that I feel I've written all of this before." Indeed, he has, especially the seemingly inevitable recycle of "he's also launched another brutally losing war against Planet Earth." Whenever I read something like that, I can only sigh, "Planet Earth is going to cope with whatever we throw at it (or dump onto it). It's what we're doing to ourselves that we should be worried about.

  • Alfred McCoy [4-23]: Military disasters and the end of empire: Writes about "what modern historians now call 'micro-militarism,'" which Google AI defines as "the tendency of declining imperial powers to launch small-scale, often ill-fated military interventions to project strength and regain fading glory, which often accelerates their decline." And citing TomDispatch, is "often driven by emotional, irrational responses from leaders, not strategic necessity." I wasn't familiar with the term, so had to look it up. I don't much care for the term, nor for any explanation of modern events that harkens back to ancient Greece for examples. Current cases remind me of Trilling's decay of conservative thought into mere "irritable mental gestures." It matters little whether they lead to loss of power or merely reflect the fear that power has already been lost.

    • Michael Schwalbe [2012-11-26]: Micro Militarism: Examples here include "patriotic displays at sporting events, such as flyovers and national anthem singing, as a form of cultural militarism that discourages debate on war policy," and "celebrating military personnel in media, normalizing war-making as an integral part of national identity."

  • William D Hartung [04-26]: Shutting down the war machine: Co-author of The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home, which Trump and Hegseth now want to give an extra $500 million to (beyond the $200 million "supplemental" they want for Iran?). It's tempting to fixate on the insane waste in this spending, but worse still is the off chance that someone in charge might be stupid enough to think they can actually use this military (especially now that someone has, so we're no longer talking hypotheticals).

  • Andrea Mazzarino [04-28]: The trauma and the terror among us, or "The global war on terror's journey home: the collective trauma of America's twenty-first century wars."

  • William deBuys [04-30]: The border wall thrives, the borderlands don't.

  • Tom Engelhardt [05-03]: A world in Trumple deep "(And we are all his apprentices now)": Another tirade, self-conscious enough to forgo "section titles for a simple reason. It's all about Donald J. Trump and when it comes to him, in this strange world of ours, no one ever really gets a break." As usual, this winds up with Trump making "climate-change denial seem like a far too mild term."

  • Karen Greenberg [05-10]: Trumpland is a man's world.

  • Juan Cole [05-12]: The Strait of Hormuz oil crisis of 2026 is the biggest ever.

Miscellaneous Pieces

The following articles, on subjects that don't really fit anywhere above, are more/less in order published.

Jelani Cobb [05-04]: Two hundred and fifty years of complicated commemorations: "Donald Trump's aversion to admitting fault suggests that we will not likely see events that grapple with the nuanced nature of the nation's history this July 4th." Or any time. I am in no way looking forward to any 250th anniversary celebrations. I expect that each of them, with or without Trump, will only heighten my disgust with what this nation has become.

Kenny Torrella [05-06]: The backlash to Billie Eilish's vegan comments explains a lot about the American left (and everyone else): I hated this title even before I had any idea what Eilish's comments were. Why should anyone on the left care what Eilish or anyone else eats? Being left has nothing to do with what one eats, or what anyone else eats. The only real question is whether to treat all people the equally. If you think so, you're on the left. Conversely, you're on the right if you think there should be some kind of hierarchy, where some people receive preferable treatment over others. Whether you eat is affected by the left-right balance, but what you eat is up to you. Most people like to eat some meat (at least when given the option), but some don't, and some of those claim their rejection of meat and animal products is some kind of virtue. I disagree, but when those same people are antiwar, egalitarian and/or altruistic, I'm happy for them, and don't mind their idiosyncrasy, as long as they don't become too imperious about it. As a leftist, I feel it is important to respect other people's preferences. Attacking people who eat meat is bad politics, and bad manners. Putting the welfare of animals over people is another non-starter, especially given how far we still are from ending the mistreatment of people.

I'm even more bothered by the subhed: "Why are American leftists so reluctant to confront the meat industry?" Why is the author so eager to attack the left? And drive a wedge between them and the meat-eating majority? Actually, Vox has gone out of their way to focus on trashing the meat industry (Torrella's byline notes his "focus on animal welfare and the future of meat"; by the way, Current Affairs is also obsessed with meat, which I think undermines the rest of their agenda). I'm not saying the meat industry should be beyond reproach: it's big, competitive, runs on thin margins, and like all businesses is tempted to cut corners. But it also manages to keep extraordinary numbers of people living "high on the hog" (or whatever your preferred cut is). I understand most of the anti-meat arguments, but the only solutions are higher prices and scarcity, and whoever imposes that isn't going to be very popular.

As for Eilish, my main complaint is I don't understand what "loving all animals" means. It's more complicated than that.

Mike Masnick [05-06]: Matt Taibbi loses his vexatious SLAPP suit as judge explains what a 'metaphor' means. Taibbi had sued Eoin Higgins, author of Owned: How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left for "defamation" (aka, reporting).

Books: Reviews, although there are more books scattered above.

  • Kohei Saito [02-11]: The enclosure of all: "How capitalism transformed the natural world." Review of Alyssa Battistoni: Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature.

    This past fall, the Liberal Democratic Party's Sanae Takaichi, who had long been regarded as an outlier on the party's right flank, became the country's first female prime minister. . . .

    Part of Takaichi's rise was fueled by heat. After the rainy season ended unusually early in much of Japan, the country saw a third straight year of record-breaking temperatures as the global average increase approaches the 1.5°C target set by the Paris Agreement. Rice yields plummeted, and the resulting "rice shock" deepened public anxiety in an already inflationary economy and forced the government to release its emergency grain reserves for the first time.

    Out of this economic and ecological turmoil came a right-wing-populist turn. Enraged at the Ishiba administration's tepid response, many voters turned to Sanseito (the "Do-It-Yourself Party"), whose platform combined promises of food self-sufficiency and support for organic farming with a rhetoric of "Japanese First." Over time, its mix of nationalism, conspiracy politics, and environmental populism curdled further into xenophobia and opposition to climate action, taking the form of attacks on immigrants, renewable energy, and vaccines. To win back the many defectors to Sanseito, the Liberal Democratic Party swerved ever more to the right and elevated Takaichi to power.

    Sound familiar? From Donald Trump in the United States and Javier Milei in Argentina to the far-right resurgence in many parts of Europe, the pattern is unmistakable: The convergence of ecological disaster, resource scarcity, a flagging and disoriented liberalism, and climate-driven displacement leads to an authoritarian turn.

  • Nancy Folbre [04-17]: What, exactly, is a fair wage?: "Arindrajit Dube brilliantly dissects how wages really are set — but overlooks the particular hurdles that care workers face." Review of the book, The Wage Standard: What's Wrong in the Labor Market and How to Fix It.

  • Corey Robin [05-11]: The long revolution: "Will capitalism last forever?" Review of Sven Beckert: Capitalism: A Global History, a book which goes way back (1150) and ranges wide (starts with the merchants of Aden). While the historical sprawl is probably the most interesting aspect of the book — having recently read Hobsbawm's quartet, Cassidy's Capitalism and Its Credits, and into Acemoglu & Johnson's Power and Progress, I'm pretty familiar with the usual turf — but the tendency to be all-inclusive risks blurring what is most peculiar about capitalism: the unique power accorded to owners. If all factories (or for that matter all trade) are capitalism, is any future alternative possible? [PS: Elsewhere Robin describes the book as "poorly conceived and terribly written." He's less clear on that here, or maybe just more diplomatic, or just chooses to focus on the facts at issue?]

Obituaries: I had been using the New York Times, but they're giving me aggravation these days, so I'll switch over to Wikipedia (May, also April), which is probably better anyway. Roughly speaking, since my last report on April 15:

  • [04-15]: Barbara Carr (85): Soul/blues singer. Name sounds familiar, but nothing in my database. [PS: Added The Best of Barbara Carr, which covers 1997-2001, B+(***).]

  • [04-15]: Robert Skidelsky (86): British historian/economist, wrote a major biography of Keynes. I read his 2009 Keynes: The Return of the Master, which convinced me of his continuing relevance and value. I also read his later How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life, which is a question few economists ask.

  • [04-19]: Desmond Morris (98): English zoologist, The Naked Ape was a big bestseller in 1967. My impression is that the book hasn't aged well.

  • [04-19]: Dave Mason (79): English singer-songwriter, started in Traffic, had a solo career of some note in the 1970s.

  • [04-22]: Michael Tilson Thomas (81): Classical music conductor, composer.

  • [04-23]: Nicole Hollander (86): Cartoonist (Sylvia).

  • [04-24]: Donald Riegle (88): Michigan politician, elected 1966 to House as a Republican, opposed Vietnam War, switched parties in 1973 and served in Senate 1976-1995.

  • [04-24]: Tony Wilson (89): Trinidadian musician, member of Hot Chocolate (first two albums), I liked his 1976 solo album I Like Your Style.

  • [04-29]: David Allan Coe (86): American country singer ("Take This Job and Shove It").

  • [05-02]: Bob Skinner (94): baseball player (1954-66), two all-star games, manager.

  • [05-06]: Ted Turner (87): Rich guy, inherited a billboard business, bought a TV station in Atlanta (WTBS), expanded it into Turner Broadcasting System, founder of CNN (and other cable networks), sold out to Time Warner (which he became largest shareholder in; he supported their AOL merger, regretted it later, losing a lot of money), owner of Atlanta Braves, married Jane Fonda (1991-2001), raced yachts, owns multiple ranches (about 2 million acres), signed a pledge to give away most of his money on death.

  • [05-09]: Bobby Cox (84): Baseball, short career as a third baseman (1968-69), long career as a manager with Atlanta, Toronto, and Atlanta again (1978-85, 1990-2010).

  • [05-09]: Craig Morton (83): Football, quarterback for Dallas and Denver.

  • [05-10]: Abraham Foxman (86): head of Anti-Defamation League (1987-2015), an organization set up to patrol against anti-semitism, but which has reduced its scope to attacking any criticism of Israel as anti-semitism.

  • [05-12]: Rex Reed (87): Film critic.

Current count: 331 links, 23402 words (28446 total)

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Monday, May 4, 2026

Music Week

May archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 45881 [45850] rated (+31), 14 [10] unrated (-4).

Finally back to Monday for Music Week. I had other stuff in mind when I woke up today, but after realizing how worn down I felt, I figured the minimum I could still do was to bag this and get it off the checklist. Still, it will probably take all day before I finish the post and update the website. I'm so far behind I need to pace myself.

Or so I thought. I ran the cutover on Monday, but then I went to work on a Substack post, and didn't get that up until Tuesday evening. I wanted to note all my recent writing here, so keeping this in sync made sense. Let me explain, from most recent first, working my way back:

  1. The Real Road to Serfdom: "Extraction, Resentment, Trump." A brief comment on a section of Tim Wu's book, The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity (pp. 122-124). He lays out five steps or stages, moving from economic concentration (monopoly) to strongman dictatorship (Trump). My first thought was that it's not that linear, and the sequence doesn't necessarily follow, but it makes more sense if you allow overlap and feedback (e.g., democratic failure allows more monopoly and extraction, which adds to the democratic failure). Also, Trump is a close enough strongman to make this sequence historical, and not just theory. This piece is also archived here.

  2. Lookback: Iraq 2003: "From day of infamy to one fleeting 'feel good' moment." While thinking about Trump's 2026 war with Iran, I recalled what I had written about Bush's 2003 war with Iraq, and thought it might be worth a revisit. I pulled that post out of my notebook, plus a couple more quotes — earlier, when I first noted the war plans, and later, when Baghdad fell and the Saddam Hussein statue was toppled (an event I designated the "feel good" day of the war; I contrasted that with the longer but still brief period of triumphalism when the major cities of Afghanistan fell in 2001). This piece is also archived here.

  3. On May 1, I wrote answers to two reader questions. The first had to do with "what motivates you to write to the extent that you do, for free no less?" I attribute this to two things: one has to do with my upbringing, where I find similar behavior in my siblings, and for that matter in my parents; the other had to do with my economic fortune, which isn't great, but suffices to allow me to do what I do. (I didn't go into the matter of how much potential income I'm sacrificing by not pressing the point. I suppose I can't know for sure, but I seriously doubt I'm giving up on much.)

    The second question is about blues and jazz books. I don't have much to offer, in that my own reading has been pretty stunted since 2001 (although I mention some new books on the shelf). I have, of course, read quite a bit online, but my proper book reading has tended toward my political and philosophical interests, whereas what I read about music is mostly just prospecting.

  4. I answered another question on April 29, about "what is it like to live in tornado alley?" More family history there.

  5. I can refer you to a Facebook post from April 30, which gives you a glimpse of my current office space. I was inspired to take this after I couldn't find a promo album. Let's see if I can link to the photo:

    This post got 43 likes and 12 comments (probably records for me, as the last time I checked, my previous Facebook post had something like 19 views). I'll note that I mostly work on the computer on the right (unseen, under the desk), rather than the newer/more powerful computer on the left (both are home-built Linux boxes). Much more stuff on the floor, unseen this side of the chair. While the shelves have long been like this (and there are many more similar ones in every other room in the house, I do occasionally clear the desks off, and most of what's lying loose on the floor isn't meant to be permanent. Although it is convenient to keep the travel cases out on the left desk, as that's the easiest place to look for a favorite oldie.

  6. I published another Substack post back on April 27, called Explaining Inflation. For it, I took a definition from "Explain It Daily" and tried to show how price increases aren't always the result of inflation: sometimes they're plain old-fashioned price gouging, especially when companies have monopoly power. I want to show that calling price gouging "inflation" is not only wrong, it implies that someone/something other than the culprits are responsible for price rises, and it further suggests that the solution for higher prices is to reduce the money supply, which is to say to promote recession. This makes no more sense than bleeding did in 19th century medicine. Come to think of it, the similarities should be unsettling.

I'm trying to write more, and quicker, on Substack. Some of this is just pushing ideas out that I've been developing all along in my journals and places like Loose Tabs. Would be nice to get more subscribers there, although I really treasure the ones I already have. Laura suggested today that instead of holding back all of my Loose Tabs drafts, I should dump them out as I go. (I've recently discovered that Jeffrey St. Clair's Roaming Charges columns are basically compilations of his Facebook posts, as I've started to follow him.) I've set up my Facebook account to allow Followers as well as Friends. Evidently, everyone who's sent me an unrequited Friend request has been dumped into the Followers list, which helps explain why the office mess photo got more circulation. (Maybe that it had a photo helped. Perhaps I need an art director?) My original interest in Facebook was because I wanted to stay in touch with certain friends and relatives, and knew they were more likely to post there than to, like, write or phone. So I've generally ignored requests from casual or virtual acquaintances, and I've done very little promotion of my writing there (for that, follow me on Bluesky (or, less reliably, on X), or just use the RSS. Whether knowing I have more followers makes me more likely to post on Facebook remains to be seen.

Of course, there is also a batch of record reviews below. I will note that before I did this week's unpacking, I had hit the bottom of my demo queue. Or at least the tray was empty: I have two more titles in the pending list that I don't seem to have CDs for. Could be elsewhere on the desk, or in another bin.

While I doubt I'll ever be classified as neat, I do intend to get a bit better organized in coming weeks. I've set up a couple of files in the "pile" for books and CDs I want to get rid of. That's the first step to moving them out. The first book to get the axe was called PostgreSQL Developer's Manual. The book dates from 2002, at which point PostgreSQL had several "advanced" features that MySQL lacked, and was favored for certain website development packages, but I never wound up using it. The first wave will mostly be tech books, as lots of them are clearly expendable. So they'll go into the file, then to the kiosk, then eventually out the door. As space opens on the shelves, I should at least be able to get stuff off the floor. I don't have the "out the door" part figured out yet, but one option is the recycle bin.

I should report that we got the carport railing up last week. We took it down before the roof work, so it's been 4-5 months. I still need to get the mini-split hooked up. Supposedly that will happen this week. I may call the attic work done for the season. While it was pretty cool today, I spent the day on other errands, and writing. Crawling around the attic is getting pretty painful for me, and it's not like I ever do anything up there other than work, so it will be out of sight, out of mind, with only the extra lumber in the garage to remind me of unfinished work.

Good chance I'll hold up next Music Week for a Loose Tabs. I have about 12,000 words in the draft file, which is more than enough to post, even if it's nowhere near complete. I'm not at all clear where the Iran war stands right now, which doesn't necessarily make me less informed than Trump. My idea of writing a piece on what should be a reasonable solution has fallen by the wayside, for lack of reasonable people, in Washington for sure, maybe also in Tehran and elsewhere.

New records reviewed this week:

Atmosphere: Jestures (2025, Rhymesayers Entertainment): Hip-hop duo from Minneapolis, rapper Slug (Sean Daley) and producer ANT (Anthony Davis), debut 1997, many albums, most very good. More consistently interesting than most, runs long (26 songs, 71 minutes) and gets stronger along the way. A- [sp]

MC Paul Barman & Kenny Segal: Antinomian Pandemonium (2026, Fused Arrow): Rapper from New Jersey, debut an EP in 2000 (It's Very Stimulating), only his fifth album, producer has long worked in similar circles. Seems to have slowed down a bit. B+(**) [bc]

Black Nile: Indigo Garden (2026, Hen House Studios): Los Angeles jazz fusion group, principally Aaron Shaw (sax) and Lawrence Shaw (bass), with keys (Luca Mendoza) and drums (Myles Martin), seems to be their fourth album since 2019 (but none on Discogs). B+(**) [bc]

Ryan Blotnick: The Woods (2024 [2026], Fishkill): Guitarist, fourth album since 2007, quartet with Tyler G. Wood (piano/organ), Adam Chilenski (bass), and Otto Hauser (drums). Some nice stuff scattered about here, but more often when it breaks with the sweet guitar than when running with it. B+(**) [dl]

Bobby Broom: Notes of Thanks (2025 [2026], Steele): Guitarist, originally from New York, based in Chicago, has at least 15 albums since 1981, 4 Deep Blue Organ Trio albums, many side credits, including with Dr. John and Sonny Rollins. Trio here, with Dennis Carroll (bass) and Kobie Watkins (drums), playing nine Rollins songs (plus one by Carroll). [Received CD, but unplayable.] B+(*) [sp]

Garret T. Capps: I Still Love San Antone (2026, Nudie): Country singer-songwriter, has several previous albums, including 2021's I Love San Antone, turns up the Tex-Mex when Joe King Carrasco and Augie Meyers drop in, before swinging into Bob Wills. B+(***) [bc]

Jessye DeSilva: Glitter Up the Dark (2024 [2026], Nine Athens): Singer-songwriter from Boston, plays keyboards, several previous albums (one on Discogs), writes songs "about religious alienation, mental health struggles, and societal injustice to create a uniquely queer and unholy ruckus." Some politics, some solid rock guitar. B+(**) [sp]

Richard Gilman-Opalsky: A Fierce and Gentle Force (2025 [2026], Edgetone): Drummer, has a couple albums, following early groups like Jody Crutch, The Judas Iscariot, Countdown to Putsch, and End Times Trio. This one is solo. Caught me in an agreeable mood. B+(***) [cd]

Ize Trio: Global Prayer (2023-25 [2026], self-released): Names, also on the cover: Chase Morrin (piano), Naseem Alatrash (cello), and George Lernis (percussion), plus a "featuring John Patitucci" (bass). Second group album. B+(**) [cd] [06-12]

Paul Kahn: Willingness (2026, Carl Cat, EP): Singer-songwriter, unless I'm confused, has a previous album from 1999, various production credits as far back as 1977. Six rather breezy songs (24:05), produced with backing vocals by Catherine Russell (also pictured on cover), with some reputable jazz musicians helping out. B- [cd] [06-19]

Kehlani: Kehlani (2026, Atlantic): R&B singer-songwriter, fifth studio album since 2017, first couple certified gold. B+(**) [sp]

Ella Langley: Dandelion (2026, Sawgod/Columbia): Country singer-songwriter from Alabama, second album (after an EP), this one keynoted by a hit single, with a Miranda Lambert duet. B+(***) [sp]

Los Thuthanaka: Wak'a (2026, self-released, EP): Bolivian-American electronica/collage duo, originally Elysia and Joshua Crampton, the former aka Chjuquimamani-Condori, had an eponymous album that placed high on some 2025 EOY lists, return here with a 3-track, 18:27 EP. Considerable noise quotient here, one I'm finding hard to take. B [bc]

Myra Melford/Satoko Fujii: Katarahi (2024 [2026], RogueArt): Duets by two of the avant-garde's world class pianists, b. 1957-58, Melford got a start with a 1990 album that Francis Davis rated a pick hit for his brief Village Voice Consumer Guide, Fujii was a student at New England Conservatory in 1994 when she was introduced to Melford by Paul Bley. They have a previous duo album from 2007. I'm not a big fan of solo, let alone duo, piano, but they are astonishing, which by now is just what you expect. A- [cd] [05-15]

Hedvig Mollestad Weejuns: Bitches Blues (2026, Rune Grammofon): Norwegian guitarist, trio with Ståle Storløkken (keyboards) and Ole Mofjell (drums), group name from a 2023 live album (evidently some slang term for Norwegians). Opens with tough fusion, then relaxes a bit. B+(***) [sp]

The Monochrome Set: Lotus Bridge (2026, Tapete): British group, appeared in the post-punk new wave of 1980, took breaks 1985-90 and 1995-2012, singer Bid Seshadri the only constant member, although Andy Warren (bass) has been around nearly as long, with Athen Aryen (keyboards) and Steve Gilchrist (drums) recent additions. I recall the name but not the sound (I had an LP in my ungraded list). This lacks the edge I associate with the early 1980s, moving it more into Cure-Suede territory. B [sp]

Maisy Owen: Dark on a Sunny Day (2026, Tompkins Square): Folkie singer-songwriter, a Nashville native, plays guitar, viola, bass, and piano, first album, 8 songs, 26:31. B+(*) [sp]

Andreas Røysum Ensemble: With Marvin Tate (2025, Motvind): Norwegian clarinetist, large group (tentet here) has three previous albums, digital was rushed out a week after recording, but LP could qualify as a 2026 new release. Tate is a poet/artist from Chicago, has several albums since 1997, mostly with his D-Settlement group, as well as appearing on albums by Mike Reed and Jaimie Branch. Strong spoken word over delightful music, lost a bit at the end. B+(***) [bc]

Maria Schneider Orchestra: American Crow (2025 [2026], ArtistShare, EP): Big band composer/arranger, a Gil Evans protégé, albums start with Evanescence in 1994, has swept the Jazz Critics Poll three times[*], every album since 2007's Sky Blue. Undoubtedly talented, but I've never warmed to her work — the only occasion where Francis Davis doubted not just my judgment but my sanity. Title piece here was commissioned in 2022 and recorded along with a second piece, totalling 18:37, but here is padded out with an alternate take and some crow vocal samples. [*Her 2015 album was tied for 1st on points, but had fewer votes, which at the time was the tie-breaker; but Davis declared a tie.] B [os]

Serokolo 7: Maramfa Musick Pro (2026, Nyege Nyege Tapes): DJ/producer/sound system operator from Limpopo, in far northeastern South Africa. B+(*) [bc]

Bria Skonberg: Brass (2025 [2026], Cellar Music Group): Trumpet player from Canada, also sings (just the last song), eighth album since 2009, backed by piano (Luther Allison), bass, and drums. B+(**) [sp]

Harry Styles: Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. (2026, Erskine/Columbia): English singer-songwriter, started in boy band One Direction, has by far the biggest solo career of the quintet, fourth chart-topping album. I've never been a fan, but this is fairly agreeable. B+(*) [sp]

Tokischa: Amor & Droga (2026, Warner Latina): Dominican rapper-singer, as a bunch of singles since 2018, seems to be her first album, with ties to rap and reggaeton and who knows what else. B+(***) [sp]

Álvaro Torres Trio: Mairena (2025 [2026], Fresh Sound New Talent): Spanish pianist, based in New York, website has several previous albums, trio with Masa Kamaguchi (bass) and Kresten Osgood (drums), but recorded live in his old home town of Madrid. Five originals, plus a Cole Porter cover. B+(**) [cd]

The Twilight Sad: It's the Long Goodbye (2026, Rock Action): Post-punk band from Scotland, some industrial slag combined with shoegaze guitar fuzz, sixth album since 2007, a 7 year break this time. B+(**) [sp]

Steve Wilson: Enduring Sonance (2025 [2026], Smoke Sessions): Saxophonist (alto/soprano, also flute), has a couple dozen albums since 1992, many more side credits, including big bands (notably Maria Schneider). With Joe Locke (vibes), Renee Rosnes (piano/electric), Jay Anderson (bass), and Kendrick Scott (drums), plus french horn on two tracks. B+(*) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Terry Callier: At the Earl of Old Town (1967 [2025], Time Traveler, 2CD): Singer-songwriter from Chicago (1945-2012), ranges into soul and jazz but mostly figures as folk. Has something of a cult rep, but Christgau dismissed him as "the black Jim Webb, only warmer — and less talented." Live set here at a Chicago folk club, just singer and guitar, predates his 1968 debut album, and is all cover songs, with "Work Song," "The Seventh Son," "Gallows Pole," "and "My Girl Sloopy" the ones I most readily recognize. Seems like a nice night out with a fairly distinctive interpreter. B+(**) [cd]

Antoine Dougbé: Antoine Dougbé Et L'Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou (1977-82 [2026], Analog Africa): I was initially tempted to file this under the Benin band, which already has a substantial database entry (starting in 1973). Dougbé (1947-96), dubbed the Devil's Prime Minister, released three albums in this brief period. A- [bc]

Roy Hargrove: Bern (2000 [2026], Time Traveler): Big-time trumpet player (1969-2002), has had a couple of stellar archival releases recently. Live set from Switzerland, a quintet with Sherman Irby (alto sax), Larry Willis (piano), Gerald Cannon (bass), and Willie Jones III (drums). B+(**) [cd]

Old music:

Ryan Blotnick: Kush (2016, Songlines): Guitarist, third album, mostly quartet with Michael Blake (tenor/soprano sax), Scott Colberg (bass), and RJ Miller (drums), plus guest pedal steel on one track. Blake is often impressive here, and the guitar fills in expertly. A- [sp]

Terry Callier: The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier (1964 [1968], Prestige): Black singer from Chicago ("childhood friend of Curtis Mayfield, Major Lance and Jerry Butler"), learned piano before guitar, started in doo-wop groups, recorded a single for Chess in 1962, moved into folk clubs, had a brief duo with David Crosby. First album, folk/blues covers (mostly trad.), with guitar and bass. Good singer, but not especially interesting music. [The 2018 reissue added a bunch of bonus tracks, but the 2025 remaster dropped them.] B [sp]

The Monochrome Set: Strange Boutique (1980, Dindisc): British group, made some noise in the early post-punk period, caught my attention but didn't sink in enough to make my early ratings database. Singer-songwriter went as Bid, with Lester Square (lead guitar), Andy Warren (bass guitar), and JD Haney (drums). Upbeat stuff has some snap and crunch, but not all that memorable. B+(*) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Dawn Clement: Dear Ms. Dearie (Origin) [05-22]
  • George Cotsirilos: In the Wee Hours (OA2) [05-22]
  • Gabriel Espinosa: The Brazilian Project (Origin) [05-22]
  • David Janeway Trio: Live at Blue LLama (SteepleChase) [05-04]
  • Doug MacDonald: Tribute to South Central (Dmac Music) [06-01]
  • Jennifer Madsen: Girl Talk (SingBaby Productions) [06-26]
  • Andrew Moorhead: Mirage (OA2) [05-22]
  • Sergio Pereira: Colors of Time (Sergio Pereira Music) [05-15]
  • Leigh Pilzer: Keep Holding On (Strange Woman) [06-19]
  • Bobby Sanabria Multiverse Big Band: Arsenio and Beyond: Live at the Bronx Music Hall (Jazzheads) [04-10]
  • Christopher Sánchez: Latin Jazz Meets Opera (Zoho) [05-08]
  • Joe Syrian Motor City Jazz Octet: A Blue Time (Circle 9) [04-24]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, April 28, 2025

Music Week

April archive (done).

Music: Current count 45850 [45803] rated (+47), 10 [20] unrated (-10).

The usual plan is to run Music Week on Mondays (sure, usually very late), regardless of how much or little I've listened to. But sometimes I commit to a different blog post, hoping to get it out before the next Music Week, and I wind up pushing Music Week back. That happened a couple weeks ago, when Loose Tabs ran over to Wednesday, April 15, pushing Music Week back to Thursday, April 16. After that, I figured I'd skip a week, and sync up on Monday, April 27.

I actually wound up considering an April 20 Music Week, but it would have only had 8 albums (mostly multi-CD archival sets. But the moment passed. I had a lot of work to do on the house, and I had the idea of writing a little something on political economics for my Notes on Everyday Life Substack newsletter. While that didn't preclude me from posting on Monday, I spent Monday working on it instead of this. It went out last night, under the title Explaining Inflation. Thus far response has been underwhelming: 1 quick like, 0 comments, 0 new subscribers, $0 (no problem there, since I'm not asking for any). Probably another case of "TL;DR" (3333 words), but also my mass subscription base peaked at 100, and has now slipped back to 99. I'm tempted to declare the venture a big failure, but I like the extra care I've put into the small amount of writing so far, and I recognize a lot of the subscriber names as dear friends, so I expect to slog on.

By the way, everything that goes to Substack also goes into a directory on my website, here.

A big part of my recent writing has focused on the Iran war, which I am of two minds about:

  1. This is the dumbest and/or most senselessly cruel thing Trump has ever done, by a pretty large margin, even though most of what he does falls into those categories.

  2. No other American politician has done so much to expose the political and moral rot that has long resided in the hearts and minds of most Americans (at least the ones that count in our distorted democracy).

My Iran war pieces are here:

Since I wrote the last one, little has changed. Sure, the intensity of bombing and reprisals have tailed off under the guide of ceasefires, but Iran's leaders are confident in their ability to persevere in the long run, while Trump and Netanyahu would rather drag this out than admit failure or even misjudgment. I expected to write a fourth piece, one that would focus on what I think should happen. Diplomacy works best when both sides seek to do the right thing: to find compromise which benefits both sides, while dispensing with claims that don't really benefit anyone. Regarding Iran, the most important outcome is that all sides normalize relations, showing recognition and respect for Iran's sovereignty and security. (A respect which Iran should reciprocate, but that's hard to expect as long as Israel lashes out at other countries while repressing its own people. While decent democratic folk could take exception at how Iran treats its own people, Israelis [and Americans] have no standing to do so until they put their own houses in order.)

The new piece on inflation was based on a definition given by Explain It Daily. That definition is fundamentally, and even somewhat comically, wrong, for reasons I try to explain. Let's see if I can reduce my points to a bare minimum:

  1. The word "inflation" is being used loosely to describe several different things, notably rising consumer prices and looser money. This allows them to perform a palm trick, where your concern over prices leads to their preferred solution (tighter money).

  2. While rising prices can be the result of loose money, in most cases they are decided by greedy businesses based on opportunities based on poor information, weak competition, and exorbitant rents — none of which can be fixed by tighter money.

  3. Tight money works by making people too poor to buy things. When that happens, slack demand can be met with lower prices, but that causes hardships for sellers as well as for buyers.

  4. There are better solutions for high prices, like competition, rent limits, and lesser profits. Also higher wages and more evenly distributed benefits — which is the solution they really want to keep off the table.

This last point aligns nicely with Mamdani's affordability focus. High prices may always be disappointing, but less so if your wages are rising fast enough to meet them. Inflation is often presented as an absolute horror, but like most things involving money, it is an arena with winners and losers. My feeling is that it's good politics to identify which is which, to temper the winners, and to prop up the losers. And it's better politics to do this in a way that creates many more winners then losers, which is possible because most trade-offs aren't simple zero-sum games.

Inflation became a heated political issue in the 2024 election, ineptly handled by Biden and Harris and their economic advisers, who seemed to be more interested in defending their statistical gains than in listening to the complaints of actual voters. Even now, Democratic-leaning economists are still in denial, coining terms like "vibecession" to dismiss voter concerns as confused. I've been reading Cory Doctorow's Enshittification, which offers a much more apt framing of problems that extend well beyond the notorious tech platforms. I have a couple shelves full of similar (if less colorful) books to draw on, as well as a fairly decent grounding in Marx and his friends and enemies. I also have a fair amount of real world experience ranging from typesetting ads to consulting on market strategies and working with financial wheeler-dealers, so I've seen plenty of what goes into the sausage.

I expect to draw on all that experience for future pieces. Maybe we'll figure out just how Trump has enshittified politics. Simply calling him a fascist demands too much prior knowledge on the subject. This at least gets to the point quickly, and doesn't run the risk of normalizing him.

Some progress worth reporting around the house. It's been cool enough that I was able to do a bit of work in the attic, but turns out very little. Good chance I'm going to leave it as is, although it might not be too hard to frame in the next extension of the planking. At least I have a rough plan for as far as I want to go. But rather than push through on that, I decided to get the railing up on the carport. Because the carport roof has a slight slope, I wanted to build a frame (20 feet long, with two 10-foot sides) with pressure-treated 2x6 lumber, which could be propped up on the outside level. We got that done in a big push on Saturday. Not perfect, but good enough. (Some plastic covers aren't tight, and I have a few screws left. One baluster probably has to be removed. But it's all straight, level, and solidly attached. Also moves a lot of clutter out of the house and garage.

Next step is to get the mini-split hooked up again and recharged. That's a job for the contractor, so my role is mostly to nag. Next week or so I expect to finally get started on organizing tools and hardware, weeding out books and CDs, and recycling clothes and such. I got some more storage drawers for the basement to help on that, plus a lot of plastic baskets to move things around. Jigsaw puzzles may be the single biggest item, especially as they don't have the residual library value of books and CDs. Probably pointless to ask for help here, especially as I have little desire to ship things long-distance.

I've been slow transitioning from the carport to these cleanup projects because the former involved a lot of painful crawling around, and I'm needing a few days to recover. That's a drag, but seems to be life these days. Working on the computer is relatively painless, but I've been plagued by keyboard disconnects and video freeze ups lately. I bought a new video board (Radeon RX550) and a Logitech mechanical keyboard, but only plugged them in a couple days ago. Keyboard is rather noisy, and taking some time to get used to, but I think it will be OK.

No writing to speak of on political book or memoir, and no idea when I might restart. I'm thinking of "Did Something Weird Happen in the 2024 Election?" might be scoped down to a Substack post. At least there I can get my basic thesis out. It's that Americans wanted a revolution, but when they got to the polls the only option they were allowed was Trump, so that's what they got. But when I tried to explain this to a friend, I got a counterargument that Trump was/is the revolution (I don't quite remember how that went). Well, yes, no, maybe, certainly not a very good one. I suppose you can say that he did his reign of terror early, then jumped into Napoleon without much Thermidor. Or we could try to figure out what to call the next higher order of Napoleonic farce. But analogies are supposed to inform, not become games in their own right. Or so I thought.

I grew up in a period when it was still possible to see revolutions as implementors of progress, so it's somewhat discomfiting top watch them go awry. But in retrospect, I see more and more of that, to the point where I'm more likely to see a revolution as a gross failure of ancien regime management as opposed to the emerging will of the people and their drive for equality, freedom, and justice. I don't wish to deny Trump agency, but a lot of what elevated him was the failures of both parties not to oppose him but to do their fucking jobs and run the country in a decent and responsible manner. They couldn't do this, not because they were evil or even stupid, but because they found it expeditious to believe a lot of crap that simply was untrue. (See my inflation post for one prime example. The Iran war pieces at least point to a couple more.) I know I'm tilting at windmills here, but from where I sit, it all seems so perfectly clear.

Still, it's damn hard to write about it, and I'm running out of time and patience. I'm thinking about shifting direction and doing some long-neglected website work. I'm also thinking about running a mid-year jazz critics poll, even though I'm far from ready to commit to the end-of-year poll. These are stopgaps, because I'm not quite ready to do nothing at all. But I seem to be headed in that direction.

Meanwhile, my first short-week's 8 albums have grown to 47 here. No real guiding principles behind what I wound up listening to. Obviously, the [cd] entries were promos, with the archival music collections timed for Record Store Day. The Gil Scott-Heron was a reader suggestion. I get so few of them I'll probably follow up if I can find something to stream. I will say that I played Anthony Joseph shortly after that, and thought it fit the same niche, but with even better music. I have another question pending, on tornados, so I'll try to get to that next week.

New records reviewed this week:

Paulo Almeida: Love in Motion (2025 [2026], Dox): Brazilian drummer, also sings, sixth studio album, with Lorenzzo Vitolo (piano, synths), Josh Schofield (alto/soprano sax), Joan Codina (bass), plus vibes (Jorge Rossy) on one track, vocals (Lisette Spinnler) on another. Nice groove, vocals hit/miss. B+(**) [cd]

Angine De Poitrine: Vol. II (2026, Spectacles Bonzaï): Instrumental rock duo, from Chicoutimi in Quebec (I've been there, and think of it as far enough off the beaten path to be the Duluth of Canada), appear on stage with masks, one playing microtonal guitar, the other drums. B+(***) [sp]

Teller Bank$: Hate Island (2026, $357ENT): Underground rapper from Des Moines, half-dozen self-released albums since 2019, gave his label a name here. Interesting vibe here, but the pleasures aren't unequivocal. B+(**) [sp]

Abate Berihun & the Addis Ken Project: Addis Ken (2021 [2026], Origin): Ethiopian singer/saxophonist, immigrated to Israel, picked up a band including Roy Mor (piano), David Michaeli (bass), and Nitzan Birnbaum (drums), with two guest vocals by Rudi Bainesay. B+(*) [cd]

Yaya Bey: Fidelity (2026, Drink Sum Wtr): Neo-soul singer-songwriter from New York, seventh album since 2016. B+(***) [sp]

Julie Campiche [Solo]: Unspoken (2024 [2026], Ronin Rhythm): Swiss harpist, looks like she has several previous albums (but not in Discogs), this one billed as "Solo" (but with sampled voices and electronics, plus bass on 4 of 8 tracks; one track features a Spanish poem by Las Patronas (a group of Mexican women who help migrants to the US) accompanied by drum and shruti. B+(***) [sp]

Dälek: Brilliance of a Falling Moon (2026, Ipecac): Newark-based experimental hip-hop group, principally Will Brooks (MC Dälek), six albums 1998-2010, returned in 2016 with producer Mike Manteca (Mike Mare), fourth album together. Some interesting industrial undertow. B+(***) [sp]

Damana: Rhizome (2023 [2025], Umulius): Octet led by Norwegian drummer Dag Magnus Narvesen, released a good album on Clean Feed in 2016, group with three saxophones, trumpet, trombone, piano, and bass. B+(**) [bc]

Marie-Paule Franke: Through the Cracks, the Light Is Born (2026, MariPosa): Jazz singer-songwriter, born in Germany, raised in Belgium, seems to be her first album, with a "New York-based quartet." First song is a tribute to Joni Mitchell. Cabaret touches, nice saxophone, a closer in French I particularly like. B+(***) [cd] [06-26]

Fuerza Regida: 111xpantia (2025, Rancho Humilde/Street Mob/Sony Music Latin): Described as "an American regional Mexican band formed in San Bernardino," ninth album since 2019, evidently very popular (Spotify credits then with 45 million streams/month). B+(**) [sp]

Barry Greene: Giants (2025 [2026], Origin): Guitarist, recently retired from a long career teaching at the University of North Florida, has several albums, and books and videos on jazz guitar. Half trio with Pat Bianchi (organ) and Ulysses Owens Jr. (drums); half quintet with David Kikoski (piano), Steve Nelson (vibes), Marco anascia (bass), and Owens; with one original and covers mostly from the guitarists who inspired his title (Wes Montgomery, Grant Greene, Pat Martino, Pat Metheny, Russell Malone). B+(*) [cd]

Jared Hall: Hometown (2023 [2026], Origin): Trumpet player, based in Seattle, has a couple previous albums (including a Rick Margitza tribute), post-hard-bop quintet with Troy Roberts (tenor sax), Ben Markley (piano), bass, and drums. B+(**) [cd]

Phil Haynes/Ben Monder/Peyton Pleninger: Terra (2025 [2026], Corner Store Jazz): Drummer, originally from Oregon, moved to New York, was part of Joint Venture in 1987 (with Ellery Eskelin, Drew Gress, and Paul Smoker) and settled into their nook of the avant-garde, while maintaining his feeling for the "old, weird America" (not sure who coined that phrase, but you probably know what I mean). Trio with guitar and saxophone: Monder is well known, and coming off a duo with Haynes. Pleninger isn't, with just two credits on Discogs (one with Henry Threadgill). Engages gradually, but engages before the final fade. B+(***) [cd] [05-01]

IDK: E.T.D.S. A Mixtape by .IDK. (2026, Rhymesayers Entertainment): Rapper Jason Mills, born in London, parents from Sierra Leone and Ghana, grew up in Maryland, first mixtape in 2014, five albums since 2019, fifth mixtape (some as Jay IDK, I've seen this attributed both ways). Acronym stands for Even the Devil Smiles. Thematically works through a 15-year prison sentence he entered at 17 (3 years actually served). Not gangsta, but hard knocks. B+(***) [sp]

Kathy Ingraham: Jazz Dreams (2026, Peirdon): Singer, half-dozen albums since 2014, wrote two songs here, the rest rock era (roughly 1964-74) standards: "Dream On," "House of the Rising Sun," "Ruby Tuesday," "Eli's Coming," "Stairway to Heaven." Arranged by Pete Levin (piano/strings/bass), features called out for Randy Brecker (flugelhorn), Evan Christopher (clarinet), Elliott Randall (guitar), and William Galison (harmonica). B+(*) [cd]

Anthony Joseph: The Ark (2026, Heavenly Sweetness): Spoken word artist from Trinidad, based in England, honed his craft writing poetry and novels, half-dozen albums since 2013 (per Discogs; Wikipedia goes back to 2007), a striking lyricist but I'm even more impressed with the music. A- [sp]

Kesha: . [Period] (2025, Kesha): Dance-pop singer-songwriter, sixth album since 2010, her debut album a big hit, subsequent records never much impressed me, which may be why I didn't bother with this one. Or maybe the title escaped me, until someone translated . to Period — I've actually been listening to a version with three dots, which Spotify calls . (...), but which is the core album plus some not entirely redundant remixes. Or it just didn't garner the rep (AOTY 64/15), but I'm hearing a solid sequence of singles. A- [sp]

Jason Kruk: Beyond the Veil (2026, SunGoose): Drummer, has at least one previous album, this one leans fusion, with two guitarists (Wayne Krantz, on 2 songs, and Adam Rogers, on 4), Fima Ephron (bass, 6 songs), and "members of Snarky Puppy" — aside from Michael League (bass) and Bob Lanzetti (guitar) I'm not sure how (or why?) they figure that, as the others on the songs with them (5 of 11) are Art Hirahara (piano) and Brian Donohue (tenor sax). B [cd] [05-01]

Joachim Kühn: Joachim Kühn & Young Lions (2025 [2026], ACT Music): German pianist, debut 1967, 81 when he recorded this, with four younger players I don't recognize: Jakob Bänsch (trumpet), Andrés Coll (marimba), Nils Kugelmann (bass), and Sebatian Wolfgruber (drums), playing new (and quite tricky) pieces by Kühn. Some exceptional music, with the trumpet player a major find. A- [sp]

M.I.A.: M.I.7 (2026, Ohmni): Maya Arulpragasam, born in London, parents Tamils from Sri Lanka, moved back there from 6 months, where her father was active in a civil war, before she returned to England at age 11. Seventh album since 2005, from a time when she partnered with Diplo (2003-08), producing a very infectious funk-rap hybrid. Has had a tumultuous life, including a relationship with one of the Bronfman heirs (2008-12), and a set of political pronouncements that are fiercely heterodox, including endorsements of Corbyn and Trump (following RFK Jr., after she had become one of the world's most vocal anti-vaxxers). Parents were Hindu, but she attended a Catholic school in Sri Lanka, and declared herself a born-again Christian in 2017. This album is "structured around the seven Trumpets of Revelation," and is being treated as Christian rock/rap, although the gospel tinges are minor, the beats uniquely her own, and the narration, well, not something I particulary notice (or mind). B+(***) [sp]

Mammal Hands: Circadia (2025 [2026], ACT Music): British jazz trio, half-dozen albums since 2014, with Jordan Smart (sax), Nick Smart (piano), and Rob Turner (drums). Easy listening jazz with hints of more. B+(*) [sp]

Liudas Mockūnas/Samuel Blaser/Marc Ducret: Twisted Summer (2023 [2026], Jersika): Lithuanian avant-saxophonist (soprano/tenor/bass sax, also clarinet), trio with trombone and guitar. B+(**) [sp]

Ashley Monroe: Dear Nashville (2026, Mountainrose Sparrow): Country singer-songwriter, seventh solo album, the first previewed in 2006 but not released until 2009 (and then only digital), but got more notice for four albums in Pistol Annies. Theme is about the many ways Nashville screws you over. B+(*) [sp]

The Outskirts: Orbital (2025 [2026], Aerophonic, 2CD): Trio of Dave Rempis (alto/tenor sax), Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (bass), and Frank Rosaly (drums), active in Chicago when the Norwegian bassist live there (2005-08), belatedly released a 2009 live album ("a barely usable rough mix") in 2020, but regrouped here for a couple of live dates in Europe: one in Padova on the first disc (74:41), and one a week earlier in Antwerp on the second (69:45), joined by pianist Marta Warelis. (I filed the old album under Rosaly's name, but Rempis claims all the compositions here.) Rempis is terrific, as usual. Warelis isn't necessary, but a plus. A- [dl]

Praed: Al Wahem (2026, Ruptured/Annihaya): Duo of Raed Yassin (keyboards, electronics, vocals, from Lebanon) and Paed Conca (clarinet, electric bass, electronics, from Switzerland), seventh album since 2008 (plus two albums as Praed Orchestra). B+(**) [sp]

Shalosh: What We Are Made Of (2025 [2026], ACT Music): Israeli piano trio: Gadi Stern (piano), David Michaeli (bass), Matan Assayag (drums). Six previous albums back to 2015. Some nice passages, some a bit overwrought. B [sp]

Jae Skeese & ILL Tone Beats: The Good Part, Vol. 1 (2026, Griselda): Buffalo rapper, busy since 2020, producer also from Buffalo, associated with Black Soprano Family, they did a single together in 2024. B+(**) [sp]

Peter Somuah: Walking Distance (2025 [2026], ACT Music): Trumpet player from Ghana, based in Rotterdam, has a couple previous albums (one called Highlife, which wasn't all that deeply rooted in its namesake music). This one doesn't totally dispense with eclectic exotica, but works as contemporary European postbop, with keyboards (Anton de Bruin), bass (Marijn van de Ven), drums (Jens Meijer), extra percussion (Danny Rombout), and spots of guest cello and flute. Still, this is a very nice example. I'd be curious what big fans of Ambrose Akinmusire make of it, since to my ears they are very similar. B+(***) [sp]

Station Model Violence: Station Model Violence (2026, Anti Fade): Australian post-punk group, first album, Bandcamp page starts by talking about Iggy Pop listening to Neu's "pastoral psychedelicism," which may be what they're aiming for (as opposed to the more obvious Wire gestalt). B+(*) [bc]

Taroug: Chott (2026, Denovali): Tunisian electronic producer, grew up in Germany, second album, some vocal content, some interest, not both at the same time. B+(*) [sp]

Katelyn Tarver: Tell Me How You Really Feel (2026, Nettwerk): Pop singer, from Georgia, probably songwriter, appeared as a teenager on American Juniors (2003), released an album in 2005 (at 16), did a fair amount of TV acting since 2010, third album since 2021, could pass for country but doesn't make a point of it. B+(**) [sp]

They Might Be Giants: The World Is to Dig (2026, Idlewild): Witty guys, John Linnell and John Flansburgh, released an eponymous album (group named after a cult fave movie) in 1986 that was easily my year-topper, but my interest waned fairly quickly after that, long before this 24th studio album. Which only really caught my attention mid-way through with their cover of "Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)" (written by Eric Carmen for Raspberries in 1974, the single from one of the year's best albums, Starting Over). The next songs registered stronger, which got me to replay the whole thing, paying more attention. It wasn't unrewarded. B+(**) [sp]

Viktoria Tolstoy & Jacob Karlzon: Who We Are (2025 [2026], ACT Music): Swedish jazz singer, adopted the surname of the Russian novelist, a great-great-grandfather. Fifteen albums since 1994. Has a previous (2013) album with the Swedish pianist, who has a similar number of albums since 1997, and who wrote all of the songs here (aside from the Radiohead cover). Choice cut: "Trigger Warning." B+(**) [sp]

Jessie Ware: Superbloom (2026, EMI): British pop singer-songwriter, sixth album since 2012, Barney Lister the most frequent co-writer/producer. Has some disco glitz. B+(*) [sp]

What You May Call It: Da Qi (2024 [2026], MechaBenzaiten): Quartet of Chris Kelsey (soprano/tenor sax, stritch), Rose Tang (guitar, vocals), Steve Holtje (keyboards, trombone), and Charles Downs (drums). Kelsey I recall as a jazz critic who did some records on CIMP that were long in my shopping list but hard to find. Holtje I know as ESP-Disk's publicist. Downs has a long and distinguished discography with Billy Bang, Cecil Taylor, William Parker, Jemeel Moondoc, etc., but mostly as Rashid Bakr. They make for some powerfully interesting music, but Tang's vocals — an acquired taste, quite possibly — disincline me from playing this again. B+(**) [cd] [05-08]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Angine De Poitrine: Vol. 1 (2024 [2026], Spectacles Bonzaï): First album, first self-released in 2024, then picked up by Les Cassettes Magiques, and now reissued by their Vol. II label. Six songs, 32:54. B+(***) [sp]

Joe Henderson: Consonance: Live at the Jazz Showcase (1978 [2026], Resonance, 2CD): Tenor saxophonist (1937-2001), made a big impression with Blue Note in the 1960s, and managed to keep going strong through the 1990s. Penguin Guide noted that he always sounds like he's in the middle of a big solo, and there is a lot of that here in sets that span 160 minutes. with Joanne Brackeen (piano), Steve Rodby (bass), and Danny Spencer (drums). Suffers a bit from sprawl, compared to albums like 1985's The State of the Tenor, but the high points are undeniable. A- [cd]

Joe Henderson Quartets: Tetragon (1967-68 [2026], Craft): After five more/less classic albums on Blue Note (1963-66), the tenor saxophonist moved to Milestone for this pair of quartet sessions, with Don Friedman or Kenny Barron (piano), Jack DeJohnette or Louis Hayes (drums), and Ron Carter (bass) on both. A- [sp]

Ahmad Jamal: At the Jazz Showcase: Live in Chicago (1976 [2026], Resonance, 2CD): Pianist (1930-2023), mostly trios starting in 1951, some quite brilliant, including the first disc here, with John Heard (bass) and Frank Gant (drums). Second disc slacks off some. B+(***) [cd]

Yusef Lateef: Alight Upon the Lake: Live at the Jazz Showcase (1975 [2026], Resonance, 3CD): Tenor saxophonist (1920-2013), also studied and played a lot of flute, especially as his interests moved into African and Middle Eastern musics. Born William Huddleston in Chattanooga, moved to Detroit where his mother remarried, briefly making him Bill Evans, until he converted to Islam and changed his name. Received advanced degrees, and taught in Massachusetts and Nigeria. Quartet here with Kenny Barron (piano), Bob Cunningham (bass), and Albert "Tootie" Heath (drums), runs the gamut, includes some impressive tenor sax and a lot of flute (which I've never much cared for, but is not uninteresting). B+(***) [cd]

Art Pepper: Everything Happens to Me: 1959 Live at the Cellar (1959 [2026], Omnivore, 4CD): Alto saxophonist, started out in the 1940s with Benny Carter and Stan Kenton, recorded some brilliant albums early but got busted for drugs and other crimes, spending most of 1954-64 in jail, except for a brief stretch from 1956-60, when he recorded his classics (the prime albums are Meets the Rhythm Section and Smack Up, but also look for the later-collected 1956-57 Aladdin sessions). After he got out, he gigged some, but didn't really get going again until his 1975 album Living Legend, followed by years of manic touring and massive recording until he died at 56 in 1982. The late studio work is collected in a 16-CD box set, The Complete Galaxy Recordings, which invites (and rewards) random sampling. Since his death, his third (and last) wife, Laurie Pepper, has been releasing his tapes, mostly from this late period. But this product goes back to the earlier period, with four hours of live sets recorded in Vancouver, with all the tape they could find (including incomplete tunes when tape ran out, ambient noise, chatter, etc.). Quartet with Chris Gage (piano), Tony Clitheroe (bass), and George Ursan (drums), who are proficient but hardly stars. But Pepper is a star, and able to extend his aura indefinitely. A- [sp]

Michel Petrucciani: Kuumbwa (1987 [2026], Elemental Music, 2CD): French pianist, short-lived (1962-99), physically stunted but he had an amazing span of the keyboard, trio with Dave Holland (bass) and Eliot Zigmund (drums), left some extraordinary performances, but this isn't quite one. B+(**) [cd]

Cecil Taylor Unit: Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts (1969 [2026], Elemental Music, 2CD): Pathbreaking avant-garde pianist (1929-2018), but a charmed one, who recorded early on for major labels, waltzed easily into DownBeat's Hall of Fame, and shows up here in an archival series that had never before strayed farther out than Mingus. But apparently this European tour packaged him alongside Duke Ellington and a very dismissive Miles Davis (described by Taylor as "pretty good for a millionaire"). His Unit always included Jimmy Lyons (alto sax), usually Andrew Cyrille (drums), and on this occasion Sam Rivers (tenor/soprano sax, flute). Three sets, over two long CDs (70:10 + 71:45), where Taylor works his magic, while the discordant horns wail away, remarkable as long as patience holds. A- [cd]

Old music:

Joe Henderson: The Elements (1973, Milestone): Featuring Alice Coltrane (piano/harp/tamboura/harmonium), with Charlie Haden (bass) and Michael White (violin) also noted on the cover, and various others. Interesting exotica. B+(***) [sp]

Kesha: Gag Order [Live Acoustic EP From Space] (2023, Kemosabe/RCA, EP): Four songs from her 2023 album Gag Order, mostly produced by Rick Rubin. B [sp]

Ashley Monroe: Satisfied (2006 [2009], Sony): Country singer-songwriter, got noticed for the trio Pistol Annies (3 good albums 2011-18, plus the 2021 Hell of a Holiday, which I missed), where Miranda Lambert was an established star, and Angaleena Presley and Monroe were newcomers, on their way to some pretty good solo albums. But this was Monroe's forgotten debut, recorded and teased with a couple singles in 2006, then shelved until 2009, when it appeared digital-only. She co-wrote seven songs, but the covers stand out ("Can't Let Go," a Randy Weeks song via Lucinda Williams, and a duet with Dwight Yoakam). B+(***) [sp]

Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson: 1980 (1980, Arista): Politically-engaged poet, spoken word albums from 1971 on paved the way for rap, worked with Jackson's funk grooves for seven albums from 1974, with this the last of the series. Regarded by some at the time as the best of the bunch, I'm finding it a bit dated and quaint. B+(***) [yt]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Richard Gilman-Opalsky: A Fierce and Gentle Force (Edgetone) [03-15]
  • Ize Trio: Global Prayer (self-released) [06-12]
  • Myra Melford/Satoko Fujii: Katarahi (RogueArt) [05-15]
  • John Pachnos: John Pachnos (Avgonyma Music) [05-15]
  • Álvaro Torres Trio: Mairena (Fresh Sound New Talent) [05-01]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Thursday, April 16, 2026

Music Week

April archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 45803 [45771] rated (+32), 20 [29] unrated (-9).

Last week's Music Week dropped a day late, on Tuesday. After that, I figured I should flush out my Loose Tabs draft file before doing another Music Week. The Trump-Netanyahu wars against Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Yemen, Somalia, and random boats in the Caribbean were roiling (as they still are), with maximum cognitive dissonance to try to hack through. I've written three substantial pieces on the Iran War — really the Trump-Netanyahu War, as it's hard to see any national interests being served by actions that are hard to make any sense of except as psychotic. These are:

The latter provides a framework for trying to figure out how this ends, but as a born-and-bred optimist, my most likely error is in expecting that somehow it has to end, for better or worse. Given the two key political figures, the most likely scenario is that it doesn't end, at least as long as they remain in power, but rather cycles through periods of greater or somewhat diminished violence. The US-Iran "ceasefire" of the moment is an example of how a state of war can be extended on a budget, while Israel's continued siege of Lebanon reminds us that Israel can turn on America as readily as on anyone else.

Compiling Loose Tabs gave me a chance to catch up with what people were saying about the war. (I started to say with what's happening on the ground, but reporting on the actual war and its casualties is exceptionally spotty even by usual standards: there is very little reporting from Iran, while Israel's censor covers up Iranian strikes, and US media usually sticks to what they're told.) Consequently, it's hard to make any predictions based on leverage (losses and other costs). What we can say is that certain extreme outcomes (like collapse of Iran's regime, or of Israel's and America's bombing capability) will not happen. We can also say that Trump and Netanyahu (together but mostly separately) have incoherent and/or fantastical views and goals, so it's hard to see how they can end the war with any sort of plausible victory, or afford to swallow an obvious defeat.

I'm not sure what more to say about it, except to continue my usual harangues on the futility of war, and on how hard it is for the right to see this, given their habitual resort to violence to maintain domestic inequality and hierarchy. Given Trump's threats and dreams of using the armed forces against immigrants (and other Americans), how could anyone think he'd moderate against imaginary threats as feverishly hyped as Iran? He is an extremely violent man, perhaps not personally, but he has practically unlimited forces he can call on to do his dirty work, and he has little if any care or compunction about who gets hurt along the way.

I'm having increasing doubts about the viability of Loose Tabs (as well as its predecessors Speaking of Which and Weekend Roundup). The problem isn't just the amount of work such collation and annotation takes, or the increasingly dire state of the world, but that so many reputable sources are disappearing behind paywalls. I think I hit 5-6 different ones in a row yesterday. Sometimes I go ahead and jot down what I can see, and sometimes that suffices to make some point, but I run into a lot of dead ends, and that is doubly frustrating: an inconvenience for me, but also a grave distortion of the information landscape. My wife is a serious newshound, and subscribes to some things I may or may not piggyback on (but that's becoming even more difficult at places like the New York Times). I grew up poor and cheap, so I'm much more reluctant to indulge. (And when I do, I usually go for books, which seem like more durable investments. I've also bought a lot of music in my day, but not so much recently.)

I don't like to second-guess people on how they choose to make a living, but from a public viewpoint we'd be better off with a free exchange of ideas, which isn't possible in a world cluttered with toll booths. It wouldn't cost much to let anyone who wants to write (or engage in any other creative activity) to do so, with the fruits easily available for all. There's little chance of anything like that happening soon, not least because those in power jealously guard the artificial scarcity of information, especially given their role in fabricating much of it. On the other hand, the prohibitionist impulse, which objects to using tax money for anything one does not personally approve of, is still very much alive. The idea that we'd all be better off if other people were better off is hard to swallow for people who grew up in conditions of scarcity.

At some point, I should factor AI into this question. One potential problem is that as long as information is scarce and profitable, those who have leverage will be tempted to use AI to flood the market, driving less cost-effective intelligence to the sidelines — a result which would be much favored by the AI barons, who we're making incredibly rich on the hunch they will be positioned to extract incredible amounts of profit from the economy.

I'm still sitting on the fence regarding AI. I'm inclined to believe that it can be a very useful tool to help writers like myself who already have a pretty good idea how to think — several pieces in this Loose Tabs lean that way — but I have little idea how to start, or with what. But that I'm behind the learning curve seemed obvious tonight, when I went to the library and noticed a whole section of For Dummies books of various AI platforms: probably not the best place to start, but an indication that a lot of ground has been broken. Some of my needs are pretty simple, like reading my writing for typos and other grammar issues. I could also use something to dive into the old notebooks and summarize what I think about various issue. I could use a keyword generator. I could use research help. I've gotten a fair amount of value already from the AI that's recently been added to Google search. Good chance something better is available. I could also use coding help for website development. I'm a pretty fair programmer, but I don't know Javascript or Python, even tough I have a pretty good idea what one might do with both. But I don't have the energy I once had to throw myself into learning new things like that. (And, as I mentioned, I grew up cheap.)

Nine days in this week, which was barely enough to nudge me over the 30 album line. I had various distractions. Most significantly (for me, anyway), I spent a couple days cooking. I wrote up a bit about the meal(s) on Facebook, including two plate pictures (one for dinner, the other for dessert). A college friend turned me onto Greek cuisine, and that was my first major breakout from my mother's Arkansas soul food. Not sure when I'll get another chance, but it seems to be one of the few things I still feel pretty competent at.

Next week should be more house tasks. The biggest, most obvious thing will be getting the carport railing back up. That's been down since January (or maybe December). I probably won't do a Music Week next week, but will try to sync up again the following Monday (April 27). I'm not working very hard to track new releases, although we have an interesting batch of records this week — including one I hadn't heard of until I backtracked a subscriber to my free Substack — I seem to be stuck at 99 subscribers there, so if you haven't already, please sign up there — or was it Bluesky?

New records reviewed this week:

Juhani Aaltonen + Raoul Björkenheim: Nostalgia (2025 [2026], Eclipse Music): Finnish saxophonist/flautist, made some superb albums in the 1970s, with nothing under his own name between 1982-2000, but recorded much after that, including this album a few months before he turned 90. He plays flute here, in duets with the Finnish guitarist. I'm not much of a flute fan, but in the past he's stood out enough I've voted for him in polls. He's still on top here. B+(***) [sp]

Rodrigo Amado/This Is Our Language Quartet: Wailers (2019 [2026], European Echoes): The Portuguese tenor saxophonist's "American Quartet," with Joe McPhee (tenor sax), Kent Kessler (bass), and Chris Corsano (drums), first appeared on the album This Is Our Language in 2012. Impressive, as always, especially when both saxes crank up. A- [dl]

Atlantic Road Trip: Watch as the Echo Falls (2025 [2026], Calligram): Trio of Chad McCullough (trumpet/synths), Paul Towndrow (alto sax/flute/whistles) and Miro Herak (vibes), sort of chamber jazz. B+(*) [cd]

Mara Calder: We Stay Ugly 'Til the Pretty Decays (2026, Black Metal Archives Label): According to the only www source I can find, "Mara Calder is a 16-year-old musician and street-smart resident of Black City. Known as the girlfriend and creative partner of Kai (Purple C), she possesses the supernatural ability to see the dead, accompanied by her ghost companion Eli. A talented producer and vocalist, she balances high school life with the chaotic urban underground and paranormal encounters." Based on this debut album, I don't believe a word of this (except "talented producer and vocalist"), even before noting that the website seems to be a catalog of AI characters. Label is British, goes by BMAL, motto "Always underground/always antifascist," self-described as "an artist-first collective, operating on a transparent license." First song is "Junkyard Cabaret," built from "detuned piano, upright bass, clanking metal, and found sounds," including dramatic shifts and time changes that us old-timers recall from cabaret (or postmodern opera from Meatloaf to Ethel Cain). Some ballads are just backed by piano, and are nearly as striking as the more hyper stuff. What we used to call a "tour de force." Sample lyric: "If it's crashing, let it burn." A- [sp]

Chicago Soul Jazz Collective: No Wind & No Rain (2026, Calligram): Original songs by Larry Brown Jr. (guitar, some vocals) and John Fournier (tenor sax), with lead vocals by Dee Alexander, and support from Ryan Nyther (trumpet), Amr Fahmy (keyboards), Micah Collier (basses), and Keith Brooks II (drums). B+(**) [cd]

Paul Citro: Keep Moving (Home) (2024-25 [2026], Calligram): Chicago guitarist, first album, quartet with Nick Mazzarella (alto sax/wurlitzer), Matt Ulery (bass), and Quin Kitchner (drums), playin original pieces by Citro. B+(*) [cd] [05-01]

Caleb Wheeler Curtis: Ritual (2025 [2026], Chill Tone): Plays stritch mostly, with spots of soprano/sopranino sax and trumpet. Has several albums since 2018. This one with Hery Paz (tenor sax/flute), Orrin Evans (piano, 4/9 tracks in the middle), Vicente Archer (bass), and Michael Sarin (drums). B+(***) [cd]

Fcukers: Ö (2026, Ninja Tune): New York dance-pop group (duo? trio?), first album (11 songs, 28:57) after a couple of EPs. Lightweight but functional, which may be enough. B+(***) [sp]

Flea: Honora (2026, Nonesuch): Famous bassist, I recognized the pseudonym but couldn't place him (Red Hot Chili Peppers), debut solo album, plays trumpet on what is reportedly aa return to his jazz roots. That's not a parade I particularly want to rain on, but it doesn't particularly work as jazz, even as fusion. Part of this is that his social circle intrudes, and they're even less jazz-oriented than he is. B- [sp]

Sophie Gault: Unhinged (2026, Torrez Music Group): Americana singer, presumably writes some songs, second album, no notes I can find on it but puts one foot firmly in country by opening with a Buck Owens song, then rocks harder than the Nashville norm. B+(**) [sp]

Tomas Janzon: Jazz Diary (2025 [2026], Changes Music): Swedish guitarist, based in New York, half-dozen albums since 1999. Originals, backed by bass (Nedra Wheeler) and drums (Tony Austin or Chuck McPherson). Includes an extra track from 2000, with Wheeler on bass. B+(**) [cd]

Kin'Gongolo Kiniata: Kiniata (2024 [2025], Helico Music): Congolese group, from Kinshasa, first album, handcrafted instruments, in an album that will appeal to fans of Konono No. 1. A- [bc]

Kinact: Kinshasa in Action (2026, Nyege Nyege Tapes): Another Congo band, founded in 2015 by Eddy Ekete, with its own mix of electronics, homemade percussion, and industrial tools. While I find these bands hard to resist, this isn't always as musical as I'd like. B+(**) [bc]

Gurf Morlix: Cobwebs & Stardust (2026, Rootball): Alt-country singer-songwriter, started connected to Blaze Foley and Lucinda Williams, went solo in 2000, has become increasingly prolific. Choice cut: "My Guitar Is a Blues Machine." B+(**) [sp]

Jim Robitaille Trio: Sonic (2026, Whaling City Sound): Guitarist, at least eight albums since 2004, backed by bass (Tom Casale) and drums (Chris Poudrier), eight originals plus covers of Coltrane and Davis. B+(**) [cd]

Ted Rosenthal Trio: The Good Old Days (2024 [2026], TMR Music): Pianist, debut was a trio in 1990, quite a few albums since, including a Maybeck Hall solo and many trios. This is mostly trio, a mix of originals and standards, one session with Martin Wind (bass) and Tim Horner (drums), the other with Noriko Ueda (bass) and Quincy Davis (drums), with two of the latter including "special guest" Ken Peplowski (clarinet), who has since passed. The rags are especially delightful. B+(***) [05-01]

Fie Schouten/Vincent Courtois/Sofia Borges/Pierre Baux: Open Space (2025 [2026], Relative Pitch): Clarinets, cello, drums, and spoken voice (in French, which I'm not following very well, but finding interesting). B+(**) [cd]

Paul Silbergleit Trio: The Stillness of July (2024 [2026], Calligram): Guitarist, has a 1996 debut album but not a lot since. Trio with Clay Schaub (bass) and Devin Drobka (drums), playing three originals plus more/less standards from Charlie Parker to Stevie Wonder. B+(**) [cd] [05-01]

Harlan Silverman: Music for Stillness (2026, Intentional): Started off playing guitar for Mayer Hawthorne, member of Cosmic Tones Research Trio, first own album, on which he plays bansuri flute, cello, viola, piano, fender rhodes, aiming for "what might peace sound like?" Modest ambition, not to be scoffed at. Functional, even. B+(***) [bc]

Slayyyter: Wor$t Girl in America (2026, Columbia): Dance-pop singer-songwriter Catherine Slater, from suburban St. Louis, started with a mixtape in 2019, third album. B+(**) [sp]

Sky Smeed: Live at the Rock House (2026, self-released): Folkie singer-songwriter, based in Lawrence, KS (grew up near Chanute, which means something to me, probably not to you), has more than a dozen albums (4 on Discogs, as far back as 2004). A dozen songs, some attempts at audience participation, plus two "radio edits" (good to be prepared). A- [sp]

Alister Spence: Always Ever (2025 [2026], Alister Spence Music): Australian pianist, dozen or so albums since 2011, including a couple of duos with Satoko Fujii. Solo. Keeps it interesting. B+(**) [cd] [04-24]

Tanya Tagaq: Saputjiji (2026, Six Shooter): Canadian Inuk throat singer, seventh studio album since 2005. Played it last night and got nothing out of it, but noticed the first song was called "Fuck War," and heard if through the post-industrial din, followed by a spoken word explaining "we're children, needing nurture, not razorblades." Rest of the album wanders some, with nothing quite grabbing me the same way, but the bleak, disturbing chill comes off as its own virtue. A- [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Born in the City of Tanta: Lower Egyptian Urban Folklore and Bedouin Shaabi From Libya's Bourini Records 1968-75 (1968-75 [2025], Sublime Frequencies): Seattle label has been scraping together world music obscurities for at least 20 years, including a very wide swath of Asia as well as all of Africa and the deeper recesses of the Amazon (and one I haven't heard called West Virginia Snake Handler Revival). Some striking tracks here, less groove than later raï or dabke but no less remarkable. Hedged a bit because it's not all public. [4/8 tracks] B+(***) [bc]

Bill Evans: At the BBC (1965 [2026], Elemental Music): Piano trio, with Chuck Israels and Larry Bunker, two sets on one CD, runs 70:15, with Humphrey Lyttleton the announcer. Some remarkable passages, but that's not unusual for the dozen or more Evans live shots that have come out recently. B+(***) [cd] [04-18]

Freddie King: Feeling Alright: The Complete 1975 Nancy Pulsations Concert (1975 [2026], Elemental Music, 2CD): Blues guitarist-singer (1934-76), placed three albums on Robert Santelli's list of the best 100 blues albums. Live in France, a little more than a year before he died at 42. B+(**) [cd] [04-18]

Cecil Taylor New Unit: Words & Music: The Last Bandstand (2016 [2026], Fundacja Słuchaj): Avant-garde pianist (1929-2018), debut 1956, ran a legendary band called the Cecil Taylor Unit in the 1970s with Jimmy Lyons, mostly recorded duos and trios after that, including a monumental showcase in Berlin in 1988. Last recording in my database was a duo with drummer Tony Oxley from 2011, so this New Unit album comes as a surprise. With Harri Sjöström (soprano and sopranino sax), Okkyung Lee (cello), Oxley (electronics), and Jackson Krall (drums), with piano and spoken word by Taylor, in a single 79:23 take (now split into two tracks). The music is remarkable. The words, which appear in the second half, are hard to follow, but have their own musicality. A- [bc]

Miroslav Vitous: Mountain Call (2003-10 [2026], ECM): Czech bassist, studied music in Vienna, then got a scholarship to Berklee, emerging in 1970 as a founder of Weather Report, leaving in 1973 to pursue an eclectic solo career. Discography jumps a decade from 1992-2002, resumes with one of his best albums (Universal Syncopations), and continues, but with nothing since 2018. This picks from several sessions, with Michel Portal (clarinets) and Jack DeJohnette (drums) in large print on the cover, and variously the first nine pieces; Esperanza Spalding (voice), Bob Mintzer (bass clarinet), Gary Campbell (soprano/tenor sax), and Gerald Cleaver (drums) in smaller print, plus "members of Czech National Symphony Orchestra" (two extended pieces near the end). B+(*) [sp]

Mal Waldron: Stardust & Starlight: At the Jazz Showcase (1979 [2026], Resonance): A great pianist (1926-2002), came up during the hard bop era, is famous for accompanying Billie Holiday in her last years, but did some of his best work in the 1980s, leading free jazz groups on an Italian label. Transitional trio set here with Steve Rodby (bass) and Wilbur Campbell (drums), joined for the last two tracks by Sonny Stitt (alto sax). A- [cd] [04-18]

Old music:

Dorisburg & Sebastian Mullaert: That Who Remembers (2023, Spazio Disponibile): Swedish electronica producer Alexander Berg, third of three albums since 2016, Mullaert has more albums back to 2011, including a previous live album with Berg. B+(**) [sp]

Ted Rosenthal: Ted Rosenthal at Maybeck [Maybeck Recital Hall Series, Volume Thirty-Eight] (1994 [1995], Concord): Solo piano, part of a series Concord recorded from 1989-95, showcasing a who's who of (mostly) mainstream pianists (first volume was Joanne Brackeen, followed by Dave McKenna, Dick Hyman, Walter Norris, Stanley Cowell, Hal Galper, John Hicks, Gerry Wiggins, Marian McPartland, and Kenny Barron). He's relatively young here (35), with just a couple albums, but he's impressive, and touches a lot of bases (two originals, Porter and Gershwin, Dameron and Tristano, Powell and Nichols, Bach and James P. Johnson, "Gone With the Wind"). B+(**) [sp]

Wordsworth: Mirror Music (2004, Halftooth): Early album, savvy words and beats. B+(**) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Terry Callier: At the Earl of Old Town (1967, Time Traveler) [04-18]
  • Roy Hargrove: Bern (2000, Time Traveler) [04-18]
  • Kathy Ingraham: Jazz Dreams (Peirdon) [03-16]
  • What You May Call It: Da Qi (MechaBenzaiten) [05-08]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Loose Tabs

I'm posting this on April 15, after initially hoping for April 10. The delay has in turn pushed Music Week out, not that I have much to report there anyway. It's been a difficult week or two, but aren't they all these days? I'll probably add more when I do publish Music Week, in a day or two. Hoping to get to some long-procrastinated house work this weekend, with decent weather forecast. Then, I hardly know what. Maybe I'll write about cooking or housework, or the book on manufacturing I've been reading, or the other books I got out from the library on tech business, or maybe another book on the advent of the Third Reich — not that the good deal I already know about that subject has adequately prepared me for the rise of Trump.

I should also point out that I've written several standalone pieces on the Iran war:

The last of these was written after Trump's April Fools' Day speech, but before his ultimatum threatening the "end of civilization" if Iran didn't surrender, or the "ceasefire" that allowed him to back down a bit (temporarily). My next piece will probably be on what I think a good peace agreement might look like, given a serious effort to find a solution based on "doing the right thing," and not just on which side is the more powerful and/or the most insane.

More on this below, in the still unfolding Iran War section.

This is an occasional collection of newsworthy links and comments, much less systematic than what I attempted in my late Speaking of Which posts. The new name comes from my extensive use of browser tabs. When I get around to cleaning up, I often find tabs opened to old articles I might want to comment on and/or refer back to. So these posts are mostly housecleaning, but may also serve as a very limited but persistent record of what 20+ years ago I started calling "the end of the American empire" and nowadays feels more like "the end of civilization." I collect these bits in a draft file, and flush them out when periodically (12 times from April-December 2025). My previous one appeared 24 days ago, on March 22.

I have a little-used option of selecting bits of text highlighted with a background color, for emphasis a bit more subtle than bold or ALL CAPS. (I saw this on Medium. I started with their greenish color [#bbdbba] and lightened it a bit [#dbfbda].) I'll try to use it sparingly.

Table of Contents:

New Stories

Sometimes stuff happens, and it dominates the news/opinion cycle for a few days or possibly several weeks. We might as well lead with it, because it's where attention is most concentrated. But eventually these stories will fold into the broader, more persistent themes of the following section.

Cuba: As I was filing my previous Loose Tabs on March 22, my feed was lighting up with tweets on Cuba, where Trump was tightening the blockade, and people of good will were raising the alarm about its probable human toll. Much like the heady early days of Bush's Iraq War, when you heard quips about how "real men go to Tehran," Trump was already talking up "Cuba next."

"No Kings": Another round of "No Kings" protests against Trump were scheduled for March 28, expected to draw biggest — and most diverse — anti-Trump crowds ever.

  • Michael Arria [03-26]: 'No Kings' protest refusal to address the war on Iran reflects the failure of the US antiwar movement: "The upcoming No Kings protest could be the biggest anti-Trump event ever, but opposing the war on Iran doesn't seem to be on the agenda." Sheesh! The organizers don't have to bullet point it (they may momentarily have balked, worrying about splitting their coalition, or maybe some kind of "rally around the flag" effect, but that didn't happen: people who were already anti-Trump saw through this war instantly, and others are discovering the war as a moment when he showed his true colors). Trump put the war on the agenda. The antiwar signs will come out. The war is already more unpopular than Vietnam was well into Nixon's "silent majority." As for the "antiwar movement," the job is going to be to get the Democratic politicians up to following their constituents and opposing the war in practice.

  • Bette Lee [04-03]: 30,000 "pissed off" Americans: A photo essay of the No Kings Protests in Portland.

Viktor Orbán: He founded the right-wing Fidesz party in Hungary, entered Parliament in 1994, and became prime minister from 1998-2002, and again in 2010, this time with enough of a majority he was able to change the constitution to lock in Fidesz power, and he has remained in power until losing this week's election. During his long reign in power, Orbán has become a hero for much of the American right (Tucker Carlson has broadcast from Hungary; Orbán has been opening speaker at CPAC; Steve Bannon referred to him as "Trump before Trump"; Trump and he have endorsed each other multiple times; JD Vance went to Hungary to campaign for Orbán [reminding us that Vance visited Pope Francis just before he died].) Although Orbán lost in a landslide this year, it remains to be seen whether the new government will be able to change the constitution to free the government from Fidesz control. [Later reports show winner Peter Magyar's Tisza party winning 137 of 199 seats in parliament, which would give them the two-thirds majority needed to change the constitution.]

  • Zack Beauchamp [04-13]: How MAGA's favorite strongman finally lost: "Hungarians ousted Viktor Orbán in an election rigged to favor him. It wasn't easy."

  • Molly O'Neal [04-13]: What Viktor Orban's crushing defeat in Hungary really means: "Ascendent leader Peter Magyar is no liberal, and is certainly not pro-Ukraine but tapped into bread and butter issues pressing on the people."

  • Harold Meyerson [04-14]: A really bad week for the global right: "And what is it about Christian nationalism that looks to produce kleptocratic regimes?"

  • Scott Lemieux [04-15]: But it's *competitive* authoritarianism! Notes that one measure of how Orbán rigged Hungary's election process is that opposition leader Peter Magyar hadn't been able to appear on state media for 18 months until he won. Does anyone think that Trump, had he been banned from news media for 18 months before the 2024 election, would still have won? But now right-wingers, who have shown nothing but contempt for democracy, want to spin this loss as a vindication of their faith in the voters.

    This kind of apologism, though, does provide a useful illustration of how Republican elites — including less Trump-aligned ones — have become comfortable with their own anti-democratic measures. Democrats could have broken the Wisconsin 2010 gerrymander by getting 70% of the statewide vote, so what's the big deal? Vote suppression measures don't make it impossible for Democrats to win, so why should we be worried about the Supreme Court effectively repealing the Voting Rights Act with a series of decisions that barely even pretend to have a legal basis? This is what John Roberts has believed since he was a DOJ functionary under Reagan, and it's a way in which Trump is more symptom than cause.

  • Tibor Dessewffy [04-15]: How was Orbán defeated? With energetic campaigning and cunning exploitation of his weaknesses.

  • Sarah Jones [04-16]: Why Orbán's loss was so devastating to the new right. This notes the cross-breeding between America's "new right" think tanks and Orbán's similar Hungarian/European organizations (which have recruited Americans like "crunchy con" Rod Dreher).

Fascism: This could be a regular feature section, but for everyday purposes we already have sections on Trump and Republicans (and Israel) that catch most of the news. Before the 2024 election, there was considerable debate over whether Trump is really a fascist (or is just play-acting). He settled that question very quickly upon taking office. Before the election, I felt that the similarities were pretty obvious, but that the political charge was largely pointless: those who understood the history of fascism were already opposed to Trump (aside from a tiny faction of proud fascists), while the word was nothing more than a vague expletive for almost everyone else (as was obvious from their efforts to call leftists "fascist"). But now that Trump is on the warpath, both domestically and abroad, there are few (if any) historical analogies other than fascism that come close to helping us understand what he is doing. I have no idea how many articles I will find explaining this, but let's start with a quote from Robert Paxton, author of Anatomy of Fascism, with this definition (from 2004):

Fascism may be defind as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, of victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

I read Paxton's book long ago, and have long felt that his definition was excessively tailored to separate Hitler and Mussolini from virtually every right-wing killer (e.g., Franco). I tend to agree with the 1930s "premature anti-fascists" who intuitively understood that the fascists are the people who wanted to kill us, regardless of how they rationalized their murderous intentions. But with his Iran War, Trump has managed to tick off literally every box on Paxton's inventory.

Eric Swalwell: Democratic congressman from California, ran for president in 2020, not coming remotely close but at least got a bit of name recognition, which this year he's tried to build on by running for governor. He was leading in the polls, but now has suspended his candidacy, and facing an expulsion vote in the House has announced his plans to resign. The charges have to do with sexual misconduct.

  • Benjy Sarlin [04-13]: Eric Swalwell's downfall, explained: "The accusations that forced out the frontrunner in California's governor race — and could push him from Congress next."

Major Threads

War on Iran: While the US has arguably waged war against Iran's Islamic Republic starting with the "Carter Doctrine" in 1979, and Israel has spurred America on at least since the 1990s, the belligerence accelerated after Trump became president in 2017 and terminated the Obama-negotiated JCPOA agreement, daring Iran to build a nuclear deterrent against US and Israeli attacks. This came to a head with the socalled Twelve-Day War of June 13-24, 2025, when Israel and the US bombed sites in Iran believed to be involved in developing materials that could be used to build nuclear warheads. Iran responded by launching missiles at Israel and US bases, hoping to establish a deterrence against further attacks, but measuring their response (as they had done following previous "targeted assassinations" to avoid provoking a broader war). Trump, at Netanyahu's urging, took this response as a sign of weakness, and started plotting another round of attacks, aimed at Iran's missiles, navy, air force, and political leadership. Trump used the period to build up offensive forces in the Persian Gulf, and on Feb. 28 unleashed a massive wave of airstrikes against Iran, starting with the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and much of the upper echelon of Iran's security state. Within a day, Trump declared himself the winner, and promised to wrap it up in a couple days or weeks. Iran, once again, responded by firing missiles and drones against Israel and US bases, but also by blocking passage through the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off major exports of oil, gas, and petrochemicals (most critically fertilizer) from the region. While Iranian arms development has never deterred Israel and America — it has actually played large in the reasons given for US & Israeli aggression — control over the Strait has finally proven to be real leverage. Of course, sensible leaders would have understood that before testing the hypothesis, and decent leader wouldn't have thought of this war in the first place. Trump is neither. Netanyahu may be more complicated, but that hardly matters.

The following pieces are roughly chronological by date, but events have moved quickly. In particular, there is one section on Trump's April 1 "speech to the nation," where he suggested a willingness to not contest control over the Strait of Hormuz. Then on April 5 (Easter Sunday), Trump issued an ultimatum to open the Strait, otherwise he would order the destruction of Iran's civilian infrastructure:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be livingin Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP

On April 7, Trump reiterated his ultimatum, in even more apocalyptic terms:

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran.

Then, just before his April 7 deadline, Trump called the attack off and accepted a ceasefire based on Iran's 10-point proposal. I've seen conflicting information about what's in that plan (including some points I can't imagine Iran prevailing on, and others that will be extremely difficult for Trump to swallow — Netanyahu is a different case, because his interests are even more personal-political than Trump's, and even more divorced from Israel's actual needs — but the suggestion that the ceasefire should include Lebanon is clearly not being heeded by Israel. These points, and much more, are reiterated in the stories below.

  • Mitchell Plitnick:

    • [03-20]: Anger in the GCC spreads as Iran retaliates over US-Israeli strikes: "These are signs of the growing impatience of Iran's Arab neighbors with Iran's tactic of striking at them in response to Israeli or American attacks. But the anger of the Gulf states isn't only reserved for Iran." I expect this will become an increasingly large and decisive part of the story. Iran wants the US to leave the region, but can't insist on that as long as the GCC states look to Washington for defense. On the other hand, the US isn't a very reliable defense for them, and given Israel quite possibly puts them at greater risk than having no US bases and negotiating separate peace deals with Iran. If/when the GCC states split with Washington, the bases will have to go, and Iran will feel much more secure.

    • [03-26]: The US and Israel's diverging interests will prolong the war, but Iran will determine its outcome: "A month into the Iran war, it is clear that Israel aims to disrupt any possible off-ramp the Trump administration and Iran may be looking for to end the fighting, and that Iran, not the US, is the key actor that will determine how the war ends."

      • Julian E Barnes/Tyler Pager/Eric Schmitt [03-24]: Saudi leader is said to push Trump to continue Iran war in recent calls: "Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sees a 'historic opportunity' to remake the region, according to people briefed by US officials on the conversations." This doesn't seem to be very reliably sourced, so one suspects that it is meant to plant the idea that it isn't just Israel that is pushing the US to war. (This sort of thing has been a regular occurrence, as we've been regularly assured that the Saudis and other Persian Gulf states are every bit as alarmed by Iran as Israel is. That in turn has been the rationale for US arms sales to the region, which Israel would veto if they didn't buy the argument about Iran.) On the other hand, this makes MBS look like a blathering idiot. I've long felt that he is a deranged megalomaniac, but nowhere near this stupid. The most likely outcomes of the war are a failed state that sows chaos in the region and a retrenched, hardened central regime which will continue to threaten its neighbors (as it, not without reason, feels threatened by them). Given this scenario, what the Saudis and the Gulf states should be doing is attempting to mediate, not to escalate the conflict. If they don't find a peaceful way out, and are viewed as mere tools of Israel and America, they risk not just Iran taking pot shots at their infrastructure but revolt from within their own ranks.

      • Matzav [03-16]: Saudi Arabia denies report claiming Crown Prince urged US to continue war with Iran.

    • [04-03]: Trump has no good options to resolve the disaster he created in Iran: "Trump faces a disaster of his own making in Iran. He had no plan to address Iran's predictable retaliation, including closing the Strait of Hormuz, but even if he did, he faces another problem: Israel, his disastrous choice for a partner in crime."

    • [04-09]: The Iran war will end only when the US finally decides to rein in Israel: "As the shaky ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran holds, only Israel has an incentive to continue fighting, as Netanyahu is widely seen as having lost the war. If there is to be a durable end to this war, the U.S. will be forced to rein in Israel." I think he's right, but that this will be very difficult for Trump, who can't stand the idea that he has to back down on anything, especially with Netanyahu doing everything he can to keep the war going. The only real hope is that someone will get in Trump's ear and convince him that Netanyahu has steered him wrong. If he chooses to use it, I believe that he does have the power to rein in Netanyahu, or simply knock the legs out from under him. (Other Israeli politicians are already lining up to follow Trump into a peace agreement, but that's going to take a signal from Trump.)

  • Ali Abunimah [03-21]: The war on Iran is making it stronger. I'm skeptical, not just because I don't know how you measure such things, or whether "stronger" is even a good thing, but the war has allowed Iran to flex muscles that had long been kept dormant, and that's caught some people by surprise who expected them to cower under America's "shock and awe" attack and fold like a house of cards.

  • Harrison Mann [03-25]: 3 things Trump needs to do to end the Iran war: While admitting that "Trump couldn't end his war tomorrow, even if he wanted to," Mann's suggests are pretty basic:

    1. Unilateral de-escalation: "stop openly trying to destroy and take over Iran."
    2. Acknowledge Iran's demands: Put them on the agenda, and negotiate over them seriously.
    3. Rein in Netanyahu: If the US cannot control Israel, the US cannot be trusted to negotiate an end to the war (as Israel can, and probably will, open it up again).

    The problem is, it's going to be very hard for Trump to back out of this war without admitting that it was a mistake, especially if he can't blame the mistake on Netanyahu. Similarly, it's going to be hard for Netanyahu to back down without admitting his own colossal error. Moreover, even if he did so, he'd still have to deal with a Palestinian problem he's only made worse, and he doesn't have the political capital within Israel to get beyond that. Mann also wrote:

    • [03-10]: I was a US intelligence analyst. Here's what a ground invasion of Iran could look like: Actually, he only considers three scenarios, none of which have any chance of forcing an Iranian surrender, or even of triggering a regime change:

      1. Commando raid on nuclear sites to secure Iran's uranium: That may seem like a doable limited objective, but the sites are deep within Iran and are likely to be well defended, some known sites are deeply buried which will slow down the operation, and some materials have probably been moved to unknown sites.
      2. Seize Kharg Island to hold Iran's oil exports hostage: This isn't worth much unless you can ship the captured oil out of the Gulf, which right now you can't. You could blow it up to keep Iranian oil off the market longer, but so much of Trump's political flak concerns oil prices that he's letting Iran sell its oil at a premium now, rather than further reducing supply.
      3. Occupy Iran's coast to reopen oil shipping lanes: For this to work, you'd have to occupy all of a very rugged coastline, which Iranian troops can access by land. Moreover, Iran doesn't have to be on the coast to launch missiles and drones into the Strait, or to mine it.

      This doesn't discuss scenarios like Iraq and Afghanistan, where the US had proxy armies they could easily supply, and neighboring countries they could mount a land invasion from. No nation adjacent to Iran would allow the US to stage an invasion force. In any case, Iran is 3-4 times larger than Iraq or Afghanistan, making it much more formidable.

  • Joshua Keating

    • [03-26]: Trump says the Iran war is over. So why won't he end it? "It may not be possible to TACO out of this one."

    • [04-01]: Is this the beginning of the end of the war in Iran? "Trump signaled that he's ready to wrap up the conflict, but that may not be up to him." Well, it could be up to him, if he were willing to accept the consequences of his mistakes: he needs to cut Iran a deal which assures them that this war will never break out again; and he needs to restrain Israel. If he doesn't do the latter, he can't make a deal, because Israel can break anything he comes up with. And since he launched the attacks, the price of assurance has only gone up, to a level of concession he's bound to find uncomfortable (perhaps even humiliating).

    • [04-07]: "A whole civilization will die tonight": How Trump is threatening war crimes: "Bombing all of Iran's bridges and power plants would be illegal." Oh, by the way, bombing anything else is also illegal, and immoral, and even if you don't care about those things, just plain stupid politics.

    • [04-07]: From threatening a civilization to ceasefire: What we learned from a wild day in the Iran war: "Trump just pulled a Russian-style policy move — and it's not clear it will deliver what he promised." Russian-style? Keating thinks he's referring to the "escalate to de-escalate" tactic, which Russia has never actually used, and denies even considering. (Unlike, say, Nixon scrambling SAC bombers in a mock attack on the Soviet Union. Nixon called his tactic the Madman Theory. Trump's threat fits that model, even if he didn't plan on "ending civilization" with nukes (a detail he remained ambiguous on, but given the size of Iran and the limits of America's conventional weapons, the only credible threat would have been to use nukes).

    • [04-09]: We have no idea if Iran can still build a bomb: "The central goal of the war is nowhere near a resolution." Interview with Jeffrey Lewis ("a professor at the Middlebury Institute's James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies"). This doesn't go into a lot of detail, probably because, as the title says, no one knows. The questions of "why would they build a bomb?" and "why should we care?" aren't raised at all. They should be, because nuclear bombs are useless except as deterrence against attack. Given how stupid the US-Israeli attack has proven to be, we would have been better off if Iran had bombs (assuming that would have deterred us; it turns out that their command of the Strait of Hormuz should have been deterrence enough, although even that shouldn't have been necessary).

  • Tom Carson [03-26]: Strange Khargo: Donald Trump's Toy Story War: "This is obviously a cool way to behave that only Presidents get to cosplay in what John Le Carre called the theater of the real." And:

    It's said that feeling nostalgia for Trump's first term is a mug's game, and maybe so. But he did show a marked aversion to getting us entangled in mindless foreign wars. For all its sins, the MAGA base shares this antipathy, and that's why they're so puzzled — if not worse — about what's become of their Donald. But maybe he's just never found a war stupid enough to entrance him until now.

  • Jack Hunter

    • [03-27]: Putting boots on the ground could kill Trump's presidency: "Every single poll of Americans, including Republicans, shows a hard line against a land war involving US troops in Iran." Polling is fickle, and it's not unusual for support for a war to increase due to a "rally around the flag" effect as the question is transformed to "do you support our troops?" On the other hand, sustaining that level of support is difficult when you're losing and don't have anything to show for it. And Trump is uniquely polarizing, so much so that many Democrats who might have rallied behind Israel didn't give Trump a moment's credibility.

      1. Iran is too big, and too distant, and too estranged, for the US to mount a successful ground invasion, at least one aimed at occupying the whole country and installing a puppet regime.
      2. Trump will make no effort at nation buiding, so the purpose of a ground invasion will be simply to obliterate and kill more precisely than is possible from the air (cf. Israel in Gaza).
      3. The political (and for that matter economic) costs of a prolonged ground war will be unbearable for Trump personally and for America as a whole.

      Ergo, it's not going to happen. Still doesn't hurt to explain what a bad idea it is, especially given that the dead ender war mongers are sure to bring it up (if only to blame peaceniks for their own failures). I might also add that if Trump's presidency is already doomed, he's unstable enough that he might take that as reason for desperate measures.

    • [04-11]: Mark Levin seems upset we haven't nuked Iran: "The neoconservative talk host tried to normalize the use of nuclear weapons and now appears irate that the president hasn't taken his advice." The right-wing idiot chorus dropping hints for Trump.

  • Oliver Holmes, et al. [03-31]: 'Get your own oil': Trump launches tirade against Europe for not joining Iran war.

  • Kelley Beaucar Vlahos [04-01]: Trump's April Fools' address to the nation: "Expectations reached a fever pitch Wednesday, but he neither called for an end of the war nor announced a ground invasion. Bottom line: We're not finished." In anticipation of the speech, oil prices dropped and the stock market rose. The speech itself was so full of nothing that financial manipulation may have been its sole purpose. In 19 minutes, Trump laid out the case for going to war, or not going to war; declared victory, while vowing to fight on; gave up on opening the Strait of Hormuz, or expected it to happen magically. For more on the speech:

    Also by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos:

  • Timothy Snyder

    • [04-01]: Wars fought for fun cannot be won: "The attack on Iran is wrong in countless ways: morally, legally, politically. But set all of that aside momentarily and stay within the logic of war planning. The war cannot be won because it was the result of a whim, not a plan." Leaving aside whether any war can be won, and his six-point rationalization of the process (do "national interests" even exist, or are they just class interests?), the point about "whim" is well taken, as is his assertion that Trump just enjoys blowing things up (the "two-minute sizzle reels" he is shown daily proves that point). But the "capabilities" goes a bit deeper: the US is doing what it is capable of doing — mostly blowing things up, but also kidnapping Maduro, bribing allies, threatening everyone else, spreading lies — but is anyone asking whether what they can do actually helps to achieve any sensible goals? Not Trump, nor his cronies, nor the rational but narrow-minded specialists tasked with devising weapons and tactics for using them, nor the Clausewitz fanboys who decided that if politics was just war by other means, we could dispose of diplomacy and put all our eggs in the military's basket. But turning this into "fun" takes something else: a lack of concern for other people, and a shallowness of character that amounts to sociopathy.

      This is the pleasure principle. If war feels good, do it. Trump and Hegseth take satisfaction in killing or dominating other people.

      That, however, has nothing to do with a national interest.

      There is no evidence of anything beyond the pleasure principle. With good intentions and bad, commentators seek to force some policy around the whimsy. But it is whimsy all the way down. And a war for fun cannot be won.

      And now that we have started with the pleasure principle, Trump is trapped, at least for a while, like an amateur gambler, in the behaviorist logic of intermittent pleasure and pain. It felt good at first. But then it didn't feel good when Iran didn't surrender, when Iran destroyed US systems, when Iran blocked the Straits of Hormuz. So now we must "double down" (consider how often that gambling jargon appears!) so that Trump can get another hit of pleasure. Each one will be more elusive than the last.

      And he who follows the pleasure principle into war cannot understand the other side. He cannot understand any action that is based upon other grounds than his own. If the other side is not having "fun" (again, Trump's own term) it should surrender. If it does not, this is, according to Trump, "unfair."

    • [04-07]: The president speaks genocide. Deciphering Trump's "a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again," while maligning various known "bad guys" who never themselves issued such sweeping and nihilistic threats, and not just because unlike Trump they never had to power to make such threats credible.

  • Zak Cheney-Rice [04-02]: How to ignore a war: "Trump is hoping confusing timelines and mixed messages of victory will make the conflict fade away."

  • David Dayen [04-02]: The opening of Trump's box: "Iran has put a tollgate across the Strait of Hormuz. This fundamentally changes the global economy."

  • Stephen Semler [04-02]: The war on Iran is more expensive than you think: "In the first two weeks of its war on Iran, the US spent an estimated $2.1 billion a day. It's no wonder Donald Trump is saying that the cost of war means the federal government can't afford to spend money to help Americans meet their basic needs." It's more expensive than Semler thinks, too.

  • Brahma Chellaney [04-03]: Why Iran is beating America: "The 'asymmetric cost' model — a war the US starts will ultimately cost the other side far more — has proven vital to sustain the illusion of American invincibility and to limit domestic political resistance to US military adventurism. Now, Iran has broken it." Explanation follows the paywall. I got a summary from google, and found the full article here, as How Iran is able to beat the US in its war. "Beat" has two meanings: to win, or just to hurt. The former is nonsensical in this context, as (despite common beliefs) both sides stand to lose much and/or gain little. The latter cuts both ways, but the question there isn't which side gets beat the worse, but how much each side can afford to be beaten. There is little doubt that the US can hurt Iran much worse than Iran can hurt the US, but can the US (and its "allies") take it? That may turn out to be the greater asymmetry.

  • Jonathan Swan/Maggie Haberman [04-07]: How Trump took the US to war with Iran: "In a series of Situation Room meetings, President Trump weighed his instincts against the deep concerns of his vice president and a pessimistic intelligence assessment. Here's the insure story of how he made the fateful decision." Pretty much as I expected, although the reporters' inside sources are already making sure to register their reservations, which Trump didn't hear or didn't give any credence to (e.g., on Hormuz, uprisings in Iran).

  • Andrew Prokop [04-08]: Does Trump really always chicken out? "Iran offers a fresh window into when Trump chickens out — and why his threats matter anyway." The problem with "chicken" is that it's a schoolyard taunt, meant to shame someone who backs away from a fight, or better still to provoke them into fighting. For a guy who fancies himself as tough, and who as president has almost arbitrary access to weapons of mass destruction, that's a dangerous accusation. The phrase caught on when Trump backed away from extreme tariff threats, which will foolish fell well short of acts of war. Iran, however, is an act of war, and there are many reasons to back away from that other than being chicken. The thing to understand is that Trump's wildest threats are nothing short of insane. When he realizes this, in some rare (for him) moment of sanity, we should welcome his backing off, and not taunt him for not doing something awful. Still, that's hard to do, largely because he so relishes making the insane threats in the first place, especially as doing so offers maximum publicity. But it also exposes him as thoughtless and dangerous, and utterly untrustworthy. It's rarely clear whether he does it just for effect, planning on "chickening out," or he just flies off the handle, and someone saner has to chill him down. Either way, it's not only not effective, like the "boy who cried wolf" it's likely to produce diminishing returns, and possibly end by doing him in. With Iran, I'm not sure that hasn't already happened.

  • James K Galbraith [04-08]: The ceasefire just showed the world that US military power is obsolete: "With the illusion shattered, now is the chance for the US to liberate itself from a broken imperial model." I see this more as a tactical retreat, perhaps based on the military finally acknowledging that they don't have the firepower to deliver on Trump's apocalyptic promises, nor do they have the defensive armor to protect against the inevitable reprisals. You could characterize that as weakness, or as pointlessness. But the ceasefire didn't shatter any illusions. It protected them from further distress. Still, why not hope for more?

    In my dreams, this defeat could liberate the US from a broken imperial model. The US could demilitarize, mothball its nuclear weapons, decommission its aircraft carriers, and close bases, even beyond those now abandoned in the Middle East. It could shrink its financial sector and devote its real resources to domestic physical, social and industrial renewal. It could revive, retrain and reenergize its worn-down population, with useful jobs doing worthwhile tasks. It could join the concert of great powers on equal terms, accepting the fact that none of the other powers — not China, not Russia, and not Iran — has any interest in taking over the world. And that therefore,for effective management of the world commonwealth, cooperative solutions must be found.

    Won't happen, but it is true that most Americans would be happier if we didn't have to carry the dead weight of empire. And that's really all it is.

  • Ishaan Tharoor [04-08]: A US-Iran ceasefire is here, but Trump's stone age mentality endures: "A temporary truce can't erase the chaos of a war that the White House started and never fully understood."

  • L Ali Khan [04-08]: The fragility of Gulf States: Some useful information here on the significance of migrant workers and foreign capital in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE. The population of migrant workers in Qatar and the UAE is around 88%; 67-70% in Kuwait; 52% in Bahrain. While migrant workers are kept powerless, those are huge numbers. While the economies are based on oil and gas, they've accumulated a lot of foreign investment, and run huge sovereign wealth funds. In Abu Dhabi, foreigners own 78% of total property value. This is all based on the appearance of stability, but could easily prove fragile.

  • Robert Pape [04-09]: "The war is turning Iran into a major world power": Interview with Pape, who's long been a skeptic of the use of air power only in war. He has a Substack called Escalation Trap, but mostly just briefing points there. As I understand "escalation trap," it's that when you commit escalation, you make it harder to try any other approach. Trump, for instance, had a range of negotiation options back in February, but in choosing to escalate by killing Khamenei, he discarded many of his options, committing to a path that pointed only toward more escalation. Pape explains it this way: "The Escalation Trap equips you with the frameworks to recognize when conflicts are shifting phases, anticipate the pressures driving escalation, and make clearer decisions before volatility hardens into irreversible commitments."

    Pape also wrote a NYT op-ed on this theme:

    • [04-06]: The war is turning Iran into a major world power. I don't much like this formulation, possibly because it seems like an unnecessary escalation: Iran clearly has some ability to frustrate and limit the US, but I'd beware of making a false equivalence. The ability to break something does not make one a craftsman, although it may negate the value of anyone else being a craftsman.

  • Ariana Aspuru/Sean Rameswaram [04-09]: Pete Hegseth preaches "maximum lethality." What has that meant in Iran? Interview with Benjamin Wallace-Wells. I'll note that all this talk about "warrior ethos" goes back to Robert D Kaplan, who in the 2000s wrote a couple books using that terminology. Actually, he concept goes back even further, as researchers discovered that draftees rarely fired their guns at enemy soldiers. A major push in the Vietnam War was to increase their firing efficiency, which was partly accomplished by dehumanizing their opponents. The next advance was getting rid of draftees, allowing better selection of "warriors," although the effect there was blunted by officers becoming less wasteful of their soldiers' lives. Still, it's hard to say that US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan weren't lethal enough. McChrystall's counterinsurgency program failed in Afghanistan because US soldiers were unwilling to build better relationships with Afghans if that meant restraint (and more risk). What's new with Trump and Hegseth is that you're never going to hear the phrase "hearts and minds" again. Given how hypocritical that's always been (at least since Vietnam), that may be for the better, but is a "pure warrior" military something that we want? Or can even use? Granted, sociopathic sadists like Hegseth and Trump get off on the idea, but are we going to look back on Trump's use of the military and find anything worth carrying forward? I doubt it.

  • James R Webb [04-09]: For peace with Iran to work a reckoning with Israel is in order: "Trump must get back to basics, and his promises to the American people. In order to do that he must put this relationship in its proper place." This is true, and more people should say so, but it is also a big ask for Trump, as his alignment with Israel is based not just on mutual donors and graft but on a deeply held faith in power and violence. Webb notes that "killing leadership makes it more difficult to negotiate." But Trump and Netanyahu have convinced themselves that negotiating is for losers, and in the process consider the elimination of potential negotiators as good policy. Good luck convincing them otherwise.

  • Matthew Cunningham-Cook [04-10]: Marcus Foundation bankrolls pro-Iran War group: "A foundation associated with Home Depot has been the biggest funder of one of the loudest voices for war against Iran." The group is Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), which Bernie Marcus has donated $19 million to.

  • Cameron Peters [04-13]: The new Hormuz blockade, briefly explained: Not really. I wonder where this subhed came from: "Trump tries Iran's playbook." It's not really the same tactic at all, although as a short-term negotiation ploy it may make some sense.

  • TRTWorld [04-13]: Iran offers 5 years enrichment freeze as US pushes for 20 in Islamabad talks: I find these time frameworks very revealing. Twenty years is long enough that current leaders can conveniently forget about the problem, continuing to treat Iran with callous contempt, figuring that the consequences will be someone else's problem. Five years is soon enough one should start planning straight away. Enrichment itself is only a hypothetical problem. While the US and Israel prefers prohibiting any HEU, the other way of neutralizing the "threat" is to normalize relations and forge bonds of trade and aid that would lead Iranians to viewing the US and Israel not as foes but as friends. Five years should be enough time to make substantial progress, if that's something the US is willing to consider. (And we're mostly talking the US here, which harbors the sharpest grudges from 1979. Israel and Saudi Arabia have found that an easy way to cozy up to the US, and to neutralize their own antagonism, is to posit Iran as a joint enemy threat. That no longer works if the US makes peace with Iran.) Another report:

  • Rajan Menon [04-16]: Behind the bluster, Donald Trump desperately needs a peace deal with Iran. Here's a solution. I'm not especially impressed with these proposals, but anything mutually agreeable would have my blessing. The key to a solution is not just that both sides must compromise, but that both sides need to recognize the other's legitimate fears, and seek to alleviate them in ways that are minimally disruptive and demeaning. This would, of course, be much easier if Israel would negotiate a modus vivendi with the Palestinians, but they are miles away from even considering such a thing.

Israel: Shortly after Israel and the US killed the Ayatollah, kicking off major war with Iran, Hezbollah lobbed a few rockets at northern Israel from Lebanon, so Israel responded as they always do, by escalating. Then when Trump canceled the apocalypse and agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran, most people expected Lebanon to chill out, but Israel escalated once again, suggesting they were even madder about the ceasefire than about Hezbollah's initial attacks (or "self-defense" or whatever). Evidently, while Israel can drag Trump into their wars, Trump can't (or won't) attempt to control Israel, so whatever ceasefire promises he makes have no credibility.

  • Dave Reed

  • Jonathan Ofir [03-22]: 'Forever live by the sword': Understanding Israelis' massive support for Iran war: "A recent poll registered Israeli support for the war on Iran at a whopping 93%. Between the genocide, the ethnic cleansing, and the annexations, Israelis think this is how it's meant to be. Constant war to sustain our constant expansion." The prevalence of right-wingers in Israel seems to be the result of so many years of psychodrama — the existential fear that has been drummed into every Israeli, combined with the seeming reprieve of incredible military victories — although this is aided by the insulation of having nearly all of the violence take place outside their own communities. (For similar reasons, Americans fell in love with WWII, and generally tolerated later wars until their utter pointlessness became too obvious to ignore.) What troubles me more is how the nominal left has fallen for the same mythology. Here's an earlier piece that makes the same point:

    • Orly Noy [03-01]: We are at war, therefore we are: "Months after proclaiming a 'historic victory,' Israel embarks on another offensive against Iran — and the ritual erasure of political dissent begins anew."

      For these three men — Lapid, Golan, and Bennett — no task is supposedly more urgent than replacing Netanyahu's blood-soaked, Kahanist government, which has led the country to unprecedented depths. They understand how dangerous he is. They know the devastation another term would bring.

      Yet the moment the smell of war fills the air, all these insights evaporate, replaced by automatic reverence to the Israeli war machine. It is as if the very idea that a war can be opposed simply does not exist within their cognitive framework.

      No one understands this mechanism better than Netanyahu. However precarious his political position may be, he knows that uniting even his fiercest rivals across the Zionist spectrum is only a click away. If "in wartime there is no coalition or opposition," then perpetual war becomes his most reliable political strategy — and he has learned to deploy it with increasing frequency.

      Netanyahu is a cynical and dangerous war criminal. But one thing cannot be denied: No Israeli leader has so deeply understood the collective psyche of Jewish Israeli society. A society that seems capable of feeling its own pulse only in war and destruction; that, if it is not attacking, destroying, and killing, is not entirely certain that it exists. In that sense, Netanyahu fits it like a glove.

  • Esther Sperber [03-26]: Settler violence is the symptom, not the disease: "As rabbis and generals rush to denounce West Bank attacks, we must ask: what kind of political system makes such brutality not just possible, but predictable?"

  • Qassam Muaddi:

    • [03-25]: What it's like to be a family caught in the crosshairs of Israel's 'de-Palestinization' of Jerusalem: "The Hamdia family spent all of their life savings on building a home, but Israeli bulldozers destroyed it in a single day. They are one example of Israel's surging policy of home demolitions in the West Bank."

    • [03-31]: Israeli policies pose an existential threat to Palestinians in the West Bank. Why isn't there more resistance? "Israeli settler pogroms, annexation, and economic strangulation are eroding Palestinian life in the West Bank." The answer seems so obvious that it's almost irresponsible to even raise the question: resistance, either through legal channels or as a violent uprising, is hopeless, with the latter exactly what the Israelis are hoping for, an excuse to do to what's left of the Palestinian West Bank what they've done to Gaza. All that really leaves is making some kind of moral appeal to the world to chastise Israel, and good luck with that. For an example:

      • Salman Abu Sitta [04-01]: Israel may dominate through violence, but Palestinians hold a force more powerful: "Israel has overwhelming military power, but moral power rooted in peace and justice is completely absent from Zionism. This is the power that has inspired millions to shout 'Free Palestine' in cities around the world like never before." Easy to say for some kind of organizer based in London. I'm choking on "powerful" in the title. That's really not the right word — "compelling," maybe? or "inspiring"? — and what about "shouting"? Isn't that what you do when no one is listening?

      Still, I wouldn't discount resistance just because it isn't working to the satisfaction of activists (especially outsiders). People resist in their own ways, given their own situations, and the limits of hope and action. Slavery existed in America from 1619 to 1865, punctuated by a few inconsequential revolts, but I wouldn't say there were long periods of no resistance.

    • [03-31]: Global condemnation as Israeli ministers celebrate death penalty law targeting Palestinian prisoners: "Human rights groups condemned a new Israeli law targeting Palestinian prisoners with the death penalty as a possible war crime and 'deeply discriminatory.' Meanwhile, Israeli ministers celebrated the law's passage with champagne on the Knesset floor."

    • [04-04]: Israel is implementing its Gaza strategy in Lebanon: turning 'buffer zones' into permanent borders: "Israel has stated it does not plan to leave Lebanon even if the current 'war' ends. If the Gaza model is any guide, Israel appears to be moving toward expanding its border into Lebanon." Israel has long (as far back as Ben-Gurion) wanted to annex southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. The problem, as in Palestine, has always been disposing of the people who live there. But while there is renewed talk of annexation, their immediate plans are only slightly less ambitious:

      Now, as Israel escalates its war on Lebanon, Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz has made Israel's plans clear: implement the Gaza model of total destruction and ethnic cleansing. He said on Tuesday that "the model of Rafah and Beit Hanoun" will be implemented in Lebanon.

      This means that Netanyahu's orders to the Israeli army to create a buffer zone 10 kilometers deep into Lebanon is more than a military strategy. It is a statement of reshaping an area of approximately 10,000 square kilometers, making it uninhabitable for its Lebanese residents, and putting it under Israeli military control. In Syria, Israel hasn't conducted the same kind of destruction, but it has announced that it will remain in the new territories it occupied after the fall of the al-Assad regime in December 2024. Together, in Lebanon and Syria, Israel seeks to maintain permanent control of some 14,000 square kilometers, all to create a so-called "buffer zone."

    • [04-08]: As US and Iran agree to a temporary ceasefire, Israel launches 'massacre' in Lebanon, threatening entire deal: "Hours after Iran and the US reached a two-week ceasefire agreement, Israel launched a massive bombing campaign across Lebanon, killing hundreds of people and threatening to derail the US-Iranian ceasefire before it even begins."

  • Jamal Abdi [04-09]: The forever spoiler: Netanyahu has been blowing up diplomacy with Iran for decades.

  • Jonathan Ofir [04-10]: Israelis are finally revolting against Netanyahu — for agreeing to the US ceasefire with Iran: "The entire Israeli political spectrum is united in blasting Netanyahu for not continuing to attack Iran, and Israeli society agrees. The reason, to put it simply, is that Israelis are war junkies." That's easy to say, not just because "Israelis are war junkies," but because the war rhetoric is so seductive to people who are sheltered from the costs and risks.

Israel-American-World Relations: I used to try to separate out Israel-related pieces into several bins. The Iran war has its own section, with most of the Lebanon front included under Israel above, as well as operations in the West Bank and Gaza, and internal Israeli politics. But here we will break out stories relating to Israeli propaganda, and the growing opposition to Israeli apartheid, war, and genocide in America and around the world.

  • Peter Beinart

    • [02-16]: The closing of the establishment Jewish mind: "What a letter claiming that accusations of genocide against Israel constitute a 'blood libel' says about pro-Israel discourse." I don't recall whether I cited this before, but the tab was still open. You can skip over the housekeeping up top and go straight to the "video transcript, where he makes his point. I'll add that "blood libel" seems to have become some kind of shorthand for any baseless accusation against Jews. Even in that very generic interpretation, it's impossible to argue that the charge of genocide is baseless. There is considerable evidence on both critical fronts: intent, and effect. You may try to argue that either or both don't quite reach the level of the legal term, but you can't pretend there's no evidence to be weighed.

  • Theia Chatelle [03-10]: With world's eyes on Iran, Israel locks down the West Bank: "The Israeli military has closed checkpoints around the West Bank, restricting Palestinians' movement as settler violence ramps up."

  • Michael Arria

    • [03-12]: Lindsey Graham helped push Trump to war: "As the war on Iran unfolds, it's clear that most Americans, including many on the right, don't support it. Nevertheless, warmonger Republican Senator Lindsey Graham continues to boast about his role in helping Israel push the US into war." There's also a section here on "Samantha Power and genocide," which includes a transcript of her response to a question of why she didn't quit her USAID post so she could speak out about the genocide unfolding in Gaza. Her rationalization isn't very compelling, making me wonder if the real problem wasn't just that she didn't take the problem seriously enough, probably because the political currents within the Biden administration were hostile to any such circumspection.

    • [03-26]: Newsom flip-flops on Israeli apartheid comments: The lobby strikes back, and by backing down, Newsom further discredits himself. One might quibble about the term "apartheid," but that's mostly because Israel's system of discrimination and separation is more extreme than South Africa's. Democrats need to find a way to talk about Israel without falling into hasbara clichés which ultimately justify war and other abuses of human rights. You don't have to say "apartheid" or "genocide" (although anyone who does is well justified). You could just say that you believe that everyone should have full and equal civil and political rights wherever they live, under whatever government is operating there. Then, when asked to clarify whether that includes Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, all you have to say is "yes." When asked about "Israel's right to self-defense," you can say, "sure, but not at the expense of anyone's rights to equal civil and political rights." Back during the 2024 campaign, Kamala Harris answered every question by first asserting Israel's "right to self-defense," after which nobody listened to anything else she had to say. Any time you write Israel a blank check like that, expect to be morally bankrupted.

    • [04-09]: Military aid to Israel emerges as the latest political litmus test for Democrats: "Last week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she would vote against any military aid to Israel, even weapons deemed 'defensive.' As support for Israel craters across the US, the issue of military aid has become the latest litmus test for Democrats." This is still a long ways from becoming a majority view, let alone a litmus test. The more realistic test is whether to oppose Trump's war against Iran, and blame Netanyahu for putting the idea into his tiny brain, and then using the leverage of the purse to rein both of them in and negotiate some kind of peace. Still, that's going to be hard for Democrats to do, especially the pro-Israel ones who would rather attack Trump for failing to win an unimaginable victory than to admit that their loyalty to Israel was (and always has been) misguided. Mainstream Democrats must finally realize that the only way they can function — the only way they can build any degree of voter trust — in the modern world is to become the party of peace. Failing that, they have no alternative when Trump flies off the handle and plunges America into a hopeless war.

  • James North [03-26]: The US media is ignoring Israel's efforts to torpedo Trump's talks with Iran: "Why won't the mainstream US media report on Israel's efforts to sabotage Trump's efforts to end the war with Iran?"

  • Yonathan Touval [03-29]: Is it 1914 in America? Filed here because the author is an Israeli "foreign-policy analyst," complains about leaders who "remain strikingly obtuse about human beings — their pride, shame, convictions and historical memory"; about his dangerous it is to place war "in the hands of people untrained in irony, contingency and the darker constants of human nature." Corey Robin complained about this piece, and he's probably right, but it seems to me pretty orthogonal to whatever it is that drives the core question, which is whether to go to war or not. A simpler first approximation is "not."

  • Nathan Thompson [04-03]: Democratic leader shift away from Israel: "Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez's announcement that she will not vote for any Israeli military aid is part of an emerging trend." I'd be more impressed if Hakeem Jeffries said that.

  • Rawan Abhari [04-04]: Stop asking if Israel has a right to exist: "The question . . . isn't a real inquiry about the rights of nations. It's a manipulation of discourse, a litmus test that forces Palestinians to offer theoretical assurances before their real political grievances can even be heard."

  • James Zogby [04-14]: A major taboo was broken at the DNC last weekend: "An AIPAC-specific resolution didn't make it through the party's meeting. But I've never seen such an open debate about the role of pro-Israel money before."

  • Bernie Sanders [04-15]: No more US military aid to Israel: "The time is long overdue for members of Congress to listen to the American people and end US military aid to the extremist Netanyahu government."

Around the World: The Ukraine War is still with us, and beyond that states around the world try to navigate around the neuroses and pathologies of Trump and Netanyahu. It is worth noting that people who are routinely slandered as mad tyrants in America often appear as much saner than those two.

  • Anatol Lieven [03-31]: Is the Iran War breaking NATO forever? "Trump is lashing out at allies as European partners increasingly turn away from his war — all signs that this is more than just a situational divide."

  • Karthik Sankaran/Sarang Shidore [03-24]: Iran war could cripple the 'Yuxi Circle' or 55% of world population: "This includes the Indian subcontinent, China, Japan, the Koreas, and all the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN."

  • Wenjing Wang [03-26]: On energy, China can sit this crisis out. Here's why. "'Green energy' here isn't a slogan or abstract aspiration. It's economic and geopolitical survival."

  • James Park [04-10]: Kim Jong Un waiting for Trump, but there's a path right in front of him: Relations between North and South Korea have thawed a bit since Lee Jae-myung followed Yoon Suk-yeol's "imprudent hawkishness," although Kim remains more focused on the US, even as Trump continues playing hard-to-get:

    From Pyongyang's perspective, engagement with Seoul has little strategic value. One takeaway Kim may have drawn from his failed 2018-19 negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump — mediated by South Korea — is that Seoul lacks either the diplomatic leverage to move U.S. policy or the agency to advance inter-Korean relations without U.S. consent. In practice, Washington exerts decisive influence over key issues of concern to Pyongyang, including potential nuclear talks, U.S.-South Korea joint military drills, sanctions, and a permanent end to the Korean War.

    Another lesson, this from the Iran War but already learned from Libya, is that giving up nuclear weapons would be stupid and perhaps suicidal. It occurs to me that Trump could make partial amends for his blunder in Iran by negotiating a normalization deal with North Korea. I doubt he has the skills or imagination to do so, and I doubt North Korea will give him the win on nuclear disarmament he mostly wants (not least to pair it with whatever he gets out of Iran; neither will be complete, but perhaps within spin distance). But it's doable if he can overcome the internal resistance that has kept the US at odds with North Korea since 1953.

Trump's World War III: I initially set this section up to deal with Trump's threats of war. We're obviously beyond that now, as Iran has its own section now. I've also opened a temporary news slot for Cuba. That leaves other fronts here, as well as broader issues of American militarism, including the logic that has led to the Iran War.

  • Leah Schroeder [02-04]: Hegseth to take control of Stars & Stripes for 'warfighter' makeover: "Critics, including veterans and First Amendment advocates, say the proposed overhaul would usurp the storied military newspaper's independence."

  • Joseph Bouchard [03-03]: How Maduro overthrow was key node in US-Israeli war on Iran: "It is important not to see them as separate operations: Venezuela was very much a precursor to regime change in Tehran." Several quotes here as how "the Israeli government has long viewed Venezuela as a strategic satellite of the Islamic Republic of Iran" make you wonder whether Israel had lobbied for the Venezuela coup. What is certain is that it served as a confidence-builder for Trump to go up against Iran — a point that Netanyahu and other skillfully exploited.

  • Daniel Immerwahr [03-16]: What' behind Trump's new world disorder? "A foreign policy freed of liberal pretenses and imperial ambitions could lead to restraint — or, as the Iran attack shows, simply license hit-and-run belligerence."

  • Alex Thurston [03-23]: Trump's Sahel reset banks on 'sovereignty,' guns + minerals deals. The art of dealing with Trump is the kickback.

  • Nick Turse: Selected articles (more here).

  • Robert Kagan [03-30]: America is now a rogue superpower: "Washington's conduct in the Iran war is accelerating global chaos and deepening America's dangerous isolation." Sounds like the author's dream come true. So why isn't he happy now?

  • Garrett Graff:

    • [04-02]: The mythology of Pete Hegseth: "The Iran War cheerleader-in-chief embraces a dangerous alternate history of the 21st century."

    • [04-06]: Is Trump about to nuke Iran? "The fact we can't say 'no' for sure should terrify us."

    • [2025-08-25]: America tips into fascism: "Today is different than before." Old, but still on the top of the author's "featured posts." Still, it wasn't immediately clear what had happened on that August 25, 2025, so I asked Google to look it up, and got this: "deadly Israeli airstrikes on Nasser Hospital in Gaza killing five journalists, the approach of powerful Typhoon Kajiki in Vietnam triggering evacuations, and US political developments involving National Guard deployments and administration cabinet changes." The latter was what the reference was to, but his subject was the whole anomalous drive of the then-eight-month-old Trump administration.

  • Francesca Fiorentini [04-03]: Finally, an anti-woke war: "America refuses a prolonged DEI quagmire." This is a bit too tongue-in-cheek, taking Hegseth at his word that the Bush wars failed because the military was too woke, but as he's fixing that, Trump should have any problems.

  • Simon Tisdall [04-04]: As Team Trump wage unceasing war on Iran, evangelical nationalists are destroying any moral world order we once had. Illustrated with pictures of Hegseth's Crusader tattoos, as if the text itself wasn't disturbing enough:

    Exploitation of Christian belief for political and military ends is a long-established, shabby US practice. . . . For most practising Christians, the misappropriation, distortion and weaponisation of faith to justify death and destruction, sow divisions, excuse war crimes and bomb Iran "back to the stone ages" is deeply saddening. Christians — who celebrate Easter on Sunday — believe Jesus was crucified for the sake of all mankind, for the forgiveness of sins, not for vindictive vengeance, pride and domination.

  • Charles Homans [04-04]: America is used to hiding its wars. Trump is doing the opposite. This seems to be largely based on the assumption that Americans have no risk in war any more: they can blow things up, kill people, make life difficult or impossible, and nothing can touch them, least of all conscience. Trump was quick to grasp this, perhaps because he has no conscience.

  • Abdaljawad Omar [04-06]: How the neoconservative influence over US war-making paved the way for Trump's war crimes in Iran: "Donald Trump's naked threats to target Iran's civilian infrastructure are the culmination of a strand of neoconservative thought that has defined U.S. war-making over three decades, from the Iraq war to Obama's drone campaigns to the Gaza genocide."

  • Bill Scher [04-08]: Trump believes in "madman theory." But he's actually a madman: "After six weeks of insane behavior, the ceasefire should not lead us to believe Trump has regained his facilities." The Madman Theory was one of Nixon's dumber ideas: in order to work, you not only have to convince the other side you're insane, but you are depending on their sanity to save you from yourself. But if the other side is sane, why don't you just try to reason with them. Sure, you have different interests, and you may have to compromise to get the best possible mix of gains and losses, but isn't that what sane people do? And I suspect that it's usually possible to reason your way to some kind of net positive — especially compared to the massive net-negative of war. The only reason for engaging in this sort of game is because you have goals that cannot be supported by reason, where one's only hope is to impose by power (e.g., Nixon on Vietnam).

    I don't know whether Trump is insane, or just plays at insanity on TV, but he's pretty convincing at it, at least in terms of his narcissism and sociopathy. What I do know is that he is reckless and insincere: he compulsively says crazy things he may or may not mean, but you can never trust to know the difference (he probably doesn't himself). I also believe that he only cares about himself, and can only engage the world in terms of what's in it for him. Thus people who want something from him have to go the circuitous route of flattery and apparent obeissance, which is to say they have to humiliate themselves to gain favors from someone they neither respect nor can trust. That's more opportunity than problem for weasels like Netanyahu and Lindsey Graham, but is a huge challenge for anyone who wants to reason toward sensible goals. When confronted with someone who is probably insane, the normal reaction is to look away and disengage. Unfortunately, if that person is also president, that's hard to do, and fraught with its own risks. (That's probably why the media work so hard to respect and rationalize Trump, because they don't feel like they can afford disengaging from the subject they're supposed to cover. Of course, the humiliation builds up, and sometimes even they snap.)

    It's also worth noting that the Madman Theory has never worked, even with leaders who are genuinely mad. At some point, pretty much everyone decides they've had enough, and have to fight back, even if the odds aren't good. Otherwise, you're just acquiescing to arrogance. By the way, Trump himself has embraced the Madman Theory:

  • Christian Paz:

    • [04-10]: Did the Trump administration threaten the pope? "Avignon-gate, the scandal blowing up MAGA-Catholic relations, explained." I'm tempted to quote James Baker about "not having a dog in that fight," but the piece is rather fascinating even if you understand that it's just about other people. I've found it interesting when right-winger protestants convert to Catholicism, presumably because they want a more ornate, more hierarchical religion (I've also heard of Catholics concerting to Eastern Orthodoxy for the same reason), only to find a mix of things they like (anti-abortion) and dislike (opposition to real killing, like capital punishment, and especially war).

    • [02-10]: Is MAGA pushing the Catholic Church to the left? "Progressive Catholics are ready to fight back." Interview with Christopher Hale, who publishes a newsletter called Letters from Leon, where he asserts that "the pontiff's effort to moderate the church and act as a bulwark against creeping authoritarianism in the Trump 2.0 era."

    • [04-13]: Donald Trump's pivot to blasphemy: "Attacking the pope and posing as Jesus — even religious conservatives are mad this time." I got over Christianity by the time I turned 20, but in my teens I was pretty well schooled in the intricacies of Christian sectarianism, at a time when the distinctions between the dozens of Protestant sects still meant something. In those days, a fraudulent poseur like Trump would have been called out from all quarters. These days, I'm not sure that most nominal Christians believe anything drawn from religious traditions. Rather, they believe in secular philosophies (liberalism, conservatism, fascism, some even socialism) and use selective readings of scripture and other authorities to buttress those beliefs. If I still cared, I would find this aspect of Trump very upsetting. Now, I'll just note that I doubt the sincerity of any professed Christian who isn't upset and disgusted by Trump's religious posturing.

  • Harold Meyerson [04-13]: Re-enacting the Crusades: "Pete Hegseth's Christianity — tribal, with plenty of enemies who deserve the sword — is central to the MAGA worldview."

  • Martin Di Caro [04-14]: Lacing up LBJ's shoes, Trump is walking willingly into a trap: "Choosing War author Fredrik Logevall on how the Democratic president went from bombing in 1964 to sending 500,000 ground troops into Vietnam in 1967." Interview. One thing I'm struck by here was the 1965 prediction by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that to win would take 500,000 troops and give years. That prediction was tested, and proved overly optimistic. Also by the Humphrey prediction that such a war would destroy the political unity Johnson built up in his 1964 landslide election.

  • Blaise Malley [04-14]: US strikes on alleged drug boats have killed more than 160 people: "With eyes on Middle East, military continues campaigns of deadly strikes at sea."

  • Jim Lobe [04-14]: Think the Iran war is a disaster? Blame these DC thin tanks first. "We asked AI to find the conflict's biggest boosters in Washington. Surprise: many are connected to Israel and pushed for the invasion of Iraq too." Don't let "AI" distract you here. Any systematic survey would have identified these same "usual suspects."

Trump vs. Law: This section has moved beyond the stormtroopers of ICE, and might as well include the whole US Courts system, as well as the increasingly oxymoronic Department of Justice. The firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi is one story here, but doesn't merit its own section.

Trump's Administration: Trump can't remake America in his own image (i.e., destroy the country, culture, and civilization) just by himself. He needs help, and having largely purged the government of civil servants and replaced them with his own minions, this is what they are doing (whether he's paying attention or not):

Trump Himself:

  • Margaret Hartmann:

  • Liz Crampton [03-28]: 'He's lied about everything': Iran war puts Trump on shaky ground with young MAGA men: "Their frustrations and anger with the conflict were on full display at CPAC this week."

  • CK Smith [04-05]: Paula White likens Trump's troubles to Jesus Christ at Easter lunch: White is "Trump's chief spiritual adviser," which evidently means that it's her job to assure Trump that whatever he does is God's will. I'm not sure whether any previous president ever employed such an adviser, but Trump is exceptionally needy of reassurance, and given his baser instincts, such reassurance is especially treacherous.

  • Tom Carson:

    • [04-07]: Terminatic: After running on about Adlai Stevenson as only a novelist would, then offering a back-handed compliment to JFK:

      Sixty-plus years later, is the performance of Mar-A-Khargo's throne-sitter in chief in the same league? In every way but one, no way. It must gall Trump to his bone spurs that the Kennedys outdo him even as narcissists, and he can't stand Serious Pretending anyhow. Besides being profoundly unserious, he's actually lousy at pretending: just watch him whenever he's got to act solemnly concerned about anyone's welfare but his own, something Kennedy could pull off even right after someone shot him in the head. As anyone who's ever been in a bar fight can tell you, what Trump's good at isn't pretending but bullshitting, not the same thing at all. Too bad a ton of bullshit can kill people every bit as dead as a bazooka.

    • [04-14]: No King of Kings: "Trump does Jesus the way Debbie did Dallas."

      Trump still has no idea why his Ramadan message didn't go over well in the ungrateful Muslim world. He thought "God bless Allah" had a benign, even generous ring to it. Only the fake news persists in the slander that he doesn't have a gooey side he can trot out like bubble gum scraped off his heel.

      I mean, Jesus, am I wrong? It's not as if he represented himself as Allah, something he's been told is a sacrilege in their religion. He thinks that's a stupid rule, but guesses it takes all kinds to make a world. Not counting everyone he wants to obliterate, but that goes without saying. Or would if he ever stopped saying it.

      One difficulty of writing about Trump 2.0 is you can never be sure whether you're making crazy shit up or just guessing right a few hours ahead of the news cycle. Unless the real clickbait here is the scoop that everybody's just fucking fed up with him, I wouldn't have bet on the President of All the Peepholes sharing an utterly endearing AI image of himself dressed up an ever-succoring Messiah to raise this hue and cry. In happier days when the redcap horde was feeling more MAGAminous, it wouldn't have.

  • Zack Beauchamp [04-13]: New data suggests Trump's assault on democracy may be stalling out: "Three new reports give some surprising reasons for optimism."

Republicans:

  • Shawn McCreesh [03-31]: In South Dakota, neighbors feel sorry for Kristi Noem's husband.

  • Zack Beauchamp [04-13]: JD Vance had a vision for the world. Trump is wrecking it. "The vice president's disastrous week reveals that he's in a trap of his own making." First he went to Hungary to campaign for Orbán. (As I've been asking everyone this week: how is that supposed to work for anyone?) Then he went to Pakistan to head the negotiations with Iran, and walked out with nothing after 21 hours. "In effect, the most promising avatar of postliberal politics in America has been saddled with a record that betrays some of his movement's core principles. And it's not clear how he'll ever escape the baggage." Actually, it looks like it's very hard for a sitting vice president to get elected: aside from Adams and Jefferson, which was under a very different system (the VP was the runner-up, not just a ticket mate), the only ones I can think of was GHW Bush, following Reagan, who had won his second term in a landslide, and Martin Van Buren, after Jackson (again, very popular, and like Bush a loser running for a second term). On the other hand, Harris, Gore, Humphrey, and Nixon all lost (Nixon and Biden did win after an interval). Harris and Humphrey were really hurt by their inability to break with the wars of unpopular presidents. Of course, Vance's prospects would look up if Trump dies (resigns, is impeached, etc.). After a shaky start (John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur) promoted VPs have won their own terms (Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson).

  • Raquel Coronell Uribe [04-14]: Vance warns the pope should 'be careful' when talking about theology: "Vance, who [says he] is Catholic, said the pope was wrong in saying Jesus wasn't on the side of those who wield the sword, pointing to the US helping defeat the Nazis in World War II."

Democrats:

  • David W Chen [03-31]: A Democratic electrician nabs a state senate seat in Republican Florida: "With Brian Nathan's victory certified, Democrats won two of three state legislative races in this month's special elections, all in Republican-leaning districts." Democrats have flipped 30 seats since the 2024 election.

  • Astead Herndon [04-04]: How one Democratic senator is tackling Trump's corruption: "Sen. Chris Murphy explains how blatant corruption is undermining faith in democracy."

  • Ed Kilgore [04-15]: Finally, Democrats are a unitd antiwar party: "Conflicts with Vietnam and Iraq deeply divided the party. But now nearly all Democrats oppose Trump's dangerous and unjust Iran war." Aside from Fetterman, who voted against limiting Trump's assumed warmaking powers, I still think many others in the Democratic caucus come up short of being antiwar. If they were, they would vote against funding for Israel, which is the driving force (and supposed beneficiary, but that may just be Netanyahu) behind Trump's war. Still, it's a movement that has to happen if Democrats are ever able to regain and maintain a hold on the presidency.

The Economy (and Economists):

  • John Cassidy:

  • Jonquilyn Hill [04-05]: The high price of everything, explained: "What the cost of gas, coffee, and milk tells us about why everything feels more expensive right now." Actually, the author just explains three cases, with three different explanations: gas prices are directly attributable to Trump's war on Iran, which has disrupted supplies; coffee production has also been disrupted, but by climate change; milk is less obvious, but a combined effect of rising costs elsewhere (including oil, which affects all of agriculture). But the author doesn't get to "everything," or even try. That's partly because the answers aren't simple — other than inflating the money supply, which may have seeded the wave of price rises that started around 2021 but doesn't explain much of what's happening recently. My own theory is that most of the initial price rises were caused by supply disruptions, then escalated by companies that found they had enough market power to raise prices, after which "inflation" snowballed into a psychology, where most businesses wanted to get in on the action, or at least not be left out. Trump is making this worse with his wars and tariffs (a consumption tax disguised as ordinary price gouging), and possibly by his deficit spending (limited as the tax cuts mostly went to the rich). On the other hand, he's dragging the economy down, not unlike the Volcker recession that broke the inflationary mindset of the 1970s.

  • Ryan Cooper [04-07]: A retrospective on Bidenomics: "Joe Biden listened to the left on full employment. But the lasting effects were wanting, and the politics were brutal." I don't have time to unpack this pretty good summary of how Biden's policies affected the economy, mostly for the better, not that he got much credit for that, not just from his enemies but from his own incoherence. I should also stress once again that what killed Harris wasn't the economy but the wars. (True that Harris wasn't much more articulate about the economy than Biden was, and especially that she failed to identify the villains — largely because she spent more time sucking up to donors than campaigning for votes.)

  • Eric Levitz

  • Robert Kuttner [04-14]: The faltering war economy: "Trump's war craters the economy in multiple ways, even if it somehow ends soon."

Technology (Including AI):

  • Eric Levitz [03-26]: 4 reasons why AI (probably) won't take your job: "What the AI jobs panic is missing."

  • Ergosphere [03-30]: The machines are fine. I'm worried about us. An astrophysics story, or parable perhaps.

  • Janet Abou-Elias/William D Hartung [04-07]: The Pentagon is going "AI first": "The US military is placing the technology at the center of its mission,and the human costs promise to be staggering." "Human costs" are nothing new at the Pentagon, where the best remedy would be slowing down and down-sizing, both of which could support much-needed overview. AI's promise of a faster, sloppier control system does just the opposite. But we should also be concerned about the literal costs. One deal cited here is a 10-year, $5.6 billion contract to the start up Salesforce. Only the Pentagon could blow that kind of money on a nebulous fantasy sketch.

  • David Futrelle [04-13]: How a New York Times puff piece missed the toxic creed of the tech oligarchy: "A profile of an AI healthcare start-up overlooked the creaky business model behind it, as well as the tech sector's worship of 'high agency.'" About Michael Gallagher, of Medvi.

    According to Gallagher, the company is on track to do $1.8 billion in sales this year, with a staff of only two (Gallagher and his younger brother).

    Too good to be true? Well, yes. Almost immediately, critics online filled in what the Times had left out: a warning letter the FDA sent to Medvi over alleged deceptive marketing practices; a RICO lawsuit against Medvi's fulfillment partner over a weight-loss compound that hasn't been proven to work; a slew of AI-generated fake doctors shilling for Medvi in thousands of spammy ads.

    After the online outcry over the article, the Times added a few paragraphs describing some of the ways that "Medvi's aggressive advertising has led to legal and regulatory issues" — which is putting it a little gingerly. But the story remains largely unchanged on the Times website. I say let it stand. Because every age gets the heroes it deserves, and Gallagher is in many ways a perfect representative of our current Gilded Age 2.0.

  • Dani Rodrik [04-13]: To work for us, AI must not think for us. Alternate (slightly better) title, at Mint: "Artificial intelligence was meant to assist human work, not replace our thinking."

Regular Columnists

Sometimes an interesting columnist writes often enough that it makes sense to collect their work in one place, rather than scatter it about.

Paul Krugman:

  • [04-07]: MAGA is winning its war against US science: "When a political movement believes that ignorance is strength."

  • [04-13]: The Axis of Autocracy loses a wheel: "Hungarians stand up for democracy."

  • [04-14]: Chinese electrotech is the big winner in the Iran War: "An energy-hungry world is being pushed away by America and into China's arms."

  • [04-15]: Autocracy = corruption: "What the US resistance can learn from Hungary." It's worth recalling here that Trump's presidential wins came when he was (improbably but relentlessly) able to paint his opponent as the corrupt one. He never acknowledged, much less normalize, his own corruption.

    The good news from Hungary is that blatant corruption doesn't have to be normalized. In fact, public perceptions of runaway corruption can become a weapon in defense of democracy. The public understands corruption, hates it, and can be mobilized to vote en masse against it.

Nathan J Robinson and Current Affairs:

Jeffrey St Clair:

Robert Wright:

  • [04-11]: The future arrived this week. "And boy are we not ready for it!" Author has a new book coming out in June, with the very unfortunate title of The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning. I recently read his 1999 book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, which was pretty good but would have been better had he excised all his references to "God" and "destiny." I suspect the new book will also have much real value, but once again way too much about "God" and "Cosmic Reckoning." He does write here:

    One of the book's central points is that if we're going to successfully navigate the AI revolution — avoid traumas and catastrophes that range from social chaos to planet-wide authoritarian rule to nuclear war to complete annihilation — we'll have to cross the threshold to true global community. The world's nations have to confront this challenge collectively — build new international rules and norms — or else watch in dismay and intermittent terror as a technology that accelerates without constraint or guidance strips us of agency.

    Given that "true global community" is a pretty extreme pipe dream, I wonder if something more practicable might work. To some extent, this depends on what the real threat of AI is, and how it interacts with other problems (or perhaps I should say comorbidities?). If you want to take nuclear war off the table, maybe the best way to tackle that problem isn't through AI but through nuclear weapons. I'm all for some "new international rules and norms," but caution that they have to be mutually agreed upon, without the coercion of power. It isn't beyond imagination that the ten or so states that possess nuclear weapons could agree to safeguards that would effectively end their threat, and that every other nation could agree, as nearly all have already done in signing the NPT, not to build their own. With no nuclear weapons, there can be no nuclear war, regardless of how funky AI gets.

    "Social chaos" and "authoritarian rule," tough less clearly defined, can also be dealt with without reference to AI. As for AI itself, I think most people understand that it promises some benefits but also poses some challenges, possibly including a few that may prove insurmountable. If we take nation-states as atoms, each free and autonomous — i.e., living in anarchy, with no overarching "world order," just a set of "international rules and norms" that are freely agreed upon, I doubt that any will want to not enjoy the benefits of AI, although they may have legitimate concerns about how others might abuse it, so they may seek to formulate some rules and norms to regulate its use, maybe even its development. Wright isn't arguing against me here, but he's imagining some kind of enforcement mechanism that I reject at an invitation to abuse. All I want to do here is question why we need to go to such (unworkable) extremes?

    Which gets us back to "what God has to do with it"? On the one hand, I find the concept bewildering (what could it possibly mean?), and on the other I find it ominous (who wants to be God? and why?). I don't know much about AI, but I suspect that the notion that whoever controls AI is going to be able to run the world is just megalomaniacal nonsense. Admittedly, if you look at the capitalization of AI companies, it's profitable nonsense, as it seems to be the basis of such ridiculous valuations. But aside from trying to set up a system of tribute-rents, which is ultimately equivalent to a tax on breathing (or life), where is the natural profit? Conversely, take away the patents and rents, and where is the problem?

    The piece goes on to offer valuable insights about Trump and Iran, before cycling back to his book, wherein he writes:

    These kinds of dangers — AI-abetted biological virus, AI-abetted computer virus, AI-infused cyberweapon, rampantly destructive AI agent — and various others make it harder for any nation to feel safe unless it has some confidence that things are under control in other nations. And it's hard to get that kind of confidence without international agreements that qualify, in at least some sense, for the term "international governance."

    To which he quotes Tom Friedman, saying virtually the same thing, but couched in more conventional realpolitik:

    The solution — this may shock people — must begin with the two AI superpowers, the US and China. It is now urgent that they learn to collaborate to prevent bad actors from gaining access to this next level of cyber capability. Such a powerful tool would threaten them both, leaving them exposed to criminal actors inside their countries and terrorist groups and other adversaries outside. It could easily become a greater threat to each country than the two countries are to each other.

    I suppose I find it hopeful that such great powers might fear the future more than each other and/or their own people, but I'm sure a sampling of AI executives would love nothing more than to see an arms race develop to control AI, as that would make themselves the most important (and potentially most powerful) people in the world. As it is, they're playing up the potential use of AI in weapons systems, because they know that's where the sweet spot between fear and money is. Take that money away, and the mighty motivation of greed will melt away. That won't cause AI not to be developed, but will slow it down, and straighten it out, with the much better motivation of altruism.

Miscellaneous Pieces

The following articles are more/less in order published, although some authors have collected pieces, and some entries have related articles underneath.

Gabrielle Gurley [03-30]: Ending sports owner blackmail: "A new bill would prohibit the money grabs that billionaire team owners unleash to pit states and cities against each other in bidding wars over potential moves." The bill is the Home Team Act, sponsored by Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). They cite the Green Bay Packers as an exception to the billionaire-owner rule, as the team is owned by fans, none of whom can exceed a 4% ownership share.

Caitlin Dewey [04-01]: America is going back to the moon: "Artemis II and the new space race, explained."

John Semley [04-14]: The fanfare around the band Geese actually was a psyop: "The Brooklyn band Geese was labeled an 'industry plant' by those who questioned its sudden ubiquity. Maybe it was." Paywalled ("You've read your last free article"; when did I ever read my first?), so I'm short on details, but as a non-fan this caught my eye. Zachary Carter tweeted: "Give me a break. They had a digital marketing team for their fourth record, and it worked. Music has always been promoted via inorganic methods." The Geese album, Getting Killed, wound up in first place in my 2025 EOY Aggregate, by a slim margin over Rosalía's Lux (247-230; AOTY put Lux ahead, 413-404, an order I might have wound up with had I surveyed my usual large number of lists, but I fell far short). I'm not a fan of either album, but had five A- albums in AOTY's top ten: Wednesday, CMAT, Lily Allen, Clipse, and Billy Woods. That's if anything above average for me, so I'm used to albums I don't much care for ranking well. Publicity has something to do with this, but more to do with ranked vs. unranked. Records that are noticed by enough people to get reviewed usually scatter not by degrees of PR but by more basic taste considerations. That said, I have even less idea why other people like Geese than I do with other ranked albums I don't care for (FKA Twigs and Turnstile from both our lists; I had Bad Bunny at ***, which qualifies as an album I like; Oklou and Hayley Williams, both ** for me, made the AOTY list, displacing Allen and Woods — sure, my list is skewed slightly in my direction).

Astrid Barltrop [04-16]: How will attitudes change if students like me aren't taught the truth about British colonial history? Misunderstandings about colonial history is not just a British problem. Most former empires, including Russia and the US (and even long-gone ones like Iran and Turkey), have exaggerated senses of their own self-importance, with little recognition of the harm they caused to others, let alone the self-harm of trying to dominate other peoples.

Books:

  • Tom Carson [03-28]: Charlie is my darling: "The Little Drummer Girl, 43 years later."

  • Robert Kuttner [04-03]: Capital ideas: "Two books on the history of capitalism provide lessons for how to tame it." Reviews of Sven Beckert: Capitalism: A Global History, and John Cassidy: Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI.

  • Ishan Desai-Geller [04-10]: The enduring lessons of the Jewish bund: "A conversation with Molly Crabapple about Here Where We Live Is Our Country, her capacious history of Bundism and what we can learn from their socialist and anti-Zionist example."

Some Notable Deaths: I've been using the New York Times, but it's giving me aggravation these days, so I'll switch over to Wikipedia (April, also March), which is probably better anyway. Roughly speaking, since my last report on March 22:

  • Dan Wall, 72 [04-14]: jazz organ player, notably worked with John Abercrombie and Jerry Bergonzi.

  • Asha Bhosle, 92 [04-12]: Indian singer.

  • Phil Garner, 76 [04-11], baseball player and manager.

  • Mike Westbrook, 90 [04-11]: English pianist, composer, band leader; a Penguin Guide favorite.

  • Afrika Bambaataa, 68 [04-09]: DJ and rapper, "Looking for the Perfect Beat" was one of the founding classics of hip-hop.

  • Davey Lopes, 80 [04-08], baseball player and manager.

  • Tracy Kidder, 80 [03-24], journalist. I read his books: The Soul of a New Machine (1982, which won a Pulitzer), and House (1985).

  • Chip Taylor, 86 [03-23], singer-songwriter ("Wild Thing").

  • Keith Ingham, 88 [03-12], English pianist.

Tweets: I've usually used this section for highlighting clever responses and/or interesting ideas.

  • Kevin M Kruse [04-02]:

    I think the reason AI propagandists are so flustered by the fact that no real writer wants to use their idiotic tools is that they themselves don't enjoy writing. They see it as a boring arduous chore to be avoided, while real writers actually enjoy writing and actually care about the quality of it.

    It's like approaching a chef who really loves making new dishes, watching other people enjoy them, enjoying the taste himself and saying, look, this cooking thing takes a lot of time and energy, wouldn't you rather just get your nutritional needs from this brand new Gruel Bar we're selling?

  • Tom Carson [04-02]:

    It fascinates me how totally indequate the NYT is -- its methods, its strictures, its preconceptions, its reason for being -- the dealing with Trump's insanity. This brand of delirium is outside their wheelhouse and that's why they're pretending it doesn't exist. I say this with some sympathy, like your grandma losing the ability to proper her wheelchair in any direction at all.

    A comment: "Compared to all the other national and international reporting outfits that are doing such a bang-up job?" Carson responded citing "the mystique of invaluability and authoritativeness the NYT has projected all my life." At least he admits that the reputation may not be deserved.

  • Jon Lovett [04-03]: "In a surprise twist, the Epstein files released the attorney general."

  • Emily DiVito [04-15]:

    Annual Tax Day reminder that Trump killed Direct File and now taxpayers have no choice but to shell out millions a year to TurboTax.

  • Dean Baker [04-15]: "Trump means that when Netanyahu gave him the orders, he was prepared to ignore the consequences." After quoting Aaron Rupar:

    Trump on high oil prices: "They're not up -- I thought, I mean, honestly -- I thought they're be much -- and I was willing to do that, to stop a nuclear weapon to be used against this country or the Middle East, to stop that it was certainly worthwhile being much higher than it is.

    Uh, but there was no nuclear weapon, nor even a program to develop a nuclear weapon, a lie Netanyahu has been pushing since the 1990s, when his estimates of achievement had already been discredited. Even if Iran had nuclear weapons, there is no reason to think that Iran would use it against Israel, much less against the US. Since the end of WWII, no nation with nuclear weapons has used them against another nation. Nor have any used them for "nuclear blackmail" (unless you read Trump's ultimatum to Iran that way). They've all posed them as deterrence against foreign attack, only to be used in response to such an attack. So why should Trump, or Netanyahu, worry about Iran developing nukes, other than that they hoped to attack Iran before it had any sort of nuclear deterrent? For what it's worth, I don't think that Netanyahu is in a position to give Trump orders. But he's a conniving sort, and persuaded Trump to launch the war by exploiting Trump's ignorance and playing on his vanity. How long Trump will allow himself to be so manipulated is an open question, as is what he will do about it. While I don't see Trump as someone easily ordered about, he is one of those rich guys who depends on other people to do anything, and he's surrounded himself with a mix of sycophantic morons and Israel agents that won't give him many options.

Current count: 270 links, 18395 words (22665 total)

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Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Music Week

April archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 45771 [45738] rated (+33), 29 [21] unrated (+8).

I've written answers to two recent questions. I don't get many, which sometimes excuses my slow responses, but I'm generally game. You can ask a question here.

Main thing I worked on last week was a two-part Substack post on Trump's Iran War:

The New York Times has a new piece, How Trump took the US to war with Iran, which reports on the war council meetings. It has more details like who sat where, but the outlines are exactly as I speculated in these posts. The only news seems to be that the insiders feeding the reporters these details are making sure to register their reservations, which if made obviously had no effect on Trump. It's the first draft of history, and already people want an edit.

What I didn't particularly anticipate was that Trump would reverse course and issue an apocalyptic ultimatum on Easter Sunday, then back off today and agree to a two-week ceasefire. As the New York Times reports: US and Iran agree to cease-fire, avoiding (or postponing) Trump's threats of imminent devastation. I haven't figured out what's going on yet, although the "TACO Tuesday" joke occurred to me before I heard it on Kimmel. Given that Trump wound up accepting an Iranian proposal as the "basis for talks" suggests that he blinked first, and that Iran expects to gain more diplomatic leverage in two weeks than the military advantage they lose as the US and Israel rearms. But how it might make sense isn't immediately clear.

I'll collect more on this during the week, and try to release a new Loose Tabs before next week. It should be shorter than the last couple, partly because I'm taking less time, and partly because I don't expect to have a lot of time this week. On the other hand, things are moving too fast to hold back just to pile up another TL;DR post. Meanwhile, you can read what I have so far in my draft file.

Music Week was delayed a day this week because a friend broke her hip and shoulder, and we helped get her settled back home from the hospital. As usual, they dump people out long before they're really ready to go. Some very interesting records below, including several that don't quite work for me but might be up your alley (Raye, Chalk, Jill Scott). I've been playing old favorites to start off most days, and I paid little attention to the demo queue this week (pretty much everything I have is still in advance of release, so it didn't seem urgent.

I have dinner plans for Saturday, and lots of house work to do. I'm not sure about the latter given how sore I still am from crawling around the attic last week.

New records reviewed this week:

Aesop Rock & Homeboy Sandman: Miami Lice: Season Four (2026, Rhymesayers Entertainment): Underground rappers Ian Bavitz and Angelo Del Villar II, both with long and notable solo careers, fourth EP/album together as Lice, getting closer to album length with 8 songs, 27:11. B+(***) [sp]

Ali & Charif Megarbane: Tirakat (2026, Habibi Funk): Ali (140 on Discogs) is a Jakarta-based trio, with a couple of previous albums. Megarbane is a Lebanese composer-producer of somewhat longer standing, including aliases like Cosmic Analog Ensemble, The Free Association Syndicate, The Submarine Chronicles, and Trans-Mara Express. B+(*) [sp]

Elles Bailey: Can't Take My Story Away (2026, Cooking Vinyl): English singer-songwriter, slotted over there as Americana, draws more on blues than country, eighth album since 2017. Strong singer, sounds good. B+(**) [sp]

Chalk: Crystalpunk (2026, Alter Music): Industrial dance-punk band from Belfast, first album, Ross Cullen the vocalist, Benedict Goddard multi-instrumentalist, they seem to also have some accomplishments in film. Starts out sounding like what I think metal should sound like, but they're more varied, and ultimately not much more hardcore than, say, the Fall (or some other 1980s band I can't recall but can almost picture). That seems about right, though I still haven't plumbed much depth here. B+(***) [sp]

Stew Cutler & Friends: Under Cover (Mostly) (2025 [2026], self-released): Guitarist, also plays harmonica, has several albums going back to 2000, mostly jazz side-credits (Bobby Previte, Wayne Horvitz), although I'm seeing this filed under blues (which works best when the friend is vocalist Bobby Harden; less so with the organ). Some nifty guitar in spots (but "Summer Breeze" is a bit too saccharine). B+(*) [sp]

The Delines: The Set Up (2026, Decor/El Cortez/Jealous Butcher): Retro country-soul band from Portland, led by reputable novelist Willy Vlautin, Amy Boone the vocalist, seventh album since 2014. B+(***) [sp]

Elucid & Sebb Bash: I Guess U Had to Be There (2026, Backwoodz Studioz): Rapper Chaz Hall, has a dozen or so albums on his own since 2007, aside from his work in Armand Hammer. With Swiss producer Sebastian Bashmolean. Pretty dense. B+(**) [sp]

Avalon Emerson & the Charm: Written Into Changes (2026, Dead Oceans): Singer-songwriter from Arizona, has a reputation as a Berlin DJ and electronic music producer, but at least here sings on what I'd call electropop (or synth-pop), keeping as group name the title of her 2023 debut. A- [sp]

Girl Scout: Brink (2026, Human Garbage): Swedish indie-pop group, Emma Jansson the singer, multiple songwriters, first album after two EPs. B+(*) [sp]

Irreversible Entanglements: Future Present Past (2026, Impulse!): DC-based free jazz collective, fifth studio album since 2017, with Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother, vocals), Aquiles Navarro (trumpet), Keir Neuringer (saxes/keyboards), Luke Stewart (bass), and Tcheser Holmes (drums). Impressive as ever. A- [sp]

DoYeon Kim: Wellspring (2026, TAO Forms): Korean, based in New York, plays gayageum (12- and 25-string), sings some, backed by Mat Maneri (viola), Henry Fraser (bass), and Tyshawn Sorey (drums). Interesting and fairly unique record, but not one I find myself particularly enjoying. B+(*) [cd] [05-01]

Erica von Kleist: Picc Pocket (2025 [2026], self-released): Flute player and saxophonist, born in Connecticut, several albums since 2005, this one focuses on the piccolo (which "has spent most of jazz history on the sidelines," not without reason). Backed by piano-bass-drums, with some trombone and tenor sax. B [cd] [04-23]

Kronos Quartet: Glorious Mahalia (2026, Smithsonian Folkways): Classical string quartet, founded by David Harrington (violin) in 1973, based in San Francisco, group was stable from 1978-99, with John Sherba and Hank Dutt retiring in 2024. Early albums included works of Terry Riley and Steve Reich, as well as modernists, but they've branched out widely, with Piazzolla and Partch, Dylan and Seeger, and lots of world music — Pieces of Africa (1992) a personal favorite. This tribute to the gospel great incorporates some of her singing, but is mostly built around spoken word samples, with Clarence Jones as well as Jackson, often focused on Martin Luther King Jr. A- [sp]

Buck Meek: The Mirror (2026, 4AD): Guitarist in Big Thief, was married to lead singer Adrianne Lenker when they founded the band, divorced in 2018, but remains in band, while both also record solo albums. This is his fourth. B+(**) [sp]

Fabiano do Nascimento & Vittor Santos E Orquestra: Vila (2026, Far Out): Brazilian guitarist, has a dozen-plus albums since 2011. Santos I know as a trombonist, but here he leads a large and rather lush orchestra: not my favorite thing, but lovely, for sure. B+(*) [sp]

Nubiyan Twist: Chasing Shadows (2026, Strut): British jazz-funk group, sixth album since 2015, much depends on their funk quotient. B [sp]

Bill Orcutt: Music in Continuous Motion (2026, Palilalia): Guitarist, has a noise-rock background starting in the group Harry Pussy, has quite a few instrumental albums, of late some with four guitars (including this one, but apparently here they're all him). B+(**) [sp]

Puma Blue: Croak Dream (2026, PIAS): British electronica producer Jacob Allen, singles since 2016 and albums since 2019, languid beats and dusky atmospherics roughly fit the genre of trip-hop. B+(**) [sp]

Raye: This Music May Contain Hope (2026, Human Re Sources): British pop/r&b singer-songwriter Rachel Keen, second album, has co-written songs for Beyoncé and Charli XCX. This is major, 17 songs for 73 minutes, with a dollop of Al Green in the middle. Too much, but half of this is as impressive as anything I've heard this year. B+(***) [sp]

Jill Scott: To Whom It May Concern (2026, Human Re Sources/Blues Babe): Soul singer-songwriter from Philadelphia, debut 2000, sixth studio album (last was 2015). A pretty major effort. B+(***) [sp]

Aktu el Shabazz: As Seen on TV (2026, 766303 DK): Underground hip-hop, Brooklyn-born, Vancouver-based MC, first album. B+(**) [sp]

Snail Mail: Ricochet (2026, Matador): Indie-pop group from Baltimore, Lindsey Jordan the singer-songwriter, third album since 2018. B+(*) [sp]

Tyshawn Sorey: Monochromatic Life (Afterlife) (2023 [2026], Dacamera): Jazz drummer, MacArthur Genius, just composer and conductor of this single 74:52 piece, played by Kim Kashkashian (viola), Sarah Rothenberg (piano/celeste), and Steven Schick (percussion), featuring the many voices of the Houston Chamber Choir: not that this sounds like a big vocal production — I'd file it under ambient, and forget it. B [sp]

Stu Bangas & Wordsworth: Chemistry (2026, 1332): Hip-hop producer Stuart Hudgins, from Boston, has put his name on 33+ albums since 2012, mostly as second bill to some rapper, including a previous album with rapper Vinson Johnson, whose first album appeared in 2002. Title is true, as words and beats mesh into continuous pleasure. A- [sp]

Thundercat: Distracted (2026, Brainfeeder): Neo-soul singer-songwriter Stephen Bruner, mostly plays bass, has a rep as a producer, fifth album since 2011. B+(*) [sp]

Mark Turner: Patternmaster (2024 [2026], ECM): Tenor saxophonist, impressive debut in 1995, recorded for majors through 2001 then fell off, but has been busy since 2018. Quartet with Jason Palmer (trumpet), Joe Martin (bass), and Jonathan Pinson (drums), whose names appear on the over, under the title. B+(*) [sp]

Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad: Jazz Is Dead 26: Antonio Carlos & Jocafi (2026, Jazz Is Dead): Brazilian duo, Antonio Carlos Marques Pinto and José Carlos Figueiredo, who brought Bahia folk into MPB, recorded at least 13 albums 1971-96, fitting the producers' focus on 1970s artists who are still kicking (now in their 80s). I'm not familiar with their old work, but this seems like it should work as a fine introductory sampler. B+(***) [sp]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Eddie Condon: Surprise! Eddie Condon at Town Hall, c. April 1944 (1944 [2026], Jazz Lives): Early swing pianist (1905-73), known more as a bandleader than as a soloist, LPs start in 1956 but recordings go back to 1928. This live set is presented as having been discovered by Michael Steinman in 1988, from the collection of J. David Goldin, and recently cleaned up, running 57:07, with a long list of notable players, identified as we go by announcer Alistair Cooke (including Sidney Catlett [or Cozy Cole], Joe Bushkin [or Art Hodes], Buster Bailey, Pee Wee Russell, Miff Mole, Billy Butterfield, and Max Kaminsky). This material has probably appeared on CD before: Jazzology released 11 volumes of Condon's The Town Hall Concerts from 1944-45. I copied them all down from Penguin Guide, which singled out Volumes 3 & 7 for 4 stars. Before this, I've only heard one later excerpt, so it's impossible to weigh this out, but I'm enjoying this almost as much as Steinman promised. Still, without an actual CD, cover, etc., one shouldn't get carried away. [Link] B+(***) [yt]

Serengeti: Ajai 2 the Reimagine (2025, self-released): Chicago underground rapper David Cohn, lots of albums since 2006, one called Ajai in 2020, Agai II in 2023, previously graded (**) and (*), this one similar to one on Bandcamp called Ajai 2 Remix Album, which came out about the same time. Probably no better or worse than any other version. B+(*) [sp]

Serengeti: Universe (2022 [2025], CC King): Seems to be a 2022 LP release (50 copies), followed by a digital reissue, but whereas the former had five titles on the A-side, just 1 on the B, this only shows a "side one" and "side two" (which is mostly ambient). B [sp]

Old music:

Kronos Quartet: Howl, U.S.A. (1996, Nonesuch): A lot of back catalog to explore. This seemed like such a obvious item for me: not only does Allen Ginsberg read his epic poem, but we also get I.F. Stone reading "Cold War Suite From How It Happens," Harry Partch's "Barstow," and an opening piece called "Sing Sing: J. Edgar Hoover." Howl was a big part of my late teen years. (I had a poster of Ginsberg glued to the ceiling over the staircase, which my mother hated, and eventually painted over; and I was a subscriber to I.F. Stone's Weekly; my interest in Partch came a bit later.) Not quite sure the music fits, nor are the readers ideal, but Ginsberg's words often overcome all that. B+(***) [sp]

Kronos Quartet: Long Time Passing: Kronos Quartet & Friends Celebrate Pete Seeger (2020, Smithsonian Folkways): Friends are singers (Aoife O'Donovan, Brian Carpenter, Lee Knight, Maria Arnal, Meklit Hadero, Sam Amidon), preserving but reshaping folk songs, many classics, most original but some older, a couple surprises (I somehow missed that "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" was his song, as was "Turn Turn Turn"). An interesting and thoughtful reframing of a powerful legacy. A- [sp]

Soda Stereo: Canción Animal (1990, Sony): Rock group from Argentina, seven studio albums 1984-95, this fifth album "considered to be one of the best albums of all time of the Latin Rock genre" (per Wikipedia; Google also recommended it; I only asked because I have a reader lobbying for Argentinian rock in general — I had no idea where to start until this group came up, probably from the same reader). If I could follow the words, I might be able to figure out whether they're as good or bad or whatever as, to pull a couple not-dissimilar bands off the top of my head, Guns 'N Roses or Manic Street Preachers. But I can't, so I'm going off rhythm and sonics. B+(*) [sp]

Wordsworth and Stu Bangas: Two Kings (2024, Brutal Music): Rapper, goes back to 2002, and producer. I'm working back from their new one, Chemistry, and finding the same attraction here, in their first collaboration, although "the alliance of two giants" line isn't quite as interesting. B+(***) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Bobby Broom: Notes of Thanks (Steele) [05-01]
  • Marie-Paule Franke: Through the Cracks, the Light Is Born (MariPosa) [06-26]
  • Phil Haynes/Ben Monder/Peyton Pleninger: Terra (Corner Store Jazz) [05-01]
  • Joe Henderson: Consonance: Live at the Jazz Showcase (1978, Resonance, 2CD) [04-18]
  • Ahmad Jamal: At the Jazz Showcaswe: Live in Chicago (1976, Resonance) [04-18]
  • Tomas Janzon: Jazz Diary (Changes Music) [04-10]
  • Paul Kahn: Willingness (Carl Cat) [06-19]
  • Jason Kruk: Beyond the Veil (SunGoose) [05-01]
  • Yusef Lateef: Alight Upon the Lake: Live at the Jazz Showcase (1975, Resonance, 3CD) [04-18]
  • Mal Waldron: Stardust & Starlight: At the Jazz Showcase (1979, Resonance) [04-18]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Music Week

March archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 45738 [45700] rated (+38), 21 [26] unrated (-5).

I didn't give any thought to posting this on Monday. I was preoccupied with writing the follow up to my March 13 Iran war post, Days of Infamy. The new one attempts to explain the war through four questions: three factual, one calling for speculation. I've written quite a bit of this (you can peek at my draft file), but I wasn't happy with the final section, and still have some tidying up to do.

I don't get much done these days, especially on ones where my prime time gets interrupted by other exigencies. Yesterday, we had to go deal with taxes. Today I had to take the car in for service. When I got back, Laura told me that Trump had called off the war. While I would welcome that, if true it would mean that much of the thinking behind my fourth answer was wrong. I'm not saying that at some point Trump won't want to simply call off the war, but I doubt he's come close to that point yet, and it's really not just up to him anymore. So I've done some checking, and need to do some more. The net effect is that I'm more than a few hours away from wrapping the Substack piece up.

So I'm not getting that piece out today. Which means that once again I've limped through another month with only one Substack post to my credit. Given that I've yet to hit 100 subscribers, I'm feeling pretty bummed about the whole enterprise. But if I can't get that done today (and possibly not even this week), I reckon I can print out what I have for Music Week, so that follows.

I don't have much more to say about this week's music. Which I suppose is fitting given how many albums below I graded without offering any further explanation. I've been focusing more on the war writing this week, and that's taking a lot out of me. It may well mean I've missed a bunch of stuff. Of course, that's always true, but this week has been exceptionally distracting.

I've done the bare minimum of bookkeeping to go from March to April. I despair of ever catching up, but this coming week should be more distracted than usual, as I try to get some house work done while the weather is still relatively decent. (We've had what is probably a record number of 90+°F days for March.)

One correction/explanation: Last week I included the Docteur Nico album cover, but omitted the review. I fixed that, but rather than referring you back, I've duplicated both this week.

By the way, I continue to add minor bits to the March 22 Loose Tabs, but most new stuff is going into the draft file.

New records reviewed this week:

Joshua Abrams: Music for Pulse Meridian Foliation (2026, Drag City): Chicago bassist, debut 2002, in 2010 released a mostly electronics album called Natural Information, and has followed that with seven Natural Information Society albums. He composed to run non-stop for Lisa Alvarado's art exhibition, using two cellos, harmonium, and electronics, and mixed it down to a single 35:42 piece. Functional ambient music, and just interesting enough. B+(**) [sp]

Courtney Barnett: Creature of Habit (2026, Mom + Pop/Fiction): Australian singer-songwriter, pretty good guitarist, fourth album since 2015. A nice little rock record, a consistent pleasure. A- [sp]

Bonnie "Prince" Billy: We Are Together Again (2026, No Quarter/Domino): Singer-songwriter Will Oldham, started as Palace Brothers in 1993, then Palace Music, recorded a solo album under his own name in 1997, then started using this moniker in 1999, now up to 27 albums. I've always been rather put off by the name, for reasons I've never examined. B+(*) [sp]

Asher Brinson: Midnight Hurricane (2026, AsherBrin): Bluegrass singer-songwriter from North Carolina, first album, quite young but gets some veteran help and makes the most of it, padding eight original songs out with one cover and two instrumental tracks. Songs are solid-plus, set in some mighty fine picking. A- [cd] [04-03]

Owen Chen: Eternal Wind: The Ghibli Collection (2025 [2026], OA2): Guitarist, based in New York, first album, joined here by a second guitarist, Andrew Cheng, playing pieces written by Joe Hisaishi for Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli. Backed by piano-bass-drums, with harmonica and/or tenor sax on five (of 9) tracks. B+(*) [cd] [04-03]

Cyger & Butterworth: Plaid Pants (2024 [2026], Outrageous8): Saxophonist Ron Cyger (also plays flute) and bassist Brent Butterworth (also guitar, ukulele, and percussion), each writing four (of eight) songs, backed by various percussionists. Nice groove. B+(**) [cd]

Flying Lotus: Big Mama (Brainfeeder, EP): Electronica producer Steven Ellison, eight albums since 2006, seven tracks (13:19), also comes with a 13:21 continuous mix. B+(*) [sp]

Tigran Hamasyan: Manifeste (2023-25 [2026], Naïve): Armenian pianist, lives in Yerevan after some time in Los Angeles, over a dozen albums since 2006, most on major labels (Verve, ECM, Nonesuch), draws on a wide array of styles, using electronics and voices (including the Yerevan State Chamber Choir). Impressive moves, just not a mix I particularly enjoy. B [sp]

Joshua Idehen: I Know You're Hurting, Everyone Is Hurting, Everyone Is Trying, You Have Got to Try (2026, Heavenly): British poet, teacher, musician, sings, raps, sometimes just utters philosophical epigrams; third album since 2023. Good advice: "do not bend to fascism." While the words impress, the beats put this over. A- [sp]

Grace Ives: Girlfriend (2026, True Panther/Capitol): Synth-pop singer-songwriter, third album since 2019. B+(***) [sp]

Jamile/Vinicius Gomes: Boundless Species (2024 [2026], La Reserve): Brazilians in New York, vocals and guitar, along with Joe Martin on bass. B+(***) [cd] [04-03]

Robert Jospé Quartet: The Night Sky (2025 [2026], self-released): American drummer, has several previous albums, going back to the 1990s (hype sheet says this is his ninth). Quartet with Daniel Clarke (keyboards), Chris Whiteman (guitar), and Paul Langosch (bass). Mostly originals (including one by Clarke), with two standards. B+(*) [cd]

The Paul Keller Orchestra: Thank You Notes: The Music of Gregg Hill (2025 [2026], Cold Plunge): Hill, based in Lansing, has few if any performance credits to speak of, but tributes to his compositions have become a cottage industry in recent years. As he turns 80, bassist Keller, whose own big band is marking its 40th anniversary, gives him the royal treatment. B+(**) [cd]

Steve Kovalcheck: Buckshot Blues (2025 [2026], OA2): Guitarist, several records since 2009, trio with Jeff Hamilton (bass) and Jon Hamar (drums) &mdash Kovalchek was on 2025's Jeff Hamilton Organ Trio album. Mostly originals, with Hamar contributing one, the covers including "Skylark" and "I've Been Everywhere." The latter and the title cut, in particular, have a nice bounciness. B+(***) [cd] [04-03]

Scott Lee: Greetings From Florida: Postcards From Paradise (2024 [2026], Sunnyside): Composer, website shows one previous album (Through the Mangrove Tunnels, 2020 on New Focus), so evidently not Discogs' Scott Lee (5), a bassist with several albums on SteepleChase. This is music written for chamber ensemble and singer Camila Meza, drawing built around lyrics from Cuban American poet Carolina Hospital. The lyrics "balance ambiguity with clarity of message in a way that makes them perfect for setting to music." I didn't warm to the music, but the depth and art is clear. B+(*) [cd] [04-16]

Roc Marciano: 656 (2026, self-released): Rapper Rakeem Calief Myer, has a dozen solo or collaborative studio albums since 2010. B+(**) [sp]

Kristen Mather de Andrade: Sim Fin (2022-24 [2026], Ansonica): Clarinet player and singer from Youngstown, Ohio; based in New York, has at least one previous album; plays Brazilian music, backed here by string quartet and other notables, including Vinicius Gomes (guitar) and Vitor Gonçalves (piano/accordion). B+(*) [cd]

Mitski: Nothing's About to Happen to Me (2026, Dead Oceans): Japanese-American singer-songwriter, mother Japanese, born there, but father was a US State Department official who dragged her all over before ending up in New York. Eighth studio album since 2012, popular breakthrough in 2012. One of the year's top-rated albums (so far), but once again she mostly slips past me. B+(*) [sp]

Model/Actriz: Swan Songs (2026, True Panther/Dirty Hit, EP): Industrial/dance-punk band, originally from Boston, now in Brooklyn, two albums, this just 3 songs, 14:01. B+(**) [sp]

Beto Paciello: The Stoic Suite (2023 [2026], Moons Arts): Brazilian pianist/composer, seems to have been around, with several albums, recorded this in New York with Eric Harland (drums), John Patitucci (bass), John Ellis (tenor/soprano sax, flute, bass clarinet), Rogerio Boccato (percussion), and Anne Boccato (voice). As is often the case, I lose this with the vocals. B [cd] [04-17]

RJD2 & Supastition: According To (2026, RJ's Electrical Connections): Hip-hop producer Jon Krohn, appeared on a Def Jux Presents volume in 2001, and led his first joint in 2002. With rapper Kamaarphial Moye, from North Carolina, who goes back as far but only has one other album since 2007. Vintage beats, underground takes, clever enough even to mitigate my initial discomfort with "Bittersweet." A- [sp]

Robyn: Sexistential (2026, Konichiwa/Young): Swedish dance-pop singer-songwriter, debut 1995, started to break into US market 2005-10, only her second album since, and a fairly short one at that (nine songs, 29:30). A- [sp]

Marta Sanchez: For the Space You Left (2024 [2026], Out of Your Head): Spanish pianist, "(2)" on Discogs, several albums since 2008, some remarkable, including this one, solo, prepared piano but only occasionally does this move into a distorted range. A- [cd] [04-17]

Dave Schumacher & Cubeye: Agua Con Gas (2025 [2026], Cubeye Music): Baritone saxophonist, albums go back to 1993, second Cubeye album, with a mixed bag of Latin jazz musicians (notably pianists Manuel Valera and Silvano Monasterios, who contribute songs/arrangements). Three Schumacher originals, and two covers from Ronnie Cuber, who somehow figures into the motif. B [cd] [04-17]

Aaron Shaw: And So It Is (2025 [2026], Leaving): Saxophonist from Los Angeles, also plays bass clarinte and alto flute, first album, has some side credits with rappers (Tyler the Creator, Billy Woods), but mostly with Carlos Niño, who co-produced here. Shaw has a horrific health story which may contribute to the focus on what's called "spiritual jazz," or he may just dig Coltrane. B+(*) [sp]

Sideshow: Tigray Funk (2026, 10k): Los Angeles rapper (13 on Discogs, no Wikipedia), has a couple previous albums, trap beats, 32 short pieces. B+(**) [sp]

Kevin Sun: Lofi at Lowlands 三 (2024 [2026], Endectomorph Music): Tenor saxophonist, made a big impression with his 2018 Trio debut, another trio here — with Walter Stinson (bass) and Kayvon Gordon (drums) — third in a series of live albums from Lowlands Bar in Brooklyn. B+(**) [sp]

Tinariwen: Hoggar (2026, Wedge): Tuareg group, formed in Algeria by exiles from Mali, spent some time in Libya before returning to Mali and getting caught up in political struggles there. Recorded an album in Ibidjan in 1991, but their breakthrough didn't come until 2001, when they started touring Europe and releasing albums there. Tenth album since 2001, all are pretty good but not very distinct. This strikes me as a bit slower and moodier than usual, which diminishes excitement but still sustains interest. B+(**) [sp]

Gregory Uhlmann: Extra Stars (2026, International Anthem): Guitarist, based in Los Angeles, has several albums, notably two by the group SML, which includes most of the guests who appear on spots here — the rest, presumably, is solo, with Uhlmann credited for guitar, bass, synths, recorder, percussion, and piano. Has sort of a "fourth world" vibe. B+(*) [sp]

Underscores: U (2026, self-released): Experimental electropop by April Harper Grey, based in San Francisco, third album. Bounces hard, glitches some. B+(**) [sp]

Johannes Wallmann: Not Tired (2024 [2025], Shifting Paradigm): German pianist, based in New York, dozen or so albums since 2004, this one with Ingrid Jensen (trumpet), Dayna Stephens (tenor sax), Nick Moran (bass), and Adam Nussbaum (drums), originals including two by co-producer Moran. B+(**) [bc]

Ben Wendel: BaRcoDe (2025 [2026], Edition): Tenor saxophonist, from Canada, a dozen or so albums since 2009, accompanied here by four vibraphonists (Joel Ross, Simon Moullier, Patricia Brennan, Juan Diego Villalobos), some also on marimba or balafon, most adding EFX. B+(**) [sp]

Xaviersobased: Xavier (2026, 1C/Surf Gang/Atlantic): Rapper/producer Xavier Lopez. Another one of those glitchy micro-genre joints. B+(**) [sp]

Zel: Still Right Here (2026, self-released): Maryland rapper and/or producer, got a rave Pitchfork review I can't read, doesn't have a Discogs I can find, or a Bandcamp; AOTY says the genre is "plugg," or maybe "ambient plugg" and/or "jerk," which Wikipedia describes as sub- or micro-genres of trap, itself a concept I have only the vaguest sense of. First take: sound is interesting, words escape me (18 tracks, 32:07). B+(***) [yt]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Docteur Nico: Presents African Fiesta Sukisa 1966-1974 (1966-74 [2025], Planet Ilunga): Congolese guitarist and bandleader Nico Kassanda (1939-85), joined Grand Kalle et l'African Jazz at age 14, left with Tabu Ley Rochereau to form L'Orchestra African Fiesta, discography has always been spotty, but this rounds up a prime period slice from his Sukisa label, available on 3-LP or with bonus songs for digital. A- [bc]

Bennie Green: Back on the Scene (1958 [2026], Blue Note): Trombonist (1923-77), from Chicago, started in the big bands of Earl Hines and Charlie Ventura, work in hard bop circles 1955-64 while keeping a fine sense of swing, later settled in Las Vegas, working in hotel bands. Fine quintet session here with Charlie Rouse (tenor sax), Joe Knight (piano), George Tucker (bass), and Louis Hayes (drums), playing six tunes, including a self-penned blues and two by Melba Liston. B+(***) [sp]

The Lawrence Marable Quartet: Tenorman (1956 [2026], Blue Note): Drummer (1929-2012), from Los Angeles, associated with West Coast jazz starting with Hampton Hawes, Wardell Gray, and Herb Geller, extending to Charlie Haden's Quartet West. Discogs counts 246 albums he played on, but this is the only one with his name up top, and even here the title is a nod to the featured saxophonist, James Clay. He's terrific throughout, well supported by Sonny Clark (piano) and Jimmy Bond (bass). A- [sp]

Twisted Teens: Blame the Clown (2025 [2026], Jazz Life): New Orleans country punk duo. Second or third label this has been picked up on. B+(**) [sp]

Old music:

None.

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Paulo Almeida: Love in Motion (Dox) [04-24]
  • Abate Berihun & the Addis Ken Project: Addis Ken (Origin) [04-17]
  • Barry Greene: Giants (Origin) [04-17]
  • Jared Hall: Hometown (Origin) [04-17]
  • Kristen Mather de Andrade: Sim Fin (Ansonica) [03-01]
  • Jim Robitaille Trio: Sonic (Whaling City Sound) [04-01]
  • Yvonne Rogers: The Button Jar (Pyroclastic) [05-08]
  • Fie Schouten/Vincent Courtois/Sofia Borges/Pierre Baux: Open Space (Relative Pitch) [03-27]

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Monday, March 23, 2026

Music Week

March archive (in progress).

Music: Current count 45700 [45655] rated (+45), 26 [39] unrated (-13).

After last week's Music Week, I decided I really should publish a new Loose Tabs before the week was out. I had published my previous one on February 27, just hours before Trump started bombing Iran. I've been running about one Loose Tabs post per month, but the war news was coming so fast and furious I didn't want to wait a whole month. (Even so, the gap this time stretched out to 23 days.)

In the meantime I wrote about the war in my Substack feed, Notes on Everyday Life, in a piece called Days of Infamy. Since then, I've decided to follow up with a second piece, which will try to reduce all the complexity and nuance of the war to four questions:

  1. Why did Netanyahu want to attack Iran?
  2. Why did Trump go along with the attack?
  3. Why didn't Iran surrender once it was attacked?
  4. And how and when and under what conditions is this war likely to end?

I'll probably take a more serious tone, but it's tempting to answer the first three flippantly:

  1. Because he's a hammer looking for a nail (he's been obsessed with crippling Iran for 44 years, and with a gullible blowhard as president of the US, this is his best chance ever).
  2. Because he was given an opportunity to kill a devil (or so he was told), and it made him feel awesome. (What's the point of being president if you can't kill whomsoever you want?)
  3. Because, well, would you surrender to these megalomaniacs when you still had even the slightest power to fight back and make them feel at least some of the pain they're senselessly causing you?

Actually, each of those three could get very long and involved if I got into the history and how it has influenced what passes for thinking in these conservative/crypto-fascist political and military leaders and their coterie of advisers and operatives. (I should perhaps be more tentative in my views of the Iranians, both because I don't follow them as closely, and because I have less feel for their history and philosophical views, but it's a pretty safe bet I understand them better than Trump and Netanyahu do.)

While I meant to post last night, the time got away from me, and I decided to wait until this afternoon: not to collect more links, but simply to add my table of contents, flesh out the section introductions a bit, and correct whatever typos I could find. But when I got up, my wife told me that Trump had called a pause in the bombing, citing productive diplomatic talks. That turned out to be not half what it was cracked up to be, but Trump did shelve his threat to start bombing Iranian power plants, causing blackouts and widespread damage and hardship. His hesitation probably saves retaliation against vulnerable infrastructure in the Persian Gulf states. Or it may signal a final recognition on Trump's part that Iran isn't going to be moved by ultimatums, no matter how deranged. I'm skeptical that Iran is going to "win" this war (to the extent that any war can be "won"), but the US is much more vulnerable, and more fragile, on many fronts than Trump was led to believe. And as these stresses interact and multiple, one shouldn't assume that the previous world order will hold. In my "Days of Infamy" piece, I spent a whole section on what I called "worser case scenarios." A week later, I find myself coming up with even worser cases.

My plan is to come up with a set of equations, each modeling a key consideration. One needs to look at what concessions Iran can and cannot make, and figure out what among the former might satisfy Trump. What Trump did was as inexcusable as, say, Putin in Ukraine (or Bush in Iraq), yet still as long as he's the guy, savvy diplomats need to figure out how to save him some face, even as they pressure him into unwanted compromises. Accordingly, a big part of the question is what sort of pressures can be brought to bear on Trump. (I have various ideas there, but Arab money is one that seems to particularly appeal to him, or at least to his craven son-in-law.) Still, I don't need to figure this out, as I'll be way out of the inner circle. Some rough sketches should suffice.

I wasn't only thinking about Iran last week. A while back, I went to the library, to return a couple books I hadn't found interesting enough to read, and see if I can pick up anything more appealing. I didn't really find anything other than Laura Field's Furious Minds, which I had just finished, but I checked out a couple of cookbooks for the hell of it. One was The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook, which seemed to have definitive recipes for pretty much anything one might want to cook. I've never watched their shows, but I have a bunch of their cookbooks, and I especially use them for baking. I figured I might look it over, but would wind up ordering a copy, and using it as a fallback reference. Glancing through it today, I see some of what looks like excess complication: their matzo brei recipe calls for sauteeing onions, which I've never considered; the dumplings in their chicken & dumplings look right (I've always used shortening, but I could see using schmaltz if I had it handy), but their stock is basically chicken pot pie filler, lots of extras that detract from the dumplings. I just boil a chicken, strip off the meat, cook the dumplings in the stock, fold the chicken back in, check the seasoning.

The other book I picked up was Pyet DeSpain's Rooted in Fire: A Celebration of Native American and Mexican Cooking. I've barely dabbled in Mexican — I have a Diana Kennedy guide, but found it much less helpful than ATK's The Best Mexican Recipes — and know nothing of Native American cooking other than corn-beans-squash plus the latter-day addition of fry bread. But a couple recipes piqued my interest, so I figured I'd check it out, and make a dinner. After I got my "Days of Infamy" piece up, I figured I was due some fun, so I went shopping. We have some pretty good Mexican grocers here, but I still had a tough time coming up with ingredients (especially on the salad front, which called for dandelion greens, purslane, and/or water cress), as well as things like maple sugar and prickly pear syrup (which I've now found on Amazon). You can find a pic and brief write up here.

DeSpain is Potawatomi, living in northeast Kansas, and was "Winner of Gordon Ramsay's Next Level Chef season one," so the aim here is less authenticity than roots-inspired fusion. Unlike my ventures into national cuisines like Burmese or Cuban or Moroccan, where I could run through a broad range of traditional dishes, I doubt there is any single Native American cuisine, nor that this even captures one facet of it, but it is an interesting concept, and none of these were dishes I had ever attempted before. The menu is long enough for a birthday dinner:

  1. Deer chili: I had a pound of ground venison in the freezer, just waiting for this; add two cans of pinto beans, and a cup of corn; in general I cut the chile quantities in half.
  2. Steamed white fish in corn husks: I had a pound of rainbow trout filets in the freezer; this included a tomato-based salsa, but I made a couple extra salsa batches below.
  3. Raspberry mezcal BBQ quail: I couldn't find quail, so I substituted cornish game hens, which I quartered; they are marinated, sauteed, marinated again, then roasted.
  4. Tomatillo salad: With jicama, red onion, corn, apple, mango, and cilantro-lime dressing; I didn't get this done in time, but made it later.
  5. Dandelion greens and pickled berry salad: I didn't get this done in time either, but had pickled the blueberries, so served them on the side; I made the salad later, using arugula, with julienned jicama, my leftover berries, and sunflower seeds.
  6. Honey and habanero roasted butternut squash: I used a milder Indian dried chili.
  7. Cilantro, honey, and lime grilled corn.
  8. Roasted sage and maple sweet potatoes.
  9. Fry bread.
  10. Strawberry salsa.
  11. Charred pineapple salsa.
  12. Mezcal and Mexican chocolate cake: topped with a ganache made with coconut cream; served with vanila ice cream on the side.

I bought more stuff than I used, including big chunk of bison (the book has three bison recipes: jerky, meatballs, braised), and various greens thinking I might substitute for use in the salads. I ran late, but a guest rescued the grill dishes while I fried the bread. I wound up using pre-shredded cheddar instead of shredding a block of cotijo I had ready. By the time I served dinner, the kitchen was as messed up as it had ever been. I was so exhausted I took a rare nap afterwards. Cleaned up in the middle of the night, and found more the next day.

I thought everything came out very good. I should write some of the recipes down, but I might as well just buy the book. Not a lot more in the book I want to try. And although Laura has suggested a couple of these dishes should be in my "rotation," I don't really have such a thing. A quick check at Amazon shows several dozen other Native American cookbooks. As I suspected, there is a good deal of regional variation.

A lot of records below. I've made a significant dent in the demo queue, picking them off in release date order until I moved well into next week. The reissues are old items that Blue Note recently reissued in their Tone Poet vinyl series. All of them are streamed, but I counted them as 2026 reissues, having initially listed them as such in my tracking file. I've cut back on tracking new releases quite a bit this year: aside from tracking my own reviews, I'm only adding things that come to me with specific recommendations. I may have to open this up later if/when we get into jazz critics polling, but I don't need to get into that now.

New records reviewed this week:

David Adewumi: The Flame Beneath the Silence (2024 [2026], Giant Step Arts): Trumpet player, first album, side-credits since 2020, label touts this "modern masters and new horizons series," offering him a live venue and major league support: Joel Ross (vibes), Linda May Han Oh (bass), and Marcus Gilmore (drums). He's off to a strong start? B+(***) [cd] [03-27]

Tyrone Allen II: Upward (2024 [2026], Dreams and Fears): Bassist, based in Brooklyn, first album, a dozen side-credits back to 2018, with several notable younger players: Neta Raanan (tenor sax), Lex Korten (keys), Samantha Feliciano (harp), Aidan Lombard (trumpet), Kayvon Gordon (drums), Abe Nouri (live effects). B+(*) [cd]

Aymeric Avice/Luke Stewart/Chad Taylor: Deep in the Earth High in the Sky (2025 [2026], RogueArt): I've seen every permutation of artist credit order for this, with my CD listing the Taylor (drums) first above the title, then last under the title, while Bandcamp lists Stewart (bass) first, with a cover scan that seems to favor Avice (trumpet). Discogs, with the same cover scan (I just got a CD with no packaging) credits Stewart first. I initially listed Taylor, but on second thought, let's give it to the French trumpeter (evidently his first album). Free jazz bash, with mbiras. B+(***) [cdr]

Anthony Branker & Other Ways of Knowing: Manifestations of a Diasporic Groove & Spirit (2025 [2026], Origin): Composer and arranger, eleventh album since 2004, previous groups called Ascent and Imagine, this one well stocked with name talent: Steve Wilson (alto/soprano sax, flute), Pete McCann (guitars), Simona Premazzi (piano), John Hébert (bass), Rudy Royston (drums), and Aimée Allen (vocals). [cd]

Carl Clements and the Real Jazz Trio: Retrospective (2024 [2026], Greydisc): Saxophonist (tenor/soprano, also bansuri), based in Massachusetts, half-dozen albums since 2004, all original pieces, backed by a European trio: piano (Jean-Yves Jung), bass (Johannes Schaedlich), and drums (Jes Biehl). B+(**) [cd]

Daphni: Butterfly (2026, Jiaolong): British house producer Daniel Snaith, fourth album, label named for his 2012 debut. Nice bounce to it. B+(***) [sp]

Dave Douglas: Four Freedoms (2025 [2026], Greenleaf Music): Trumpet player, many albums since 1993, live set from the Getxo Kultura Jazz Festival in Spain, quartet with Marta Warelis (piano), Nick Dunston (bass), and Joey Baron (drums). Tricky music. B+(**) [sp]

Matt Dwonszyk: Live at the Sidedoor (2024 [2026], self-released): Bassist, third release as leader, eight originals, two covers, no musician credits on the packaging but per hype sheet: Josh Bruneau (trumpet), Matt Knoegel (tenor sax), Taber Gable (piano), Jonathan Barber (drums). The venue is located in Old Lyme, CT, and the musicians evidently have some kind of relationship to Jackie McLean. It comes through, and maybe a bit of Mingus too. B+(***) [cd]

Kim Gordon: Play Me (2026, Matador): Sonic Youth's better half, third solo studio album, "relies primarily on Gordon's trap vocals, [producer Justin] Raisen's industrial textures, and trip hop beats." Short (29:55) and rather cryptic. B+(***) [sp]

Simon Hanes: Gargantua (2024 [2026], Pyroclastic): California-born, Brooklyn-based composer/arranger, has a couple previous albums, draws inspiration from Rabelais for this "audacious new album," featuring three soprano voices, backed by three each on French horns, trombones, basses, and drum sets. The voices are the sticking point with me. B+(**) [cd] [03-27]

Alexander Hawkins/Taylor Ho Bynum: A Near Permanent State of Wonder (2024 [2025], RogueArt): Piano and trumpet (well, actually cornet and flugelhorn) duo, free jazz players of repute, and considerable rapport. B+(***) [cdr]

Steven Husted and Friends: Two Nights - "Live!" (2025 [2026], self-released): Bassist, worked in Bay Area before moving to Austin, website has two previous albums but none in Discogs. With sax (Grant Teeple) on the first half, guitar (Matt Berger) picking up the slack on the second, backed by keys (Milo Hehmsoth), and drums (Israel Yanez), playing eight originals plus standards by Irving Berlin, Clifford Brown, and Hank Mobley. Nice mainstream jazz. Runs over 77 minutes. B+(*) [cd]

The Interplay Jazz Orchestra: Bite Your Tongue (2025 [2026], Bigtime): Big band, directed by Joey Devassy (trombone) and Gary Henderson (trumpet), formed in 2013 but this is the only album I've found, three Devassy originals plus six standards, some sharp solo work, especially in the saxophone section. B+(***) [cd]

Javon Jackson: Jackson Plays Dylan (2025 [2026], Solid Jackson/Palmetto): Tenor saxophonist, has done impressive work since his 1991 debut, but hasn't always made the best choices. Plays ten Bob Dylan tunes here (after an original intro), backed by keyboards (Jeremy Manasia), bass, and drums, with two guest vocalists (Lisa Fischer and Nicole Zuraitis), singing the two canon songs I least want to ever hear the lyrics to ever again. I've heard a lot of Dylan over the years, and almost never want to hear him again these days. I've often been out of sync with other critics, which may have led to some bad feelings. But I was surprised by the three Jewels & Binoculars albums, where his melodies proved fruitful for a purely instrumental jazz trio. But this isn't that. B+(*) [cd] [03-27]

Anna Kolchina: Reach for Tomorrow (2021-25 [2026], OA2): Standards singer from "the Soviet Union about 18 hours from Moscow" (an odd measurement that could mean dozens or thousands of miles, but evidently someplace with horses), moved to New York City in 2017, "a place where you can become friends with your heroes." At least one previous album, as well as a connection to Sheila Jordan. Twelve songs recorded over several years, each backed by a sole guitarist: Paul Bollenback, Peter Bernstein, Ilya Lushtak, Romero Lubambo, Russell Malone, Yotam Silberstein. I couldn't sort out the guitarists, but they might make an interesting blindfold test. They are all fine, and the singer shines with such minimal support. A- [cd]

Ladytron: Paradises (2026, Nettwerk): English electropop band, eighth studio album since 2001, a long one with 16 songs running 71:31, Daniel Hunt the composer, Helen Marnie the lead vocalist. B+(*) [sp]

Julian Lage: Scenes From Above (2025 [2026], Blue Note): Well-regarded guitarist, debut 2009, sixth Blue Note album, featuring credits for John Medeski (organ/piano), Jorge Roeder (bass), and Kenny Wolleson (drums), with a couple credits for Patrick Waren (dulcitone, strings). He often strikes me as a bit languid, but on occasion, Medeski kicks this up a notch. B+(*) [sp]

Brian Landrus: Just When You Think You Know (2025 [2026], BlueLand/Palmetto): Baritone saxophonist, albums since 2007, also plays some tenor, bass clarinet, and flutes (down to bass flute), along with Zaccai Curtis (keyboards), Dave Stryker (guitars), Lonnie Plaxico (basses), and Rudy Royston (drums). Veers a bit toward easy listening. B+(*) [cd]

Tom Lippincott: Ode to the Possible (2025 [2026], self-released): Guitarist, plays an 8-string model with electronics, first album under his own name although he has scattered credits back to 1990. Qfuartet with David Fernandez (strong tenor/soprano sax), bass, and drums, plus a Camila Meza vocal on one track. B+(**) [cd]

Lisanne Lyons: May I Come In (2022-24 [2026], OA2): Standards singer, started in the Air Force, has sung in ghost bands (Harry James, Maynard Ferguson), first album, backed by a big band plus strings, produced by Mike Lewis. B+(**) [cd]

Luke Norris: Moment From the Past (2023 [2026], self-released): Saxophonist, also plays clarinet and synths, has a previous album from 2020, here with Dabin Ryu (keyboards), Tyrone Allen (basses), and Kayvon Gordon (drums), with Abe Nouri adding some "wildly inventive post-production." B+(***) [cd]

Adam O'Farrill: Elephant (2024 [2025], Out of Your Head): Trumpet player, son of Afro-Cuban Jazz majordomo Arturo O'Farrill (himself the son of famed Cuban bandleader Chico O'Farrill), has the chops to ply the family trade but on his own plays uninflected but often brilliant postbop. Quartet with Yvonne Rogers (piano), Walter Stinson (bass), and Russell Holzman (drums), with some electronics. A- [cd]

Meg Okura/Pan Asian Chamber Jazz Ensemble: Isaiah (2022 [2026], Adhyâropa): Violinist, born in Japan, makes a point in the notes of being an outsider ("an immigrant, a Jew by choice in an interracial marriage, and as a musician moving from classical to jazz"), but finding "solace" in composing, and in leading this twenty-year group with prominent names that don't strike me as conspicuously Asian. It's a terrific group, augmented by guests like Randy Brecker and Sam Newsome, playing scores that come from and go to pretty much everywhere. A- [cd]

Chenxi Pan: This Very Moment (2025 [2026], Origin): Jazz singer-songwriter, from China, moved to New York 2021, debut album, with tenor sax/clarinet, piano, guitar, bass, drums, violin, and cello. Matt Wilson produced. B [cd]

Poppy: Empty Hands (2026, Sumerian): Singer-songwriter Moriah Rose Pereira, tenth album since 2016, opens in pop mode, but follows up with metal thrash, which I'm surprised to enjoy more. B+(*) [sp]

Benjie Porecki: Faster Than We Know (2026, Funklove Productions): Pianist, also plays organ and other keyboards, from the DC area, eighth album sice 1996, eight original pieces plus a cover of "Superstar" (which I'm told was "famously covered by the Carpenters," but I associate with songwriters Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell). I prefer the piano to the organ. B+(*) [cd]

Reverso: Between Two Silences (2024 [2026], Alternate Side): Trombonist Ryan Keberle, his name no longer up front in this chamber jazz trio, with Frank Woeste (piano) and Vincent Courtois (cello), in what is at least their fifth album together (back to a Ravel-inspired 2017 album), this one original material from all three (3-5-2), this time inspired by Satie. B+(***) [cd] [03-27]

Joel Ross: Gospel Music (2026, Blue Note): Vibraphonist, grew up in Chicago, based in Brooklyn, fifth Blue Note album since 2019 (or 7th if you cound Out Of/Into, the "supergroup" I file under his name). Mostly original pieces (two exceptions), mostly quintet with Josh Johnson (alto sax), Maria Grand (tenor sax), Jeremy Corren (piano), Kanoa Mendenhall (bass), and Jeremy Dutton (drums), with a couple of guest spots for vocals and others (like Brandee Younger on harp). B+(**) [sp]

Harvie S: Bright Dawn (2024 [2026], Origin): Bassist, originally Swartz, shortened his name because so many people (including me) misspelled it, side-credit since 1973, has a couple dozen albums as leader or in duos (notably with Sheila Jordan). Quartet here with Peter Bernstein (guitar), Miki Hayama (piano), and Matt Wilson (drums). B+(**) [cd]

Walter Smith III: Twio Vol. 2 (2026, Blue Note): Tenor saxophonist, from Houston, studied at Berklee and now chairs the woodwind department there, debut 2006, third album on Blue Note, revisits the concept of his 2018 album Twio, with a trio playing standards supplemented by two "eminent elders" (this time Ron Carter and Branford Marsalis; the bassist and drummer are also new this time, Joe Sanders and Kendrick Scott). B+(***) [sp]

Yuyo Sotashe & Chris Pattishall: Invocation (2022 [2026], self-released, EP): Singer and piano (or synths or sound design), four songs, 20:35, makes an impression. B+(**) [cd]

Harriet Tubman & Georgia Muldrow: Electrical Field of Love (2026, Pi): Avant-fusion trio of Brandon Ross (guitar/banjo), Melvin Gibbs (electric bass), and JT Lewis (drums), sixth album since 1998, with Muldrow added for vocals and keyboards (more than a dozen albums on her own since 2006). Heavy. B+(***) [cd] [03-27]

Immanuel Wilkins Quartet: Live at the Village Vanguard Vol. 1 (2025 [2026], Blue Note): Alto saxophonist, became an instant star when Blue Note released his Omega in 2020, has made the rounds as well as keynoting the Out Of/Into label all-star group. First live album, with Micah Thomas (piano), Ryoma Takenaga (bass), and Kweku Sumbry (drums); is being rolled out in bits, with this on CD and LP, and later digital-only releases for Vol. 2 (April 17) and Vol. 3 (May 15). I imagine that at some point I'll have to treat the combination as a single album, at least for polling purposes. I'm underwhelmed so far, but I've upgraded him in the past. B+(**) [sp]

Winged Wheel: Desert So Green (2025 [2026], 12XU): Discogs calls then "an indie supergroup," although I recognize just one name (Steve Shelley, from Sonic Youth), and two more bands (Circuit des Yeux, Tyvek), and never ran across their two previous albums. Does have a little Sonic Youth background sound. B+(**) [sp]

Jack Wood: For Every Man There's a Woman (2026, Jazz Hang): Standards crooner, "long a fixture in Southern California," has connections to Las Vegas and Utah (where most of this was recorded, cover cites special guests: The Lenore Raphael Trio with guitarist Doug MacDonald. Also strings. I have something of a soft spot for this sort of thing. B+(***) [cd] [03-24]

Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries:

Docteur Nico: Presents African Fiesta Sukisa 1966-1974 (1966-74 [2025], Planet Ilunga): Congolese guitarist and bandleader Nico Kassanda (1939-85), joined Grand Kalle et l'African Jazz at age 14, left with Tabu Ley Rochereau to form L'Orchestra African Fiesta, discography has always been spotty, but this rounds up a prime period slice from his Sukisa label, available on 3-LP or with bonus songs for digital. A- [bc]

Hank Mobley Sextet: Hank (1957 [2026], Blue Note): Tenor saxophonist, Leonard Feather called him the "middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone," which suggested that he couldn't compete with Coltrane and Rollins, but was masterful under any other light. This is pretty early, but one of seven albums from 1957 that Wikipedia lists, most with redundant or unimaginative titles, some tied to his membership in the Jazz Messengers. With John Jenkins (alto sax), Donald Byrd (trumpet), Bobby Timmons (piano), Wilbur Ware (bass), and Philly Joe Jones (drums). Reissued in Blue Note's Tone Poet series. B+(***) [yt]

Lee Morgan: City Lights (1957 [2026], Blue Note): Trumpet player, a key player in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, off to a very solid solo career. With George Coleman (tenor/alto sax), Ray Bryant (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Art Taylor (drums). Superb when he goes in hot, less so with a ballad. B+(**) [sp]

Tyrone Washington: Natural Essence (1967 [2026], Blue Note): Tenor saxophonist, b. 1944, recorded three albums 1968-74, leaving music for religious reasons, and eventually becoming a Sunni Muslim minister (as Mohammad Bilal Abdullah). He joined Horace Silver for The Jody Grind in 1966, and Larry Young for Contrasts in 1967. This was his first as leader, with Woody Shaw (trumpet), James Spaulding (alto sax/flute), Kenny Barron (piano), Reggie Workman (bass), and Joe Chambers (drums). This is pretty exciting, especially Shaw. Evidently a second Blue Note session was recorded but never released. A- [sp]

Old music:

Hank Mobley: With Donald Byrd and Lee Morgan (1956 [1957], Blue Note): Tenor saxophonist, one of seven albums he released in 1957, a four-song hard bop blowing session with the two trumpet players, piano (Horace Silver), bass (Paul Chambers), and drums (Charlie Persip). B+(**) [sp]

Hank Mobley: A Caddy for Daddy (1965 [1966], Blue Note): One of the few 1960s albums I missed by the tenor saxophonist, a sextet with Lee Morgan (trumpet), Curtis Fuller (trombone), McCoy Tyner (piano), Bob Cranshaw (bass), and Billy Higgins (drums), playing four originals and one Wayne Shorter piece. B+(*) [sp]

Barbara Rosene With Vince Giordano & the Nighthawks: Deep Night (2000-01 [2001], Stomp Off): Trad/swing jazz singer, Michael Steinman raved about a recent performance so I thought I'd look her up. Nothing new since 2013's Nice & Naughty, but I had missed this first album, and I felt like a break from the new stuff. Discogs doesn't list musicians, but Giordano plays tuba and bass, and his band recorded from 1984-2006 (also backing Loudon Wainwright III on his 2020 I'd Rather Lead a Band). AI suggests Conal Fowkes (piano), Dan Levinson (sax/clarinet), Jon-Erik Kellso (trumpet), and Andy Stein (violin). B+(**) [sp]

Barbara Rosene & Her New Yorkers: Ev'rything's Made for Love (2003, Stomp Off): Another generous batch of old-timey songs (25, 73:40), backed by a nine-piece band where Jon-Erik Kellso (trumpet) and John Gill (drums) are probably the best known, with notable contributions by Conal Fowkes (piano), Matt Munisteri (guitar/banjo), and Meg Okura (violin). B+(***) [sp]

Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:

  • Atlantic Road Trip: Watch as the Echo Falls (Calligram) [04-03]
  • Ryan Blotnick: The Woods (Fishkill) [04-17]
  • Chicago Soul Jazz Collective: No Wind & No Rain (Calligram) [04-10]
  • Paul Citro: Keep Moving (Home) (Calligram) [05-01]
  • Caleb Wheeler Curtis: Ritual (Chill Tone) [04-10]
  • Cyger & Butterworth: Plaid Pants (Outrageous8) [03-11]
  • Bill Evans: At the BBC (1965, Elemental Music) [04-18]
  • Robert Jospé Quartet: The Night Sky (self-released) [01-11]
  • The Paul Keller Orchestra: Thank You Notes: The Music of Gregg Hill (Cold Plunge) [03-27]
  • Freddie King: Feeling Alright: The Complete 1975 Nancy Pulsations Concert (Elemental Music, 2CD) [04-18]
  • Michel Petrucciani: Kuumbwa (1987, Elemental Music, 2CD) [04-18]
  • Ted Rosenthal Trio: The Good Old Days (TMR Music) [05-01]
  • Paul Silbergleit Trio: The Stillness of July (Calligram) [05-01]
  • Alister Spence: Always Ever (Alister Spence Music) [04-24]
  • Cecil Taylor Unit: Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts (Elemental Music, 2CD) [04-18]

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