I’ve been spending lots of time with Sam Reed’s new This Is Love album, and two general impressions have settled in. The first is that this is a very good album. The second is that the start of This Is Love goes hard.
#nowplaying
Anat Cohen
Alabama Shakes
I have a new favorite post-gig routine. I get home, put on soft pants, crash-land on the couch and open up my laptop to see if I can find a concert streaming somewhere. It started a while back with Bonnaroo/Coachella streams, but it’s getting easier to find streaming video on random Fridays, and I love it. There’s a specific type of satisfaction associated with playing music for people and then getting to relax while watching someone else do it. (It reminds me a little of those restaurants that open at midnight and serve people from other restaurants who are just finishing their shifts.)
The video above isn’t live, but it’s recent — “Gimme All Your Love” from Alabama Shakes’ April 10 Coachella performance.
Kamasi Washington
Do you like ambition? Do you like the live instrumentation Flying Lotus incorporates? Do you like Thundercat’s fleet-footed bass style? Do you like saxophone that’s so propulsive it might as well have a jet engine attached to it? Do you like the idea that the shimmering chorus parts that schmaltzified last century’s mass-market jazz could be redeemed and repurposed for the forces of good? Do you like feeling overwhelmed? Like you’re where you are but somewhere else at the same time? Like you’re just a tiny speck in a vast, complicated universe that you’ll never fully know but are grateful to be a part of? Would you have accepted a transfer to Sterling Cooper West, if given the opportunity?
Mavis Staples
- New EP from Mavis Staples? Check.
- Savvy electronic production from labelmate Son Little that lays down a haunting and murky atmospheric foundation while threading the reverence+newness needle? Mhmm.
- Two songs written by Son Little? Yup. One by Blind Lemon Jefferson and another by Pops Staples? Yuuuup.
- Perfectly unsettling background vocals (Son Little’s, I think) on “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean”? Damn right.
- Worth a listen? You better believe it.
Built to Spill
I remember seeing the (completely awesome) cover art for Untethered Moon while I was at BK Music on Record Store Day, and I’d guess that’s what made me want to try it out. This is my first experience with Built to Spill, and given their long history, I felt a little like an interloper — much like I did listening to the album Sleater-Kinney released this year.
Pokey LaFarge
Now that popular culture has fractured into tiny bits, with a niche community for pretty much anything you could take an interest in — old or new — the idea of cultural revival feels a little obsolete. You don’t need to wait around for something to become stylish again. Just do your thing, post a selfie where a community of like minds will see it and you might as well be living in the time and/or place of your preference. Let your freak flag fly and someone somewhere will start singing the corresponding national anthem.
That’s a little how I felt about Pokey LaFarge’s last few albums. He was flying his retrospective flag, and man was it fun to sing along. This is what I wrote about him last time around:
Setting aside for a moment that Pokey’s songs would sound great no matter how they were drawn, I think it’s unfair to say his style is borrowed from another time. Different genres may have their heydays — see Age, Jazz — but carrying on a lapsed tradition doesn’t have to feel like a resurrection. Music isn’t technology. It doesn’t become obsolete. You can employ whichever style works for you… as long as it flows through you genuinely and you have something to bring to the table.
Here’s the thing though: His new album, Something in the Water, takes that idea even further.
Sufjan Stevens
One of the key benefits criticism can provide is clarity. I am so thankful for this Pitchfork review of the new Sufjan Stevens album.
Courtney Barnett
There’s a line in Courtney Barnett’s song “Depreston” that stands out to me, and I can’t get over how great it is. The irony is that the line — “I’m saving 23 dollars a week” — shouldn’t stand out at all. It’s so matter-of-fact, like an unremarkable piece of an unremarkable conversation you might not even remember having.
Some context — the song is ostensibly about moving to the suburbs, and a piece of the first verse concerns how buying a coffee maker saves you money, but I relate to the song as a story about growing up.
Brandi Carlile
Tonight I’ll go to the Robins Center and see the Richmond Spiders men’s basketball team play their last home game of the season. (If they win, they’ll progress to the NIT semifinals at Madison Square Garden.) While not making it into the NCAA tournament stung, this NIT run has been such a wonderful bonus. I assumed that my last time seeing the mighty Kendall Anthony in a Spiders uniform in person would be the double overtime VCU win, so watching him again on Sunday night — in yet another overtime win, no less, this time against Arizona State — was a real treat. A cherry on top of the icing that VCU game already represented.
You Hear That 