My goal for 2019 is to write at least a little something about every show I see, preferably by the next day, we’ll see how it goes. I will compile weekly and post here as-is. If you prefer to get these reviews in your inbox each day they are written, email me and I’ll add you to my mailing list.
So, in that spirit, this is the fifteenth of hopefully 52 posts…
15Apr19
Mingus Big Band @ Jazz Standard
Last night the #resideNYC gang hit the Jazz Standard for their 10-year-long Mingus Mondays residency, last night featuring the Mingus Big Band. After a nice meal upstairs, a group of us took up a nice quarter of the Jazz Standard which was already quite full otherwise, and were treated to a great hour of Mingus music.
I’ve always dug Charles Mingus and I thought the band did a great job conveying that certain energy he has. The first song, “GG” was sort of representative of what I think of when I think of his music, a sort of unwieldy thing that teeters on the edge of chaos, but stays true and is quite beautiful on many levels. Imagine a baby elephant on a tightrope, wobbling from side to side, making its way across an expanse, seems like it’s going to fall, speeds up and then slows down and then speeds up again, and never does fall, makes it fine, it knew it would the whole time. That was the band tackling this material. It was an appropriately big band, the music kind of demands it — multiple saxophones and trombones (tenor and bass trombones in there) and trumpets to go with piano, drums and, of course, bass. A couple of the members actually played with Mingus, but they’re all pros. All solos were great, I think my favorite was by the lone female who was on baritone. The drum solo in the opening piece deserves its own sentence, it was so ridiculous I wouldn’t even know how to describe it, but it involved using his body in different ways and a few squeaky toys and a lot of goofy facial expressions…. also long enough to make you laugh more than once and catch your breath in between. That was fun. The whole thing was fun. For a “proper” jazz club, I have always found Jazz Standard to be very relaxed, just a great vibe in the room, and so it felt very homey and very residency-y. I love the “if we don’t get it right this time, there’s always next week” energy when a band like this plays a residency show, which inevitably means they will get it right every time.
There’s also something to be said for a band that plays the music of a single composer like Mingus, someone I’m never going to see perform live, but whose music is bigger than the man who played it originally. It’s really those compositions and getting to hear many of them in a single set gives a great feel for his genius, as the bandleader said, the mix of jazz and classical (and yet, my, how it swings! even the ballads had some get-up-and-go to ‘em), the density of so many horns, and a certain sound that is unmistakably Mingus.
A great night with a great gang.
Rev. Vince Anderson & the Love Choir @ Union Pool
In one of those too-perfect-not-to situations, we hit a second residency on the way home, catching about an hour of the first set at Union Pool with Rev Vince. The room was packed, maybe a little more so than usual and we walked in to a rather rocking version of “This Land Is Your Land.” Vince named his band the “Love Choir” for a reason, this guy is full of love and positive energy (even when singing a rather pointed song about our current commander in chief). I couldn’t help but think about the Ghosts of the Forest show with its themes of love and optimism and realized when it comes to repertoire, songs like “Amazing Grace” and “This Little Light of Mine” are tough to beat. They were videotaping the show for maybe a film or something and Vince brought out a guest vocalist for Amazing Grace and it was easily one of the best versions of the song I’ve seen… great vocals and a blistering guitar solo. If you are looking for a spiritual uplifting night of music that you can also dance your ass off to, Monday nights are made for Vince, perfect for something after the other something you’re doing.
The only thing about these shows is that in the 4 or 5 times I’ve been there, I’ve had some sort of problem with someone in the crowd probably 3 of them. Like the entire audience, usually a packed Union Pool for the early set at least, is letting themselves go to the love in the room and there’s always like one or two assholes who are just, well, assholes. Which is to say last night was the closest I’ve come to a fistfight in a long while, even closer than when I confronted the nitrous dudes after the Freaks Ball. So, go see Rev Vince, but beware… not sure what kind of fuckwad magnet he’s got under that hat of his, but it works pretty damn well.
18Apr19
Elkhorn, SUSS @ Nublu 151 (#2019.125)
I’d seen Elkhorn one other time a couple years back at Pete’s Candy Store, part of a very small crowd in a very small space. Thursday they played the much-larger but still-intimate Nublu 151 to a nice sized crowd… I have to say it’s nice to see a decent audience for music like this, because seems just as easy that a band like Elkhorn can just fade away into what-ever-happened-to-those-guys? memory and that would be a shame.
Elkhorn is a guitar duo, one guy playing an acoustic 12-string and another playing electric. All instrumental, their music is pure meditation, the musical equivalent to sitting cross-legged on the floor and concentrating very deeply on your breathing. Which isn’t to say that it’s just this ambient, ephemeral thing, there is some grit and energy to it. The two guitars contrast in kind of fascinating ways, like sitting in front of a campfire: the 12-string just this steady, vaporous smoke rising into the sky at a constant pace, and the electric guitar the fire itself, dancing in bright orange-yellow, random patterns; one part giving off this hot crackle and the other a sort of dull, droning roar. Together it works perfectly. The music was just gorgeous and introspective. They played a combination of songs off their new album and some new stuff that they’ve been working on the road — the show was the completion of what sounded like a pretty long tour. It’s interesting seeing a show like this in a place like a more-than-half-full Nublu… you kind of just want to sit on the floor and zone out and you can be pretty sure that everyone else in the room does, too, but for the most part everyone is standing around like they would at any other Nublu show and so there’s that very tangible, physical tension that plays off the uber-relaxing music you’re immersed in. Not only do you want to be sitting on the floor, but you kind of want to be sitting in the dark, but instead there’s this disco ball spitting lights in spiral fashion around the room. My mind drifted on those disco ball lights, I imagined them to be stars in the sky out in the middle of nowhere, where this campfire was glowing, and imagined the music being this sort of long-exposure photograph of the sky, the disco lights spinning like in one of those photos of the sky, the stars taking circular paths, proving the earth is spinning even if you can’t feel it… that’s the music of Elkhorn, that contact with a planet below you slowly turning underneath the stars above while all the day-to-day continues. They’d string 2 or 3 songs together with no pause, giving the feeling of more grandiose movements. It worked quite well… they could have gone on forever and I would have been plenty happy. Such a great set.
After Elkhorn was SUSS. What an interesting band… pedal steel and several other guitars and a guy doing some electronics in the background. The music was so dreamy. Not just dreamy in that lilting, airy way, but dreamy in that it had the feel of a dream, you wake up and you can remember bits of what you were dreaming about, a feeling or an emotion or the makings of an idea, but never the full picture. SUSS’s songs had that half-baked feel, just a simple notion, never a full narrative. The central focus was a totally floating pedal steel, an instrument I just adore, especially when used like this, a cosmic, weightless, beautiful thing. One guitarist played half on a resonator guitar with some delicate, not-quite-complex finger picking and then switched to a Telecaster that he played almost exclusively with an e-bow, creating even more weightlessness. Another guy mostly just played rhythm and then another switched between bass, acoustic guitar and a rare electric mandolin. The electronics guy sat in the back and just added some ambient digital texture to the whole thing, not too much rhythm, just wide swaths of sound. They’d play a song that felt barely like a riff or an idea and just kind of drone on it for a while. Was rather blissful. Definitely will check them out again.
Wayne Krantz, Kush Abadey, Orlando le Fleming @ 55 Bar
Off to 55 Bar, of course…
My 12th Krantz’n of 2019 and in some ways, what else can you say, but in other ways, there are so many details and angles to take on these gigs. Take for instance Wayne’s use of effects, have I really dug into that yet? For some reason his pedal work seemed to really occupy my attention during the early set. Wayne makes some truly unique sounds with his arrangement of pedals and knobs, from these gong-like tomes, like he’s summoned the churches of the city to take guitar solos, to an underwater bubbling, cold-fusion from the bottom of a swimming pool, to lightning bolts of sound, the guitar shred of Greek gods right in the middle of the West Village. He always seems to dial into the right tone, building a layer of magic on top of his already scintillating talents.
This week was the second (I believe) time for Kush Abadey playing drums for Wayne, my first time seeing him. I believe he is like mid-20’s young and he’s got a ton of energy and strength on the kit, a good fit for the Krantz thing. He wasn’t tentative, that’s for sure, perhaps occasionally to his detriment… he was fine, but definitely needed to be reigned in or guided by Wayne at times. le Fleming is growing on me more and more with his bass playing… last night he felt more like a slap-bass funk guy which made the music, well, funkier, to say the least. Always kind of amazing to see how each week can be so different.
The early set was great, it’s always great, but maybe B- average-Thursday-at-55-Bar great, not piss-your-pants great. The second set, on the other hand, was eyes-rolling-into-the-back-of-your-skull awesome. Another sort of fine-print sick thing about Wayne Krantz is that even though he’s this ridiculously talented player who can do things with his hands at speeds you can’t fathom, he also is totally fine laying back and just finding a chord to groove on for a while. He is not afraid to go minimal either. And then he does these little vignettes where the other two guys stop playing and he just does an unaccompanied solo and these are usually mindblowing magic. The second set last night featured another ferocious version of “U Can’t Touch This” which has become his monster jam vehicle… I mean, they all are in some way, but the way he takes this song. Theme > jam of certain length > theme > longer jam > theme > improvisation so far flung you forget what day it is > theme (oh wait, it’s this song??). It’s like he’s testing his own limits each cycle, his limits and the band’s limits and the crowd’s limits. Last night it was total outer-limits shit. Last week he was so comfortable with the band it was this effortless blob of ridiculousness. Last night it was more like Wayne giving it his all to carry the other two, him making them look like all-timers and not vice versa. His playing during those jams, especially the last one, the effects, the two-solos-in-opposite-directions-simultaneously brain-twisters. I mean wowwowow! Then he followed that up with one of those unaccompanied bits, perhaps the most awe-inspiring piece of guitar playing I’ve ever seen. I honestly don’t know how he makes this music. He’s not hitting any pedals, he’s picking at each string with his fingers, but it sounds like every time he hits a string 3 notes come out and some of these notes echo and multiply and linger and some don’t and on top of that, he’s creating these complex melodies. Total fugue state, channeling music from through the wormhole. Holyfuckingshit. So, yeah, that was good. The band kept up just fine, Abadey is a beast-in-the-making and le Fleming moved from funk-machine to electrogoo footsoldier in the late set to push things over the edge. Another amazing night at 55 Bar. Looking forward to another in just one short week.
20Apr19
Another excellent weekend day of livemusic’n
Off the Road Again @ Skinny Dennis
Started off at Skinny Dennis in Williamsburg. The band is billed as “Off the Road Again with Sean Walsh,” but I’m pretty sure it’s just National Reserve playing off-tour at their homebase, or a very close approximation of that. I really enjoy everything I see in this spot, love the spot, it’s awesome, especially on a weekend afternoon, but these guys are like head and shoulders above the other bands I’ve seen there. Killer versions of “Sitting on top of the World” and “Trouble In Mind” among others. Like a bar band on steroids, just excellent rock and roll, fantastic players — 2 guitars, bass drums — and sweet songs, covers and originals. The scene there yesterday was also much more chill and easy than other times and… I definitely wasn’t the oldest person there for once! These guys play regularly there, including next Saturday afternoon and I highly recommend it for a cold beer and A+ rock and roll if you’ve got a free afternoon. Three sets at 4, 5 and 6, done by 7… what could be bad?
Live From Here @ Town Hall
Two trains to Town Hall and walked in right as Stuart Duncan and Chris Eldridge started warming up with some superb fiddle-tune action. I wrote a review of this for Bowery Presents House List which will post tomorrow morning and I’ve written plenty about Live From Here, so I’m not going to go crazy with a long review of yesterday’s show, but suffice it to say, it was, in a word, excellent. If anything I’d point out that Cecile McLorin Salvant’s singing shook me to the core, just a marvelous voice and human being. Just, wow!. I can’t even say what it is about her that was so bowl-you-over, like what is it?? I’ve listened to her most recent album and it’s pretty excellent, but seeing her live is a different story, the range, the phrasing, the emotion, the playfulness, like when you see an expert use all ten fingers to play a guitar and just multiply the sound, that was her. Blown away. Josh Ritter was much better than I was expecting with a nice surprise of the Freak-friendly Josh Kaufman accompanying him on guitar, quite tastefully… that was cool to see. Jeff Daniels doing Atticus Finch reading from To Kill A Mockingbird was fantastic. And of course everything else, I really liked the house band yesterday, Chris Morrissey playing bass instead of musical director Mike Elizondo ended up being a great treat, I thought he was musically a step up from Mike and it showed throughout. He did a great Vulfpeck thing during the Joe Dart portion of the birthday section. Gaby Moreno is ridiculous every time, like steals the show good every time she plays, so talented and awesome. More than any other LFH I’ve seen it seemed like Chris Thile really took a backseat to his band and the guests, which isn’t to say he wasn’t in the mix, and there were plenty of mandolin solos, but his talents weren’t the focus of the show for me. Except for the opening pre-show performance of Radiohead’s “Morning Bell,” which was so magnificient I could have gone home happy after that. Like, people are walking in and he’s just like “what do you want to hear” and someone shouts out “Radiohead!” and he pulls this thing out of his pocket, a jaw-dropping solo version, like no-big-whoop! Just totally awe-inspiring, but par for the course for Mr. Thile. I thought the comedian Mike Lawrence was kinda meh compared to some of the others I’ve seen perform on LFH, just very standard hokey shit and a couple too many absolute groaners. It probably wasn’t my favorite of all the Live From Here’s I’ve seen and yet it still was an astounding early evening of music and entertainment, an incredible variety of music and performances that had me grinning from ear to ear.
I’ll post a link to my review tomorrow.
Sylvie Courvoisier, Kenny Wolleson, Drew Gress, Jonathan Finlayson @ The Stone
As this city often does, another show was teed up perfectly as I made my way downtown and walked into the Stone space a minute or two before the lights went off for the music. Hey, when you’re good, you’re good…
Last night’s show was the Sylvie Courvoisier Trio (SC on piano, Wolleson on drums and Drew Gress on bass) with “special guest” Finlayson on trumpet. Wow! Finlayson very much felt like a special guest. The other three had this tremendous chemistry, they would just go into this zone, taking whatever piece they were playing and just melting it into a three-person liquid. The three of them really were just transfixing, I found myself completely out-of-myself, not quite sleeping, but definitely not awake. Kenny Wolleson is a marvel, the key component of more amazing bands than seems possible. At this point if you’re putting together a killer band in NYC and Wolleson isn’t your first choice for the drummer, you’d better have a damn good reason. And if you’re seeing music in NYC and you’ve gone a month or more without seeing Kenny play drums or vibes, well, what the fuck is wrong with you, man?
Sylvie is a very balanced player, gets out there, but stays beautiful, pounds away at the keys with her fists and arms, but also retains a soft touch. All 3 of them really seemed to be playing very melodically, which gave the feel like there was no leader and they would just float through these compositions and improvisation like a single entity. Finlayson was sort of on top of all this, he was fantastic when he played, but he felt very superfluous to me… guest horn players usually feel this way to me. He’s great, but I would have rather just had the trio. Thankfully, he was a contributor and not a full-timer for the set, he would play at the start of a piece, doubling Courvoisier, taking a great solo and then, for the most part, moved to the side and let the three of them just float away. Pretty breathtaking stuff.
I’ve noticed the last few times at the Stone that they are much more relaxed about the sets going long, this one was about 70+ minutes. Used to be 60 and that was it. No complaints here.
Acid Mothers Temple @ Market Hotel
Finished a nice long Saturday of killer music strong with a trip back to Brooklyn for Acid Mothers Temple. If you’ve never seen these guys, well, you’re missing out. This was my 5th AMT show and never not been bowled over. They are the giants of the Japanese psych-rock scene, and they are some heavy muthafucking Japanese wizards. Just 80 minutes of skull-to-skull headbutt jammers, a total are-my-ears-bleeding onslaught of guitar shred. Actually, for all the gobs and gobs of guitar that we were dished at the show last night, it was really the bassist and drummer who knocked me out the most. The drummer was just a non-stop machine of blatt-a-blatt and bassist was very Phil-Leshian in his ability to hold down the low end while also serepentining the melody through all the guitar and synth noise. They’re not all instrumental, but the singing is in Japanese and it’s more or less buried under all that noise — and there’s a lot of noise, in a very good way — that it may as well be.
And, you know, it’s not all in-your-face rage-rock. There’s a bit of melodic texture and some quiet moments and stretches where it’s downright funky. They are a sorta Japanese jamband and they totally kill it. They have this song I’ve seen them play, and I have no idea about the names of any of ’em, but it’s like their Dark Star, this long many-faceted thing that rocks and grooves and goes places and you think it’s over and it’s not and then you think now it’s over, but it’s not and it’s a good thing, because it’s so damn good… the main riff is this glorious thing from a place very far away, an exotic mythical place, the place where you climb a mountain seeking wisdom from the sage guru who resides at the peak and when you get there it’s not a guru at all, but a 5-piece psych-rock band with crazy hair and long beards and they melt your face with this song. Yeah, that fucking good.
Market Hotel is such a great space, a perfect size, some little idiosyncrasies, great energy, friendly staff, where-am-I-again? out-of-the-way location. I really dig it and wish there were more things there I wanted to go out of my way to see… and the venue has windows! I was struck by this last night, not many clubs and spaces have windows, and one of these windows at the Market Hotel, the one directly behind the stage, is basically on the platform at the Myrtle J-M subway stop and you’re watching these trains come in and go while your brain takes these little trips with the Acid Mothers Temple, outbound, inbound, outbound, inbound. And, I mean, it was 420 and I’m watching the trippiest of stonerjams from these Japanese freakers and watching the J train go back and forth and, man, that was a great way to cap off an absolutely killer afternoon > evening > late night of music. This city fucking rules!
