13Jan20
Mark Guiliana & Special Guest TBA, Golden Valley Is Now @ the Sultan Room
Sometimes it does, indeed, feel like you’re living in a simulation, part of someone else’s grand design and maybe that someone has programmed the universe to fuck with you and maybe that someone has programmed it so that all of your favorite musicians keep playing together to blow your fucking mind. As far as evidence one way or the other, let’s place last night as a data point in favor of: the programmer of this ridiculous simulated reality wants to blow my fucking mind (and I am here for it!).
So, one of my top ten albums of 2019 was called “Golden Valley Is Now,” which is a somehow appropriate name for the trio that features Reid Anderson on bass, Dave King on drums and Craig Taborn on keyboards. King & Anderson are the rhythm section of the Bad Plus, probably my favorite band of this century, a group I’ve seen more than 50 times. Craig Taborn is a guy I’ve seen a bunch of times and always am super blown away by. I have never in my mind thought I would like to hear what the Bad Plus would sound like electronic, but just because I never consciously thought it doesn’t mean that my simulated self didn’t want it, didn’t need it in some programmed-into-my-DNA sort of way, a primordial longing that was no less real just because I wasn’t aware of it. That album is freakin’ awesome, made for me and my sensibilities, the Radiohead-meets-Monk compositional genius of Reid Anderson (et al.) in a mindbending future-is-now we-don’t-need-no-stinkin’-genres package. When the show got announced as part of the NYC Winter Jazz Festival, there was no doubt in my mind that I would be there, I couldn’t wait to see this music live. The fact that it was actually an opening slot, opening for Mark Guiliana and who-knows-who on a Monday night, didn’t matter. (of course, that didn’t stop me from yes-I’m-an-idiot not getting tickets and almost getting shut out of a sold out show, but thanks Pete for making sure we got in, no problem!).
Right out of the gate, first song in, I knew this was going to be a did-not-disappoint set of music. They opened with “Song One,” which is maybe the best song on the album, a torrent of electronic awesome, starting almost innocently, three guys tippy-toeing around a theme, large cats in Africa circling prey and then… POUNCE! First thing you finally grasp is Reid Anderson is playing electric bass, which I have never seen before. I think maybe over the past 17 years of Reid Anderson being one of my absolute favorite musicians have I thought I wonder what Reid Anderson would sound like electric, but damn, did my DNA want to know and, damn did the livemusicgods deliver. When that band pounces in that song, Reid’s bass is some ferocious teeth-of-the-tiger flesh-ripping shit. Halfway through this song a satellite passing over Brooklyn could easily see the smile on my face it was that large, beaming, unnatural. The set covered much of the album, maybe all of it, maybe a couple songs not on there, the trio weaved through hair-raising funky shit, brain-splitting Radiohead-esque electro-rock and simply gorgeous indescribabilities. My smile only got bigger as it went on. It was like a cosmic passageway opened between the electronic and jazz worlds and the music passed itself as it went from one to the other. For a band that’s maybe played once or twice together in this format (maybe… King claimed it was their 3rd gig), they were unbelievably tight. Or maybe not unbelievably, the bond between Anderson & King is something that, especially as the Bad Plus has moved on to phase 2, grown into that something special territory and King mentioning how he’s known Taborn since middle school (amazing how all these guys always knew each other when they were kids, how is that possible?), fueled the chemistry between the three of them. For someone on my favorite-bassist-ever list, Anderson is exceedingly not-flashy or even the kind of jaw-dropping talent that other bassists have. Rather, his is a sensibility the same way a dude or lady may be an attractive individual, but it’s their sense of style that catches your eye. That’s Reid, he has a sonic sense of style that is inventive, thought-provoking, spine-tingling, awe-inspiring, soul-affirming. Whenever I hear music from Reid Anderson, I think about this deterministic universe, how the physics of the universe from the dawn of time, how the evolution of life on earth has led to the moment where I am sitting in front of Reid Anderson relearning what ecstasy really means and why I may have evolved to feel that way. He’s that good. Last night he was in that zone, different on the electric, but it didn’t matter, his sensibility came through the music as much as ever, perhaps in more interesting ways with Taborn laying on all sorts of groovy electronic synthy playing, magnificent stuff. Yes, the music was amazing, Reid’s energy was a centerpiece, Taborn was a wizard of sound, texture and groove, but… the undeniable oomph of the set came from Dave King whose that dude’s a great drummer stock seems to rise every time I see him. He was simply on another, inhuman level last night, one of the best drumming performances I’ve ever seen. We were set up right in front of the guy and I had trouble wrapping my mind around what he was doing. And it wasn’t like he was overpowering or doing show-offy technical whoozats, just that he had it going on, mixing in hands and mallets and some great work on the electronic drumpad, a man-made computer testing the rhythmic limits of the simulation. You see great drummers zillions of times and the best can still amaze with their creativity and energy and Dave King was nothing short of amazing last night.
In fact, about 2/3 of the way through the set I pondered the last time I had been so wow’d by a drumming performance and I realized that it was a time a year and a half ago at the Stone and that the drummer that night was Mark Guiliana. That night he played in a duo and who he played with brings me back to the very beginning of this review, about how the show was billed as Guiliana & TBA. I have to admit, when the show was announced, I didn’t think a damn thing about who that TBA was, I figured it’d be some sort of jam session of some mix of somebody’s a don’t-know-’ems, but really, honestly I just didn’t think about it for a second. The previous day, someone asked who I thought he was playing with and that he saw on the WJF website that it was apparently a guitar player. So, cool, a duo with Mark and a guitar player and this being NYC and it being Winter Jazz Fest, the range of who he could play with was extremely, amazingly broad and in almost all likelihood, it would be good. Still, I didn’t think too much about who it would actually be. And I don’t know why I didn’t think about it and why I didn’t think there was any remote possibility that the guitarist in question might possibly be the did I just win the lottery? Bill Frisell. The simulation couldn’t be that rigged to luck me into catching two absolute surprise sets of my favorite guitarist in like 2 weeks, could it? You see, as the rumors went from rumors to yes and as that Golden Valley set reached its amazing conclusion, I remembered that I had seen Mark Guiliana and Bill Frisell play a duo set before and that that show was one of the best sets of drumming I had ever seen and, sheeeeesh, how good is that?
Yes, we were treated to a nice solid hour plus of improvisation between Mark and Bill. Mark and Bill, such ordinary names for such extraordinary musicians. While I don’t think the entirety of the set quite reached that night at the Stone a year and a half ago, it was rather remarkable even as it was all over the place. You know those alignment charts, where like different things range from “lawful good” to “chaotic evil?” This set was like that, hitting all 9 of the potential squares, moments where both musicians were in synch to make things beautiful, out of synch and making things weird and thorny, moments where one was going one way and the other the other and all points in between. Perhaps the truly moments were near the beginning, Mark starting a deconstructed funk rhythm, a beat both catchy and impossible, Frisell toying at his guitar and then finding that spot, that fucking spot, where all things holy and good about the universe condense into a phrase or note or wisp of sound out of Bill Frisell’s guitar, sounds that can only come out of his guitar. I mean, if seeing Reid Anderson confirms my deterministic universe view, seeing Bill Frisell erases all that, seeing Frisell is looking straight into the eyes of God. Never you fret, this set got to the we’re-looking-into-the-creator’s-gaze place early on and would find it a few more times during the set. The set also had some courageous improvisation, with knotty freak-outs and straight rocking. Guiliana spurned a few different samples of “field recording” type audio on top of the improv at several moments. The first of these was audio of announcers at a Japanese baseball game and it felt so appropriate, the way the patter of the talk between the announcers was very familiar to anyone who’s listened to a ballgame on the radio, but also totally foreign and weird (to anyone who doesn’t speak Japanese), somehow this was a sonic metaphor for the music, these conventional, familiar tropes mixed with a lost-in-translation disorientation. Later he leaned heavily on audio from an announcer at the Tyson/Holmes 1988 heavyweight title fight, sampling certain bits over and over, creating a rhythm all its own, somehow the bravado and supercharged energy of the recording at odds with Bill’s carefully crafted, unassuming beauty.
Frisell & Guiliana (Friselliana) have an interesting chemistry in that it almost seems like they have none at all. Their styles are at right angles to each other and yet, in their planes of music existence, they do find a spot of overlap. Still, the interesting thing is the parts where they didn’t quite overlap, where there was push and pull and maybe some discomfort, that’s where the weirdness and exploration happens, when Bill’s ability to take seeds and water and sunlight and somehow turn them all into a beautiful flower garden of guitar playing met Guliana’s controlled spasms of inhuman rhythms, there was so much to grasp, it was almost too much. Almost. While the set wasn’t the kill-me-now magic of that Stone set, the setting and surroundings of the night were different, there was no way it could replicate it exactly. Instead, perhaps, we saw the second step towards more continued interactions between the two, hopefully more opportunities to find brief moments of overlap and more deep-dive exploration of the rest of the universe where they do not. Hopefully the programmers of this simulation will oblige again soon.
An all-timer night of music, will be surprised, even here in mid-January, if this show doesn’t end up on my year-end list.
14Jan20 Julian Lage Trio (w/ Dave King & Jorge Roeder) @ Village Vanguard (early set)
If you have a piece of clothing that’s inside out and you want to right-side-in it, you kind of grab one spot and pull the entire shirt or pair of pants around that one fixed part so that it’s right again. That’s what it felt like for my transition from the excellent show Monday night to the excellent show I saw last night, as if the high-level jazz scene had been grabbed in one spot from Monday, that being drummer Dave King, and pulled entirely through it so that on Tuesday he was still there, as if he had never left, but the rest of everything was an “inside out” (or “right side in”) inversion. The funky, cool environs of the Sultan Room in Bushwick was now the classic, historical Village Vanguard in the West Village; Reid Anderson’s understated centerpiece sensibility on the electric bass had been replaced with Jorge Roeder’s somehow-always-surprising deft follow-the-lead playing on the upright bass; and instead of the seated Bill Frisell’s not-flashy, subtle brilliance grow-a-flower-garden guitar playing, augmented by design with the most artful use of effects you will ever see was now the metaphorically towering Julian Lage with his we-don’t-need-no-effects-to-make-magic, brain-breaking, flashy-not-flashy genius. The best music finds its place in context with all the other music, the best shows in this city reach out and communicate with other shows in the city, across time and space, like the roots of trees passing information to each other underground, unseen, sometimes over generations. That energy was in the air last night.
While Lage has played the Vanguard a few times, this would be his first time playing a headlining gig there and, unsurprising to anyone who’s seen him play in the past 5 years, the first set of the weeklong residency was sold out, packed with people who knew and people who were about to find out. The set opened with the trio doing their version of “Love Hurts” off of the release of the same name from last year. The song moved through several phases. If the gig felt like an inside-out take on the previous night (for me, at least), the music also reflected that. Monday’s was a postcard from the fringe of what “jazz” music might be now and might be in the future or from some distant alternate universe, on the outside from some distance looking back. Last night’s set was perhaps not equally as groundbreaking, musically, but still felt like the cutting edge of the jazz idiom, but it was decidedly happening inside the jazz sphere. This was a “jazz show” in nearly every sense, but one played by perhaps the genres not-too-future standard bearer. And even that sells Julian Lage short, he is more than just a jazz guitarist, and that is the point. When he’s playing jazz guitar, he’s the best jazz guitarist there is; when he is playing bluegrass he is the best bluegrass guitar player there is. When he’s playing some sort of avant garde John Zorn classical acoustic music, he is the best at that. When he’s in a jamming fusion band with Nels Cline, he is the best at doing that. He is conversant in many, many musical languages, can recite poetry and write novels in any of them, but he rarely mixes them. So last night we got jazz guitar legend-in-his-own-time Julian Lage and the show started out that way, a jazz guitar version of “Love Hurts.” But it morphed, first it was straight up, then it was straight up with some twists, Julian getting into his “I’m not showing off/I’m showing off” stylistic shit, astounding runs across the fretboard, a guitar neck that seems to have more surface area than when other people play the electric guitar, simply more places to put his fingers and more ways to do it than seems physically possible. Then the phase changed again and the remnants of the “song” were all but gone, the band was now untethered and improvising, Roeder and King unshackled from “Love Hurts” and driving an inventive jam, pushing as much as pulling with Lage. And then the phase changed again, the other two dropped out and Julian fell into what I can only call a fugue, dizzying, beautiful, what the fuck is he doing!?!? guitar playing, unnatural and mindblowing. And then the phase changed again and that fugue served as a transition out of one song and into the next, each change almost imperceptible at first, but there it was, we were no longer in “Love Hurts,” we were in something new, something much more interesting compositionally, a challenging full-trio romp, prog-jazz of the highest don’t-try-this-at-home level. Like, wow, man!
So yeah, they opened strong and kept it going. Julian’s total comfort with his guitar and the trio made for a rather thrilling and joyous set of music. He is almost too good, in that he numbs you to his talent. That’s a testament to his showing off/not showing off style, for the most part you almost have to look away from the brightness lest you go blind staring at it. If you try too hard to think about what those hands are doing, how they are responding to some lightning fast, ultimate-creativity thought in his head which is transmitting through some electrical signal to the muscles in his hands, if you think about all of the electrical engineering that goes into making such beautiful art, not to mention making it with three other sentient computers banging away at the drums and bass respectively, if you think about all that you’ll be frozen in awe. Best to just sit back and enjoy the actual music, which was blissful and challenging and fun and happy and beautiful and everything you want music to do. Of course, at times, you couldn’t help but look away and you had to restrain from making some sort of noise to respond, some sort of pleasured groan that just wants to leap out of your mouth in response to what you’re seeing/hearing, or, worse, shouting out an expletive what the fuck is going on here!! At a few points some people couldn’t restrain themselves, “what in the actual fuck!” a guy in front of me blurted out at one particularly nasty run of the fingers. I mean, seriously WTAF?
I don’t know the whole setlist, but it drew largely from the last couple albums, sometimes staying close to the song structure, sometimes departing into some heady trio jamming. Roeder & King have become the perfect foils for Julian’s forays and both took the lead plenty of times as well. Fascinating to see Dave two nights in a row in such different circumstances. He felt like the leader Monday night and played with an unconstrained energy that you rarely see, even from a master like him. Last night he was no so much constrained as he was reactionary, surrendering to Julian’s genius, feeding off of it and making it better. Overall, it was almost as great a drumming performance, especially being able to see both back-to-back. As much as I love to see different musicians and just different music night to night, seeing the same people over and over is a gift as well, especially with people like Dave King who finds ways to make people laugh and think while he shakes ridiculous toy apples, the same damn toys he’s been shaking for decades… like someone is seeing this guy play drums for the first time and someone is seeing him for the 75th time and their experiences are the same and also, very, very different. Similarly with Julian who is, on any given night, a self-contained best-in-class genius at what he does, a masterclass in guitar for an hour at a time. But taken in toto, all of it, so much so you can’t wrap your arms around it all and even if you could, how could you stand to hold it all at once?
The set got better as it went on, it really didn’t matter what songs they were playing. The band left to its deserved applause and walked off stage and the lights came up and people got up to go, shaking their heads at what they had just witnessed. There was no one in that room that didn’t feel like they hadn’t gotten their money’s worth when those lights came up and the band took their bow. But that’s not to say we didn’t want to hear more and spurned on by at least one dude up front who basically whipped the crowd’s enthusiasm into a light froth, the band returned for a legit, well-earned encore. Well-earned on both sides, of course. I honestly was perfectly content with the set as delivered, but the encore ended up being their version of Roy Orbison’s “Crying,” a song I’ve heard Julian do in some form 2 or 3 times, and it was, by far, the best version, a make-you-cry, give-you-chills, blow-you-away display of guitar prowess. I mean, he spends 70 minutes doing things with the guitar you didn’t know were possible, without using an effect or a delay or a gimmick of any type, just two hands and that’s it and, I mean at some point it just can’t get any better, right? And then he comes back on stage and plays something better than what you’ve seen. Not sure about the math on that one, but daaaaaamn, that encore was fucking good and to think I was ready to walk away content. Daaaaamn.
Go see Julian Lage this week. Simply the best guitarist I’ve ever seen.
16Jan20
Ryan Scott & the Kind Buds @ Sunny’s -> Scott Sharrards’ Green is Beautiful @ LunAtico
A free evening and nothing really jumped out at me, show-wise, Thursday, so I headed to BK to catch Ryan Scott who had come recommended. Plus it’s been a while since I’ve been to Sunny’s, which is a great room to catch music in, if not utterly out of the way (for me). Got there a little after nine, room was relatively empty, band still setting up, but obviously close to getting started. When they did start, a few more people came in, and a slow trickle throughout the set, a few tables filled with people who were obviously together, maybe one other table with people and me sitting by myself.
So, for all the great experimental music in this town, sometimes it’s good to just see a great rock and roll band, too, and Ryan Scott & the Kind Buds are a great rock and roll band. They opened with a song I should know the name of, strong New Orleans flair, Scott kind of channeling Anders Osborne a little with some not-yet-earned growl in the voice. The band is laid back, but got their shit down: Scott on vocals and guitar, bassist, guy on keys (including the room’s piano) and the drummer is Robin MacMillan, I now know. I mean, I see this guy playing drums all over town in all sorts of bands, in the past month alone at Skinny Dennis and Barbes and until Thursday I did not know his name, but now I do. Anyway, if I’m at a gig and Macmillan is on the drums, I know I’m probably in the right place. So, they’re going good from the get-go, some greasy guitar solos, some organ work, nice NOLA sound. Dig it. The next song is a cover of Bill Withers’ “Kissing My Love” and damn, that was some groovy shit, with Scott mixing in some appropriately funky effects on the guitar and the band keeping things moving nicely. That was sort of the set, hopping around from {blank}-rock song, some recognizable, some not, band sounding great, Scott killing it with the vocals and not-too-flashy/impressive guitar work. The set was a whole lotta what’s-not-to-love. They did a great version of “You Can Leave Your Hat On” which I always associate with Merle Saunders and it struck me that the repertoire was very heavy with “songs Merle Saunders might have played,” which is a good thing. I decided to stick around for a little bit of the second set before moving on (not sure this was the right move or not), but when the second set started, the crowd had maybe doubled in size and when the music started, I think I was the only one still seated. The room was comfortably full and everyone was dancing and the music shifted to the slightly more dance-friendly shade. I don’t think there were more than one or two people older than me there, everyone was having a blast and, why wouldn’t they? Definitely recommend hitting these guys next time they play Sunny’s or elsewhere, I definitely will do my best to see them again.
Hopped from Red Hook to Bed Stuy and probably didn’t time things out, but got to LunAtico for the last 30 minutes of the Green Is Beautiful set. This is my second time seeing Sharrard do this and it’s just a really killer band with a really killer guitarist playing songs from perhaps the grooviest catalog there is. Again, what’s not to love? They play it there about once a month or every couple months, occasionally elsewhere, there is absolutely nothing about that set, that spot and the scene there that isn’t perfect. Highly recommended.
18Jan20 Umphrey’s McGee @ Beacon Theatre
Caught Umphrey’s on Saturday night. I think besides the UMBowl @ The Cap many years back, this was maybe my favorite Umphrey’s McGee show. We were settled right behind the soundboard with an amazing view of the lights and what felt like the entire row to ourselves, thought the jamming was more interesting than past times I’ve seen Umphrey’s and enjoyed the Sterns sit-in, Rush cover, etc. Good stuff. My full review for Bowery Presents House List is here if you’re interested in reading.
