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What have you been listening to this week?
@Whom asked me to cover this post for today.
What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)
Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.
You can make a chart if you use last.fm:
http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/
Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.
My chart
Mostly just getting some mileage out of the recent releases - last week was a good week!
Mentioned before, but The National's new record is very easy to put on and just let play. With so many different voices it feels like a collaborative effort more than any of their past work, and I think that gives it it's inviting tone.
IGOR came from left field, but it's solid! I couldn't get behind the hype on Flower Boy, but IGOR has really caught my attention. It's found a sound and it runs with it, and doesn't overstay it's welcome. I've only given it two spins, and I'll be really interested to see how this album settles into its longevity, or lack of.
Any Jazz fans should definitely check out Ruby Rushton's new album, lots of call backs to the golden era while still sounding modern, highly reccomend.
This reminds me that I haven't seen anyone mention Care For Me since the year end lists and before that I hadn't heard much about it for a while. Its following seems to have lost a lot of steam.
It was my top album of last year, and has found itself among my all time favourites. I've listened to it more times than I'd admit.
It's a shame - I feel like it received great acclaim from the critical publications, but just based on my circles, it fell flat with most people. I remember the first and second time I heard it and I thought almost nothing of it, then for whatever reason on the third time I absolutely understood what Saba was doing, and I haven't fallen out of love with it since. The only song I would exclude is 'LOGOUT' which, according to the streaming data, is the most popular - probably because of the Chance feature, who frankly sounds like he wish he were somewhere else.
the shortlist:
Beautiful by Obsidia Feat. CoMa.
Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power. I got a used CD for $6 and you don't pass that deal up. I had to sell my original CD when I moved, so I'm still operating in the red as it were, but it's nice to have Pantera's best CD back again.
I listened to a classic soul jazz album for the first time in a few years: Swiss Movement by Les McCann and Eddie Harris. It was recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1969, and it was literally the first time McCann had played with Harris and trumpeter Benny Bailey. No warmup gigs, no rehearsals, no nothing. The album starts with the definitive version of "Compared To What," and the entire set is crackling with energy.
On the live music front, I saw a great show from the trumpet master Wallace Roney last night at a tiny non-profit jazz club in NYC's northern suburbs. Roney came to prominence in the '80s as a member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and a long membership in the Tony Williams Quintet. He was also famously mentored by Miles Davis, appearing alongside Miles and Quincy Jones at their Montreux concert (one of Miles's last gigs). Roney also took the trumpet chair on an early '90s tour and live album by the members of the "Second Great Miles Davis Quintet" (Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams). That resume, along with Wallace's mastery of ballads, slow blues and muted trumpet solos, got him pinned with an unfair reputation as a Miles imitator. Based on what I saw last night, he is so much more than that, with inspiration from all the great trumpet masters combined into his own very fiery and cutting style. He led a quintet with some very young musicians, obviously enjoying the mentoring role that he experienced as a younger player from Miles and Blakey. The ensemble sections were a little rough around the edges, and the drummer in particular felt like a young thoroughbred who wanted to run at top speed at all times - Wallace had to tell him to mellow out a couple of times during the night. But that youthful energy backing up the seasoned jazz master made for an exhilarating couple of sets.
Big Big Train's new album Grand Tour came out last week and I've been a bit obsessed. Ariel, in particular, is a striking epic connecting bits from The Tempest and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
I've felt like many of their past albums have had interesting themes and music, but were lacking a bit in the lyrics. With Folklore and now Grand Tour, however, it definitely seems like they've found a new richness that I'm really enjoying.
The only thing to pull me away from Grand Tour this week was going to see Riverside play live for their new album Wasteland, which was a really fun show.
I finally checked out Khruangbin, a psychedelic band recommended to me by a friend. I've especially enjoyed their song Lady and Man. Outside of that, I've been listening to Lisa Jaeggi's Empirical Science
The new Carly Rae Jepsen is pretty darn good. Been listening to that a lot. Other than that, I have a playlist of tracks that I shuffle through when I'm working... or not working.
This is my Shuffle Playlist on Spotify
my chart
I have a (potentially bad) habit of listening to the same albums too much whenever I'm in a rut, so I've been making an active effort to have a chart's worth of new music listened to each week. Half of these albums are new to me (Weeping Choir, Hi, This is Flume, POST-, Injury Reserve's self-titled, Split Personalities, Seraphim, The Love Market, and Immediate Horizon) and the other half are albums that I'm regularly coming back to.