TED DROZDOWSKI
SENIOR EDITOR
I’ve sought refuge during the pandemic—mental deliverance and comfort food for the soul—in my roots. Blues has long been a source of the latter for me. And Mississippi Suitcase is elemental: a celebratory bonfire, radiating Parcek’s virtuosity, creativity, and musical intelligence.
Peter Parcek
Mississippi Suitcase
It’s not simply his world-class and richly original guitar playing, which dances on an emotional high wire between transcendent invention and deep tradition, or his songwriting, which illuminates all the corners of our humanity, that makes him such an important and hauntingly expressive artist in today’s blues and roots scene. Or even the way his singing breathes with life and wisdom. There’s also his ability to reframe classic material, whether by Sonny Boy Williamson or Lou Reed, in a way that’s respectful of history and yet resonant in the present. He can be wild and unpredictable, yet resolute as granite. And, like a bonfire, he burns. He is truly a master, and I love this album.
Pink Floyd
Delicate Sound of Thunder
Pink Floyd has been my shelter in this year’s storm. I revisit everything in the band’s and David Gilmour’s catalogs constantly, finding warmth in the weirdness and beauty, and in the empathy of their finest lyrics, and uplift in Syd Barrett’s and David’s performances. So it felt like this reissue, recorded during the 1987 Momentary Lapse of Reason tour, was a gift made for me. The remastered sound and the performances are killer—a sonic, psychedelic spa I can soak in infinitely, and there’s music not on the original release, including the wordless wonder “The Great Gig in the Sky.” And while I love Syd’s left-field virtuosity, nobody has a more beautiful, burnished tone than David, and the delicate precision of his bends and phrasing cut to my heart. I really get lost in his playing, in the best way possible. Adding to my Floydian refuge was the also-just-reissued book Barrett: The Definitive Visual Companion, by Russell Beecher and Will Shutes, packed with early photos of Syd, with and without the band, and his paintings and drawings, including work through the early mid-2000s. It’s a fascination look inside a wonderful and difficult mind.
Henry Kaiser, Mike Watt, Vinny Golia, Wayne Peet, and John Hanrahan
A Love Supreme Electric: A Salvo Inspired By John Coltrane—A Love Supreme & Meditations
This two-album set answers a theoretical: What if Coltrane had survived cancer and joined Miles Davis in pioneering electric jazz? Five of the world’s finest improvisors weigh in via compositions from the two brilliant ’Trane albums in the title. There’s a lot of mystery, satisfaction, and surprise in these 12 performances, as instrumental voices blend and fracture, melodies skyrocket and flare, and notes tumble in a stampeding herd or slowly and elegantly stretch like lazy cats in the sun. Kaiser’s guitar playing is full of energy and invention, but, honestly, so is everyone’s. At times there are clear nods to Sonny Sharrock, who was himself a Coltrane disciple, and the improv supergroup Last Exit. During pandemic isolation, this rune to chaos and control (and Coltrane, of course!) is a marvelous reminder of freedom—and a reminder that free jazz has always been about human, rather than musical, liberation.
Most-anticipated 2021 releases: Please, Tom Waits … please, this year! Any unreleased Sonny Sharrock, R.L. Burnside, or Junior Kimbrough recordings. More great discoveries and productions from Dan Auerbach and his Easy Eye label. And new music from Julian Lage, Anthony Pirog, and Valerie June.
Fleet Foxes
ShoreFollowing a three-year break, indie-folk outfit Fleet Foxes has returned with its fourth studio album, Shore, released this autumnal equinox. Their 2017 release, Crack-Up, saw songwriter Robin Pecknold traipsing into structurally abstract territory. On Shore, Pecknold takes his orchestral, reinvented-’60s-rock sound and places it into a more contextualized format, generously embroidering it with Seattle-born brass quartet, the Westerlies. An intently uplifting work, Shore was written and produced by Pecknold without his bandmates—a first under the Fleet Foxes name.
Pecknold uses the guitar like a composer, writing simple motifs from which he extrapolates scenic, technicolor arrangements featuring acoustic and electric interplay, guiding with melodic lines (“Sunblind” and “Thymia”), creating gentle textures on songs like “Featherweight” and “A Long Way Past the Past,” and at times echoing his Beach Boys-esque, reverb-bathed vocals (“Maestranza”). Shore breathes with a sense of midsummer freedom and contemplation, offering a new heart to a tiring season.
Must-hear tracks: “Featherweight,” “Maestranza”
Yuval Ron
Somewhere in This Universe, Somebody Hits a DrumBefore you even listen to it, it’s clear that Yuval Ron’s Somewhere in This Universe, Somebody Hits a Drum is a very serious record. Stoic, in full astronaut gear, Ron floats in space on the album’s artwork, a definitive image for the odd mental cinema the record scaffolds—with the crucial role of drummer played by Marco Minnemann. It’s there on the final frontier, equipped with astral, analog synthesizers, arresting time signatures, and a generous helping of self-satire, that Ron presents his open jazz/metal echo of classic prog dipped in an absurd crystalline fondue.
It all begins with a march and a regal Gregorian yodel heralding the space voyage, and unfolds through Ron’s peaceful-stream-meets-metal-arpeggios guitar, and the occasional tubular bell and aural suggestion of space monsters (by growling, distorted effects). Matt Paull on keys and Roberto Badoglio on bass complete the quartet, together cultivating a fertile prog playground … in space.
Must-hear tracks: “Wi-Fi in Emerald City,” “I Believe in Astronauts”