Music Monday: Alt-Country, Alt-Jazz, and Trombone

I listen to a good bit of music and sometimes I find my self in rut. I’ll listlessly scan new releases, allow my streaming service to randomly play music for me, check out Stephen Mejias’s new music at Twittering Machines, or switch genres just to see whether I can find something that wakes me up a bit.

This past weekend, I decided to check out the new album by Plains, I Walked With You a Ways (2022). I’ve always like Katie Crutchfield as Waxahatchee and I was intrigued by the early reviews of her album with Jess Williamson (whom I don’t know) and the potential of a little alt-country to shake me from me from my musical torpor. 

The album is good. A bit twangy in spots (which I actually have found that I don’t mind) and with Crutchfield and Williamson trading vocal duties, there’s enough variation to keep me interested throughout. The song writing, as one might guess from Crutchfield’s output as Waxahatchee, is top rate. 

I’ve enjoyed the song “Abilene” in particular, but the entire album is solid:

I also put on the most recent album featuring Wadada Leo Smith, Two Centuries, where he performs with electronic artist Qsim Naqvi and drummer Andrew Cyrille. It’s good and like any number of recent collaborations between electronic musicians and jazz artists celebrates the tension between ambient waves of sound produced by Naqvi,  Cyrille’s drumming, and Smiths amazing tone on trumpet. 

I particularly appreciate this album because Smith’s recent output has been on the Finnish TUM Records label which does not release music to the major streaming services. This means (audible gasp), I can’t try before I buy and with an artists as varied (and prolific) as Wadada Leo Smith, this seems (for some reason) to be a risk that I’m not entirely comfortable taking.

I don’t know why this is. After all, a quick trip to the Youtubes makes clear that I should at least own his Great Lakes Suite (2014):

Finally, I’ve been enjoying trombonist Julian Priester’s Polarization (1977) with his band at the time Marine Intrusion. The album cover is enough to explain my interest, but so is the fact that Priester not only played with everyone in the jazz world but also performed with Sun Ra. Priester was one of the DuSable High School trained musicians who performed with Sun Ra in his Chicago days and continued to appear with the Arkestra from time to time over the next thirty years (including on some of Ra’s more polished and intriguing late 1980s recordings).

Albums led by trombone players are pretty rare and usually worth a listen. This one, however, is pretty remarkable in the way that it draws you into the music. Perhaps this is part of the charm of albums led by instruments usually pushed to the margins or buried in a mix designed to favor trumpets and saxophones.

Check it out!