Hampton Hawes & Martial Solal - 'Key For Two' (Affinity)

Solal isn't a well-known name outside of France, but he's done a lot of film soundtrack composition, including Godard's Breathless. This record pairs him in the studio in Paris, 1969, with legend/tragedy Hawes, for a two piano collaboration which sadly fails to utilise the power of those instruments together. Large parts of the record are given over to solos, and when they play together, they mostly stay out of each other's way. The opening and closing tracks are 'Key for Two' and 'Three for Two', composed by Hawes and Solal respectively, and they're not only the only original compositions on the record but the only time where the two really go at it. The middle of the record is given over to standards and covers, all of which float by in a pleasant bop manner but usually showcasing just one pianist at a time. I can't tell who is who and the all-star rhythm section of Pierre Michelot and Kenny Clarke largely function as session musicians. I mean, it's a competent bop quartet,  but for the most part this sounds like public domain jazz to use in a movie. There are some high points, mostly when the rhythm section drops out. This version of 'Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most' is light and tender, almost fragile; the similarly unaccompanied 'Godchild' has some real spirit, as the two pianos dance around each other, teasing furtively. Michelot and Clarke really get cooking on 'The Theme', but that's about the most pyrotechnics on display. There's a real fear of dissonance here, and the liner notes even make a point of stating how carefully rehearsed these sessions were. I don't demand chaos or discord, but I want to hear a vision, and I don't think either pianist here puts forth anything particularly distinct. The two originals are really all we got, and the first is nothing more than a 12-bar, though executed confidently enough to dazzle. The last ends suddenly, almost like an accidental tape splice or a mastering error, which is a bit odd. I was curious about Hawes, and wanted to hear the pain and struggles of his addictions in his playing, but this is kinda standard (while I must point out - technically extremely competent, colourful and expressive, and bright). I wonder if more somber music might reveal more of who he was - and 'Spring', by far the highlight of this record, suggests this might be the case. It's also crazy to think that just a few months after this was recorded, somewhere across town, the Art Ensemble of Chicago recorded People in Sorrow and all of those other mind-blowing explorations of the American experience.

Andrew Graham's Swarming Branch - 'Classic Glass' (Tonk)

This is one hell of a sound sound, and it warms my heart that there's a gang of youngsters in Columbus, Ohio making music like this. Do you like Tin Pan Alley, musical cabaret and a Harry Nilsson/Van Dyke Parks vibe? But also fuzzy, jammy indie rock with psychedelic riffs galore? This might be for you, and I can guess this might be a love-it-or-hate it aesthetic; it's about as far from macho posturing as I can imagine while still being 'rock' music, yet to me this doesn't sound affected, even though Graham's singing technique is a bit like the guy from Cockey Rebel crossed with Basement Tapes-era Dylan. As the band name indicates, Mr. Graham is the singer-songwriter behind the Swarming Branch, but keyboardist Dane Terry (creator of a a fantastic solo album we'll get to, one day) is a pretty strong presence, and the bright, springy drums of Sean Leary aren't to be overlooked. This trio makes up the core, I guess, but there's guest musicians galore, including three 'lead guitar' players, obviously not found on every track. It's a bit messy to unravel but it doesn't really matter, because it sounds like a BAND. Their self-administered label is called Tonk and the concept of the honky-tonk rears its head from the majestic/shambolic opening cut ('That Constant Country Thirst') and lyrically in the amazingly cryptic and simultaneously anthemic 'Holy Joeys, Cognoscenti, Tar Babies In Love'. But I wonder what honky-tonk even means to them? There's hints of Nashville in places, sure, such as the slide guitars on 'The New Age Succuba, Susie Jean', but everything feels warped as hell -- and not through a druggy or surrealist haze. It's actually a really hard aesthetic to put a finger on, but it's one that feels confident and open at the same time. The rising and falling guitars and keyboard lines are occasionally chillingly beautiful; 'The Pounce' is as close as this record comes to a ballad, and it wears its heart on its sleeve. And sometimes it just drives straight ahead in the way that rock and roll does best. The high point of the album (and of music overall for the past few years, to these ears) may be the medley of 'This Water Does Not Reach The River' and 'I Warn You' that ends side 1. The first of these is a manic, high-energy stomper and the latter a 4/4 mid-tempo dirge that has some simple, yet stunning interplay between the instruments that makes this feel like a genius chipping away at a rock to reveal some sculpture. When Swarming Branch fall into these more straight-forward moments, it's incredibly satisfying; besides 'I Warn You's powerful punch, 'Final Boss' feels practically like a stadium-rock song, with a relentless pounding on the piano, some synth creepage courtesy of Ryan Jewell, and Graham's irrepressible voice soaring over it all. It crashes to an epic finish and effectively ends the record as the last track is an electro-pop oddity by a guest artist - a strange choice, but this record is a bouquet of strange choices, really, which all gel together to make some odd sense. I am more excited to hear what they do next than I am about just about anyone else actively making music today.

Gastr del Sol - 'Upgrade and Afterlife' (Drag City)

This was the one that really did it for me - my first Gastr release, which is a near-masterpiece like all of the records that brought Grubbs and O'Rourke together. That's a pairing that seems to make no sense on paper and ends up being the greater than the sum of two parts. The formula of Crookt, Crackt or Fly isn't deviated from too much except there is maybe less acoustic guitar choppiness and more of a unified sensibility to create some pleasing compositions - works that are about synergy rather than difference. The tracks with vocals are placed in the centre, but the starting and ending cuts are masterfully lyrics despite being instrumental. 'Our Exquisite Replica of Eternity' - what a title, what a track. It's O'Rourke who clearly takes lead here, with his 'new music' composer chops in the forefront, building things around some electroacoustic drones which move and grind slowly as the piece unfolds. It explodes, an O'Rourke trick evident in many of his records, but here recalling George Gershwin heavily, which feels forward thinking in its anachronism. It's all spinning at 45 RPM (this is not a double album but a one-and-a-half record) which gives it a sense of momentum too. The ending track is a John Fahey cover, 'Dry Bones in the Valley' (from 1975's Old Fashioned Love, if you were wondering) and it's done pretty straight, breathing through the space in the acoustic strum and showing these guys as the virtuoso musicians that they are; once Tony Conrad's violin drone comes in, the track takes on a hypnotic and incredibly melancholy tendency that intensifies until the record is over. And these songs in the middle, with Grubbs dropping his Grubbisms everywhere? Great too, for the most part. 'These are shark fins/I believe the tongue propels them' is the most quotable and wonderful-ridiculous Gastr lyric ever, making 'Rebecca Sylvester' the single most iconic Gastr del Sol track. The piano psychosis of Mirror Repair is most evident during 'The Relay', and 'Hello Spiral' brings in the McEntire drumming (after a harsh, aggressive bit of tape work by Ralf Wehowsky, sounding like John Wiese's hand to me) for the indie rock sound (but only a bit). Actually, it's 'Hello Spiral' that sounds precisely like the LP is skipping, just off-kilter enough to make it feel maddening. I obviously love this record, to the point where I read great personal emotional connections into it despite it being relentlessly avant-garde and obtuse. But it's a warm avant-garde, a celebration of art and possibilities (as the famous Roman Signer photo on the cover indicates). and maybe it sounds a bit silly or dated now but you gotta believe this 18 year old was enthralled. Upgrade & Afterlife is a map of possibilities for what music and art can do, slouching towards the cerebral but never quite abandoning the guttural. And the crazy thing is that they followed it up with something even better.

Bent Leg Fatima (File 13)

To all those of you who own this record, I ask, 'When was the last time you listened to it?' Cause I was about to lament this as a great forgotten psych-pop record, but then I started thinking about how much I overuse the idea of the 'forgotten' here on the Underbite ... forgotten exactly by whom? I often make the mistake of assuming some sort of hive mind of music listeners, inadvertently projecting my own biases and beliefs onto the rest of you. It's been years since I've given this a spin, and once the first proper song began ('Cup and Saucer') I started thinking about how this should get more play. There's a lot of creaking and bending despite it being a fairly driven Krauty-jam, and the singing/vocalisations are bright and melodic while still maintaining an aura of the mystic. When Bent Leg Fatima step on the more acoustic/folky gears, it reminds me more of something like Bügsküll. There's something unmistakably 90s indie pop about it, but it's melting under weird artefacts: Alice Coltrane records covered in butter, canyon cinemas projected backwards, and frogs leaping to wrong time signatures. They know when to accentuate things with studio fuckery, but they don't overdo it. Things sounded a bit simpler then; later these dudes morphed into party-Kraut-Hee Haw revival band Need New Body, but I think they were still ascending at this point. Both bands share a proclivity for horizontal (or go-nowhere, if you prefer) instrumentals, based among a deep rhythm, though Bent Leg's are much more chilled out. There's guitars but they don't dominate - the organs and electric pianos shoot out jumpy and high strung, plucky staccato arrows occasionally turning into lightning. The balance is split quite nicely between 'pop' and instrumental; you can pick your favorites but they're interspersed perfectly. Just when I start to get bored with the synths and wispy atmospherics, someone starts to croon about a mouse or a cat again. Though judging from the titles, these guys were also writing about Hemingway and Yachts. Psychedelphia's take on "Yacht Rock"? I don't hear much of a Christopher Cross influence, but maybe I'm just not trying hard enough. Did I mention how great the production is? The drums sound like drums, and this sounds like a real band playing on top but it's somehow modern and retro at the same time.

Albert Ayler - 'Nuits de la Fondation Maeght vol. 1' (Shandar)

This is one of the prides of my collection, if I have to look at it as a collection (a habit I all-too-often slip into) -- a mint condition copy of the first ever release on the Shandar label, truly one of the greatest labels of all-time. And the discography page online claims that this recording is Albert Ayler's last ever concert. I don't know if that's true - if so, I'm a bit surprised that the music stays so close to the jazz idiom and away from the fusion rock of his last studio work -- but it's a lovely sounding document, with a very different band from what we heard last (which was four years prior). Cal Cobbs (here listed as Call Cobbs) plays piano and his presence is quite strong. His style of long, elliptical runs suggests that he is definitely the pianist heard on 'Angels', a track from the Live in Greenwich Village discs. Allen Blairman is a bit more rigid than either Sunny Murray or Beaver Harris but he infuses the longer tracks with a momentum that can almost be seen as nervousness. Who knows what was going through Albert's head at this point? He certainly has energy. 'Spirits' has him zigzagging all over the map, switching to soprano at points (I think). Cobbs pretty much sticks to a chordal progression underneath most of the quarter-hour we hear it, and those chords sound like they come from another piece. But by this point, Ayler's compositions have all blended into one another and since the titles are all so similar and repetitive it suggests that he's left us one giant body of work instead of a bunch of individual compositions. I think Ayler peaked around 66/67 with the band we heard on the last two releases - I'm a bit biased towards the violin but also it had a more unique character to it. The Blairman/Steve Tintweiss rhythm section here is more rooted in Sonny Rollins and post-bop styles, and while this gives Ayler a grounding it lacks the utter mindfuckery of the marching-band/Negro spritual style he was doing a few years earlier. I guess that's what is the most disappointing about Ayler's last recordings - not that he tapered in ability or vision, but the folk elements were gone (or at least buried, most likely digested and reassimilated into something else). That's not to say that Nuits de la Fondation Maeght isn't great - it's definitely a great great jazz record, but it's only an average Albert Ayler record. But even though Ayler left us so many documents of his work, it still wasn't enough. 'Holy Family' on side 2 sounds exuberant and joyful, but very much a jazz piece. I guess I miss a trumpet to bounce off Ayler's explorations, and the rhythm section really does hold things down a bit. 'Spirits Rejoice' at the end is a familiar theme made beautiful by Cobbs' twinkling, and it's played fairly straight here, a ballad that continually picks up and breathes life into itself just when it's at the point of expiration. And expiration for Albert's life was to come just a few months after this, so it's nearly impossible to listen to this without some profound feelings, looking to hear symptoms of his troubled life in this version of 'Spirits Rejoice'. I'm not sure that I can actually hear that on this record; in fact, it's the lack of pain on this record that is telltale, if anything.