The Karl Hendricks Trio - 'Buick Electra' (Peas Kor)

Things get personal here, and I don't expect anyone who didn't grow up in Pittsburgh to understand my undying love for this record. I was about to write 'anyone who didn't grow up in the shadow of this man', but then I realised that's not so accurate. Because that would imply that he was some towering figure who dominated everything that came in his wake, but that's not true at all. Yes, Karl Hendricks was a huge figure to me and many others in the Pittsburgh music world, but he wasn't intimidating or menacing or scary; his shadow was a pleasant place to inhabit, because as corny as it is to say, he was a sort of 'father figure'. Karl. who passed away in January of this year, was little more than a decade older than me, but symbolised the whole generation of a music scene that I peered into, as a teenager, with eager eyes. This older wave, who would be probably considered 'old-school' now (as I am probably 'mid-school' by this point), but were sort of 'mid-school' to me when I was 'new school' in the late 90s, if ya follow - they set the pace for what being in a band in Pittsburgh meant. I saw the Karl Hendricks Trio early in the afternoon at Lollapalooza '93, on the second stage, and the moshing morons in the crowd couldn't overpower the purity that seemed to emanate from the stage. From that moment (I was 13) I think I began to formulate my value system for all music and art and everything to follow. I knew they were "local" and "indie rock" and they had a serious-seeming work ethic, and records illustrated by this cartoonist name Wayno which conjured an honesty and efficiency of songwriting that appealed greatly to me. Then I got a little older and met him, since he worked at (and later owned) the record store that supplied so, so many of these records under review here.... and he was great. Friendly, sure, even if a bit distant - and always willing to offer suggestions, and amazingly he got to know me a bit, which was like being blessed with acceptance into this so-called music scene I so aspired to join. At one point we had a class together at the University, 'The Modernist Tradition', when I was a sophomore. He brought me LPs of the next two records under discussion here, since I didn't have them, and we talked not just about music but about Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. Over the years he developed a much more rock-focused aesthetic, extending his guitar playing and classic influences, though of course its evident here - there's a Stones cover, after all ('She Was Hot'). Buick Electra is the first Karl LP, from 1992, and still my favourite, though it was really during my senior year of high school (1996-97) that I grew so attached to it. These songs are somewhere between indie-pop and indie-rock, melodic but occasionally heavy, and portrayed (to me, at least) a secret world. They seemed to pick up from the jangly influence of R.E.M. and 80s college rock that I liked then, but took it a bit further with a bit of punk spirit, but none of the irritating technical/math jerking off of the other Pittsburgh bands. Karl was Pittsburgh's greatest ever romantic, and he never needed to hide his emotions between any sort of swagger. Three songs here contain the word 'heart' in the title and the rest of them might as well too; even the songs of loss and regret ('Dead Flowers', which is not a Stones cover; 'All That's Left'). 'Orange Nehi' is perhaps the album's most angular and steely track, the title a reference to a local soda which (along with the slightly obtuse melody) conspired to speak volumes to me as a teenager, a secret language that I felt I could decode. 'Dumber Than I Look' is soulful and earnest; 'Painted My Heart' is so sweet and devoted that it brings tears to my eyes, but the whole record does right now. Early Karl is what inspired me and showed me that 'local music' could be amazing; his Jolly Doom cassette from the pre-Trio days and the I Hate This Party 7" are also essential recordings for me. I'll cut this short now as there's two more Karl records to follow, but I hope there is a day when I can listen to this record without crying; I guess I should just be grateful for the last two decades of listening to it while feeling joyous and inspired.

Charlie Haden - 'Liberation Music Orchestra' (Impulse!)

Maybe it's a safe pick, a consensus one for sure - when Mr. Haden passed two summers ago, most of the online obituaries referred specifically to this record as his masterwork, along with the early Ornette Coleman recordings, of course. I often cite this among my most treasured recordings in the entire 'jazz' sub-section of my vinyl accumulation, though (like fellow Impulse genre-bender The Black Saint and Sinner Lady by Mingus), 'jazz' isn't the right term to encapsulate all the ideas at play here. So much could go wrong here - a white guy working with predominantly black musicians (though arranged by a white lady), directly addressing political struggles during the same time that Archie Shepp and the Art Ensemble of Chicago were radicalising their music. But Haden and Bley used the Spanish Civil War as their focal point, and somehow it gels in a way which survives the test of time and avoids musical-tourist trappings. Perhaps this was the Buena Vista Social Club of its day, but to me, there's a sense of adventure, and a unified feeling, a purity of vision, as well as a widening of musical possibilities. Bley's arrangements may be the secret ingredient but this is still driven by Haden's plucking -- bass is definitively the lead instrument here, and even on piano-driven segment such as 'War Prayers' or the choral elements, it clearly emanates out of his leadership. I found this record when an undergraduate, through Robert Wyatt's cover of 'Song for Che', and that song is still the most powerful to me - a warbling, fluid melody that spins around like a bead of water on glossy paper,  building through several dramatic peaks without giving in to melodrama. It's pure Haden for long stretches, and the melody (as dynamic as it is) stands up there with Ayler's 'Ghosts' for me as one of the most iconic compositions in so-called 'free' jazz. I don't mean to diminish the other players here: Gato's sax burns with its usual sizzling energy, not that it should be taken for granted; Don Cherry and Dewey Redman make this a proto-lineup of Old and New Dreams, where Coleman's vast shadow can be chucked aside.  Roswell Rudd is underrated here, as always, but trombonists are generally underrated, right? For all of the years I've spent exploring avant-garde/free jazz, the records I come back to the most are the ones which stand out against the skronky, blow-out-your-brains aesthetic so commonly associated with the genre. This record, the aforementioned Black Saint and Sinner Lady, Shepp's Blasé, Art Ensemble records, Escalator Over the Hill, Sun Ra's more doo-wop influenced pieces -- for someone who claims to love free jazz, my preferences are further away from the 'free' side of it, towards a little more compositional basis, or towards other genre-influences such as classical or folk. Liberation Music Orchestra is maybe as much about the idea, the image carried through by its cover - a ragtag-looking group of musicians united in an expression of solidarity for the underclasses, in a time when that still meant something, before the all-pervasive irony of postmodernism took over etcetera, etcetera. Of course, this ragtag bunch is made up of some of the most successful and well-respected musicians of their time, but that brick-wall cover photo still conveys something. It's like the free jazz version of the cover of the first Ramones album, maybe, but musically about as far away from that simplicity as possible. 

Leonard Cohen - 'Songs from a Room' (Columbia)

OK, so I have a few Leonard Cohen LPs ahead and I don't really know how to write about them. (What a copout vibe these pages have been taking lately!). Of course this stuff is timeless and there's nothing I can add to it. This one isn't my absolute favorite but it's still beyond criticism. I don't have the first LP for some reason but this is the same exact formula, except with a jew's harp added. All I can really talk about is moments I had in my own life with it; this particular LP, this copy even, I grabbed secondhand when I was 16 or 17 and I remember listening to it with a girlfriend (or whatever passes for a girlfriend at that age) and somehow 'Story of Isaac' set the mood for, well, y'know. And for all the acclaim of that song, it's greatest element to me is how sparse it is - a stumbling bassline, the barest accents of guitar parts (usually just two or three repeated notes) and the barely audible but ever present jew's harp. As stern as Len's final warning is, it holds back from grandiose drama; that's saved for 'A Bunch of Quarrelsome Heroes', with frantically strummed chords and a soaring voice. He sings it for the crickets and the army, though. It's silly to even say these songs are retreads of the first record because this is a poet who embraced songwriting afterall, and I already said this was beyond criticism. 'The Partisan' inaugurates the great tradition of military imagery in Cohen songs, and I love this one. It's not for the chilling, female-backed French chorus, but for the rapid yet light fingerpicking, the song again driven by a few bass notes. There's an intensity that somehow is convincing enough that I've always accepted this Montreal poet singing as if he's actually in a war - and it's a cover version. Now Songs from a Room is my least favourite of the big four, by which I refer to Cohen's infallible first four albums. But despite being in fourth place this is still pretty damn solid. I love it less because of few droopy tunes that never resonated with me - 'Seems So Long Ago, Nancy', 'Lady Midnight' and I guess 'The Butcher'. What I've learned with Leonard Cohen over the years is that his music develops with me. As I age, I find new things in it and the songwriting becomes more personal and meaningful - which is the exact opposite of just about everything else I've ever listened to. This explains why I still listen to Cohen now as I did at 17, and why I don't listen the Smoking Popes anymore. So I'm sure in ten more years 'Lady Midnight' will make a boatload of sense to me, the same way that 17-year-old me dismissed Death of a Lady's Man and the 30 year old me fell in love with it.