The Music Survey for 2007

MUSIC 2007: A DECIDEDLY SELECTIVE SURVEY

Steven Greenfield

June 14, 2008

GENERAL COMMENTS

This took me so long to finish that you’ve probably forgotten all about 2007 by now; these records might be seen as relics rather than cutting-edge. For those (few) of you who were actually waiting for this to be published, I offer my apology for the long delay; I found myself with more albums than ever (58) and far less free time available to work on reviewing them.

The year in music resists any easy characterizations. Some steady favorites came back with new releases this year that lived up to expectations, more or less—in particular, Radiohead, Stars, and the long-awaited (and much publicized) second recording from Arcade Fire. Animal Collective put out perhaps their best album yet. Feist managed to defy skeptics and create a record that rose above the iPod hype surrounding it, and Interpol also produced a dependably solid, workmanlike effort. Battles debuted with an intriguing if inscrutable CD titled Mirrored. LCD Soundsystem, a one-man band, produced a hip and surprisingly fully formed (for one so young) set of dance tracks. And Peter Bjorn and John demonstrated that their chosen title, Writer's Block, does not apply to their own work, an instantly appealing testament to the songwriting craft.

I was mildly disappointed with what the Fiery Furnaces issued and underwhelmed by the new one from Ozomatli, their first in several years. With some of the records that tended toward the freak folk/neo-hippie trend, I wondered why I bothered. It was a fairly strong year for electronica, with Justice and Burial dueling for the honors of best in class, and a reasonably good year for the elementally silly music that is dear to my heart (see the entries for Datarock and Flaming Fire below)—even considering that They Might Be Giants appear to have been reduced to providing the soundtracks for Dunkin’ Donuts commercials (Massachusettans of a feather flock together). As far as I could see, it was a weak year for Latin music, and not great in terms of what I was exposed to from other cultures, either. Tinariwen’s Aman Iman: Water Is Life was justly celebrated. But my favorite of all was the Romanian gypsy band Fanfare Ciocărlia—their music is zesty, lusty, and great fun. In the realms of jazz and classical, there was hardly a weak entry in the bunch; both kinds of music may be living off past glories for the most part and suffering from a declining base of record purchasers, but that takes nothing away from the virtuosity and conviction of these performances.

For one year at least, I will leave off lamenting what seems to be the inevitable decline of the record album as we know it and the stores that sell it. Meanwhile, as I write in mid-2008, a Circuit City is getting ready to open on the former Upper West Side site of Tower Records.

Notes from live performances this year: It was a forgettable summer at Celebrate Brooklyn! though I somehow ended up there several times anyway, most notably to see a performance of the zouk band Kassav’, whose popularity peaked probably a good fifteen or even twenty years ago. I took one look at the lineup for the Siren Festival in Coney Island and decided to skip it that year. I spent an enjoyable late July evening on the rooftop of the Upper West Side Jewish Community Center, listening to the Sarah Aroeste Band (see below) do modern interpretations of traditional Sephardic music. In the fall, I had a chance to see Anat Cohen lead her Anzic Orchestra at the Jazz Standard, which was wonderful, and to chat with her briefly and have her sign my copy of her CD, reviewed below. I also witnessed a memorable moment at Carnegie Hall, when Simon Rattle, leading the Berlin Philharmonic, following the first movement of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, admonished the audience to still their customary between-movements rustling and fidgeting and hacking—as a distraction from serious contemplation of the music. Imagine that! On the same program, Magnus Lindberg’s Seht der Sonne (“See the Sun”) was given its U.S. premiere, and the young (well, middle-aged) Finnish composer was present to receive accolades afterward.

Toward the end of the year, on my birthday, several friends and I were witness to a marvelous act of re-creation. Tribute bands are inherently cheesy (as mocked acidly by The Dead Milkmen some fifteen years ago, “I’m going to see my favorite cover band, Crystal Ship! They do a Doors show; really impressive!”). And yet, The Musical Box, five guys devoted to resurrecting the Genesis of the early 1970s, did a really bang-up job bringing back to life the show from the 1973 Selling England by the Pound tour. Not just the music but the Peter Gabriel costumes (there were many costume quick-changes), the lighting, even the between-songs banter. With some imagination, you could just about say that the lead singer resembled Gabriel (to the point of shaving a notch out of his hairline as Gabriel did), the bassist looked like Michael Rutherford, the keyboard player was a ringer for Tony Banks. The crowd at the Tribeca Performing Arts Center on the campus of Borough of Manhattan Community College seemed to be mostly thirty- and forty-somethings, like me, a few years too young to have witnessed the original performances.

Passings: Notable among those in the music world who left us for good in 2007: Luciano Pavarotti, experimental composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, Max Roach, Oscar Peterson, Michael Brecker (see below, in the Jazz section), New Orleans clarinetist Alvin Batiste, pianist Andrew Hill, Joe Zawinul (keyboard player for Weather Report), Egon Bondy (lyricist for Plastic People of the Universe), legendary Latin percussionist Patato Valdés, Tito Gómez (singer with La Sonora Ponceña, Grupo Niche, and Ray Barretto), Don Ho, Robert Goulet, Tommy Newsom (led the Late Show orchestra for years), Hilly Kristal (founder of CBGBs), Ike Turner, Dan Fogelberg, Billy Thorpe (singer, guitarist with the Aztecs—big in Australia, anyway), and Pimp C (worked with Bun B—enough said). Also, Merv Griffin, who started out his long career as a performer.

When you presume to give others your critical opinions, it is always smart to leech off the thoughts of those cooler than you. As usual, I would like to thank Luis Rueda and Steve Holtje for sharing their advice and musical opinions over the course of the year, as well as the helpful staff at Sound Fix Records in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Finally, thanks to Melissa for her encouragement, patience, and understanding.

And now, to the music! starting with my Album of the Year for 2007:

ROCK/POP ALBUM OF THE YEAR:

ARCADE FIRE, Neon Bible—Few albums in recent years were awaited with more anticipation than the Arcade Fire’s sophomore effort. Such was the appreciation for the band’s debut record, Funeral (2004). Plenty of us read the stories in the press about the purchase of a church on the outskirts of Montreal to refit as a recording studio; even so, the Arcade Fire needed to use a different church, the Église St. Jean Baptiste, for the organ parts in “Intervention” and “My Body Is a Cage.” The band’s arrival in the broader public consciousness was signaled by its appearance on Saturday Night Live in late February. So, was it worth the wait and the hype? It sure was. The new record was number one or number two on many critics’ end of the year lists. In some respects, Neon Bible represents stylistic and thematic continuity with Funeral; in other ways, it is a departure. The Arcade Fire seems to have discovered a fresh vocation—as the new Bruce Springsteen! Whether consciously or not, a number of these songs sound uncannily like 1980s-vintage Springsteen—everyone who listens readily picks up on it—even Win Butler’s voice begins to approximate that of the Boss. This tendency reaches its pinnacle on “(Antichrist Television Blues)” but is also apparent on “Keep the Car Running” and “Intervention” and even (in ballad mode) on “Ocean of Noise” and “Windowsill.” That the resemblance is acknowledged by the band itself is confirmed by its having made an appearance to perform a couple of songs at a Springsteen concert this past fall in Ottawa. A number of songs on Neon Bible share Springsteen’s concern with how difficult it is for the workingman to get by in today’s America; the other overriding theme the record deals with is the nature of religious zeal, accentuated by that powerful St. Jean Baptiste organ. These themes come together, indeed clash, on the troubled “Intervention,” which appears, in its cryptic way, to question the merit of being a “soldier of Christ.” “My Body Is a Cage,” the closing number, is about spiritual transcendence of corporeal limitations, in harmony with the zeitgeist in a season when The Diving Bell was one of the most critically acclaimed movies; until the organ kicks in and it becomes anthemic, it is a quiet, bluesy piece. The wordy “(Antichrist Television Blues)” is sung by a narrator haunted by the specter of September 11, but his real obsession seems to be pushing his shy teenage daughter to become an American Idol-type star, something he believes in with a fervor as ardent as any truly religious passion. High-strung fervor and restlessness of spirit pervade Neon Bible. Both the first two songs, “Black Mirror” and “Keep the Car Running,” begin by talking about nightmares; the first with a sense of dire foreboding, the second in a cry of despair that is nonetheless so infectious in its uptempo stirrings that you cannot help but be drawn in. Even “No Cars Go,” ostensibly about finding refuge, takes on a coloration of anguish and paranoia. This is also one of only two songs in which Butler’s wife, Régine Chassagne, gets to sing lead (in conjunction with Butler)—and in the other (“Black Wave/Bad Vibrations”), her voice is hardly shown to best advantage. Plea to Win Butler (as if he’d be reading this!): Don’t be such a towering egotist; Régine deserves more of a chance to shine. Among the many collaborators credited in the CD jacket, the most intriguing is the “McGill [University] Synchronized Swim Team” (why? A video project?). I would rank Neon Bible just below Funeral as an artistic statement; but then, Funeral may well turn out to be the album of the decade. A+/A

And the rest . . .

AIR, Pocket Symphony—The duo of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel has always been more popular on its own side of the Atlantic than here. But the long-awaited Pocket Symphony had less success even in the group’s prime markets of France and Italy than 2004’s Talkie Walkie. And with good reason: the earlier record was warmer and had a couple of genuine hits in “Cherry Blossom Girl” and “Surfing on a Rocket.” Pocket Symphony is similar in its sweet-natured consonance and gentle washes of sound. It just does not add up to as much, not even with the addition of guest percussionists and “Magic Malik” (French jazz flutist Malik Mezzadri, for “Once Upon a Time” and “Photograph”). Nor is it rescued by the vocal contributions of Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker (the song he leads, “One Hell of a Party,” is actually one of the weaker entries) or Neil Hannon of the pop group Divine Comedy (his “Somewhere between Waking and Sleeping” is actually not half-bad). Hannon’s singing is decidedly superior to that of the helium-voiced Dunckel, who for some reason has come to be identified as the (unnaturally high) voice of Air (though his partner, Godin, has a much more appealing voice) and carries the burden of most of the vocals on the disc. I fail to appreciate the the vapid verses of “Once Upon a Time,” the silliness of the “Napalm Love” lyric, the empty arpeggiations of “Night Shift.” It is notable that in “Mer du Japon,” the best song on the disc—compact, lively, even (softly) rocking, and possessing a nice false ending complete with wave sounds—Dunckel sings in his native tongue. There are three entries from France in this survey (Justice and Keren Ann are the others), and they are united, sadly, by the awareness of the need to sing in English to reach a broad audience globally. Beyond the pleasures of “Mer du Japon,” one is left to savor discrete moments: the dusky synthesizer sonorities at the outset of “Photograph” (the body of the song itself is lame); the moody buzz of “Mayfair Song” opening to a broad expanse of limpid piano tones; the quiet urgency of “Left Bank”; the spellbinding opening keyboard sequence of “Redhead Girl,” subtly undulating, before Dunckel’s voice kicks in. And this might not suffice if you’ve forked over $18.99 plus tax for the CD. B-

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE, Strawberry Jam—Animal Collective is keepin’ it weird. And somehow keeping it fresh as well. One might have thought that the band’s shtick—the wild-eyed enfants terribles lighting matches for fascination and throwing crayons and toy dinosaurs around the recording studio, or something to that effect—would have gotten old by now. No! Animal Collective is still successfully walking the tightrope of making music with a certain quality of naïveté, at least on the surface, as the band gapes in wonder at the bizarre scenes unfolding around it, so different from the world of childhood yet so much the same; still, this is pulled off without a hint of mawkishness. The lyrics seem strewn on the page by someone with a severe case of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. (For example, it’s hard to discern any connection between the quasi-random thoughts of “For Reverend Green” and the famed gospel singer. More disturbing are the words to “Unsolved Mysteries,” should you choose to try and interpret them seriously.) The singing of Avey Tare (David Portner) veers suddenly from sober reflection or bold declamation to loony falsetto, wildcat yelps, and spasms of screechiness—and the accompanying musical line is similarly subject to unpredictable bouts of tempestuousness. With all that, this is perhaps the most melodically and harmonically welcoming and sophisticated record Animal Collective has made yet. (The lyrics in the CD booklet, for once written in ordinary script rather than the child’s scrawl the band prefers for its titles, are more accessible as well.) “Unsolved Mysteries” is both bubbly and gently throbbing, with an oddly Caribbean lilt to its harmonies. “Cuckoo Cuckoo,” the dreamiest-sounding composition, has a beautifully contemplative piano ostinato, above which is layered the band’s trademark vocal fulminations. The quasi-tropical lilt returns, briefly, with the concluding song, “Derek,” before it gets noisier and more percussive for good. Other songs chug along, sway above a rapid, clipped 6/8 rhythm (“Fireworks”), swerve, oscillate, or rollick along. If Animal Collective’s goofiness doesn’t put you off, this record has plenty of interesting musical surges, eddies, and undercurrents that reward repeating listening. A

ANTIBALAS, Security—What does it suggest about the narrowness of critics’ field of vision that Antibalas was on no list of top records that I managed to see? My biggest criticism of Brooklyn-based “Afrobeat orchestra” Antibalas is that at times the band falls too much in love with its own sound, leading to drawn-out sections where not a lot is happening. This is most evident in “Sanctuary,” a nearly thirteen-minute song that could profitably have been boiled down to four or five. This is true of Antibalas’s live concerts as well, judging from the one time I saw the group play. Antibalas models itself on the late Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat music of the 1970s, an admixture of West Africa’s indigenous highlife sound with jazz and funk, set to an “African” beat dense in polyrhythms and heavy with syncopation. But Antibalas draws on other elements, like salsa, as well. (The band’s founder, saxophonist Martín Perna, gave it a name that means “anti-bullets” in Spanish.) Political message is also an integral part of the music, and it is generally blunt and unsubtle. There is nonetheless humor in the appropriately lengthy “Filibuster X” as conga player and lead vocalist Amayo speculates on what GOP could possibly stand for (“Greedy Old People?” “Guilty Of Perjury?”) over a frantically paced rhythm. Although the prevailing mood of the record is surprisingly languid, given the activist sentiments expressed, Security at its best achieves a craggy majesty in its horn passages threaded with synthesizer and guitar, as in the opening “Beaten Metal” and in “I.C.E.” A-

BATTLES, Mirrored—Most of the songs on Mirrored are wordless (not necessarily voiceless, though), but “Atlas,” Battles’ first “hit” of sorts, does have them, and because they are sung in a blurred, Disney-cartoonish fashion, it has become a sport among fans and people with a lot of time on their hands (there are many of those on the Internet) trying to figure out what those words are. The band isn’t giving any hints. Battles is hard to pigeonhole; some have labeled the band “postrock,” which is a fairly useless description sometimes said to mean that it uses rock instruments to make music that is not rock (which is true only if you have an excessively narrow definition of rock). Others use the term “math rock,” which has no meaning to me and brings to mind the old cartoon “Multiplication Rock.” It certainly borrows from progressive rock, but pounding beats and bizarrely processed vocals are a mainstay. Each of the four members of Battles has spent time with other bands. Tyondai Braxton, who is responsible for the voicings, is the son of jazz experimentalist Anthony Braxton. “Atlas” was supposed to be a move from experimentalism toward greater accessibility, yet, with those goofy vocals and springy, boing-boing dotted-note rhythms, it is still pretty odd. But it hews closer to tonality than some of the other selections. Mirrored is bookended by “Race: In” and “Race: Out,” which initially would seem to have little in common—certainly the rhythmically brisk and constant “Race: In” is very different from the sustained tones and drumrolls that start off “Race: Out”—but the whistled melody of “In,” which sounds like a sailor’s tune, is briefly recapitulated electronically in “Out,” which then proceeds to mimic the harmonics and pace of the earlier track. “Ddiamondd” features more whistling and unintelligible lyrics, plus the stuttering vocal line that the song’s name hints at. “Leyendecker” is a brief piece with a heavy-metal beat and an otherworldly but still seductive wordless voicing that starts in normal range and twists up to a near falsetto. The note-warping “Rainbow,” full of slides and mini-percussion attacks and brief instrumental phrasings that can sound like Beethoven or Looney Tunes, ends with a vocal sung tunelessly in the declamatory manner of Arrington de Dionyso of the band Old Time Relijun. On a record that is hard to wrap one’s mind around. “Tonto” is the most complex, thorny, and difficult piece, but it eventually distills into a simple theme (one could imagine it to be Native American) that slows dramatically and adds sleigh bells before submerging into its bass chords. Battles was chosen by the folks at the alternative music store Sound Fix, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as their best of the year. There’s plenty enough going on in Mirrored to keep the listener coming back for more. The danger is that, for all the visceral drumbeats, it appeals more to the head than the heart. A-

THE BUDOS BAND, The Budos Band II—From deep in the heart of Staten Island comes a large-group ensemble of mostly white guys performing funk, soul and Afrobeat. If life were neat and tidy, this entry would be directly under that of Antibalas, which has a similar orientation; alas, there are a couple of intervening entries. Like Antibalas, they look to Fela Kuti as the progenitor of their musical genre. Recorded on the Dap-Kings’ record label, Daptones, this is Budos’s second album. Nearly all the compositions are originals, but there is a fascinating take on the Temptations’ “My Girl,” making the familiar song very much the band’s own. The Budos version of the classic Afrobeat sound is jazzy (in a jazz-rock sort of way), swingy, just a touch moody and mysterious. It derives much power from its horns, trumpets and the way-cool baritone sax of Jared Tankel (listen to him toll away like a foghorn at the beginning of “Deep in the Sand”). Meantime, the funky feel is conjured by Daniel Foder’s bass guitar licks. Guest instrumentalist Daisy Sugarman contributes some grainy, guttural flutepassages to “Mas o Menos.” There’s a whole battery of Latin percussion in addition to the standard drum kit, and a Farfisa organ supplies some otherworldly sustained tones. The technical proficiency may not quite be there—the trumpets may blow an entrance or attack, and at times there are intonation issues—but in all the band plays with remarkable self-assurance. It’s an odd point of comparison, but in some ways these guys make me think of the Tijuana Brass, in terms of their ensemble sound and the consistency of their laid-back approach to each number—also the fact that each tune is an instrumental yields a certain cool detachment, far from the political urgency of Antibalas’s protest songs. A/A-

BURIAL, Untrue—It sounds like . . . what? Michael McDonald of the Doobie Brothers in a decompression tank (in the transfixing “Archangel”)? Children’s voices bubbling up from the bottom of a shallow pool? Hip-hop castrati heard through an old crystal wireless set? The computerized burblings of “Endorphin” resemble Radiohead from that band’s most inward-gazing, Amnesiac era. Other passages are more like the dreamy trip-hop of Olive from the 1990s. The identity of the recording artist who goes by the tag Burial is shrouded—he prefers anonymity. But he lives in London, and Mark Fisher of the Wire managed to get a fairly lengthy interview that demystified him to some extent. Turns out he is lacking a college education and enjoys EastEnders (a snippet of dialogue from this long-running soap opera may be what shows up at the beginning of “Etched Headplate”), PlayStation, and a ghost story writer named M. R. James. Untrue is his second release on the Hyperdub label, in a genre curiously called dubstep. Especially curious given how much of Untrue has no “steps”—no discernible rhythm at all. Where there is, it is classic drum & bass. The only track that feels like a real “dance” invitation is the final cut, “Raver.” Voices are manipulated to such a degree that one cannot safely assume the gender of the singer, and they always sound filtered and remote, adding to the creepy atmospherics of the disc. Sometimes words are discernible (“And it’s all because you lied” on the title track, set to a beat that sounds like a basketball being dribbled on asphalt), sometimes not. Yet, as unnatural and detached as the sonic qualities of Untrue are, it really is not a gloomy or morbid record; it manages against the odds to generate real warmth amid the dark shadings. Burial talks in the interview about a kind of euphoria peculiar to Britain and about wanting the voices to sound like angels (at which juncture Fisher points out that angels are said to be sexless). Metacritic awarded Untrue its album of the year. And I would have to concur that Burial has programmed and processed a most fascinating sound experiment/collage. A

CARIBOU, Andorra—Advances in recording technology have allowed individuals to pose as bands, which often seems a mixed blessing at best, as such projects (witness last year’s Gulag Orkestar from Zach Condon, who records as Beirut) can be exercises in self-indulgence. This is, alas, the case with Dan Snaith’s Caribou as well. Snaith, a Canadian, originally recorded as Manitoba but changed the name under threat of a lawsuit from Handsome Dick Manitoba of the Dictators. Here he plays drums and whatever electronic gear and special effects are called for (details are skimpy on the CD jacket). The album is gentle and atmospheric; it is also far too sap-laden, and this quality is only magnified by Snaith’s drippy voice, so high it is almost a countertenor. This is especially apparent on “She’s the One” and “Desiree,” revoltingly putrescent in their intended sweetness. Snaith seems to be going for a blissed-out sensibility, or perhaps he is aiming higher and falling short. I cannot, however, bring myself to dismiss this record out of hand. That is because it gradually gets better as it goes along. The breezy, brisk “Sundialing” is effective in a straightforward manner, with bits of flute and synthesizer filigree adding a touch of the heavens; it helps that Snaith’s voice is not front and center. “Irene,” the penultimate track, which follows “Sundialing,” has a vocal as icky as any that precedes it; yet, it is graced by a mellow, ethereal synthesizer arpeggiation that is the song’s predominant element. It is with the final offering, “Niobe,” though, that Andorra hits its stride at last; this nearly nine-minute composition, the longest on the record, builds a shimmery, rumbling, highly synthesized fever dream atop a simple bass sequence of three sustained notes climbing the scale; it is truly stirring, with a sense of drama, intensity and climax that is missing from the rest of the record. Pity. B-/C+

CIBO MATTO, Pom Pom: The Essential Cibo Matto—This compilation is good for two types of people: those who are casually interested in the New York-based Japanese female duo that was Cibo Matto and who don’t already own one of their two full-length releases, and Cibo Matto completists. As there is little that is truly new on this disc, I won’t assign a grade. Cibo Matto (which means “crazy food” in Italian) formed in the mid-1990s and made two deliciously original, trippy albums (Viva! La Woman and Stereo Type A). Then Yuka Honda (keyboards) and Miho Hatori (vocals) went their separate ways into solo projects and collaborations with various New York downtown musicians. Pom Pom includes a Dan the Automator remix of “King of Silence,” whose initial version appeared on Stereo Type A. The song “Back Seat” was previously available only on the Japan edition of Stereo Type A (purchasers of the U.S. version weren’t missing out on anything special here). More interesting is “Vamos a la Playa” (not to be confused with the Europop tune of the same name that was popular when I was a student in Italy in the early-mid 1980s), apparently the B-side of the single “Working for Vacation” (the latter was later included on Stereo Type A; the former was not). This song, in spite of its Spanish title, is given a distinctly Brazilian vocal and percussive accompaniment (hard to tell from the CD jacket who deserves the credit for this); it is an adorable little reverie that presages Hatori’s later work with the NY-based Brazilian ensemble Forro in the Dark. “Swords and a Paintbrush” is the one track that has not previously been released anywhere; it originated out of the recording sessions for Stereo Type A but did not make the final cut. It is a slow-tempo, moody, melancholic piece that pays its respects to trip-hop: nice enough but far from extraordinary. Also new to me was “Spoon,” from the EP Super Relax of 1997. Of the “new” material on this disc, this is easily the best: it swings, with jazzy horn charts, even as it infuses the senses with a mystique of coolness. The compilation manages to include all but two tracks from Viva! La Woman. On the CD jacket, the duo is given high praise by the dean of New York Japanese female artists, Yoko Ono (“your brand of magic is in every song you cooked”). But this is not at all surprising, in light of the fact that Ono’s son, Sean Lennon, was involved in producing and creating Cibo Matto’s unique sound from the start. (NO GRADE GIVEN)

CLOUD CULT, The Meaning of 8—As Sesame Street would say, this production was brought to you by the number 8. If you were ever wondering whether that figure had any cosmic meaning beyond mere numerical value, Cloud Cult lays it out for you, with a moderately lengthy disquisition inside the CD jacket on the importance of 8 across various religious and ethnic traditions. And that’s without even considering its significance for Yankee fans (Bill Dickey, Yogi Berra), 49ers rooters (Steve Young), Penguins/Flyers boosters (Mark Recchi), or Laker lovers (Kobe Bryant, before he “reformed”). If I wax sarcastic, it is because I do not buy into the intense spirituality and mysticism that suffuses this disc. In fact, despite the tenderness and loving care that went into the making of The Meaning of 8, it strikes me as a bit precious. Emo bands just aren’t my passion. The central tragedy of bandleader Craig Minowa’s life is that his son passed away in infancy; to have written more than a hundred songs about it seems morbid and suggests an inability to come to grips. Moreover, Minowa’s quavery voice, thin tone, and at times uncertain pitch leave a great deal to be desired. There are some interesting ideas on here, particularly “Shape of 8,” which not coincidentally is an instrumental piece, heavy on the percussion and with a wiry, distorted guitar sound, or the wry tale of an otherworldly encounter in “Alien Christ,” about the only song to demonstrate any humor or detachment. (The loon sounds in the brief, quiet “Everywhere All at One Time” add a bit of local color for this Minnesota-based ensemble.) But they don’t begin to offset the cringe-inducing qualities of the other tracks (viz., the two tracks in the middle of the tracklist dedicated to Kaidin, the dead son—“Your 8^th Birthday” and “Dance for the Dead”). Cloud Cult has six members, but the band is very much Craig Minowa’s baby; what it needs more than anything is a strong second presence to act as a check on Minowa’s excesses and self-importance. D

DATAROCK, Datarock Datarock—The record so nice they named it twice! Datarock’s “Computer Camp Love” was the second-most-played individual song on my CD system in 2007, after Flaming Fire’s “Lemon Isis” (see below). A nerd’s parody of “Summer Nights” from Grease, “Computer Camp Love” kicks off with the lead singer intoning, “I ran into her on computer camp,” followed by a high-pitched chorus asking, “Was that in ’84?” To which the leader replies, “Not sure. I had my Commodore 64; had to score.” The feel of the song (accent and all) is so true to the American experience that it came as a surprise when I learned that Datarock is actually from Bergen, Norway. As the B-52’s are to Flaming Fire, the Talking Heads are to Datarock, the difference being that only certain Datarock songs sound inspired by David Byrne and co. Devo is another touchstone, particularly in evidence on the acronym-spouting “New Song.” No slavish imitators, though, Datarock brings a fresh and more cosmopolitan approach to the geeky/intellectual side of the New Wave revival. Singer Fredrik Saroea is good at evoking the edgy nervousness Byrne made his specialty—this is particularly on show in “Fa-Fa-Fa” and “Sex Me Up.” Elsewhere, his tone can be one of hoarse vehemence (“Princess”). Or he can aspire to being an ice-cool lounge crooner, or at least a broad-mouthed spoof of one, as in “Ganguro Girl” or “I Will Always Remember You.” A number of tracks cultivate a primitive electronic feel—just an organ or Casio or Fender-Rhodes paired with a drum machine—to evoke the late 1970s or early 1980s (just listen to “Computer Camp Love” or “Ugly Primadonna”). Which is not to imply an absence of churning electric guitar licks when called for. Saroea’s partner in Datarock, “Ket-Ill” (Ketil Mosnes), is responsible for backing vocals, bass, keyboards, and programming. “I Will Always Remember You” pairs Saroea will the sugary vocals of Norwegian pop singer Annie in what is easily the (tongue in cheek) corniest song on the record. Among the other listed contributors is one who goes by “Bad Bikini.” The disc includes music videos of “Bulldozer,” “Computer Camp Love,” and “Fa-Fa-Fa.” Datarock Datarock was without question the sleeper album of the year—very enjoyable. A

DE PHAZZ, Days of Twang—Some sites have described the music of De Phazz as jazz or “nu jazz” or “slow-tempo jazz.” It is jazz in the same way that “cool jazz” is, which is to say, not at all. Instead, it is lounge music, at times sophisticated (and therefore rising above wallpaper sound) but seldom aspiring higher than laid-back electronica, as typified in “Nonsensical Theme.” Frequently, the low-key, dreamy arrangements with hints of trip-hop exotica put me in mind of the Supreme Beings of Leisure; other arrangements recall Lee Ritenour, at the easy-listening end of the jazz spectrum. “Better World” and the succeeding track, “Le Petit Bastard,” incorporate elements from dub, reggae, and calypso, while a bluesy or roadhouse feel ties together the consecutive songs “My Society,” “Rock’n’Roll Dude,” “Shadow of a Lie” and “What’s the Use of …?” De Phazz is essentially German record producer/ “turntablist” Pit Baumgartner plus whomever he recruits as collaborators, most notably here, on vocals and as co-creators, Barbara Lahr, Pat Appleton, and Karl Frierson. The catchiest tunes both have infernal connections, “Hell Alright” and “Devil’s Music” (the latter taken from a Bill Hicks quote about rock ‘n roll), with their Jerry Lee Lewis/Elvis Presley-esque vocals, and both are reprised at the end of the disc, together with the moodier and more introspective “How High the Hat.” There are some nice touches: the Herb Alpert-like mellow trumpet licks of Joo Kraus on “Devil’s Music”; the “Masterpiece Theater” trumpet flourishes and bits of operatic arias on “105 FM Jam,” the odd banjo twang of “What’s the Use of …?” and the bluesy mouth harp of “My Society,” interspersed with baritone sax riffs. All well done and tasteful; there are no clunkers on this CD. A-

FEIST, The Reminder—Leslie Feist, who dropped her first name for performance purposes, became the It Girl when she appeared as the woman in the spangly blue dress dancing and singing “1234” on one of Apple’s iPod commercials this past year. Unknown just a few years ago, Feist is now so ubiquitous that there’s even an inevitable backlash movement. But The Reminder still made many critics’ best-of lists. I am in the minority that liked her previous recording, Let It Die (2004/2005), better. On that record, she was charming throughout, in songs that generally moved briskly; even the slow ones were light enough not to drag. The Reminder differs, first, in that all its songs were written or cowritten by Feist and, second, in its inconsistency. About half the thirteen songs I really like; most of the others do nothing for me; either they are too folky for my tastes (“The Park”), or too unremarkable (I would be tempted to place the by now overly familiar “1234” in that category, though its soulfulness probably spares it that distinction). The only one I actively dislike is the closer, “How My Heart Behaves,” sung as a duet with Eirik Glambek Boe—mushy romantic stuff, harp glissandos and all, yuck! “My Moon My Man” partakes of the spirit of Let It Die; it is light, sleek, smartly executed. “Honey Honey” processes the backing vocals of Feist’s Broken Social Scene mates Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning to sound like a freight train’s horn; the spare arrangement of organ bass and harp works well against Feist’s pretty, plaintive singing. Another slow song that is a quiet gem is “The Water,” as her voice needs no adornment, and here her sustained tones are aided by just the softest hint of piano, vibraphone, and horns. “Sealion” is a sort of silly yarn/fable, but the handclapping is infectious, delimiting the song’s rhythmic backbone (thus preventing you from dwelling too much on the tall tales as you’re swept along); handclapping also enlivens the homier “Past Is Present.” Subpar efforts like “I Feel It All” and “Brandy Alexander” do not prevent this album from being an enjoyable experience; it’s just that Feist’s previous work led me to expect still more. A-

THE FIERY FURNACES, Widow City—The Friedbergers will continue to tax the patience of those possessing short attention spans with their long-forn songs, even as Matthew Friedberger’s jump-cut style of composing frustrates more careful listeners seeking coherence. I often find myself wishing that the Fiery Furnaces could tear away from their infatuation with concept albums and return to the kind of lighter, breezy pop exemplified by “Tropical Iceland” from their early years. If Widow City in fact has an overarching concept, it’s hard to discern—the lyrics cover three panels of the CD cover in double-column tiny print, and if you get through them all, you won’t be any more enlightened about what it all means than when you started out. A birth-chart “made by a special commission of Navajo basketball coaches and blonde ladies”? The lyrics are certainly unconventional but sometimes seem to have been chosen by throwing darts at a map or a timetable or encyclopedia. Even by the standard of concept records, this one falls shy of its immediate predecessor, Bitter Tea (2006). Widow City has its moments, certainly, but there is nothing to compare with Bitter Tea’s “Nevers,” surely one of the cleverest and most charming pop songs of the decade, or “Benton Harbor Blues.” It comes closest to the spirit of its predecessor in “Navy Nurse,” which is in rapid succession chord crunching, storytelling, and anthemic. Perhaps Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger are getting too arcane and inscrutable even for their dedicated fan base. There’s still good material on Widow City, but it tends to be concentrated toward the beginning and the end of the disc. The most powerful track is “Duplexes of the Dead,” heavy on the Mellotron and throbbing like a pulsar. The carnivalesque “Philadelphia Grand Jury,” which leads off the set, is absorbing in its disjointed, suite-like way—but is Matthew aware that grand juries do not “string up” suspects? “Wicker Whatnots” is typically verbose but features a minimalist, scowling bass line that sounds like a throwback to the punk era and some thudding chords. The title track, which rounds out the disc, is every bit as kabuki/cartoonish/soap opera-esque as “The Philadelphia Grand Jury”—both entertaining and utterly baffling. Too much else on Widow City is simply baffling. B+

FLAMING FIRE, When the High Bell Rings—I have WFMU, specifically, its station manager, Ken Freedman, to blame for introducing me to this band. In fact, I met Ken, at a Flaming Fire concert in Park Slope, some time after he started giving this record frequent airplay on his Wednesday morning show. Flaming Fire is originally from Nebraska but now makes Williamsburg home. I would be remiss not to mention the most obvious influence and point of comparison: the B-52’s, their distinct sound updated for the successor generation. The fulcrum of the band is the husband-wife team of Patrick and Kate Hambrecht, both singers, together with Lauren Weinstein. Their donning red togas at concerts gives them the cultish air of high priests, which perhaps they are in a sense. It would be hard to make a straight-faced case for When the High Bell Rings as an album for the ages; it is far too uneven for that. But I’ve given it plenty of airplay over the course of the year because it is great fun to listen to--both clever and silly. Most of the songs are originals, and some of these are pretty good, but of primary interest are one cover and a song loosely based on a transgressive French chanson. The cover, of Yes’s “Astral Traveller” from 1970, is nearly unrecognizable as such and is more shouted than sung. (When I asked Kate Hambrecht about it after the concert, she said, “We sounded really mad” on this track; I asked if the group disliked Yes, and she replied no.) As a Yes lover, I much prefer the original, and yet I appreciate the inventiveness of the newer rendition. “Lemon Isis” is based on a scandal-provoking 1984 Serge Gainsbourg song, “Lemon Incest,” which in turned grounded its theme on a Chopin etude. Performed along with his then twelve-year-old daughter, Charlotte, the Gainsbourg song played with the phrases “un zeste de citron” and “inceste de citron” and spoke of “the love we can never make together.” Flaming Fire takes this stew of taboo lust and layers onto it the incestuous myth of Osiris and Isis from ancient Egypt, plus some unique historical interpretations of an antireligious bent involving edifice complexes and obelisks as phallic symbols. Of the rest of the record, the strongest sequence includes “10 Days”—a maniacally energetic if repetitious theme at the service of utterly goofy lyrics—and the nicely punchy “Fog Machine,” sandwiched around another cover, of Devo’s “Shout” (1984), which tick-tocks its way to a shouting intensity before ending quietly. “Kar Shabi” is supposedly a Tajik folk song, drummed, droned and chanted, while the final number, “The Moon,” is a space-filler, an extended sequence of electronic bleeps and twitters that add up to little. Meteorological and particularly astrological imagery pervade the disc. Available from http://www.flamingfire.com. A-

FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE, Traffic and Weather—As far as I can tell, the consensus among Fountains of Wayne veterans is that this record doesn’t live up to 1999’s Utopia Parkway. Fountains of Wayne’s failure to gain more of a following, at least beyond the Eastern Seaboard, may say something about the crisis of alternative rock in the new century, or perhaps just a roll of fame’s dice. The band, whose founding members, Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood, attended Williams College in the late 1980s, has shown its craft in fashioning smart pop songs, sometimes conjuring microcosms as fully conceived as a good short story. This talent is fully on display in the opening number, “Someone to Love,” about a couple of people looking for love who manage to miss a chance connection with each other. If all the entries on Traffic and Weather hewed to that standard, it would be one of the year’s great albums. Alas, there is much here that serves as padding, and the mattress sags at that. Rather than dwell on how “Yolanda Hayes” gives us no real reason to care about the song’s “love” object, a DMV clerk, or on how jejune “Planet of Weed” sounds (song composition as painting by numbers), I’d rather hit the highlights. “Strapped for Cash” is a catchy number that livens things up by bringing in three trumpeters for the chorus (“When did we turn into Chicago?” as Collingwood joked in a New York Magazine piece); there’s also a clever Billy Joel allusion late in the song. The title track makes for a solid pop anthem, a throbbing come-on from one news anchor to a fetching on-air colleague. And the rollicking “’92 Subaru” is surprisingly reminiscent of Van Halen in its auto shop talk and the power chords and reverb of its bridge—the difference being that David Lee Roth would probably never be caught dead in anything as suburban-conventional as a Subaru, which is the joke of the song. As stars, moons and fire pervade the Flaming Fire record (see above), imagery of travel and movement is the everpresent motif that holds this CD together; indeed, the closing “Seatbacks and Traytables” is a folky benediction about the restlessness and dislocation of being constantly on the go. Bit of trivia I cannot resist: Chris Collingwood, a Bucks County, Pennsylvania, native like myself, is from Sellersville, also the hometown of Phillies pitcher Jamie Moyer. A-/B+

GRINDERMAN, Grinderman—I have never been a Nick Cave fan, but on first listening, I was struck by the raw, vulgar, in-your-face humor that animates the songs on this disc, beginning with the exhortations to “kick those white mice and black dogs out” at the top of the first song, “Get It On.” Grinderman is in terms of its personnel a slimmed-down version of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. The new band’s approach is deliberately primitivist—on the title track, there’s just one grungy bass guitar, laying down the same chord pattern over and over with an unvaryingly blunt rhythm of steady eighth notes, to accompany Cave’s sung melody. “Go Tell the Women” has an arrangement nearly as spare, making the song absolutely dependent on the charismatic quality of Cave’s Dylanesque sprechtstimme. Other songs are much noisier—“No Pussy Blues,” a primer on sexual frustration, is full of yowling reverb, and “Honey Bee (Let’s Fly to Mars)” churns, buzzes, and wails. “Get It On” showcases a furious-paced fuzztone guitar with plonking notes of emphasis from the piano. Songs carry indelible titles like “Electric Alice” (one of the quieter numbers), “Depth Charge Ethel” (not at all quiet; its industrial-strength chord progressions have the impact of a pneumatic drill), and “Love Bomb.” On an album that rides roughshod on the eardrums, charged by naked aggression, a contemplative song like “Man in the Moon” really stands out. But the mood doesn’t last long before the grinding resumes—slowly at first, with the bluesy “When My Love Comes Down,” before picking up with a tremolo-laden and caterwauling flourish in “Love Bomb” to round out the set. Grinderman is for those who like their music crude, stripped-down, and packing a wallop. A-

HOT CHIP, DJ-Kicks—Last year’s compilation in the DJ-Kicks series was presented by Four Tet (a.k.a. Kieran Hebden). This year, the exquisitely echt English electronica ensemble Hot Chip weighs in with its selections. As was the case last year, the “DJ” included just one track that is his/its own work. And, as with last year, assigning a grade is consequently passing judgment on the DJ’s taste, nothing more. I find this series useful because it makes me aware of developments in pop music (though by no means are these cuts new or even nearly new) that would otherwise pass me by. In the words Hot Chip placed in the liner notes and credited to “Professor Albert R. Chuffer,” “The small hope . . . is to create some mischievous detours and derailments in your musical tastes; there’s a topsy-turvy nature to it, with plenty of unfinished stories, blind alleys, false walls and trap doors . . .” Some of the hip-hop choices are just dreadful (“Jiggle It” by Young Leek); others are clever and amusing (Positive K’s saucy verbal sparring with a female counterpart in “I Got A Man,” which ends with “I’m Daddy Long Stroke, and your man’s Pee-wee Herman.”). Tom Zé’s “Cademar” is a great little song that sounds completely out of place set to a disco beat. Hot Chip’s own “My Piano” is only so-so, less enjoyable than the material from the group’s 2006 record, The Warning. There’s a great deal of U.K./European techno, house music, and electronica sampled on this year’s DJ-Kicks—I like some of the darker ones, especially the German-English sequence stretching from Dominik Eulberg’s “Der Buchdrucker” through Grauzone’s “Film 2,” This Heat’s “Radio Prague,” and Wookie’s “Far East” in the middle of the track list. Also entertaining is the French techno duo Nôze, with “Love Affair.” Hot Chip has put a couple of classics on here: Etta James and Sugar Pie DeSanto’s “In the Basement, Part One” (though it never peaked very high in the 1966 pop charts) and Ray Charles’s “Mess Around” (from 1953). But Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out” seems a hackneyed choice—or maybe I object simply because Jackson has become vocal in the smokers’ rights movement, a cause for which I have zero sympathy. In the inevitable comparison between Hot Chip’s and Four Tet’s DJ-Kicks, I give an edge to Four Tet. B+/B

INTERPOL, Our Love to Admire—Never the most innovative or groundbreaking band, Interpol is still a very good one, having put out a couple of solid studio albums previously, starting with Turn Out the Bright Lights in 2002. New York Magazine, searching this year for a “successor” to the Strokes as the quintessential New York band, would have done better choosing Interpol than the far quirkier (and less firmly NY-identified) Animal Collective (see above). Our Love to Admire, a more fully formed statement than the debut album, is in the same mold: more a matter of excellent craftsmanship, in straight-ahead rock fashion, than transcendent artistry. On a record that delivers consistent enjoyment, one of the few genuine emotional peaks is the subtle buildup to the ringing climax of “Mammoth” (seemingly the inspiration for the diorama photos in the CD jacket). The final song on the disc, the tremolo-laden “Lighthouse,” is of a different nature from the rest: moody, contemplative, more airy and experimental. The catchiest tunes are the single “Heinrich Maneuver,” a moderate hit on the charts that starts out asking, “How are things on the West Coast?” and the slower-burning (naturally) “Rest My Chemistry.” All the throbbing and chiming on Our Love to Admire makes it sound as if Interpol is bidding to abandon its postpunk origins and join the ranks of shoegaze bands. British-born lead singer Paul Banks’s declamation is a touch portentous—this is rock ’n’ roll, not The Twilight Zone—but it comes with the territory. A-

JUSTICE, †—OK, so the album title is “Cross”? Or is it as unpronounceable as Prince’s now abandoned glyph? French electronica duo Justice (Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay) made its name remixing other bands’ and electronica groups’ material, notably including that of Simian, the precursor of Simian Mobile Disco (see below). The two groups bear some surface similarity, but Justice, which resides at the loud, rocking, heavy-beat end of the electronica spectrum, possesses far more native compositional genius. In a bizarre way, the duo might be thought of as their compatriots Air (see above) on steroids, minus the vocal reveries, plus a thudding drum machine or set of synthesized percussive effects. All but three songs are effectively wordless, and the three that do carry a lyric are actually the worst the disc has to offer. Strangely, “D.A.N.C.E.,” which has quickly become Justice’s signature anthem, is one of the least danceable tracks on the record, as it is a bit slow and rhythmically stilted. “DVNO,” sung (not terribly appealingly) by someone credited as DVNO (“four capital letters written in gold”) and supposedly standing for “El Divino,” is a pointless little exercise in self-promotion. But what is truly loathsome is the track preceding it, “Tthhee Ppaarrttyy.” This rap features Uffie, a twenty-year-old from Miami (original name: Anna-Catherine Hartley) who records on the same Paris-based label, Ed Banger, as Justice. She is so smugly narcissistic, egotistical and in possession of an inflated sense of entitlement as to make one wish there were legal precedent for sentencing such personality types to five years’ labor in a Darfur refugee camp. But that irritating nonsense aside, this record rivals Burial as the best I heard in electronica this year: unabashedly heavy-footed dance music that manages to keep a lightness of tone (witness how “Let There Be Light” clarifies its timbre “like butter”) and even sprinkle in a touch of funkiness (as on “Newjack”) or a dash of industrial noise (as on “Stress”). The descending minor scales Auge and de Rosnay are so fond of can seem a little obvious, yet the pair have the creative skill to contextualize these in ways that will keep your ears riveted. The skimpy credits include an extensive list of acknowledgments, ranging from 50 Cent to Modest Mussorgsky. A/A-

KEREN ANN, Keren Ann—Her voice is often described as pretty. It is, in a mournful sort of way, with a flatness of affect. Israel-born, Paris-based Keren Ann may not know how to pronounce “Caspian” (“case-pian,” she sings), but she did produce a record of taste and refinement that made many best-of lists this year. I’m generally lukewarm about singer-songwriters; when it comes to this self-titled album, I am of two minds. The opening song, “It’s All a Lie,” sets the tone, matching the characteristics of the voice, attractive but wan. The same can be said for “When No Endings End,” folky in feel yet set to a melody that sounds recycled from somewhere else. The arrangements to “Lay Your Head Down”—a modest chorus plus violin and cello—are lovely, and yet the song’s warm and inviting lyric is delivered with a studied coolness. “The Harder Ships of the World” and “Between the Flatland and the Caspian Sea” are cosmopolitan, world-weary ballads that come down smoothly without leaving much of an imprint; the former is distinguished by its limpid piano tones. Her sound and sensibility seem better suited to the wry, roguish “It Ain’t No Crime”—with its thumping beat and wailing electric guitar, the most rocking sound on the disc—or the introspective “Liberty” (again set to an airy Icelandic choir), though this last strikes me as a little too movie-soundtrack-ready in its gently consonant theme. The wordless (but hardly voiceless) “Caspia,” which rounds out the disc, is the second-rockingest tune presented, taking a simple idea and relentlessly riding it to the end. So, is this suave, knowing, well-constructed indie music? Yes. Does it compel attention and invite repeated listenings, to search for hidden meanings and overlooked charms? Perhaps not. B+

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM, Sound of Silver—This record has been showered with critical praise (the Village Voice recently named it the best of 2007 in its annual Pazz & Jop survey), and I am pleased to add my own, with certain reservations. James Murphy, who is in essence LCD Soundsystem all by himself (he does make use of collaborators, particularly when touring), describes his music as “danceable punk funk.” I would not quarrel with the first of those descriptors, in any case. At times, LCD sounds much like another New York-based dance-oriented group, the Rapture (whose debut record, not coincidentally, Murphy produced), but with more of a political edge. As with disco music everywhere, it is highly repetitious. But when the grooves are good, as they are here, it does not get tiresome. In fact, it’s remarkable how a tune (“All My Friends”) whose primary accompaniment is a piano that keeps insistently pounding the same note can still hold a listener’s interest—an engaging vocal melody and changing synthesizer undertones are key. Guitarist Tyler Pope and drummer Patrick Mahoney collaborate on certain compositions, and Nancy Whang adds backing vocals to some tracks. The song that draws most attention is “North American Scum.” It was released as a single prior to the album, and even in a lineup of strong songs, it jumps out at you. It is in your face; it sounds grungy à la Sonic Youth, but also like New Order, or even 1980s “hair band” metal; it is the anti-“Back in the U.S.S.R.” The lyric is attempting to make a grand statement about Americans’ attitudes toward foreigners and behavior abroad, and yet its many verses manage to say very little—our standards for what constitutes great writing in pop have become sadly debased if critics view “North American Scum” as a profound message song. If poetry is economy of language, well, this is not it. Other noteworthy songs are “Someone Great”—an almost childishly singsong melody but given a jewel-like electronic setting—and the title track, with its simple message about having second thoughts regarding the desire to go back and relive one’s teenage years. In this song, Murphy does pour on the funk, and it surprised me at first that the suave voice we hear is in fact his own. “Time to Get Away” (intermittently) and “Us v Them” (throughout) make use of samba-type percussion. The final cut, “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down,” is a radical departure—no dance beat, just a simple piano and drum accompaniment to Murphy’s singing, unembellished by production tricks, as he unleashes his conflicted feelings toward his hometown. The song’s concluding flourish (following a false ending) sadly underutilizes an ensemble of instrumentalists, including a string quartet featuring the well-traveled cellist Jane Scarpantoni. A/A-

LA OTRACINA, Tonal Ellipse of the One—The best way I can describe this record is that it is like the Mars Volta without the words, a psychedelic voyage to unfathomed quadrants of the galaxy. The name of the Brooklyn studio where the CD was recorded is telling: Urban Spaceman. Lacking the anguished vocals of the Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Tonal Ellipse is not nearly as emotionally taxing or cathartic. La Otracina represents one of two camps in the movement to revive progressive rock, the more acidic and harder-pounding one (the other being lighter and often associated with “freak folk”). So you get a big dose of keening, wailing electric guitar licks, punctuated or supported by percussive explosions or emphatic rumblings and cosmic special effects, sometimes repeated to the point of exhaustion, seeming more like an etude in obsessiveness or something a garage band was still tinkering with than a fully conceptualized piece. However, there is in fact more to the music than this—structure is always more difficult to discern in long-form composition (there are just five tracks on Tonal Ellipse). Drummer and founder Adam Kriney wrote the songs in collaboration with Tyler Nolan, who had been the band’s regular guitarist and appears on this disc (subsequently replaced by Italian-born Ninni Morgia). Again drawing comparison to the Mars Volta, the songs have intervals where nothing much is going on—sustained tones and synthetic flourishes or those compulsively repetitious patterns—interspersed with the busier, noisier, more agitated sections. It’s a little icy and remote—bloodless compared to the high-strung passions of the Mars Volta—but the way these all too simple motifs are transformed over the course of nine or eleven minutes appeals on an intellectual level. One section a couple of minutes into “Nine Times the Color Red Explodes Like Heated Blood” (the selections all have names in this vein, in true prog-rock fashion) sounds like a brief homage to King Crimson’s “Twenty-first Century Schizoid Man.” The record ends with a sprawling, nearly fourteen-minute rumination called “Ode to Amalthea” that includes, in its early stages, some playing around with the tone sequence from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. A-/B+

OZOMATLI, Don’t Mess with the Dragon—Ozomatli’s last album, Street Signs (2004), won my Album of the Year for 2004. That set an awfully high bar for the current release, so no great surprise that it fails to clear. I have always had mixed feelings, in fact, about this Los Angeles combo: hate their rapping, which sounds chirpy and wannabe-tough; love their purely Latin grooves. Whether they’re doing salsa, cumbia, merengue, or boleros, their playing is tight and suffused with vitality. (With the news that MC Jabu is leaving the band, there is hope that the next record will move away from hip-hop.) The most poignant, and political, song is the ballad “Violeta,” as a soldier patrolling in “a faraway desert” ponders the lie he has been led to serve and wonders if he will ever see his loved ones again. “La Temperatura” also has a political back story (in support of striking workers), but the song, a merengue drawing on elements from Central American punta and even klezmer, is as infectious as an impromptu jam session. “La Gallina,” a cumbia punctuated by a rooster crowing at intervals, is similarly energetic, even if the melody seems far from original. Ozomatli does well by more straight-ahead rock as well: the opening “Can’t Stop” lives up to its name; “Magnolia Soul” sways like a New Orleans street parade; “When I Close My Eyes” surfs atop a rapid ska beat. On the opposite side of the ledger, the band’s tribute to its hometown, “City of Angels,” is full of spunk but also that infernal rapping, as unappealing as Los Angeles itself. “La Segunda Mano” takes a classic Latin harmony in an intriguing string and vocal arrangement (featuring guest star Martha Gonzales of Quetzal) and just ruins it by steamrolling it with hip-hop. The title track employs a Chinese erhu to little effect in a dull, flat-footed anthem that is like a barroom boast; “Creo” (“I’ll believe it when I see it”) is similarly undistinguished. The biggest waste of digital bits is “After Party,” with its clichéd refrain, “Oye baby, oye mami, ¿Dónde está la after party?” Taken as a whole, though, the pluses of this album outweigh its drawbacks. B+

PETER BJORN AND JOHN, Writer’s Block—The “Swedish invasion” continues strong with this clever, appealing Stockholm pop trio singing (as Swedish groups invariably seem to do) in English. The group is best known for “Young Folks,” which was a hit single in Europe a year before it was included on this disc. “Young Folks,” which features the vocal pairing of Peter Morén and Victoria Bergsman of the Concretes (a Swedish girl group responsible for the unpleasant 2003 single “Warm Night”), plays off a bit of classic musical japonaiserie (think of the little pentatonic motif that old-time cartoons used whenever a character lands in Japan), cheerily whistled before being sung in a brisk, tight arrangement that has male and female voices in dialogue and duet. A brief preview of this tune comes in the sixteen-second opening title track. In fact, the first several songs all feature whistling. My favorite is the snappy “Amsterdam,” not least because the lead singer is Björn Yttling rather than the grainy-voiced Morén, who usually takes the lead vocal. Morén’s shortcomings as a singer are laid bare in “Poor Cow,” which has just a bit of acoustic strumming and a spare keyboard overtone to go with the vocal line. There is a certain simplicity to both the songwriting and the arrangements that manages to avoid tipping over into glibness; “Paris 2004” is one good track to dial up to hear this quality at work, as is “The Chills,” even though the latter is layered with more elaborate production effects. “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” is like a modern-day surf guitar tune, with a touch of steel drum percussion for flavoring. The CD includes three bonus tracks: a remix of “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,” plus “Ancient Curse,” which started out as the B-side of “Young Folks,” and “All Those Expectations,” whose vocal distortions, slowed-down pacing, and burbly sonic production sound like nothing else on the record and therefore defy all those expectations. A-

PYLON, Gyrate Plus—This is a reissue of an LP from 1980, with a few add-ons; yes, Pylon really does predate the compact disc era, and R.E.M. has claimed the band as an early influence. Despite having been present at the birth of the Athens, Georgia, alt-rock scene, Pylon was destined for the semi-obscurity of Athens bands NOT named R.E.M. or the B-52’s (refer to Love Tractor, etc.). I’m not sure what possessed me to pick up this recording since I have never liked vocals that are shouted rather than sung. (Vanessa Briscoe, nowadays Vanessa Briscoe Hay, is the shouter.) If you can get past the harsh singing (I obviously cannot), the record is prototypically New Wave-y: spare, minimalist production; simple chord progressions with lots of repetition; a nervous, punk ferocity; jittery, grinding guitar lines reminiscent of Gang of Four. While I can to a certain extent appreciate the record’s elemental, primary-colors nature, its vehemence and urgency, more generally it sounds artless—like raw anger and frustration. I’d be tempted to say Pylon is trying to sound like the Cocteau Twins and failing, except that the Cocteau Twins formed after these recordings came out. Besides which, the Cocteau Twins, for all the strangeness and rough edges of Elizabeth Fraser’s vocals, aspired to something far more refined. Gyrate Plus will appeal more to those raised on punk, but such people may well be familiar with the original, and the addition of two 45 r.p.m. singles at the beginning plus a remix version of “Danger” plus one more single from a demo tape (“Functionality”) at the end may not be enough to make them cough up another fifteen/twenty bucks—unless they worship at the Pylon altar the way Michael Stipe of R.E.M. does. C+

RADIOHEAD, In Rainbows—Far more ink was spilled discussing Radiohead’s unorthodox distribution method for its seventh studio album (making it a pay-as-you-wish digital download, long before it ever appeared in stores) than the actual music. To the question everybody asks first—how much didya pay for it?—my answer is, ten bucks (plus tax). That’s how much Virgin Records in Times Square was charging the day it went on sale there, in the fading post-Christmas days of December 2007. But what about the music? NPR listeners polled picked it as album of the year, and New York Magazine concurred, as did Jon Pareles in the New York Times. Although critics have praised its accessibility, in fact, compared to the previous release, Hail to the Thief (2003), it is actually a step back toward the more withdrawn albums of the early 2000s, Kid A and Amnesiac, though not as extreme as the latter. It takes some intensive and repeated listening to appreciate—but this is true of every Radiohead record from OK Computer (1997) onward; instant gratification is not on the menu. Nor is anyone going to use the psychologically navel-gazing In Rainbows as a pick-me-up. The songs are all of similar hue and texture, whether slow or fast: contemplative, self-castigating, dark, dense, neuralgic. On many tracks, guitar is used purely as a rhythm instrument, making the exceptions (“Bodysnatchers,” “Jigsaw Falling into Place”) something of a revelation. Thom Yorke’s lyrics aren’t especially deep, but they do have a way of burrowing into your consciousness that might produce a sensation of relief that the record’s only forty-two minutes long. Which is not to say the experience is unenjoyable; there are some exquisite and intricate passages in these compositions, equal to the best work Radiohead has produced. “All I Need” is practically a tone poem, a carbuncle of surpassing beauty. The opener, “15 Step,” starts off as a distinctly second-drawer Radiohead tune, but it takes on a completely new dimension with the addition of spectral synthesizer overtones, above the children’s cries. “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” delivers the promised arpeggiations, fast and thickly layered with chiming guitars, plaintive moans from Yorke, and echoey synthesizers—there’s a lot going on here as the song develops. “Bodysnatchers,” treating a theme of physical limitations in common with the Arcade Fire’s “My Body Is a Cage” (see above) in a very different manner, is as lively as this album gets, and toward the end of its four minutes, it builds to the kind of guitar-driven power sound that harkens back to The Bends (1995), the band’s most extroverted and rocking-out record. While the ethereal closing number, “Videotape,” reaches for heaven with its broken, shuddering beats and its insistent pattern of descending piano tones, it is the third track, “Nude,” that comes closest to sheer transcendence; its shimmering washes of tone and hum and poignant harmonies resolve in a way that is as sublime as anything in the Radiohead canon. So where does In Rainbows rank among Radiohead’s seven full-length releases? I would say, smack in the middle, behind OK Computer, The Bends and Hail to the Thief. A/A-

SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO, Attack Decay Sustain Release—There is absolutely nothing profound about this English dance duo, James Ellis Ford and James Antony Shaw. The best dance discs give you reason to listen even when you’re not “shakin’ your thing”; this falls short of that standard. Simian Mobile Disco is what remains when the electropop band Simian fell apart a couple of years back. Attack Decay Sustain Release is not without its pleasures, of the immediate-gratification sort (the tune “Wooden” is like easy listening at disco pacing). And even the lesser tracks are not embarrassing, though it’s a mistake when S.M.D. slows down the tempo for variety’s sake, as in “I Believe.” I have to wonder what the record company, Interscope, thought about the fourth track, “Hustler,” in which an unidentified female (there are no credits in the CD jacket) of seemingly subpar IQ rapping about how she’s going to steal records from a record store, and “Whatcha gonna do about it? Nuffin’.” “It’s the Beat” features the lead singer of the Go! Team, Ninja (voted “15th-coolest person in music” in 2005 by Britain’s NME), which gives it some snap but does not save it from being one of the most obvious and least interesting selections. The most appealing tracks are the first two (“Sleep Deprivation” is wordless, whereas “I Got This Down” has a dopey lyric, but both have powerful beats) and the last two (the crisply precise “Clock” and “System,” with its dreamy synthesizer glissandos and oscillations in volume), plus the electronic blips and flourishes and machine-gun pumping of “Tits and Acid.” B-

SPOON, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga—It’s not every band whose drummer (Jim Eno) designs semiconductor chips on the side. Or whose lead singer (Britt Daniel) “telecommutes” from Portand, Oregon, to the band’s base more than a thousand miles away (in Austin). Yet the pleasures of Spoon’s infantilely titled 2007 release are fairly mainstream. This short (barely thirty-six minutes long) record has been much praised, even overpraised, in the music media. Its big single, “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb,” is ingratiating without being terribly memorable. The top of its refrain does, however, strain the upper end of Daniel’s vocal range. More exciting is “The Underdog,” from its thunderous drum intro to its improbably cheery horns backing a chorus in which Daniel is singing, “You got no fear of the underdog/That’s why you will not survive.” The incongruities continue with the very Iberian-sounding guitar part on “My Little Japanese Cigarette Case.” “Black Like Me” starts out in very conventional indie manner, just a guy singing hoarsely over a strumming acoustic guitar, with a bit of piano and brushes for background; toward the end, it acquires all the pseudo-orchestral overlay of an Electric Light Orchestra number before ending the record abruptly. Like LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver (see above), Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga has a song featuring a sung melody over a throbbing piano monotone (“The Ghost of You Lingers”), but although the note played in this case actually changes for harmonic purposes (unlike LCD’s), the end result is far less engaging. “Rhythm & Soul” and “Eddie’s Raga” are merely dull. Elsewhere, what Spoon has become is the musical equivalent of good comfort food; on songs like “Don’t You Evah” and “Finer Feelings,” you know pretty much what you’re getting, and it is satisfying rather than challenging. A-/B+

STARS, In Our Bedroom after the War—The other great Montreal-based band has put out another majestic record, as subtle and restrained as the Arcade Fire (see above) is heart-on-sleeve emotional. NPR’s Stephen Thompson named this CD as the year’s best release. A number of other critics felt In Our Bedroom failed to live up to its highly praised predecessor, Set Yourself on Fire (2005), leading to a pointed exchange between lead singer Torquil Campbell and Pitchfork Media, but I disagree: the current record is the equal of the best material Stars has put out. What it lacks in visceral excitement, it makes up for through its refinement and sensitivity, a perceptiveness about human nature that runs fathoms deeper than most pop bands ever probe. Witness the delicacy with which the band handles “Personal,” a song in which a meetup through the personal ads goes astray as a result of conflicting and maybe unrealistic expectations—the lonely advertiser’s question shifts from “is it you and me?” to “is it you? or me?” by the end. In this context, having both male and female lead singers, Campbell and Amy Millan, is advantageous. The two trade off parts as well in the beautiful, scene-setting “The Night Starts Here,” following an instrumental introduction ending in a bit of fortune telling (read by Moria Wylie) that includes the album title in its poetry. On a record that speaks of war, there are two songs involving demonstrations, the rousing “Take Me to the Riot” and “Barricade,” which is a little more problematic as a paean to love among those who commit acts of cruelty and violence (for another thing, does anyone still use the term “pigs” for the cops?). The meaning of “The Ghost of Genova Heights” is more cryptic (who exactly is “the one who told his men to turn back” that is now haunting a quiet bedroom community?), but the music has, unusually for Stars, a blue-eyed soul feel to its chorus, as Campbell’s voice rises to a falsetto. This soulfulness is echoed by Millan in the chorus of “My Favourite Book.” Millan’s singing is especially beautiful, a gossamer-light soprano, in another romance, “Window Bird”; whereas in the more rocking “Bitches in Tokyo” (looking regretfully at a failed romance), her voice approaches the earthier quality of her Broken Social Scene colleague Emily Haines, the lead singer of Metric. Campbell, for his part, modulates his timbre with perfectly assured control in “Barricade.” As this largely nocturnally situated record draws to a close, the ghoulish nightmare saga of an unbalanced fugitive fleeing law enforecement, “Life 2: The Unhappy Ending,” gives way to the tentative and qualified reassurance of “Today Will Be Better, I Swear!” and finally the title track as an affirmation that puts life’s smaller problems in perspective. Among the contributors to the making of this record, Daniel “Lemony Snicket” Handler wrote an intro of sorts to the song lyrics in the booklet (these are set on individual leaves, which is a nuisance) and is credited with playing the accordion. The CD package includes a DVD “videography” by Anthony Seck of Stars on tour. A

WHITE RABBITS, Fort Nightly—“Kid on My Shoulders,” which kicks off White Rabbits’ debut album, is fast-paced, urgent in its cycling four-note bass pattern, and totally compelling. (It is also briefly reprised—for about forty-three seconds—as a slowed-down, boozy singalong later on the record.) The remainder of the record shows flashes of brilliance but does not deliver dependably. White Rabbits, a six-man band originally formed at the University of Missouri, describes its music as “honky-tonk calypso,” which isn’t a particularly useful characterization. For me, at least, it’s hard to discern the Caribbean inflections, with a few exceptions, notably in “Navy Wives,” ”I Used to Complain Now I Don’t,” and the concluding title, “Tourist Trap.” Similarly, the piano stylings in “I Used to Complain” are sort of honky-tonk, but where else on this record? “While We Go Dancing,” briskly paced, smartly written, and tight, shows the éclat missing from other songs. Some of the West Indian-inspired numbers aren’t bad; “I Used to Complain” has a nice “Matilda”-like bounce to it. By the eighth track, “March of the Camels,” which has a sort of nyah-nyahing kids’ chorus, things have really bogged down in indirection. The title track, which follows, sets out in the same vein (insipid melody over plonking bass notes on piano and action-movie bass guitar figurations) but is ultimately partially redeemed by a fresh keyboard theme that resolves the aura of mystery and intrigue the harmonics were attempting to set up. “The Plot” has plenty of energy but not much verve, while “The Dinner Party” is another tune that pairs interesting accompanying instrumentation with a dull melody. Give White Rabbits credit for attempting to forge a new sound—it just seems underdeveloped at this stage. B/B-

XIU XIU, Remixed & Covered—The concept for this double-disc set is interesting in the abstract; the execution far less satisfying, in part because of defective working materials. The first record, “Covers,” presents a lineup of performers, most obscure to the average listener but closely associated with the Bay Area-based Xiu Xiu—which is largely Jamie Stewart, with an ever-shifting team of collaborators—doing their own versions of Xiu Xiu songs. Some of these are just god-awful: Marissa Nadler does not have an unpleasant voice, but her rendition of “Clowne Towne” is revolting, and, not having heard the original, I’m not sure whether to blame her or the creators. “Oxbow,” sung—“growled” would be more accurate—by a black, gay Baltimorean who calls himself Saturn, is similarly hard to stomach. “Support Our Troops” is warbled and yodeled and spat out by Devendra Banhart himself. To a degree, a song like this is a useful antidote to those who use that slogan to bully antiwar protesters, yet it goes overboard—its angry characterization of the soldiers abroad as dumb massacring brutes is grotesque and the final line, asking, “Why should I care if you get killed” uttely callous. “The Wig Master” also has a lyric that seems to seek shock value, while “I Luv the Valley OH!” recycles a well-worn descending-scale minor harmony used in songs from “Hit the Road, Jack” to “Stray Cat Strut.” On the other hand, Sunset Rubdown’s rendition of “Apistat Commander” has a certain august majesty reminiscent of David Bowie in his “Space Oddity” days. “Mousey Toy,” covered by the Italian group Larsen, starts off cold and creepy, as an uninflected, computerlike female speaker chants the lyric in broken English over a static background of strumming and a steady shrill pitch and strangulated voices. But eventually the percussion kicks in, giving it impetus, and the pulsing and sustained synthetic oboe tones give it surprising grandeur. Good for Cows does the instrumental “Sad Pony Guerilla Girl” as scratchy strings and percussion, morphing into cello bowing that becomes improbably rapid. The second disc contains “Remixes” of Xiu Xiu songs, and about half of these are from the group’s most recent release, 2006’s The Air Force. The stylistic variety is impressive; you would never guess all these pieces were from the same band. Again, though, the selections are woefully uneven in quality. “Hello from Eau Claire,” sung by Jamie Stewart’s cousin and current bandmate, Caralee McElroy, pumps energetically and is upbeat fun; “Ceremony” is similarly lively but is memorable mainly for its wild and undisciplined singing, making it grating to sit through. “Buzz Saw” and “Bishop, CA” are mechanistic, highly repetitious, and all about beats and electronic bells and whistles. Other songs—“Over Over” and “Tonite & Today”—wallow in bathos or suicidal morbidity; none more so than “Suha,” about a young woman who feels trapped and wants to end it all. It seems a strange artistic choice to have “Suha,” told from a first-person perspective, sung by a male. “The Air Force” takes inspiration from the Beatles’ “Revolution No. 9” to launch the listener on a hallucinogenic journey through a collage of sampled sounds. The “Remixes” disc is superior to the “Covers,” but, hey, everything is relative. B/B- (“Remixed”)/ C (“Covered”)

YEASAYER, All Hour Cymbals—Like their fellow Brooklyn denizens White Rabbits (see above), Yeasayer has generated a number of intriguing themes that must be sorted from the musical chaff. They draw on folk and gospel to express a “blissed-out” spirituality, but there are also elements of progressive rock and (so the band itself claims) Middle Eastern traditions. Perhaps this last influence is evident in the “modal” harmonies of “Wait for the Summer”; its wilder, darker-hued companion piece, “Wait for the Wintertime”; or “Worms,” but no more than in, say, Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.” Yeasayer’s nearest musical kin are thus Akron/Family, with nods to Sufjan Stevens and Devendra Banhart. The record begins with “Sunrise,” which has its own peculiar groovy soulfulness; as the most songful track on the disc, it naturally came closest to being a genuine hit, followed closely by “2080,” which has similar qualities, as well as a brief sampling of children shout-singing the rollicking melody. The middle of the tracklist is largely forgettable material. Toward the end of the disc, though, the falsetto strangeness and neo-Turkish or –Persian exotica of “Worms” morphs into “Waves,” centering on a beautiful and not at all Middle Eastern (though tabla drums can be heard behind it) harmonic pattern on the piano, jumping in and out of minor mode. which the band milks for all it is worth. Yeasayer’s cultivation of the freak folk ethos reaches its apotheosis with the uncredited, untitled bonus track that follows the long pause after “Worms/Waves.” This is a flower-child singalong, in which the refrain says grace in a way that is, from a lyrical standpoint, bluntly graceless. B

“Hors de Combat” section

HONORABLE MENTION: MISCELLANEOUS

KIRAN AHLUWALIA, Wanderlust—The ghazal is a love poem set to song that came to northern India from Persia in the fourteenth century. Kiran Ahluwalia grew up in Toronto but returned to her native India to study with Vithal Rao, who had been court musician to the last nizam of Hyderabad and thus heir to a centuries-old ghazal tradition. Not everything on Wanderlust is a ghazal; one song takes a Sufi poem as its basis instead, and two come (“Merey Mathay” and “Tumba”) from the other tradition Ahluwalia makes her specialty: Punjabi folk song. But all the melodies and arrangements are her compositions, with the exception of the opening “Jo Dil” (by the master, Rao) and, in part, “Tumba,” which draws on a tune in the Punjabi folk repertory. I have no point of reference for this kind of music, but I can say that a number of tracks carry a distinctive Middle Eastern flavor and would not seem out of place in, say, Israeli folk dance, were it not for those tabla drums; this comes through most clearly in the lovely “Yakeenan,” its melody seeming to carry a tang of the eastern Mediterranean. Oddly, Rao’s “Jo Dil,” one of my least favorite songs on the record, sounds to my ears more like something you’d hear in a Chinese rather than an Indian restaurant, largely as a result of the quality of the melismatic vocal part. (The language certainly does NOT sound Chinese; these songs are all performed in Punjabi or Urdu.) I am not enamored of Ahluwalia’s slightly pinched tone; even discounting that drawback, a number of the selections leave me cold. Of the two duets she sings with Shahid Ali Khan, “Merey Mathay,” which has a galloping tabla beat and Khan providing sinuous, mostly backing, vocals, works nicely; the pairing on the Sufi poem setting, “Jaag Na Jaag,” suffers from a less interesting chorus, and the extended solo cries by each can get a little carried away. “Tumba” is one of the more enjoyable pieces in its sinuous intricacy, drawing its special texture from the plucking of the tumbi. Of the slow ghazals, “Teray Darsan,” arranged simply for voice and guitar with just a hint of harmomium and drums, is most appealing in its thematic plaintiveness and subtlety; “Haath Apne,” which uses Portuguese guitars and is slightly heavier on the harmonium, takes second place, if not as tightly structured. I had been searching for another kind of Punjabi music altogether, DJ Rekha Presents Basement Bhangra, but could not find a copy in time for this survey. B+

SARAH AROESTE BAND, Puertas—As mentioned in the opening section above, my introduction to the Sarah Aroeste Band came via a live rooftop performance at the West Side JCC on a sultry summer evening. I was charmed, both by the soloist (for an Ashkenazi Jew like myself, the Sephardim always carry a tinge of exoticism) and by the music. Sarah Aroeste’s roots are in Thessaloniki (Salonica), one of a number of important centers of Sephardic Jewry in the eastern Mediterranean after the expulsion from Spain in 1492. The idea behind the five-member band is “modernizing” traditional Sephardic songs, sung in the Judeo-Spanish tongue known as Ladino, by updating the arrangements for a mixture of traditional and rock string instruments and percussion. In doing so, the band brings in Western influences—jazz, blues, even a touch of funk—as Aroeste herself is, after all, American born. The most radical of these arrangements is the deep house club-dub of “Puertas Remix” that concludes the record, recapitulating sections of “Una Matica de Ruda” and “Si La Mar Era de Leche.” The most personal statement is also the one song she performs in English, “Thessaloniki.” “Inspired” by Mongo Santamaría’s “Afro Blue,” it modifies and speeds up the original tune and transplants its context from Afro-Caribbean to Greek-Turkish-Levantine. Traditional instrumentation used for “Thessaloniki” includes the Middle Eastern lute known as oud, as well as a battery of percussion: a frame drum known as bendir; a goblet-shaped drum called darbuka, or dumbek; a tambourine, riqq; and finger percussion, karakeb. Elsewhere, the record makes use of finger cymbals known as zils. Aroeste has a nice voice, in a mezzo soprano range; one oddity of her delivery is a tendency at times to sound as if she’s shaping the lyrics through gritted teeth, syllables yearning to break free and then almost spat out. This is most pronounced on “Povereta Muchachika” (“Poor Girl”), a slow number that is, for me, one of the least ingratiating on the record. Anyone who was dragged along to Israeli folk dances as a youth will pick up on the melodies as recognizably “Hebraic”—indeed, Aroeste’s male bandmates have Israeli names, or at least three of the four do. The arrangements don’t always yield the best results: in the ballad “Me Siento Alegre” (rendered in English as “Yearn for You”—the English titles are not always direct translations), the guitar power chords seem distinctly out of place. But this is a minor quibble; more often, the orchestration does no damage to the integrity of the original while making the music something today’s youth can more readily relate to, whether it is bringing in klezmer trumpeter Frank London for “Si La Mar Era de Leche” (“The Siren”) or insinuating piano accompaniment from bandmember Yoel Ben-Simhon into “Una Pastora Yo Ami” (“I Loved Once”), together with a caterwauling bridge passage from (fellow bandmember) Yaron Eilam’s electric guitar. Puertas reaches the height of its appeal in the swingiest pieces: “Una Matica de Ruda” (“Young Lovers”; literal translation: “A Sprig of Rue”), in which the instrumentation and style are kept fairly traditional (the clarinet and electric guitar notwithstanding), and the album’s opener, “Los Bibilicos” (“Love Blooms”; literal translation: “The Nightingales”), pungent in its Eastern fragrances. Available from http://www.saraharoeste.com. A/A-

FANFARE CIOCĂRLIA, Queens and Kings—Raucous and hot-blooded, high-spirited and humorous, this record by Romania’s leading gypsy band was easily my pick among non-mainstream pop this year. I first became aware of Fanfare Ciocărlia (the name translates as “Skylark Brass Band”) a couple of years ago, when Basement Jaxx sampled their “Asfalt Tango” in the song “Hey U.” Dedicated to the band’s founder, clarinetist Ioan Ivancea (pictured on the CD cover with his wife), who died of cancer in 2006, Queens and Kings brings in Romany (gypsy) performers from across Europe for the Balkan equivalent of a New Orleans jazz funeral—not without its moments of yearning and lamentation but more celebratory than somber. The band Kaloome, from Perpignan, on France’s Mediterranean coast, contributes to two Gispy Kings-like Catalan rumba numbers, sung in Spanish, “Que Dolor” and “Cuando Tú Volverás,” replete with flamenco guitars and furiously precise handclapping, yet even these are distinguished by Fanfare Ciocărlia’s Balkan horns in the chorus sections. Notwithstanding the characteristic Spanish sound of “Que Dolor,” it was written by fellow Romanian gypsy composer Dan Armeanca, who is also responsible for the opening number, “Kan Marau La” (“I Will Beat Her”), a booming song redolent of brass and wind flourishes, bent notes, and “exotic” Eastern European harmonics. There is only one accordion song on the record; Fanfare Ciocărlia isn’t about accordion music, but they did import accordionist Dejan Belkic from Belgrade, along with his bandmates from the group Kal and the Nis, Serbia-based singer Saban Bajramovic, for the rapid-fire pumping of “Sandala” (note that only some of the songs are translated in the CD booklet). There is also just one traditional song here, sounding somewhat like “Tradition” off The Fiddler on the Roof, “Pănă Cănd Nu Te Iubeam” (“In the Time before I Loved You”), sung by Hungary’s bubbly, helium-voiced Mitsou, who now leads a fusion band called Mitsoura. Another notable guest singer is Florentina Sandu, just twenty years old. She joins Mitsou in the club-ready beats of “Duj Duj,” voicing the straight-woman part, while Mitsou scats and draws mincing curlicues around her line. Sandu returns for a solo turn in “Mukav Tu” (“I Will Leave You”), in which she, in turn, gets to be more playful with her vocal. Yet another vocal style among the female guest singers is offered by the 65-year-old Esma Resdepova; although she is native to Macedonia, her singing on “Ibrahim” and “Nakelavishe,” both of which she wrote herself, is close to the sobbing, heart-on-sleeve mannerisms of the great flamenco performers. In a final contrast, the Bosnian Liljana Butler sounds uncannily like a male tenor on “Ma Rov”; whereas Bulgaria’s Jony Iliev, on the romping “Mig Mig,” sounds female, in a strained sort of way. The band has included one vocal from the late master, Ivancea, on the brief “Farewell March.” As a particularly tasty bonbon, the CD concludes with the most bizarre cover version (full of growls, yowls, whoops, and staccato-tongued nonsense syllables) of Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” that you’re ever likely to hear—or, chances are, you have already heard it, if you stayed to the very end of Sacha Baron-Cohen’s movie Borat, for which it was commissioned (it plays during the second half of the closing credits). A

KONONO NO. 1, Live at Couleur Café—They’re back! Those otherworldly timbres from crudely amplified likembés (an instrument similar to a thumb piano), that battery of junkyard percussion, that irrepressible traffic cop’s whistle. This record is very similar to Konono No. 1’s first recording for Crammed Discs, Congotronics (2005), except that here the Congolese ensemble is performing live at a Brussels venue. In fact, two of the pieces Konono present to the Couleur Café patrons were also on the first record: “Kule Kule” and “Mama Liza.” The music is rhythmically precise and intricate, and the band’s natural exuberance is heightened by having it recorded in front of an audience. The problem with Live at Couleur Café is that it is too much of a muchness—too little variety; the eight tracks are largely interchangeable. Moreover, my impression is that, as with any number of ensembles in the realm of African music, rhythm is so predominant that melodic and harmonic considerations suffer from relative neglect. As a result, as tunes, these all sound underdeveloped. With little to distinguish one track from another, it sounds like one 56-minute-long jam session, and attention before long begins to flag. “Zey Isa Langa” stays in the mind a bit longer because of it introduces a new element—male and female call-and-response choruses; even these, though, are not anything you’d be likely to hum in the shower. This begins a sequence—through “Kule Kule,” “Mama Liza,” and “Mama Na Bana”—in which each contains that same element, and hence they all sound alike, too. The most engaging of these—the one with the most complex stew of elements, from languid exchanges between the men and women to a concluding instrumental section that really sizzles—is the last full-bodied song (the final track, “Outro,” is a mere two-minute throwback to the “Intro”), “Mama Na Bana.” By itself, it is not enough to save this record from its own monotony. B-

TINARIWEN, Aman Iman: Water Is Life—From the trackless sands of the Sahara comes a band that mesmerized the cognoscenti this year with its third studio album, Aman Iman. This record made quite a few critics’ top fifty lists, despite being sung in an inaccessible language (Tamashek, a Tuareg tongue) about topics (Tuareg rebellion against the Malian central government, primarily) that hardly concern the average Western musical tourist. Nor are Westerners likely to be aware of the band’s origins, forming in a Tuareg rebel training camp set up by Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya. Tinariwen is in some respects more a collective, with floating membership, than a band. But the music that collective produces is something the developed world can readily latch on to; Tinariwen dispenses with with traditional instrumentation in favor of electric guitars, and its music draws heavily on American blues and rock. In this, the music shares kinship with that of the late Ali Farka Touré. The vocal styles, however, are more characteristically West African, trancelike in the repetitiveness of their incantations, with plenty of ululations in the women’s voices and call-and-response refrains. One aspect of Tinariwen that I find impossible to accustom myself to is the timbre of the female vocals; when I first sampled the record, I thought I was hearing a children’s chorus, and that is still what it sounds like. The spareness and simplicity in a number of the arrangements places the emphasis squarely on the expressiveness of the human voice. This ranges from the high pitch of the whooping desert cries to the low growl of the soloist in “Ikyadarh Dim” (“I Look at You”). Yet, the nature of the music is alien enough that it may not register with the listener that some of the quieter songs are about rebel leaders and bloody uprisings and factional fighting. In the end, it probably doesn’t matter; people are drawn to this record either by the sheer exoticism or by the familiarity of the wailing guitars, the half-imagined kinship with the roots music of their own homeland, which achieves the summit of its power in the wonderful “Tamatant Tilay” (“Death Is Here”). Or perhaps by both: “Assouf” (“Longing”) manages to stress both the male soloist-female chorus vocal exchanges and the soulful, twangy guitar licks. Aman Iman manages to find the beauty in unyielding ferocity as well as placid serenity. A-

HONORABLE MENTION: LATIN

BONDE DO ROLÊ, With Lasers—In a weak year for Latin music (particularly for those like me who don’t appreciate Café Tacuba), the one entry I have from south of the border is itself a little disappointing. Bonde do Rolê is from Curitiba, in southern Brazil, and their sound is categorized as baile funk, or funk carioca, which, as its name would indicate, had its origins in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. In reality, Bonde do Rolê draws heavily on various North American styles, from dance/electronica to heavy metal to grunge. Other native Brazilian genres find their way into the music as well: “James Bonde” is closer in spirit and bass line to Tom Zé than to anything else on this disc, while “Solta o Frango” and “Geremia” incorporate the big surdo (bass drum) beats of samba. The vocal style, however, is closer to hip-hop. I would find the spiritedness of With Lasers easier to take if not for Marina Ribatski’s obnoxious performance at the mike—monotonous shouting rather than singing, in the aggressive manner that evidently characterizes baile funk. It becomes apparent at times that Bonde do Rolê does not take itself entirely seriously, which is a saving grace—in “Marina Gasolina,” which carries a funky low-brass chart, Ribatski promises, “Meet me after school, and I’ll beat you like gorilla” (most of the lyrics are in Portuguese, though), while “Geremia” features, beyond that big beat, a goofy kazoo chorus. The shame is that in the techno-flavored “Quero Te Amar,” she shows that she can more than carry a tune when she wants to. Pedro D’eyrot is the other “MC” in the group, while Rodrigo Gorky (the surnames reflect Curitiba’s large Ukrainian immigrant population) is the DJ. “Marina Gasolina” invokes the name of Bronx hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa, and, indeed, much of With Lasers seems a tribute to early 1980s rap music, which is fine if you’re into that sort of thing. In the intro to the opening number, “Dança do Zumbi,” D’eyrot says in a basso profundo voice, “Death to your speakers!” If Banda do Rolê would only tone down the vocals, the speakers, and my eardrums, would survive the experience and maybe even enjoy the beats. B/B-

HONORABLE MENTION: JAZZ

MICHAEL BRECKER, Pilgrimage—This was the last studio recording Michael Brecker made—he died from leukemia complications in January 2007. He was reported to be in dire health even as the recording was being made, in the summer of 2006, so for him to have played up to the standard of artistry he did (for what it’s worth, he was awarded two Grammys posthumously for it) was an act of genuine bravery. For this valedictory statement, he set aside the “Quindectet” big-band lineup he had assembled for his previous album as a bandleader, Wide Angles (2003). Instead, he recorded with an all-star cast: Pat Metheny on guitars, Herbie Hancock and Brad Mehldau alternating tracks on piano, John Patitucci on bass, and Jack DeJohnette (see below) on drums. Brecker himself played the tenor sax and a device known as EWI, or “electronic wind instrument,” which makes its odd appearance in “Tumbleweed” as well as the final (title) track. The nine numbers on Pilgrimage are all his own creations. Under the circumstances, the critical reception was more than dutifully reverent; the record was widely praised. That noted, I find his writing fairly bland. From a compositional standpoint, toward the end of his career at least, he seemed to be playing it safe. There is some decent material on Pilgrimage; I especially like the tight ensemble energy and sensuous harmonics of the principal theme of “Tumbleweed” (also the only song to carry background vocals, African chanting that is not credited in the liner notes), and “Pilgrimage” itself gradually builds momentum (actually, the EWI solo is the most interesting passage in the piece) to bring the disc to a more satisfying conclusion. “Anagram” contains some thrilling runs in both the piano and sax parts, as well as a handful of stop-time moments to shake things up, and Metheny contributes a nimble-fingered solo. But the going gets tedious in slower songs like “When Can I Kiss You Again?” “Half Moon Lane,” and “Loose Threads”—there is a lack of visceral excitement in the laid-back themes, or their prettiness is too close to smooth jazz. The musicianship of these celebrated veterans is superb throughout. B

ANAT COHEN AND THE ANZIC ORCHESTRA, Noir—It took me some delving to find out the origin of “Anzic”; according to the record label of the same name, which puts out the music of Anat Cohen and others, the “An-” is for Anat, naturally, and the “-zic” is for “music,” spelled phonetically. So that’s it—no exotic Slavic origin and nothing to do with the Anzus defense treaty between the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. I saw Anat Cohen and the orchestra live at the Jazz Standard back in the fall, and after the show, she kindly signed the book jacket of my copy of her CD with a flourish: “For Steven with a ‘v’—viva el clarinet J”. She is part of an Israeli family whose talents have proliferated across the New York jazz scene; older brother Yuval is, like her, a sax player (he contributes the soprano sax part in “Medley: Samba de Orfeu/Struttin’ with Some Barbeque”), while younger brother Avishai plays trumpet and flugelhorn in a number of lineups, including the Anzic Orchestra. Anat Cohen herself, following study at Berklee College of Music (many of the jazz musicians in this survey have a Berklee connection, apparently a rite of passage tantamount to a classical pianist or composer studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in days of yore), apprenticed with Afro-Cuban and Brazilian bands in New York, and that background comes through on Noir. None of the compositions are original, though all the arrangements are, conceived by her high school friend Oded Lev-Ari. In some ways, the record reminds me of Tito Puente’s 1957 album Night Beat in its switching back and forth between “straight” jazz and the Latin tinge, not to mention the brashness with which the big band plays in the more straightforward numbers, typified by Johnny Griffin’s “Do It,” which, although it would not seem out of place on the Puente record, is actually the newest composition of the bunch, only a decade old when recorded here. In one song, the two idioms are melded cunningly: “Samba De Orfeu/Struttin’ with Some Barbeque.” The first and longer part was written by Luiz Bonfa and popularized in the movie Black Orpheus, while the “trio” section is credited to Louis Armstrong’s second wife, Lil Hardin. This is also the only song on the disc that unites the three Cohen siblings, with Yuval and Anat sharing duties on soprano sax (plus Ted Nash on tenor and Billy Drewes on alto). The “Struttin’” (straight) chaser is as exuberant, with the band letting loose a Dixieland wail of brass and sax chorus, as the “Samba” opening is light-footed and fleet-fingered, paced by the guitar of Guilherme Monteiro. The two other Brazilian selections, Hermeto Pascoal’s “Bebê” and the Lacerda Benedicto/Pixinguinha “Ingênuo,” plus the Cape Verdean “Carnaval de São Vicente” of Pedro Manuel Rodrigues, each offer their own miniature universe of silky pleasures, even if the 1947 “Ingênuo” sounds too courtly and antiquated for my tastes. Noir begins with one of the touchstones of Cuban popular music, Ernesto Lecuona’s “La Comparsa,” of which this is the sixth version I own. Anat Cohen, on the clarinet, begins with simple exposition of the melody, with a beauty of tone I could never have hoped to replicate as a student of the instrument years ago, and eventually soups it up a bit, making for a quasi-klezmer Cuban tune, never going beyond the bounds of good taste, though. By contrast, she adopts a grainy tone on the tenor sax to match the grit of the Redd Evans/Dave Mann “No Moon At All.” The orchestra attacks the ensemble passages with relish, but there are also extended passages of gentle guitar soloing by Monteiro. Anat Cohen has professed in the CD booklet that “Cry Me a River,” the bluesy Arthur Hamilton standard, is a great clarinet piece, and she sets out to prove the case with tremendous control and range, from mellifluous tones to bent notes to perilous runs, but all in the service of the music’s soul. An unusual choice is the Sun Ra/Hobart Dotson “You Never Told Me that You Care”; I was not aware that boudoir ballads were part of the far-out Sun Ra’s repertoire. A/A-

DAVE DOUGLAS QUINTET, Live at the Jazz Standard—Trumpeter Dave Douglas has recorded fronting so many different groups and configurations (as well as taking part in John Zorn’s Masada) as to make your head spin: the Tiny Bell Trio, the quartet, Sanctuary, as a soloist with various guests, now the quintet. The band performed these pieces, distilled from 44 such works recorded over a week’s stand in December 2006 at one of New York’s leading clubs, which shares its East Side premises with a barbeque restaurant upstairs. The two discs do not differ sharply: the first presents the most current material Douglas had been refining; the second offers slightly older compositions by Douglas, mainly ideas intended for the band’s 2006 studio album, Meaning and Mystery, that did not make the final cut. I am not as passionate about the new live record as I was about the other Dave Douglas recording I have, Freak In (2003). Then again, Freak In would easily make my list of top ten records of the decade. On both releases, he is taken with the sound of the Fender Rhodes organ, on the live record played by Uri Caine, giving the music a distinct “1970s” feel. In the live sets, both Caine and tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin are given scope for wide-ranging ruminations. Douglas’s inspirations are similarly wide ranging: funk and free jazz (he has been compared to Lester Bowie on Allmusic.com) are wellsprings; so are pop music (not to the same degree on the live record as on Freak In) and the classical avant-garde. The slower sections come across as soulful, and not just because of the Fender Rhodes. The trumpeter is not averse to a bit of jokiness as well: for December gigs, the first CD has him making hit-and-run allusions to “Frosty the Snowman” (on “Earmarks”) and “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” (on “Seth Thomas”). He will once in a while muff an attack, but tonal purity isn’t really what he is after, anyway; he will make the instrument growl and sputter in the service of expressivity. Thematically, the music on the first disc occupies a continuum from atonal to quasi-tonal. Douglas likes to mix things up; for example, the short, punchy “The Cornet Is a Fickle Friend” is followed up by the much longer and mellower “The Next Phase (For Thomas).” Lively in a different way is “War Room,” as Douglas and McCaslin play off each other’s parts, over rapid, gliding runs and pulsating figuartions in the organ. In the follow-up, “Indian Point,” Douglas’s horn outbursts are recalibrated for an altogether slinkier composition. If “Seth Thomas” makes reference to clocks or metronomes, it is not an obvious one; rather than Bachian regularity, we get lots of stop-time sections, some brief swingy ensemble passages, and a lot of trumpet soloing against a walking bass line. After hearing Disc 1, the consonance of some of the pieces on Disc 2, in particular the benedictory “Meaning and Mystery” and the jaunty “Little Penn,” are like walking abruptly into a skylit room. But “Navigations” is as wild and unruly as anything on the first disc. The audience also makes its presence felt more on the second disc, whether through its applause (tellingly tepid and scattered after the short “Redemption”) or its soul coughing. My favorite compositions from the second aluminum platter are the two live “bonus tracks”: “Magic Triangle,” originally from the import CD of the same name, is a gem; impelled by a throbbing dotted-note bass pattern, it is the perfect illustration that music does not have to be tonal to be beautiful. “A Single Sky,” which first appeared as the concise opener on the record Strange Liberation (2004), in its live setting is opened up and greatly expanded, giving Douglas and McCaslin ample room to chase one another up and down the chromatic scales, generating lots of heat energy to close out the set. A-

FLORATONE, Floratone—Jazz traditionalists will not/do not like this recording. No matter; its heavy production treatment is another avenue toward shaking up the ossified world of jazz, which has been steadily losing its audience for all Wynton Marsalis’s efforts to revive it along first principles. Floratone, named for the Seattle (now Portland) studio where much of the recording and engineering was done, is a project of jazz-experimental guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Matt Chamberlain, who is a generation younger and has been a session man for Brad Mehldau and various pop performers, with the active collaboration of producers Tucker Martine and Lee Townsend. There is no improvisation to speak of—what improvisation there was took place in the original Frisell-Chamberlain jam sessions—before the sound engineers went to work and the musicians returned for a final overlay—nor does the music swing. It does have plenty of long tones, especially deep bass ones, together with overdubs, tape loops, and repeating figurations. But the record would hold little appeal if it were merely a collection of cool sound effects. Rather, the compositions are fully formed soundscapes. Michael Katzif of NPR writes, “Frisell's tremolo-intensive guitar sits front and center, teasing out references to gritty desert rock, Spaghetti Western soundtracks and even the slinky upstroke strums of dub and reggae.” The most moodily beautiful of these, saturated in rich tonal color, is “The Passenger”; “The Wanderer” is similarly Cinemascopic in nature, but with some cosmic embellishments as well. The most far-out, futuristic touches come in the latter tracks, which are also the most repetitious, not just in “The Future” (self-evidently) but especially in “Frontiers” and “Threadbare,” with their mechanistic pumping and their blips and interesting choices for percussion (pipes and wrenches come to mind). For a record put together in the Pacific Northwest, there sure is plenty of material making reference to the Mississippi Delta: “Mississippi Rising” is bathed in the blues, and “Louisiana Lowboat” only a little less so, though it ends with an unexpected viola flourish from Eyvind Kang. (There are also pieces called “Swamped” and “Monsoon.”) Other guest appearances are made by Viktor Krauss on acoustic and electric bass and Ron Miles on cornet. A/A-

CHARLIE HUNTER AND BOBBY PREVITE as GROUNDTRUTHER, Altitude—OK, so this isn’t a jazz record in any conventional sense. No swing, little sense of improv; at times minimalist or content to play around with atmospherics; at others sounding spacy and futuristic, while other sections really rock out. I put the recording in with the jazz stuff because a) that is the way Virgin Records chose to classify it, and b) Bobby Previte is known as a (sometime) jazz drummer and Charlie Hunter as a (sometime) jazz guitarist. (Hunter appeared on one of Christian McBride’s Live at Tonic sessions, which I reviewed last year.) Their invited guest on Altitude is John Medeski, a (sometime) jazz keyboards player, best known for being one-third of Medeski Martin and Wood. Altitude is the third part of a trilogy by Groundtruther on Thirsty Ear records (the same label on which Matthew Shipp—see below—records), each of which had a different guest performer. I had not heard the preceding efforts, Latitude and Longitude, prior to coming across this one, but now there’s ample reason to go into the back catalog. Altitude is a two-CD set: the first, “Above Sea Level,” is the more extroverted of the two and generally features longer-form compositions; the second, “Below Sea Level,” is, if not purely acoustic, then much more so, moody and fitful, notes rather than tunes, with little squalls and eddies of tempestuousness. “Above Sea Level” consists of seven titles, all invoking monumental structures such as the Taipei 101 skyscraper and Kingda Ka, the world’s (and New Jersey’s) tallest roller coaster (except for one monumental feature, “Everest”). It is full of heavy beats and drum flourishes, power chords, grungy textures, industrial noise, reverb, and planetarium laser-show-quality synthesizers or creepy keyboard tones sounding straight out of an old sci-fi flick (viz. “Everest,” particularly toward the end). The disc ends, appropriately enough, with some shuddering feedback. The resulting mix has a lot of the flavor of 1970s progressive rock, minus the lyrics, with more than a nod to acid rock trippiness and funk grooves. “Empire State,” more than fifteen minutes in length, drills its way into the listener’s skull before easing off the percussive syncopation and going on an extended excursion into Rod Argent territory. “Pyramid of Giza” indulges in some modal arabesques—or perhaps hieroglyphics—simulating the sound of a sitar along the way. “Warsaw Radio Mast” constructs a melody of blurred metallic tones and Morse code blips over a rapid, dotted-note rhythm in the bass guitar. The pieces on “Below Sea Level,” appropriately, have names that conjure low-lying places and suboceanic topography. Rather than tuneful and driven, they are static, at times highly repetitious, resembling modernist chamber music. The first three, “Three Haikus,” are vignettes in miniature, each lasting just thirty seconds or so, barely enough time to evoke a mood, much less the places they are named for (“Death Valley,” “Salt Lake,” “Dead Sea”). “Submarine Canyon” offers the combination of an insistent, unvarying piano line with a percussion pattern also caught in an endless loop and a guitar accompaniment that offers little in the way of chord changes to break the monotony, yet somehow it comes together in a dramatically compelling way. Some of the other compositions pick up some genuine movement and development, such as “Sea Floor Spreading Hypothesis,” which goes from a simple loping guitar and piano motif into ever denser and more layered attacks and cycling keyboard repetitions punctuated with very deep bass notes before dying away; others remain soundscapes or experimental tone poems. “Cold Seep” features a growling voice buried under layers of sound, as if from a great depth. “Bathymetric Expression” and “Tectonic Revolution” are among the most fitful, stormy and volatile on “Below Sea Level,” with the latter packing an extraordinarily elaborate tantrum into its less than two minutes. “Mariana Trench,” the longest piece on the second disc, at more than seven minutes, takes its time building up to a charged climax with a heavily percussive three-note piano figuration piled onto itself again and again, while “Challenger Deep” feels yearning in its ascending sequences, as if trying to emerge from fathoms below and reach a higher plane as the record concludes. “Above Sea Level” is far more accessible, but “Below Sea Level” will still reward a patient and intense listener. A (“Above Sea Level”)/A/A- (“Below Sea Level”)

KEITH JARRETT, GARY PEACOCK, AND JACK DEJOHNETTE, My Foolish Heart: Live at Montreux—Although this concert was recorded in July 2001, Keith Jarrett chose not to release it for another six years, doing so to mark the 25th anniversary of the formation of his Standards trio with bassist Gary Peacock and longtime percussion collaborator Jack DeJohnette. Jarrett has long attracted a cultlike following, as a sort of high priest of the piano; a fussbudget whose approach to swing is consistently rigorous. His idiosyncrasies are well known; his outspoken critique of the newer generation of players as imitative and disingenuous only slightly less so. On My Foolish Heart, his trademark caterwauling at the keyboard becomes more distracting the longer the 2-CD set goes on. The listener just has to accept that it comes with the territory; beyond that, his tone is limpid, his touch is sure, and the band plays with the studied ease of a threesome that has been together for an eternity. The first disc alternates fast and slow numbers until the end, when it follows a breezy take on Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern’s “The Song Is You,” from the early musical Music in the Air (1932), with the Fats Waller/Harry Brooks stride piano piece “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” which shows a close connection to its roots in ragtime. “The Song Is You” shows Jarrett’s fluency, as the rapid clip at which he proceeds allows for the interpolation of plenty of grace notes and flourishes without ever muddying the palette or blurring the principal theme. Of the ballads on Disc 1, the title track, originally from the movie of the same name, has enjoyed a second life as a jazz standard, as pianists eviscerate the sentimentality for which critics originally skewered it; Jarrett does some real groaning during one particular passage. The uptempo numbers “Four” (1964), by Miles Davis, and Sonny Rollins’s bebop classic “Oleo” are a delight, played with vigor and fluidity. “Oleo,” with its intricate rhythm changes, allows plenty of space for improvisation—DeJohnette has more freedom to knock around his drum kit toward the end than on any other track on the disc—while “Four” contains some nifty bass passagework by Peacock about two-thirds of the way through. The second disc picks up where the first left off, with another Fats Waller quasi-rag, “Honeyscukle Rose.” Given a scintillating rendition by Jarrett, it is one of the highlights of the second set, along with Thelonious Monk’s incomparable “Straight, No Chaser.” Monk is, like Claude Debussy in the world of classical music, out on his own musical branch, having created a harmonic universe that stands apart from the mainstream. On this knotty, complex standard, Jarrett’s playing reaches its most daring, particularly toward the close—he adds a short coda that is expressive yet shreds the bounds of conventionality. In between these two songs, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s “You Took Advantage of Me,” from the 1928 musical Present Arms, partakes of the jaunty ragtime spirit of the Waller pieces, having been written in the same era, particularly in its opening presentation and conclusion, in which the percussion is hammed up a bit. If the record drags anywhere, it is in the Jule Styne/Sammy Cahn ballad “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry” (1945); not that the performance becomes flaccid, but it is drawn out to ten and a half minutes without achieving much beyond endless restatements of the theme. Two “encores” are served up: “On Green Dolphin Street” (1947), by Bronislaw Kaper and Ned Washington, restores the breeziness that went missing during “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry”; the improv section explodes in a cloud of percussive rambunctiousness by DeJohnette. Jimmy van Heusen and Sammy Cahn’s 1958 “Only the Lonely,” a weepy song composed for the Frank Sinatra LP of the same name, closes the concert, with a shirring of cymbals, on a contemplative note, delicately expressive while deftly sidestepping bathos. A

JOE LOVANO AND HANK JONES, Kids: Live at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola—As you listen to this duo’s live performance at Lincoln Center’s clublike space overlooking Central Park, keep reminding yourself that the pianist was just months shy of his eighty-eighth birthday when it was recorded. There is both a (seemingly) effortless elegance and tight control in Hank Jones’s playing, always smooth but never glib. As saxophonists go, Joe Lovano ranks in the middle of the breathiness scale (but this could have something to do with the way the instrument was miked for the recording)—it is noticeable but not especially obtrusive. Otherwise, he shares Jones’s tonal sensibilities of restraint. The two men are linked in other ways, despite being born more than a generation apart, in different regions and circumstances (though both grew up in the central Great Lakes portion of the country). Lovano came up through the Mel Lewis big band, which Lewis had cofounded with Thad Jones—Hank’s younger brother. He has also played with Jones’s other performing brother, drummer Elvin Jones. The set that he and Hank perform at Dizzy’s is mellow and relaxed, as fits the club’s ambience, but never dull or inconsequential—the material, which is mainly standards, is too strong for that. It includes three of Thad Jones’s compositions: the fancy-free “Lady Luck” (cowritten with Frank Wess), which serves as the intro, the harder-bopping “Little Rascal On a Rock,” and “Kids Are Pretty People,” as slinky as a cat. Tadd Dameron’s gentle “Soultrane” finds Lovano’s playing at its buzziest. Thelonious Monk’s “Four In One,” like pretty much all of Monk’s music, inhabits a gemlike alternative universe of rhythmic pacing and harmonic language. The aggressive syncopations of the Bud Powell/Miles Davis bebop tune “Budo” are about as hard-edged as this record gets. Otherwise, there are a couple of interpretations of musical numbers (“Lazy Afternoon” from the seldom heard The Golden Apple and “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” from Oklahoma!, which is transformed through a gauzy harmonic scrim), plus a snappy song that was one of Frank Sinatra’s early hits (“Oh! Look at Me Now!”) with the Tommy Dorsey orchestra. Each of the performers showcases one of his own compositions as well: Lovano’s “Charlie Chan” provides a lot of busywork (for the tenor sax player, in any case), whereas Jones’s wistful and touching “Lullaby,” as tempered as the man himself, puts the players on a more equal footing. If the improvisations throughout are less than daring, in this context it really does not matter. A/A-

JOSHUA REDMAN, Back East—Dewey Redman’s kid came of age about a decade and a half ago and was quickly compared to some of the tenor sax greats. Having survived the inevitable backlash against such lofty praise, he has established himself as one of the leaders of the younger generation, whether working in a traditional vein or ranging further afield. On Back East, which serves as a response of sorts to Sonny Rollins’s Way Out West (1957), he is trying something new: working in a trio format. Everything is arranged for sax and rhythm section, though on several tracks, the sax part is doubled, notably on John Coltrane’s “India,” which is presented as a duet between himself and his father, who died in September 2006, a few months after the recording sessions for Back East. It would take a bigger aficionado than me to tell which one is playing at which moment, but they do weave seamlessly around each other’s lines. Dewey Redman gets the closing word, as the record ends with “GJ,” a slow, blue-period number, contributed as a gift to Joshua Redman’s infant son, that ultimately devolves into the bleating runs the older Redman made a name for himself with as a free jazz practitioner. Sonny Rollins and Dewey Redman are not the only sax greats being paid homage here; Joshua Redman’s own composition “Indonesia” follows from Coltrane and “India,” taking the earlier piece’s harmonic background and moving it front and center amid tightly nested irregular time signatures (alternating between 5/4 and 6/4?). So the album title takes on another dimension, reflecting the younger Redman’s studies of Indian and Indonesian music at Berkeley’s Center for World Music. “Zarafah,” written as a tribute to Joshua Redman’s mother, is a relatively long-form piece that displays the saxophonist’s talent for writing modal jazz, moody and mystical, in full flower. Similarly Eastern in inspiration is Redman’s “Mantra #5,” on which he shares the lead on soprano sax with Chris Cheek. Wayne Shorter’s “Indian Song,” from his sometimes overlooked 1965 Blue Note record Etcetera, pairs Redman with Joe Lovano (see above) on a version cut down to about half the length of the original, and here I can tell which is which because Redman’s tighter embasure results in an exquisite clarity of tone, which he maintains throughout the record, with the exception of of some honking on the title track. The album opens with Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Surrey with the Fringe on Top” (this is a good year for Oklahoma! covers; see the Lovano-Jones entry above), which allows the saxophonist wide latitude for improvisation. He is free and easy with the standards “East of the Sun (and West of the Moon)” and Johnny Mercer’s “I’m an Old Cowhand,” too, but never to the extent of coasting. Redman rotates the rhythm sections he uses: sometimes Larry Grenadier (bass) and Ali Jackson (drums); sometimes Christian McBride and Brian Blades; other times Reuben Rogers and Eric Harland. A

JOHN SCOFIELD, This Meets That—Guitarist and bandleader John Scofield has released a slew of recordings since branching out on his own in the late 1970s, after attending the Berklee College of Music and then spending several years playing with the likes of Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, Gary Burton, and Charles Mingus. His trio, unusually for jazz, consists of electric guitar, electric bass (Steve Swallow), and drums (Bill Stewart). This lineup is tailored for exploring jazz’s intersections with rock and funk, in a vein similar to other prominent guitarists, Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell (see Floratone, above), both of whom Scofield has worked with. But the overall feel is one of mellowness. Electric bass solos replace the upright double-bass of a standard jazz trio (viz. “Memorette”) Saxes, bass clarinet and horns are brought in for most tracks, and Frisell contributes tremolo guitar on “House of the Rising Sun.” The compositions are Scofield’s, with three exceptions, none of which come from the world of jazz: Charlie Rich’s country classic “Behind Closed Doors”; the folk-blues standard “House of the Rising Sun”; and the Rolling Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Of these, “House of the Rising Sun” is perhaps too briskly paced, coming off sounding glib; “Satisfaction” satisfies in a visceral, not terribly jazzlike way, but it won’t replace Devo’s as my all-time favorite cover version. Scofield has done some fairly daring experimental collaboration, such as with British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage; you won’t find that kind of material on This Meets That, although “Pretty Out,” while not sacrificing melody and structure, plays around with some intriguing pedal and reverb effects. The opening number, “The Low Road,” seems to promise something similar at its scratchy outset but quickly switches, becoming a pretty tune with a funky bass groove. One of the niftiest compositions is “Strangeness in the Night,” alternating between stop-time segments in which trumpet and trombone predominate and rapid walking bass passages that allow Scofield to embroider improvisations on top. Scofield’s tribute, as it were, to administrative incompetence, “Heck of a Job,” is very funky, with a vaguely Brazilian feel, especially in its opening bars. B+

MATTHEW SHIPP, Piano Vortex—Starkly modernistic and hard-edged, Matthew Shipp’s music is not for the casual listener. Not everything on Piano Vortex is knotty and difficult, just most of it. In fact, there is really just one piece that can be said to be tuneful, “Key Swing.” The final track, “To Vitalize,” swings—amid its passages of heavy syncopation—and has a kind of singsong manner, except that the singing is atonal. The remainder of the record leaves the listener with nothing easy to hook onto; that is the challenge of free jazz. The sprawling, ruminative ten-minute title track that opens the disc never quite leaves the realm of jazz—there’s always that bass rhythm behind the skittering piano runs—but it comes close to classical Minimalism. Shipp is playing piano in a trio, but Whit Dickey’s drumming is so unobtrusive (or perhaps the record was engineered that way) that one is barely conscious of him. Joe Morris’s bass, by contrast, is omnipresent; if not quite in the cockpit with the piano, it is certainly the propeller. “The New Circumstance” and “Sliding through Space” each begin with the bass bowed, and Morris does not shy from making it scrape and grate and squeal—the raw edge of his palette. Later in “Sliding through Space,” Shipp suddenly gets loud and tempestuous, pounding the keys while repeating the same figure ad nauseam. As forbiddingly abstract as this music is, it sometimes does follow the characterisitc theme-solo improvisation-theme format, as in “The New Circumstance.” And Shipp manages to sneak in allusions to other jazz works on occasion, before reverting to form. Piano Vortex is part of Thirsty Ear records’ Blue Series, ambitiously aiming to forge a new signature sound for improvising musicians (careful to avoid the tag “jazz,” as that would be limiting). Shipp attended Berklee College of Music; he also studied at the New England Conservatory of Music. He is a longtime member of the David S. Ware quartet and has worked with Roscoe Mitchell and William Parker. B+/B

HONORABLE MENTION: CLASSICAL

Again, this year, I will not actually venture to assign grades or critique extensively, as it is just too intimidating with classical music, and I lack some of the musical vocabulary and training needed for assessing it. I managed to accumulate nine recordings that were 2007 releases.

BÉLA BARTÓK, String Quartet No.5/ PAUL HINDEMITH, String Quartet No. 4 (Zehetmair Quartett)—Neither of these Central European composers active in the first half of twentieth century wrote crowd-pleasers; their music—challenging and astringent—is the analogue of Expressionism in the art world. Béla Bartók’s Fifth String Quartet (1934) is written in arch form, meaning that its five movements have a symmetry, with the first movement matching the fifth and the second corresponding with the fourth, while the first movement is itself an arch form in miniature. The piece also is shot through with the composer’s ethnomusicological interests, in particular, the central movement (“Scherzo: Alla Bulgarese”) is written in a rhythmic pattern of 4 + 2 + 3 that corresponds to one type of Bulgarian folk music. Although it is considered more traditional and diatonic (i.e., tonal) than the earlier quartets (well, everything is relative), it is still far from having any melodic “hooks”—jagged and agitated in the outer movements, eerily quiet and moody (from sullen to songful to woozy) in the inner ones, footloose and fury-driven (but stillfiercely antimelodic) in the central movement—and comes across as forbidding to many, I have no doubt. As a teaser, there’s one brief moment toward the end of the final movement that is astoundingly conventional, before the restless churning resumes to finish out. Paul Hindemith also moved back toward tonality as his career progressed, but it was his own peculiar twelve-tone tonal system rather than standard scales or major chords. The Fourth String Quartet (1921), like Bartók’s Fifth, is in five movements. Like Bartók’s as well, the piece has no shortage of angst and feverish intensity of roiling strings but also, often within the same movement, passages of lyricism, even if the “lyric” sounds melodically alien. The second movement starts out dramatically choppy and percussive, alternating with sections that are calmer rhythmically and dynamically but also unsettled, searching for tonal mooring. The fourth movement is more tormented and tempestuous still. The quiet third, with plenty of pizzicato, is “songful” in accordance with the odd tonal conventions set up by the composer, and much of the concluding Rondo is the same, except that it is anchored by a set of chords that seem recognizably diatonic, even hummable, as the piece reaches its final measures.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 5 in E Flat Major (“The Emperor”); Piano Sonata No. 28 in A Major (Hélène Grimaud, piano; Staatskapelle Dresden, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski)—The “Emperor” is Beethoven’s last and most renowned piano concerto, written in 1809. Lasting nearly forty minutes, it is symphonic in scale. The first-movement Allegro is a twenty-minute monument in its own right, with cadenza-like flourishes throughout but a pause for an extended cadenza in the middle section. Both the main and the subsidiary themes have a grandeur that has come to be thought of as typically Beethovenian, but when one pauses to consider the creative process, all the more remarkable that the composer conceived of this music while steadily losing his hearing, and while his adopted city of Vienna was under assault from Napoleon’s troops. The delicate second movement, with its arpeggiated piano figurations front and center, is said to be based on an Austrian pilgrim hymn, and one of its primar y motifs would seem to have inspired Leonard Bernstein in his composition of “Somewhere” from West Side Story. The slow movement leads directly into the concluding Rondo, which, if nowhere near as grand as the first-movement Allegro, engages in far more revelry as it revolves through its several themes and cadenzas. The Piano Sonata in A Major (1816), the first of Beethoven’s “late-period” sonatas, is in four movements, alternating two slow movements with longer and more complicated faster ones. The second movement, given the tempo marking of a “lively march,” is particularly intricate and quirky, subverting expectations (a march in dotted rhythms?) along the way; it is a mini-suite of sorts, complete with a slow section taking up a seemingly unrelated theme and a trio, not to mention jarring dissonances and dynamics at times. The finale, a fugue, stays with one basic theme but takes it through various transmutations in key, tempo, and texture, ending with an emphatic pounding of chords just as the piece appears to be headed for a gentle conclusion. Beethoven’s newfound interest in expressive freedom and establishing an intimate relationship with the performer prefigured the Romantic movement. The CD liner notes say little about the music itself, focusing on Hélène Grimaud’s intellectual approach (very French; the essay in the book jacket carries a swell title: “A Philosopher at the Piano”). But no one should be put off sheer enjoyment of the music.

HENRYK GÓRECKI, String Quartet No. 3, Pieśni Śpiewają (“… songs are sung”) (Kronos Quartet)—Henryk Górecki has assumed the odd status of a one-hit wonder in an era when classical composers, especially those writing in the modernist vein, can reasonably expect to be zero-hit wonders. Górecki’s Third Symphony proved surprisingly popular when Elektra/Nonesuch Records issued a recording of it in 1992, sixteen years after he composed it. All the more surprising, given how unrelentingly dark Górecki’s music is; people respond to the intensity of spiritual fervor in the work of this deeply Catholic Polish composer, as they do with the music of Arvo Pärt or John Tavener. Some have characterized Górecki as an accessible composer because, in his later years, his music is fairly simple, direct, and essentially tonal (though it stretches the bounds of tonality as well). Taking its good old time, existing almost outside any time signature, it has passages that are genuinely lyrical. But its repetition, the composer’s refusal to engage in much in the way of thematic development, and that unrelieved grimness and sense of anguish make it, to my ears, forbidding. The third string quartet is fifty minutes long, in five movements, but feels longer. The first two and last two movements are slow, deliberate, and moody, surrounding a much shorter, faster and livelier third movement that employs counterpoint and is like a jolt of electricity to a patient in cardiac arrest. To be fair, the middle portion of the fourth movement as well rises to a pitch of intensity that is stirring in its expressiveness, and the other movements on occasion rouse themselves from the murk. The second movement is most songful of the bunch. Otherwise, the composition is static and airless. As for the Kronos Quartet, which commissioned this piece in the mid-1990s, as it did Górecki’s first two string quartets, and performs it with fluidity, fluency and throbbing earnestness, I have always felt that they strive too self-consciously to be hip, didactically trying to shape their audiences’ listening habits by acting as an arbiter of good taste. Kind of like this reviewer!

JOSEPH HAYDN, Piano Sonatas (Marc-André Hamelin, piano)—Franz Joseph Haydn, best known for his symphonies and string quartets, was a pioneer of yet another fundamental form of classical composition: the piano sonata. He wrote dozens (the exact number seems to vary according to whom one consults); ten are laid out here by Hyperion on twin CDs for the delectation, sublimely played by the Philadelphia-based French Canadian pianist Marc-André Hamelin. The ten span a substantial portion of Haydn’s career, from the late 1760s to the 1790s. Most are in three movements: fast-slow-fast (often the finale is marked Presto, or very fast), but a couple of the shorter sonatas are just two movements long. The lineup is weighted toward the first disc, which presents three monumental, quasi-symphonic works, nos. 50, 46, and 52, separated by a couple of sophisticated trifles, the two-movement nos. 40 and 41. The opening movement of no. 52 in particular introduces a bedazzling set of permutations on the main theme. The second disc presents a couple of the earlier sonatas (the earliest were written for harpsichord, before the fortepiano was developed), the lightweight no. 43 (whose authorship by Haydn is disputed by some scholars), plus a couple of more substantial pieces: the genial and popular no. 37 and no. 32, which is by far the darkest in mood and the most urgently insistent, particularly in the pounding finale.

CARL NIELSEN, Clarinet & Flute Concertos; Wind Quintet (Emmanuel Pahud, flute; Sabine Meyer, clarinet; Stefan Schweigert, bassoon; Jonathan Kelly, oboe and cor anglais; Radek Baborák, French horn; Berlin Philarmonic, conducted by Simon Rattle)—From what limited exposure I have had to the music of Carl Nielsen, I have found it difficult to warm to, though he is finding a certain vogue with hip younger conductors. But this disc is all about woodwinds, and I had some school training in the clarinet. Denmark’s best-known composer was trained as a violinist and later played brass instruments. Nonetheless, in his composition, he showed a particular affinity for wind instruments, intending to compose a concerto for each member of his wind quintet, though he lived only long enough to complete the flute and clarinet concertos. The two-movement flute concerto, played here by Emmanuel Pahud, is the smoother and more readily ingratiating of the two concertos on the recording, though it has its outbursts of orchestral tempestuousness, too. The clarinet serves as a secondary soloist of sorts in some passages. The four-movement clarinet concerto does not similarly award such prominence to the flute, though the soloist does get some critical support from the bassoon in the third movement. It is knottier and was considered fiendishly challenging by the clarinetist it was written for, Aage Oxenvad. But the principal theme of its opening movement is actually quite easy to latch onto, as simple and basic as the cadenza toward the end is intricate and otherworldly. The brief final movement is by turns pastoral and rumbustious. Sabine Meyer plays with a gorgeous and (for those frustrated clarinet amateurs among us) enviable tone. The four-movement wind quintet (1922), which predates the flute concerto by three years and the clarinet concerto by six, is a tour de force of ensemble composition. It begins with a relaxed and genial conversation among the players in the Allegro movement, and progresses through a fleet and serene Menuet in which the main theme is carried by the clarinet and the secondary theme by the oboe. A darker-hued, fairly static Praeludium, the shortest movement on the disc, then leads into the final movement, a lengthy theme and variations, in which each instrument gets a star turn (in fact, all but the bassoon get more than one), with the most bizarre and showy soloing being given to the clarinet, before everyone reunites for a restatement of the theme.

SERGEI PROKOFIEV, Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor; MAURICE RAVEL, Piano Concerto in G Major (Yundi Li, piano; Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Seiji Ozawa)—Yundi Li is the “other” hot young Chinese pianist. Some critics feel he is a better performer and technician than the more widely known Lang Lang; I am not equipped to make the comparison. But Li has made an intriguing coupling of concertos here. Maurice Ravel was Sergei Prokofiev’s senior by sixteen years, but his Piano Concerto in G is a late work, completed in 1931 and receiving its first performance in 1932, whereas Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto (1913; orchestration revised in 1923) is from early in the composer’s career, predating the Ravel by nearly two decades. On this CD, the Ravel is a studio recording, while the Prokofiev was recorded live in the Great Hall at the Berlin Philharmonic’s home base, the Philharmonie. Prokofiev’s four-movement concerto is very much in the late Romantic vein and, at the same time, radically Modernist enough to have elicited a chorus of catcalls at its premiere at Pavlovsk and critical complaints subsequently. The opening theme of the Andantino movement that begins the piece is something that, in the quality of its poignant chromaticism and broad sweep, Sergei Rachmaninoff might well have penned. The brief Scherzo that follows is rapid-fire and motoric, as the pianist races up and down the keyboard. There is a sharp shift with the Intermezzo, which begins with an ominous chorus in the brass and winds and a grim, thumping martial beat, while the piano lays down oddly galumphing dotted-note patterns. The metronome gets reset to Autobahn speed for the Finale, marked “Allegro tempestoso,” though it eventually slows down, a couple of times. The second slow passage is extended and dwindles to a pianissimo and deceptively somnolent calm that is shattered with startling violence by the final attack, occurring about a minute before the piece ends, with an unrestrained flurry of pounding piano runs and counterpoint and orchestral blasts. The three-movement Ravel concerto sounds jazzy at various intervals, responding to the influence of George Gershwin, as evidenced in Ravel’s own remarks (“I have heard of George Gershwin's works and I find them intriguing.”). The concerto was written following his tour of America in 1928, during which he met and befriended Gershwin. The bluesy motifs, like something out of Porgy and Bess, and bent notes of the opening Allegramente are not what one associates with Ravel, though they are sparse and interspersed among much more typically delicate Impressionistic passages for piano. One can readily hear echoes of Ravel’s earlier compositions as well, from Ma Mere l’Oye (the “Mother Goose” suite) to La Alborada del Gracioso. The middle movement is far more sober and restrained, as the orchestra recedes into the background, or at least the middle distance, leaving ample room for glistening keyboard arpeggios, ending with a long trill in the right hand. The short Presto finale is much like the first movement, throwing in everything but the kitchen sink: whiplash sound effects, trumpet fanfares, blaring trombones, keening from the clarinets and flutes, and plenty of superfast runs from Li that veer daringly (for Ravel) off course tonally before recovering. With the last of these runs spinning to its conclusion, the orchestra brings the concerto to a close with the same emphatic tutti flourish with which it began the movement, repeated several times.

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH, Concerto No. 1 for Piano, Trumpet, and Strings; Concertino for Two Pianos in A Minor; Quintet for Piano and String Quartet in G Minor (Martha Argerich, piano, with Renaud Capuçon, violin; Lida Chen, viola; Mischa Maisky, cello; Alissa Margulis, violin; Sergei Nakariakov, trumpet; Lilya Zilberstein, piano; and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana, conducted by Alexander Vedernikov)—This live recording, part of the “Progetto Martha Argerich,” was made at the Lugano Festival in Switzerland in 2006 and features three compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich performed by the Argentine pianist in the company of others. Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto is, unusually, in effect a double concerto, although the trumpet part is subsidiary to the pianist’s; the composer had set out to write a trumpet concerto. Written in 1933, it predates the denunciation of Shostakovich’s music by the Soviet state by several years and is accordingly more high-spirited and mischievous than the other works on the disc, though these musical pratfalls and accidental notes appear only in the outer (allegro) movements; the Lento second movement, in 3/4, is more sober and (mostly) restrained; here Sergei Nakariakov’s trumpet appears only in the middle section and is muted. The first and fourth movements go through several shifts in mood and tempo, as elegantly stated themes give way to fingering busywork, which in turn devolves into keyboard banging, and the trumpet is by turns jaunty, cartoonish, or blaring, as if trying to stop the stream of notes. The Concertino for Two Pianos (1953) is generally regarded as the least substantial piece of the three offered here. In the course of nine and a half minutes, its single movement switches several times between Adagio and more rapid sections. Only in the faster mode, which predominates after the introductory first two and a half minutes, seems to make full use of the possibilities of dual pianists; Lilya Zilberstein partners with Argerich on the piece. In the Quintet for Piano and String Quartet (1940), a chastened Shostakovich is suppressing his more radical and sardonic impulses in favor of neoclassicism. The first appearance of the quartet, following a brief piano intro, is astonishingly coarse and grating in tone, but effect dissipates quickly. The lengthy Fugue movement is intensely lyrical but descends gradually into glumness and despair. The brooding spell is broken by the central Scherzo, rapid-fire and percussive and eschewing tonal beauty. The Intermezzo that follows, marked lento, is similar in tenor to the Fugue, growing in intensity and insistence toward the end. This buildup of grief makes the plucky lightheartedness and sense of play in the Finale all the more surprising; the mood swings may have been precarious throughout, yet the drama subsides in the warmth of gentle affirmation.

HEITOR VILLA-LOBOS, Bachianas Brasileiras; Mômoprecóce; Guitar Concerto (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Enrique Bátiz; New Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy; London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Jesús López-Cobos)—The Bachianas Brasileiras are Heitor Villa-Lobos’s most famous compositions, presented complete here on three CDs, together with his children’s piece Mômoprecóce and his Guitar Concerto. There are nine of them, composed during the middle of Villa-Lobos’s career, from 1930 to 1945, corresponding to the years Getúlio Vargas was in power (the first time around), and each one is quite distinct. The unifying element is that each one attempts a synthesis of classical forms employed by Johann Sebastian Bach (prelude, fugue, fantasia, gigue, chorale, toccata, etc.) with Brazilian popular music styles. Just as it is not necessary to have plotted the entire correspondence between Ulysses and the chapters of the Odyssey to have some appreciation of the former, so the listener doesn’t need to know much about Brazilian folk of the early twentieth century or to be a Bach scholar to derive pleasure from hearing these; they are hardly dry academic exercises. The first Bachiana is scored for eight cellos, and that is not the only surprise. The opening movement at least sounds anguished and overwrought, not the sunny stereotype Brazil conjures for most Northerners. Bachiana No. 2, the first of four (the others are No. 4, No. 7, and No. 8) written for full orchestra, is immediately different in setting and mood, with sultry bent notes in the sax and trombone solos and passages that sound like they belong to an epic soundtrack, while others are jaunty or conspiratorial. No. 3 takes the form of a piano concerto, featuring Jorge Federico Osorio, and seems far closer to Sergei Rachmaninoff in spirit—a “Rachiana” rather than a Bachiana. No. 5, which is very short (as are No. 6 and No. 9), is the only one taking song form, here sung by the operatic soprano Barbara Hendricks. No. 6 is scored as a concise flute-bassoon duet (Lisa Hansen on flute; Susan Bell, bassoon). No. 9 was intended for wordless voices but is presented here as transcribed by Villa-Lobos for orchestra. Of the orchestral Bachianas, No. 4 reaches closest to grandeur, although its individual movements (excepting the prelude) were cobbled together from piano compositions Villa-Lobos wrote for other purposes. Nos. 7 and 8 each sandwich two dance numbers between a more lugubrious prelude and fugue; in No. 7 both dances are fleet, whereas the Modinha movement of No. 8 takes quite awhile to get off the ground, but it is followed up by one of the most vigorous and memorable movements, the Tocata/Catira Batida “stamping dance” (most movements have both a Bachian and a Brazilian title). Mômoprecóce, written for children at a time when children’s pleasures were necessarily simpler than today yet at the same time a good deal more substantive and sophisticated, betrays its origins as a piano cycle, called Carnaval das Crianças (“Children’s Carnival); although scored for piano and orchestra as one lengthy movement, it has several distinct sections, or episodes, with shifting moods. The Guitar Concerto, in three movements, was originally written for Andrés Segovia, and here the solo is given over to Ángel Romero. Segovia complained of a lack of virtuosity in the composition, at which point Villa-Lobos tacked on an extended cadenza to the end of the second movement—which even without it was the one portion of the composition where the orchestra takes a decidedly subservient role—nearly doubling its length. Altogether, the piece is beautifully done, limpid and precise, and shows Villa-Lobos’s skill in writing for the guitar.

ANTONIO VIVALDI, The Four Seasons; Concerto in G Minor Op. 12, No.1 (Sarah Chang, violin; Orpheus Chamber Orchestra)—What is there to say about The Four Seasons, one of the best-known works in the repertory? Not all the twelve movements are quite as familiar: the first two movements of the “Summer” concerto, the middle movement of “Autumn,” and the last two movements of “Winter” are certainly not as ubiquitous. Particularly striking is the Adagio movement of “Summer”—languid, even torpid, and soft as a July evening breeze, it is nonetheless repeatedly interrupted by monotone bass rumbles of thunder in the string ensemble, presaging further outbursts of heavy weather in the famous Presto finale. The Four Seasons is a set of four concertos written in 1723 and part of a larger group of twelve Vivaldi called The Contest of Harmony and Invention. There are two major-key (“Spring” and “Autumn”) concertos alternating with two minor-key concertos, each with three movements that are essentially fast-slow-fast. The original orchestration was for violin solo, string quartet, and basso continuo, a role generally assumed (as on this disc) by the harpsichord. On this EMI Classics recording, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra supplies the harpsichord, played by John Gibbons, and essentially quadruples the string quartet, with four first violinsts, four second violinists, four violists, three cellists, and a bassist. Philadelphia native and former prodigy Sarah Chang, who has been with the EMI label from the start (while still in grade school, in fact) solos with the self-assurance of one long accustomed to this beloved piece while still preserving the sense of wonder for those hearing it in full for the first time. The CD jacket presents intact a series of sonnets, of unkown authorship (some would like to believe the composer himself wrote them), that Vivaldi intended to accompany each season and each movement. The disc is rounded out by Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in G Minor, Op. 12, No.1. Written six years after The Four Seasons, it is similar to them in spirit and form, with a serene Largo sandwiched between spirited but decorous Allegro movements.