Aimee Mann, Charmer

Few songwriters today can dig into the messy guts and gristle of relationships the way Aimee Mann does and still sound so remarkably upbeat and playful. Sure, we can chalk it up to the resolve that comes with maturity; at a youthful 52, Mann has carved out her own indie pop niche where strength, self-reliance and a placid disdain for victimhood drive the narrative (even “Save Me,” her signature hit from the 1999 film Magnolia, rang more like a call-to-arms than a plea for help). But she’s also got a keen poetic knack for observation — augmented, at times, by a healthy dose of sarcasm — that makes her much more than just an “empowered woman” troubadour.

Charmer, her first full-length since 2008′s @#%&*! Smilers, pivots on the theme of manipulation — how people do it to one another and, more deliciously, how Mann might be doing it to us. She hits all the right notes on the opening title cut — a candy-coated throwback to The Cars (recalling her collegiate ties to Boston) that straddles the line between finger-wagging and self-indictment: “When you’re a charmer, you hate yourself/ A victim of sideshow hypnosis like everyone else,” she sings, with a nudge and a wink. Throughout the album, Mann’s lightness colors songs of repudiation (“Disappeared”), schadenfreude (“Soon Enough”) and dangerous enablers (“Living A Lie,” a catchy duet with The Shins’ James Mercer) that could easily feel like a downer in anyone else’s hands. If that isn’t enough, Charmer is also an impeccably-made rock record; backed by a well-grizzled band of close friends and session vets, Mann seems to revel in showing off her A-game, but she’s never rock-star distant. She’s the indie goddess we can still hold close, and there’s a considerable degree of charm in that.

Six Degrees of Colin Stetson’s New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges

Besides touring with Bon Iver and Arcade Fire, Colin Stetson does solo gigs at rock and jazz festivals, playing unaccompanied bass saxophone pieces with big-beat power, clear forms studded with catchy riffs and sequencer-like patterns, and an enormous sound befitting a giant horn. He pulls it off using a battery of techniques from jazz and improvised music, notably circular breathing (to keep blowing continuously, even while inhaling), multiphonics (singing one note, playing another), slap-tonguing, controlled squeals, and split-tones that teeter between pitches. He also exploits incidental sounds: the brushes-on-snare sniff of drawing air through the nose, the slap of keypads on metal. His execution is a marvel of coordination; Stetson makes ridiculously complex stuff sound like it plays itself. He records the horn in real time with multiple close and distant mikes, then manipulates the mix to spotlight specific effects. For all that, the music’s primal, suggesting ritual dances around a fire on the plains. “Three Blind Mice” lurks behind “A Dream of Water,” narrated by Laurie Anderson in late-night-storyteller mode. My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden sings Blind Willie Johnson’s “Lord I Just Can’t Keep from Crying” over a didgeridoo-y drone. Whirling worlds intersect. (Volume one’s a winner too.)

Perfecting Imperfection: On the Ideas Behind the First Bikini Kill Record

20 years ago this October, Bikini Kill released our self-titled first EP. Recently, the rights to our records returned to us, so we started Bikini Kill Records as a way to document our work on our own terms. Our full catalog was re-released digitally in July. The physical reissues will come out one at a time, in special anniversary editions that aim to contextualize each release. The first 12″ EP comes out this fall.

At the end of Bikini Kill’s first US tour in June 1991, Ian MacKaye offered us a free day at Inner Ear Studios after he saw us play at the legendary punk venue DC Space. We were touring on borrowed equipment and hadn’t slept in at least three days, but soon found ourselves in a real studio making our first record with someone we admired. It was a great opportunity, but it was also a little intimidating: Recording studios are traditionally male-dominated environments, and we had little-to-no experience in that setting.

Listening to the record now, our discomfort is audible. Kathleen nails it, but the rest of us sound a little hesitant. Ian remembers us being nervous; that was probably due to our decision to record live, without overdubs, in as few takes as possible. But that wasn’t the only reason. As much as we were thrilled to be given access to the tools necessary to make a record, I remember deliberately wanting to create a document that emphasized process over product.

In short: Bikini Kill wanted to inspire other girls to start bands. We left our mistakes on the record because we wanted girls to listen to it and imagine themselves in a recording studio. Like the early D.C. hardcore bands that recorded at Inner Ear before us, we also left in the bits between songs where the singer talks to the engineer as a way to document the process of making a record. We wanted you to hear us talking in the studio so that you might be inspired to make your own record. We didn’t want to gloss over anything. That was our aesthetic. It was political.

In an article I wrote at the time for my fanzine Jigsaw, I called that technique “the impetus of imperfection.” You could also call it “daring to suck.” It’s a way to demystify the myth of perfection that a more polished product perpetuates, and it’s also a way to say, “Hey! You at home! You can make a record, too! You don’t have to be a prodigy. It’s not about that. It’s about figuring out what is possible with the tools you have and the place you’re living in. You don’t even have to wait until you know how to play your instrument. Just start a band, play a show, make a record.” There’s a part on the Rites of Spring album where bass player Mike Fellows misses a note. As a kid listening to that record in my bedroom on repeat, that mistake opened up a whole world to me. It made me imagine the space where the band recorded, and it made me feel OK about making a mistake at my first recording session with my first band, The Go Team.

Our visual aesthetic corresponded to that idea. You can tell we laid out the records on a Xerox machine, stayed up all night, worked under fluorescent lights. We didn’t have our lettering typeset by a professional. We did it ourselves using old typewriters, Sharpies, rub-off letters and stencils. We crossed stuff out and rewrote it and left it looking messy. Words fell off the page and got taped back on. You can see the tape, you can see our fingerprints and you can see coffee stains. We used snapshots and blown-up color copies. We look weird. You can imagine the photographer and create a story around the situation the photo captures. You can see the dots, you can see the process the printer used and you can see the lines we drew on the page to guide us. When we used a professional quality photograph, we made sure it was off-center, so you could imagine someone laying it out by hand, in a hurry. Nothing is straight. Everything is crooked. We didn’t want our relationship to the means of production to be invisible. We wanted to incite participation.

The first Bikini Kill record is an insurrection. We didn’t set out to create a masterpiece. We weren’t interested in perfection. We didn’t want you to feel satisfied listening to a record. We were agitators. We wanted all girls in all towns to start their own bands. We thought if that happened, the world would change.

Unfortunately, it didn’t happen. Did the world change? You tell me.

Bill Frisell, Solos: The Jazz Sessions

Bill Frisell has always been a guitarist of unflappable grace and homespun wisdom, spooling out luscious textures with a deliberate, unmistakable drawl that is an anodyne to tumult and chaos. The revelation of Solos: The Jazz Sessions is that he is able to sustain that gentle luminosity when surrounded by churchlike quiet.

Recorded in a Toronto church in April, 2004, as part of a Canadian television series that filmed solo performances and interviews with prominent jazz musicians, Sessions leads off with Frisell originals ranging from the plainspoken “Keep Your Eyes Open” from Nashville to the effects-laden “Boubacar” from The Intercontinentals, a sweetly simmered goulash of foot-pedaled, knob-turned loops of blues and country licks. Then a string of classic covers ensue, broken only by the conjoining of Frisell’s “Poem For Eva” with the Carter-and-Cash clan’s “Wildwood Flower.” Naturally, Frisell tweaks expectations, delivering a relatively straightforward (by Frisell’s standards anyway) folk rendition of Bob Dylan’s scathing “Masters of War,” while taking liberties with the Appalachian standard “Shenandoah” that include a sudden, metallic eruption that explodes like the northern lights and a peekaboo approach to the familiar melody that lasts until the nine-minute mark.

Last, but not least, are the interview snippets, which are brief but generally valuable, especially the first one, in which Frisell explains why he repeats his song choices so frequently — to remove intellectual impediments until “they feel like a part of my bloodstream.” Mission accomplished on the songs performed here.

New This Week: Bob Dylan, Avett Bros & More

The fall avalanche has begun! After several weeks with only a handful of scraps, we have a veritable embarrassment of riches. So Many Records. So Many Records. Here’s what we like, you tell us what we missed in the comments.

Bob Dylan, Tempest: Bob Dylan’s 35th (!!!) album features the biggest epic of his career — a 14-minute song about the sinking of the Titanic. I have no room in my life for American classic rock pretty much ever, and yet I always make room for Bob Dylan. He remains as punk rock as classic rock can get. I mean that! I can write 5,000 words explaining why, but I’ll spare you. Says Andy Beta of the Recommended new record:

Tempest finds Dylan at his most mortal, both physically — his phlegmatic voice is gritty enough to abrade paint and out-carnie Tom Waits — and lyrically. Hundreds of dead bodies float in the ocean, the gunned-down John Lennon gets remembered on the maudlin “Roll On John,” while the noir of “Tin Angel” ends in a grisly murder-suicide.

The Avett Brothers, The Carpenter: North Carolina darlings follow up their breakthrough with a collection of sad slow-growers. Is it me, or does it kinda feel like Mumford & Sons ate their lunch? Which is lame, because the Avetts rock a lot harder. Jill Mapes says:

On their latest album The Carpenter, the North Carolina group stares down mortality with a frankness not uncommon to country outlaws. Although it is informed in part by the fact that bassist Bob Crawford’s young daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor, the darkness of the acoustic dirges (“The Once and Future Carpenter,” “Life”) are tempered by poppy, piano-laden songs like “Pretty Girl From Michigan” that hardly qualify as folk or Americana

Raveonettes, The Observator:
GARAGE. It’s a new Raveonettes record! Bill Murphy says:

Observator, their latest, channels that same restless, exploratory energy from their past work into an exquisitely crafted suite of moody pop songs that swing between isolation and ecstasy. It’s a richly textured album that shimmers with shoegaze goth (“The Enemy,” with Foo taking the lead in her wispy tenor), southern Cali psych-pop (“She Owns the Streets”) and even a dab of Nilsson-ish piano whimsy (the meditative single “Observations”).

The Jam, Extras: Well, this seems crucial. 1992 compilation of B-Sides and rarities by one of the greatest British bands of all time. It helps that I am in the middle of a hardcore Jam phase right now. Recommended

The Helio Sequence, Negotiations: The fifth set from Portland indie rockers The Helio Sequence. Michaelangelo Matos says:

Musically, guitarist-singer Brandon Summers and one-time Modest Mouse drummer Benjamin Weikel haven’t changed all that much. They still ache with longing over slow-to-medium-fast tempos, still write glacially pretty guitar parts, and still nail that autumnal sweet spot that a lot of older indie fans like to nestle into deeply.

Gallows, Gallows: The sophomore release from London hardcore punks. I loved loved loved their debut, Orchestra of Wolves, but it’s been a minute since I caught up with them. Says Ian Gittins:

Since their debut, the uncompromising rage-rockers have since lost their talismanic front man, Frank Carter, replacing him with Wade MacNeil of Toronto thrashers Alexisonfire, but neither of these setbacks looks to have dimmed their creative fervor. Back on an indie label where they always belonged, Gallows once again hit us with the sharp end of their visceral, serrated racket.

TOY, TOY: The British indiepop quintet offer up a thrilling debut album. Andrew Perry says:

“Colours Running Out” introduces a sound-palette of heavily-treated shoegaze-y guitars, rooted by quietly metronomic drumming and an irresistibly acidic vocal melody. Through the ensuing tracks, the listener is tossed between poppy bliss and trancey disorientation. “Lose My Way” and “My Heart Skips A Beat” verge on a New Order-esque stateliness, bittersweet reflections on love gone wrong couched in beautiful, ineffably catchy music.

Calexico, Algiers: Calexico relocated to New Orleans for their strong and surprising seventh LP. Says Sharon O’Connell:

Opener “Epic” is swarthy and insistent with a great pop groove and the muscular “Splitter” could well satisfy Springsteen fans, while it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine more adventurous Kings Of Leon devotees warming to “Maybe On Monday.” With an international guest list of empathetic instrumentalists and vocalists, Calexico have delivered a record as strong, soulful and surprising as their adopted city itself. Not bad, 22 years on.

King Cyst, Real Pussy: Underwater Peoples comes through again with another album of loose, wobbling psych-indie, four-track to the core. Sounds taped-together and delightfully shambling. Fans of the uber-avant, this is for you.

Amanda Palmer, Theater is Evil: Everyone’s favorite doyenne of the dark returns with a batch of crowdfunded rock & roll. Rid your mind of the cabaret days of yore — this is taut, tense, guitar-powered rock.

Dan Melchior, The Backward Path: More great experimental folk from DM — lotsa buzzing, lotsa weird noises in between splashes of outre folk music.

Turbo Fruits, Butter: Rip-roaring rock & roll from Turbo Fruits! It finds an unlikely middle ground between motorcycle rock & rollers and scuzzbucket punk rock. Lotsa growl, lotsa sneer. Recommended

Various Artists, ’60s Garage Nuggets: I’m having kind of a retro phase at the moment, so this comp could not possibly arrive at a better time. For me. You can guess from the title what you’ve got here — lotsa incense, lotsa peppermints, lotsa flangey guitars. Recommended

DMX, Undisputed: I’m gonna be honest with you, despite what the title says, I think there might actually be some disputing going on here. X still sounds rip-yer-throat-out fierce, though he’d be better served by some stronger beats.

LifeSavers Underground, PTSD: The first LSU record in God knows how long. Brian Doidge is back in the fold, and Knott billed this as, sonically, the “heaviest” LSU record ever. Which it certainly is. A concept record about the soldiers who are returning from the Iraq war with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I haven’t spend enough time with this to have an opinion of it.

Will Johnson, Scorpion: New solo record from Will from Centr-O-Matic is as arid and spooky and haunted as we’ve come to expect from him. Brittle folk songs topped with Johnson’s parched, crackling voice. Longtime fans will find much to love.

ZZ Top, La Futura: New one from ZZ Top! Growly, greasy, grizzled down-south rock & roll that is everything you’d expect from The Top and more. Do people call them The Top? I just did. Ol’ Double-Z’s. The Top. The Toppers.

Field Report, Field Report: Nice, steady folk-type stuff — gentle melodies, fluttering acoustic guitars and warm, rich pianos. Fans of the National, this might be your jam.

Serpentine Path, Serpentine Path: Unearthly Trance called it quit after a dozen years, a fact that makes me completely miserable. If you haven’t heard V, I would recommend you do so immediately. Fortunately, its members went on to form Serpentine Path. Of their new record, Jon Wiederhorn says:

Serpentine Path is packed with the requisite trudging tempos, stomping beats, down tuned riffs, repetitive rhythms and feral death metal howls that made Unearthly Trance an unsettling treat. Even so, there are a few sonic frills between Serpentine Path ‘s unrelenting showers of sludge.

Seapony, Failing: Lovely, breezey indiepop from these Pacific Northwesterners that sounds like the kind of thing you’d find on 7″ at Rough Trade in the late ’80s. Which is one of the highest compliments I know how to pay!

Tom Tom Club, Downtown Rockers: New one from Tom Tom Club sounds like it picks up right where they left off. Lots of synths and affectless delivery with the occasional neon-blue squiggle of guitar.

Dave Sumner’s Jazz Picks

Nice drop this week, with a variety of sounds from Jazz’s vast breadth of sub-genres. Piano makes the strongest appearance throughout, though it’s the more experimentally inclined recordings that, potentially, could leave the more lasting impression. Overall, a fun week of discovery. Let’s begin…

Michael Feinberg, The Elvin Jones Project: Bassist Michael Feinberg’s inspiration for this album was the result of his observations of the relationships various Coltrane bassists had with drummer Elvin Jones. For this session, he has drummer-extraordinaire Bill Hart sitting in “Elvin’s chair,” and accompanied by George Garzone on sax, Tim Hagans on trumpet, and Leo Genovese on piano (with a guest appearance by Alex Wintz on guitar). A wonderful album of beautifully textured music, and one hundred percent jazz, top-shelf vintage. Pick of the Week.

Samo Salamon, Eleven Stories: Guitarist Salamon has been terrifically productive, putting out an album a year (or more) for the last decade, and it’s been nice to track both the development of his personal sound, as well as his experiments along the way. This album has him in a trio with Michel Godard (tuba, electric bass) and Roberto Dani (drums). It’s got the early Bill Frisell ECM surreality, an introspective deliberate tempo, and moments that flirt with avant-garde and folk. A cerebral album that is great for sitting back on a rainy day and just closing your eyes. Highly Recommended.

Fred Hersch Trio, Alive at the Vanguard: Live date with Fred Hersch on piano, John Hébert on bass, and Eric McPherson: drums. Double-disc release from Hersch’s gig at the Vanguard. Music crackles like a sparkler on a 4th of July evening… beautiful to look at, full of life, and might just singe you a bit if you get too close. A solid album from the jazz vet. Recommended.

The Cloudmakers Trio with Ralph Alessi, Live at the Pizza Express: Featuring a trio of vital participants of the UK jazz scene (Jim Hart on vibes, Michael Janisch on bass, and Dave Smith on drums), and joined by NYC trumpeter Alessi, this is a set of modern jazz recorded live at the Pizza Express, a venue that brings all types of great modern jazz to the public. Lots of stop-and-go motions, angular lines, and wavering interludes. For the most part, sounds more like a studio recording than a live one. Live music energy doesn’t emanate from the speakers, but, conversely, the sound quality is pretty solid.

Flu(o), Encore Remuants: A quintet of trumpet, guitar, drums, bass, and piano. Modern jazz-rock fusion, often heavier on the latter of those two elements. Electronic effects, mostly for the sake of textural dissonance. Some interesting moments. I don’t know if Cuong Vu was the father of this type of jazz-rock fusion, but this album sounds as if inspired by him.

World Kora Trio, Korazon: Folk-jazz album, very cheerful and buoyant. With Eric Longworth on electric cello, Cherif Soumano on the kora, and Jean-Lu di Fraya on percussion (and some vocals). Rustic music that sometimes drifts, sometimes swings. Too pretty. Fans of the Ablaye Cissoko/Volker Goetze collaborations should be downloading this album.

Moskus, Salmesykkel: Young piano trio with a nice take on the Nordic jazz sound, mixing it with some Indie-rock elements. Most tracks are peaceful and serene, others get a little dizzy with allusion to free jazz, and others have a nice steady beat. Just a real nice album, moody, with interludes of rising up and stomping about. Find of the Week.

Antonis Ladopoulos & Sami Amiris, Phos: Pleasant duo of tenor sax and piano. Nothing earth-shattering, but a sax-piano duo album often brings a sublime understatement to the table, and this recording gives plenty of that. Always good to have an album like this for those lazy Sunday afternoons when all you feel like doing is shutting yourself off from the world and drifting quietly in place.

Sam Newsome, The Art Of the Soprano Vol. 1: A solo soprano sax recording, much in the vein of Steve Lacy’s approach to soloing. Former member of Terence Blanchard’s Quintet, Newsome switched from tenor to soprano, then delved into the musics of various geographies, before, now, settling into the role of solo performer. Cerebral music that explores sound and possibilities therein. Good stuff.

Bill Frisell, Solos: The Jazz Sessions: Another in the solos series, this time featuring guitar great Bill Frisell. The solos series come from a dvd that has various musicians alone at their instrument, playing songs from the past as they talk about the music and their past and their theories on music. Part autobiography, part interview, and 100% undiluted Frisell guitar.

Charles Gayle Trio, Look Up: Recorded back in 1994, live, it’s a high energy performance of Charles Gayle on tenor sax and bass clarinet, Michael Bisio on bass, and Michael Wimberley on drums. Gayle’s music is like a conflagration of pure free jazz intensity. Add in a some spoken (shouted?) word action, and the voltage amps up even more. I love that the ESP Disk label is releasing some of these older live recordings.

George Cables, My Muse: Trio date with George Cables on piano, Essiet Essiet on bass, and Victor Lewis on drums. One of the living legends of the jazz scene, Cables brings a sublimely understated piano jazz album. Nothing complicated, just a pianist at home on the instrument he’s spent a lifetime getting to know. Tracks like “But He Knows” make me think I’ll be enjoying this album even more in a couple months… kind of album that accretes goodwill at an imperceptible rate until, suddenly, it never leaves the stereo.

Alexis Cole, I Carry Your Heart: Alexis Cole works with the Jeremy Hahn trio, and along with help from guests Pat Labarbera and Eric Alexander, puts lyrics to the music of Pepper Adams. Nice hop to the music, a classic jazz vocals album sound. Tasteful accompaniment, and easy to like. Very happy with the inclusion of Alexander and Labarbera… this is music they can sink their teeth into.

Pet Shop Boys, Elysium

Anyone who knows Pet Shop Boys merely by its droll and flamboyant live spectacle is only getting a partial glimpse of the duo’s genius. Since the mid ’80s, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe have taken great pains to create records which are equal parts sophisticated, sentimental and pointed. Elysium, the group’s first proper studio album since 2009′s Yes, is no different: The record contains acerbic social critique (“In the sea of negativity/ I’m statue of liberty,” is how “Ego Music” skewers the false humility of modern pop stars), elegant wordplay (“I’m invisible/ It’s queer/ How gradually/ I’ve become/ Invisible”) and gushing romantic sentiments (the settle-for-me exhortation of “Give It A Go,” the longing-come-true “Memory Of The Future”).

Produced by long-time Kanye West collaborator Andrew Dawson (who also engineered fun.’s Some Nights and Beyonce’s 4), Elysium is more retro-sounding and subdued than the group’s recent efforts. Watery electropop, percolating slow jams and nuanced effects — stacked vocals, moody keyboard droning, the occasional ’80s-caliber voice or synth flourish — coexist with moments of unabashed schmaltz (the string-swept “Requiem in Denim and Leopardskin,” piano-laden ’60s-pop homage “Give It A Go”) and even mournful acoustic guitar (“Breathing Space”). Even the Pet Shop Boys-grade dancefloor classics — such as the alarming disco surge “Face Like That” or the frazzled synthpop spurt “Ego Music” — aren’t quite as peppy.

What makes Elysium so affecting, however, is its reflective tone. “Invisible” laments the painful reality of aging out of youthful frivolity, while “Leaving” discusses lessons learned from — and finding hope in — a failed relationship. And then there’s the sublime “Your Early Stuff,” which lambastes clueless music fans who don’t take veteran musicians seriously. Lyrics such as “I still quite like some of your early stuff/ It’s bad in a good way, if you know what I mean” gradually segue into the backhanded punchline, “Anyway, what’s your name?” It’s vintage Pet Shop Boys wit you can take as both a sly nod to the band’s detractors — and as a defiant statement of relevance.

Dave Matthews Band, Away From The World

Is Dave Matthews — the middle-of-the-road, millions-in-the-bank music industry titan — relatable? As he himself once said, “Bartender, please.” It’s to his and his band’s strength then, that on Away From The World, DMB’s latest album, and its first in more than a decade with producer Steve Lilywhite (who oversaw their successful mid-’90s LPs), the 45-year-old casts himself as just another mid-life everyman on the brink, a far-more identifiable character than his amphitheater-packing, bro-friendly reputation might suggest.

Matthews, whose voice remains the same gruff, lithe and divisive instrument it’s long been, checks into the clinic early. “Sometimes I feel like I’m losing my mind,” he confesses on album-opener “Broken Things.” Soon enough he’s a stone presence in the arms of a lover (“The Riff”) and a sweet-talking chump forced to count his chickens (“Sweet”). Rhythmically, the band — with saxophonist Jeff Coffin replacing the late Leroi Moore — stays within its time-tested lane: oiled-up NOLA funk (“Belly Belly Nice”) bumping uglies with wind-swept jazz (“Snow Outside”). But Matthews, more than his mates, reps change we can believe in. “Don’t waste time trying to be something you’re not,” he proselytizes on epic closer “Drunken Solider.” They’re words he’s evidently taken to heart.

New This Week: Bob Dylan, Avett Bros & More

The fall avalanche has begun! After several weeks with only a handful of scraps, we have a veritable embarrassment of riches. So Many Records. So Many Records. Here’s what we like, you tell us what we missed in the comments.

Bob Dylan, Tempest: Bob Dylan’s 35th (!!!) album features the biggest epic of his career — a 14-minute song about the sinking of the Titanic. I have no room in my life for American classic rock pretty much ever, and yet I always make room for Bob Dylan. He remains as punk rock as classic rock can get. I mean that! I can write 5,000 words explaining why, but I’ll spare you. Says Andy Beta of theRecommended new record:

Tempest finds Dylan at his most mortal, both physically — his phlegmatic voice is gritty enough to abrade paint and out-carnie Tom Waits — and lyrically. Hundreds of dead bodies float in the ocean, the gunned-down John Lennon gets remembered on the maudlin “Roll On John,” while the noir of “Tin Angel” ends in a grisly murder-suicide.

The Avett Brothers, The Carpenter: North Carolina darlings follow up their breakthrough with a collection of sad slow-growers. Is it me, or does it kinda feel like Mumford & Sons ate their lunch? Which is lame, because the Avetts rock a lot harder. Jill Mapes says:

On their latest album The Carpenter, the North Carolina group stares down mortality with a frankness not uncommon to country outlaws. Although it is informed in part by the fact that bassist Bob Crawford’s young daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor, the darkness of the acoustic dirges (“The Once and Future Carpenter,” “Life”) are tempered by poppy, piano-laden songs like “Pretty Girl From Michigan” that hardly qualify as folk or Americana

Raveonettes, The Observator:
GARAGE. It’s a new Raveonettes record! Bill Murphy says:

Observator, their latest, channels that same restless, exploratory energy from their past work into an exquisitely crafted suite of moody pop songs that swing between isolation and ecstasy. It’s a richly textured album that shimmers with shoegaze goth (“The Enemy,” with Foo taking the lead in her wispy tenor), southern Cali psych-pop (“She Owns the Streets”) and even a dab of Nilsson-ish piano whimsy (the meditative single “Observations”).

The Jam, Extras: Well, this seems crucial. 1992 compilation of B-Sides and rarities by one of the greatest British bands of all time. It helps that I am in the middle of a hardcore Jam phase right now. Recommended

The Helio Sequence, Negotiations: The fifth set from Portland indie rockers The Helio Sequence. Michaelangelo Matos says:

Musically, guitarist-singer Brandon Summers and one-time Modest Mouse drummer Benjamin Weikel haven’t changed all that much. They still ache with longing over slow-to-medium-fast tempos, still write glacially pretty guitar parts, and still nail that autumnal sweet spot that a lot of older indie fans like to nestle into deeply.

Gallows, Gallows: The sophomore release from London hardcore punks. I loved loved loved their debut, Orchestra of Wolves, but it’s been a minute since I caught up with them. Says Ian Gittins:

Since their debut, the uncompromising rage-rockers have since lost their talismanic front man, Frank Carter, replacing him with Wade MacNeil of Toronto thrashers Alexisonfire, but neither of these setbacks looks to have dimmed their creative fervor. Back on an indie label where they always belonged, Gallows once again hit us with the sharp end of their visceral, serrated racket.

TOY, TOY: The British indiepop quintet offer up a thrilling debut album. Andrew Perry says:

“Colours Running Out” introduces a sound-palette of heavily-treated shoegaze-y guitars, rooted by quietly metronomic drumming and an irresistibly acidic vocal melody. Through the ensuing tracks, the listener is tossed between poppy bliss and trancey disorientation. “Lose My Way” and “My Heart Skips A Beat” verge on a New Order-esque stateliness, bittersweet reflections on love gone wrong couched in beautiful, ineffably catchy music.

Calexico, Algiers: Calexico relocated to New Orleans for their strong and surprising seventh LP. Says Sharon O’Connell:

Opener “Epic” is swarthy and insistent with a great pop groove and the muscular “Splitter” could well satisfy Springsteen fans, while it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine more adventurous Kings Of Leon devotees warming to “Maybe On Monday.” With an international guest list of empathetic instrumentalists and vocalists, Calexico have delivered a record as strong, soulful and surprising as their adopted city itself. Not bad, 22 years on.

King Cyst, Real Pussy: Underwater Peoples comes through again with another album of loose, wobbling psych-indie, four-track to the core. Sounds taped-together and delightfully shambling. Fans of the uber-avant, this is for you.

Amanda Palmer, Theater is Evil: Everyone’s favorite doyenne of the dark returns with a batch of crowdfunded rock & roll. Rid your mind of the cabaret days of yore — this is taut, tense, guitar-powered rock.

Dan Melchior, The Backward Path: More great experimental folk from DM — lotsa buzzing, lotsa weird noises in between splashes of outre folk music.

Turbo Fruits, Butter: Rip-roaring rock & roll from Turbo Fruits! It finds an unlikely middle ground between motorcycle rock & rollers and scuzzbucket punk rock. Lotsa growl, lotsa sneer. Recommended

Various Artists, ’60s Garage Nuggets: I’m having kind of a retro phase at the moment, so this comp could not possibly arrive at a better time. For me. You can guess from the title what you’ve got here — lotsa incense, lotsa peppermints, lotsa flangey guitars. Recommended

DMX, Undisputed: I’m gonna be honest with you, despite what the title says, I think there might actually be some disputing going on here. X still sounds rip-yer-throat-out fierce, though he’d be better served by some stronger beats.

LifeSavers Underground, PTSD: The first LSU record in God knows how long. Brian Doidge is back in the fold, and Knott billed this as, sonically, the “heaviest” LSU record ever. Which it certainly is. A concept record about the soldiers who are returning from the Iraq war with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I haven’t spend enough time with this to have an opinion of it.

Will Johnson, Scorpion: New solo record from Will from Centr-O-Matic is as arid and spooky and haunted as we’ve come to expect from him. Brittle folk songs topped with Johnson’s parched, crackling voice. Longtime fans will find much to love.

ZZ Top, La Futura: New one from ZZ Top! Growly, greasy, grizzled down-south rock & roll that is everything you’d expect from The Top and more. Do people call them The Top? I just did. Ol’ Double-Z’s. The Top. The Toppers.

Field Report, Field Report: Nice, steady folk-type stuff — gentle melodies, fluttering acoustic guitars and warm, rich pianos. Fans of the National, this might be your jam.

Serpentine Path, Serpentine Path: Unearthly Trance called it quit after a dozen years, a fact that makes me completely miserable. If you haven’t heard V, I would recommend you do so immediately. Fortunately, its members went on to form Serpentine Path. Of their new record, Jon Wiederhorn says:

Serpentine Path is packed with the requisite trudging tempos, stomping beats, down tuned riffs, repetitive rhythms and feral death metal howls that made Unearthly Trance an unsettling treat. Even so, there are a few sonic frills between Serpentine Path ‘s unrelenting showers of sludge.

Seapony, Failing: Lovely, breezey indiepop from these Pacific Northwesterners that sounds like the kind of thing you’d find on 7″ at Rough Trade in the late ’80s. Which is one of the highest compliments I know how to pay!

Tom Tom Club, Downtown Rockers: New one from Tom Tom Club sounds like it picks up right where they left off. Lots of synths and affectless delivery with the occasional neon-blue squiggle of guitar.

Dave Sumner’s Jazz Picks

Nice drop this week, with a variety of sounds from Jazz’s vast breadth of sub-genres. Piano makes the strongest appearance throughout, though it’s the more experimentally inclined recordings that, potentially, could leave the more lasting impression. Overall, a fun week of discovery. Let’s begin…

Michael Feinberg, The Elvin Jones Project: Bassist Michael Feinberg’s inspiration for this album was the result of his observations of the relationships various Coltrane bassists had with drummer Elvin Jones. For this session, he has drummer-extraordinaire Bill Hart sitting in “Elvin’s chair,” and accompanied by George Garzone on sax, Tim Hagans on trumpet, and Leo Genovese on piano (with a guest appearance by Alex Wintz on guitar). A wonderful album of beautifully textured music, and one hundred percent jazz, top-shelf vintage. Pick of the Week.

Samo Salamon, Eleven Stories: Guitarist Salamon has been terrifically productive, putting out an album a year (or more) for the last decade, and it’s been nice to track both the development of his personal sound, as well as his experiments along the way. This album has him in a trio with Michel Godard (tuba, electric bass) and Roberto Dani (drums). It’s got the early Bill Frisell ECM surreality, an introspective deliberate tempo, and moments that flirt with avant-garde and folk. A cerebral album that is great for sitting back on a rainy day and just closing your eyes. Highly Recommended.

Fred Hersch Trio, Alive at the Vanguard: Live date with Fred Hersch on piano, John Hébert on bass, and Eric McPherson: drums. Double-disc release from Hersch’s gig at the Vanguard. Music crackles like a sparkler on a 4th of July evening… beautiful to look at, full of life, and might just singe you a bit if you get too close. A solid album from the jazz vet. Recommended.

The Cloudmakers Trio with Ralph Alessi, Live at the Pizza Express: Featuring a trio of vital participants of the UK jazz scene (Jim Hart on vibes, Michael Janisch on bass, and Dave Smith on drums), and joined by NYC trumpeter Alessi, this is a set of modern jazz recorded live at the Pizza Express, a venue that brings all types of great modern jazz to the public. Lots of stop-and-go motions, angular lines, and wavering interludes. For the most part, sounds more like a studio recording than a live one. Live music energy doesn’t emanate from the speakers, but, conversely, the sound quality is pretty solid.

Flu(o), Encore Remuants: A quintet of trumpet, guitar, drums, bass, and piano. Modern jazz-rock fusion, often heavier on the latter of those two elements. Electronic effects, mostly for the sake of textural dissonance. Some interesting moments. I don’t know if Cuong Vu was the father of this type of jazz-rock fusion, but this album sounds as if inspired by him.

World Kora Trio, Korazon: Folk-jazz album, very cheerful and buoyant. With Eric Longworth on electric cello, Cherif Soumano on the kora, and Jean-Lu di Fraya on percussion (and some vocals). Rustic music that sometimes drifts, sometimes swings. Too pretty. Fans of the Ablaye Cissoko/Volker Goetze collaborations should be downloading this album.

Moskus, Salmesykkel: Young piano trio with a nice take on the Nordic jazz sound, mixing it with some Indie-rock elements. Most tracks are peaceful and serene, others get a little dizzy with allusion to free jazz, and others have a nice steady beat. Just a real nice album, moody, with interludes of rising up and stomping about. Find of the Week.

Antonis Ladopoulos & Sami Amiris, Phos: Pleasant duo of tenor sax and piano. Nothing earth-shattering, but a sax-piano duo album often brings a sublime understatement to the table, and this recording gives plenty of that. Always good to have an album like this for those lazy Sunday afternoons when all you feel like doing is shutting yourself off from the world and drifting quietly in place.

Sam Newsome, The Art Of the Soprano Vol. 1: A solo soprano sax recording, much in the vein of Steve Lacy’s approach to soloing. Former member of Terence Blanchard’s Quintet, Newsome switched from tenor to soprano, then delved into the musics of various geographies, before, now, settling into the role of solo performer. Cerebral music that explores sound and possibilities therein. Good stuff.

Bill Frisell, Solos: The Jazz Sessions: Another in the solos series, this time featuring guitar great Bill Frisell. The solos series come from a dvd that has various musicians alone at their instrument, playing songs from the past as they talk about the music and their past and their theories on music. Part autobiography, part interview, and 100% undiluted Frisell guitar.

Charles Gayle Trio, Look Up: Recorded back in 1994, live, it’s a high energy performance of Charles Gayle on tenor sax and bass clarinet, Michael Bisio on bass, and Michael Wimberley on drums. Gayle’s music is like a conflagration of pure free jazz intensity. Add in a some spoken (shouted?) word action, and the voltage amps up even more. I love that the ESP Disk label is releasing some of these older live recordings.

George Cables, My Muse: Trio date with George Cables on piano, Essiet Essiet on bass, and Victor Lewis on drums. One of the living legends of the jazz scene, Cables brings a sublimely understated piano jazz album. Nothing complicated, just a pianist at home on the instrument he’s spent a lifetime getting to know. Tracks like “But He Knows” make me think I’ll be enjoying this album even more in a couple months… kind of album that accretes goodwill at an imperceptible rate until, suddenly, it never leaves the stereo.

Alexis Cole, I Carry Your Heart: Alexis Cole works with the Jeremy Hahn trio, and along with help from guests Pat Labarbera and Eric Alexander, puts lyrics to the music of Pepper Adams. Nice hop to the music, a classic jazz vocals album sound. Tasteful accompaniment, and easy to like. Very happy with the inclusion of Alexander and Labarbera… this is music they can sink their teeth into.

Bob Dylan, Tempest

Eight minutes to detail love’s dissolution on “Ballad in Plain D”; 11 minutes to itemize a parade of inconsolable icons on “Desolation Row”; 11 on a Song of Solomon ode to his wife on “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”; another 11 on the murder of New York mobster Joey Gallo. Yet it’s on Bob Dylan’s 35th studio album that he lays out the biggest epic of his career, “Titanic,” a 14-minute, 45-verse, chorus-free Celtic waltz about the day that great ship went down. In Dylan’s expert hands, he floats between the tragedy as rendered by the Carter Family, Woody Guthrie and William & Versey Smith as well as James Cameron, meditating on death, fate, Leonardo DiCaprio, and the realization that “there is no understanding on the judgment of God’s hand.”

Tempest finds Dylan at his most mortal, both physically — his phlegmatic voice is gritty enough to abrade paint and out-carnie Tom Waits — and lyrically. Hundreds of dead bodies float in the ocean, the gunned-down John Lennon gets remembered on the maudlin “Roll On John,” while the noir of “Tin Angel” ends in a grisly murder-suicide.

Fittingly, his backing band kills. Powered by Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo’s accordion and guitarist Charlie Sexton, they navigate turn-of-the-century blues, folk, country-swing, and jazz. See how the “Mannish Boy” riff lurches to meet the conjunto accordion for a song about “Early Roman Kings.” It leaves Dylan free to prowl and growl, sinister and gallows-humored. When on the Stones-y “Pay in Blood,” he snarls out “the more I die the more I live,” he sounds like he’s got nothing but time.

Lydia Netzer, Shine Shine Shine

Lydia Netzer creates a sci-fi folk tale with her debut novel, weaving together an epic love story that transcends (literal) space and time, vibrant characters, and, naturally, robots.

In Shine Shine Shine, Sunny, a congenitally bald little girl and Maxon, an autistic boy, fall in love and eventually get married. Flash-forward to the future, when Maxon becomes an astronaut on a risky, high-profile mission to the moon while Sunny remains at home, raising their lovably robotic son, Bubber, gestating their second child, worrying about her dying mother and relinquishing her reliance on wigs as she struggles to maintain a normal life at home. Except that “normal” in this story is so not normal. There’s a recurring theme of learning how to be human and learning how to read emotions that applies sweetly to both the robots and the humans in the book.

Netzer’s story and characters are at once folksy and not of this earth, which is aided by narrator Joshilyn Jackson’s astonishing array of whimsical voices.

Interview: Debo Band

With its rolling grooves, heavy arrangements, funky horn sections, and sophisticated singers, Ethiopian pop music’s so-called golden age, which aficionados agree lasted from about 1969-74, bears scant resemblance to any other African style of the time. Boston’s Debo Band captures the era’s essence on its debut album. It also integrates more recent styles into its 11-member dancefloor rumpus, embellishing the whole shebang with accordion, strings, sousaphone and other instruments more closely associated with Eastern Europe than with East Africa. “I like the idea of folk music being modern,” explains bandleader Danny Mekonnen. “I’m trying to be progressive.”

A mission statement incarnate, Debo Band lives up to its name: “Debo” signifies collective or communal effort in Amharic, Ethiopia’s main language. Mekonnen was born in Sudan in 1980 after his parents fled the military dictatorship that hijacked Ethiopia in 1974. Although Mekonnen was exposed to plenty of Ethiopian music on homemade tapes as a child, and discovered Miles and Coltrane as a saxophone-slinging teenager in the Dallas area, he was converted to the glories of the aforementioned golden age just like everyone else: through French producer Francis Falceto’s indispensable Ethiopiques series on the Buda Musique label. He met future Debo front man Bruck Tesfaye, raised in Ethiopia, in a Boston-area Ethio-diaspora student association, and the two performed songs by the venerable Mahmoud Ahmed and younger Ethio-reggae star Teddy Afro at a talent show. Debo eventually coalesced as a community band in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, and the group played its first real show at an Eagles lodge in 2006.

Debo’s debut announces itself with the Ethio-jazz classic “Akale Wube” by Ethio-jazz godfather Mulatu Astatke, who has his own connection to the Boston jazz scene as the Berklee School of Music’s first African graduate and later as a collaborator with the area’s Ethiopia-obsessed Either/Orchestra. Mekonnen chooses the band’s material with Tesfaye, an Amharic speaker in charge of the group’s lyrical message. Both insist the group think beyond 1974. Originals like “Not Just a Song” and “DC Flower” reflect the influence of Teddy Tadesse, Gossaye Tesfaya, and the many other Debo contemporaries who blend Ethiopia’s traditional and modern repertoires.

When I spoke with Mekonnen, who had just finished sorting band T-shirts prior to a show in Northampton, Massachusetts, the Harvard PhD candidate in ethnomusicology noted that Falceto was “a bit of a purist” in what he’s been releasing on Ethiopiques since 1997. “I think he’s been drawn to things on vinyl,” Mekonnen said. “He hasn’t released any music that came out on cassette inititally. He writes that Ethiopian music kind of died when Haile Selassie was deposed in ’74, but I think [the music industry] became more complicated.” With the communists in power, vinyl was no longer imported. Cassettes continued to be produced, but tracking down master tapes became even more difficult than with vinyl.

I ask Mekonnen to suggest a couple of contemporary Ethiopian artists deserving of a wider hearing. “There are so many,” he replies before suggesting singer Omar Souleyman. Neither the similarly named Syrian dabke star nor the Egyptian politician, Souleyman is a favorite among Ethiopia’s Oromo people, and Mekonnen admires the way he mixes horns and live drums with synths and drum machines. He also digs guitarist Mesfin Abebe, “an amazing musician” recorded primarily in the ’80s. But that’s just the tiny tip of the iceberg.

“When I’m in Ethiopia in a taxi cab or one of these buses that seats 10 people, I still hear songs on the radio with no idea who the singers or bands are. I’m drawn to this music from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s but still feel like a novice listener even though I’ve been doing this seriously for so long. That speaks volumes to the richness of the music and how much there is to draw from.”

When I walk into the middle of a Debo show in Brooklyn the next day, Tesfaye is crooning the beautiful “Medinanna Zelesegna” accompanied by violinist Kaethe Hostetter, who started a school in Addis Ababa and performs with traditional group and occasional Debo tour partners Fendika. When three Grupo Fantasma horn players join the band’s own horn trio for an explosive take on Mahmoud Ahmed’s “Belomi Benna,” the tall, charismatic Tesfaye jumps offstage into the crowd, shimmying his shoulders and working some vigorous stiff-legged moves. The brass players march through the audience, which comes to a boil. The Debo Band, you suddenly realize, has earned your highest praise: You want to listen as hard as you want to dance.

New This Week: Race Horses, Toy, The Raveonettes & More

Race Horses, Furniture The Welsh band’s second album is an excitable gallop through the best of Britpop. Victoria Segal writes:

“Although the jovial experimentation of “Mates” or “Old And New”’s cosmic balladry bear the marks of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci and Super Furry Animals – and not merely because they are Welsh – Race Horses display a melodramatic touch that those bands never really possessed. On “Sisters”, for instance, they just about manage to cram themselves into Jarvis Cocker’s cords.”

Toy, Toy Toy’s dreamy, krautrock-inflected gothgaze should nail an autumnal sweet spot perfectly. Andrew Perry writes:

“It’s a full-tilt lysergic trip whose repercussions remain with you long after its last deafening chords have died out. In a word: invest!”

The Raveonettes, Observator The Danish duo reunite for an album of exquisitely crafted moody pop songs, inspired by depression and a substance-fuelled sojourn to Venice, California. Bill Murphy writes:

“All the signatures of the Raveonettes are here – cavernous reverbs, jangly guitars and hallucinatory vocal harmonies that recall the Everly Brothers through the haze of a walking dream – but what sets this one apart is the sense that the band, and Wagner in particular, has gone through the fire and grown stronger from the experience.”

Calexico, Algiers For their seventh LP, Calexico relocated to the Algiers district of New Orleans to record a clutch of soulful, stirring songs that brim with their trademark sensual drama. Recommended.

Patterson Hood, Heat Lightning Rumbles In The Distance The Drive-By Truckers frontman releases a third album of stripped-down country-rock, with the emphasis on rock. Inspired by a troubled period in his twenties, the songs tackle heartbreak, boozing and using.

Mala, Mala in Cuba Dubstep producer Mala relocated to Havana for this inspired album that mixes Latin heat with South London bass and beats and, in doing so, creates music that’s truly off the map. Recommended.

Hugh Cornwell, Totem And Taboo Steve Albini was at the controls for this solo album by Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers who, on the evidence of caustic songs like “Stuck In Daily Mail Land”, has become punk’s answer to Ray Davies.

Amanda Palmer, Theatre Is Evil This album was financed through the funding site Kickstarter by Palmer’s devoted army of fans, who are repaid with an album of fantastically over-the-top pop.

Gallows, Gallows The departure of bloody-nosed frontman Frank Turner hasn’t dented any of Gallows’s hardcore drive. Ian Gittins writes:

“It’s short on nuance and subtlety, sure, but as an adrenalin-drenched example of 21^st-century UK punk, this is nigh on impossible to beat.”

The Helio Sequence, Negotiations The Portland duo’s fifth album mixes glacially pretty guitar parts with acoustic warmth created by using old analogue gear. Michaelangelo Matos writes:

“Negotiations doesn’t have the grooveful rush of 2004’s gorgeous Love and Distance – still their best – but that album’s sweet quality still glimmers on this one’s surface.”

The Avett Brothers, The Carpenter

On “Down with the Shine,” the Avett Brothers sing, “It’s a real bad time to bring up the truth,” but that doesn’t stop them from doing so. On their latest album The Carpenter, the North Carolina group stares down mortality with a frankness not uncommon to country outlaws. Although it is informed in part by the fact that bassist Bob Crawford’s young daughter was diagnosed with a brain tumor, the darkness of the acoustic dirges (“The Once and Future Carpenter,” “Life”) are tempered by poppy, piano-laden songs like “Pretty Girl From Michigan” that hardly qualify as folk or Americana — a pattern the group introduced on its Rick Rubin-produced major label debut, 2009′s I and Love and You. “Geraldine” and album highlight “Paul Newman vs. The Demons” channel the energetic “grunge-grass” band the Avett Brothers were when they began 12 years ago. That sense of history won’t be lost on the diehard fans who have watched the band inch its way toward commercial success while younger folk-rock acts like Mumford & Sons became instant chart-toppers. Fittingly, it’s not the pop songs on The Carpenter that sparkle — it’s the slow-growers.

Interview: Debo Band

With its rolling grooves, heavy arrangements, funky horn sections, and sophisticated singers, Ethiopian pop music’s so-called golden age, which aficionados agree lasted from about 1969-74, bears scant resemblance to any other African style of the time. Boston’s Debo Band captures the era’s essence on its debut album. It also integrates more recent styles into its 11-member dancefloor rumpus, embellishing the whole shebang with accordion, strings, sousaphone and other instruments more closely associated with Eastern Europe than with East Africa. “I like the idea of folk music being modern,” explains bandleader Danny Mekonnen. “I’m trying to be progressive.”

A mission statement incarnate, Debo Band lives up to its name: “Debo” signifies collective or communal effort in Amharic, Ethiopia’s main language. Mekonnen was born in Sudan in 1980 after his parents fled the military dictatorship that hijacked Ethiopia in 1974. Although Mekonnen was exposed to plenty of Ethiopian music on homemade tapes as a child, and discovered Miles and Coltrane as a saxophone-slinging teenager in the Dallas area, he was converted to the glories of the aforementioned golden age just like everyone else: through French producer Francis Falceto’s indispensable Ethiopiques series on the Buda Musique label. He met future Debo front man Bruck Tesfaye, raised in Ethiopia, in a Boston-area Ethio-diaspora student association, and the two performed songs by the venerable Mahmoud Ahmed and younger Ethio-reggae star Teddy Afro at a talent show. Debo eventually coalesced as a community band in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood, and the group played its first real show at an Eagles lodge in 2006.

Debo’s debut announces itself with the Ethio-jazz classic “Akale Wube” by Ethio-jazz godfather Mulatu Astatke, who has his own connection to the Boston jazz scene as the Berklee School of Music’s first African graduate and later as a collaborator with the area’s Ethiopia-obsessed Either/Orchestra. Mekonnen chooses the band’s material with Tesfaye, an Amharic speaker in charge of the group’s lyrical message. Both insist the group think beyond 1974. Originals like “Not Just a Song” and “DC Flower” reflect the influence of Teddy Tadesse, Gossaye Tesfaya, and the many other Debo contemporaries who blend Ethiopia’s traditional and modern repertoires.

When I spoke with Mekonnen, who had just finished sorting band T-shirts prior to a show in Northampton, Massachusetts, the Harvard PhD candidate in ethnomusicology noted that Falceto was “a bit of a purist” in what he’s been releasing on Ethiopiques since 1997. “I think he’s been drawn to things on vinyl,” Mekonnen said. “He hasn’t released any music that came out on cassette inititally. He writes that Ethiopian music kind of died when Haile Selassie was deposed in ’74, but I think [the music industry] became more complicated.” With the communists in power, vinyl was no longer imported. Cassettes continued to be produced, but tracking down master tapes became even more difficult than with vinyl.

I ask Mekonnen to suggest a couple of contemporary Ethiopian artists deserving of a wider hearing. “There are so many,” he replies before suggesting singer Omar Souleyman. Neither the similarly named Syrian dabke star nor the Egyptian politician, Souleyman is a favorite among Ethiopia’s Oromo people, and Mekonnen admires the way he mixes horns and live drums with synths and drum machines. He also digs guitarist Mesfin Abebe, “an amazing musician” recorded primarily in the ’80s. But that’s just the tiny tip of the iceberg.

“When I’m in Ethiopia in a taxi cab or one of these buses that seats 10 people, I still hear songs on the radio with no idea who the singers or bands are. I’m drawn to this music from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s but still feel like a novice listener even though I’ve been doing this seriously for so long. That speaks volumes to the richness of the music and how much there is to draw from.”

When I walk into the middle of a Debo show in Brooklyn the next day, Tesfaye is crooning the beautiful “Medinanna Zelesegna” accompanied by violinist Kaethe Hostetter, who started a school in Addis Ababa and performs with traditional group and occasional Debo tour partners Fendika. When three Grupo Fantasma horn players join the band’s own horn trio for an explosive take on Mahmoud Ahmed’s “Belomi Benna,” the tall, charismatic Tesfaye jumps offstage into the crowd, shimmying his shoulders and working some vigorous stiff-legged moves. The brass players march through the audience, which comes to a boil. The Debo Band, you suddenly realize, has earned your highest praise: You want to listen as hard as you want to dance.

Serpentine Path, Serpentine Path

When New York doom trio Unearthly Trance pulled the plug in July 2012 after 12 years as a band, it wasn’t so much a death as a rebirth: The self-titled full-length debut by Serpentine Path features all three members of that group along with Ramsses guitarist Tim Bagshaw, who earned his stripes as the original bassist of British gloomlords Electric Wizard. The chemistry among the four is strong and Serpentine Path is packed with the requisite trudging tempos, stomping beats, down tuned riffs, repetitive rhythms and feral death metal howls that made Unearthly Trance an unsettling treat. Even so, there are a few sonic frills between Serpentine Path‘s unrelenting showers of sludge.

“Arrows” opens with a megaphone reading from “The Book of Revelations” that should be familiar to Iron Maiden fans and conspiracy theorists alike, “Beyond the Dawn of Time” starts with a quote from the trailer for the original “The Last House on the Left” and “Bats Amongst Heathens” ends with the echoing sounds of squealing beasts descending upon unwary prey. But most of Serpentine Path is stark and barren, delivering the most impact with the fewest number of notes. It’s not a quantum leap from Unearthly Trance and the tones are reminiscent of Rammses; other key reference points are Sleep, Winter (whose guitarist Stephen Flam recently joined the band) and early Earth.

Unlike many doom bands, Serpentine Path don’t want to depress or enervate. Their goals are even more sinister: Even when their droning guitars and sledgehammer beats border on psychedelic, it’s a bleak, agonizing type of transcendence that’s as unpleasant as it is compelling. There’s nothing “pretty” about the apocalyptic guitar harmonies of “Only a Monolith Remains,” the sparse tight-fisted punches and sepulchral growls of “Compendium of Suffering” or the decayedriffs of “Crotalus Horridus Horridus.” Then again underground metal has always thrived on self-abuse and futility.

For those who relish ugly, nightmarish and merciless doom, Serpentine Path is a welcome sonic ritual of demise — kind of like being buried neck-deep in the beach sand for 45 minutesand watching the tide come in.

Who in the World is Ironing Board Sam?

With the recent release of his new-old Ninth Wonder of the World of Music, Ironing Board Sam is back with a vengeance. This will doubtless come as a surprise to those of you who’d never heard of him and thus didn’t know he’d ever been gone. But relax: You are, by far, in the majority. Even in his heyday, Ironing Board Sam was nearly a total obscurity — working primarily in local scenes around the South with only minimal touring, and recording sporadic singles, all for different labels and none approaching hitdom. But those who got to see him, whether in person or on the R&B television program Night Train, remember him well, for Sam could put on a show. Ninth Wonder is a superb album for anyone interested in hearing a true maverick at work.

Born Samuel Moore in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in 1939, he began gigging locally on piano and organ at age 14. By the late ’50s he was on the scene in Miami where, lacking a stand for his electric organ, he mounted it on an ironing board. When he moved to Memphis around 1959, his instrument earned Sammy Moore the new moniker Ironing Board Sam, which he resented (whoever gave him that handle proved prescient, however, as the ultra-hot Sam & Dave soon emerged from Memphis, and the former’s surname was Moore; the who’s-who confusion caused by having two Sam Moores in the same music scene would likely have killed Ironing Board Sam’s already-meager career). By the mid ’60s, Sam was based in Nashville — I picture him down on Jefferson Street showing the young, unknown Jimi Hendrix what showmanship was all about.

Because make no mistake, Sam was already a showman — a slightly mellower Little Richard crossed with a slightly saner Screaming Jay Hawkins and a slightly less churchy Ray Charles — as he moved back to Memphis, then to Chicago, Iowa, Los Angeles, Memphis once more. Somewhere in there — history is woefully imprecise — Sam invented his “button board,” which was actually two keyboards. The main one looked like a Hammond B3 but underneath the keys were guitar strings that were fed through a wah-wah pedal and into an amp. Not only could he make it sound something like a B3, he could also make it sound like a piano, a guitar and all three combined. The lower keyboard, which provided bass, consisted of 60 upholstery tacks connected to electronic sensors. Under his coat sleeve, a wire ran down Sam’s arm to his fingers, conducting electricity to the buttons. It was just one of his many inventions — among other he claims to have built a machine with just five moving parts that could provide electricity to an entire apartment complex at no cost — and Sam never had to worry about anyone else playing his ax; nobody else could figure out how it worked.

In the mid ’70s Sam moved to New Orleans, where he was in residence, billed as “The Eighth Wonder of the World” and backed only by drummer Kerry Brown, at Mason’s VIP Lounge on South Clairborne. There, he’d lift his keyboard off its stand and strap it onto his shoulder as he strolled the club and sidewalk playing his late-night, lowdown blues; Brown played with the tips of his drumsticks on fire, and sometimes ended the set by burning the whole damn kit. When Sam got booked into Jazzfest in 1979, he did his entire show underwater in a 1500-gallon aquarium. Later, he busked on the streets backed by a wind-up monkey toy that kept time, as it were, on drums. When Sam concluded from the disco trend that audiences would now only listen to jukeboxes or deejays, he built an eight-foot high wooden jukebox, put himself and his keyboard inside it, and played that on French Quarter sidewalks; it had a coin slot that you fed money if you wanted him to take your request. In 1991, playing a vintage Wurlitzer piano, he cut demos for a local Orleans Records album called Human Touch; though unavailable on eMusic, it was finally released in 1996.

And then Sam’s button keyboard was vanquished. Before going on the road, he gave it to an electronics tech to have it transistorized and the guy found the whole project so ludicrous he up and threw it out. Sam claims he’s simply never had time to build a new one. Some of his aura consequently faded in New Orleans and he’d been retired for some time when Katrina savaged the city in 2005. He moved back to his South Carolina birthplace and began gigging again; eventually rediscovered by the Music Makers Relief Organization, a charitable group that helps get Southern roots musicians back on their feet, he recorded and released the solo piano album Going Up, which defines blues broadly enough to include a mellow but tortured version of the Roy Hawkins/B.B. King standard “Why I Sing the Blues,” the eternal ’50s doo-wop “Cherry Pie,” New Orleans parade and party fare like “Orleans Party” and “Come to Mardi Gras,” an aching take on “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and a somewhat less successful one on the scat-jazz “In the Mood for Love,” even “Ode to Billie Joe,” which he calls “Tallahassee Bridge (Billy Joe),” and which plays funereal vocals off against chipper boogie piano.

But Ninth Wonder is the Ironing Board Sam album you simply can’t miss, because it was originally recorded in the late ’60s/early ’70s as part of a promo packet to get Sam gigs; only 100 were pressed and sent to agencies, and none were released. And though it uses conventional instruments, it catches the man at his jumpin’, jivin’ and carryin’-on peak. His keyboard work is deep, soulful and playful; his vocals laced with jazz and gospel as well as blues. This version of “Cherry Pie,” even with its staccato rhythm and vocals, is a powerful argument for the axiom that Simple is Best; “The Island Song” features semi-scat vocals, while “Do the Ironing Board” is utter, delightful nonsense, with Sam eventually creaking up into a comical falsetto. “Danny Boy,” of all things, gets taken to church by the organ/guitar tandem. Sam’s version of “Boogie on Reggae Woman,” another unlikely choice, is in its own way every bit as insistent as Stevie Wonder’s original. “Going Up-Going Down” is his woozy interpretation of Jimmy Reed’s “Baby What You Want Me to Do,” while “Purple Raindrops” rides organ lines as invincible as the most formidable Ray Charles. “Bye Bye Blackbird,” the finale, transforms the decimated loser of the Tin Pan Alley standard into something more like a bat out of hell. Here’s the most entertaining eight tracks and nearly 22 minutes of blues-based music likely to be released this year, and it should leave you longing for more. Hopefully, the 73-year-old Sam, Living Blues Magazine’s comeback artist of the year, will be able to provide it.

The Raveonettes, Observator

Last year’s Raven in the Grave was as bleak and elegiac as anything the Danish duo Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo have ever made, but there was a distinct sense of playfulness coursing quietly beneath the darkness. Pushing gently against verse-chorus-verse strictures, the band experimented with studio effects and expanded song structures, stretching their well-honed sound into new territory. Observator, their latest, channels that same restless, exploratory energy into an exquisitely crafted suite of moody pop songs that swing between isolation and ecstasy. It wasn’t an easy journey for Wagner; in the liner notes, he describes a brief bout with depression and a substance-fueled sojourn in Venice, California — inspired by a search for Jim Morrison as muse — that stalled the album’s early stages and nearly put him out of commission.

But apparently, a little time in the wilderness did him some good. He and Foo soon reunited with famed producer Richard Gottehrer, and after a week at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, they emerged with a richly textured album that shimmers with shoegaze goth (“The Enemy,” with Foo taking the lead in her wispy tenor), southern Cali psych-pop (“She Owns the Streets”) and even a dab of Nilsson-ish piano whimsy (the meditative single “Observations”). “So many times I’ve lost control/ I don’t wanna be young and cold,” Wagner sings on the opening cut “Young and Cold,” affirming his rejuvenation from the outset. All the signatures of the Raveonettes are here — cavernous reverbs, jangly guitars and hallucinatory vocal harmonies that recall the Everly Brothers through the haze of a waking dream — but what sets this one apart is the sense that the band, and Wagner in particular, has gone through the fire and grown stronger from the experience.

The Helio Sequence, Negotiations

The line on Negotiations, Portland indie-rock duo the Helio Sequence’s fifth album, is that its making was marked by big departures, due primarily to outside circumstances. A flood ruined the group’s original rehearsal/recording space, necessitating a move to a larger warehouse; they also bought more analog gear this time around — the album’s sonic warmth is an obvious byproduct. But musically, guitarist-singer Brandon Summers and one-time Modest Mouse drummer Benjamin Weikel haven’t changed all that much. They still ache with longing over slow-to-medium-fast tempos, still write glacially pretty guitar parts, and still nail that autumnal sweet spot that a lot of older indie fans like to nestle into deeply. Negotiations, their fifth album for Sub Pop, doesn’t have the grooveful rush of 2004′s gorgeous Love and Distance — still their best — but that album’s sweet quality still glimmers on this one’s surface. “The Measure” showcases the Helio Sequence on high simmer, its most fetching mode, its pensive lyric (“So you want to know the difference between the broken and the lost/ Between the voiceless and the muted/ Between the payback and the cost”) fitting its slow-cresting guitar picking and tom-heavy beat like a glove. Homespun but widescreen — it’s what they do best.

Chick Corea & Gary Burton, Hot House

After 30 years of shared recordings — seven duet albums, four of them Grammy Award winners — Chick Corea and Gary Burton’s partnership is one of jazz’s most established. Hot House, their latest effort, continues their familiar, still-brilliant approach, mixing jazz standards and pop songs. But with such inventive jazz upstarts as vibraphonists Chris Dingman and Jason Adasiewicz, and pianists Guillermo Klein, Jason Lindner, and John Clayton, nipping at this aging duo’s heels, Hot House occasionally sounds like it was intended for the concert hall, not the titular jazz hothouse.

Corea and Burton perform superbly throughout, beginning with “Can’t We Be Friends,” a jaunty gallop through a familiar Frank Sinatra swinger. The pair covers two Jobim songs, “Chega de Saudade” and “Once I Loved,” the Brazilian composer’s lusciously rhythmic material suiting the duo’s perfect alignment of chordal sophistication and dazzling delivery. Corea and Burton truly play as one, trading harmony and solo roles with simpatico mastery. Bill Evans’s “Time Remembered” unfurls gently, thoughtfully, Burton’s solo particularly iridescent. But when the title track finally hits, you realize what the bulk of Hot House is missing: heat! The only up-tempo bebop song on an album named for a Tadd Dameron standard, “Hot House” is gritty and rollicking, waking you from the beautiful stupor of slow to mid tempo songs that, while expertly performed, lack the stomp, energy and fire that would have invigorated Hot House. Let’s hope Corea and Burton revisit the Hot House theme, and include more of the bebop that inspired the song’s composer, next time around.

Calexico, Algiers

It’s absurd to suggest that all music reflects the geographic location in which it was recorded. But Calexico’s sound is so regionally evocative that they even took the name from a town near the US/Mexican border. It’s the perfect handle for their alt-country-informed blend of desert blues, spaghetti western soundtracks, ’50s/’60s surf-rock and music from across the Latin-American spectrum — a compelling and highly distinctive hybrid that has almost become a genre in its own right.

All the more surprising then, that for the recording of their seventh LP Calexico relocated to New Orleans, specifically to its Algiers neighborhood. But there’s no swampy funk, jazz, Cajun two-step or Creole boogie here. Rather, pump organ, Moog, keys and Venezuelan cuatro guitar blend with their usual guitar/upright bass/drums set-up and beloved accordion, brass and pedal-steel, to create songs brimming with the band’s trademark sensual drama, but which see them subtly shifting ground.

Opener “Epic” is swarthy and insistent with a great pop groove and the muscular “Splitter” could well satisfy Springsteen fans, while it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine more adventurous Kings Of Leon devotees warming to “Maybe On Monday.” With an international guest list of empathetic instrumentalists and vocalists, Calexico have delivered a record as strong, soulful and surprising as their adopted city itself. Not bad, 22 years on.