Although it was a really lovely autumn Sunday with soft blue skies, abundant sunshine, and a crisp breeze, I was still feeling rather worn out from shipping our December issue. Instead of finding a place to watch the Giants demolish the Raiders, I decided to stay inside and listen to records. I considered taking notes to accompany each album, but doing so would have felt too much like more work, so I opted to simply listen and deal with the subsequent guilt.
<B>Regina Spektor: <I>Far</I></B><BR>
Sire 519396-2 (CD). 2009. Mike Elizondo, Jeff Lynne, Jacknife Lee, David Kahne, prods.; Adam Hawkins, Marc Mann, Steve Jay, Tom McFall, engs. AAD? TT: 47:21<BR>
Performance ****<BR>
Sonics ****½
Plenty of albums have one or two great tracks, but once in a while, an album will be near-flawless from start to finish. Name an album that you think is perfect from beginning to end.
Watching Bobby Bradford and David Murray on the bandstand together at the Jazz Standard Saturday night (see my last blog entry) inspired me to take another listen to the only CD that paired them together, <I>Death of a Sideman</I>, recorded in 1991 under Murray’s name but featuring nothing but Bradford compositions, eight tracks’ worth.
I’m not going to get all flowery and poetic on this one. I’m just going to say: Buy this record.
Cold Cave’s sound, look, and fixations on sex, love, violence, and death remind me of early Sonic Youth. The 12” single for “Love Comes Close” is due out on October 20, thanks to <a href="http://www.matadorrecords.com/matablog/2009/10/05/announcing-cold-cave-…;. Buy it while supplies last.
As I was saying a few days ago, Bobby Bradford’s rare appearance at the Jazz Standard last Saturday was one of the most bracing sets I’ve seen in a long time. In the early-to-mid ‘90s, New Yorkers could go hear this sort of jazz—exuberant, free, but highly disciplined music—almost every night at the Knitting Factory. Just about everyone in Bradford’s band on Saturday was a regular at “the Knit” in its heyday—David Murray on tenor sax, Marty Ehrlich on alto, Mark Dresser on bass, Andrew Cyrille on drums: an extraordinary band.
Whenever anyone marvels at the enormous Genesis II.5 loudspeakers in my house, I'm quick to tell them that the II.5 is the <I>smallest</I>, least expensive loudspeaker made by Genesis Technologies. In fact, the company makes two larger speaker systems, the $33,000 Genesis II and the $70,000 Genesis I (footnote 1).
