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Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest

Hello Jon.
I hope you had a great weekend.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the new Grizzly Bear record. It strikes me as being an important release. I am tempted to call it "timeless." At the very least, I get the feeling that the band was attempting to create an honest and lasting piece of art.

In fact, it seems to be an album about time. Or about the passing of time. And, of course, love. The futility of time in the face of love. Time is inescapable, except to love. The word "time" appears in several of the songs, and in others, the lyrics seem to suggest…

Jay Bennett

Sad to hear of the death of guitarist/keyboard player/singer/songwriter/mad genius Jay Bennett at age 45. I don’t want to be a hater here but like many others, his portrayal in the Wilco film, I Am Trying To Break Your Hearthas always been very problematic for me.

If you’ve seen the film it’s clear that Bennett had his issues. He talks too much, has an endless capacity for arguing over minutiae and can in general be scattered but insistent. Speaking from personal experience, an interview with both Tweedy and Bennett at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel just after Bennett joined, the man…

Jazz at the Chocolate Factory

I’ve just found out about a new, and unlikely, place to go hear jazz in New York City: the Cacao Bar at the Chocolate Factory, a.k.a. MarieBelle. Most of the time, it’s a chi-chi caf—on the 2nd floor of 762 Madison Avenue, between E. 65th and 66th Streets—that serves hyper-rich chocolates, exotic drinks, and (so I’m told) killer short ribs. But on Wednesday nights, from 7:30 to 10, jazz musicians—a pianist and usually just one or two others (there’s no room for more)—come in and play.

Last night, the players were Frank Kimbrough on piano and Ted Nash alternating between flute and tenor…

Music Makes Us Human

I've been reading Daniel Levitan's The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature, which makes pretty strong claims for the importance of those tones in time. (Neil McCormick conducted an interesting interview with Levitan in The Telegraph.)

Music, Levitan argues, functioned as a means to store verbal information long before writing was developed, creates social bonds, and serves, like gaudy plumage, as a means of advertising genetic fitness. His thesis reminds me somewhat of one proposed by ethnomusicologist John Blacking, that primitive man could dance before he…

Joe Lovano & Us Five

Joe Lovano’s Folk Art, his 22nd album on the Blue Note label, is an odd, sometimes jarring record—it took a few hearings before I found my bearings—but once the fragments snap into place, it’s a rousing pleaser, bursting with indigo moods, heart-skipped romance, and free-flow funk riffs. Lovano plays all kinds of reeds—tenor sax, straight alto sax, clarinet, and, on one song, the aulochrome, a Hungarian-built horn that’s a double soprano sax (attached to one reed), each side tuned to a different key, so that you blow melody and harmony simultaneously. He plays with a somewhat hardened tone,…

The Good News Is

Last week, we moved&#151from the sixth floor of 261 Madison Avenue to the fifth floor of 261 Madison Avenue. The good news is abundant:

1. We are now on the east side of the building, which means we no longer face Madison Avenue, which means it is much, much quieter
2. Closely related to number 1: We get morning sunshine, which is nice
3. We share the floor with Soap Opera Digest, which means there are many lovely women floating about in their pretty spring dresses

The bad news is my office is still full of work.

Editor on deadline! Watch out!

Sonny & Linda Sharrock: Paradise

One of the records we listened to at the Monkeyhaus last week was Sonny & Linda Sharrock's Paradise&#151a powerfully uplifting record, in my opinion. Sonny Sharrock, however, did not feel the same. In a 1989 interview with WKCR's Ben Ratliff, Sonny dismissed Paradise as being "not a good album," and attributed the album's failure to his own incompetence as a bandleader.

As a sideman, Sonny Sharrock appeared on three records in 1966: Pharaoh Sanders's Tauhid, Marzette Watts's eponymous album, and Byard Lancaster's It's Not Up To Us. Also around that time, Sharrock, like…

While My JVC Vibrates the Concrete

Lyle Owerko likes boomboxes.

When I think of the boombox, I think of growing up in Newark, New Jersey; I think of Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing; I think of making mix tapes in my bedroom, recording popular songs directly from Z100 and Hot 97; I think of my parents, young and happy, taking us to Jersey City's Lincoln Park, which, at the time, seemed like a million miles from home, and now is home; I think of my father making sure we had the right number of size-D batteries; I think of my first experiences with hi-fi.

In this video, Lyle Owerko and Fab Five Freddy discuss…

Lydia Lunch: Queen of Siam

Lydia Lunch's 1980 album Queen of Siam (ZE Records ZEA 33006, LP) is so impressive&#151both sonically and musically&#151that, while listening, you might just find yourself compelled to send an enthusiastic, breathless text message to one of your friends.

"Dude," you might write, "do you have Lydia Lunch's 'Queen of Siam' on vinyl? Ooh, it's great fun on the hi-fi!"

And, if all is right with the world, you just might receive an equally enthusiastic and breathless message in return.

"You have to be kidding! I am listening to it right now. No joke. WTF!"…

Music For Pleasure Time

I just got off the phone with Nathaniel Friedman, a writer working on a "vinyl revival" piece scheduled to appear in an upcoming issue of Penthouse, that finest of fine men's periodicals. I think it went fairly well. If nothing else, it gives me an excuse to buy the magazine.

"I'm mentioned in an article in here. No, dude, really…"

We explored the possibilities surrounding this so-called "vinyl revival," discussed vinyl's ineffable soul, pondered its influence on the music industry, on hi-fi, and on the world, in general. I talked about vinyl's ability to communicate…