Barely a year removed from his final performance with The Miracles, Smokey Robinson delivered Smokey, his first album stepping out on his own. Driving solo, Robinson pushed his sound sonically and topically. The politically and morally charged, “Just My Soul Responding” is the pinnacle of that push . . .
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"With the ETA band, there were all these other experiences dealing with music that people were composing. So, when we would improvise, all of that other stuff was informed in what we were doing." Visionary guitarist Jeff Parker joins us to discuss The Way Out of Easy, recorded live at his residency at ETA . . .
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Drop in. Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.
34.1090° N, 118.2334° W . . .
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How many songs can you think of where the songwriter has a philosophical interaction with a
burrowing mole? If the answer is none, then now it is one. This is one of the many charms to be relished in Bridget St John's rousing “Curl Your Toes." After studying in France for a time in the late '60s, St John found herself floating around in the English folk atmosphere with many scene-makers of the time. She soon met musical champion and promotional extraordinaire John Peel and went on to release her fully acoustic debut album, Ask Me No Questions . . .
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One of the ambient country scene’s biggest proponents for almost a decade now has been Bob Holmes, whose work with SUSS, numün and the Ambient Country podcast — among many other efforts — have spread the gospel far and wide. Holmes’ latest project is Across The Horizon, a collaboration with Northern Spy Records that brings onboard various like-minded artists drawn “from the wide landscape of instrumental music” (including Luke Schneider, Marisa Anderson, William Tyler and more) to curate a series of digital releases that will culminate next year in a double LP compilation of stellar sonic explorations . . .
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Welcome to the penultimate episode of our ninth season, featuring Pat Irwin of Suss. You may remember him from last year’s Suss talk, with his bandmates Jonathan Gregg and Bob Holmes, but he’s back for a solo talk this time, which allowed us to dig into his wild life in music, from his time in the the late ‘70s New York No Wave scene with The Raybeats and 8-Eyed Spy, to his work with Southern freak icons The B-52s, and his long career crafting music for TV and animation, including shows like Rocko’s Modern Life . . .
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More supremely groovy sounds from Gray/Smith, the drums/guitar duo made up of L. Gray (guitar and vocals) and Rob Smith, who you know from their time in the underground trenches with No-Neck Blues Band, Pigeons and many more. At first, Heels in the Aisle comes across deeply laid-back, the songs coalescing out of nothing, drifting together effortlessly. But that might be an illusion . . .
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You might have spotted Ava Mendoza on Bill Orcutt’s Four Guitars tour earlier this year, a meeting of four exceptional players of diverse backgrounds: Wendy Eisenberg from jazz and art song experiment, Shane Parrish from the finger-picked blues-drone world, the unclassifiable Orcutt, and Mendoza, a bold expander of the electric blues rock universe. She’s played with everyone—William Parker, Nels Cline, Matana Roberts, and Fred Frith among others—and led free-jazz, noise-rock, blues-encrusted Unnatural Ways through two albums, blending McLaughlin and Son House-ish textures. The Circular Train expands on this syncretic vision . . .
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In a massive four-CD set, Allen Lowe and his adventurous ensemble conjure an alternate past while exploring real history. Their tribute to Louis Armstrong, the country he grew up in and the worlds he created employs a wealth of traditions and styles, from Dixieland to fusion. A sprawling, eccentric mix of contradictions, confluences and celebrations, it rewrites the past and charts a weird vision for the future . . .
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With Lilly Wave, cartoonish Brian Blomerth creates a vivid and oracular comix biography about the life and far out ideas of John C. Lilly. Though far from a typical biography (to start, all the human characters in the story are anthropomorphized in Blomerth's signature style), it nonetheless creates context in which to experience Lilly's most psychedelic notions. From the deep sea to outer space, this one is a journey. Dive in . . .
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Robert Smith never aimed to create the definitive soundtrack for our current dystopian moment, but he may have done it anyway. The argument against? He wrote some of these songs more than a decade ago and has been playing them off and on at shows for nearly as long. But despite the temporal disjunction, if you’re looking for some way through early November 2024, bleak, magisterial Songs of a Lost World makes an ideal companion. It is wise, spiritually charged and not at all bent on insisting that “we’ll get through this” or “things will get better . . .
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Home of the Demo comes from a quiet period in Anthony Moore’s eventful musical life. The avant-garde keyboardist and composer’s art-pop-cabaret project Slapp Happy had run aground, after moving from Berlin to London and collaborating with Henry Cow for two albums. Virgin Records released his first solo album Out (1976) but passed on the subsequent ones, Flying Doesn’t Help (1979) and World Service (1981), both issued on independents . . .
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Seed of memory. Via satellite, transmitting from northeast Los Angeles — the Aquarium Drunkard Show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35. 7pm California time, Wednesdays.
34.1090° N, 118.2334° W . . .
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This week, a talk taped earlier this summer with Martin Courtney of Real Estate. Real Estate has been releasing great albums since the late 2000s. This year, they released their sixth LP, called Daniel. Produced in Nashville by Daniel Tashian, who produced Kacy Musgraves’ breakthrough Golden Hour, it’s a mellow, refined sound—deeply rooted in acoustic ‘90s rock textures and dappled with pedal steel. It’s a record about growing up, and accepting all that comes with accumulated time spent here on earth . . .
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"If the freedom doesn't kill you/Well then man, I think the politics might." Richard Swift cracks that line in "The Original Thought," the opening number of 4 Hits & A Miss-The Essential Richard Swift, a 50-minute, 14-song collection that serves as a primer or introduction to the late songsmith. Lovely, charmed, oddball, and often ha ha funny, this playlist presents Swift as a pop wizard/joker/wisecracking oracle, tap dancing the line between sarcastic wit and transcendental wisdom . . .
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