Jeff McCord on the month’s new releases
Jason Moran
Blue Note
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Buy this at jasonmoran.com
“Heady stuff.” If only by dropping references to painters Basquiat and Rauschenberg into his work, Houston-born jazz pianist JASON MORAN undoubtedly hears that a lot. His latest, ARTIST IN RESIDENCE (Blue Note), based on his compositions for three commissions in the past year—for Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center and New York’s Dia Art Foundation and Jazz at Lincoln Center—does little to dispel the notion. Snippets of artist Adrian Piper intoning her peers to “break down the barriers” between the art world and its audience form a hip-hop-like backbeat; elsewhere a lovely soprano voice is juxtaposed with his trio, while found objects rattle, feet shuffle, or pencils scribble as Moran comps away. If all this sounds like an academic bore, remember that Moran is the same musician who playfully inverted Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” and threw the Albert King chestnut “I’ll Play the Blues for You” into the deep end. With a creative talent unrivaled in modern jazz, Moran makes the music soar with ebullience and ingenuity. He might aim at his listeners’ heads, but he also knows to never shoot over them.
Shawn Colvin
Nonesuch
With her penchant for storytelling, SHAWN COLVIN delivers songs of subtle simplicity, directness, and universal appeal. Despite the fact that she composes virtually none of her music (her longtime collaborator John Leventhal does that), her backing tracks always seem permanently fused to her words. ON THESE FOUR WALLS (Nonesuch), Colvin’s first recording in five years, there are moments that feel lacking in cleverness or depth (“So Good to See You,” “Fill Me Up”), but it’s not her way to hammer a point home. Colvin’s past includes stints at hard rock, western swing, and Off-Broadway, but she has found a method that works (check out her shelf of Grammys), and if it’s at times formulaic, well, the songs are the main thing: the Springsteen-like narrator (gender excluded) of “Summer Dress” yearning for something more, the wistful midlife resignation of the title track, and the fine Beatle-esque soaring of “Cinnamon Road” (with fellow Austinite Patty Griffin). It’s as close as Walls comes to a knockout punch. There are surprises, like a Paul Westerberg cover, but it’s primarily life, love, promise, regret—all wrapped in peerless adult pop.
Guy Clark
Dualtone
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Buy this at Workbench Songs Autographed PRE-ORDER
One of the revelations of the recent Townes Van Zandt documentary Be Here to Love Me was seeing GUY CLARK in full bloom, undiminished by age. Everything about him—the irascible wit, drunken smile, and back-slapping demeanor—spelled trouble with a capital T. Yet since the filming, he’s found his own trouble, trading the T for the big C. Album photos of an aged Clark without his trademark mane come as a shock, yet lymphoma (reportedly in remission) hasn’t crushed this ornery sumbitch. WORKBENCH SONGS (Dualtone) is a broadly entertaining work, one of the Monahans-born songwriter’s most focused albums in some time. There’s a frayed edge to his voice, but Clark’s songs sing with ragged abandon. He runs down a few well-worn roads—the Anybar, USA, “Out in the Parking Lot” and “Analog Girl” (“Out in the garden/She’s got a Web site”)—but there are detours as well: the easy-swing charm of “Tornado Time in Texas”; the hilarious “Exposé,” co-written with Rodney Crowell and Hank DeVito; and best of all, the touching “Magdalene,” where a fugitive begs a girl to join him as he hightails it to Mexico. Yep, trouble.
Grupo Fantasma
This eleven-piece Austin band has been captured onstage at Antone’s nightclub for its third album, Grupo Fantasma Comes Alive (Aire Sol). We caught up with Adrian Quesada, one of Grupo’s two guitarists, in the middle of a summer Canadian tour.
Why a live album now? People have been asking us to release a live album since the early days, and despite good feedback from the first two albums, we still heard that they didn’t live up to the real show. We finally felt confident enough to record live.
Original vocalist Brian Ramos has moved on. How has his leaving changed things? The most difficult thing about parting ways with Brian was on the personal level. He was like a brother to a lot of us. The band has roots more than fifteen years old, and the bonds are as crucial as the music itself. It’s become less about having a front man and more about being a musical machine, an Afro-Latin-funk orchestra in the tradition of the ones we were inspired by.
Your tour schedule seems relentless. How does such a large band keep it together out there? We laugh—a lot. I know Willie already said it, but it’s a lot of fun to hit the road and make music with your friends.
Grupo Fantasma Comes Alive: Grupo Fantasma, published by AireSol.
