New Music Now

To celebrate my new job, I've purchased a whole heap of new music. Here's what:

Meredith Monk: Atlas
I deeply love her last new album, Mercy. What she's doing makes a great deal of sense to me--for the most part, I've never paid much attention to lyrics, so singing without words seems almost more expressive to me, because you get the emotion without having it cluttered with what is often bad poetry.

John Zorn: 50th Birthday Celebration volums 4 and 11, Electric Masada and Bar Kokhba
I haven't been listening to Zorn so much lately, but I saw Bar Kokhba at the JVC jazz festival four or five years ago, and they changed how I listened to music a great deal. So having a live disc of them is kinda like reliving that concert. Electric Masada sounds just like 70's miles davis.

Perneice Brothers: Discover a Lovelier You
Not quite as ghostly and luminous as Yours, Mine and Ours but still frickin beautiful

Brad Meldau: Live In Tokyo
His trio work sometimes annoys me, something about the drummer, too cluttered or something. But I love solo piano, and I love what Meldau does to the rock and folk of Radiohead and Nick Drake. I love Nick Drake so much and Meldau pulls something very sad and beautiful out of his already and sad and beautiful songs.

Ryan Adams: Cold Roses and Rock N Roll
It doesn't seem to get much better than this guy. He hears Dylan, Joni Mitchell, 90's rock, blues, everything, and makes something fresh out of it all. What I like most, I think, is that he's not trying to make anything new, just to make deep, exciting songs. Cold Roses is two discs of near perfection. And Rock N Roll is a kind of send up, but it's as deathly serious and moving as the rest of Adams work.

--------------Much later that night...

Trip to IKEA with B and Woody. We bought two giant books shelves, a wok, some other stuff. Stuck in traffic for a long time, then exhaustedly assembled some furnature.

Just read some very irritating reviws of Ryan Adams' work on allmusic.com. The reviewer seemed to have a chip on his shoulder about Adams, wanted the songs to be worse than they are, to make Adams into an asshole. Who cares who Adams is? The songs are fucking great. It was the kind of reviewing in which the reviewer wants to draw more attention to himself and how smart he is than to the work. It's an easy way to make a review, but it's not too useful.

Reading Forest Gander's forthcoming book. It's good--more accessible maybe. Couldn't really get into his work till now. Must sleep.