Day’s Plays Guest Post: Amy Domingues



[You can learn about Amy’s music here and here.]


Les Filles de Illighadad, Eghass Malan: This is one of my favorite music groups of the past few years. Tuareg music is hypnotic in its simplicity and repetitive rhythms, and it induces almost a meditative state. Fatou Seidi Ghali and her bandmates hail from the desert in Niger, and she is the first woman to play Tuareg guitar professionally. I was lucky to see them play live last year. The combination of the responsorial vocal chants, minimal guitar repetitions, a simple leather drum, and the pounding of a calabash half-submerged in water creates a compelling soundscape.


Joe Wong + Nite Creatures, “Minor”: This is the new single from Joe’s forthcoming debut album on Decca Records. Joe is an old pal from DC back in the day, and he’s been churning out quality TV/Film soundtracks in LA for the past decade. He also has a really great podcast, The Trap Set, interviewing musicians. I’ve known Joe to be an amazing drummer, but it turns out he’s also a great singer and songwriter as well! This new solo album brings to mind Scott Walker’s epic album Scott 4 with its crystalline vocal production and lavish orchestration. Technically, I’m playing cello in his backing band for NYC/Philly shows in October…. I hope it still happens!


Fiona Apple, Fetch the Bolt Cutters: I wasn’t a Fiona Apple aficionado previously, but I had read some good things about this record when it came out in April, and I have a lot of respect for an artist who can record an entire album herself and then have the balls to release it in the middle of a pandemic. I deemed it a little chaotic upon first listening, but then after a few more I was really struck by the variety of musical sounds and uninhibited vocals with razor sharp narrative lyrics. So I keep listening and find new things each time to appreciate.


Hailu Mergia, Hailu Mergia & His Classical Instrument: Shemonmuanaye: Ethiopian jazz accordion? Why yes, please. This album was recorded in 1985 shortly after Mergia relocated to DC from Ethiopia to study music at Howard University. It was recorded in 3 days and largely improvised pieces for accordion, Rhodes piano, synthesizer, and drum machine. The accordion had been popular in Ethiopia in the 1950s, and Mergia’s inspiration for the album was to bring back this instrument from his youth and blend it with traditional Ethiopian melodies and current music technology. It’s my go-to chill out record. Incidentally, Mergia still lives in DC and drives taxis.


Bill Callahan, Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest: Bill Callahan’s ability to spin a completely original narrative tale in 3-4 minutes is a rare talent. Combined with his signature  economy of sound, this prolific songwriter never disappoints. In songs such as “The Ballad of The Hulk” and “Watch Me Get Married” his confessional lyrics mix with surprising metaphors, and there is always some new layer of meaning to decipher upon each listen.


Musica Secreta, Lucrezia Vizzana: Componimenti Musicali 1623: Lucrezia Vizzana was a 17th century Bolognese nun at the convent of S. Christina who managed to publish a remarkable set of sacred motets at a time of great prohibition in religious music. Convents were basically the only option for women who wanted to be educated and free to express themselves musically and not be shunned by society as having loose morals. Vizzana’s collection reflects her piety and her musical influences of Banchieri, Monteverdi and the new stile moderno which was taking the European scene by storm. This is a gorgeous recording of vocal music which transcends the centuries to offer us peace and tranquility if we choose to listen.

Day’s Plays Guest Post: Norman Brannon



[You can check out Norman’s work here.]


Arthur Conley, Sweet Soul Music: I think about Arthur Conley a lot. Most people at least know “Sweet Soul Music,” the international hit single he co-wrote with Otis Redding, but the entirety of his 1967 debut album — also produced by Redding — had a darker vibe: Songs like “Take Me (Just As I Am)” and “I’m a Lonely Stranger” hinted at the struggle underneath. Conley eventually rejected his success, legally changed his name, and moved to the Netherlands where he felt he could live openly as a gay man, and I guess I think about him a lot because I always wonder how things might have ended differently if he’d just felt free.


Ayelle, NOMAD (Mixtape): I was always a fan of minimal techno — from Basic Channel to Force Inc. — so when minimalism started moving into pop music, I was all in. Ayelle is a Swedish-Iranian singer who  lives in New York, and from my vantage point, she is committing to this style like it’s some kind of cult. Every track on this mixtape relies on her vocal to the extent that the songs feature very little else besides a strong beat, some sub bass, and ethereal keys. What I love about it is that I know it’s probably more complex than that, but it doesn’t sound like it.


Arca, KiCk i: This would probably have been called IDM in the mid-‘90s, but it also feels more accessible than that. “Mequetrefe” sort of reminds me of when Funkstörung started dabbling in hip-hop, but with a Latin groove punching its way out, while “Nonbinary” eventually morphs into a ballroom vogue track if the legendary children were having seizures. When a Björk guest spot is the least interesting thing on your record, you’ve crossed a lot of fucking lines.


Lonely The Brave, Things Will Matter: I still love honest-to-God rock music. But more than that, I love songs. If you are going to play rock music, then I need something to sing along to, I want an anthem, I want to feel like whoever is singing those words is really going through it. Lonely the Brave give that to me, and more than that, I think they understand that the songs are the thing: Each of their first two albums comes with an accompanying “Redux” version that strips all the songs into unique acoustic arrangements that rival the rock versions. The songs just expose themselves, no tricks necessary.


Owen, The AvalancheAs someone who has lived inside of the band world for 30 years, I have a lot of talented friends. But while I admire them all and love so many of the records they’ve made, I’m never really envious. Not so with Owen: Mike Kinsella writes songs that I wish I played on, he writes lyrics that I wish I wrote, he expresses himself in a way that I’ve just never really been able to express myself. This record, his latest, made me want to write a book or make a record immediately. It reminded me that for all that I’ve put out of myself in the world, I still don’t feel right about myself and that making things is the only salve I know.


Mark Owen, The Art of Doing Nothing: Most people can’t figure out why Take That are my favorite band, and I swear I never meant for them to be. Certainly a band who started by rolling around naked in jello for a music video can’t be my favorite band! But that was 30 years ago, and when I think about who I was 30 years ago, I can’t say I’m any more or less proud of who I was or what I did. In my eyes, Mark Owen is the underdog in Take That — the guy who isn’t Robbie Williams or Gary Barlow — and this album, to me, cemented his superior status. It’s a modern pop record with dark corners and rough edges; there’s bits of Bowie and Moroder and Lanois if you listen hard enough. Should you leave your prejudices at the door, you might actually come to realize how special this record is.

Day’s Plays Guest Post: Hank Shteamer


Hello, my name is Hank. Thanks to Zach for inviting me to do this. Info on some of my endeavors can be found here.


T Pain, Tiny Desk Concert: This video is in no way new. Doing some Googling, it appears that the internet rightly flipped out over it en masse in October 2014 when it came out, and it’s currently sitting at 18.7 million YouTube views. But it is new to me. I like watching NPR’s Tiny Desk performances in general (lately, I’ve loved the Tyler, the Creator and Noname ones), and last week, the T Pain edition popped up in my YouTube “Up next” box. Since then, I have probably watched it 30 times. This is an extremely potent example of the Unplugged effect, i.e., the magic that can result when an artist usually heard through a filter of volume, distortion, and/or high-tech production (in this case, Auto-Tune), etc., checks those trappings at the door and simply let the songs speak for themselves. I’ve likely heard these tracks — “Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’),” “Drankin’ Patna,” etc. — out in the world in a passive kind of way, but none of that prior exposure prepared me for this, i.e., the transformation of strip-club anthems into what sound more like heart-rending gospel hymns. The whole performance, just T-Pain and a keyboardist I wish I knew more about who’s apparently named Toro (apologies if I got that spelling wrong, but I cannot find any info on this man anywhere), feels casual yet sublime. I just wish it were longer.


On the Might of Princes, Where You Are and Where You Want to Be: The world of emo, screamo and related subgenres is discussed these days with an almost academic specificity, complete with talk of “waves” and micro-eras. I admire the dedication but I don’t pretend to be an authority here. I just happen to dig a lot of the music that falls under this general umbrella, from Rites of Spring and Cap’n Jazz all the way up through Say Anything, La Dispute and the Hotelier. (Being from Kansas City, I’ve got a special fondness for the bands Boys Life, Giants Chair, and The Farewell Bend, all essential if you don’t know them.) In terms of the fundamental qualities that I look for in this general area, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a better record than this one. It’s at once punishing and emotionally shattering, ranging from apocalyptically intense post-hardcore to the most tender indie rock imaginable. Singer-guitarist-songwriter Jason Rosenthal, who tragically died in 2013, comes off like the ultimate embodiment of that pissed-off, wounded kid we all know from countless basement shows, shrieking his way through the end of adolescence. (And clearly his sentiments connected; check out this priceless live footage.) But this record is not just some kind of raw purge — the songs are elaborate yet beautifully paced, with an almost proggy sweep that I’ve rarely heard in this genre, and performed with real lived-in maturity (the drum performance by Chris Enriquez is absolutely stellar). The last song, “For Meg,” is so naked and exposed, it should come with a warning label. This is music you want to pump your fist to while sobbing uncontrollably, which is about the highest compliment I could think to pay an emo/screamo record. (After being out of print for years, the album was recently reissued by Dead Broke Rekerds; the vinyl’s already sold out, but thankfully can you can at least download it on Bandcamp. There’s also an OTMOP documentary now in progress, and I can’t wait to see it.)


Grateful Dead, Dick’s Picks Volume 31:I’m not a Dead expert; honestly, I’m barely a Dead novice. But I do really enjoy the Dead, especially those moments when they break free of song and really take it out there. This marathon set, drawn from three shows in August 1974, features some sublime examples of that aspect of Dead-dom, particularly a nearly half-hour-long version of “Playing in the Band” that I find absolutely transcendent. The idea of “jamming” has become a cliché and even a pejorative but there’s a reason so many people flocked to this group for decades — it’s because there’s a real feeling of eternity in this music, and of this strange, symbiotic ensemble unity where various musical organisms (shout-out in particular to Lesh and Kreutzmann, who I never tire of homing in on) are moving independently yet with full awareness of and responsiveness to the other. It’s rock music with a lot of the most attractive qualities of jazz and ambient music and, while this particular sensation isn’t pervasive throughout the album, there are still hints of it all over this set.


John Zorn, Baphomet: I’ve just concluded a roughly four-month immersion in the John Zorn universe, culminating in a somewhat lengthy Rolling Stone story that I published a couple weeks back. I spent time with a mountain of music for this and came away with a whole bunch of new Zorn and Zorn-adjacent faves, but the album that’s been sticking with me the most is the newest: Baphomet, which is the eighth album in just five years by Simulacrum, Zorn’s death-metal organ trio with the great John Medeski on keys and younger avant-garde metal badasses Matt Hollenberg (also of the band Cleric) and Kenny Grohowski (also of Imperial Triumphant, who are about to release an absolutely batshit and inspired album called Alphaville that you need to hear if you have an interest in any kind of outlandish/heavy music) on guitar and drums, respectively. Their live album from earlier this year, Beyond Good and Evil, is also excellent, but I really love the way Zorn turns them loose on a long-form piece here (one composition lasting around 40 minutes) and shows off everything they can do, from towering, explosive hard prog to groovy funk-fusion and gently lyrical mood music. I’d recommend this equally to a Zorn completist and someone who’s never heard a note of his music before. (Mount Analogue, another roughly 40-minute Zorn suite from 2012, with a more chill and mystical bent, is a great complement to Baphomet.)


Paul Bley, Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, When Will the Blues Leave: I adore Paul Bley. I know a lot of his records but not enough. Something — I wish I could remember what — sent me down a Bley rabbit hole recently, and I don’t think I’ll emerge for a while. I particularly love hearing him when he’s matched with players who share his knack for effortlessly bridging bold abstraction and disarming emotional depth. Two prime suspects there are Gary Peacock and Paul Motian, and this live trio set (recorded in 1999 but not released till last year) is a holy document. The ballads in particular on this thing (particularly the one called “Flame“) sound like they’re simultaneously ascending and exploding, and the more intense pieces (like the scampering rendition of the title piece by Ornette Coleman) have a kind of joyous spark to them that makes you want to leap up and start shimmying wildly. Players like these (RIP to both Pauls) found a way to celebrate the many schools and eras of jazz in all their splendor while also uncovering new and infinite musical mysteries. What you hear here is so free but it’s not “free jazz”; it’s just three absolute masters communing on the high wire and seeing what happens.


Bob Dylan, Rough and Rowdy Ways: Somehow at 79, Dylan is making more Dylan-y music than he ever has. He’s fully settled into his late style, capitalizing on the full range of his now-ravaged voice, and arrived at a mode that as my friend, the brilliant Jay Ruttenberg, put it in a New Yorker write-up, feels both “frisky and elegiac.” He tosses out one-liners both hammy and hilarious (I think my favorite is “I’ll take Scarface Pacino and the Godfather Brando/Mix ‘em up in a tank and get a robot commando,” from “My Own Version of You“), spits out threats with unsettling venom (“I ain’t no false prophet — I just said what I said; I’m here to bring vengeance on somebody’s head”) and creates these humid song tapestries that just keep unspooling and unspooling, on into some surreal eternity. There’s not really a Dylan album I know that I don’t love, and I know quite a few. But right now, I love this album (particularly the songs “False Prophet” and “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)“) as much as any of them.

Day’s Plays Guest Post: J. Robbins


[You can hear some of J.’s music here, here, and here.]


Sparks, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip: Brothers Ron and Russell Mael formed Sparks in 1967, which means they have been a band as long as I’ve been alive. 2020 is the year I became a super-fan. This is their 24th studio album, released this May, and like every other Sparks record I’ve heard, it’s full of timeless, eccentric yet immediate pop music that crackles with an irrepressible creative joy. Sublimely ridiculous lyrics (“Stravinsky’s only hit / he toned it down a bit / He didn’t write the words, that was my job”) frame surreal and sometimes unexpectedly poignant stories, while the music runs an insanely wide gamut from almost symphonic harmonic complexity to new-wave ditty simplicity. Unlikely but incredibly catchy hooks abound. This record achieved the impossible: it made me smile while I was doing yard work.


The Drones, Feelin’ Kinda Free:  The Drones were an Australian guitar band between 1997 – 2016. Members went on to form the delightfully-named Tropical Fuck Storm, who are also great, but the Drones are a special band for me and this record is a masterpiece. Singer/guitarist Garth Liddiard is a virtuoso of “wrong” notes and whammy bar mutations, whose playing has a scary emotional directness, seeming sometimes to grasp and stumble, but always with purpose and musicality. Their sound went through stages from garage-psych noise to melancholy Gothic Americana, to Neil Young-influenced walls of sound, and this record, their last, was a dive off the deep end incorporating loops, digital editing, and deep synth bass into an uncompromising wall of sound, with lyrics ranging from sharp-tongued political outrage (“Private Execution”) and conspiracy-theory-fueled satire (“Taman Shud”) to broken-hearted farewells (“To Think That I Once Loved You”). I often describe this record as “imagine if Beauty Pill were drug-addled reprobates,” and I say that with a heart full of love and awe.


Grace Jones, Hurricane: I got HOOKED on this record for maybe two weeks after watching the documentary “Bloodlight and Bami.” Deep grooves, inventive production, powerfully autobiographical lyrics, that unmistakeable voice so full of depth and challenge. A perfect beginning: “This is my voice, my weapon of choice.” The song “Williams Blood” is like a tone poem. Before I heard this record, I had always thought of Grace Jones mainly as an icon of surfaces and representation — her piercing gaze; her striking looks; her records, which, though brilliantly curated and highly enjoyable, were mainly cover tunes – but this (no less stylish) record is personal, powerful, and deep.


Einstürzende Neubauten, Perpetuum Mobile: Most people who know Einstürzende Neubauten only from a distance seem to think of them primarily as a noise band, more of an alienating art statement than music; the putative inventors of the elusive genre known as “industrial,” with lore such as their legendary destruction of the old 9:30 Club stage with jackhammers. But in the course of their 40-year history, they have absorbed and incorporated influences as disparate as Kurt Weil and Lee Hazelwood, and produced some sublimely beautiful music with unorthodox textures, hypnotic rhythms, and poetic lyrics. This record can bring tears to my eyes, especially “Youme and Meyou” and “Dead Friends Around the Corner.”


T-Bone Burnett, Tooth of Crime: T-Bone Burnett is mostly known as a record producer (his star-studded discography includes Sam Phillips, Elvis Costello, Gillian Welch, and the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss collaboration Raising Sand) and soundtrack composer (True Detective among many others). I went looking into his music after hearing an interview on the Broken Record podcast, and this album, along with its sister “The True False Identity,” stuck with me. The musical soundscape often resembles a slicker, more elegant version of Tom Waits’ recent records – noisy, often overdriven – yet somehow still understated. Lonely tremolo guitars hang in the charged air, distorted kick drums boom and ring, but the total effect is more seductive than Waits’ cranky challenge. Burnett’s deadpan delivery of darkly comic lyrics sometimes gives way to a more melancholy melodicism and an almost tin pan alley aesthetic, as in the ballad “Dope Island,” a duet with Sam Phillips which is a standout track for me.


Jerry Goldsmith, Logan’s Run Soundtrack: Jerry Goldsmith has been a huge musical influence on me since I was a kid. Like all the best movie composers, he was able to evoke the inner lives of a film’s characters, the soul within its action, and bring the audience into the story in a way only music could achieve. He was an effortless musical chameleon, while still maintaining his voice as a composer — endlessly inventive with melody, harmony, and rhythm, equally comfortable with pop hooks or 12-tone soundscapes. It became his curse that he had to supply depth for so many films that lacked it in and of themselves (to illustrate my point: try watching the supernatural scenes in the original “Poltergeist” with the sound down). Anyway, leaving the actual movie aside, this score is great! Goldsmith was a big fan of mixing what was then brand-new music tech like analog synthesizers and tape echo units with more conventional orchestral sounds, and in this score he really revels in avant-garde synth weirdness (to reflect the emotionless world of the dome dwellers) – but he also makes the most out of what sounds like a small-ish orchestra (with nods to Stravinsky and Copland) when it’s time to bring a sense of wonder or a deeper human feeling.

West 4th St Basketball Courts Manhattan NYC

These photos attempt an impression of the play as opposed to a document of it. I had a wide lens on my camera when I came up out of the subway and rather than over-jockey for a better view, I opted to use the fence as a kind of screen to mediate the action.

I’m not sure when the W4th courts got sponsorship but the Nike banners don’t look new and so much of the village has gone through similar changes that conspicuous branding seems more a cosmetic than a practical shift. That is, there was plenty of basketball on these courts before Nike got there.

Nuestro Pueblo: Watts Towers

My most recent trip to Los Angeles finally yielded a visit to the Watts Towers. I’m not sure what I expected to see but the effect of the towers rising, as their designer and builder Simon Rodia put it, “up to the sun,” was both breathtaking and calming. There, in the middle of a tidy, residential area, is the Watts Towers Arts Center, home to the single city block environed by the towers and their relevant structures, as well as a museum of contemporary art, a handfull of faded but still compelling murals, and some freestanding sculpture. It is a celebration of the neighborhood, the vibrancy of Watts, a full embrace of its past, and full advocacy of its present and future. There are artist residencies and music festivals, and jazz education and mentorship for emerging and developing youth musicians, but above all are the towers, Nuestro Pueblo.

[A note about the photos: I opted to develop the photos of the towers in black and white because my color versions were overwhelmed by the late-morning sunlight. The same light, of course, served ground-level photography quite well, making it possible to capture the brilliance and array of colors and textures that make up the rest of the work.]

BELLS≥ Recording at the Magpie Cage

My band, BELLS≥, recorded the first of our North American Spirituals this past weekend at the Magpie Cage in Baltimore. The piece is called “The First Ray.” We debuted it last year on tour, and although we’ve kept the overall structure intact from that version, there have been some significant changes that we hope familiar listeners will enjoy.

Among these changes is J. Robbins joining us on bass. We were all quite pleased working together on Solutions, Silence, and Affirmations and it seemed a natural move for us to include him on this and future recordings. We look forward to his contributions to the remaining Spirituals as we move towards composing and recording the entire cycle.

High School

I was recently in my hometown for my high school reunion. I’ve never attended a reunion, in part because my attendance at high school in the first place was not very consistent, and in part because I never finished high school anyway, and in part because I thought of myself as either someone who didn’t need to attend a reunion or someone who might not be entirely welcome at such an event.

As it happens, however, I had a wonderful time. I enjoyed speaking to each of my friends and former classmates, whether at length or briefly, and hearing from them how the years have been, how adulthood has been, about their families, their work, their other interests, some of which remain from early in their lives.

Many of us have kept each other abreast via Facebook but not all of us, and the chance to catch up with those who reserve their social activity for less questionable platforms and whose lives are no less full for it was, in this case, unusual and inspiring. It’s easy to assume that the affect and effect of high school strata and adolescent turmoil can still reach us in our middle age, just as it’s easy to assume that Facebook is the only way to stay in touch anymore: in both assumptions we sell ourselves short, cut ourselves off from a freer, less mediated, and more satisfying exchange.

It was a joy to see firsthand the enthusiasm we maintain for each other for a single reason, a single association that endures precisely because it culminated at the commencement of our adulthood. Here are a handful of photos from the site of those parallel adolescences, that culmination.

L.E.S. Colors

However much the neighborhood has changed —and in its way suffered— with the last decade of gentrification, I still have a handful of favorites on the Lower East Side, relative newcomers CW Pencil Enterprise and Russ & Daughters Café, and stalwarts Economy Candy, and Katz’s Delicatessen among them.

But this handful of photos takes passing stock of some in-between stuff, things seen en route from one stop to another.

Colorado

I was in Colorado last week for a family event and took these pictures in the course of a hike into a very small portion of Rocky Mountain National Park. What appealed to me about these subjects was the disarray, the contrast between cleared and nearly-uniform wooded areas and meadows, and the invasive presence of the root balls and fallen trees that previously contributed to that order. Each of these photos presents a sort of sore thumb.

If it can be said that there is an argument between the dead or fallen —the disrupted— plant lives displayed here and those that flourish, it follows that one aspect of the fight is the stubborn, gnarled refusal of the former trees to move on: rather than decompose, they opt to dry out and stay put.

Time, it seems,
forgives, if not redeems.