The Oscars and Musical Pillaging

The Academy Award nominees were announced today. Cue fanfare!

For the few of you that have been dedicate readers of "Music in the Bubble" over the past two years, you may remember that I used to do a bit of film reviewing (see here, here, here, and here). And like everyone, I am awards obsessed, even when I try to convince myself they don't mean anything, and always get it wrong (Crash? Over Brokeback? Really? REALLY?).

So I can't help from commenting on today's nominee announcement in some way. First, the category of what I'm excited about:

1. "Tree of Life" for best picture! And Terrence Malick for best director.

This was definitely my favorite movie of the year, but I'll admit it can be a difficult viewing experience without the proper mindset. It certainly has won its share of accolades (Palme d'Or at Cannes), but I didn't think it would be acknowledged by the more middle-brow Academy. If nominees reflect what Hollywood thinks of itself, then I feel "Tree of Life" reflects their highest artistic aspirations.

2. "The Muppets" get a nomination for best song.

Most people are talking about the fact that there are only two songs nominated (I think it's because they changed the rules so that only songs that actually appear in the film can be nominated, and only one from a particular film). But I'm just excited thinking about Brett McKenzie/Jason Segal/Walter the Muppet getting to do ridiculous things on big-time TV. I disagree over their choice of song though. I would put my money on the opening "Life's a Happy Song," the most joyously upbeat, earnest song I've heard all year.

3. "The Artist" did not get the most nominations (though it did get a lot).

Ok, so I have some problems with this movie. There are a lot of neat tricks throughout, it's well-shot and such, but it never really coalesced for me into an affecting, singular product. The story and characters felt somewhat overshadowed by all the gimmickry. It still may walk away with the top prize, but without all the technical award nominations, there's a good-sized segment of the Academy voting bloc (the technicians/cinematographers) that will likely not be voting for it. If I had to put money on anything, it would be "The Descendants," (as a makeup for "Sideways" and the rest of Payne's career), or "The Help" (the closest thing nominated to a successful, middlebrow drama). The techies will probably split between "Hugo" and "Tree of Life," leaving these actor-driven dramas at the top.

But anyway, my major complaint with the artist comes with its musical score (and its best score nomination of course, and it's win at the Golden Globes). This is my greatest concern going into the awards. Yes, I did just bury the lead again.

Ludovic Bource's score for "The Artist" has generated about as much controversy as a musical score can. A little over two weeks ago, actress Kim Novak, co-star of the Hitchcock film "Vertigo," saw the much-buzzed "Artist." Soon after, she bought out a full page ad in the trade magazine Variety lambasting the film for using music from Bernard Herrmann's famous "Vertigo" score. She called the usage a "rape," feeling that her body of work "...has been violated by the movie." Novak strongly objected to the film's re-appropriation of the music as a way to score a cheap "in" with the audience, eliciting emotions that were a product of "Vertigo" rather than the new film itself.

Bource was taken aback by this comment, and responded on the red carpet at the Golden Globes (and elsewhere, everyone asked him the same question) that the use of Herrmann's score was in tribute. Since "The Artist" is a love-letter to the art of making films, then it's only appropriate to reference famous bits of film history. Bernard Herrmann's widow Norma, then responded on BBC Radio 4, saying that although the producers of "The Artist" had never asked or even said that they were using Herrmann's cues, she said that he would have approved of their use in this context.

I agree with Novak that the use of Herrmann's "Veritgo" cues was improper, but only because of the fact that I agree with Herrmann's widow that pre-existing film music would have been acceptable to use as a send-up. When I saw "The Artist," I had known of the musical controversy, and paid close attention to when the Herrmann music popped up. I was expecting to have it jump out at me, provide a substantial musical change of pace, and be evident that this was in fact a musical reference. Instead, the famous "Vertigo" love theme blended imperceptibly into the rest of the score. The movie used a re-recorded version, giving it the same timbre as the Bource's new music cues. Bource's own musical aesthetic is that of a normal, contemporary film composer - it's subtle, and more about the general atmosphere than tunes or intricate counterpoint. It certainly is far removed from the overstatement of classic composers like Herrmann, Korngold, and others whose scores demanded the attention of the viewer, and became a character themselves.

Because Bource uses the "Vertigo" themes in this way, reorchestrating them rather than playing them in their original, grainy atmosphere, he isn't as much sending up Herrmann's work as much as plagiarizing it. By altering Herrmann's music to fit his particular aesthetic, Bource is admitting that he can't write a great tune like Herrmann's "Vertigo" love theme, and so must steal it and record it in a way that divorces the theme from its original sound-context. A true send-up makes it clear that one is referencing or lampooning a particular style. It has to be obvious, like "Back in the USSR" - the Beatles sending up the Beach Boys. In his interviews, Bource is trying to make it seem that his use of Herrmann's music is in loving tribute. Bource may actually feel that way, but the way he actually uses the "Vertigo" cues feels like a robbery rather than a tribute. It would be same as if James Horner said that the reason he steals themes from Copland, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich is that they are in tribute to their great work.

Like music critic Alex Ross said, it could be some complex meta-message about the borrowing of Art in a media-saturated world, or it could just be that Bource is a hack. A hack that's the odds-on favorite to win the biggest music award in Hollywood.

I'm not saying that I am against borrowing music for different movies. It's many times hugely effective. Kubrick was an expert (all that crazy Gyorgy Ligeti in 2001, all of Clockwork Orange), Wes Anderson is an expert (um, like everything), "Tree of Life" was made by its intense use of various classical themes. It can even be effective to recompose a theme into a new soundworld, what Bource tried to do in "The Artist." In my favorite film from last year - "The Social Network" - Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross decided to arrange Edvard Grieg's famous "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from the first Peer Gynt Suite in a weird, electronic way to accompany the big regata a little over halfway through the film.

This usage works because it plays on contradictions, like all good, clear references do. Reznor and Ross's score was eerie and ambient in the best way, and very un-classical. By appropriating a famous classical theme for the scene that symbolizes the Winkelvii's inability to be truly the best at anything, the score effectively satirizes the dying old world of aristocratic privilege they live in, a world being taken over by technology. Reznor and Ross were not trying to be Grieg, like Bource is trying to be Herrmann, but were using Grieg to make a specific point.

The ineffectiveness of Bource's appropriation of the music of "Vertigo" crystalizes for the me the problems of "The Artist" in general. "The Artist" is allegedly a tribute to the silent film era, but it doesn't embrace the sound world of silent films. Bource's score is an amalgam of Herrmann-ish and noir tropes. There aren't any notable mad-cap scenes with ridiculous percussion sound effects. The era that Bource seems to fetishize is not the silent era, but the Hollywood heyday of the '40s and '50s. In this way, "The Artist" feels like a tribute to a fictional past, an era that never actually existed. Having such nostalgia for a time that didn't actually occur is a very problematic idea - an idea central to the conservative and Tea Party mindset. While a film like "Singin' in the Rain" or a musical like "Follies" gets to the heart of bygone eras of entertainment through their embrace of contradiction and pastiche and clear references to famous films of that actual era, "The Artist" prefers to rewrite film history, and steal the good stuff to make it seem like a well-made movie.

Today Meets Yesterday on Latin Jazz Double Bill

It's well known that today meets yesterday in a museum, but a concert hall is also a nice place for intergenerational communication. Sometimes its just musicians in tuxedos and audience members communing with a dead white guy. But it's nicer when there's a sense of dialogue between musicians themselves, like an old master and an up-and-comer.

The McCarter Theater here at Princeton had just this kind of concert on Friday evening, pairing Cuban piano wunderkind Alfredo Rodriguez with his legendary countryman (and rare US visitor), pianist Chucho Valdés. While both performances were standouts on their own, putting them together helped highlight how the two take their Cuban musical heritage into new places.

Some assorted observations from the evening are below the jump.

To Read (Music) is to Not Know?

Late yesterday evening, jazz critic Nate Chinen posted a rather innocuous tweet. He wrote, "Sometimes I think jazz musicians underestimate the appeal of a band performing without music stands."

Cue firestorm.

I'm not going to report on everyone who said what, just that it touched a lot of nerves across various musical communities. Drummer Matt Wilson chimed in with remembrances of Dewey Redman. Sara Kirkland Snider and Judd Greenstein spoke from experience in the world of alt-classical. And of course the prodigious tweeter-cum-trumpeter Nicholas Payton had to get in on the action this morning ("It ain't the tool, it's the fool using it," he said).

So I responded as well with the following tweet. "[I]s it that there's less tune-learning by ear now & jazz people refer to selves as composers not songwriters?"

Chinen responded by noting that this is definitely a factor, but then noting the impressiveness of working bands that play complex music without charts - Vijay Iyer's trio and the Bad Plus.

So now I will try to answer why this set off such a firestorm, what I really meant in my tweet, and what I think about Chinen's response.

What's the big deal?


Jazz people always love a negative opinion. The oft-repeated jazz is dead meme, Kurt Rosenwinkel's modern jazz sucks rant, Nicholas Payton's post-modern New Orleans-jazz as a word has no meaning thing. Stuff like that catches on. Chinen's tweet certainly has enough snark to catch on with jazz folk, and it gets an entire idea across within the 140 character limit, so all the easier to respond to.

But it can't just be the negativity thing. There were those classical people getting in on the threat too. The great thing about Chinen's tweet is that it gets at a fundamental issue of how to teach and learn music. If a small jazz group is reading music on the bandstand, it probably hasn't rehearsed the music much. The group hasn't had time to internalize it. Written music allows for quicker uptake of more music, but the problem is that there is so much more to a piece of music than what is on the page. Chinen seemed to be speaking to an apparent epidemic in jazz where bands use seemingly use gigs as rehearsal time (even affects the best of us, like Ravi Coltrane) and aren't putting forth a strong, fully-baked product.

Which leads me to my tweet

I remember hearing guitarist Mark Stewart of the Bang On a Can All Stars (and Paul Simon's music director) talk about rehearsing a piece for the group by Ornette Coleman. Stewart said that Coleman said something to effect of, "We've had notation for hundreds of years and all it does is give us more problems." Coleman has a point in that notation as we know it isn't the best way of communicating many kinds of musical gestures. Transcribing jazz solos (especially Coleman's) can many times be an exercise in futility because everything that makes the solo great - the particular character of the rhythmic feel, the pitch bends, the tone quality of particular notes - are impossible to completely encapsulate on paper.

When one is truly "reading" a piece of music, one's focus is devoted to playing the correct notes at the correct time, and maybe getting the correct articulations and dynamics too, if the notes and rhythms aren't too hard. Any of the "music" that actually comes out is the result of the pre-programmed instincts physically encoded into the muscle memory of the player. The performer doesn't really have time to think about musical character and inflection. Seeing a group of musicians read music they're not particularly familiar with in front of an audience is like seeing a show where all the actors carry their scripts around. The latter happens, but it's definitely not standard operating procedure.

If a musician learns a particular piece of music aurally, he or she has to learn the notes and rhythms in small chunks (based on the whole 7 +/- 2 bits of information that one can hold in short term memory at a given time), but doesn't just learn the notes and rhythms in abstract. The musician learns the qualities of each note, and how they're supposed to go from one note to the next in the phrase. By the time the musician finishes learning the piece, they have already gotten inside it, internalized all of the nuances.

However, this process is time consuming and so usually only works for short pieces, i.e. songs and tunes. Which finally brings me to the point of my tweet. (Prepare for un-backed sweeping statement). Until the mid-1960s or so, jazz was primarily a tune-based idiom. Jazz bands would play versions of pop tunes of the day, having learned them from ubiquitous radio-play or what not. When jazz musicians would write their own tunes, they would be based on pop forms (sometimes explicitly, stringing a new melody on a popular tune's chord progression) or traditional forms like the blues. (Digression: big bands needed notation to coordinate many instrumentalists, but that leads to another part of the argument). When beboppers came together for a jam session, there was never a need for charts. The players just picked out tunes they all knew.

Most jazz musicians have gotten away from this mindset. Young players trying to "get with the tradition" play songbook standards out of fake book and lose all the nuance that makes a tune good. The impulse to art-ify the jazz led most musicians to write more and more complex charts with shifting meters and through-composed solo sections. There's a shift from an aural, vernacular idiom to a written, art-oriented one (America's classical music anyone?).

It's no surprise then that jazz people refer to themselves as composers rather than songwriters. To me, I feel that a lot of post-bop falls for a fetish of complexity that only a few musicians (David Binney as the prime exception that proves the rule) can pull off. My guess is that Chinen was at a gig with one of these kinds of bands when he unloaded his tweet.

There are still a few jazz musicians that work in a no-notation, tune-oriented environment. Lee Konitz comes to mind, with his pick an arbitrary standard and hope the band catches on game. Then there's Bill Frisell and his trio, who have a unique shared vocabulary of tunes across generations and genres. And then there's the whole folk/traditional/fiddle circuit where written charts would be even more out of place. It makes sense then that a lot of the bands I've been getting into lately that seem less reliant on charts come from this folk-ish sense of tune (Jeremy Udden's Plainville, Jenny Scheinman's Mischief and Mayhem).

Chinen's Response and Complexity Without Charts


I definitely agree with Chinen in terms of the impressiveness of groups like the Bad Plus and Vijay Iyer trio that can pull off tricky pieces with hardly a piece of paper music in sight. That's true with groups that play highly-complex classical music too. It's nuts seeing So Percussion rock John Cage's epic Third Construction completely memorized. And then there's Steve Reich's original group that read pieces like Music for 18 Musicians off little cheat sheets that hardly got in the way of anything.

When I perform any solo percussion piece, I always have to do it without music, just from a practical standpoint - I have to watch where my sticks are flying in order to hit the right marimba bar, or the right part of drum. Having to memorize pieces also helps me really internalize all aspects of the complex music. Having a written chart to read from may help the learning process at first, but by the time I memorize it, it's in the same performance state it would be if I learned it aurally bit by bit.

In this regard, I don't feel that the Bad Plus and Vijay Iyer playing without charts is any more special than a folk group playing a series of traditional tunes they learned by ear. The concept of "tunes" being "simple" is definitely blown up by this album by Crooked Still's Brittany Haas and composer-fiddler-laptop maven Dan Trueman (Go to track 5 for prime example). It's certainly possible to learn a lot of Vijay's and the Bad Plus's music in this way (I've done it with "Prehensile Dream" on piano). And Vijay's complexities are rhythmic rather than form or harmony-based. If Norwegian Fiddlers can learn the uneven springar meter (see the last track "Hangdog" below) by ear, it's possible to learn Vijay's crazy rhythms that way as well.



In the end, I feel performing without written music and music stands is the result of knowing music in a deep, subconscious, programmed-into-the-muscles way. One can get to this deep knowledge by learning music aurally and capturing the entire essence of each short phrase, or by memorizing a written work over a long period of time, and gradually adding more and more nuance through practice. In a performance context, it becomes more than just showing the audience you know the music so deeply, it takes on a sense of performance art. Without worrying about the mechanics of reading music, the players have the opportunity to actually look at each other and interact, move more freely and expressively, and translate the essence of the music in a more unadulterated way. It takes on a more ritualistic bent, and a greater sense of humanity. Watching someone read is boring. Watching someone speak well is fascinating. (Maybe they can make musical teleprompters?)

I'm now led back to the first part of my entry - why this tweet set off such a firestorm. Based on the amount of word vomit here, Chinen's tweet touches on huge issues that are very central to what makes a piece of music good - the what (the notes) or the how (the character). Pretty impressive for something less than 140 characters long.

Either way, I do think we can all agree on that if you're going to get up in front of an audience to play music, you better know that music damn well, music stand or no music stand.

Best Downtown Music of the Year - Even More Intriguing Instrumentals

5. Ben Allison - Action Refraction

"Jazz musicians are often their own worst enemy," bassist and composer Ben Allison says. "The classic trap is trying to add interest to a piece by making it more complex."

So when Allison sits down to compose, he keeps his "jazz" instincts in check by keeping things simple. Allison's compositions, like on his terrific 2009 album "Think Free," are quirky but tuneful, expressively direct but filled with little hidden surprises.

Because of his interest in tunes over pyrotechnics, one would think that Allison would be an expert at the art of the cover. In reality, Allison is deathly afraid of taking on well-known tunes, whether songbook standards or the rock hits he grew up with. On his first nine albums as a leader, Allison performed only two covers total.

That has all changed with "Action-Refraction."

While a jazz album with tunes by PJ Harvey and the Carpenters may appear to the cynical as a self-conscious grab for younger audiences, in Allison's case it is a great risk, and one that pays off fantastically for both performer and listener.

Even on a jazz classic like Theolonius Monk's "Jackie-ing" and classical composer Samuel Barber's "St. Ita's Vision," Allison imbues the entire album with a strong rock vibe. Drummer Rudy Royston tunes his kit dry and low, grounding the tracks in that kind of  time-feel that makes you clench your lips in approval. Pianist Jason Lindner sticks mostly to keyboards of the electronic variety, including the Prophet synth that seems to pop up on every hit today. And to complete the package, guitarists Steve Cardenas and Brandon Seabrook unleash scurrying lines and thrashing dissonances that could even make Nels Cline a bit jealous.

What's most impressive about "Action-Refraction" though is how thoroughly Allison reinvents each tune without losing its essential personality. “We’ve Only Just Begun” is retrofitted with a hyperactive breakbeat from Royston as guitarist Cardenas emits full-bodied downstrums. Saxophonist Michael Blake lofts a languorous interpretation of the melody on top, capturing the casual innocence of Karen Carpenter’s vocal. All together, the cover elicits the feeling of someone caught in a crazy urban pace of life, using this song of their youth to ground them.

But the cover that sticks in the mind longest is of Donny Hathaway’s “Someday We’ll All Be Free.” Trying to duplicate Hathaway’s greasy, moving vocal from the original is an unwinnable battle, so Allison instead attempted to translate the cathartic feeling of the song into an instrumental gesture. After a subtle statement of the melody from Lindner, the band launches into a simple, two-chord slow build. Little by little, Steve Cardenas’ lines become more churlish and Brandon Seabrook gradually threatens to down the vessel with unholy noises coming from a Walkman plugged into his guitar pickup. After four and a half minutes of building tension, it all explodes in a cathartic release at the return of the main hook. Ohmygod. Dry mouth. Chills. You turn the album off for a minute just to make sense of it all.

4. NOW Ensemble - Awake



A band name like "NOW Ensemble" makes a big statement. Capitalization is confrontation in typeset. It's really like having one of those exclamation points-within-parenthesis, but without the ridiculousness. So this band name asserts hipness, newness, all-around now-ness with such force that it would be an utterly pretentious name if the music didn't encapsulate what's going on in classical music today, which it does.

If the record label New Amsterdam (see the Jefferson Friedman/Chiara Quartet album too) is the face of the alt or indie classical movement in New York, and NOW Ensemble - which is co-led by New Amsterdam co-director Judd Greenstein - is the flagship group of New Amsterdam, then by syllogism NOW Ensemble is the face of New York indie-classical. On their sophomore album "Awake," this chamber presents a set of 6 distinctive compositions that articulate the indie-classical values of textural novelty, cross-genre engagement, and a mindset of "We care if you listen!"*

There is much to like in all of these pieces. There's the spine-tingling pins & needles texture in Prix de Rome winner Sean Friar's "Velvet Hammer." There are the moody, eye-liner black harmonies of Missy Mazzoli's "Magic With Everyday Objects." There's Bon Iver-like lyricism in David Crowell's "Waiting in the Rain for Snow" and darting Afro-pop guitar lines in Mark Dancigers' "Burst."

But you may not even get to those tracks for a while after falling in love with Greenstein's own "Change." It starts with a solitary flute fragment and over the course of 13 minutes blossoms into a full-on dance party. With halting phrases and bouncy rhythms borrowed from Hip-Hop and an inviting modal harmonic palette, it goes down as easy as a pop tune but with intricacies that demand repeated listens. Your culturally-aware non-listener friends will exclaim "I can't believe it's classical!" It certainly doesn't pander to fans of the National and Dirty Projectors, it just articulates a belief that classical music can be enjoyed by anyone willing to tune in.

*"Change," "Velvet Hammer" and "Burst" are by Princeton University grad students and premiered at the University, a far cry from the Babbitisms of eras past.

3. Gerald Cleaver & Uncle June - Be It As I See It



Like its counterpart on the vocal list (The Roots' "undun"), drummer Gerald Cleaver's "Be It As I See It" is an ambitious concept album. It translates into musical form the Great Migration of African-Americans in the early 20th century - and the move of Cleaver's own family from the rural South to Detroit, Michigan in particular. Just as no family's story, or no person's retelling of the family story, is the same, each track here has a different mood, a different soundworld, a different sense of narrative and pacing. All in all, it's quite the messy affair, but held together by the indefatigable drummer-leader and his killer band featuring the likes of Mat Maneri on viola (he of the Paul Motian strings album), Craig Taborn on piano (he of the prodigious solo piano album), and Tony Malaby on saxophone (wait, how's he not on my list this year?).

Much of the album is dense and abstract, sometimes Beefhearty on "To Love," sometimes AACM/chamber jazzy on "Fence & Post: Lee/Mae." But there's a intense warmth that permeates every inch of the music, probably stemming from Cleaver's old world, trashy cymbals. It's familiar free jazz, a story told over dinner, or a fire in the living room.

You feel the sense of history most intently on "Fence & Post: Statues/UmBra." It starts with a calm broken eighth-note feel, Taborn adding an array of lush keyboard harmonies on top. Visions fly through the darkening mind - open fields seen from a train, tall buildings far off. Then it all disintegrates under a wall of indecipherable voices, distorted guitar, and phosphorescent keyboard splotches. Cleaver and co. have just transported you to a time you didn't think you knew.

2. Jeremy Udden's Plainville - If the Past Seems So Bright



You've probably found a couple of commonalities in what I liked this year and since we're getting near the end, I'll freely admit them.

I love messy music.

I love music that sustains a wonderful mood for a long time.

"If the Past Seems So Bright" is both messy and leisurely, and got me right from the start, as my review from May certifies.

But what makes it hold up against all the other great music I've heard this year is how it pushes those long sustains to extremes. It is the most patient music I've heard all year.

The opening track "Bright Eyes" is the prime example of the album's patience. The tempo is in the ballpark of 40 beats per minute, about 66% slower than a big hit from the likes of Gaga or LMFAO, literally at the far end of the metronome. Drummer RJ Miller rarely deviates from this dirge-like boom-chick the entire tune, maybe adding a sizzle-cymbal accent once a minute. Keyboardist Pete Rende, guitarist Brandon Seabrook (yep, him again), and the leader-saxophonist Jeremy Udden each take long, spacious solos, upwards of 2 minutes each. They aren't laden with vocabulary, but emphasize and explore the individual sounds their instruments make. It may not "go anywhere," but it sure doesn't need to.

Maybe "If the Past Seems So Bright" can be a part of 2012 resolution: take an analog break from this crazy digital world once each day.

1. David Binney - Graylen Epicenter 


The nebulous genre of "post-bop" is a real hard one to navigate for musicians. First to describe post-bop. It's um, like, gosh. Maybe the best way to describe is just any music descended from the tradition of Charlie Parker & John Coltrane (and others of course). There's an emphasis on vocabulary & harmony, playing changes. Actually, it's really the style of jazz that's taught in American conservatories. And herein lies the dual rub of this style.

First, with everyone being taught the same scales and ways of improvising, how is one going to forge and individual voice. And second, why waste your breath when Miles & Trane have already played it all?

This looks like a pretty bleak picture of post-bop, and for jazz in general, considering that it's the dominant style. But some players and composers have found their way out. Tenor Sax player Mark Turner embraced the woody sound of pre-Coltrane cool players like Warne Marsh. Trumpeter Terrence Blanchard embraces cinematic harmony and pacing (he does do a lot of film scores for Spike Lee), a moody style picked up by acolytes like pianists Aaron Parks & Fabian Almazan and trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire. Then there's the whole crew of musicians that embraced different strains of Afro-Latin music, a list that would stretch far too long.

And then there's alto saxophonist David Binney.

In the two decades since his move to New York City, Binney has done pretty much everything a saxophonist can do. He's formed collaborative bands, some funky, some Latin-tinged. He's been a first call sideman for jazzpersons of all stripes, from Joel Harrison (see no. 9) to garrulous saxmaster Donny McCaslin. He's held a regular gig at Greenwich Village's 55 Bar for a decade now. He's even spent some time backing up the likes of Maceo Parker and Aretha Franklin. Out of all these experiences, Binney has formed a unique musical vision, combining post-bop's reputation for uncompromising angularity with a punkish sense that Binney might die if those notes don't come out of his horn.

Binney's style has reached a new apotheosis with his uncompromisingly-titled "Graylen Epicenter." And it sure does start with bang.

The beginning of the opener "All of Time" feels you're being shot out on one of those 500-foot-tall phallic roller coasters at Six Flags or Cedar Point. But instead of being over in 30 seconds, it goes on for 3 minutes without letting up. The second 2 are occupied by a thrashing and altogether astonishing dual drum solo by Brian Blade and Dan Weiss over an unrelenting ra-ta-tat tat vamp (since when is it ok to start a tune with a drum solo? Oh well, I'm not gonna argue here). Just to make sure you don't die from an adrenaline-induced heart attack, the solo subsides into a lightly swinging piano solo by Craig Taborn (see what I said about the sideman thing?). But Taborn builds it all back up before too long, unleashing a typically wild and passionate solo from Binney. Then unexpectedly at the 8:30 mark, a voice pops up in the mix. No, it's not that of Gretchen Parlato, who's been wordlessly vocalizing the melody throughout, but that of Binney himself. "If I only could only see you," Binney intones like a lost backup track for Brian Wilson's "Smile" record, "then all of time would stand still for you and I." With all the thrash and edge leading up to it, it's a disarming and vulnerable moment and it somehow feels like the just the thing the piece needed to send it out into the stratosphere.

Ok, now it is time for you to listen to this face-meltage.





Good. Now that's taken care of.

Even after a transcendent performance such as this, the rest of the album doesn't disappoint. There's still plenty of drum dueling on the quirky free-funk jams "Terrorists and Movie Stars" and "Any Years Costume." There are dynamic, exploratory solos on the title track and the chipper vamp-based "Equality At Low Levels." And there's tenderness too on the slow-build pop ballad "Everglow" and the tropic lullaby "From This Far."

On "Graylen Epicenter," David Binney takes a defibrillator to post-bop, cutting through all the irregular chaotic beats, showing that there is a pulse there, and still many new adventures to be had.

For all of time, you ask? I can't say for sure, but I wouldn't count anything out with Mr. Binney around.

Downtown Music of the Year - Vocal Edition, part Deux

Without further ado, I count down the 5 best vocal albums of the year starting with...

5. Abigail Washburn - City of Refuge



The title track on Abigail Washburn's "City of Refuge" begins quite humbly. It's just an Appalachian Old-Time clawhammer banjo tune, dry and unadorned. The lyrics begin simply enough too. "I got a mother, I got a father," Washburn intones in her clear, cracker-barrel voice, seeming as an extension of the banjo sound itself. As the song continues, more sounds are added little by little. A droning accordion, crescendo, a second voice, fiddle, and before you know it, the world of Appalachian Old-Time music has been transformed. It has the sense of U2's castles-in-the-air aesthetic, but more tied to the land, organic.

The rest of the album explores this concept further, marrying American folk traditions with the grand gestures of arena rock, the quirky orchestrations of indie, and even some flavors from the Far East (Washburn has spent quite a bit of time in China. Ask her about the time she got thrown out of cab in Bejing for not doing a traditional Chinese song right). The fact that all these disparate sounds are wholly integrated is a result of healthy collaboration. Washburn's main songwriting partner Kai Welch brings along his piano and guitar chops and his rock-hewn instincts. The band is then filled out with great hired guns like Chris Funk of the Decemberists and guitarist Bill Frisell. And it's all guided by the steady hand of crack producer Tucker Martine.

The production values are a throwback just like the music itself - to a time when big studios were playgrounds for experimentation in addition to hit factories. With the marriage of tradition and experimentation, Washburn and co. have created an album with strong roots that allow it to grow into a lush, flowering tree. It's not a "something for everyone" kind of album, but a singular work that anyone can embrace.

4. Hazmat Modine - Cicada

Back in the days before amps and microphones, the way to get a roomful of people moving was to have a big band of loud instruments - trumpets, trombones, tuba, and plenty of drums - and set 'em loose. Singer/harmonicat Wade Schuman's Hazmat Modine (a hazardous central heater - they do blow some dangerously hot air) certainly harkens back to those days, but with an ear for diverse world styles that can only be of the moment.

The tunes on "Cicada" are an encyclopedic collection of old-school brass-band styles, from down-home blues and New Orleans second-line to calypso, ska, and even a bit of tango. The band of New York studio and theater virtuosos swings through each style with equal aplomb, creating arrangements with tight unison figures and unfettered, improvisatory joy. The seemingly-lost Stax records hit "I've Been Lonely For So Long" is positively booty shaking, especially on that killer outro (let go longer please!).

But the real stunner on this album is Schuman's voice. It's infinitely versatile, with a bluesman's gravel, a falsetto in the stratosphere, and anything in between. You spend the album's full runtime in slack-jawed amazement, good feeling piled upon good feeling. If we do actually suffer an apocalypse in 2012, thank goodness there will still be good music to make us happy that doesn't need to be plugged in.





3. The Roots - undun

People like to talk about the many different sides of The Roots. There's the greatest band in late nite side with Jimmy Fallon. There's the funky jam band side when they perform live. There's the crack studio band that backs up the likes of John Legend. And then there's the group that has made worldly, thoughtful hip-hop albums of their own for 20 years. Well I'd like to argue that there's only one side to The Roots. Or better yet, they make the case themselves on their terribly ambitious Hip-Hop concept album (or maybe an opera, or a film), "undun."

"undun" tells the story of one Redford Stephens in reverse, starting with his death and recounting the choices and events that brought him there. The album is both political and philosophical, dealing with issues of fate and free will, especially how these concepts relate to issues of urban poverty. A rotating cast of singers and rappers (Bilal, Big K.R.I.T, Phonte, and more) alongside Roots MC Black Thought illuminate the many different sides of Stephens' mind in a highly personal way. Stephens is everyman and no man, not a fully-drawn character, but a loose archetype brought to life by the personal experience of each vocalist.

The music that backs up these dark and potent ruminations shows just how much music is inside the head of de facto music director/drummer ?uestlove. The album runs the gauntlet of music styles from lush neo-soul to evocative film score to free-jazz freakout. Questo leads the band through all these varied styles with aplomb, breathing life into quantized grooves and synthesized soundscapes. In fact, the album's musical seed is the short piano prelude "Redford" from inscrutable indie darling Sufjan Stevens' "Michigan" album. Just the variety of music explored and appropriated on "undun" shows that The Roots don't see any walls between their personalities, it's all part of their huge and playful aesthetic.

"undun" is as much a true Hip-Hop album as "Sergeant Peppers'" was a true rock album. By embracing such disparate styles and even abstraction, these two albums push their respective genres into art music territory. It's clear that both are transcendent classics of their time and place. But as the last plaintive string chords ring out at the end of "undun," the question remains: what's next?


2. Donnacha Dennehy/Crash Ensemble - Grá Agus Bás

When I loaded this album onto my computer, for some reason iTunes decided to import the second half first, a setting of W.B. Yeats poems for the soprano Dawn Upshaw, called "That The Night Come." So when I pushed play after it finished, this was the first piece I heard.

And I got one of those ohmygod-massive-chills-I-don't-know-what-to-do moments.

I'm someone who believes that if you come up with a heavenly sound, there's no reason to move away from that. In that first part of the song cycle - "He Wishes His Beloved Were Dead" - Dennehy magically concocts one of those heavenly soundworlds and sits there blissfully for four minutes (that I wish would go on for just a bit more!). The combination of string harmonics, high piano notes, electric guitar, bowed vibraphone, and smatterings of woodwinds congeals into one perfectly homogenous but ever-shifting mass. You feel as if you're suspended in a light-blue crystal, with little flashes of northern lights skipping across your gaze. This accompaniment doesn't feel like fancy dressing for the vocal line, but instead reverses the relationship. Upshaw must navigate her way through the texture carefully, not to disturb the delicate crystalline arrangement. She passes this treacherous test with flying colors, her warm voice becoming a true part within the gorgeous texture.

Dennehy is a true master of texture and orchestration and throughout this album, he creates many fascinating soundworlds to accompany the diverse moods of the text and diverse styles of singing. In contrast to Upshaw's clear operatic soprano on "That The Night Come," Iarla Ó Lionáird shows off his laser-beam, Sean-nos style voice on the album's title piece. To bring the music closer to its traditional origins, Dennehy experiments with more natural "just intonation" rather than the 12-note equal tempered tuning we're accustomed to. The piece is a 25-minute journey to the past and back, a luminous vision of a world we know only from memory.


1. tUnE-yArDs - w h o k i l l

So far on this list we've seen styles from around the world, unheard-of voices, kicking it old-school, embracing technology, party music, ponder music. They're all special, satisfying listening experiences, but there's a reason why they occupy spots 2 to 10.

Because tUnE-yArDs has it all. Merrill Garbus' sophomore album delivers on all the promise of her lo-lo-fi debut and then some. Her voice, from vulnerable whisper to terrifying scream, seems to come from some West African country who's name you forget, or may not actually exist. Armed with an array of loop pedals, she multiplies this powerful, acidic voice into a choir, or really a sonic army. Then there are the gut-busting drum beats, the enveloping bass lines of partner-in-jazz-crimes Nate Brenner, and some meaty dual-sax hooks that stir this mystic brew to a fever pitch. It's got the energy and let's-play-together vibe of a drum circle, but without the haphazard sonic construction. "w h o k i l l" is a party, whether it comes blasting out of a DJ sound system or your earbuds.

Garbus certainly has her way with words as well. The opening "My Country" is the official anthem of a partly-cloudy patriot, while "Gangsta" takes on the issues of cultural-musical appropriation present in Garbus' music itself. The infectious hooks and near-manic energy of all these songs make you want to listen again right after they've finished, and they reward you for it. Each time, you'll hear the composite riffs and beats a bit differently, realizing their gloriously human imperfections. It isn't music that's trying to be simply likable. It's so very human and puts itself out there without apology. And when music is this real and natural, you have to love it.

Best Downtown Music of the Year - Instrumental Intrigue

2011 is ending fast, and there's still 15 more great albums to talk about! So onto my best instrumental albums of the year list, numbers 10 to 6.

10. Tim Berne/Jim Black/Nels Cline - The Veil

What happens when you put three avant-improv masters in a sweltering storefront in the East Village, let in a standing room audience of 80, and turn off the fans?

Some real hot music, that's what.

Ok, ok, haha, I'll stop with the puns. But this music is truly burning.

Black drives the bus with a manic energy. Cline splatters the canvas with torrid sheets of guitar-paint. Berne somehow wiggles a sense of narrative through this dense sonic thicket. It's a real head-trip and a massive adrenaline rush; a thinking-person's rock, and a rockin' person's jazz.

It's lightning in a bottle.

That should be enough to get you to check it out, but if you want a bit more play-by-play, I have some here.

9. Joel Harrison String Choir - The Music of Paul Motian



You've heard me go on about the uniqueness and vitality Paul Motian's drumming. But one can't have a three-decade career as a bandleader in jazz without having some compositional voice. Motian's compositional acumen tends to be overshadowed by his inimitable drumming, or his drumming is at least understood as a necessary ingredient for the success of his compositions.

Guitarist Joel Harrison disagrees with that critical appraisal and makes a compelling case for the strength and beauty of Motian's output through his rearrangements for an ensemble of 2 violins, 2 violas, cello, and 2 guitars.

That's right. No drummers here.

Motian certainly had a soft spot for the sounds of string instruments. He worked with soundscaping guitarist Bill Frisell for thirty years, then put together bands with 2 or 3 guitarists, and later embraced the wily microtonal sounds of Mat Maneri's viola (which also appears on Mr. Harrison's album). While Motian composed at the piano (having learned from Keith Jarrett in the 1970s), he probably never had the chops to compose multiple lines at once. Instead, he'd keep the sustain pedal down, letting rich chords ring out while lacing folk-like melodies above.

Harrison has serious classical-composing chops of his own, and dresses up Motian's tunes with ornate counterpoint. Yet these arrangements play to the strengths of these improv-ready musicians, never weighed down in filigree, always putting the tunes first. Just the sound of the string choir emphasizes the rustic feeling of Motian's tunes, strengthening his style's identity as surreal Americana, like a mystical landscape of Andrew Wyeth. "It Should Have Happened A Long Time Ago" is utterly transporting, unfolding like a rough-hewn cartoon flight over grain-colored hills.

Although the album came out 11 months before Motian's death at the age of 80, it proves both a fitting tribute and a convincing bit of advocacy. Here's to hoping that Harrison's tribute inspires others to explore and perform Motian's miraculous music.

8. Tyshawn Sorey - Oblique - I

Barrels through the knottiest mixed-meters with the greatest of ease. Has hands faster than Buddy Rich's and softer than Shelly Manne's.

And he plays trombone?

Yes, Tyshawn Sorey is a drumming superhero. He's been a vital sidekick for math-jazz innovators Steve Coleman, Steve Lehman, and Vijay Iyer for nearly a decade, but more recently has staked out his own unique compositional space. 2009's "Koan" was a gorgeously sparse affair, and a real surprise to those (myself included) that only knew his hyperprecise prog drumming. "Oblique I" splits the difference, featuring a set of compositions that are somehow both cerebral and inviting.

Sorey's never afraid of odd group combinations (trombone and acoustic guitar anyone?), but on "Oblique I" opts for a seemingly traditional jazz instrumentation - alto sax (the firecracker Loren Stillman), guitar (the bracing Todd Neufield), piano (the triple-armed John Escreet), bass (the rock-solid Chris Tordini), & drums. Yet this doesn't mean the results are any less novel and adventurous.

In terms of both titles (just numbers) and syntax, Sorey's compositions echo those of his teacher Anthony Braxton. There are just the vaguest hints of tonality and tunefulness, but a huge dynamic range that nary another record can match. The pieces' through-lines are built from these dynamic and textural contrasts, yielding moments of catharsis and heartbreaking vulnerability. Sorey himself guides the proceedings with his peerless drumming. He tunes his drums low for jazz, enveloping the band in a warm halo. And even though he has chops out the wazoo, he never flaunts them in a Buddy Rich-type way, instead electing to develop his own melodies around the toms and cymbals.

"Oblique" describes the music quite perceptively. It's rich and mysterious, never coming straight at the listener. One who decides to follow these circuitous routes will be very much rewarded.

7. The Chiara String Quartet & Matmos - Jefferson Friedman: Quartets

I'd love to imagine Franz Josef Haydn, the proverbial godfather of the string quartet, taking a trip to the present day to hear what music is like. He comes to New York, hearing that there are some really great string quartets doing cool things there. He stops in at the place these cool string quartets like to play most, Le Poussin Rouge on Bleecker Street. One of the said cool quartets - the Chiara String Quartet - walks out on stage to play their friend Jefferson Friedman's String Quartet no. 2. They start and Haydn's head asplodes.

Cuz the sounds that just came out of the ensemble he thought he knew so well are so far beyond his wildest imagination.

Friedman's 2nd String Quartet was written for his friends of the Chiara Quartet in 1999, and it's almost criminal that it has taken so long to make its way to disk. The head-sploding intro is a string quartet gone death metal, all full-bowed sixteenth notes and gnarly dissonance. If anyone tells you classical music is boring, just play them that intro. But the piece isn't just shredding. There are these time-stopping long tones, which sound as if you're staring across an cold, undisturbed lake at sunset. There are burbling pizzicato grooves that slink and tremble underneath wry, undulating melodies.

Friedman is a master at exploring all of the new possibilities these old instruments can offer. In order to make a violin growl like an electric guitar, Friedman has violinist Rebecca Fisher (actually, everyone does this at some point) dig into the strings very close to the bridge, an eerie effect called sul ponticello. But it's not just specific techniques. Friedman seems to know what each member does well and the players know what Friedman likes to write. With composer and ensemble working together so closely, the piece takes on a life beyond the notes. There's a reason why the opening daga-daga-daga seems to jump out of the speakers and grab your throat.

To further the spirit of collaboration, Friedman asked his friends in the electronics duo Matmos to put together some remixes of his string quartets. It's a testament to the strength and imagination of the pieces that they sound just fine overlaid with quantized electro grooves and glitchy effects.

6. Craig Taborn - Avenging Angel

I had meant to review this album when it came out in June. But after listening to it once, I felt I didn't get it enough to be able to translate it. It definitely hit me like a sack of bricks that "Avenging Angel" was a monumental statement by a real deep musician. But what were all of those ideas that Craig Taborn was throwing around? Where did they come from?

Six months later, "Avenging Angel" is still as astounding and inscrutable as ever; astounding and inscrutable as why the world's best (for my money) improvising pianist has the proclivity to only put out an album of his own every several years.

In many ways, "Avenging Angel" is a very self-conscious ECM solo piano record in the tradition of Keith Jarrett and Paul Bley. The opening "The Broad Day King" is Jarrett-like in its lightly-bobbing groove and effortless lyricism, while "Diamond Turning Dream" shares Bley's penchant for pointillism. And of course its recorded in high ECM style, with that crystal piano sweeping through a reverberant hall. Yet all these influences - and tons more from classical impressionism to metal-ish dissonances - are distilled by Taborn's well-pondered aesthetic.

From a technical standpoint, Taborn is primarily concerned with two main ideas - developing musical ideas simultaneously with both hands (gleaned from the multi-keyboard work of Weather Report's Joe Zawinul) and exploring every possible color and articulation that a piano can express. "Neverland" is a tour de force in both departments. Each hand plays its own melody, rarely more than one note at a time each. While the two lines relate to each other harmonically, they don't line up in a way that makes one subservient to the other. Taborn achieves this remarkable independence through attacking notes in different ways, ping-ponging the listener's attention from one line to the other. The time isn't as relaxed as a simpler improvisation like "Broad Day King," but it shows just how hard it is to do what Taborn is attempting. Many players with this kind of technique tend to coast too much (see Corea, Chick), always doing what they do best. It's great to see someone like Taborn overload his CPU and see what unexpected things come out.

Best Downtown Music of the Year - Vocal Edition

Merry Christmas Even and Happy 5^th night of Hanukkah! It is during this time of year when we all wax nostalgic upon seeing cousins and old friends home from college. And considering my propensity to shift the subject of conversation to what my father calls “Les Grandes Topiques Musicales,” I wax nostalgic about all the great music I heard for the first time this year.

Since working at NPR gave me access to a huge swath of this year’s recorded output, I heard a lot more great albums this year than last. So in a spirit of inclusion, I have not just one but two best-of-2011 lists – one for vocal albums and one for instrumentals. As last year, the official downtown music rules apply. All of these albums don’t fit super-comfortably into any one genre, and that’s why they sounded different than most else I heard this year.

Today we’ll start with the vocal list, counting down from number 10 to number 6.

10. Crooked Still – Friends of Fall EP

This quintet of Boston-based newgrass virtuosos has sadly just gone on hiatus (er’body’s got other projects, like singer Aoife O’Donovan touring around with Yo-Yo Ma and Chris Thile), but not before they put together this valedictory EP. Each member took on the role of bandleader for a day, bringing in a new tune or a favorite cover. The results, at just under 23 minutes, show just how wide their concept of folk is.

There’s a frisky cover of the Beatles’ “We Can Work it Out,” and a heartbreakingly spare one of Paul Simon’s Bachian “American Tune.” And then there are originals like banjoist Greg Liszt’s (who has a Ph.D in Biology from MIT btw) “It’ll End Too Soon,” and singer O’Donovan’s “The Peace of Wild Things” that meld pop chord progressions and poetic lyrics, while still rooted in the American Old Time style. But the highlight may be fiddler Brittany Haas’ arrangement of the traditional “When Sorrows Encompass Me ‘Round,” a driving update that makes the tune as fresh as any of the originals. Lines fly between Haas and cellist Tristan Clarridge. Bassist Corey DiMario grounds the activity with a deep time-feel. And over top of it all, O’Donovan intones the tune with a quiet intensity, as if she is screaming through a whisper.

9. Becca Stevens Band – Weightless

Becca Stevens' "Weightless" opens with a gentle pep talk of a title track. "I know this is hard but by holding on you only make it harder," she sings. "So let go, embrace what you are." This broken, vulnerable character is a near-constant presence on the album, sometimes lamenting ("No More"), sometimes fighting ("Canyon Dust"). Combined with some choice covers, including a wonderful folksy reinvention of the Smiths' "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out,", Stevens seems to have curated a typical set of confessional, singer-songwriter-y songs.

But what makes this album special is the "band" part. Stevens' assertive, passionate vocals are backed by an array of her exotic guitars (like the South American charango on the cover), Liam Robinson's accordion, and a rocking rhythm team of Chris Tordini on bass and Jordan Perlson on drums. The arrangements are rich and intricate, like the 3-part vocal canon on the title track. It's totally hip and worldly, an organically-grown fusion of folk, jazz, and pop. The energy and bounce of the Becca Stevens Band makes this a uniquely irresistible confession. You'll want to start it again the moment it ends.

8. Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

In an era where reinvention rules music, the greatest risk can be sticking with what you know. It's a risk that 2008's biggest breakout band Fleet Foxes took for their sophomore album and it has paid massive dividends. Their Blue Ridge-via-Seattle sound struck a major chord with digital world-weary fans, particularly in Great Britain, where their debut album went gold. But because of the Pitchfork-induced obsession with an indie band's schtick, another album of homey vocal harmonies may have landed with a thud among cognoscenti.

But Fleet Foxes proved that they were more than up to the challenge with the release of "Helplessness Blues." Instead of abandoning a core band sound and self-consciously experimenting with other forms, lead singer Robin Pecknold and co dove deeper into what they do best, finding new unexplored avenues within the well-hashed over realm of folk rock. Instead of relying on the wall-of-sound harmonies, Pecknold stepped closer to center stage, revealing new expressive shades of his voice.  The band expanded simple songs into mini-symphonies with multiple sections, leading listeners through narratives rather than relying on hooks and images. And no band seemed to be more in step with the millennial generation zeitgeist of heading into an unforgiving world after a childhood in Lake Woebegone than the Fleet Foxes on the record's title track.

Pecknold's voice, direct-yet-mysterious lyrics, and the band's rich arrangements come together in full on "The Shrine/An Argument." A first person narrative of jilted love and yearning for peace, the song goes from burbling guitar arpeggios, to thrashing downstrumming, to an angelic a capella chorale, to a free-jazz freakout, ending with a series of plaintive string chords, revealing the many complicated emotions of the song's narrator. Pecknold is at his most affecting here, as his yelping, "Sunshine over me no matter what I do," is positively chill-inducing. "Helplessness Blues" is no rehash of their first album, but an even richer listening experience.

7. The Claudia Quintet + 1 – What is the Beautiful

Beat poetry accompanied by jazz has a much-maligned reputation. It seems terribly self-indulgent for someone to go up on a stage and say whatever and then some musicians play whatever and somehow insist that it's profoundly meaningful and if you don't get it, it's your own fault. There is a bit of truth to this stereotype, but what it really reveals is how hard it is to marry poetry - with its own internal rhythms and sounds - to music, which attempts to impose new rhythms and sounds on top of it. When it works though, it can be really special, like on pianist Fred Hersch's magnum opus jazz oratorio, Leaves of Grass, based on Walt Whitman's poetry.

Drummer John Hollenbeck and vocalist Kurt Elling were on that record, and the two have again teamed up with Mr. Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet (the + 1 being pianist Matt Mitchell) for another successful marriage of poetry and jazz, featuring the work of the under-known Beat forerunner Kenneth Patchen. Elling's garrulous spoken-word baritone shares the vocal duties with the wistful falsetto of Theo Bleckmann. Unavailable for a recording session with the rest of the band, Mr. Elling recorded his readings separately, and Hollenbeck then composed music around it, dressing the alternating jocular and poignant words in lush textures of accordion and bowed vibraphone. Bleckmann performs a more tradition role, singing Hollenbeck's musical settings of Patchen's poetry with pinpoint intonation and aching understatement - the setting of "The Snow is Deep on the Ground" feels so natural as to suggest an otherworldly collaboration between the living composer and deceased poet.

The album's title track features Elling spilling incantations, telling the band to "Pause./And begin again." As the members of band spin layers of lines around Elling, he intones lines of simple idealism:

It would take little to be free.
That no man hate another man,
Because he is black;
Because he is yellow;
Because he is white;

Because we are everyman.

The music here is simple, yet unfamiliar. It perks up your attention, but forces you to concentrate on the clear words, making them hit home in new, powerful way.

6. Wilco – The Whole Love

It's weird that America's consistently-best live rock band is so inscrutable when it heads into the studio. Wilco's art music experimentalists one day, Stax Records nostalgists the next. In their live shows, they somehow make it all work together, but have yet to translate that experience to the studio.

Until now.

At the moment the torrid groove and burbling distortion kick in at the top of "Art of Almost," you know "The Whole Love" isn't a nice little Dad Rock record. The song is all wall of sound and cryptic lyrics, the most "out" Wilco has gone since "Less Than You Think" on 2004's "A Ghost is Born." Even more straight-ahead songs, like the following track "I Might," are filled with edgy and unpredictable sonic touches, creating a sense of nervous vitality.

The album's capstone is the gorgeously languorous final track, "One Sunday Morning." It's a 12-minute meditation on the complicated relationship of a father and son, punctuated by Mikael Jorgenson's liquid piano and a luminous glockenspiel hook. It's that kind of miraculous song that speaks to the darkest parts of the soul and yet seems to pass in an instant. 

"The Whole Love" may not be an epoch-defining record like "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," but it certainly is the first of theirs to encapsulate the whole Wilco.