The Earth Is In the Sky
Spiritual jazz, retro pop, synth soundscapes, and mystic reveries—nine songs for September 2024
It finally happened. I felt a chill in the air. No, I’m not lying. After enduring another record-breaking streak of days over 100, we’ve got our first taste of autumn here in the desert and look, I’ll take any relief I can get, even a false fall. Maybe that’s the theme tying these nine songs together: I come to them looking for a little escape and each delivers.
Not much spiel beyond that this week. I remain busy as usual—check out Transmissions for a talk with Joe Boyd (!) and if you’re in Phoenix, swing by Hello Lincoln for our Band Shirt Day Art Show Friday, September 20th. It’s going to be so much fun. But without further delay, here’s some music.
Worms ‘R’ Us, “Worms ‘R’ Us” from Larry on the Mountain (2024)
What is Larry doing on that mountain? Hard to say! But this breezy bliss-popper suggests he’s doing just fine up there. Think Brightblack Morning Light in a chipper mood and you’re on the right track. Vocalist Annie Laufman oozes a detached cool here, cooing over languid guitars and drum machine ticks. She sounds great, but the EP includes instrumental versions too if you wanna go sans words.
Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra, “Le Musichien” from Le Musichien (1983, reissued in 2024)
This slice of beatific spiritual jazz has been in constant rotation since my friend Chad DePasquale turned me on to it with his Aquarium Drunkard review. Assembled by French jazz pianist François Tusquesas in 1971 as a “people’s jazz workshop,” Intercommunal Free Dance Orchestra was a shifting collective of musicians. “Le Musichien” was recorded by the group in Paris in 1981 and as Chad notes, its lush chords, soaring soprano sax, and chanted vocals exude an “exultant tranquility” in line with Pharoah Sanders’ at his most relaxed. I put my copy (compact disc edition) on at least once a week.
Jill Fraser, “Amen 2” from Earthly Pleasures (2024)
Synthesist Jill Fraser has been making sounds and music for television commercials and films for decades (see the infamous Sean Connery vehicle Zardoz and Paul Schrader’s Hardcore). But with her forthcoming Drag City debut Earthly Pleasures, she turns her attention to late 19th and early 20th century hymns. Not that you’d recognize them outright. Utilizing this sacred material as a launching pad, she’s abstracted the material into dazzling new soundscapes, adding up to a science fiction concept of what human music might sound like to extraterrestrials or sentient machines in some far flung future.
Ginger Root, “No Problems” from SHINBANGUMI (2024)
Huntington Beach’s Cameron Lew, aka Ginger Root, is back with SHINBANGUMI, a soulful blend of R&B, ‘80s Japanese city pop, AOR gloss, and Ram-era McCartney friskiness. “No Problems” buzzes with insistent energy while retaining a jazzy sway. To top it all off, Ginger Root has created an immersive fictional saga to accompany the album, crafted with vintage gear and a keen eye for Japanese pop culture of the past.
Dummy, “Unshaped Road” from Free Energy (2024)
Los Angeles band Dummy’s Mandatory Enjoyment was a sleeper hit of 2021 (not to mention brilliantly titled) but the band’s new record might be even better. Adding a heavy dose of psychedelia and danceability to Dummy’s motorik core, songs like “Unshaped Road” sound like something a club DJ could pack the floor with in an alternate reality where MBV’s Loveless hit the mainstream and no one ever coined the terms “shoegaze” or “IDM.”
Previous Industries, “Dominick’s” from Service Merchandise (2024)
I do my best not to get too “old head” in my views about rap, but can I just say how pleasing it is to listen to an album this knotty, odd, and boom-bappy? But let’s go beyond the sonics: Open Mike Eagle, STILL RIFT, and Video Dave approach their supergroup debut with serious insight, wrapping reflections on age, nostalgia, and consumerism in pop culture riddles, inside jokes, and head-twisting lyrical enigmas.
By the by, PI are appearing on the next episode of WASTOIDS’ Hotline, so call 1-877-WASTOIDS with an actual telephone and leave a question for them to answer on our answering machine.
Hataałii, “In My Lawn” from Waiting For a Sign (2024)
Window Rock musician Hataałii loves to do odd things with his voice: squeak, moan, rumble, ramble. He maintains a trickster’s charm of Waiting For a Sign, his latest outing for Dangerbird, which reminds me a little of Destroyer’s Dan Bejar or Badlands-era Dirty Beaches. If the fried and evocative album cover doesn’t sell you alone, perhaps the coiled-up country rock guitars of this quirky anthem will.
Tom Verlaine, “The Earth Is In the Sky” from Songs and Other Things (2006, reissued in 2024)
Though I love Television and the late Tom Verlaine in general, I’ve only recently come to Songs and Other Things, his final solo album. Originally released by Thrill Jockey in 2006, it’s been reissued alongside 1992’s Medium Cool and 2006’s Around by the folks at Real Gone Records, in partnership with Verlaine’s partner Jutta Koether, who pens expansive new liner notes to the trio of records. The folk-rock lilt here reminds me a bit of Richard Thompson, but the lyrics—half-sung, half-spoken, naturally—present Verlaine at his most cosmically conscious. “There is no word that is not praise,” indeed.
Astrologer, “Heart of Mine,” from Astrologer Fleetwood Sprawl (2024)
As a city, Phoenix has always been big on tearing it all down and starting over—and over, and over, and over. As a consequence, I don’t feel like a lot of artists tap into the character of this place—as perhaps that character is a bit elusive or even occluded by all the strip mall beige and new builds. Songwriter Andrew Cameron Cline knows how to spot it though: Astrologer Fleetwood Sprawl is his ode to the spirit of the sprawl. Incorporating ELO and GBV covers, vintage Phoenix commercials, and heart-tugging jangle ballads like this, they paint a vision of a half-remembered Sonoran afternoon. I’m stopping by Smitty’s, need anything?