My must-listen pile is getting taller and taller—so many new releases from ear-worthy artists, both familiar and new to me. To lower the stack to a more manageable height and introduce a wider array of music worth your time, here are several short reviews, written after a single listen.
It’s taken more than six years, even longer for some of the tunes on the album, but vocalist, songwriter, bandleader Isaac Aragon’s new album, The Healing, is here at last, with a vinyl release party at Rio Bravo Brewing on Friday, June 13. It’s well worth the wait. From songwriting to packaging and everything between, it’s a first-class production. The live show will be memorable, all but guaranteed to move body and soul.
“My level of I-don’t-give-a-fuckery is so high right now,” Mustafa Stefan Dill, oudist, guitarist, composer, told me on the phone. He meant that in a positive way. Explode Yourself, the new release from Love Unfold the Sun, is a liberated celebration of life, unconcerned with fitting itself into any box‚ blowing the box wide open, in fact. This Friday, the band celebrates the album’s release at Paradiso in Santa Fe.
Saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock has established herself as an adventurous, innovative, and expressive musician and a compelling improviser. However, on her ambitious recent release, Purposing the Air, it’s not her saxophone that is heard, but her composer’s pen, which takes as its subject the poetry of Erica Hunt, specifically “Mood Librarian—a poem in koan,” from Jump the Clock. Together, the pens of Laubrock and Hunt create an evocative atmosphere as challenging as it is inviting.
Two musician-composers with distinct voices have graced us with intriguing new releases recently: The Lone Wild Bird, a solo album from accordionist Will Holshouser, and Every Journey, from pianist Claire Cope’s 11-piece Ensemble C. Both are definitely ear-worthy.
