Category Archives: Reviews

CD Release Party for Floozy’s “Open Can of Super Days”

In the last couple of years, three new female trios have sprung up in Albuquerque, each with its own sound and sensibility, each feeling like it couldn’t have happened anywhere else, and each feeling like it has the potential to take another step.artworks-000039100075-hxwebu-t200x200

First, there was hONEyhoUSe, then Jeez LaWeez, and now comes Floozy: Teresa Esguerra (Local Honey), Bronson
Elliott (Sexy Mother Pluckers), and Tanya Nunez (Tommy Rickard, Stu Nevitt).

Until a few weeks ago, I knew very little about these last three ladies, and now I can’t get their songs out of my head. Their first album, Open Can of Super Days (Flophouse Records), will be unleashed Saturday with a release party at the Outpost. It’s a big wet kiss of an album—exhilarating and dangerous, messy and calculating—a lipstick-smeared excursion into electro-acoustic folk-punk, with a shot of Thelma and Louise. Want to go for a ride with the top down?  Continue reading →

An Exotic Detour into Familiar Territory

A Review:
Third World Love, Songs and Portraits (Anzic Records)

2716194549-1I meant to review Songs and Portraits, the fourth release from Third World Love, almost a year ago, but the entire universe conspired against it. The universe now appears to be occupied with other things, so here we go.

Unafraid of melody and committed to the groove, Third World Love comprises Avishai Cohen (brother to Anat) on trumpet, Yonatan Avishai on piano, Omer Avital on bass, and Daniel Freedman on drums. The first three guys hail from Israel, and they bring strong Middle Eastern influences to the table. (Freedman is a native Brooklynite.) All four of them share a willingness to entertain other musical influences, from rock to Arabic to African. They may also share a single brain; it’s hard to explain the tightness of their ensemble playing otherwise. And what playing it is—spontaneous and combustible jazz at a very high level of technical proficiency. Continue reading →

Omar Sosa Invokes the Spirits of the Ancestors

A Review:
Omar Sosa, Eggun: the Afri-Lectric Experience (Otá Records)

I’ve seen it happen in live performances: Some interior door swings cover_eggunopen, and the musician connects with something else. Music pours out
irresistibly, the performer as much in its thrall as the audience, an open channel between this world and another—a messenger of light.

Cuban-born pianist/composer Omar Sosa is one of those musicians, and as with all of them—Ravi Shankar, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Regina Carter, to name a few—I now listen to his work with my ears tuned to a slightly different frequency, alert for the transformative communion. Eggun, like many a Sosa recording, opens that channel.  Continue reading →