Take Five: I don't know what I need
But I usually find it, eventually, and yes, it's often a song or an album, a book or a poem. Here is what caught my attention this week.
“Take Five” is posted each Friday, and offers five things I spent some time with over the course of the previous week. No criticism, no in-depth analysis, just a few things I think you might be interested in checking out. When the spirit moves me, I’ll post other things at other times.
1. Guided by Voices — 'Class Clown Spots a UFO'
Though this Substack is named for a Guided by Voices song, I haven't written much about the band. To be honest, it is such an integral part of life that I sometimes take it for granted. A new phone and the resulting jumble it made of my music drove a playlist of my favorite tracks from GBV leader Robert Pollard to the top of the app and I've been listening to that a lot over the past week. What struck me on a recent day is how the music from the six albums a reunited GBV recorded from 2011 to 2014 has been buried. The latest incarnation of the band performs classics that predate that period and songs from the 18 albums it has issued in the past eight years, so this little interregnum is often ignored. However, I'd stack most of those six LPs up against much of the output of the latter-day version, and certainly find more standout tracks from that period. One of the best is the title track from the Class Clown Spots a UFO album, the second of three issued in 2012. It's one of the most accomplished pure pop songs in Pollard's catalog, regardless of era, with an indelible hook .
2. Rae Armantrout — Go Figure
I usually have six or seven books going at one time, and one is almost always a book of poetry. In fact, that is probably where I am my most adventurous, picking up collections because the title intrigues me, or because the first couple of poems caught my attention. That randomness means there are dozens (hundreds?) of poets I've had a mind to read but haven't gotten to yet. I can scratch Rae Armantrout from that list now that I have read her latest, Go Figure. I had meant to read Armantrout after reading her introduction to Robert Wood Lynn’s Mothman Apologia, one of my favorite poetry collections of the past few years (and subject of my first Substack post nearly two years ago), but it wasn’t until reading this on the back cover of Go Figure — “Keen, pithy meditations on a world that continues to surprise us” — that I actually did. Pithy though the meditations may be, they are not lightweight. Armantrout packs so much into these concise verses:
The time came when the flags
flown over Enchanted Forest
and Camper Land
could never be raised
above half-mast
because mass murder
followed mass murder
so rapidly.
3. Freckle — 'I Don't Know What I Need'
It is difficult to keep up with Ty Segall. The garage rocker has dozens of records under his own name, as part of other bands, or in tandem with other artists. I have a few, but gave up long ago on any hope of keeping track of it all. But his latest endeavor, Freckle, will have some staying power. It's a band with Corey Madden, leader of the band Color Green, and the pair offer a deliciously retro sound that feels like a lost gem from the late '60s/early '70s. The tune that caught my ear was "I Don't Know What I Need," a beautiful two minutes and 45 seconds of acoustic bliss full of harmonies and booming drums. It's an instant add to my shuffle playlist that will surely bring a smile every time it pops up. Segall's next solo album is out in May, so this won't get much attention for very long. Check it out while you have the chance.
4. Michael Bisio — nuMBq
I'm always intrigued by unusual instrumentation in bands, particularly in jazz where the traditional horns, bass, drums can be quickly turned on its head by the presence of other instruments. The new combo around bassist Michael Bisio, nuMBq -- with viola, upright bass, English horn and percussion -- fits the bill. I mainly know Bisio from his work with the Matthew Shipp Trio, so I was interested to learn he has those free jazz roots as well as a foot planted firmly in the orchestral world. Though the bulk of the music here would be considered free, there are clearly composed sections that ground the performances, rendering the improvisations seem more unfettered in comparison. Speaking of his early career straddling the two worlds, Bisio said, “I had to hide the fact from the orchestra players that I loved great black music, and hide the fact from jazz players that I was an orchestra player. It just wasn’t acceptable to do both.” It is now, and the new LP from this new quartet is the proof.
5. Nat Baldwin — Live at Firehouse, March 24, 2024
Watching a video of a performance by Nat Baldwin at a venue in Worcester, Mass., from last year, I was captivated by his T-shirt. The last time I saw Baldwin was likely at the Trumpet Blossom in Iowa City, and I'm reminded of that by the "Feed Me Weird Things" T-shirt Baldwin wears here. As was the case with so many acts, I was introduced to Baldwin’s work by the late Chris Wiersema, who curated the FMWT series (see below for more on Chris, who died a year ago). I haven't listened to Baldwin in a while, and because he is performing at the Mission Creek Festival next month, I thought I should check in and see what he is up to. This video is as good an indication as anything, as Baldwin plays his double bass in nearly every way but what you might expect. He plays for several minutes before ever drawing a bow across the strings, discovering percussive roles for various parts of the instrument, conjuring short bursts of noise that, in their repetition and tone, become musical. Baldwin, a former member of the Dirty Projectors, has no easy road as a solo instrumentalist on an instrument not usually pressed into such service. But he has developed ways to captivate an audience of those willing to go on the journey with him. I for one will be there for the ride.
