High Hopes

Here’s the Steeple

Songs From Robin Hood Lane

Alex Chilton

Ken Nordine, the possessor of one of the greatest speaking voices ever committed to tape, died in February. He was 98.  

Nordine first went public in the late 1950s and early 1960s with a series of spoken-word recordings for Dot Records. The titles of three of them—Word Jazz, Son of Word Jazz, and Word Jazz Vol. II—minted the catchphrase with which he would henceforth be identified.

FYAH

Theon Cross

The busy rhythms established by the drummer Moses Boyd justify the references on Cross’ Bandcamp page to “modern grime and trap” as surely as the tightly coiled honking of the saxophonists Nubya Garcia and Wayne Francis justify the references to “stretching and re-shaping the boundaries” of jazz. But what’s really doing the stretching and reshaping is Cross’ tuba. Usurping the role normally assigned to the bass, it fattens the music’s bottom with meaningful oompahs and blats. On the skittering “Candace of Meroe,” it beggars description.

Insofar as contemporary drama and Black History Month coincided this year, the films Black KkKlansman and Black Panther sucked much of the air out of the room. 

But a richer, more challenging, and more universal “black history” story can be found in the Sanaa Opera Project’s just-released recording of The Mask in the Mirror (Navona), a three-act opera by the Scottish-born third-stream composer and jazz pianist Richard Thompson.  

The Maritime Suite: “We Have Fed Our Sea For A Thousand Years”

Peter Bellamy

At 27, the Austin, Texas–based singer-songwriter Harrison Lemke is too young to have experienced firsthand the rapture fanaticism of the 1970s.

Nevertheless, as the titles of his 2013 single “We Wait” and his 2015 EP Sound Check at the Eschaton imply, hopes and fears associated with the Second Coming haunt the 93 observant and soul-searching lo-fi folk (and sometimes rock) songs that he has recorded and released on six albums, four EPs, and two singles over the last six years.

It’s an impressive output by any standard.