Tampa Calling

It’s been three years since Soviet-American songstress Regina Spektor first enchanted us with the soul-pop perfection of Begin to Hope and proved herself a storyteller with a keen sense of detail and drama, a confident singer with a broad vocal range — from high and pure to low and sensual — and a poet with a unique use of words and an alluring inflection, not as if English were her second language, but as if she’s established a whole new charming style of speaking.

The follow-up and Spektor’s fifth studio album doesn’t quite attain the catchy ease of its predecessor, but far (Sire Records) carries its own abundance of appeal.

In the bouncy opening track, “The Calculation,” Spektor playfully ponders the mathematical equation of love and the surprising fury of its burn while in “Folding Chair,” she enjoys a casual day at the beach with her sweetheart and daydreams of domestic bliss (“Let’s get a silver bullet trailer, and have a baby boy / I’ll safety pin his clothes all cool and you’ll graffiti up his toys”). “The Wallet” shows her way of making the mundane seem remarkable with a touching ballad about finding someone’s lost wallet, and she combines quiet, abstract contemplation with grandiose stretches of piano and rhythmic flourishes in the melancholy yet somehow uplifting “Eet.” (Video after the jump) Read the rest of this entry »

Perhaps I was just young, but there seemingly was a time when Tori Amos felt edgy and just a little brash. Over the years, though, she has mellowed considerably and I’ve filed her in the “artists I used to like whose new albums I check out out of politeness only but I doubt I’ll ever actually like anything they ever do again” folder.

Enter KRISTEENYOUNG.

I think the opening paragraph of their bio tells you everything you need to know about this band:

“What’s black and white and can crush you like a bug? A piano. These monsters weigh anywhere from 300 lbs for a small upright, to four or even five times that for a concert grand. So why do artists let them sound so wimpy? KRISTEENYOUNG wants the piano to kick your ass. Their new album, Music for Strippers, Hookers, and the Odd On-Looker, feels like it was born in the boxing ring, not some sun-dappled Laurel Canyon living room.”

Audio clips after the jump.

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Allen Toussaint: The Bright Mississippi (Nonesuch)

I’ve long been aware of Allen Toussaint as a New Orleans treasure, a prolific songwriter, magic-touch producer and arranger, and solo artist with a rather middling voice. I knew he played piano, but did not know he was such a bad, bad man at the keyboard.

I do now.

The Bright Mississippi, produced by Toussaint’s friend and frequent collaborator Joe Henry, is nothing short of a revelation, an album of instrumentals (save one vocal) that both honors and reinvents a number of songs associated with early New Orleans blues and jazz: Sidney Bechets’ “Egyptian Fantasy,” Jellyroll Morton’s “Winin’ Boy Blues,” Joe Oliver’s West End Blues,” and traditionals “St. James Infirmary” and “Take a Closer Walk With Thee,” to name a handful.

Toussaint and his dream band — trumpeter Nicholas Payton, clarinetist Don Byron, acoustic guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist David Piltch and drummer Jay Bellerose — play the songs with an expansive ease, rather than employing tightly wound improvisational free-for-alls often referred to as Dixieland. One of the album’s charms, though, is the clattering, march-style drums heard on a number of the full-ensemble pieces (”Singin’ the Blues,” Monk’s “Bright Mississippi”), imbuing them with an antique quality.

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My men’s league basketball game ran into overtime, so I arrived at the Palladium’s Side Door club just in time for boogie-woogie piano master Bob Seeley to go on break. I was surprised, and pleased, to see a sell-out audience of 150 lingering around the tables, the crowd made up mostly of retirees.

Seeley, based in Detroit, is 80, but doesn’t look it — and he certainly doesn’t play like you might expect an 80-year-old to play. He’s a firebrand with remarkable technique. After doing brisk CD sales at the merch table, and a set by locals Liz Pennock & Dr. Blues, Seeley took to the baby grand and wowed the joint.

Whereas most jazz piano features the player’s right hand, with the left hand laying out chordal accents, boogie-woogie highlights the left hand, which pounds out a steady stream of eighth notes.

Not to say that Seeley’s other paw was sub-bar; he used it to execute some marvelous runs.

Boogie-woogie, played on solo piano like last night, is one of the most exuberant, joyous sounds to emanate from the annals of American music. Seeley sure proved that.

His show-stopper piece was “Mama Don’t Allow,” an old-time number that Seeley used to strut his skills in boogie, ragtime, stride, Charleston, Ellingtonia (”Take the A Train”), Gershwin (”I Got Rhythm”) and more. He blasted through the piece with supreme confidence and good humor.

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Gerald Cleaver/Willliam Parker/Craig Taborn: Farmers By Nature (AUM Fidelity)

This is full-immersion music — on the part of players and listener alike. Farmers by Nature captures a live performance by three of the most accomplished improvisers to be found anywhere — drummer Cleaver, bassist Parker and pianist Taborn — in a completely extemporaneous setting. The level of interactivity is at a ridiculously sophisticated ebb, each player leading and reacting equally, the trio moving organically from minimalist solo forays to manic, almost violent, crescendos.

There aren’t a lot of pretty notes here, but the music is not the non-stop, high-dudgeon cacophony that informs most free jazz. During a good portion of “The Night,” Taborn fixates on the middle range of his piano, wringing all he can from a limited palette of notes. On the ensuing two pieces, “Cranes” and “Not Unlike Number 10,” he murders his instrument, spewing out fusillades of sound like he’s a deranged octopus.

Very little of Farmers by Nature grooves, but most of it finds a shifting but discernible pulse. A section of “In Trees” features Taborn’s scattershots over something akin to a frenetic bop rhythm. Occasionally, Parker gets a bit enamored with plumbing the sonic possibilities of his acoustic bass and devolves into lone noodling, but soon enough the trio rediscovers its collective momentum and (dis)order is restored.

The trio has no particular destination during the set — and is in no particular hurry to get there. But the immersed listener, with sensibilities geared to this sort of music, will find it a most invigorating ride.

—Eric Snider