Album Review: Jeff Parker and ETAIVtet- Happy Today

A musician of my acquaintance recently posted a screed in which he objected to “a clear lack of gender identity” and decried a supposed “global ideology” in jazz. I can only guess at what he meant, but it’s possible the mainstream jazz artist was triggered by the abundance of positive publicity surrounding the release of Happy Today.

The curmudgeon would be justified in suggesting Happy Today doesn’t swing. It grooves. Neither does Happy Today contain direct echoes of Louis Armstrong, Oscar Peterson or Wynton Marsalis. Instead, it’s in the innovative spirit of Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter.

The disputant may be appalled by the assertion, but the grouping of guitarist Jeff Parker, saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss and drummer Jay Bellerose epitomizes the prevailing sound in improvised music. For fans like me, Happy Today is comfort music. In fact, the funky serenity of Happy Today risks seeming overly familiar.

Vintage jazz provides a different form of solace. I recently took great pleasure in bingeing on the solo recordings of Art Tatum. Yet I was left cold when I attended a performance by a locally based devotee of Tatum earlier this month. Jazz- with or without consideration of “gender identity” and “global ideology”- will never cease evolving.

Albums Review: Drake- Habibti, Iceman and Maid of Honour

Spotify’s twentieth anniversary initiative recently informed me that Kanye West is my “all-time most-streamed artist” at the service. Earl Sweatshirt’s “Burgundy” is my most-streamed song. Rap and hip-hop tracks make up almost half of the “Your All-Time Most Streamed Songs” playlist Spotify generated for me.

Drake and Kendrick Lamar are on the playlist. Because I don’t have the timorous mindset of a fifteen-year-old, I tried to ignore the intrigues of the stars’ notorious rap beef. To reiterate the obvious: the dissolute Canadian pop-rapper Drake is obviously “not like us.”

In fact, lawyers representing the villainous Drake threatened to sue me in 2007. Yet unlike the hordes of malleable fans and critics currently dunking on Drake, I gauge art strictly on quality rather than fleeting fashionability.

The three albums Drake released on May 15- Habibti, Iceman and Maid of Honour- light up the pleasure centers in my brain. While each features the elite production and smooth flow that made him one of the ten most popular artists of the past twenty years, a retro electro-funk orientation makes Maid of Honour my favorite.

Dreadful lines like “why do you save all these shots of your screen? Are you a goalie?” just add to the fun. The vulnerability that invites listeners to laugh at Drake’s faults and weaknesses has always been an integral part of his appeal. Schadenfreude has rarely been more rewarding than on Habibti, Iceman and Maid of Honour.

Concert Review: Isata Kanneh-Mason at the 1900 Building

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

My birthday gift to myself was a pair of $50 tickets to a recital by Isata Kanneh-Mason at the 1900 Building on May 15. My date and I showed up forty minutes early to the general admission event to maximize the value of my extravagance.

As at a 2024 concert at Helzberg Hall, we claimed the best seats in the house from which to study the technique of the British phenomenon. She’s almost certainly one of the ten most famous living classical pianists. Approximately 225 attended the performance.

Studying Kanneh-Mason’s spider-like fingers as they scrambled across the Steinway on compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven, Maurice Ravel and Dobrinka Tabakova dazzled us. While she’s not a particularly demonstrative pianist, the 29-year-old’s fingering was so masterful as to be magical. 

Even from twelve feet away, notes resounded that I didn’t see Kanneh-Mason strike during a reading of Tabakova’s daring "Halo". (My partner later explained that an ingenious use of pedals lay behind the mystery.)

Better still, Kanneh-Mason almost imperceptibly lingered on the dissonance passages of each work. Emphasizing Beethoven’s brutality rather than his melodic sweetness provided me with new insights into the titan. Happy birthday to me.

Album Review: Gabrielle Cavassa- Diavola

My life partner occasionally mocks my musical choices with ridiculous scatting. I suppose much of the mainstream jazz I enjoy sounds corny to people who aren’t in love with the form. Diavola can’t be easily lampooned. 

The choices Gabrielle Cavassa makes on her new album are wonderfully understated. The flawless approach allows her to breathe new life into a pair of Day-Glo relics. Interpretations of Barry Manilow’s “Could It Be Magic” and Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” are of a piece with the reminder of the album’s exquisite torch songs.

Cassava doesn’t deserve all the credit. Several of the world’s best musicians- Joshua Redman, Jeff Parker, Paul Cornish, Larry Grenadier and Brian Blade- accompany the vocalist. Their imaginative playing and Cavassa’ elegance makes goofing on Diavola impossible.

Longhaired Redneck

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

My father and I harbored unseemly infatuations with sixteen-year-old Tanya Tucker when her interpretation of  David Allan Coe’s "Would You Lay With Me (In a Field of Stone)" hit #1 in 1974. A few years older than me, the country star was among my first crushes. As for my dad, well, I’d rather not dwell on his fandom during that era.

“You Never Even Called Me by My Name” and “Longhaired Redneck,” Coe’s first two big hits under his own name, were cross-genre radio sensations in the Midwest. My outlaw-crazed father and I set aside our considerable differences in our shared appreciation of Coe’s loopy songs.

Regrettably, my old man incorporated Coe punchlines like "it'll hairlip the pope" into his everyday vernacular. The subsequent decade of Coe hits included the novelty song “Divers Do It Deeper,” the Hank Williams hagiography “The Ride” and the shameless cheese of “Mona Lisa Lost Her Smile.” We loved it all, including a lot of sinister sleaze which I’ve since renounced.

Several Coe songs served as musical guideposts for me. For instance, the reference to the Flying Burrito Brothers in 1976’s "Willie, Waylon and Me" was the first time I’d heard of the band. And Coe’s catalog of drinking songs like “D-R-U-N-K,” “Tennessee Whiskey” and “Jack Daniels, If You Please” is on par with that of Merle Haggard and Gary Stewart.

The New York Times’ recent feature about The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters compelled me to begin compiling a list of the most egregious omissions. While Rodney Crowell and Kanye West were at the top of my ranking, Coe held a spot lower on the list until I learned he up and died on April 29.

April 2026 Recap: A Monthly Exercise in Critical Transparency

Screenshot of the trailer for Finnish National Opera’s production of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Festen by There Stands the Glass.

The Top Ten Albums of April 2026
1. Ella Langley- Dandelion
Somethin’ simple.

2. Dave Douglas- Transcend
Above and beyond.

3. Marta Sanchez- For the Space You Left
Treated piano.

4. Thundercat- Distracted
Atomic dog.

5. Squarepusher- Kammerkonzert
The chamber music of tomorrow.

6. Mike and Earl Sweatshirt- Pompeii//Utility
Blurrier and slurrier.

7. Isata Kanneh-Mason- Prokofiev: Piano Concerto No. 3
A delectable souvenir of a recital I caught in 2024.

8. Dan Penn- Smoke Filled Room
My review.

9. sunn O)))- sunn O)))
Zero tolerance for silence.

10. My New Band Believe- My New Band Believe
My review.

The Top Three Reissues and Reimaginings of April 2026
1. Rosalía- Lux: Complete Works
Expanded version of the 2025 stunner.

2. Jimmy Scott- Falling In Love Is Wonderful
Killing me softly.

3. Kronos Quartet- Glorious Mahalia
How she got over.

The Top Ten Songs of April 2026
1. Nduduzo Makhathini- “Kuzodlula”
Blessed quietude.

2. Beth Orton- “Waiting”
Wallowing in misery.

3. Karol G and Greg Gonzalez- "Después de ti"
After you.

4. Céline Dion- “Dansons”
Jetlag is doing funny things to me.

5. Baalti and Lapgan- “Romance”
Remembering Asha Bhosle.

6. aja monet featuring Mick Jenkins and Vic Mensa- “melting clocks”
Timeless.

7. That Mexican OT- “Still Virgil”
Victory lap.

8. Quiet Light- “Self Tape”
Blue Monday.

9. Bruce Hornsby featuring Blake Mills and Bob Weir- “Might as Well Be Me, Florinda”
My review.

10. Matthew Stevens and Josh Johnson- “Hazy”
The apogee of the sound of the moment.

The Top Ten Performances of April 2026
Rapturous life events involving extensive travel precluded me from attending ten performances in April.

The previous monthly recap is here.

Album Review: Dan Penn- Smoke Filled Room

Karaoke isn’t my thing. Forced to participate, I might turn to the songbook of Dan Penn. “It Tears Me Up” and “The Dark End of the Street” are beyond my limited range, but I’d like to think I could pull off "Cry Like a Baby" or "I'm Your Puppet" through the use of goofy gesticulations.

Penn’s new album Smoke Filled Room is loaded with new karaoke candidates. The hard-knock “Blues of the Month Club” is a solid update of the Bobby “Blue” Bland hit “Members Only.” The reverent gospel composition “One Blue Light” sounds for all the world like a new Christmas classic.

“Nothing Out There” is an ode to mature love. A polished cover of the octogenarian’s breakup song “Leave It Like You Found It” could become a hit for Miranda Lambert. But compelled to step up to the mic, I’d attempt to talk-sing my way through the blue-eyed soul of the title track.

Shukran

Original image of Fes by There Stands the Glass.

I’d forgotten about Cheb Mami. Much as Tuareg desert music and baile funk have been embraced by the world music community in recent years, Cheb Mami was a breakout star among inconstant European and North American listeners in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Moroccans are apparently less fickle. Songs by the man known as the Prince of Rai blasted from kiosks, taxis and sketchy back-alley cafés during my recent trip to the North African nation. Four of the five top markets for Cheb Mami on Spotify are in Morocco. The fifth is Cheb Mami’s native Algiers. An out-of-print 1989 compact disc that opens with "Derfik Confiance" was the first Cheb Mami recording I owned. Rather than once again making Karol G and Bad Bunny my outdoor soundtrack this summer, I intend to turn to Cheb Mami’s lo-fi North African electro-pop.

Album Review: My New Band Believe

I’m invariably embarrassed by the frequent references to my affection for the prog-rock of the early 1970s at There Stands the Glass and at Plastic Sax. I just can’t shake my unfashionable predilection. For instance, viewing the multitude of Spanish traffic roundabouts near Madrid’s airport from above involuntarily put Yes’ 1971 earworm on repeat in my head recently. Portions of “In the Blink of an Eye,” the second track on the new self-titled My New Band Believe album, sound like a contrafact of “Roundabout”. The press materials accompanying the album references Bert Jansch, John Renbourn and Judee Sills, but that’s a red herring. The recording overseen by Cameron Picton of Black Midi revives the arty British sound of 10cc, Gentle Giant, Roy Harper, Henry Cow, Robert Wyatt and- yes- Yes. Even though it’s ridiculously twee, I unabashedly can’t get enough of it.

Turn a Deaf Ear

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

The cool kids insist they love it. My feed is speckled with their rave reviews. Yet to me, the latest release from an artist with impeccable credentials and well-deserved goodwill is almost unlistenable. What’s characterized as a daring change in direction seems like tasteless pandering. What others praise as microtonal I call out-of-tune. Taste is subjective, of course, but the ostensible “instant classic” is manifestly an artistic disaster. I’m not ordinarily bothered by disparities between my verdict and the opinions of others. In this instance, however, I’m convinced tastemakers are following the critical consensus to maintain good relationships with a publicity team and record label armed with guest lists and promotional vinyl. It’s disappointing that the work of many of my peers can be so cheaply purchased.