The pleasures provided by year-end music lists are manifold. I relish the opportunity to display my (obviously superior) taste and disparage the (clearly inferior) selections of others. Yet the most rewarding aspect of combing through entries is encountering undiscovered sounds. Even though I listen to about two dozen new albums in their entirety every week, I only learned of No Joke! when I peeked at a rough draft of a colleague’s best-of 2021 list. Released three weeks ago by the illustrious ESP-Disk record label, the date led by the prolific bassist William Parker and his wife, the poet, choreographer and activist Patricia Nicholson, is a spiritual and musical companion to Irresistible Entanglements’ free jazz tour de force Open the Gates. Indignant and cacophonous, No Joke! is a dead serious call to action.
