Shopping List: The New and the Notable
The Nels Cline Singers, Draw Breath; David Witham, Spinning the Circle (Cryptogramophone)
The lack of a vocalist in the Nels Cline Singers suggests the sort of gamesmanship Cline is constantly up to. Assuming the lead guitar role in popular country-rock band Wilco hasn't cramped his knack for ignoring the boundaries between rock, country, and jazz guitar. Cline's twenty-minute appearance on keyboardist David Witham's album is merely the icing on a somewhat more orthodox album with strong electric-Miles overtones. Great stuff all around.
Sinéad O'Connor, Theology (Koch)
"If God lived on Earth people would break his windows," writes Sinéad O'Connor in the liner notes to her gloriously indignant double album of devotional music. One CD consists of live acoustic versions of tunes given a lush studio treatment on the other. O'Connor's Christianity is closely aligned with Rastafarianism (a subtle reggae undercurrent flows throughout), and one of its highlights is O'Connor's rewritten version of "Rivers of Babylon."
The Rough Guide to North African Café (World Music Network)
An excellent introduction to recent hip sounds emanating from former French colonies Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia. The album's many fascinating fusions include Maurice El Medioni's "Rai Rock Rumba" and French-Tunisian oud player's Smadj's electronically enhanced "Hat." Opportunities for future research abound on what could be my favorite Rough Guide compilation to date.
Waverly Seven, Yo! Bobby (Anzic)
There's an old-fashoned finger-snapping pizazz to these two dozen jazzed-up instrumental renditions of songs popularized by Bobby Darin. The young and talented Anzic Records stable (featuring multi-reed player Anat Cohen) has a collective blast on everything from standards such as "Skylark" and "Nature Boy" to the show tune "Artificial Flowers." The only dud would be Darin's biggest hit, "Splish Splash," which hardly swung in the first place.
The Wild Magnolias, They Call Us Wild (Sunnyside)
Preeminent New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian tribe the Wild Magnolias kick some serious rump on this terrific double-CD collection representing their hard-to-find midseventies heyday. Indian chants were transformed into gutbucket funk with the assistance of The New Orleans Project, a great local combo featuring guitarist "Snooks" Eaglin. The album also includes a sixty-eight-page PDF-file booklet covering the Indians' historical context.