One of the more cringeworthy moments of music journalism in recent memory centers on the NME’s “Cool List” for 2006 and editor Conor McNicholas’s statement that, “This year’s Cool List is a testament to the raft of hugely talented women who have taken hold of the music scene in 2006” and that they’re “living proof that you can still rock a crowd when you’re wearing stilettos.”
Come on. Footwear and estrogen are not creative burdens.
2006 is not The Year of the Woman (just check a Chinese restaurant placemat), and to say so would be silly, because that would imply that there was a time when women weren’t essential to popular music.
That goes for unpopular music, too. Girl Monster is a three-disc compilation of music created by women, largely underground (the two exceptions are Björk and Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads).
The titular creature is manifested on the cover as a hideous photo collage, and any of the collection’s sixty-one tracks makes it abundantly clear that this isn’t the Lilith Fair crowd. The earliest tracks date from the fruitful post-punk era, covering the important Raincoats/Slits hub with tracks by both of those groups, one by Ana da Silva (of the Raincoats), and one by Ari Up (of the Slits). Their contemporaries are also featured with excellent selections such as “Mind Your Own Business” by Delta 5 and “Die Matrosen” by the Swiss outfit LiLiPUT.
Selections from recent years vary widely, including beat-driven electronic numbers (Client, Hanin Elias), sharp-edged rock (Erase Errata, Juliette and the Licks), and over-the-top, sexed-up dancefloor anthems (Cat5, Peaches). Two highlights are perhaps the strangest tracks on the compilation—the show-stealing “Me Saw Me Momma” by Kevin Blechdom, with frenzied, staccato vocals, and the audio cut-up madness of “Fom Fom” by Vicki Bennett, a.k.
a. People Like Us. It’s a solid, diverse collection that serves well as either an introduction to several key post-punk acts or a refreshing slice of modern femme-driven creativity.
Any recording of new and original jazz material is welcome, but when it comes from a legendary performer – one who has invented a major style himself – it is a landmark event. Ornette Coleman has been playing jazz for over 55 years – a creditable achievement in any case. Somewhere around the late 1960s or early 1970s his explorations into improv performances by each member of the band and weaving dissonance into funk rhythms earned him the controversial title of the inventor of “free jazz.
” Miles Davis was initially critical of Coleman’s pitch-sliding “loosey-goosey” music, but later praised and adopted many of the techniques himself.
Sound Grammar is the latest development of that technique, one Coleman now calls “harmolodics.” Tempos that shift with little warning, spontaneity to the point of endings that are on a minor key or at an unexpected point in a riff -- these are as close to predictable as any music from Coleman could be.
Coleman’s own description of his approach to the alto sax says it best: “You can play the alto in a way where the people can’t hear nothing but what you’re doing but they feel everything that you’re playing.”
Six of the eight tracks are new material: “Song X” and “Turnaround” are worthy remakes from earlier albums. “Song X” is the title song from his outstanding 1985 collaboration with Pat Metheny.
My only criticism of the remake is that there is no guitar.
“Matador” and “Call to Duty” are the best new examples of the so-tight-its-loose approach on Sound Grammar. The recognizable slur-happy alto sax that Coleman plays so cleanly and across keys throughout is most demanding on “Once Only,” but the whole album is loosely structured and works well.
The band is sparse: two bassists and a drummer. Greg Cohen plucks his bass while Tony Falanga bows his upright and the result is a playful mixture of drama and texture. Coleman’s son Denardo plays the drums masterfully, if a bit under-mic’d and mixed too far into the background.
Still this is a great album for both longtime Coleman fans and those new to his unique styles.
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