Mixographic: March 2024
In which I confuse my lions for my lambs.
Well. March happened. You can’t, with a straight face, say that it didn’t.
My new music intake hit the first lull of the year last month; it’s not that I didn’t listen to anything new (my notes tell me I still managed 19 records from 2024) or that I didn’t have some favorites. Let’s talk about those first and foremost:
Bolis Pupul, “Spicy Crab”: On a Friday-night Zoom call during the deepest depths of pandemic psychosis, my friends and I started goofing around about cyberpunk tropes, which mostly amounted to saying “jack in!” a bunch and giggling into our beers. At one point, my friend Andrew found a photo of a seafood restaurant in Hong Kong called Under Bridge Spicy Crab, and suggested that, once we’d all uploaded ourselves, Neuromancer-style, their website is the place we should all meet. …listen, it was 2020. Anyway: $100 says this is what’s playing when we get there.
Jahari Massamba Unit, “Stomping Gamay”: A semi-decent excuse for my new music delinquency: I took a hard U-turn back into jazz history this month; more on that later. Though my headphones spent much of the month in the ‘60sand ‘70s, they also served up a couple decent looks at where jazz is headed today, as well. Here’s a standout track from YHWH is LOVE, the second album from beatmaster Madlib and ace drummer/producer Karreim Riggins under the Jahari Massamba Unit moniker. After years of mining the greats for samples, Madlib and Riggins now reseed the ground with their own take on jazz; that, along with the jazz-punk collaboration from the Messthetics and saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, tells me I’ll have plenty to dive into when my listening habits return to this century.
The Bevis Frond, “Happy Wings”: For years now, the Bevis Frond has existed just outside the periphery of my listening habits; on the rare occasion that Nick Saloman’s long-running psych-rock concern did flit into focus, it felt impenetrable, and occupied the same space in my head as the equally imposing catalogs of, say, Frank Zappa or the Residents. In addition to being Saloman’s 28th studio LP, Focus on Nature was also my first, and prompted two questions: has he always sounded like a hermit with a mushroom hut just big enough to hold a 4-track and, if so, why didn’t anyone tell me sooner?
Four Tet, “Storm Crystals”: Here’s your Sad About My Sick Dad pick of the month. You can almost picture me, one sunny day at work this month, driving through the chilly light of a lunch hour, my mind miles and years away.
Pissed Jeans, “Everywhere Is Bad”: I kept waiting for them to dunk on Chicago in the lyrics. They didn’t, and the exclusion was worse than the diss. Great snotty song, though.
Julia Holter, “Something In the Room She Moves”: The flute on this one gets me, in the same way I’m gotten by just about every record Julia Holter ever releases. Her stuff hits me like the musical equivalent of very expensive incense. Primo stuff for the small thoughtful hours of the night.
You’ll find a few more 2024 picks (that everybody else is already talking about anyway) on the mix; in lieu of more record write-ups, I’d like to use the following few paragraphs to influence your spending habits: as of this month, Live From Bitter Jester Vol. 2 is now available for vinyl preorder, and I’m here to tell you why you should buy it.
So, here’s an editor’s note upfront: I’ve been a judge for the Bitter Jester Music Festival since 2021. A quick overview for the uninitiated: since 2006, a dedicated group of volunteers and music educators has gathered every summer in Highland Park, IL to throw a battle of the bands for high school and college-aged bands from around the Midwest. The official prizes include everything from studio time and media support to live appearances at Ravinia and Navy Pier. There’s also icy-cold cash, of course: $2,000 for the winners, plus $1,000 to runners-up and $500 to honorable mention.
It’s a big deal, and getting bigger; 2023’s edition saw semi-finalists from eight states, including artists traveling from as far away as Massachusetts and Tennessee. Ten different bands from five of those states made the cut for the finals, for which I was fortunate enough to be a judge, and which serves as the source material for Live at Bitter Jester Vol. 2.
If you were there on that hot and blustery June afternoon last summer, you remember just how close the contest was: the grand prize was ultimately decided by a one-song-takes-all tiebreaker between eventual winners Scorched Waves and runners-up Ur Mom. If you weren’t there? Well, this record will make you feel like you were; in fact, the first thing you’ll hear when you drop the needle is the call-and-response exhortation that precedes 3 minutes of dance-punk sugar from Flint, MI’s Heat Above. It’s a hell of a way to drop in, and a promising sign of what’s to come.
Whoever sequenced this record knew what they were doing, because that sense of immediacy and urgency is present throughout, and adds extra bite to the emo-accented rock of Exit 122 and the scream-powered balladry of Polly on the Wall.
Other times, it reveals new sides of the sound. I knew I had a soft spot for the “frog rock” (funk plus prog, I believe) sound of Wisconsin’s Fightin’ Bob; I’d judged them highly in both the 2022 and 2023 contests. While their live show left me transfixed by their mutton-chopped bassist, the live recording of their song “Jupiter” left me even more impressed by their guitar interplay than I’d been in two previous live show. That’s a credit to the band, but also to music director Kevin Ray and his team of young mixing engineers (and festival alums) behind the boards; the production on Live from Bitter Jester Vol. 2 punches way, way above its weight class. I certainly have plenty of professional live albums from way bigger bands that don’t sound nearly as good as this.
(One last note on the music: I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Scorched Waves vs. Ur Mom debate, because the margins were razor-thin in both the initial vote and the tiebreaker. What do you think? Did Scorched Waves’ doomy surf-rock win you over, or are you more into the Breeders-meets-Amy-Winehouse blues of Ur Mom? Either way, aren’t we lucky to have both?)
This compilation’s worth it for the music alone, but the real value lies in what that music represents. Ask any in-the-know indiehead, and they’ll tell you: the American festival scene feels like its hit a nadir in 2024, and the big Chicago names aren’t exempt. Lollapalooza’s continuing its transformation into a generic Hot 100 showcase, Pitchfork’s facing an uncertain future after the much-publicized shake-up at Condé Nast, and Riot Fest’s staring down another year of contention from Douglass Park neighbors with legitimate grievances about who the festival serves and who it doesn’t.
At a time when festivals feel increasingly meaningless, then, it’s even more rewarding to find one that really feels like home. For me, that’s Bitter Jester. At the end of the day, the competition part of the event is almost secondary to the support network that’s formed around it. In addition to being competitors, the bands that meet up at each year’s concerts are also each other’s biggest fans; win or lose, they leave Highland Park with couches to crash on, collaborators to work with, and future tour mates to book with. Those good vibes extend all the way to the record: Live from Bitter Jester Vol. 2 doesn't just let you catch a glimpse of the bands of the future; it also invites you into its community of the now. Pressed at Smashed Plastic and released by Val’s Halla Records and the Bitter Jester Foundation for the Arts, it’s a true Chicagoland labor of love, and the one and only record you should buy this month.
Preorder Live at Bitter Jester Vol. 2 here.
Other Songs of Note
I’d intended to write about this next bit at greater length, but we get what we get: spent St. Patrick’s Day weekend catching more live music than I’d seen since becoming a father with help from three of the dirtiest dudes in town. Our evenings were about as far apart sonically as you can get: Thursday night, we grabbed the last four spots in Dorian’s Through the Record Shop to catch a smoking set and a half from meditative Chicago jazz quartet Resavoir (whose locked-in rendition of their 2019 track “Woah” is still reverberating around my skull). After a day of recovery, we headed back out on Friday to catch the hottest ticket in town for geriatric millennials: the first Chicago show in 20 years from Welsh post-hardcore shitkickers mclusky. Readers, let me tell you: I haven’t smiled so much at a show in years, and somehow, the band was having an even better time.
The month in old jazz recommendation: a big brassy noir ode to British prisons from the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band, the ghosts of Ahmad Jamal and his erstwhile Chicago nightclub the Alhambra, some late-era Bill Evans cribbed from a 1979 episode of Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz, and the French jazz-funk fusion of Cortex, who’ll be in Chicago this summer. You should’ve seen how fast I bought those tickets.
Turns out the song parodied in this old SCTV sketch is real. Even weirder: it’s pretty irresistible. They definitely should’ve let Rick Moranis, Eugene Levy, and John Candy handle the actual video, though.
Speaking of weird internet things: this video from West German disco act (and official Eurovision entry for 1979) Dschinghis Khan crossed my feed this month. For as wild as Eurovision can sometimes feel these days, the modern contest is a paragon of order compared to the chthonic lawlessness of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Wait until you see the one where they dress up like extras from Three Amigos.
Can’t top that! The end!
Mixographic: March 2024
Bolis Pupul, “Spicy Crab”
Jahari Massamba Unit, “Stomping Gamay”
The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis, Three Sisters”
The Bevis Frond, “Happy Wings”
Four Tet, “Storm Crystals”
Pissed Jeans, “Everywhere Is Bad”
Julia Holter, “Something In the Room She Moves”
Mannequin Pussy, “Nothing Like”
Waxahatchee, “Right Back to It” (feat. MJ Lenderman)
Adrianne Lenker, “Vampire Empire”
“Resavoir, “Woah”
mclusky, “To Hell With Good Intentions”
Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band, “Pentonville”
Ahmad Jamal, “Broadway”
Bill Evans, “The Days of Wine and Roses”
Cortex, “Troupeau Bleu”
Chilliwack, “My Girl (Gone, Gone, Gone)”
Dschinghis Khan, “Moskau”