My listening session was delayed a couple of days this week. Since I the family and I went out of town at the end of the week, I couldn’t have my usual Friday session. So, after a ride to Milledgeville for lunch, I was able to make up my missed session.
This week’s surprising standout was “Mar del plata,” by Bill Frissell, et al., off of Taking Turns. It was a subtle, but magical, chart with oodles of soundstage and space between the players. Really nice. Other great-sounding songs were David Byrne’s “Make-Believe Mambo,” the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” the tile track from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by Branford Marsalis, Beck’s “The Golden Age,” Robert Coltrane’s “Moment’s Notice” off of the iconic Blue Train, and Buddy Guy’s “Anna Lee.” These all shared an expansive soundstage and excellent engineering.
In fact, most of the songs on this playlist sounded good. Billy Strings’ “Gild the Lily” sounded almost as if I had more then just the two speakers. That guy has some chops, too. I heard Saint Motel on Jimmy Kimmel Live last week; they played “Get It at Home” on the show, so I included the track on this playlist. They have an eighties kind of vibe—a feel-good sound that sounded great. I definitely have to listen to more of these two acts.
Even some older stuff that I wouldn’t expect much from sounded good, like Jimmy Page’s “Hummingbird”—a song that will always take me back to my time in Cincinnati in the late-eighties. Even Rush’s “Subdivisions” sounded good; I listened to the version off of their new Rush 50 (Anniversary Super Deluxe) that just came out. I will forever lament Rush’s sound engineering: to have one of the greatest drummers in rock history not recorded as well as it could have been is a crying shame. Their pre-eighties stuff actually sounds better.
Short notes this week, as I am adding them late. Fridays definitely work better.