Last Chance for Common Sense, Rodney Kendrick's third album, is a typically exotic and eclectic set, drawing equally from funk, world music, and gospel. Some of the songs lack cohesive structures, but the playing - not only from Kendrick, but from Dewey Redman, Justin Robinson, and several others - is inventive and invigorating, making the album well worth a listen.
Take a look at the cover of Rodney Crowell’s brilliant new album, The Chicago Sessions, and you might recognize a familiar callback to the legendary songwriter’s 1978 debut. “In a lot of ways, this album feels like that very first record to me,” Crowell reflects. “When my daughter Chelsea suggested we lay the artwork out similarly, the connection made perfect sense. There’s something very simple, very innocent about it. It’s just me and the band in a room together, loose and live and having fun.”Produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, The Chicago Sessions is indeed a throwback to Crowell’s early days of making records, but it’s no nostalgia trip.
The charismatic performances that distinguish Outrospection center on the 11 expressive compositions from Gregg Hill, an under-the-radar composer of imagination and emotional depth. Renowned bassist Rodney Whitaker first recognized Hill's music several years ago, and soon after they teamed up for the 2018 release, "Common Ground." Warmth and humanity resonate throughout the recording, grown out of their friendship, two men of disparate generations and backgrounds who found each other through the music. "We both know how to listen," Whitaker reflects. "Our common ground is the music. It's really the great neutralizer." The exceptional improvisors joining Whitaker are drawn primarily from the jazz faculty at Michigan State University, the program he has helmed for two decades…
Batdorf & Rodney had some modest success with their eponymous second album, and their third record, 1975's Life Is You, built on that record's progress, charting higher and launching a modest hit with a cover of Jim Weatherly's "You Are a Song," which stayed on the charts for seven weeks, peaking at number 87. "You Are a Song" is an example of what's right with the record – a sentimental, sweet tune draped in strings and harmonies, a pefect representation of how folk-rock turned into mellow soft rock by emphasizing the melody and the feel. The rest of the record treads the same ground but not quite as successfully, largely because the songwriting of Batdorf & Rodney isn't as consistently good as Weatherly (who contributes another standout, "To a Gentler Time"). The duo – John Batdorf on lead vocals, Mark Rodney on lead acoustic guitar – are very earnest and intent on writing serious material (one track is a two-piece suite which, ironically, provides one of the better melodies here).
The last of six LPs by the Red Rodney-Ira Sullivan Quintet was also the band's finest. There are times in the music (which consists of three originals by pianist Garry Dial, Herbie Hancock's "Speak Like a Child" and "As Time Goes By") where the group sounds like the early Ornette Coleman Quartet. The setting and advanced repertoire clearly challenged Rodney (who mostly sticks here to flugelhorn) and inspired Sullivan (switching between alto, alto flute, soprano and flugelhorn). A post-bop gem, one of Rodney's finest recordings.
Sir Richard Rodney Bennett’s Gothic opera The Mines of Sulphur is reminiscent of suspense thrillers from Edgar Allan Poe to Alfred Hitchcock. Love, longing, and dark as well as light comedy abound in this macabre tale of greed and retribution set in a haunted manor house in the West of England. The title of the tale, taken from Shakespeare’s Othello, refers to the theme of gradual corruption.