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Dec 17

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2025: The best bits

The brutish reality of Donald Trump’s second term as president of the United States was beginning to emerge when Bruce Springsteen arrived for the first date of his 2025 European tour in Manchester on May 14. I wasn’t there, which meant I didn’t hear him perform, as his final encore, Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom”, a song that could be seen as the last, magnificent expression of its creator’s 1963-64 incarnation as a singer of protest ballads. The clip above shows that Springsteen, seeking to take a stand at another moment in history, gave it everything he had. In October, Al Stewart made a similarly fine choice when, during his farewell tour, he closed his London Palladium show with Dylan’s “Love Minus Zero/No Limit”, one of the compositions that had shaped his own career as a songwriter. With proper humility, but with their own creative spirit still demonstrably alive and alert, Springsteen and Stewart were reminding us of the enduring significance of the greatest artist of our time, whose own emergence was explored in the finest archival release of the year.

NEW ALBUMS

1 Ambrose Akinmusire: Honey From a Winter Stone (Nonesuch)

2 Mavis Staples: Sad and Beautiful World (Anti-)

3 Arve Henriksen / Trygve Seim / Anders Jormin / Markku Ouaskari: Arcanum (ECM)

4 Masabumi Kikuchi: Hanamichi / The Final Studio Recording Vol II (Red Hook)

5 The Necks: Disquiet (Northern Spy)

6 Patricia Brennan: Of the Near and Far (Pyroclastic)

7 Amina Claudine Myers: Solace of the Mind (Red Hook)

8 The Waterboys: Life, Death and Dennis Hopper (Sun)

9 Peter Brötzmann: The Quartet (Okoroku)

10 Chris Ingham Quintet: Walter / Donald (Downhome)

11 Vilhelm Bromander Unfolding Orchestra: Jorden Vi Ärvde (Thanatosis)

12 Nels Cline: Consentrik Quartet (Blue Note)

13 Bryan Ferry & Amelia Barratt: Loose Talk (Dene Jesmond)

14 Lucy Railton: Blue Veil (Ideologic Organ)

15 Charles Lloyd: Figures in Blue (Blue Note)

REISSUE / ARCHIVE

1 Bob Dylan: Through the Open Window: The Bootleg Series Vol 18 1956-1963 (Columbia Legacy)

2 Charlie Parker: Bird in Kansas City (Verve)

3 Dionne Warwick: Make It Easy on Yourself — The Scepter Recordings 1962-1971 (SoulMusic)

4 Mike Westbrook Orchestra: The Cortège / Live at the BBC 1980 (Cadillac)

5 Pharoah Sanders: Izipho Zam (Strata East)

6 Tomasz Stanko Quartet: September Night (ECM)

7 Larry Stabbins, Keith Tippett, Louis Moholo-Moholo: Live in Foggia (Ogun)

8 A New Awakening: Adventures in British Jazz 1966-1971 (Strawberry)

9 Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru: Church of Kidane Mehret (Mississippi)

10 Irma Thomas: Wish Someone Would Care (Kent)

LIVE PERFORMANCE

1 The Weather Station (Islington Town Hall, March)

2 Tyshawn Sorey Trio (Cafe Oto, February)

3 Paul Brady (Bush Hall, April)

4 The Necks (Cafe Oto, May)

5 Maria Schneider / Oslo Jazz Ensemble (Barbican, March)

6 Tom Skinner (Queen Elizabeth Hall, November)

7 Patti Smith Plays Horses (London Palladium, October)

8 Schlippenbach Trio (Cafe Oto, Jan)

9 Bang on a Can All Stars: Terry Riley 80th birthday tribute (Barbican, May)

10 Wadada Leo Smith / Vijay Iyer (Wigmore Hall, October)

11 Olie Brice Quartet (Vortex, July)

12 Adrian Dunbar / Guildhall Sessions Orchestra: The Waste Land (Queen Elizabeth Hall, November)

13 Al Stewart (London Palladium, October)

14 Sebastian Rochford’s Finding Ways (Jazz in the Round, Cockpit Theatre, November)

15 Louis Moholo-Moholo Memorial (100 Club, August)

MUSIC BOOKS

1 Billy Hart w/Ethan Iverson: Oceans of Time (Cymbal Press)

2 Tom Piazza: Living in the Present with John Prine (Omnibus)

3 Jonathan Gould: Burning Down the House (Mariner Books)

4. Neil Storey (ed.): The Island Book of Records Vol 2, 1969-70 (Manchester University Press)

5 Sonny Simmons w/Marc Chaloin: Before You Die Later (Blank Forms)

FICTION

1 Vincenzo Latronico: Perfection (Fitzcarraldo)

2 Sam Sussman: Boy from the North Country (Grove Press)

3 Andrew Miller: The Land in Winter (Sceptre)

NON-FICTION

Paul Gorman: Granny Takes a Trip (White Rabbit)

FILMS

1 Nickel Boys (dir. RaMell Ross)

2 From Hilde, With Love (dir. Andreas Dresen)

3 Sinners (dir. Ryan Coogler)

4 The Ballad of Wallis Island (dir. James Griffiths)

5 A Complete Unknown (dir. James Mangold) 

DANCE

Quadrophenia: A Mod Ballet (Sadler’s Wells, July)

EXHIBITIONS

1 Noah Davis (Barbican, May)

2 Jean-François Millet (National Gallery, October)

3 Lee Miller (Tate Britain, December)

Dec 10

2 Comments

Kind of Dukish

The idea of jazz as a repertory music is so fraught with dangers that it tends to evoke my instinctive distrust. Sometimes, though, you can only give in and enjoy it. The Pocket Ellington, as the pianist Alex Webb calls his septet devoted to the music of the immortal Duke, turns out to be a very good idea.

This is not a recreation of the great Ellington splinter groups of the early 1940s, whose recordings were issued under the names of Johnny Hodges, Rex Stewart and Barney Bigard. At the Pizza Express in Soho last night the Pocket Ellington entertained a sold-out house with Webb’s artful arrangements of some of Duke’s (and Billy Strayhorn’s) best known compositions, rendered for the trumpet of Andy Davies, the trombone of David Lalljee, the alto and baritone saxophones and clarinet of Alan Barnes, the tenor saxophone of Tony Kofi, the double bass of Dave Green and the drums of Winston Clifford.

To miniaturise what were originally big-band compositions can have the effect of bringing unexpected facets into the light. I enjoyed the way the ensemble brought out an elliptical quality seeming to anticipate bebop in the melodies of Duke’s “Cotton Tail” and Strayhorn’s “Johnny Come Lately”, written in 1940 and 1942 respectively, an impression heightened by the work of the rhythm section behind Kofi’s solo on the former.

Webb resists the temptation to stretch the material to suit modern time-frames. Miniatures such as “Ko-Ko”, “Le Sucrier Velours” (from The Queen’s Suite, written in 1959 for Elizabeth II), the title piece from Such Sweet Thunder and “Chelsea Bridge” retained their original exquisite proportions. Even the medleys of “Main Stem”/”Rockin’ in Rhythm” and “Harlem Air Shaft”/”Drop Me Off in Harlem” remained brisk and crisp, leaving the listener wanting more.

The singer Marvin Muoneké joined the line-up for “Jump for Joy”, “I’m Beginning to See the Light” and other favourites, making an excellent job of Webb’s amusing lyric to “Johnny Come Lately” and handling the stately contours of “Sophisticated Lady” with appropriate delicacy.

Naturally, Webb’s chosen format can’t provide the heft and occasional lushness of a full big band. But there are plenty of compensations, including Kofi’s pensive unaccompanied coda to “Chelsea Bridge” and everything Barnes did, including an eloquent alto passage on “What Am I Here For”. And, of course, the presence of Dave Green, an important figure on the British jazz scene for six decades and still, at 83, keeping his bandmates honest.

Jazz mustn’t become a museum, and more fine young musicians than ever need the world to pay attention as they try to move the music forward. But when the past is respectfully addressed and reinvigorated with such skill as that shown by Webb and his colleagues, principles can happily be suspended.

Dec 5

6 Comments

Steve Cropper 1941-2025

You don’t expect the people you interview to write thank-you letters, but it’s quite nice when they do. Particularly when it comes from someone like Steve Cropper, as happened to me in 1971 after I’d interviewed him for the Melody Maker at his new studio in Memphis on a break from a session he was producing for his old friend Eddie Floyd. I kept the letter, of course, as you would.

Cropper died this week, aged 84. Here’s the obituary I wrote yesterday for the Guardian. I hope I did him some kind of justice. He was a hero of mine, as were the other members of the MGs, ever since I first heard “Green Onions” in 1962. I have all their albums, all the way up to 1994’s That’s the Way It Should Be, and they’re among the last things I’d part with. My favourite is probably Soul Dressing, from 1965, even thought it was the one whose mediocre sales persuaded them that instrumental albums needed covers of familiar tunes in order to attract buyers.

Hence, on subsequent albums, things like their fine versions of the Temptations’ “Get Ready”, Gershwin’s “Summertime”, Cliff Nobles’ “The Horse”, the Delfonics’ “La-La Means I Love You” and Aretha’s “(Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You’ve Been Gone”. I listen to those alongside the MGs’ originals I love: “Big Train”, “Soul Sanction”, “Double or Nothing”, “Kinda Easy Like”, “Last Tango in Memphis”, “Cruisin'”, “Sarasota Sunset” and the rest. It was nice of Steve to take the trouble to express his thanks all those years ago. So now I’ll say thank you back to him, for all of it.