I'm rereading gallagher girls and can I just say I'd Tell You I'd Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You is so funny if you think about it from Josh's perspective.
Like you're just vibing at a fair and then all the sudden you see a girl reaching her hand into a trashcan to grab a soda bottle, you make eye contact and the first thing she says is "I have a cat." You have a silly little conversation about her cat who loves bottles, and learn she is homeschooled for religious reasons and then you leave thinking she's cute.
Then you run into her a few more times including at outside your neighbors surprise party, that she claims she was going to but then never enters. You ask this girl how to keep in touch because you like her, and she says no phone or email, leave notes in this wall instead???? You try to figure out what church this "homeschooled for religious reasons and doesn't have a phone" girl goes to and you have no idea.
You start dating her-still messaging through the wall- she never lets you take her home, she gets really confused when you give her a present on her birthday, almost like she forgot it was her birthday?
Then your friend claims that your girlfriend isn't actually homeschooled, she actually goes to the super exclusive boarding school for rich girls in your home town. When you catch her outside the school, she breaks up with you, claiming she was bored and that's why she dated you and then she IMMEDIATELY GETS KIDNAPPED.
So you do what any normal person would do, you call the cops. you try and rescue her and she's mad about it??? Claims it was a school thing??? And now she's fighting people off and ziplinning away while saying she never had a cat???
So your next rational move is to steal a forklift and drive it through the wall to save your girlfriend from whatever craziness she's involved in.
Then you're taken back to the boarding school, learn its actually a school for spies, your girlfriend is a spy and has lied to you about every single detail about herself, even down to her birthday and her dad being dead. Literally nothing you know about this girl except for her first name is true, and you've been dating for months.
And then her mom gives you special tea that makes you forget everything since she dumped you and you immediately start dating your girl best friend.
I was rereading LYKY and in chapter 9 Cammie says she didn't want there to be a file with Josh's name on it in Langley. To which I laughed and said out: "Oh Cammie, what am I reading?". Because the books are mission reports.
And it hit me, that I'm reading the report. Meaning I have clearance. We're Gallagher Girls! We are spies. Because we have access to these reports! How cool is that?
I've been thinking about you a lot lately. And I can't talk to anyone about it. Or maybe I don't want to.
I think the only person I could talk to about you... is you. And I can't do that for obvious reasons. Well, obvious to me. It can't be obvious to you because you forgot, which is the obvious thing, and now we're in this whole kind of spiral thing where it just goes around and around like a... spiral.
I did some crazy things. Crazier than getting a bottle out of a trash can or going through your trash or everything that happened the night we broke up.
I realize you might not have known about the trash thing, but I'm just gonna move past that.
You might be wondering why, in the aftermath of all of the things that have happened since the night we broke up, why am I thinking about you. Maybe it's because I miss when things were much easier and, whether you believe it or not, that was a much easier time.
Or maybe it has more to do with the fact that I lost my memories recently. Of the whole summer. I realize I actually don't know how much you forgot and I never will. I know the night we broke up is mostly a blur and I know you remember that we dated and that I lied.
Since coming back I've been almost bored out of my mind. I've lost so much weight, but also my whole appetite? I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like everyone keeps thinking they're presenting me with opportunities to 'come back' and I keep missing or not taking them. And somehow, through all this weirdness, the weirdest thing is that I've felt you here the whole time. Everything seems to come back to the semester we met. And it's my own fault, it's the things I did that made it this way, but it makes me think of you and it's like you're here.
I guess that's why I can't talk to Zach about this. If Zach was talking to me that is. Anyway, I realized I don't really have much to say about you, rather, things I want to say to you. Um, so, I guess, that's what this is.
I must have lied straight to your face twenty times a day. And like how can you lie that much to someone while still thinking you love them? While wanting them to believe that you love them? I get so mad at Zach for withholding things from me and lying to me. And he's doing that for things far more serious than I was. He'll do it if he thinks it'll keep me safe; even if it makes me hate him a little bit. The stakes are high. What was I lying to you for? Fun? Like scratching an itch. Like you were my little strange addiction.
And you still tried to stay after you found out I lied. Sure, you wanted me to explain and I lied some more, but then you followed me anyway. On a forklift. Against what you thought were kidnappers. I guess highly trained operatives are actually worse than run of the mill kidnappers. Although the kidnappers being run of the mill is really an assumption and what would it even mean to be a run of the mill kidnapper? It's not like that's a serious profession. Unless it is
I don't know, Josh. I've always done the on my own thing. My instinct is to isolate myself. It's why I'm called the chameleon, not that you knew that about me. And there you were, showing me, at the end but also throughout our relationship, that you would have stood by me and I just- couldn't. I couldn't bring myself to not hide from you, too. In my defense, clearly I wouldn't have been able to tell you much since you did end up having your memory wiped. But we never really had a chance. And that's kind of on me.
I'm sorry. I'm sure it feels like I played with your feelings. And maybe I did. I wish you knew that was never my intention.
We were too different if you look at the larger picture. But if you looked at just Josh and Cammie, I don't think we were half bad. I wish we'd had a chance. A real chance. I'm glad that you and I happened and I wish you knew I do regret how I handled it. I'd hope you could forgive me, if you ever got to know all this. Because I bet you resent me. I would. It wasn't really your style, but no one is perfect. I'd resent me, resent all of it, so it's not like I could blame you. But maybe someday we could look back on what happened and agree maybe we weren't terrible. Maybe we were just fifteen.
I'm not saying any of this as an excuse. I promise I haven't forgotten my fault in all of this. And I mean look at me now. I'm alone, sitting here, in what is supposed to be my home with my best friends and my boyfriend and I'm writing a letter to my ex boyfriend that no one is ever gonna see but me. And I don't blame them either, not really. Since you I've messed up with a lot of people in my life. All of my self-control kind of got difficult I guess.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that I know and I'm sorry. Josh, you're the worst of my crimes. They all started with you and you were completely innocent. You fell hard for a girl you thought you knew and I wasn't even her. And then you saw me with Zach and I'm sure it felt so weird. Like a punch to the gut in the form of me just waving a new guy around like 'good riddance!'.
I never was the best to you. I'm sorry.
I never was. And I'm sorry. But I'm trying to be better. I just wanted to tell somebody that I'm trying. Someone who won't tell me that I'm not or that it's not enough.
Listen, I seriously respect all the wonderful people that have put in the work to make Gallagher Girl playlists. I truly do. Y’all have immaculate taste. But I also need to express my despair at the lack of early-mid 2000s songs on these playlists. The fist book was released in 2006. 2006!
Sweet children, Bex was not listening to “Skyfall” by Adele during her solo boxing sessions. No ma’am, you know she was blasting “Independent Women, Pt.1” by Destiny’s Child on her MP3 player. Macey McHenry was amongst the first to have an iPod shuffle (and you know 60% of the songs on it were probably written about her). Cameron Ann Morgan got through her breakup with Josh by staring out the window and listening to “She Will Be Loved” on repeat. Liz Sutton listened to just enough of the local pop station to stay informed before inevitably switching back to NPR.
If all of them are normal people, who do you think fits cam more: josh or zach?
If Josh and Zach were both normal school boys, I’m not really sure who would fit Cammie more.
I think Josh was an excellent example of a first boyfriend/first love.
But I think Zach just fits with Cammie. Even if Zach were a normal boy he just understands Cammie in a way that I don’t think Josh did. Like yes, Josh saw Cammie when nobody else did. But, Zach knew how Cammie operated. He knew what she actually felt regardless of their training.
2021 marked my twenty-third-year writing about music. Across the avocation, I have taken hiatuses. One must, I think, to remain engaged, inspired and hopefully, relevant. Late September signaled another sabbatical and the good ship Dusted sailed on without my association. Reviewing for this publication and being part of its community of writers for the past two decades has been a pleasure and a privilege. It is a pursuit that I plan to resume in earnest in early-2022.
In the meantime, here is an annual tradition of trawling through the vast musical treasures released over the past twelve-months to construct a semblance of a list of those that sound elevated to these ears. There is so much in the world designed to deaden, diminish, and deter one’s faculties, but artists and the music they create past, present, and future continue to persevere and endear. Despite the tenacious primacy placed on self-interest in this country, we are still all in this together.
Wadada Leo Smith
Doyen Wadada Leo Smith was steadfast in celebrating his ascension to octogenarian early, opting to embrace the entirety of the year through a series of opulent and edifying releases on the Finnish TUM label. The pandemic pushed back, delaying several until after his December 18th birthday. The titles in the world as of this writing are all nigh essential, including the three-disc solo, Trumpet, the mix-and-match Sacred Ceremonies with Milford Graves and Bill Laswell, The Chicago Symphonies, conceived and scored for his all-star Great Lakes Quartets, and A Love Sonnet for Billie Holiday, which enlists pianist Vijay Iyer and drummer Jack DeJohnette in an album-length paean to the star-crossed chanteuse. The remaining titles are thankfully set to drop in February.
Joe McPhee
McPhee has an invariable and inviolable place on this list, year-end, year out. The passing of his brother Charlie in June 2020 was the biggest blow that year, but he kept a busy release schedule into the next across a variety of projects including the sensibly solo Route 84 Quarantine Blues and a handful of exciting ensemble ventures, among them: Flow Trio’s Winter Garden (ESP), the Blue Reality Quartet with Michael Marcus, Jay Rosen and Warren Smith, and The Sweet Spot, aptly titled in its assemblage of McPhee, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Michael Bisio and Juma Sultan, who turns 80 in April and appears to still be going strong.
Julius Hemphill — The Boye Multi-National Crusade for Harmony (New World)
Physical box sets are still plentiful and popular these days; this one managed to easily match the ask of its exorbitant price with the copious riches of its contents. Curated by the late Hemphill’s erstwhile student Marty Ehrlich, it is an “inside baseball” survey of the maestro’s work from the invaluable perspective of previously unreleased recordings. Vintage duets with musical soulmate and cello wunderkind Abdul Wadud? Check. String ensemble reimaginings of Charles Mingus compositions? Check. The list goes on, and Hemphill shines with scintillating consistency in every context, whether he is playing notes or not.
John Coltrane — Love Supreme Live in Seattle (Impulse)
It is hard not to harbor ill will towards the late Joe Brazil, who sat on the tape source that yielded this release for 43-years and subsequently left hungry listeners the world over in the dark as to its treasures. Yes, the balance is suspect, preserving Elvin Jones’ drums in stentorian clarity while recessing Coltrane to something of a muted, off-mic guest on his own gig. And yes, it is sidemen McCoy Tyner and Pharoah Sanders who subjectively shine most brightly in their respective solo features. But this is still very much a late-period Coltrane concert and one of plum circumstance and topical focus. The titular devotional suite receives a singularly expansive reading, one steeped in energy music extrapolations that set it starkly apart from both its earlier studio and Antibes renditions. Essential listening.
Stephen Riley
Another regular in these end of annum assessments, Riley’s now my depending-on-the-day favorite under-fifty saxophonist, simply because he aged out of the under-forty bracket. I Remember You astutely teams him with an old teacher, guitarist Vic Juris, who lamentably passed away several weeks post-session. Original Mind is similarly incandescent in its capture of a duo concert with pianist Ernest Turner at a Canadian patron’s home. Both deliver on the deep listening, colloquial improvisation that is not as common as it should be given the immense possibilities such intimate engagement accords.
James Brandon Lewis
Science no longer carries the pervasive cachet in public consciousness that it once did. Lewis’ music exists as an exhilarating rejoinder to this depressing directional turn. Inspired and shaped by the intricacies of molecular biology, his working quartet with pianist Auran Ortiz, bassist Brad Jones, and drummer Chad Taylor is proudly egghead on their sophomore album, Code of Being (Intakt), completely sidestepping pretentiousness for an abiding soulfulness and improvisational cooperation. Jesup Wagon (Tao Forms), is a sister project in that regard, working from a broader palette trading piano for cornet, cello, guembri and mbira in aural homage to African American scientist/inventor George Washington Carver.
Cecil Taylor
Taylor’s been gone almost four-years, but the archival wing of his discography is still yielding riches. Lifting the Bandstand (Listening Foundation) applies attention to a dynamic quartet as diverse in membership as it was in sound. Göttingen and Music for Two Continents – Live at Jazz Jamboree ’84 (Fundacja Sluchaj) feature two large ensembles: the first a sprawling variation on Taylor’s workshop venture, the second an iteration of his Euro-American orchestra bolstered by the heavy horn firepower of Frank Wright, Enrico Rava Tomaz Stanko. Corona (Corbett vs. Dempsey) frames a 1996 reunion duo with Sunny Murray with vocal choir while Live in Ruvo di Puglia 2000 (Enja) unearths a solo first set from a momentous concert with the massive Italian Instabile Orchestra. The master’s legacy lives.
Haasan Ibn Ali
A half-century’s worth of whispers and rumors finally came true this year with the release of two archival repositories returning pianist Haasan Ibn Ali to the limelight. Metaphysics dusts off his long-thought-lost quartet session for the Atlantic label with a twenty-something Odean Pope bringing Philly tenor heat. Retrospect in Retirement of Delay takes a deep and welcome dive into the solo side of Ali’s ivories-gilded expression through an extended program of standards and originals. Both are essential post-bop documents, indicative of a fiercely original improvisor who died tragically absent his due.
Fresh Sound
Strange that the most consistently satisfying jazz reissue label is this Spanish one that operates largely independent of stateside copyright considerations and still manages to produce product that frequently puts its domestic counterparts to pasture. This year signaled the launch of another series, “Rare and Obscure Jazz Albums,” which is absolute truth in advertising, returning seminal sides by the likes of reedist John La Porta and the Sandole Brothers (older sibling Dennis, a teacher of Coltrane) to circulation in two-fer form. Bassist Vinnie Burke, guitarists Jimmy Gourley and Arv Garrison, vibraphonist Bobby Montez, and pianist John Dennis (a contemporary of Haasan Ibn Ali) received similar regal treatment through their regular reissue line.
NoBusiness
This Lithuanian label is similarly persistent and dependable in its mission of balancing new free jazz and improvisation releases with impeccably curated archival editions. Most ambitious on their docket this year, Joel Futterman’s Creation Series: five densely packed discs of solo performances by the improvising pianist, doubling sparingly on curved soprano saxophone and creating arrestingly involving worlds of sound. Undulation, a fifth entry in the ongoing Sam Rivers archival series, documents a regrettably truncated fusion-infused tributary of his discography, while the Chap Chap series, revitalizing the work of key Japanese and Korean improvisers, highlights historical performances by saxophonist Mototeru Takagi and brassman Itaru Oki.
Ezz-thetics
A passing of torch in remastering engineers from the prolifically nonpareil Peter Pfister to the so-far worthy Michael Brandli, did little to decelerate the latest iteration of producer Werner Uehlinger’s Hat Hut label. The purview is still a balance of new recordings of creative improvised music and modern classical proponents and carefully refurbished and curated combinations of classic free jazz sessions from labels like ESP, Impulse and Fontana. Vocal detractors may question the legality and ethics of retooling these sacred texts, but there is no denying the proof of the enhanced fidelity on projects like New York Eye and Ear Control and Celebrating Bird at one hundred, the latter which adds further luster to iconic concert and studio sides by centenarian Charlie Parker.
Ches Smith’s We All Break — Path of Seven Colors (Pyroclastic)
Ches Smith had a cultural appropriation problem. Certain audience members started attributing the Vodou rhythms laced inventively through his music as his own creations. The drummer addressed the erroneously assumed authorship head on, forming a band with the Haitian musicians who had inspired him. This handsome, but still economical, box documents two of the ensemble’s iterations separated by a span of a half-decade and the outcome is one of the finest cross-cultural collaborations of improvised music in recent memory. Smith’s kit is a frequent fulcrum, but the singers and percussionists that surround him in both settings are on equal, if not more prominent footing in the figurative and literal dances that ensue. Everybody wins.
Natural Information Society with Evan Parker — descension (Out of Our Constrictions) (Eremite)
Originally released on vinyl, but beyond my scope in that format for reasons noted below, the CD edition of this double album as licensed by Eremite to the Aguirre label brought the music into my orbit and it has never really been absent since. Josh Abrams first assembled the ensemble back in 2010 and like the “ecstatic minimalism” it espouses, there’s malleability to both instrumentation and direction that feels simultaneously deeply organic and mesmerizingly optimistic. Recorded at London’s Café Oto in the summer of 2019, the concert finds Evan Parker augmenting the core instrumentation of harmonium, drums, bass clarinet and Abrams’ anchoring guembri. It is an inspired addition, as the saxophonist mostly sheds his usual acerbic accoutrements for a sonorously sustained euphoniousness that’s utterly disarming.
More of Joni as I tend to dig her most. Just a guitar or piano within reach and a repertoire threaded with both originals and folk covers that serves as a means of reciprocal satisfaction between her and audience(s). This second dispatch from singer/songwriter’s dusted-off and voluminous archives leans more to the former stripe. Delicate pathos and winding turns of veiled phrase and phrasing are still populous and personal no matter their sourcing. Fidelity is expectedly variable, but surprisingly listenable across the coffee house stages, TV and radio studios, living rooms and Carnegie Hall. Joni is vulnerably and venturously Joni throughout.
Baligh Hamd — Instrumental Modal Pop of 70s Egypt (Sublime Frequencies)
An invaluable hour-long survey of one of the undisputed innovators of Egyptian orchestral pop music, this assiduously assembled compilation still only scratches the surface of Hamdi’s vast discography. Similar to Salah Ragab in his openness to Western music forms and instruments as additives to a fundamentally Arabic musical foundation, Hamdi’s reach was wider, deeper, and more prolific. The sides gathered, sourced from 1970s albums, revel in intricate quarter-tone constructions and grand ensemble gestures that also benefit from the presence of ace instrumentalists like guitarist Omar Khorshid, organist Magdi al-Husseini, and accordionist Faruq Salama to interpret them. It is the kind of keenly programmed teaser disc that begs for an expansive box set follow-up.
Pastor TL Barrett & the Youth for Christ Choir (Numero)
A Chicago spiritual staple, Pastor TL Barrett recognized that rolling with the idiomatic changes instigated by soul music and proactively involving youth in his vibrant Southside ministry were crucial strategies in successfully spreading the gospel. Barrett recorded a string of albums in the 1970s that are optimal candidates for the royal Numero Group treatment. This CD edition gathering four of the finest of them along with a fifth disc of extras is an effective antidote to the “exorbitantly-priced vinyl blues.” The music is keenly indicative of that contemporaneous “Trojan Horse” tactic of cloaking religious teachings in musical trappings popular with secular circles to create a supercharged alloy equally appealing to audiences suited to both Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings.
Smokey Hogg — The Texas Blues of… (Ace)
Texan Smokey Hogg left a lot to be desired as an accommodating bandleader. Ruled by an idiosyncratic rhythmic compass that rivaled the likes of Jenks “Tex” Carman or John Lee Hooker, he often left his sideman struggling to conventionally accompany him. Keeping up with and catering to his quixotic whims just came with the gig. This compilation, the fifth from the UK Ace imprint, captures more of the weirdly satisfying gestalt Hogg was miraculously able to maintain much of the time. His vocals and guitar spill and slosh over valiant, often futile, backing and somehow stay compelling through a confluence of swagger and ad-lib invention. Solo sides confirm the scrupulous method undergirding his outward-facing arbitrariness. File under music ill-suited for fence-sitters.
V/A — Shake the Foundations: Militant Funk & the Post Punk Dancefloor, 1978-1984 (Cherry Red)
The UK-based Cherry Red imprint has cobbled a cottage industry out of curatorial box sets that also serve as enlightening aural textbooks around musical genres and idioms. This three-disc set applies a research lens to a loosely defined species of funk-influenced post punk that sprang up in British clubs at the cusp of the 1970s. Backbeats and corpulent, rolling bass lines abound, vying with jangly guitars, staccato synths and the occasional compact horn section to express attitude and anomie without sacrificing the vital supremacy of epic grooves. Simple Minds, Jah Wobble, Vicious Pink, Furniture, Perfect Zebras and forty-four other bands get single track opportunities to impart their parts in shaping the scene.
Dollar Vinyl
It is a not-so-secret secret that I have lived nearly the entirety of my adult life without a turntable. That has not precluded the procurement of vinyl, but it has necessitated playing it on borrowed equipment. The reasons behind the admittedly odd abstention fall to spatial considerations and spousal appeasement, but my wife signaled a sea change when she reversed past proclamations and gifted me a record player for my 50th birthday. Since then, it has been self-determined limitations of selectivity and a preference for dollar-priced vinyl with specific priority placed on vintage belly-dancing and Hawaiian/country steel guitar recordings. The specimen below is an especially enjoyable envoy from the first category and made all the better by the presence of a surf-meets-Anatolia guitarist in the accompanying band who arguably was on a steady diet of Omar Khorshid albums at the time.
Unleash the Archers
As a writer who professes a wide purview when it comes to ingesting music, I can still be stubbornly parochial towards certain genres. This is true of metal, where dabbling in unfamiliar bands is something done only rarely and sparingly. Unleash the Archers came to my attention during a lapse in defenses. Initially chafed by their sci-fi-meets-sorcery bombast and theatrics, these traits, amplified through unabashed earnestness that feels gloriously grounded in their British Columbian roots, are now aspects I unreservedly adore. Iron Maiden and Queensryche are indelible antecedents, but Brittany Slayes’ stratospheric pipes, twining melody-musclebound guitars, a Spinal Tap-style, revolving bass chair, and the math-meets-meteorological event that is often Scott Buchanan’s properly pummeled cans make for a reliably engrossing, fist-pumping, power metal result.
Twenty-five more in loosely stochastic order:
Roscoe Mitchell & Mike Reed - Ritual & the Dance (Astral Spirits)
JD Allen – Queen City (Savant)
Nicole Mitchell/ Tomeka Reid/ Mike Reed – Then There’s This (Astral Spirits)
Ben Goldberg – Everything Happens to Be (Bag Productions)
Roscoe Mitchell/ Sandy Ewen/ Damon Smith/ Weasel Walter – A Railroad Spike Forms the Voice (ugEXPLODE)
Claire Chase – Density 2036 (Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Jamie Branch – Fly or Die Live (International Anthem)
Lee Morgan – Complete Live at the Lighthouse (Blue Note)
Roy Brooks – Understanding (Reel to Real)
Ray Russell – Forget to Remember, Live Vol. 2 1970 (Jazz in Britain)
Sun Ra – Lanquidity (Philly Jazz/Strut)
Lloyd McNeil – Tori (Baobab/Soul Jazz)
JR Monterose – JR is Alive in Amsterdam (HSM/Ultra Vybe)
