Finding the way
Glenn Jones
Fleeting (Thrill Jockey)
In the early ’90s, as a member of the mostly instrumental group Cul de Sac, Glenn Jones helped point out the possibilities of combining vernacular acoustic guitar styles with krautrock and surf music. In another way, the group transferred John Fahey’s visionary ethos to a full-band setup—and Fahey actually co-authored an album with Cul de Sac a few years before his death.
Since 2004, Jones’ solo work has honored Fahey’s memory not just by evoking his sensibilities or employing his Piedmont-derived picking techniques, but by being so darn good at both. Fleeting was recorded in a friend’s New Jersey home near Rancocas Creek—sounds of the natural world permeate the album, and it rolls by, as patient as the water. On 10 tracks of solo guitar and occasional banjo, and with minimal means, Jones subtly conjures a range of emotions, from the spry “Flower Turned Inside-Out” to the fretful “Gone Before” to the melancholy but abiding “Mother’s Day.” Fleeting won’t drown out the world, but it might make you hear it differently. A treat.
Holger Czukay
Movie! (Grönland, re-release)
Holger Czukay helped define German rock at the turn of the ’70s as the bassist in the incredible, highly influential Can. By the end of the decade, Can had devolved into confused, humorless, proggy disco, but Czukay’s 1979 solo album, Movie!, seemed to offer a clean page. It included contributions by his charter Can-mates, and recovered the band’s sense of experimentalism and oft-obscured playfulness.
Czukay’s collages anticipated artists like Madlib and The Books, laying found sounds and recordings over drummer Jaki Liebzeit’s tight grooves. “Persian Love” is a standout on a small scale, while “Hollywood Symphony” morphs for 15 engaging minutes, a sauntering shuffle that melts down before erupting in a springy polyrhythm worthy of early Can. Czukay is a game, if amateurish, vocalist—which isn’t a complaint, though he does get shrill on “Oh Lord, Give Us More Money,” a messy track featuring cartoonish falling and crashing effects—it’s the one to skip. But “Cool in the Pool” is goofy, frisky fun, and Movie! includes an instrumental version along with the vocal cut, which sounds like the herald of a good-weird summer.
Free Pizza
Berlin, DE (BUFU)
Some things never get old. One is childhood friends making music together. Another is punchy, melodic postpunk. A third is free pizza. Bases covered.
Bassist/vocalist Jesus Vio and guitarist Santiago Cardenas met in Miami and began collaborating in high school, eventually following their muse and the fates to Boston, where they formed Free Pizza. The band became a local favorite, playing raucous, rockabilly-inflected live shows, recording sporadically and briefly going on hiatus before reforming and relocating to Nashville. (Affirming peripatetic tendencies, the new EP is named after the city where they wrote this batch of songs.)
The Free Pizza on Berlin, DE is less rockabilly than earlier iterations—leadoff track “Dancing” sets the exuberant tone, with Vio’s twee yelp bouncing on piled mattresses of postpunk references: Buzzcocks, X, Mike Watt, The Slits, The Feelies and Meat Puppets. The lyrics throughout are mere whimsy, to wit: “Maybe if I didn’t care / Maybe if I went upstairs / This water would fucking boil.” But there’s charm to spare, and charming whimsy doesn’t get old, either.
—Nick Rubin