#deerhoof

A ton of great new albums came out this past Friday, and I wrote about four of them:

- I wrote a very sad deep dive into how Gregg Allman recorded a farewell album while fighting liver cancer.

- I convinced Karl Rove to review the National’s new track “Walk It Back.”

- I reviewed the latest album from one of my indie heroes, Chad VanGaalen.

- I got Deerhoof to tell the story behind every single songonMountain Moves, their new protest album.

- I did not write about the new Neil Young archival release, but here’s my 2016 “Neil Young Hung Up on Me” piece anyway.

Guitarist/composerMary Halvorson’s Nonesuch debut albums, AmaryllisandBelladonna, are out now. The two suites come in a two-LP vinyl set or as two separate CDs and digital albums, produced and mixed by John Dieterich (Deerhoof). You can get them and hear them here.

“These are new landmarks in Halvorson’s already inimitable discography,” exclaims the Guardian in a five-star, Jazz Album of the Month review.

Amaryllis is a six-song suite performed by a newly formed sextet of master improvisers—Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Nick Dunston (bass), Tomas Fujiwara (drums), Jacob Garchik (trombone), and Adam O’Farrill (trumpet)—and the Mivos string quartet joins for three of the songs, making this the largest ensemble for which Halvorson has written to date; you can watch a new video for the title track here. Belladonna is a set of five compositions written for Halvorson on guitar plus the Mivos Quartet, whose parts are through-composed and augmented by Halvorson’s guitar improvisations.

They celebrate the albums’ release with performances of the two suites at National Sawdust in Brooklyn on May 18; Jimmy’s Jazz and Blues Club in Portsmouth, NH, May 20; and Festival International Musique Actuelle in in Victoriaville, Quebec, May 21.