Time to point out some tunes that I’ve had in heavy rotation lately.
First, Billy Strings’s new record, Highway Prayers, is nothing short of amazing. Clocking in at 74 minutes and twenty tracks, it has a little something for everyone: bluegrass, newgrass, jamgrass, a talking blues song, and a dash of folk-pop thrown in for good measure. It’s the first album in quite a while that was so good the first time I heard it that I felt the need to text a few friends and tell them to listen to it.
Back in the May 2024 edition of my now-defunct Music Of The Month posts, I called attention to the most recent album from Finom, Not God. Well, at the beginning of July we got High Roller, a solo release from one-half of the Finom duo, Sima Cunningham. Wow, what an album! The more I listen, the more I love it. If I were desperately trying to find fault, I could quibble over the fact that, to me, the back half seems like a bit of a different record from the front half. A few tweaks in track order would have fixed that. But that’s a trivial observation about an excellent album. Sima’s got it going on.
Finally, a couple months ago I was scrolling my Mastodon feed (which I rarely do) and the album Parker’s Mood randomly popped up. I’d never heard of it, but it’s a 1995 Verve recording from Christian McBride, Roy Hargove, and Stephen Scott. Obviously these are stellar musicians with spectacular chops, but unlike so many jazz records, this one stays melodic throughout. (As I’ve said many times before, however amazing it is to see a great player improvising over chord changes in a live setting, I can’t think of anything more boring to hear on a record.) Also, I’m a sucker for a strong acoustic bass line, and McBride absolutely shines on this album. Give it a try.
Get some music in your ears, everybody!