Here’s the occasional free edition of Heathen D. Send it to your music people (which is different than spreading this like hantavirus).

You’ll get it in your inbox twice a week (and on that note, a new Purple Vu is about to drop, covering the new archival Onna 2xLP on An’Archives and the Stephen Cogle 1981 demo now out on Siltbreeze, among other older music and antiquities, so go over there and subscribe too)

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Otherwise, I’ll find you! Like I found all of these.

JEFF PARKER ETA IVTET Happy Today LP (International Anthem/Nonesuch)

This is a great settling-in moment for Parker’s remarkable combo, and everyone involved (bassist Anna Butterss, saxophonist Josh Johnson, drummer Jay Bellerose) has come up either in formation (SML) or in the next act (the reactivation and revitalization of Tortoise, Bellerose’s increasing demand as a session player) in the intervening years following the pandemic, as their music began to ring out once we were all fully trapped at home or in isolation, jonesing for the C’s we couldn’t have: company, congregation, consolation. One can’t shake the fact that the rise of this group reminded a lot of us precisely what we’d given up in order for us to survive, and the coincidence (another C) that the unity experienced through their recordings was something the players themselves couldn’t get back to. Three albums in, all live recordings (this in LA’s Lodge Room, a far bigger venue than the where the nearby Enfield Tennis Academy stood) and they’re settled, rooted, thriving across the expected sidelong sojourns into and out of the low orbits they’ve explored on the last two. Still buffeted by difficulty (Parker was displaced from the Eaton fire, plus all ... this [gestures hands]), the band opens up a little further, Johnson’s sax standing out a little more on both pieces, the groove still long, loping and ever-changing, Parker guiding the melody along with each change. It’s still one of the more exciting episodes in American improvisational music in some time, and the tent is growing. One would expect this group would invite more players to the conversation, because even if we don’t know how this story ends we can certainly follow how it gets there, and maybe to more profound effect on the last two. It’s not a contest, though, because they already won.

HANNAH LEW s/t LP (Night School)

First solo outing for Hannah Lew following five records fronting Cold Beat and a stellar run in Grass Widow, which feels like a lifetime ago. At once more pop and more personal than where Cold Beat wound up, this is a nice, suitably expressive change of pace, still heavily indebted to the synthesizer as a tool for arrangement and organization, but used here as a means to get the feelings down rather than build up a wall, and Lew’s co-conspirators (Maryam Qudus from La Luz, Andrew Kerwin late of Ovens, ex-Swirlie/Victory at Sea jammer Christina Files, Adam Lee Miller from ADULT.) are more than game to bring things up or down to suit the moment. Nothing crazier here than a sweet return to form for a great songwriter who now refracts the talent through the prismatic effects of electronics.

FACING “Maybe” b/w “Amiright” CD single/DL (self-released)

Tour single (on the consumer’s medium – compact disc) from a Chicago-via-somewhere trio that’s exciting to me. Their Q4 surprise Temporary Bodies album is still rackin’ em up at HDHQ and these two new tracks keep the mystery afloat if not build upon it, by which to say, afloat is what makes these songs work. With the only constant being Claudia Ferme’s breathy high registers, the electronics and flourishes around them do as they want, be it staying on the anchor of a three-chord mantra and rubber band dirt bass frequency as synths form frigid drones and whale songs around it (“Maybe”) or starting with the heartpunch build up and gradually winding it down across the tense, staccato arrangement and ghost noise punctuation (“Amiright”). I’d like to see this band play with FACS, an alphabetically harmonious possibility.

Goodnight! Doug M