Dig the Vetiver "box set" in the back.Vetiver - Find Me Gone
Two recent gospel comps on Soul Jazz and Numero Group that allow me to quote Mike McGonigal and make Jesus jokes, but not the other way around.
Phi Ta Khon: Ghosts of Isan
Mark Fosson - The Lost Takoma Sessions (scroll down)
As my Vetiver piece no doubt attests, I have surprised myself by being wholly impressed with the newest. This after finding the first album ho-hum and subsequently missing Cabic's set at the Bowery. It probably didn't help matters that I detested co-hort Devendra Banhart's last one (and let's not mention the reggae 12"), but the craftsmanship and interplay here is delectable. And rather than being like a hairshirt, Cabic's increased Bolanisms are as comforting as an old, threadbare tee, breezy, worn, but perfect for the summer. Almost everyone I've chatted to about this album (meaning Grizzly Bear and uh...Chris Robinson) also digs it, so it's not just the bourbonade talking here.
And do I ever feel foolish for missing all fourteen of those "Forever Changes performed in its entirety" Arthur Lee & Love gigs that came through the past five years or so. Maybe I should've gone to Os Mutantes to bathe in such faded light, too, lest it extinguish on this earth? Yet missing Arthur feels like part and parcel for the Love experience. Unappreciated (or should it just be unrequited?), Forever Changes was lost on ears with its ellipses, syncopes, word games, ever-sprawling California roads and open-ended forever chord changes. MacLean was cold in the ground by the time of MOJO's black magick revival, and did they ever unearth Johnny Echols? Either way, a bummer in the summer...
