The music had started sounding the same to me, and I feared that I could not listen—or hear—anymore. Then, within a week or so, I came across these five albums—from John Lurie, American Patchwork Quartet, Alexvndria, the Yes! Trio, and Allison Burik—that sound nothing like one another. Thank goodness. Here are five short (mostly) reviews to whet your appetite.

John Lurie
Painting with John (Strange and Beautiful)
A review
Listening to John Lurie’s mesmerizing 56-track, 90-minute collection of music from his HBO series Painting with John, I found these three words recurring in my notes: trance, Africa, blues. Sign me up. The series, which showcases Lurie’s vibrant paintings, his disarmingly offbeat sense of humor, and a wisdom distilled from a life overflowing with experiences that might have killed anyone else, draws on material from previous albums, as well as new material composed and recorded specifically for the show. Lurie is probably best known as cofounder, with his brother, Evan, of the iconic New York City–based, tongue-in-cheek (kinda) punk-jazz Lounge Lizards, through which scores of exceptional musicians have passed, and his sophisticated but instantly accessible compositions are rendered by a who’s who of musicians. There’s Steven Bernstein (trumpet), the late Curtis Fowlkes (trombone), and Doug Wieselman (guitar, clarinet, ocarina, baritone saxophone, bass clarinet), Michael Blake (tenor and soprano saxophone), Jane Scarpantoni (cello), Tony Scherr (electric and acoustic bass, slide guitar), and Kenny Wollesen (percussion, marimba, vibes), to name just a handful. (Lurie himself plays banjo, guitar, saxophones, harmonica, and sampling keyboard, among other instruments. An extensive list of the album’s personnel and track provenance, which includes material from sources as disparate as the Lounge Lizards and Lurie’s film soundtracks, can be found on the Bandcamp page.) There is a concordance between the way things interact in Lurie’s paintings and his music. He constructs deep grooves by carefully interlocking lines from different instruments, creating a dynamic rhythmic web that captures your surrender to the music, which he then electrifies with unexpected, sometimes explosive splashes of color. The same thing is going on in his paintings. The main difference is that you can dance to his music, and you will want to, whether you’re an “Old Man Dancing” (track 18) or not. Fifty-five of the tracks fall between 30 seconds and 5 minutes (well developed in either case), and the collection ends with the raw 19-minute hypnosis of “The Invention of Animals,” a live trio performance with Lurie (sax), Billy Martin (drums), and Calvin Weston (percussion), from the eponymous 2014 album (reviewed here). Painting with John can be preordered from Bandcamp prior to its March 15 release.

American Patchwork Quartet
American Patchwork Quartet (indie)
A review
The American Patchwork Quartet, the brainchild of South Carolinian guitarist/vocalist Clay Ross, winner of multiple Grammy Awards, aims to “reclaim the immigrant soul of American Roots Music,” according to the group’s website. To that end, he has enlisted the assistance of three of the world’s premier musicians, including U.S. immigrants Hindustani vocalist Falguni Shah and Issei jazz bassist Yasushi Nakamura, along with Detroit’s stellar jazz drummer Clarence Penn. Taking some of America’s best-known, most-cherished, and deepest songs, the quartet exposes them to the varied influences of its four members, in settings that range from straight acoustic to country rock to funk to music hall. You have not really heard “Shenandoah” until you’ve heard Shah’s naked vocal, her Hindi microtonal ornamentation inscribing this anthem of longing in your heart. Among the other high points in the 14 tracks are the opener, “Beneath the Willow,” which beautifully combines a country folk arrangement with an R&B bass and a Hindustani vocalization; the funked-up “Soul of a Man,” with its finger in your chest demanding an answer to the unanswerable; “Wind and Rain,” a harrowing tale delivered with a deceptively sweet vocal; and the dark rock of the apocalyptic “John the Revelator.” But you will find intriguing music in every track and informative notes for each, and the confirmation that these songs carry universal truths reflected in every human soul. Available on Bandcamp.

Alexvndria
Hopeless Romantic (indie)
A review
I’m hopelessly romantic, which explains why the EP title Hopeless Romantic caught my eye. The music caught my ear. More specifically, it was the warm, flexible, inviting voice of vocalist/violinist Alexvndria (née Alexandria Hill), a classically trained and employed violinist—she can play—who turned to songwriting and vocalizing when the pandemic shut down her performance opportunities. The songs, four originals and a cover of Jill Scott’s “He Loves Me,” are all about love—“situationships, lust, unrequited love, and fulfilling love,” as the press release puts it. On Scott’s neosoul tune, which is lushly produced with a full orchestral battery of strings, Alexvndria captures the near-unbearable ecstatic vulnerability of new love, neurons aquiver. Her “Twilight” luxuriates in the fleeting pleasure of lustful desire, while her “Stay” explores the agonizing uncertainty of a lover’s commitment. Alexvndria’s violin beautifully expands upon this feeling, and it would have been nice to hear more of it. Unfortunately, this tune and “Twilight” come to weirdly abrupt endings. Nonetheless, Hopeless Romantic is a pleasing introduction to a promising singer/songwriter with a lovely voice and an expressive violin.

Yes! Trio
Spring Sings (Jazz&People)
A review
It’s been four years since the appearance of their award-winning album Groove de Jour (reviewed here), and while I have yet to tire of its infectious, swinging optimism, I am happy to note the arrival of another helping from the Yes! Trio via a similarly captivating album, Spring Sings. This is crisp, assertive, sophisticated jazz that swings down the mainstream, riding the confluence of currents from the very different backgrounds of the three maestros: pianist Aaron Goldberg (a Harvard-educated Bostonian from an educated Jewish family), bassist Omer Avital (an idealist hippie Israeli with Moroccan and Yemenite ancestors and musical influences), and drummer Ali Jackson (a Detroit native from a musical family at the center of African American arts). The album features six originals from Jackson, one from Avital, and two jazz standards—and egalitarian interplay at the highest level. Among the many highlights are Goldberg’s ability to mine the repetition of a relatively simple pattern of notes to extract a trove of emotional information, as on the muscular, swaggering rendition of “The Best Is Yet to Come;” the Middle Eastern blues that threads through Avital’s string-bending and rhythmically alive bass lines, as on his “Bass Intro to Sheikh Ali;” and the through-going kinetic engine of Jackson, as on the perfectly punctuated, supersyncopated “Fivin.” Current favorites are Jackson’s ballad “Sanción,” richly harmonized by Goldberg, and the trio’s upbeat take on “How Deep Is the Ocean,” with its funky bass solo. It’s a satisfying outing that will cleanse the day.

Allison Burik
Realm (indie)
A review
Saxophonist Allison Burik, a key participant in Montréal’s jazz and experimental music scenes, celebrates women and nonbinary characters from myth, folktales, and history on their first solo release, Realm. Burik deftly layers sax, bass clarinet, alto flute, vocals, field recordings, guitar, and electronic treatments to create deeply atmospheric settings for their spare and dramatic compositions that seem to float just outside the everyday world in a timeless ether. (Guitarist Magdalena Abrego, Burik’s musical partner in the duo Umbrella Pine, graces two tracks.) The album opens with “Be the Dragon,” a raw repeating pattern with Burik vocalizing simultaneously with their saxophone, dedicated to “the women and genderfluid folks that defied ‘traditional’ gender roles to take up arms in battle,” says Burik in their notes. It ends on “Fragment 94,” with lyrics from a poem of Sappho’s, which offers a gentle blessing and affirmation. Between the two are four songs, three with lyrics, that touch on the challenges of the celebrated figures in Norse heritage and three brief instrumental musings. The album may awake listeners’ awareness and appreciation of “the many ways of being human,” as Burik says, and it surely offers them a spellbinding excursion into an otherworldly musical realm.

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