Album Review: Tucker Wetmore- What Not To

A friend is aghast at my ongoing affection for the music of Morgan Wallen. Not only have I not cancelled Wallen, I continue to listen to the controversial country star for pleasure.

My pal may not know I was raised on country music and that my life partner’s predilections mean I’ve always been familiar with current country radio fare. Another critical factor can’t be easily dismissed: I live in Kansas. I’m liable to hear Wallen every time I step outside.

Tucker Wetmore sounds a lot like Wallen throughout his new album What Not To. The best songs of both men concern the irresistible lure of alcohol and the heartbreak of the women they love. Given it’s the soundtrack of my life, I’m willing to forgive the incessant sonic and lyrical clichés.

I’m the Problem, Morgan Wallen’s fourth album, will be released next month. If it’s as solid as What Not To, it’s going to be a country-themed summer on my Kansas homestead. My friend is always welcome, but he’ll never talk to me again if he catches me singing along with "It Takes One to Break One".

April 2025 Recap: A Monthly Exercise in Critical Transparency

Screenshot of the trailer for Houston Grand Opera’s production of Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser by There Stands the Glass.

The Top Ten Albums of April 2025

1. Sumac and Moor Mother- The Film
End times.

2. Sherelle- With a Vengeance
British footwork.

3. Leif Ove Andsnes and the Norwegian Soloists’ Choir- Liszt: Via Crucis & Solo Piano Works
Sometimes it causes me to tremble.

4. Gerald Clayton- Ones & Twos
My review.

5. Salif Keita- So Kono
Hushed beauty.

6. Black Country, New Road- Forever Howlong
My review.

7. Marilyn Crispell, Thommy Andersson and Michala Østergaard-Nielsen- The Cave
Improvisation worthy of Plato.

8. Willie Nelson- Oh What a Beautiful World
Willie on Rodney.

9. The Mars Volta- Lucro sucio; Los ojos del vacio
My review.

10. Tucker Wetmore- What Not To
My review.

The Top Three Reissues, Repackagings and Reimaginings of April 2025

1. John Hicks- Steadfast
Forty-year-old solo piano.

2. Sun Ra- Nuits de la Fondation Maeght
The space bop motherlode.

3. Stanley Cowell- Musa: Ancestral Streams
A 1974 classic reemerges.

The Top Ten Songs of April 2025

1. Emma-Jean Thackray- "Thank You for the Day"
Blessings abound.

2. Sault- “L.U.”
Gospel truth.

3. Bon Iver featuring Dijon and Flock of Dimes- "Day One"
We miss the old Kanye.

4. Lorde- "What Was That"
Royal.

5. Carin León, Diego El Cigala and Chanela Clicka- "Te Quiero Y Me Miento"
Intercontinental fusion.

6. Christian Nodal- "Amé"
Love.

7. Mark Morton featuring Nikki Lane- “Down No More”
Straight and narrow.

8. Viagra Boys- "You N33d Me"
Needy.

9. Jane Remover featuring Danny Brown- "Psychoboost"
Hyperpop fantasia.

10. Mekons- "Before the Ice Age"
Warmth.

The Top Ten Performances of April 2025

1. Jake Heggie’s master class at Grant Recital Hall
My review.

2. Joseph Genualdi and Sean Chen at White Recital Hall
My review.

3. Les Arts Florissants with Théotime Langlois de Swarte at the Folly Theater
My Instagram clip.

4. Lauren Auge and Jacob Hofeling at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
My Instagram clip.

5. Electronic Music Midwest Festival at Kansas City Kansas Community College
My Instagram clips: day one and day two.

6. Helen Sung with Bach Aria Soloists at the Folly Theater
My review.

7. Opus 76 at Shawnee Mission South High School
My Instagram clip.

8. The Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society’s “3 Expressions of Light and Sound” at Charlotte Street Foundation
My Instagram clip.

9. Bob Bowman at Westport Coffee House
My Instagram clip.

10. Aaron Sizemore, Craig Akin and Taylor Babb at the Music House
My Instagram clip.

The previous monthly recap is here.

Album Review: Gerald Clayton- Ones & Twos

Music appreciation has become so effortless that I’m inclined to resent the artists responsible for Ones & Twos. Accessing the gimmick of the new Blue Note Records release required the help of a friend kind enough to create bespoke files for me.

Alluding to the DJ reference in the title of his latest album, Gerald Clayton explains it’s “a record where the A side can be played simultaneously with the B side… you hear two separate pieces at the same time.”

Each side of the twelve-track album is meant to be heard separately and simultaneously. The music in the latter experience is obviously twice as dense as the detached tracks. Remarkably, it succeeds both ways.

The ruse may not have intrigued me had not several of my favorite musicians been involved. Marquis Hill, Elena Pinderhughes, Joel Ross, Kendrick Scott and the brilliant trickster Kassa Overall have created many of the most exciting sounds of the past decade. Ones & Twos is no exception.

Album Review: The Mars Volta- Lucro sucio; Los ojos del vacio

A Pink Floyd tribute band once practiced across the street from a family member’s home in Portland. Rain or shine, I’d sit outside listening to rehearsals during my frequent visits to Oregon. I developed a previously tenuous affection for Pink Floyd while monitoring the care the musicians put into grandiose pieces like “The Great Gig in the Sky.” My unanticipated admiration for the classic rock band makes The Mars Volta’s new album seem instantly familiar. Lucro sucio; Los ojos del vacio often sounds like the Mars Volta’s characteristic psychedelic freakouts are filtered through Animals. The album’s arrival amid Lenten temperance makes my endorsement all the more meaningful. The innate conservatism of the classic rock tribe almost certainly negates the crossover appeal of Lucro sucio; Los ojos del vacio, but this fossil is still watching pigs on the wing.

Masterclass Review: Jake Heggie at Grant Recital Hall

(Original image of YounHee Choi, Laci Olberding and Jake Heggie by There Stands the Glass.)

Most masterclasses in classical music offer valuable insights into the form I’d been unable to glean from recordings and performances. I didn’t learn a single thing about music at Jake Heggie’s free masterclass at Grant Recital Hall on Wednesday, April 9. Yet the famed composer taught me and about thirty students a lot about life. Rather than focusing on conventional subjects such as vocal timbre, Heggie tutored four groupings of UMKC Conservatory students as if he were a life coach. While he’s a prodigious namedropper- he referenced his associations with Julie Andrews, Joyce DiDonato, Patti LuPone, Leontyne Price and Stephen Sondheim- Heggie diligently focused on drawing out the repressed personalities of the students. The counseling seemed to be precisely what the apprentices needed. I know I was a slightly better person at the conclusion of the two-hour session.

Album Review: Black Country, New Road- Forever Howlong

I can’t remember exactly when I began to loathe chamber-rock. I’m inclined to blame it on The Decemberists. The 2011 release of the Portland band’s chart-topping album The King Is Dead seems to coincide with my rejection of precious art-pop. 

Forever Howlong is precisely the sort of intricately-arranged, literary-minded and unapologetically pretentious nonsense I disdain. So why am I infatuated with Black Country, New Road’s new album? Two elements explain my hypocrisy.

Forever Howlong frequently references the art music I currently enjoy. I appreciate the nods to the likes of Alban Berg, Franz Schubert and Kurt Weill. And there’s plenty of the prog that remains my guilty pleasure. The wonkiest aspects of Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, King Crimson and Van der Graaf Generator echo throughout the album.

Secondly, I experience Forever Howlong’s songs as bits of soundtracks to my favorite British novels by Henry Fielding, Thomas Hardy, Iris Murdoch and Ian McEwan. Still, writing these words makes me queasy. I will likely have repudiated this out-of-character endorsement come December.

Book Review: Brad Mehldau's Formation: Building a Personal Canon, Part 1

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

My indifference to the personal lives of musicians shields me from the reprehensible behavior of otherwise brilliant artists. In the cloistered realm of jazz, I’m entirely content to remain oblivious to scandalous scuttlebutt. Even though Brad Mehldau is clearly among the most important musicians of our time, I never wondered about his religious and sexual orientations or his political and ethnic affiliations. 

I neither expected nor wanted private confessions in the distressingly explicit 2023 memoir Formation: Building a Personal Canon, Part 1. Yet since he was compelled to reveal all, it’s only right that I divulge that several of the incidents Mehldau describes are uncannily similar to traumatic experiences that scarred my formative years.

I’m a few years older than the pianist and my background is less affluent and refined. Even so, I grasped Mehldau’s generational reference points and I share similar degrees of contrition for past misdeeds. While I never succumbed to drug addiction, I too acted as a passive witness to the gradual annihilation of self-destructive friends.

What about music? It’s here too, in an entirely relatable form. Like me, Mehldau was raised on pop music before gradually surrendering to an infatuation with jazz. He attended concerts by the Ramones and the Grateful Dead. With much deliberation he planted his flag in the latter camp of the punk versus prog divide. He’s down with Pat Metheny and Rush.

Mehldau cites intellectual and literary luminaries like Harold Bloom, James Joyce and Thomas Mann as consequential guides in the development of his bildung. Here’s an absurd reduction of the culmination of Formation: Mehldau finally hits upon a conceptual means by which to create meaningful art beyond the usual corny homages to the music of the past.

March 2025 Recap: A Monthly Exercise in Critical Transparency

Screenshot of the trailer for the Royal Opera’s production of Charles Gounod’s Faust by There Stands the Glass.

The Top Ten Albums of March 2025
1. Vijay Iyer and Leo Wadada Smith- Defiant Life
Resistance.

2. Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson- Bone Bells
“What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells.”

3. Destroyer- Dan’s Boogie
Regrettably, I know just what he means.

4. Nels Cline- Consentrik Quartet
My review.

5. clipping.- Dead Channel Sky
Overcast.

6. Anouar Brahem- After the Last Sky
Light in darkness.

7. Jan Lisiecki- Preludes by Chopin, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Messiaen, Górecki
All killer, no filler.

8. Bob James and Dave Koz- Just Us
My review.

9. Slim Thug and Propain- Double Cup
Still tippin’.

10. Stik Figa and DJ Sean P- A Small Fortune
Buried treasure.

The Top Three Reissues, Repackagings and Reimaginings of March 2025
1. Art Pepper- Geneva 1980
Late-career fire.

2. Neil Young- Oceanside Countryside
Previously unreleased 1977 album.

3. Branford Marsalis Quartet- Belonging
A replication of Keith Jarrett’s 1974 album.

The Top Ten Songs of March 2025
1. Nathy Peluso- “Erotika”
Salsa. 

2. PremRock featuring Cavalier and Elucid- “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
Bad guys.

3. Billy Woods and Kenny Segal- “Misery”
Muck and mire.

4. feeble little horse- “This Is Real”
Debaser.

5. Mackenzie Carpenter- “Gone Fishing”
Hook, line and sinker.

6. Maren Morris- “Carry Me Through”
Self help.

7. Black Country, New Road- “Happy Birthday”
Fourpenny opera.

8. Dierks Bentley featuring Stephen Wilson Jr.- "Cold Beer Can"
Pop a top.

9. Little Simz- "Free"
Priceless.

10. TheBabeGabe and The Human featuring Monogram- "1999"
They were dreaming when they wrote this.

The Top Ten Performances of March 2025
1. Robyn Hitchcock and Emma Swift at Knuckleheads
My review.

2. Branford Marsalis Quartet at the Folly Theater
My review.

3. Dead Heat, Stakes Is High, Failure Drill and Honey at Howdy
My Instagram clip.

4. Leonidas Kavakos and Danil Trifonov at the Folly Theater
My Instagram snapshot.

5. Leonkoro at the 1900 Building
My Instagram snapshot.

6. Bram and Lucy Wijnands and the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra at the Folly Theater
My review.

7. Thomas Dunford at Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral
My Instagram snapshot.

8. The Lyric Opera of Kansas City’s “Becoming a Redwood: The Songs of Lori Laitman and Dana Gioia” at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church
My Instagram snapshot.

9. Dawson Jones at Green Lady Lounge
My review.

10. The Lyric Opera’s “Cruzar la Cara de la Luna” with Mariachi los Camperos at Muriel Kauffman Theatre
My review.

The previous monthly recap is here.

Concert Review: Robyn Hitchcock and Emma Swift at the Garage at Knuckleheads

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

I recall hearing “I Wanna Destroy You” in 1980, but I didn’t manage to attend a performance by Robyn Hitchcock until last week. Hitchcock has held up remarkably well during the intervening forty-five years. 

The unconventional time of the 3 p.m. show at Knuckleheads on March 22, 2025, suited the graying audience of about 250. (I paid $33.51 for my ticket.) Hitchcock focused on old favorites like "Balloon Man" at the acoustic outing. He joked that the songs would remind haggard fans of an era in which they were young and attractive.

I was startled by Thompson’s impressive guitar work and his ongoing obsession with the Beatles. I hadn’t picked up on his debt to Bert Jansch or his fixation on the Fab Four that extended to his closing song "A Day in the Life".

Hitchcock admitted that the intermission was designed to compel fans to purchase “holy relics” from his wife Emma Swift at the merch table. Swift joined Hitchcock for a few songs after the break. Their caustic banter made me uncomfortable. Saying she was tired of dark compositions, Swift suggested they perform the Hitchcock song “that was almost a hit.”

The cult artist responded to the brutal barb by mocking her affection for Moo Deng. The onstage acrimony reminded me of a tense Richard and Linda Thompson concert in 1982, two years after Hitchcock hit my radar. I hope the relationship of this talented couple fares better.

Book Review: Alan McGee- How to Run an Indie Label

Original image by There Stands the Glass.

I’m always down for tales involving independent record label music distributors. I tore through Alan McGee’s over-the-top How to Run an Indie Label after happening upon the 2024 memoir on the new release shelf at a library.

The 2024 memoir by the co-founder of Creation Records is a bit of a mess. Seemingly transcribed rather than written, the 300 pages are engaging in spite of intermittent repetition and occasional typos. The title of the Scottish punk provocateur’s book is presumably meant to be ironic in spite of dizzying success he achieved with Oasis.

The music associated with Britpop is one of my biggest blindspots. What little of bands like Blur, Oasis and Suede I’ve heard never did much for me. Reading between the lines, McGee doesn’t really care for those sounds either. On a related note, neither of us can muster enthusiasm for the Foo Fighters. 

The account of the heyday of Creation Records is the least compelling portion of How to Run an Indie Label. Most readers will derive more pleasure from McGee’s insider gossip about the Libertines, My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus and Mary Chain.

I’m grateful to McGee for reminding me about excellent outsider bands like Television Personalities. Better yet, he turned me on to Kevin Rowland’s astounding 1999 covers album My Beauty. Rowland’s queasy version of the Hollies’ "I Can't Tell the Bottom From the Top" reflects my estimation of How to Run an Indie Label.