The rest is conversation

Switch off but think and start a conversation. REALLY think what moved you in jazz this year.

The proper jazz release year ends soon.

No one much puts out albums in December that aren’t Christmas themed. Before then there are a few more weeks and we’ve heard a few gems already to write about soon in these pages, dear readers, so bookmark the site for more.

Yuletide fare is not worth bothering about as a rule unless purchased for sentimental or seasonal reasons and that isn’t enough.

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They certainly never end up as among the albums of the year.

And speaking of albums of the year conversation, an annual parlour game that is meaningless beyond the useful exercise of decluttering long accumulated opinions and correcting some misapprehensions, the main thing to remember is that there are hundreds of these lists. Few are worth reading. So what.

The hardest most brutal thing about thinking critically (meaning: giving opinions and justifying them) in terms of album reviewing isn’t in the short term.

It’s in the six month later period instead.

That doesn’t mean choosing an album that came out ages ago either because you just know sometimes even if it was only released last week that a certain album just works and should be counted even without the luxury of a lot more listening – Myles Sanko’s Let It Unfold springs to mind in that latter regard.

In other words, what without Googling, without looking up anything online or in magazines or papers, sticks out from earlier in the year for the jazz conversation?

Was even earlier in the year from what you recall better than now in terms of releases?

Is there something obvious that you immediately type without even going back and listening to the albums in question?

Earworm territory

Do you have an earworm as you think of this?

Reader, we do.

The first in a while (the last was the appealing Mark Knopfler ‘clapped out punchateer’ ditty, ‘Mr Solomons Said’).

We heard the song we have in mind around about release time way back, a song called ‘Together‘ from choice Tutu Puoane album Wrapped in Rhythm Vol 1.

Reader, try the process. What jumps out.

This is what we reckoned at the half point of the year

A couple of things need pointing out if you decide to think and then switch off all music so you get no prompt or accidental bias it’s better. Then concentrate.

Firstly is the quantity of jazz you have listened to incrementally (if you did that, even – maybe you didn’t listen for months on end or are only now sufficiently less jaded) this year enough to make an opinion that you think has validity?

If yes. Fine.

If no, also fine!

You still know even if based on scant reasoning what you like when judged against a smaller pool.

Secondly, are you thinking about your top jazz in the context only of jazz or jazz among your other listening (rock, hip-hop, classical, pop, global sounds)?

If the former you will be much more streamlined.

If the latter you will perhaps be thinking about what you like or didn’t like within the prism of another great love.

Hatch, match and dispatch thinking

In the like, follow, subscribe patterns of social media hatch, match, dispatch chute approach and that is the extent of your critiquing you don’t really have to justify why or how you have arrived at what you like at all because the reaction is all.

It is enough just to show approval or whether you are a bit meh about it all.

Best-of ism even when spread over a year is only a tool towards better jazz appreciation. It may even be just a fun hobby thing to do.

Worst-of the year – no one does worst-of lists – tells even less apart from pointing out blind spots and how someone is prone or not to rant rather than rave.

There’s so much toxic stuff on the internet, being negative is boring and destructive.

Too much praise

It’s rare given how supportive and kind most specialist writers often cosplaying as unpaid cheerleaders are to find batshit crazily wrong negative massively disparaging copy.

There are few, actually none that I can think of, music writers as scathing as a Camilla Long or Julie Burchill (who used to be a star music journalist) who unlike the more arcane shallow end warm waters of jazzdom operate in the real world of dog eat dog mass media blitzkreig destruction is everything scorched earth tomorrow’s chip paper type of journalism.

If jazz critics were as brutal as some hard news beat op/ed journalists it wouldn’t make their work necessarily better or more honest weirdly because specialists are better informed and know that crude shot from the hip opinions are crass. If disrupter jazz critics did rule the roost it would even make reading their work especially if a musician something of a no-go area for self preservation purposes and the sake of their mental health if nothing else even more significant. I don’t believe you learn anything from anyone hating on you viciously especially when it is done as it often is by sensationally minded hacks cynically and performatively.

Hatchet jobs aren’t cool

I don’t think any musician should believe their own press. But many do! Given how liberally they quote work that they may have hired a publicist to help generate and then festoon all over the Internet they must. The more canny just use the verbiage of hyperbole hunting and comforting lifejacket accrual of golden words to persuade bookers or funding bodies to help finance their work or to sell copies of their work. That’s really what it’s all about, marketing services and the sensible wrangling into a usable bonfire of the vanities all these collectable digital assets both audio and visual to fire up the enthusiasm of jazz anoraks everywhere.

Returning to my earlier point about taking a breath and really thinking about what stood out for you this year is a useful exercise.

But what if nothing stood out?

It’s OK to say nothing stood out or that you only listened to reissues or caught up with last year’s releases that you didn’t have time to absorb when they first came out.

Final point – is it time for physical releases to recede even more in terms of priority especially for new artists starting out?

I think it is from an eco point of view to cut down on landfill demos. A strategy involving digital only releases can work IF you are realistic enough to realise that you need profile first. Sales may come but it will be a trickle before that wished for flood.

Switch your computer off. You think of the year that is all but gone in jazz release terms after the first week of December and won’t begin in earnest again until February ’25. Apart from the fast approaching sleigh bells the rustle of which you won’t be able to avoid soon what are you truly hearing?

Decide before the Jupiter like pronouncements jazz conversation from the mostly now laid off keepers of the flame in The New York Times and The Guardian return to anoint the greatest of the latest to try to make up your mind for you all over again.