The Vagaries of Anonymity: On the New False Personal History of the Residents

After all these years – more than four decades, in fact – what kind of names would befit the most famously shrouded band in rock? Could they be Penn, Teller, Siegfried and Roy? Are they really the Beatles, a notion they flirted with in their early days, or are they Bingo, Bango, Bongo and Irving? What could possibly satisfy fans of the band who have long wondered about the real identities of San Francisco's weirdest denizens.

The band opened its 2010-2011 Talking Light tour (which came on the heels of their fantastic Bunny Boy project, during which someone who sounded like the one called the Singing Resident certainly seemed to show his face shrouded only by a thick beard and shop glasses) with a grinding dirge of a take on “Smelly Tongues” from their first record (1974's Meet the Residents) after which the frontman introduced himself, lacking neither pride nor drawl, as “Randy, lead singer for the Residents!” And he introduced the rest of the band! Keyboardist Bob and guitarist Chuck! At last the truth was … was what?

The Residents haven't just hidden their identities over the course of a long and rich career, they've played with the very idea of identity. After their early toying with the Beatles, they continued perpetuating the notion of a foursome, wearing four sets of the famous tuxedo and eyeball costumes or other matching and face-concealing get-ups even when there were up to six people on stage. In a surprising spoken passage during the 2002 Demons Dance Alone tour, however, they gave the veil a surprise piercing, with the Singing Resident announcing a desire for a manager who could get them back on MTV and in the process admitting to being a band – or this band, anyway – for the first time.

But last time out there were only three Residents onstage. At the outset of the show (which can also be seen on the new Talking Light: Bimbo's DVD from MVDvisual), there were only three. Carlos, Randy explained, had quit the band and gone home to Mexico. However much truth there might be in the names and band politics, Carlos's departure is probably best seen as setting them up for another round of storytelling, or story-within-a-story telling perhaps on a scale worthy of MacBeth.

This is exciting for true believers because the Residents are master storytellers. Despite the image they project, it's not all that helpful to think of them as a band. They are a storytelling troupe the likes of which has never been seen before. The Bunny Boy story was told through YouTube videos, live appearances and CDs, and the protagonist (a possibly fratricidal recluse) was even available for direct interaction through email and instant messaging. The Carlos story is just beginning to unfold, and true enough may never come to pass (leaving projects unfinished seems to be a part of the Resident aesthetic). But the liner notes to a CD available in limited numbers on the last tour added a little to the tale. The mostly instrumental (and fairly invigorating) record, which bears the mouthful title The Residents' Talking Light Presents Dolor Generar – Una Noche Lost en Van Horn, Texas: Pre-Show Music for the Talking Light Tour, contained a brief story in the notes. After Carlos quit the band, Chuck (or Charles, as he calls himself there) had apparently followed him to Texas where they met up at a bar. Carlos put something in Chuck's drink to pick him up after the long drive, and then a waitress gave Carlos a small box with rocks inside. He doesn't remember much else. He ends the short note by saying that he never figured out why Carlos quit the band.

If there is a plot, it thickens with the new release The Residents Present Sonidos de la Noche: Coochie Brake. The album concerns the kids who grew up to become the Residents exploring the backwaters of their native Louisiana, and is sung almost entirely in Spanish. But more surprising than the language is the fact that it isn't the Singing Resident doing the singing. Vocal credits go to drummer Carlos this time with Chuck on keybords and Bob on guitar. Songwriting and performance credits go to “The Residents / Sonidos de la Noche” and Randy is thanked, making this perhaps the first album where Singing Resident Randy doesn't appear. It also may not be. He doesn't play an instrument on stage, and there have been a number of instrumental Residents records, but this is one of the the first times they've given individual performer credits (they never had names before the last couple years) and the first time they've pointed out that the band was something other than the foursome.

Meanwhile, somewhere perhaps just south of reality, Randy Rose was concerning himself with the story of a friend named Sam. While Bob, Chuck and Carlos were recording songs about their youth in Louisiana, and while Chuck was chasing Carlos through Texas, Randy was workshopping a new production called Sam's Enchanted Evening, first in San Francisco and then over four nights in New York. On March 24 at Abrons Arts Center in Manhattan's Lower East Side, Randy – with the help of a pianist and an actress in the role of a nonverbal cocktail waitress – put on a revue of a couple dozen pop hits stitched together to tell the story of an alcoholic Vietnam vet who stumbles into a bar to celebrate his birthday by exorcising his demons. It's essentially a one-man show – the pianist and the waitress contribute to the action but don't have lines – for the Singing, or perhaps the Acting, Resident. Sam is not a warm character. He's a racist and his homophobia seems to run through a strong current of denial. Over the course of the 90-minute show, presented without intermission, Sam didn't become any more likable, but he did become a sympathetic figure. And while the only music was the piano and an occasional banged cooking pot, the songs (including “Ode to Billy Joe,” “Sixteen Tons,” “Windmills of Your Mind” and “Livin' la Vida Loca”) came off as pure Residents. Through the strength of the Singing Resident's powerful rasp and assured stage presence, Sam's Enchanted Evening was, if not a rock show, still a Residents show.

All of this recent activity comes as the band is poised to mount another tour. The band that only toured three times in its first 25 years has come in recent years to do so almost annually, and to use the practice of touring as a tool in cross-platform storytelling. As of this writing the band is preparing for its 40th Anniversary tour and seems to have several stories underway. Is the story of Carlos's departure setting the stage? The band has only done two “greatest hits” tours; the rest have all been stageplays, operas of sorts. And there must be a reason for them to have decided to use individual names for the first time in 40 years, names which don't seem to be real. As pointed out on the Residents Lovers forum (www.createforum.com/theresidents), Chuck has been credited with the last name Bobuck, giving him the one name you can't use in the children's song “The Name Game.” But there's a reason they're using names now. And there's a reason they're introducing band politics to the storyline. And whatever that reason is, it's not about revealing their identities.

Despite their newfound naming, Demons Dance Alone remains their most revelatory and direct work. If it's not their strongest musically, it does have an infectious, repeating theme. The double disc version released by Mute furthers the revelations, more intimately so than their current tactics. “The first thing one needs to know about about THE RESIDENTS is that there are no RESIDENTS,” according to the unsigned liner notes to the release. “'It all started in 1972 when four people with little direction and less talent decided to start band.' Now the lies begin … or do they? […] The band not only had no faces, genders, or names, THE RESIDENTS had no personalities. […] If no one claims to be a RESIDENT, doesn't that mean everyone is a potential RESIDENT? Don't we all get their mail?”

As their play within a play within a play reaches its 40th anniversary, we can all revel with them. For there are, indeed, no Residents. Neither Randy nor Chuck nor Carlos nor Bob. And we, we are all Residents.

Text and cell phone photo by Kurt Gottschalk

Here's a rough video from one of the San Francisco shows. It looks like there was more staging in New York, at least from this glimpse.

The David Murray Blues Big Band with James "Blood" Ulmer live at Iridium

David Murray opened the first set of a two night run March 7 with his Blues Big Band playing a song of his own called “Stressology.” Before bringing out featured performer James “Blood” Ulmer, he said, he wanted to relieve some stress for the audience “because New York is so imposing.” It might have been seen as a quiet homecoming of sorts for the saxophonist who has been talking about moving back to New York after a decade and a half in Paris. He didn't say as much from the stage but here he was, back in New York and in front of a big band, even if it was a Tuesday at Iridium instead of one of the many, many Mondays he hosted at the Knitting Factory.

There were a couple names back from those olden days - Alex Harding on baritone sax and Jaribu Shahid on upright bass and bass guitar - but it was still a new project and if the band wasn't up to the full power that Murray's big band had harnessed when they were playing weekly gigs, they still backed Ulmer more than ably once he joined them on stage. All told, it was probably a better Ulmer gig than it was a Murray one even if the leader's few tenor solos still stole the show. The one notable exception to that broad stroke came in the form of another Murray in the 15-piece band who wasn't introduced until midpoint.

Ulmer started with a strong take on Bessie Smith's “Backwater Blues” and a funky version of his own “Talk About Jesus,” both of which appeared on his 2007 release Bad Blood in the City: The Piety Street Sessions. His phlanged guitar was untroubled by treble as he moaned the New Orleans-inspired songs through a choppy vibrato while a bold young man comped next to him on a custom Stratocaster. The rhythm figures played by the younger guitarist paid a debt owed to Ulmer, but when he stood up to solo he showed an allegiance to Hendrix, Santana and Eddie Hazel as well. And when David Murray introduced him as Mingus Murray - without going so far as to say he was his son, although he is - the lineage was made clear. The younger Murray has been setting the stage for his own rhythm and funky blues, describing himself as an “art nouveau rock star from the future” and releasing his first album as a free download via his website.

The various forces aligned for a cover of Kanye West's “Love Lockdown,” a song the elder Murray has also played with his Cuban Ensemble joined by singer Macy Gray and Roots drummer ?estlove and firmly grounded here by Shahid's electric bass. The set concluded with a reading of “Sitting on Top of the Worldwhich was the jazziest thing of the night.

Even with some nods to the new, there was a current of nostalgia going on, enough so that one could be forgiven for imagining that Murray and Ulmer might next revisit Recording N.Y.C. 1986, even without the late, great Fred Hopkins. It's unlikely, but it remains one of the best releases in either man's catalog.

Here's a short documentary about the project, not from the same gig but worth a watch:



- Kurt Gottschalk

New Takes on Kate Bush and David Bowie

Theo Bleckmann
Hello Earth! The Music of Kate Bush
(Winter & Winter)

The Wee Trio
Ashes to Ashes: A David Bowie Intraspective
(Bionic Records)


It's easy to make the mistake of remembering Kate Bush as a girl at her piano, a bit of a weird one maybe, but essentially looking pretty doing ballerina steps and singing pretty songs in a high soprano. And with as much as a dozen years passing between albums (she's released a total of 10 since her first in 1978), she doesn't do an awful lot to remind us otherwise.

It often feels as if this is the mistake singer Theo Bleckmann has made on Hello Earth! The Music of Kate Bush. While Bush's songs aren't often cheery, they do sometimes feel light. Not unsophisticated or unintelligent but ethereal, and these are the songs toward which Bleckmann is drawn. He is a fine singer, occupying a territory between art song and cabaret, which allows for smart arrangements and just a little bit of camp but not much by way of the screeches of terror sometimes in Bush's recordings.

As such, a song like “All the Love” from 1982's The Dreaming (her boldest and by some measures her best album) is perfect for Bleckmann: It feels easy but it doesn't move in obvious ways. There's enough gristle there to make for a smart arrangement and enough, well, dreaminess for Bleckmann to luxuriate in. It might be the high point of the album, along with a lightly percussive take on “Army Dreamers” from Bush's previous record, Never for Ever. Those two songs sandwich an example of Bleckmann's proclivities leading him astray. “The Saxophone Song,” from her 1978 debut, is a tossaway track about feeling a connection with a musician in a bar band; the band ups the jazziness and Bleckmann scats along pushing it (not illogically but still unenticingly) toward Joni Mitchell's stabs at jazz. Caleb Buhans is called upon to provide the sax fills of the original on his violin, but curiously doesn't get the chance to grind out the wonderful dissonances in Never for Ever's “Violin,” which they ill-advisedly turn into a thin thrash rather than letting it be the nightmare Bush originally created. Two other of Bush's harder-edged songs – The Dreaming's “Suspended in Gaffa” and “Running Up That Hill” (from 1985's Hounds of Love) – are given more fitting treatments if still a bit buffed and polished.

All of that said, however, it's a good album. If for the most part he stays in his comfort zone, it's also there that he finds success. Taking on “Babooshka” or “Sat in Your Lap” ultimately wouldn't have made Bleckmann's album better even if they're arguably among the better of Bush's songs. The band (which alongside Bleckmann's processed and layered vocals and Burhans' processed violin and guitar includes Henry Hey on electric and acoustic keyboards, Skúli Sverrison on electric bass and John Hollenbeck on percussion) does an excellent job of representing the Fairlight synth, tribal drums and floating tone clouds of Bush's music while giving it a fresh take. It's a bit odd to hear five men make Bush's music lighter than she did herself, but it works.

Probably moreso than any woman who had gone before her, Bush's spirit guide through art rock was David Bowie. Like him, she had the pretty face, unmistakably bravado vocals and sophisticated sexuality that made her seem to rise above the rock world. And like Theo Bleckmann, the Wee Trio attempts to place that figure in an arthouse lounge.

Bowie has had a longer and much more prolific career (and perhaps as a result hit-to-miss ratio), and has certainly held a brighter spot in the spotlight. But at his best he's right up there with her, and the Wees give a nice selection of his best in their half-hour, six song program. Two of finest art songs (“The Man Who Sold the World” and “Ashes to Ashes”) are at center, surrounded by a smart rocker (“1984”) and a dumb rocker (“Queen Bitch”), all bookended by nods to latter day Bowie in 1997's “The Battle for Britain” and 2002's “Sunday.” The trio (bassist Dan Loomis, drummer Jared Schong and James Westfall on vibes) has worked this sort of formula before. On past records they've recorded arrangements of Aphex Twin and Nirvana but this is the first time they've fixed their focus so tightly on one point. The arrangements here are smart, both inventive and faithful, and if there's a shortcoming it's in the design. It's a fun listen for Bowie fans, but a vibe trio is only going to get so far. The songs they chose originally called upon such diverse talents as Mick Ronson, Carlos Alomar and Reeves Gabrels – and that's just the guitars, which the Wees lack. As with Bleckmann's Bush, much of the drama gets lost in translation.

- Kurt Gottschalk

Keeril Makan's Target

Keeril Makan
Target
(Starkland)

Unfamiliar with Keeril Makan's name, I was initially attracted to this CD on the strength of violinist Jennifer Choi and cellist Alex Waterman both being involved, and by the fact that the label – Starkland – is usually a safe bet. Even still, I hadn't quite steadied myself for brilliance when I put it on. Makan was born in New Jersey of South African, Indian and Russian-Jewish parentage and studied composition and religion at Oberlin before earning a PhD in composition from University of California -Berkeley. He is a recipient of the Luciano Berio Rome Prize and has been commissioned by Bang on a Can and the American Composer's Orchestra. His work haas been performed at the Other Minds Festival in San Francisco and the MATA Festival in New York. So maybe I should have heard of him before now.

Target opens with 2, a piece from 1998 for violin and percussion played beautifully by Choi and David Shively. It's a staggering work of precision that doesn't rely on tightly metered phrasing. The initial 17 minutes of varying pulse hypnotize the listener with lulling, only to be broken by a frightful metal-on-metal conclusion. This is followed by a piece for solo cello composed in 2002. At not quite nine minutes, Zones d'accord is the shortest piece on the disc and seems to fly by all too quickly. Waterman executes the textural piece – scored for open strings and harmonics – wonderfully. His touch is crucil and in hs hands the piece hovers, disappearing just as its presence is becoming known.

Taken together, the first two pieces might leave the listener vulnerable, as if a nerve had been exposed – a perfectly raw state for Resonance Alloy from 2004. The half-hour percussion work is an absolutely stunning meditation on rhythm performed by Shively on gong. Makan cites as inspiration for the piece James Tenney's Having Never Written a Single Note for Percussion and Alvin Lucier's Silver Streetcar for the Orchestra, two other pieces of quickly counted repetitions. It's vibrant and surprising, psychedelic in a certain sense, and is the piece that pushes Target into the realm of essential listening.

- Kurt Gottschalk

I Feel the Earth Move: Dylan Carson’s Dark Revolution

by Kurt Gottschalk

Dylan Carson has fronted his band Earth (if with a good number of membership changes) for a remarkable 22 years, and in the process has outlined something of a continuum of heavy rock. Although the band came out of the Seattle grunge explosion, their doomy, downtempo riffs stem from a moment predating grunge, predating punk and predating the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Carson reached further back, lifting Black Sabbath's original name and borrowing from that band's early metal inventions. But the glacial power Carson has crafted over the course of a dozen albums is hardly a throwback. His revelation wasn’t just in tempo, it was in taking the posture of hard rock and freeing it from the constrained expectations of heavy metal. And as such, Earth has been the impetus for the most exciting new movement in rock since Carson was hanging with Kurt Cobain.

And something like the way popes, kings and bluesmen names themselves in a lineage, the tectonic shifts that resulted in the explosion of creativity in black metal over the last decade can be traced by names. Starting with the nod to Sabbath in its name, Earth has spawned a lineage of namesakes. The band released the live album Sunn Amps and Smashed Guitars, containing a single half-hour track, in 1995. (The 2001 reissue included a bonus track with vocals by Cobain.) The album was titled in tribute to the band's favorite brand of amplifier, and it was that album which in turn gave Sunn O))), the kings of the New Wave of Downtempo Heavy Metal, its name. (Like the amp, the band name is pronounced “sun,” the “O)))” representing the sun on the amplifier logo.) And in 2001, Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson (of Sunn O))) and Southern Lord records) formed a band with Lee Dorian (Cathedral, Napalm Death) and Justin Greaves (Electric Wizard) called “Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine,” taking its name from a track on Earth's second record. So Earth's cred papers are clearly in order. But while the NWODHM has blossomed, Earth has turned slowly toward the dawn. After a break from recording, during which Carson worked past drug addiction, the band came back with a new and almost sunny, well, overcast anyway, sound.

The 2008 Southern Lord release The Bee Made Honey in the Lion's Skull featured the band's boldest and most unusual lineup yet. The new quartet featured Adrienne Davies on drums, Steve Moore on grand and electric pianos and Hammond organ and Don McGreevy on electric and upright bass, and even featured jazz and Americana guitarist Bill Frisell on three tracks. It may have been the furthest Carson had ever strayed from the metal roots, but it was still epic Earth: long instrumental tracks built from ploddingly slow riffs and improvised asides.

There wasn't a new release until this year's Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 1. (The 2010 issue A Bureaucratic Desire for Extra-Capsular Extraction was a compilation of early recordings.) Angels/Demons brings Earth closer to the rock core, but by no means is it a reversal of the band's slow orbit. Davies (who has been with the band since the 2005's Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method, including a short stretch where she and Carson played as a duo) is the only member retained. The textural space filled by keyboards on Bee/Lion is now occupied by Lori Goldston's cello. The varying instrumentation has resulted in two of the richest records in the Earth discography, but it never seems as if the band is struggling to do something new. Reviews have tossed around labels like “jazzy” and “country,” and Carson has said the same in interviews, but it's not like the band is trying on genres for size.

Angels/Demons is a heavier record than Bee/Lion, but at the same time it's more open, even including a 20-minute wholly improvised track. The band's improvising side was on fine display when they played le Poisson Rouge in New York in June. The lineup had changed again slightly for the touring band, and with Angelina Baldoz replacing Karl Blau on electric bass Carson became the only male in his group. It is, perhaps, a demographic that shouldn't matter, or that shows another aspect of metal's changing face, or just serves to remind that when it all is up, you've got to go back to Mother Earth.

About half the slowly majestic, 90-minute set was made up of songs from the new album and included the title track from Bees/Lion. But the setlist wasn't reserved to new material: They reached back to “Ouroboros is Broken,” the first song Carson wrote for the band (and being performed, he said, for the last time) and a cover of a song by the circa 1960s British folksinger Anne Briggs. Live they were something to behold. Davies' solid, slow-motion drumming seemed like a video effect, and the intermingling of cello and guitar was resonant.

If there is something countryish, as Carson and his legion of bloggers claim, about the new Earth, it's through a filter of Neil Young, or maybe the Dirty Three. But they have something else. They are an exercise in restraint, which might just be the buzzword for the NWODHM or even, if so grand a claim might be made, for innovative music in the early 21st Century. Back in the 20th, jazz, improv, rock, they were rarely about restraint. Anton Webern’s lessons went largely unlearned. But nowadays withholding abandon is where it’s at. They weren’t without forebears; AMM, the Necks, hell, Satie as well. Then Polwechsel, Dawn of Midi, Om, Memorize the Sky and legions of others. But Earth, Earth is rock and roll. This isn’t conceptual or ironic or even strategic. It's real, dirty, rock and roll. Slow and druggy wins the race.

Dashiki: A Jazz Mystery by Flo Wetzel

by Kurt Gottschalk

Florence Wetzel
Dashiki
iUniverse

Jazzbos have a bad habit of making things … jazzy: jazz nativities, jazz brunches, jazz hands. It's perhaps a product of the underdog psychology, a bit of defensiveness about having occupied so much more marketplace real estate 40 or 50 years ago than today, a desperate attempt to prove they can change with the times. This is relevant here only because it's so worth noting that in her “jazz mystery” Florence Wetzel has the appearances of falling into the trappings of jazz as an adjective, but wonderfully manages not to.

There are two basic things Wetzel had to do to make her jazz mystery work: One was to write a good novel about jazz and the other was to write a good mystery. Falling short of either of those would have meant running the risk of being quaint. And unfortunately, the book's title, Dashiki, and its cover, with funky font and Afro-festooned model, don't do much to convince otherwise. That the design makes sense within the context of the story only matters post-point-of-purchase.

But this is classic book-by-cover-judging, and Wetzel's too smart to err on either the jazz or the mystery count. Instead, she has crafted a story which works as a finely-tuned thriller while fitting snugly within jazz history. The double-murder in her tale involves Shinwell Johnson – a b-list trumpeter who moved in circles with Art Blakey and John Coltrane and was just beginning to have his moment some 40 years ago when he was killed – and Betty Brown, his one-time girlfriend whose current-day killing is the crux of the book. A third crime gives the tale its impetus: Brown was in possession of rare tapes of Coltrane playing with Thelonious Monk which Johnson had stolen from Trane's house. When her body was discovered, the tapes were gone.

Wetzel's deep knowledge of jazz enables her to construct a thoroughly believable story, and if it might be a bit name-droppy at times (presumably not every reader is going to follow every mention of Alfred Lion or Lee Morgan) the stripe of her fiction never clashes with the plaid of nonfiction in which she's she's placed it. Her pacing and use of foils and humor make for a fine suspense yarn. But more importantly, she gives her characters rich emotional depth and writes affectionately about the jazz geeks who populate her world, from the heroine journalist caught up in the crime to the round of acquaintances who are key to the plot's unfolding. (In full disclosure, I've known Wetzel and admired her work for years, and have a cameo role as one of those geeks.) Ultimately, it's Wetzel's gift for creating rich and empathetic characters that makes her jazz mystery such an enjoyable and unpredictable read.

Recent Recordings from Matana Roberts

Coin Coin Chapter One: Les Gens de Coleur Lebres
(Constellation)

Live in London
(Central Control)

by Kurt Gottschalk

Although she’s been working the project live for several years already, Les Gens de Coleur Lebres is the first part of Matana Roberts’ epic Coin Coin project to make it to record. The series of suites (too big to call a single work) is in 12 parts — or “chapters,” as she tags them — each a musical portrait of someone in her family history.

Chapter One, released on the Canadian label Constellation, is a smart and harrowing telling of one of the ugliest chapters in America’s own history, and perhaps more importantly of the people who survived it. The literal part of the story doesn’t come in straightaway. Roberts stretches her Montreal 12tet first, pushing them between loose jazzy themes and (more) open improvisations for the first seven minutes before introducing the first vocal piece, “Por Piti,” which confronts the listener with a harrowing pain before the scene has even been set. It then retreats into a series of mid-Coltrane-reminiscent lines before folding in a complementary vocal part by singer Gitu Jain and then the first recitation, a quick litany of the horrors seen by the protagonist, born into slavery.

Roberts has a good sense for structuring composition and improvisation into movements and guiding her bands through them, making for another sort of storytelling. The subject of slavery is certainly tough material either to write or to recite, and Roberts’ delivery comes off as a bit dated — not 1840s but 1970s. There’s a black feminist theater vibe at play in the Ntozake Shange-styled oration which could be a distraction if everything else weren’t so well done. The spoken passage is brief and is immediately swallowed up by a quick horn frenzy followed by an antebellum string lament then a taut, repeated line which proves to be the unexpected foundation of a brass band theme, oddly coupled with hard electric guitar.

The work solidifies as the ensemble moves through the gorgeous and thoughtful “Song for Eulalie” and then “Kersalia,” which includes a more successful orchestrated recitation before pulling some more near-New Orleans jazz. These are followed by the album’s masterstroke. “Libation for Mr. Brown: Bid em in...” is a clever and catchy song about a slave auction, preying on the feeling of an active, enjoyable afternoon almost to the point of deception: Sung from the point of view of the auctioneer, the sale of human beings is accompanied by the warmth of a sunny day. It’s brilliantly sing-song and plaintive, the simple melody inducing a very real fright.

Roberts doesn’t use the text to tell the whole story and the project seems to demand a box set (or flash drive, at least) release with notes telling the literal story that only comes through in glimmers in the musical telling. At the same time, however, what Coin Coin might be about is not the stories themselves but simply the fact that they exist, that they haven’t been forgotten, that Roberts has access to them as a source for inspiration. In July, Roberts premiered the sixth chapter of Coin Coin at the Jazz Gallery in New York City, this section based on 139 pieces her great grandfather using the Bible as a source for musical inspiration at the same time while at the same time teaching himself to read. Like “Papa Joe,” Roberts has a grand storyline to chart through music. Not quite a jazz opera, not quite musical theater, Roberts is crafting a new and personal form of narrative.

Live in London is a more conventional jazz outing, recorded at the Vortex by BBC radio with a crackerjack British rhythm section. They open with a 27-minute take on “My Sistr,” a song written by the Canadian singer Frankie Sparo, who also records on Constellation. Roberts’ “Pieces of We” is followed by an exciting piece called “Glass” then “Turn it Around,” a Carribean-tinged bop that morphs into a meditation in its six quick minutes. The album’s final act is dominated by a wonderfully faithful-and-free version of Duke Ellington’s “Oska T” before closing with the gentle outro “Exchange.” It’s a solid jazz record, perhaps not as important but at the same time nicely free of the intensity of Les Gens de Coleur Lebres.

Over the last decade, Roberts has made her presence known among those in the know in Chicago, New York and Montreal, and while these aren’t her first releases they still feel like an arrival for an artist who’s well worth continued watching.