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I've just posted a review on my blog of the mind-melting new album from Ingebrigt Haker Flaten's The Young Mothers. Here's an excerpt: "The Young Mothers is a group formed in Austin by Ingebrigt Haker Flaten that synthesizes free jazz, electronics, punk, rap and God knows what else in their pursuit of musical mayhem. For the record, I generally hate these kind of groups, because many times the components sound grafted onto each other, or they’re really a rock band that adds some scronky sax with no context in relation to the whole. When Dennis Gonzalez of Yells At Eels told me about this project, I was thinking to myself, “Uh, how am I going to tell this nice man that this thing sucks?” But one listen to a mothers (sic) work is never done and I was a fan...it's a blast of energy that hits you across the face and doesn’t back down...On Wells, the original, Jason Jackson’s tart, angular alto on top of a No Wave guitar riff reminded me of The Contortions, a pioneer of this approach..." You can read the full review of a mothers work is never done on my blog.

Yells At Eels played the Dallas Museum of Art last Thursday evening as part of the "Jazz in the Atrium" series. Yells is of course led by trumpeter Dennis Gonzalaz, and in addition to the core group of his sons Aaron on bass and Stefan on drums, they added guitarist Greg Prickett, who was part of Ronald Shannon Jackson's last Decoding Society group when they played the Kessler Theatre back in 2012. Here's an excerpt from my review, which I posted on my blog: "It hit me as I was sitting there that here we have the successor to Ronald Shannon Jackson. Stefan brings the intensity and attack of rock drumming, and combines it with the shifting rhythms and shadings of free jazz drumming…”