More From the Music Desk

I'm still listening to all of the great music from February 4, both the new releases (Time Skiffs by Animal Collective and Ants From Up Above by Black Country, New Roads) and the newly rediscovered (the legendary All Lights Fucked by the Hairy Amp Drooling by the musicians who would become Godspeed You! Black Emperor).  

But last year, in a fit of optimism, I bought tickets to the 2022 edition of Knoxville's Big Ears Festival despite the covids, convinced that the newly developed vaccines would finally bring about the end of the pandemic.  Since the time of the purchase, I observed the decline of the delta variant and then the rise and current fall of the omicron variant. The festival is scheduled for the 24th to the 27th of March - new omicron cases are declining and I'm hoping they're all gone by then, and no new variants cause a new wave of infections.

But in any event, I'm fully vaccinated and boostered, and, despite the lack of a positive test but based on my loss of sense of smell, I suspect that I was infected by the virus last January. My sense of smell has recovered a little bit since mid-January, but I still can't smell my morning coffee.  In any event, I'm probably now as immune and protected as anyone can be, and the festival will require proof of vaccination for entry and claims masks will be required at all times.  It's time, if not past time, to get back to life despite the risks - not a time to be stupid, but to take reasonable precautions and accept that all of life carries some risk.

The reason I bring this up now is because the schedule for Big Ears 2022 was released today, and just as I feared, they did it: the three acts I'm most looking forward to seeing - Animal Collective, Patti Smith, and Kim Gordon - are all playing on the same night.

On Friday night, Kim Gordon plays the wonderful Tennessee Theater from 7:30  to 8:45 pm, followed by Patti Smith from 10:00 to 11:30 pm.  Animal Collective plays from 9:15 to 10:30 pm at The Mill and Mine, some half-mile-plus away.  One could conceivably beeline from the Tennessee Theater after Kim Gordon and make it to The Mill and Mine in time to catch Animal Collective, but you'd probably not get a great viewing spot.  And then you'd either have to leave Animal Collective early to see Patti Smith, or settle for just the last half-hour of her set.

At this point, I'm leaning toward a night at The Mill and Mine with Kim Gordon and Patti Smith, and passing on Animal Collective. Not to take anything away from AnCo, but I've already seen them several times while I've never seen Patti Smith or Kim Gordon (or her former band, Sonic Youth). In addition, while I enjoy the new AnCo LP, Time Skiffs, it doesn't really make a compelling case for being heard live.  It's a fine, perfectly acceptable album, but it's not revelatory or groundbreaking in the way their early 2000s album were.  Which is fine - it's not fair to demand that after 20-plus years, AnCo have to reinvent popular music with every new release.  There are plenty of experimental passages, but it's the sort of experimentalism we've come to expect from the band.  Animal Collective have made enormous contributions to contemporary rock, and after 21 years, it's unreasonable to expect every new release to break new ground.  I'm mean, The Beatles revolutionized rock music in the mid-60s, but 21 years later, no one was expecting the surviving  members to reinvent popular music in 1986.  The mere fact that AnCo are still making music together, and good music at that, it cause enough for celebration.  But arguably not enough to pass on the chance to see Patti Smith and Kim Gordon for the first and most likely only chance in my life.

But who knows?  If I start hearing amazing things about Animal Collective's performances on this tour, I may change my mind.

Thursday night, before the AnCo-Gordon-Smith debacle, I expect to see the band Low.  Like AnCo, Low is a veteran band, playing together since at least 1994 and arguably steadily improving and refining their sound with each passing year.  What no one expected was that in 2018, after successfully recording together to critical acclaim for nearly 25 year, they radically altered their sound, while somehow still retaining their unique identity. 2018's Double Negative suddenly introduced huge slabs of static and noise into their slightly baroque folk-rock sound, and the experimentation continued with 2021's Hey What.  Low are evidence that some old dogs can learn new tricks and can accomplish more than merely coexisting successfully over two decades.  Strangely, despite all the studio effects and layers of static, they still somehow sound like Low, with all their sweet harmonies and heartfelt lyricism still intact. It's an amazing trick, and one no one expected from Low at this point in their career.

Other musicians I anticipate hearing at Big Ears this year include Sō Percussion and 75 Dollar Bill (Thursday); Claire Rousay, Aurora Nealand, and L'Rain (Friday); John Zorn, Mary Lattimore, Meredith Monk, Jaimie Branch, and Efterklang (Saturday); and Andy Schauf, Bonny Light Horseman, Lisel, and Yves Tumor (Sunday).  Of course, the programing is so diverse and eclectic that I may wind up at totally different sets.  The whole point of Big Ears is discovery, and I anticipate learning about new bands via recommendations from other audience members.