Like Butterss

One title, among gazillions, plucked from the 2022 slipstream

It’s Friday, new release day, and you know what that means: More music than you could reasonably ingest in your lifetime has just dropped.

Spotify says an average of 60,000 songs enter the streaming ecosystem daily. There are conflicting stats on weekly numbers of new releases (singles, LPs, etc.), but when you think about it, the exact numbers don’t really matter: We’re living in a time when the torrential flow of audio information from creators to listeners — often cited as evidence of the health of music — has dramatically outpaced our ability to adequately appreciate the sounds and ideas embedded in the grooves.

I think about this every time I encounter a sparkling, carefully cut gem like Activities, the 2022 debut album of Australia-born LA-based Anna Butterss. The bassist and composer has recorded and toured with Phoebe Bridgers, Madison Cunningham, Jeff Parker, Makaya McCraven and Daniel Villareal — a range of talents that gives some indication of her scope and sensitivity as a musician.

Activities began with an invitation from engineer and producer Pete Min of Colorfield Records: Was Butterss interested in spending a day experimenting in the studio? Out of that came songs and riffs that map a territory between sumptuous washy ambience, indie-rock hookcraft and post-jazz groovemaking. Just as importantly, the initial session shaped Butterss’ ideas about layering and organizing sounds, and making electronic elements resonate like acoustic instruments.

The songs of Activities are short and terse and declarative. The work breathes with the spirit of spontaneity yet cannily avoids the solo heroic strategems of jazz abstraction. The melodies have a playful and memorably singable quality, and Butterss, who plays most of the instruments herself, uses minimal arrangements and open space to sharpen their outlines. These pieces do not scream “genius” on first encounter, and that’s probably the kiss of commercial death for a debut project in the aforementioned deluge of releases. But they will do that, eventually, given time.