Seven Song Spin: Playing Against Type

Many of my favorite artists have been known for their free-ranging versatility, even what some might less charitably call dilettante-ism, musical tourism, or at best artistic restlessness. For this week's playlist I've culled a handful of tunes that are in some way uncharacteristic of the artist rendering them—cases where they've ventured outside their comfort zone or circumscribed musical "type" for whatever reason, yet still made music I cherish.

This complete playlist can be found here.

Krumpholz commission: This has been a favorite since I first heard it, in equal part because I can't believe this bubbly "Sonatina for Mandolin and Harpsichord" is really by Beethoven and because it's such an effervescent earworm. (Wenzel Krumpholz, incidentally, was the plucky pal he wrote this one for.)

Try and make me change my mind: It was about a decade ago I happened to sit down in a tiny Brooklyn coffeeshop where Dylan's Live at Budokan was playing. I had never heard it, and I found its radical, often wild rearrangements of his catalogue revelatory—not necessarily because I thought all his choices worked but because he was obviously so into these new fully fleshed out revisions, and they were all such big swings: "All I Really Want to Do" as a power-pop march, "I Want You" as a passionate free-tempo ballad, or possibly most gimmicky of all, this reggae take on "Don't Think Twice." For better or worse, I can't think of any other artist who so thoroughly rearranged his standards this way; Elvis Costello often tinkers with some of his biggest tunes but not quite as thoroughly or studiedly as this. I for one love the ambition, and most of the results; and I don't think of the Dylan originals as so sacrosanct that their maker can't remake them with such evident vigor.

Are you gone gone?: Speaking of white bards' oddball stabs at reggae, it probably says a lot about my taste that my favorite song on Patti Smith's Horses has always been the loopy, disjointed, extremely catchy "Redondo Beach." I like the rest of her stuff, I really do, but there's something about the contrast of her hangdog New York whine and the sunny West Coast vibe of the tune that has always both amused and moved me.

It's a long, long way: Sadly not available on the interweb but once in my vinyl collection was novelty madman Spike Jones's late album Washington Square—or, as the artist was officially billed, "The New Band of Spike Jones." It features 12 instrumental covers of folk, country, and jazz standards in deadpan down-home renditions that blend Dixieland and banjo-picking string band, ranging from "Blowin' in the Wind" to "The Ballad of Jed Clampett." I'm quite partial to this ramblin' take on Weill's "September Song."

If I'm lost or I'm forgiven: Elvis Costello's late-career forays into jazz, Big Band, and, in the case of The Juliet Letters, a kind of chamber-music song cycle, have been seen by many fans and others as jump-the-shark moments, strayings from his natural rock métier. I don't know; I've always heard him as a singular pop craftsman with a great, questing ear for harmony and lyrics, and this great album with the Brodsky Quartet, though it may require a steep acquiring-taste curve for some listeners, pried him out of some comfortable ruts as composer, lyricist, and singer, and it all works quite beautifully as a complete collection. Among many faves of mine is the album's elegiac closer, "The Birds Will Still Be Singing."

Office wallpaper: I've made this point in this space before, but the impish Frenchman Erik Satie was more than just the composer of spare, limpid piano pieces like "Gymnopedies" or "Gnossiennes." He was also an inveterate prankster who wrote odd, obstreperous extravaganzas like Parade (with instruments including ocarino, typewriter, siren, and starter's pistol), as well as ruminative quasi-operas like Socrate. In the silly-Satie vein, I'm especially partial to an orchestral version of Trois morceaux en forme de poire (Three pieces in the shape of a pear), as well to a series of pieces under the title Musique d'ameublement, literally "furniture music," which Satie ostensibly intended as background music. But just try to imagine not paying attention to this drolly petulant opening piece, "Tenture de cabinet prefectoral" ("Wall-lining of the chief officer's office").

I dance in my mind: I've put a track from Janelle Monae's breakthrough record The Archandroid on a previous playlist, but can you blame me? Here she channels some Screamin' Jay Hawkins-esque rockabilly, with something of a nod to '80s throwbacks like Stray Cats or B-52's, on the manic "Come Alive (War of the Roses)"—perhaps best known for its repurposing at the 2020 Oscars but best sampled in its original dose.