Music Diary, Vol. -2
For the rationale behind this mad effort, explanations here. The full series of Music Diary posts are here. The full playlist is above, also here.
Week of Dec. 25-31, 2023
Lyric: Burl Ives (Longfellow/Marks), "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day"
Song: I always look forward to “and folks stealin’ a kiss or two,” and it gets me every time.
Song: I always look forward to “and folks stealin’ a kiss or two,” and it gets me every time.
Album: My favorite Christmas record apart from the Peanuts one has to be this Chieftains collection. The rock star guests are nice bonuses, but the best tracks here are full-on Celtic jams: “The Wren in the Furze” and “Breton Carol.”
Lyric: Cat Power, "The Greatest"
Song: I find this Susheela Raman track an irresistible, inspired hybrid; you might call it prog raga. Especially striking: It’s not easy to make music this complicated nevertheless sound so light on its feet.
Song: I find this Susheela Raman track an irresistible, inspired hybrid; you might call it prog raga. Especially striking: It’s not easy to make music this complicated nevertheless sound so light on its feet.
Album: The evident joy that went into the making of this 1998 Fatboy Slim collection is utterly infectious—it pours out of every big-beat track and in some cases reaches full-on ecstasy.
Lyric: Jim Reeves (Audrey & Joe Allison), "He'll Have to Go"
Song: No matter how carefully I count out the opening of this headlong Beatles jam, I’m always blindsided by the “Come on, come on” downbeat. Thereafter it’s a sloppy lasagna of offstroke accents, reggae & blues & pop all smushed together—bliss.
Song: No matter how carefully I count out the opening of this headlong Beatles jam, I’m always blindsided by the “Come on, come on” downbeat. Thereafter it’s a sloppy lasagna of offstroke accents, reggae & blues & pop all smushed together—bliss.
Album: First heard of Essra Mohawk from her obituary last week. What a pleasure to discover yet another under-appreciated 1970s singer-songwriter, a la Judee Sill, Norma Tanega, or Margo Guryan. With Mohawk, the clear reference point is Laura Nyro.
Lyric: Pat Stanley (Bock & Harnick), "I Love a Cop"
Song: Sam Phillips’s exquisite artisanal pop is so associated with the guitar in my ear that this piano-based phantasmagoria has always stood out—it’s almost self-consciously dark and Lynchian, but with just the right balance of drama and reverie.
Song: Sam Phillips’s exquisite artisanal pop is so associated with the guitar in my ear that this piano-based phantasmagoria has always stood out—it’s almost self-consciously dark and Lynchian, but with just the right balance of drama and reverie.
Album: Not even half as bonkers as the Coppola film it was made for (and maybe that was the problem), this Tom Waits/Crystal Gayle record is nevertheless a gorgeous soundscape to project one’s dreams on—a martini served in a snow globe.
Lyric: The Secret Sisters, "Silver"
Song: I know I’m not the only who hears the desert in the Meat Puppets, but I wonder how many can place it as the Arizona desert specifically—weird and beautiful in its own way, it’s the sound of driving, purple sunsets, saguaros, and Googie’s.
Song: I know I’m not the only who hears the desert in the Meat Puppets, but I wonder how many can place it as the Arizona desert specifically—weird and beautiful in its own way, it’s the sound of driving, purple sunsets, saguaros, and Googie’s.
Album: This Schubert song cycle is not as bleak or forbidding as its reputation suggests. Yes, it has moments of hair-raising severity and anguish, but it also swirls with—well, not joy exactly, but vitality, certainly, especially as rendered here.
Lyric: Caroline Rose, "Bikini"
Song: I love all of Midlake’s 2006 THE TRIALS OF VAN OCCUPANTHER, but the track with the most magnetic pull remains this earnest, soaring ode to a sickly prairie wife. Heavy on violin and toms and vocal harmony, it generates the warmth it yearns for.
Song: I love all of Midlake’s 2006 THE TRIALS OF VAN OCCUPANTHER, but the track with the most magnetic pull remains this earnest, soaring ode to a sickly prairie wife. Heavy on violin and toms and vocal harmony, it generates the warmth it yearns for.
Album: I enjoy the kitschy yé-yé bops on this 1968 Françoise Hardy collection, but I’m especially a sucker for the slower, folkier, more wistful chansons, including the definitive Cohen cover.
Lyric: Glen Campbell, "Less of Me"
Song: “What’s wrong with a withered hand?” Like a hymn trapped in amber, this movement from John Adams’s “American Standard” vibrates with a suspended majesty that is somehow both punctured and amplified by the found audio about Jesus’s miracles.
Song: “What’s wrong with a withered hand?” Like a hymn trapped in amber, this movement from John Adams’s “American Standard” vibrates with a suspended majesty that is somehow both punctured and amplified by the found audio about Jesus’s miracles.
Album: I can’t recommend this record of Ukrainian choral music from the 15th to the 19th centuries highly enough. The monophonic chants are as riveting as the sweet polyphonies. A cathedral of sound in time, it’s a perfect way to cap a very full year.
Comments
Post a Comment