Music Diary, Vol. 3

For the rationale behind this mad effort, the initial post is here. The full series of Music Diary posts are here. The full playlist is above, and also here.

Week of Jan. 22-28, 2024

Lyric: Trini Alvarado and company (Elizabeth Swados), "Lullaby From Baby to Baby"

Song: Mary Weiss's gale force voice could cut through steel. Consider the opening of this B-side to the Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack," where she hits two flat-third notes (a B-flat on "love") so hard they sound microtonal. Rest in vocal power.

Album: 6 great players at the top of their game, collectively and individually. Even the jagged edges on this record feel seamless.

Lyric: Harry Nilsson, "Gotta Get Up"

Song: My best friend in high school could play the hell out of this killer Brahms Rhapsody, which has always sounded like proto-Prokofiev to me, and is certainly one of his more orchestral-sounding pieces for piano. Radu Lupu’s rendition brings all that out.

Album: My favorite member of boygenius is bassist Jay Som, whose own music is intricate, retro, tuneful rocky pop (or poppy rock). This 2019 record is an ideal intro.

Lyric: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, "Red Right Hand"

Song: I have a soft spot for the awkward and unlikely Yes/Buggles crossover record that was 1980’s DRAMA, but the only track that really sounds like classic Yes—indeed feels like a callback to “Roundabout”—is the album’s strong closer. The guitar bit at 1:48 sends me.

Album: Lovers of Eastern European string quartets—I know you’re out there—should not sleep on this lovely collection of sweet-and-sour pieces by the underrated M.K. Čiurlionis (who also somehow found time to be an influential symbolist painter in his day).

Lyric: Moondog, "High on a Rocky Ledge"

Song: I’m not 100 percent sold on The Hillbenders’ full bluegrass recreation of The Who’s Tommy (it’s worth at least one listen) but there’s no denying the twangy appeal of their take on the Overture.

Album: This gorgeous, casually star-studded collection sounds exactly like what the hyper-talented child of folk musicians who’s drawn to opera and showtunes would make—in other words, it’s the most Rufus Wainwright Rufus Wainwright record in a while.

Lyric: Leslie Odom Jr. (Miranda), "Wait for It"

Song: Elvis Costello's score for Aterballetto's MIDSUMMER ballet, released on record as IL SOGNO, is a mixed bag, but you can definitely hear his questing harmonic edge in this quasi-march, which sounds a bit like William Walton dancing with Darius Milhaud.

Album: I love Dirty Projectors' output before and after this 2012 masterpiece, but this is the record that burrowed deep and stuck. Their most fully realized mix of sonic adventure and rock-solid songcraft, it still moves my body as much as my soul.

Lyric: David Bowie, "Time"

Song: I have mixed feelings about the new Adam Guettel/Craig Lucas musical of DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, but this heart-lifting tune, which both leads sing a version of, literally soars above the rest of the ambitious but uneven score.

Album: Spent much of yesterday listening to the first two records by the great early ‘70s singer-songwriter Melanie, who died last week. This, her first disc, includes lovely, bracing originals and a disarmingly passionate cover of the Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday.”

Lyric: B.J. Thomas, "Would They Love Him Down in Shreveport Today"

Song: Doing this late Leonard Cohen classic at Greenpoint Reformed Church today. Beautifully composed and eminently singable (even if he didn’t do much of that himself with it), its most striking gambit is to suggest that God needs healing too.

Album: George Jones’s theology is legible and moving to me, even if I don’t quite share it, and it’s seldom been starker than on this 1990 record, which sums up his spiritual struggle with the track “It’s the Bible Against the Bible.”