Music Diary, Vol. 4

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. 30-Feb. 4, 2024

Lyric: Elvis Costello, "Beyond Belief"

Song: This is songwriting: The ache and resolution of this Paramore song about belatedly acknowledging feelings is all there in the music of the chorus, with a bruising F#m-sus4 on the word "lied" and a sweetly settled B major under "needed to." Listen and learn.

Album: There’s not a bad track on this 1994 Luscious Jackson record, which gave me a deliciously vicarious New York vibe long before I lived here.

Lyric: Rachel Bay Jones (Pasek/Paul), "So Big/So Small"

Song: Four of the most harrowing minutes in music: the tale of boy who cries “Erl-king” and is shushed by his clueless father until he turns up dead. Schubert’s setting of the Goethe poem is a nail biter, and Fischer-Dieskau and Moore make it sting.

Album: Spent much of yesterday savoring the rootsy retro stylings of Eilen Jewell on several of her records, but this one’s big rockabilly sound made it stand above the pack.

Lyric: The Shins, "New Slang"

Song: We know how great Joni could sound with a band from COURT AND SPARK and subsequent tours, but how did she sound with rootsier, rockier backing? This 1972 demo with Neil Young’s Stray Gators gives a tantalizing glimpse of a road not quite taken.

Album: For their first full non-concept album since the epochal WHO’S NEXT, The Who put out this uneven grab bag of restless, fitfully ambitious rockers and yearning ballads. Hardly their best but its imperfections make me love it all the more.

Lyric: Kelli O'Hara (Jason Robert Brown), "Almost Real"

Song: Just snagged advance tickets to the can't-believe-it's-actually-happening Madison Cunningham/Juana Molina tour. To celebrate, please enjoy Madison's sizzling take (with the great Gaby Moreno) on one of Juana's more wiggly earworms.

Album: There are plenty of contenders for the title, but for me Ravel’s crowning achievement was the opera he wrote with Colette about a brat who trashes his room only to have its broken pieces come to life and teach him a lesson.

Lyric: Velvet Underground & Nico, "All Tomorrow's Parties"

Song: Easily Kurt Weill’s most punk effort, sung with seething outrage by Teresa Stratas. The miraculous thing: Felix Gasbarra’s double-edged cry of “Shell” doesn’t need translation; environmental devastation sounds the same in both German & English.

Album: Her new record comes out in a week, and while I wait I’ve been revisiting Brittany Howard’s first solo album with renewed joy and awe. Like Curtis Mayfield, she’s rooted so deep yet soars so high, and I don’t just mean musically.

Lyric: Reckless Kelly, "You Cared Enough to Lie"

Song: Sometimes a love song is just a love song, like this exquisite gem of a tune by Labi Siffre. It has a tinge of quiet melancholy and need, sure, but there’s no subtext here—it is as sweet and sincere as a kiss.

Album: I swear by the U.S. version of RUBBER SOUL because I grew up with it, but if there'd only ever been the UK one (opening with "Drive My Car"), would we still think of this as The Beatles-go-folk record or as a bridge from HELP! to REVOLVER?

Lyric: Feist, "In Lightning"

Song: An old-time gospel tune I wrote for “An Appalachian Twelfth Night” back in 2002, using a Bible greatest hit and drawing on the sound of the bluegrass records I was spinning for inspiration. Never used in the show, alas, but it made the record.

Album: It has been some time since I heard Steve Reich’s iterative masterpiece, which despite its heavy import invariably lifts my spirit. The tempi and timbre, the voices, the searing whistle—how fitting that a piece about trains should be so moving.