Music Diary, Vol. -4
For the rationale behind this mad effort, explanations here. The full series of Music Diary posts are here. Full playlist above and here.
Week of Dec. 11-17, 2023
Lyric: The Carpenters (Paul Williams), "Rainy Days and Mondays"
Song: The ebullient Sammy Rae is too young to have grown up listening to 1970s pop through an AM radio, but I’ll be damned if this blue-eyed soul track, with its brisk horns and jewel-cut melody, doesn’t take me straight back to that time.
Song: The ebullient Sammy Rae is too young to have grown up listening to 1970s pop through an AM radio, but I’ll be damned if this blue-eyed soul track, with its brisk horns and jewel-cut melody, doesn’t take me straight back to that time.
Album: I recall a critic saying of Beck’s MIDNITE VULTURES that it was as much a comedy record as anything. I feel similarly about this brilliant, rackety 100 gecs record, which consistently makes me laugh (even if some laughs catch in my throat).
Lyric: Paravi, "Angry"
Song: Yet another Madison Cunningham tune I seem to rediscover every few months, this deceptively light-sounding, sneakily complicated tune is an amazing roller coaster ride, from tuneful delicacy into wild abandon (cf. 2:32) and back. A master class.
Song: Yet another Madison Cunningham tune I seem to rediscover every few months, this deceptively light-sounding, sneakily complicated tune is an amazing roller coaster ride, from tuneful delicacy into wild abandon (cf. 2:32) and back. A master class.
Album: The Mexican Institute of Sound is really just one guy, producer Camilo Lara, but on this irresistible 2021 collection he (and a ton of guests) make a case for that name—though it’s less an institute than a party of sounds, old and new.
Lyric: Rosanne Cash, "My Baby Thinks He's a Train"
Song: You may not think we need another version of this Disney standard, but this is one of Lucy Woodward's specialties: covers you don't think will work. Among its other virtues, this sultry 6/8 strut has a memorable lift-off out of the bridge.
Song: You may not think we need another version of this Disney standard, but this is one of Lucy Woodward's specialties: covers you don't think will work. Among its other virtues, this sultry 6/8 strut has a memorable lift-off out of the bridge.
Album: For better or worse this 1957 record was my introduction to Lady Day. Even then I could tell it was late-period Billie, but I loved it instantly and enduringly; I wouldn't trade a note of these relaxed yet razor-sharp renditions.
Lyric: Chappell Roan, "My Kink Is Karma"
Song: I've got a soft spot for this oddball early Bowie track, which segues from a moody stalker's lament into an outright meltdown over a Bo Diddley beat, and contains the amazing lyric, "I'm a phallus in pigtails." So strange this was never a hit.
Song: I've got a soft spot for this oddball early Bowie track, which segues from a moody stalker's lament into an outright meltdown over a Bo Diddley beat, and contains the amazing lyric, "I'm a phallus in pigtails." So strange this was never a hit.
Album: I've listened to Manu Chao's first record for so long, I think I take for granted the unique hybrid of reggae, rock en español, and worldbeat he brought to the scene a quarter century ago. And after all those replays, it still sounds fresh.
Lyric: Joe Glazer, "Too Old to Work"
Song: Elvis’s leisurely but intent rendition of this Dylan deep cut maps out a whole territory of roads not taken. But I’m so glad he walked down this one road this one time.
Song: Elvis’s leisurely but intent rendition of this Dylan deep cut maps out a whole territory of roads not taken. But I’m so glad he walked down this one road this one time.
Album: A fair amount of Martin Carthy’s 1965 debut is the kind of hairshirt-y folk that gives the genre a bad name with some (though not me), but it also has the “Scarborough Fair” that Paul Simon nicked and several other craftily arranged chestnuts.
Lyric: Tyler Childers, "Long Violent History"
Song: Though it was “Alech Taadi” that made Khaled an international star, my fave of his from the same record, N’ISSI N’ISSI, was always "Adieu," with its popping beat, impassioned vocal, and saxophone blending effortlessly with his Raï pop sound.
Song: Though it was “Alech Taadi” that made Khaled an international star, my fave of his from the same record, N’ISSI N’ISSI, was always "Adieu," with its popping beat, impassioned vocal, and saxophone blending effortlessly with his Raï pop sound.
Album: This 1971 Marcos Valle record is as kitschy and beautiful as its cover art. Not for him the muted cool of Jobim or the psychedelia of Os Mutantes; this is more like the Brazilian pop equivalent of what The Bee Gees were doing around this time.
Lyric: Ron Sexsmith, "God Loves Everyone"
Song: We play so much Dylan at Greenpoint Reformed Church, our band could be called Shots of Love. But we don’t just pull from his Christian era. I’m especially partial to this Keats-worthy outtake, which I first heard on the BIOGRAPH collection.
Song: We play so much Dylan at Greenpoint Reformed Church, our band could be called Shots of Love. But we don’t just pull from his Christian era. I’m especially partial to this Keats-worthy outtake, which I first heard on the BIOGRAPH collection.
Album: Came to this record for John Eliot Gardiner’s take on Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms (laser-sharp) and was overjoyed to discover the religious music of Lily Boulanger, who sounds a bit like if Debussy had a lost neoclassical period. Gorgeous.
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