Music Diary, Vol. 5

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 Feb. 5-11

Lyrics: Auli'i Cravalho (Richmond/Benjamin), "I'd Rather Be Me"

Song: As Tracy Chapman is on everyone’s minds after the Grammys, here’s another iconic single from her 1988 debut album, which uses the same chords as “Fast Car” (in a slightly different order) to zoom out from class aspiration to class struggle.

Album: They cleaned up their sound a bit on subsequent records but this 1986 collection is the pure, uncut Shonen Knife I first grew to love: rough and ready songs about choco-bars and bison and ghosts, delivered with infectious glee and punk abandon.

Lyrics: The Carter Family, "Wildwood Flower"

Song: This sunny, bonkers Pom Poko tune had my attention even before it very abruptly changed key (around :45) and starting messing with the meter. I'm not saying music has to be a little strange to stick with me; also not not saying that.

Album: If you like your folk stark and unadorned, this Lisa O'Neill record is for you. With both traditional songs and arresting originals, she's a master of the sort of po-faced defamiliarization that makes "old" and "weird" into synonyms.

Lyrics: Cloud Cult, "You'll Be Bright (Invocation 1)"

Song: Messiaen and Janáček took inspiration from bird songs, but composer Carola Bauckholt went several steps further with this extraordinary piece for wind instruments, which she has scored to sound eerily like migratory birds playing chamber music.

Album: This Shelby Lynne classic doesn't just stand outside genre, it positively towers above the blurry lines between pop & jazz, country & soul, Alabama & Palm Springs. It somehow manages to sound like no other record while evoking so many others.

Lyrics: Mojo Nixon, "The Amazing Bigfoot Diet"

Song: Richard Swift was a retro pop savant who deserved wider acclaim and success. This ragtime-y late effort shows him at his most Harry Nilsson-esque, not only in the bright sound but the dark content. He had his demons, but he sure made them dance.

Album: I’m trying to think of any way I could love Margaret Glaspy’s debut record more than I do, and I’ve got nothing. To my ears it’s a perfect balance of raw and cooked, fine crafting and distressed sound, like a grittier Madison Cunningham.

Lyrics: Aimee Mann, "Jacob Marley's Chain"

Song: The insistent triple meter, the rising-falling dynamics, the stretchy Lydian mode—this mesmerizing Laura Marling cut is a sort of breakup song, but it sounds more like an attempt to break a spell (and/or cast a new one.)

Album: Spinning Brittany Howard's essential new record nonstop today, and I keep marveling at both the variety of its sound and the consistency of its ambition. Expansive yet dense, maximalist and minimalist in turn, it's an inspired genre scramble.

Lyrics: Eilen Jewell, "79 Cents"

Song: The propulsive 5/4 figure that opens and recurs throughout this Led Zeppelin deep cut is the kind of random earworm that often gets stuck in my head unbidden, and always welcomely.

Album: Each song on this stone cold Sundays classic is a perfect, jangly folk-pop jewel unto itself; strung together they make gem-studded crown of surpassing beauty. (And their follow-up record is nearly as great.)

Lyrics: Sinead O'Connor, "Lullaby for Cain"

Song: A song that embodies its title subject, this Norma Tanega tune has her signature odd momentum, this time in a driving triple meter and sunny major key. This is throw-your-hat-in-the-air music if I ever heard it.

Album: Mildly obsessed with this gorgeous collection of traditional Māori songs and Western hymns, most of which employs nothing more than a tireless, slightly out-of-tune guitarist, a bassist, and 2 enthusiastic choirs. It’s a heavenly/earthly sound.