Music Diary, Vol. -12

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 Oct. 16-22, 2023

Lyrics: R.E.M., "Feeling Gravity's Pull"

Song: Not sure what’s making all the sounds on this infectious Karol Conká track, but I did look up a translation for the lyrics, and I can say this tune definitely lives up to its title (fuzuê means “commotion”).

Album: Wish I had more time to write about this, but long story short: Since Joni’s not on Spotify, and only Vol. 1 and Vol. 3 of her archives are on YouTube Music, I ponied up for Vol. 2, which covers 1968-71, and it is, unsurprisingly, a revelation.

Lyrics: Wanda Jackson, "Silver Threads and Golden Needles"

Song: The Music Tells the Story, Exhibit 1 Million: the way Jimmy McHugh and Harold Adamson set "most" in the chorus of this underrated standard, first over a lightly dissonant major-7th, and last with a brief stop on the top note. Genius.

Album: This may not make anyone’s top albums of 1972, but this debut from Cleveland’s own Raspberries sounds to me like a solid, Badfinger-esque bridge from the Beatles to the AM rock of Cheap Trick et al., and that’s a bridge I’ll always walk across.

Lyrics: The Boggs, "Remember the Orphans"

Song: My favorite slide from Caroline Polachek’s hilariously dorky presentation of her stunning, synesthetic new single “Dang” on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a performance that could be a permanent installation at the Museum of Jurassic Technology.

Album: Introduced to bandleader Carla Bley by the Weill compilation LOST IN THE STARS, I happened upon this badass 1991 LP at Aron’s. I can think of few other records like it, as sprawling as it is taut; it’s discursive but there’s not a wasted note.

Lyrics: Joan Armatrading, "Woncha Come on Home"

Song: Eerily reharmonized Madison Cunningham/Wendy Melvoin cover of a song made famous by The Flamingos (actually a Warren-Dubin standard from 1934), whose strange chords and lugubrious tempo make the lyrics sound like horror. “I only have eyes” indeed.

Album: Somehow missed that the great Margaret Glaspy has a new record, and happy to say that like 2016’s flawless EMOTIONS AND MATH, it’s a trove of guitar grit, tunefully tangled songcraft, vocal vulnerability—most of the ingredients I crave in my pop/rock.

Lyrics: Jeanette McDonald (Rodgers & Hart), "Isn't It Romantic?"

Song: I can think of few more ideal marriages of music and text than Samuel Barber’s achingly gorgeous setting of this iconic, elegiac James Agee poem. And in the dramaturgically attuned Dawn Upshaw, it has the perfect interpreter.

Album: I’m lamentably late to Echo & The Bunnymen fandom, so I was startled to learn recently that this ambitious, fascinating 1984 record initially had a mixed reception. Not every pop band that adds orchestra nails it, but to my ears this one does.

Lyrics: Madison Cunningham, "When Love Comes Alone"

Song: This exquisite Fleet Foxes waltz has their usual surging delicacy, but I always wait for the sudden downward shift to a minor key (exactly halfway through), and for the disintegration at the end—the only musical clues to the song’s deep sadness.

Album: From its opening scratchy double stop (Corigliano) to its final ghostly harmonic (Messiaen), plus of course the Pärt part in the middle, this spry, searching violin-and-piano record by Maria Bachmann and Jon Kibonoff is among my reliable faves.

Lyrics: Stevie Wonder, "Heaven Help Us All"

Song: Here’s a lovely song Madison Cunningham co-wrote with her sister Riley and recorded with their dad’s praise band in 2012. Her vocal sound and ear for harmony, and her bittersweet lyrical gift, were already full formed at age 16.

Album: The same year he memorably jammed with The Beatles, keyboardist Billy Preston released this delicious record, which expertly walks the familiar gospel/soul line. The keys are a multilayered joy, natch; also of note are the vocal arrangements.