Music Diary, Vol. -14

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. 2-8, 2023

Lyrics: Gram Parsons, "$1,000 Wedding"

Song: This darwin deez tune is a Byrne-worthy guitar pop confection (with the mind-busting lyric “I think I love you are horrible”), and Keith Schofield’s droll video, a mash-up of commercial stock footage and Deez photobombs, is a pop art masterpiece.

Album: My local coffee place is where I first heard the breezy, mildly trippy, eminently companionable pop of Still Woozy. I don’t remember which song first hooked me, as there’s not a bad track on his 2021 record.

Lyrics: darwin deez, "You Can't Be My Girl"

Song: Played this jagged, mesmeric Juana Molina tune for my 14-year-old on our way to his guitar lesson; he didn’t believe she was making these odd sounds with a guitar. When I told him where she’s from, he said, “Argentina? More like Martiantina.”

Album: Spent most of yesterday basking in these two absorbing chamber pieces by Bernard Herrmann. Yes, their harmonic language is recognizably his, but these are serious standalone compositions with their own internal logic, not film score leftovers.

Lyrics: Alan Cumming (Kander & Ebb), "I Don't Care Much"

Song: I can’t always account for the songs that pop into my head unbidden. I haven’t listened to the CANDIDE score in ages, but today for some reason (could it be the spectacle in Congress?), this merry ode to public execution is stuck in my ear.

Album: I’m not sure which I’m more smitten with, Laufey’s exquisite voice—kind of a throatier Julie London—or her unapologetically old-school songcraft, as if Jerome Kern made bedroom pop. Luckily I don’t have to choose.

Lyrics: Klaatu, "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft"

Song: This somewhat awkward Aretha Franklin/Frankie Valli duet makes me think better of both them—him for his meek but solid efforts to hold his own, her for her calm graciousness in making room for someone she could blow off the stage with a breath.

Album: Dagmar Pecková's 2017 Weill collection is eccentrically but lovingly curated and orchestrated, and while her plummy mezzo soprano isn't my preferred sound for this material, it holds up entertainingly well in this style.

Lyrics: Bruce Springsteen, "Johnny 99"

Song: She’s a great singer, one of the best, but Maria McKee has been underrated as a songwriter. Consider this sturdy, affecting, easy-to-overlook countrybilly gem, and just listen to the way she sings, “I will love you from my grave.” Perfection.

Album: Been listening nonstop to this sad, beautiful guitar rock record by Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin, which manages to find endless shades and subtleties within its artfully sustained melancholy groove.

Lyrics: Langley Schools Music Project (Fleetwood Mac), "Rhiannon"

Song: Trippy and tuneful is a combination I usually can't resist, especially when it comes sheathed in a sleek, haunting, angular bop like this instant Nicole Atkins classic.

Album: I'm late to this witty, sinewy, often ravishing Caroline Shaw choral piece, which won the Pulitzer and got a lot of buzz 10 years ago. The buzz is still humming in its strange, beautiful bones.

Lyrics: Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint, "Ascension Day"

Song: With my Greenpoint Reformed Church band I play a lot of Dylan and Cohen and old-time gospel, but occasionally we’ve been known to bust out this Joe Zawinul classic, which true to its title always feels to me like the finest yet firmest caress imaginable.

Album: Can serialism be spiritual? The composer Sofia Gubaidulina isn't a strict serialist, but the violin concerto that headlines this record clearly has a subterranean internal logic beneath its stirring and forbidding surface. It's stunning.