Music Diary, Vol. 15

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 April 15-21, 2024

LYRICS: Fiona Apple, "Slow Like Honey"

SONG: Cartoonist Trina Robbins's recent death is a great excuse to revisit this early Joni classic, which cites her. As always, my ear relishes the sudden bright E triad she traces over the song's predominant D (on "secondhand one"). Filigree indeed.

ALBUM: I bought this Richard & Linda Thompson record entirely thanks to its #24 spot on a Rolling Stone list of the "top 100 albums of the last 20 years" (published in 1987). It's great, but nothing tops its ironically upbeat closer, "Wall of Death."

LYRICS: Bebe Neuwirth (Andrew Lippa), "Just Around the Corner"

SONG: Can’t get enough of this breezy, utterly disarming folk pop ode to a hard-to-get lover by Omar Apollo.

ALBUM: If one measure of a songwriter’s craft is how well their work holds up when covered by others, Elvis Costello is one of the greats, based on this must-listen collection. Big names aside, don’t miss Tasmin Archer’s “All Grown Up.”

LYRICS: Randy Newman, "I'm Dead (But I Don't Know It)"

SONG: Oddly enough this uncharacteristically blunt-force jam was a gateway to Zeppelin fandom for me. I had resisted them for years as logy faux bluesmen, but then I heard this, and it sounded almost punk; it blew my ears open to all their brilliance.

ALBUM: I love the new SWEENEY revival, not least for the chance to hear the full Tunick orchestrations. But the cast album from the stripped-down 2005 revival, with astute arrangements by Sarah Travis, remains a favorite rendition of the score.

LYRICS: Wilco, "Heavy Metal Drummer"

SONG: Juana Molina and Madison Cunningham closed their stunning set last night at White Eagle Hall with a soaring rendition of this mysterious, harmonically sneaky banger from Molina’s WED 21 record.

ALBUM: I swear by the 1958 German recording of DREIGROSCHENOPER (THREEPENNY) but I also love this 1960 record of its tune-packed sequel, HAPPY END—even though, or maybe because, it dispenses with a full cast and is all sung by Lenya.

LYRICS: Maggie and Terre Roche, "West Virginia"

SONG: This song was inspired not so much by Shostakovich's music as by a quote attributed to him about the triumphal finale of his 5th symphony, which he apparently disclaimed as ironic, as if to say through clenched teeth "our business is rejoicing."

ALBUM: Spent most of yesterday spinning the new Vampire Weekend disc, trying to find a song I don’t love. Couldn’t do it. This one’s a keeper.

LYRICS: Madonna, "Live to Tell"

SONG: I don’t think McCartney gets enough credit for how sad and weird he can be, even in ballads. Maybe it’s the minor chord on the title word here, or the needy repetition of the chorus, but this tune has always disturbed me as much as it moves me.

ALBUM: All the early Bowie records are gospel to me, but I have a special place in my heart for this one, poised between freak folk and full Ziggy glam rock. While his next 2 releases would be wildly eclectic, this one has a bracing sonic cohesion.

LYRICS: Lovett & Asheville Symphony, "Don't Freak Out"

SONG: Jake Thackray wrote witty, often rude songs about eccentrics and freaks and sang them in a plummy Jacques Brel baritone—all of which makes his song about Jesus both a curiosity and curiously affecting.

ALBUM: What I take away from every listen to this prayerful, quietly anguished Messiaen masterpiece is its pulse and color—both the irregular but insistent heartbeat of its rhythms and its winding, always upward-straining harmonies.