Music Diary, Vol. 27

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 July 8-14, 2024

LYRICS: Faye Webster, "It Doesn't Work Like That"

SONG: It's better known for renditions by Valli or Winehouse, but the version of this breezy 1962 classic I swear by is the one k.d. lang made with TAKE 6 for the movie SHAG, which I can't help but hear, at least in part, as a queer anthem.

ALBUM: This all too rare Duke Ellington film score not only fit the film it was made for—shot by Otto Preminger in wide screen and black-and-white, with a tone both intimate and Olympian—it also makes a great symphonic jazz suite on its own.

LYRICS: Peggy Lee (with Sonny Burke), "Sans Souci"

SONG: This simmering, sweet Shania Twain come-on was already lulling me with its gentle vocal harmonies when the accordion snuck in and dropped some tasty triplets—full swoon.

ALBUM: I've heard few records that make the guitar's singing qualities more apparent than this low-key but totally absorbing duet record featuring bossa nova pioneer Laurindo Almeida and Brazilian jazz aficionado Charlie Byrd. Not a bad track on it.

LYRICS: Benny Spellman (Allen Toussaint), "Fortune Teller"

SONG: One great thing about sampling is the deep cuts it can lead you to. Case in point, this delicious, faintly jazzy Robert Parker soul B-side from 1967, which underpins the recent Bakar hit “Hell N Back.” It’s a bop.

ALBUM: Fiona Apple’s 2nd album freaked people out 25 years ago, and not just for its 90-word title. To many it sounded angry, disjointed, light on hooks. Time has not dulled its edge but I think we’ve caught up with it; it’s a bruised masterpiece.

LYRICS: Millhouse (Kendt), "The People You Leave Behind"

SONG: Another for the Music That Pops Into My Head file: I recently found myself humming the chiming 6-note guitar figure that leavens this Squeeze litany of disappointment. Was I thinking about drudgery, patriarchy—or just remembering a cool riff?

ALBUM: This great Sam Phillips breakup record, now 20 years old, has a very live-sounding rattle and strum, with prickly guitar, shuffling drums, and a rapturously dark vocal timbre. It conveys heartbreak and liberation like no other record I know.

LYRICS: Lyle Lovett, "If I Had a Boat"

SONG: If the bass line of this tasty jam from Herbie Hancock’s BLOW-UP score rings a bell, just think of the chills that you spill  up my back, my supper dish, my succotash wish. I couldn’t ask for another.

ALBUM: He blinded us with synths: Thomas Dolby showed such inarguable facility with electronic soundscapes that his polymathic mastery of the entire pop-funk palette has been underrated, as heard on this moody, rangy, cinematic 1984 masterpiece.

LYRICS: Julie Andrews (Lerner & Loewe), "Just You Wait"

SONG: Elvis Costello once called this angry, catchy howl of a tune “a cross between The Rolling Stones and Prokofiev,” and that’s not far off. The thundering bass line, one of Bruce Thomas’s last for The Attractions, is the key to this volatile hybrid. UPDATE: I have been corrected by the man himself; it's Costello himself, not Thomas, on bass.

ALBUM: I think of this Stones classic as a country/folk record bookended by 2 essential rockers (“Gimme Shelter” and “Monkey Man”), with “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” as kind of gospel encore/epilogue. How do you hear it?

LYRICS: Fleet Foxes, "Helplessness Blues"

SONG: The tectonic chord changes of this sidelong spiritual by Beck transmit the song’s light-from-the-shadows message as clearly as do the lyrics, especially the recurring minor-to-major surge. It’s the sound of the morning coming to meet you.

ALBUM: Only a few of these gorgeous piano-choral pieces by Lili Boulanger treat religious or spiritual subjects, but everything this tragically short-lived genius composed feels lit from within, pulsing and rippling with otherworldly luminescence.