Music Diary, Vol. 41

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 Oct. 14-20, 2024

LYRICS: Groucho Marx (Kalmar/Ruby/Pienold), "The Laws of My Administration"

SONG: I’ve long loved this brassy, headlong Juliette Gréco tune but had no idea how horny the lyrics are. (“You’re naked under that sweater” is the first line.) Sung with relish by a woman, though, they don’t sound as leering as Léo Ferré’s original.

ALBUM: The vintage reggae on this essential soundtrack record is first-class, of course, but on a fresh relisten I also appreciate the Mayfield-worthy soul of Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross” and “Sitting in Limbo.”

LYRICS: Ewan MacColl, "Dirty Old Town"

SONG: Obsessed with this early composition by Django Reinhardt, on which he mostly plays rhythm guitar (a rhythm that owes much to Ravel’s Boléro) and leaves the bare melody to flute, strings, horn. It all has the evocative indirection of a dream.

ALBUM: Is this 1983 R.E.M. classic the greatest debut LP ever? All I know is, it’s one record that sold me on first listen—a track-by-track total conversion experience. Heard all these years later, it retains its mystery, its edge, and its joy.

LYRICS: Bing Crosby (Cole Porter), "It's All Right With Me"

SONG: Like most folks in my generation, my intro to this psychotic, quasi-operatic blues waltz by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins came via the tape deck Eszter Balint’s Eva plays while walking down an NYC street near the opening of STRANGER THAN PARADISE.

ALBUM: I loved Adia Victoria’s first LP, BEYOND THE BLOODHOUNDS, so much that it took me a while to warm to her follow-up. Listening again now, I don’t get what my hangup was: It’s a deep dish of Gothic swamp pop/rock, as tuneful as it is dark.

LYRICS: Aldous Harding, "Leathery Whip"

SONG: Some Sondheim is immediately accessible, but a fair amount of his work takes effort and attention—and amply rewards it. I can think of few examples more illustrative than this masterful, moving quasi-minimalist scena from Pacific Overtures.

ALBUM: These 2 exquisite discs of chamber music by Debussy and Saint-Saëns are for anyone who loves the opening of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun but would like it to last into the evening (and add oboe, clarinet, and bassoon to the flute).

LYRICS: Betty Everett (Rudy Clark), “The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss)”

SONG: It’s not Dylan’s first piano-led song on record (that would be “Black Crow Blues”), but this creepy-crawly classic sounded like nothing he’d done before. It sounds very film noir; you can practically smell (and see) the smoke in the room.

ALBUM: On their new album-length cover of the lost masterpiece Buckingham Nicks, Madison Cunningham and Andrew Bird turn the original’s shaggy folk-pop into something more artisanal, neo-classical even, though it also has moments of raucous abandon.

LYRICS: Spanky and Our Gang (Bob Dorough/Stuart Scharf), "Give a Damn"

SONG: I know this Cheap Trick classic is ostensibly about internalized self-censorship or the like, but it’s scored and performed so stirringly that I have always found it more thrilling than disturbing—Orwell recast as a spy chase romp.

ALBUM: The lyrics, the lyrics, the lyrics—yes, the music on this definitive Squeeze album is aces, but it’s the grit, humor, and specificity of the words (and worlds) conjured by Difford & Tilbrook here that always draw me back and bowl me over.

LYRICS: John Hiatt, "Thing Called Love"

SONG: When I’ve done this great Lone Justice gospel tune at Greenpoint Reformed Church, I’ve often smoothed out (or messed up) the odd, deliciously word-stuffed meter of the verses, but leaned into the wailing abandon of the chorus. A gift indeed.

ALBUM: There is your life before you’ve heard this epic Gavin Bryars piece, and your life after. Built on a 25-second loop of a homeless London man singing an apparently original hymn, it is a palimpsest, a talisman, a monument. It will mark you.