Music Diary, Vol. -49

For the rationale behind this mad effort, explanations here. The full series of Music Diary posts are here. The full playlist (minus the Bowie memorial tribute, which is a Facebook video) is above, also here.

Week of Jan. 30-Feb. 5, 2023

LYRICS: George Jones (w/ Virginia Suber and Johnny Mathis), "Brown to Blue"

SONG: Few things lift my spirits like a big guitar riff and airy vocal harmonies, but there’s more than mere 1960s psych-rock throwback going on with the preposterously named trio Sunflower Bean. This shapely, soaring 2016 track is among their best.

ALBUM: Tom Verlaine’s guitar provided both architecture and ornamentation, pulse and filigree, and his songcraft could be as endearingly wild as Charles Ives’. The Television records are essential but don’t sleep on this fierce 1987 collection.

LYRICS: Tom Lehrer, "Silent E"

SONG: Much as Mulatu Astatke’s Ethiopian jazz clearly shows the influence of Latin music, the Egyptian band Wust El-Balad clearly takes inspiration from a hemisphere other than their own, as on this lovely quasi-calypso tune.

ALBUM: I had never heard of the great Brazilian guitarist Rosinha de Valença till a few weeks ago, but I’ve already played this amazing, wide-ranging 1971 record of hers a dozen times since then. Seriously worth your time.

LYRICS: Public Enemy, "Cold Lampin' With Flavor"

SONG: The velocity and brilliance of her delivery well explains why she’s called Koffee, but the thing that sticks with me from this infectious track is when she slows down, breaks the fourth wall, and intones, “Why?”

ALBUM: All the superlatives you may have heard applied to Margo Price’s Strays are true. A ride, a reverie, a romp, it mines a deep vein of rock Americana you might have assumed was tapped out. You could live inside this record.

LYRICS: Paul Simon, "How the Heart Approaches What It Yearns"

SONG: Still don't know why this surging Queen of Jeans banger has not become a fist-pumping arena rock standard. Sing it with me now: "Love will always fuck you over."

ALBUM: If you enjoy the vocal adventuring of Björk, Petra Haden, Rosalía, or Kimbra but haven't heard the French singer Camille, this genius 2005 collection, based around a single drone but nevertheless wildly various, is a must listen.

LYRICS: Fred Astaire, Jack Buchanan, Nanette Fabray (Schwartz/Dietz), "Triplets"

SONG: If all this Ravel classic did was make a piano sound like a fountain, it would be a mere parlor trick. As always with this gnomic genius, surface brilliance is a window into huge, tectonic emotion. Burbling waters run deep.

ALBUM: If you like endlessly hooky, guitar-powered pop with a light touch of math rock, you need to be acquainted with the irrepressible genius of Charlotte Hatherley. She has no bad records, so you might as well start with her manic 2004 solo debut.

LYRICS: The Replacements, "Swingin' Party"

SONG: The seeming whimsy of the song's central image and the friskiness of the arrangement are in beautiful tension with the anguish of much of the lyrics, not to mention the exquisitely strangulated vocals, on this classic 1992 Tanita Tikaram track.

ALBUM: It's not my favorite Yes album by a long shot, but I've developed a real fondness for their second record's mix of chamber pop and light psychedelia. Especially compared to what they'd do next, it's refreshingly modest, even sweet.

LYRICS: Tom Verlaine, "Song"

SONG: Almost exactly 7 years ago, I opened the Sunday service at Greenpoint Reformed Church with this Bowie memorial tribute, and no less than Donny McCaslin sat in on flute.

ALBUM: She was still calling herself Leslie Phillips at this point, but the Beatlesque, T-Bone-inflected guitar pop sound of Sam Phillips was already in full effect on this 1987 collection.