Music Diary, Vol. -52

In reaching back retrospectively through my social media music shares (project explained here), I have finally gotten to the week before I started sharing a #dailyalbum. So there just be #dailylyric and #dailysong for the remainder of this look back (and honestly I don't know where this road stops—we'll see!). The full playlist is above, also here.

Week of Jan. 9-15, 2023

LYRICS: Judy Garland & Mickey Rooney (Rodgers & Hart), "I Wish I Were in Love Again"

SONG: Another huge gap on streaming services: the 2 late-'80s albums by Hugo Largo, a quartet with 2 electric basses, violin, and keening vocals by Mimi Goese. It's as weird and wonderful as you might imagine. This stunning track was my intro to them.

LYRICS: Harry Rose, "Frankfurter Sandwiches"

SONG: It's not just the relentless repetition of the 12-note melody in this great The Weather Station earworm that makes it feel so beautifully obsessive; it's also the tune's odd 3-bar shape, which keeps bringing us up short, then reeling us back in.

LYRICS: Talking Heads, "Found a Job"

SONG: With its open borrowings from Spencer Davis Group and the Ventures, and a bass line he stole from himself, this creepy-crawly Joe Jackson classic has no right to work as well as it does; I always turn it up when it comes on.

LYRICS: Bruce Springsteen, "Growin' Up"

SONG: Amazing what a rich, even orchestral sound just 2 instruments can make—then again, when it's Håkan Hardenberger on horn and Roland Pöntinen on keys, and the piece is the rousing conclusion of Hansen's cornet sonata, it shouldn't be that surprising.

LYRICS: Eddie Noack, "Psycho"

SONG: I wrote this song in the late '80s but didn't record it until the mid-2000s with producer (and drummer) Matt North, and we got in some ringers to nail it: That's Jeff Turmes on sax. On harmonica? Why, it's Tommy Morgan, of Pet Sounds fame.

LYRICS: Jake Thackray, "The Hair of the Widow of Bridlington"

SONG: Dirty Projectors have many more complicated and ambitious tunes, but I don’t think they have any as ravishingly lovely as this sad, sweet, deceptively simple ballad sung by Angel Deradoorian. (The Dylan reference doesn’t hurt.)

LYRICS: St. Vincent, "Jesus Saves, I Spend"

SONG: From "Blessed" to "Rhythm of the Saints," Paul Simon has treated religion and spirituality with a mix of curiosity and irreverence, so it's interesting that his most nakedly earnest spiritual is his only one explicitly about his given faith.