Music Diary, Vol. 62

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 March 10-16, 2025

LYRICS: Jesse Welles, "The Poor"

SONG: It seems to me that the key to this gorgeous, literally flowery R.E.M. album closer is the sharp contrast between the slippery chromaticism of the verse and the reassuring, hymn-like chords of the chorus. The dam breaks and the river flows.

ALBUM: Happily revisiting this sumptuous 2003 record by Susheela Raman, in which she does so-called world music on her own British-South Indian terms, with sitar and tabla joining rock drums, Tuvan hoomii, kora, and Hawaiian guitar. It rocks; it also floats.

LYRICS: Indigo Girls, "Closer to Fine"

SONG: The gently chorused electric guitar draws me, but what hooks me in this Cosima tune is her exquisite, involving vocal—imagine Sade but with Caroline Polachek flourishes. It’s not often that a singer this strong is also so artfully subtle.

ALBUM: On her last released record (she recorded another that never came out), Bobbie Gentry sounds relaxed, soulful, a little old-timey. It seems clear she’d heard Laura Nyro and possibly even Karen Carpenter. A swan song all the sweeter for its understatement.

LYRICS: The Replacements, "The Ledge"

SONG: The new White Lotus playlist led me to the kicky compilation Thai Beat A Go Go, which contains this flinty Little Richard cover. Internet research tells me that the title is not a name, as in the original, but an informal Thai word for “moody” or “upset.”

ALBUM: Is this the most Hans Zimmer score ever to have Zimmered? So much of the film’s glacial, monumental pace and tone were set by this sprawling, unsettling soundscape, which reminds me of something Alex Ross once said of Radiohead: This music sounds tall.

LYRICS: Nirvana, "Drain You"

SONG: No matter how often I hear it, this haunted early Rufus Wainwright tune is always slower and more hypnotic than I remember, or can even really fathom. His harmonic sensibility was what first grabbed me, but it's his confident mastery of time I've come to love most.

ALBUM: This iconic Dylan live set dramatizes the fraught but fruitful relationship between his folk and rock sounds. In tracks like "Just Like a Woman" (acoustic) and "One Too Many Mornings" (electric), we hear a master shape shifter finding his true métier.

LYRICS: R.E.M., "Driver 8"

SONG: "Tell tales on the crack in the wall/The man is a seanchaí" is the entirety lyrical content of this riveting rave-up by Dublin band The Scratch. It's all they need to whip up a trance-like frenzy. (First heard on the extraordinary Say Nothing soundtrack.)

ALBUM: One of my fave Ravel collections for its sheer variety: the striking, evocative Chansons madécasses; a trio of piano curiosities, all gems; the plucky charms of the cello/violin sonata. It doesn't fit his tinkerer's rep, but the man contained multitudes.

LYRICS: David Johansen, "Frenchette"

SONG: The heart-punching drum sound on this banger from Red (programmed, not live, and, in this case at least, better on Taylor’s version) is perfect for a song in which mourning for a dead relationship turns into a kind of angry joy; her tears are defiant.

ALBUM: Tonight I’m seeing the musical based on this iconic 1997 record (again), which gives me another chance to reflect on its curious out-of-time quality: Here was a preservationist project that ended up saying something fresh, then became its own tradition.

LYRICS: Curtis Mayfield, "Move On Up"

SONG: A misguided WWI-era effort to turn prophetic words by William Blake into an English nationalist anthem was blessedly overturned when composer Hubert Parry gifted the song to the suffragists and Labour. It sings of England, yes, but its vision of a better world is available to all of us.

ALBUM: Unlike other 20th-century composers with spiritual commitments, Sofia Gubaidulina didn’t turn to medieval forms, minimalism, or birdsong to express the divine. Instead her music bespeaks an angry, anguished faith—a noisy, intimate dialogue with God.