Music Diary, Vol. 70

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 May 5-11, 2025

LYRICS: Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt (Linda Thompson), “Telling Me Lies”

SONG: Strong Blondie vibes on this addictive Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory jam. I especially listen for the moment, a minute before the end, when Devra Hoff’s bass takes the wheel and drives it home.

ALBUM: Hendrix’s famous Stratocaster is not just the leading voice and driving force on this, his hastily made first record with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell; it also somehow provides the album’s atmosphere and color. A synesthetic masterwork.

LYRICS: Rosalind Russell (Bernstein/Comden/Green), "One Hundred Easy Ways"

SONG: As a kid, I grooved to this track on school bus rides, but even then I felt like Bad Company's idea of a "rock 'n' roll fantasy" sounded pretty thin. 3 jesters, a crowd of dancers, a spotlight, amps, and an offstage mom telling you to turn it down? Maybe dream bigger!

ALBUM: The plaintive, bird-like tones of the oboe and English horn cut straight to my heart, and as this lovely record shows, few composers wrote as sensitively and joyously for these wind instruments as Mozart's near-contemporary, the Bohemian Leopold Gassmann.

LYRICS: Joni Mitchell, "For the Roses"

SONG: There are 3 underrated soul-pop shuffles on Elvis Costello’s debut record—“Pay It Back,” “Sneaky Feelings,” and this jaunty clapback—that sound like nothing he did subsequently with The Attractions, and which feel in retrospect like a tantalizing road not taken.

ALBUM: “Classically informed electro-pop” or “John Adams meets Tame Impala” are not entirely inaccurate descriptions of this transfixing Owen Pallett record from 2014, but they don’t begin to hint at its dark, swirling depths and vaulting ambition.

LYRICS: Bobby Van and Elaine Stritch (Rodgers & Hart), “The Heart Is Quicker Than the Eye”

SONG: I love the way the ostensible source music—marching bands celebrating the Feast of San Rocco in Little Italy—frames the murder of Don Fanucci in The Godfather Part II: a funereal minor-key march as buildup, then a festive oompah tune for the shooting and getaway.

ALBUM: The title of Yazz Ahmed's mesmerizing new record, a lyric quote from the Weill/Gershwin standard "My Ship," piqued my interest. Several listens to its rich, evocative blend of jazz trumpet and vibes with Bahraini rhythms and scales leave me stunned.

LYRICS: Tears for Fears, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"

SONG: This 2002 track by Louise Goffin has a chill, offbeat, junky-found-sound groove I very much associate with late '90s-early '00s L.A., when the likes of Eels, Beck, and Eleni Mandell were making a more rumpled predecessor of today's bedroom pop—backhouse pop, I guess.

ALBUM: The thing about making a record that already sounded timeless when it came out, as did this 2001 neo-folk masterpiece from Gillian Welch (and David Rawlings), is that it stands a good chance of retaining that timeless quality, as this one indeed does.

LYRICS: Gaby Moreno, "Illusion"

SONG: I struggle a bit with Floyd Collins tbh, but I’m obsessed with this plangent, perfectly formed ballad from Act II (song proper starts at :57), not least the shady blue note on “follow ‘long the diamonds” or the surprising/inevitable cadence that follows.

ALBUM: It’s not just her rich, smoky lower register that makes Sarah Vaughan such a fascinating singer, as evidenced on this great 2-disc set. It’s also the paradox of her sound: as natural as breathing yet precisely sculpted, neither effortless nor effortful.

LYRICS: Kirk Franklin, "Hello Fear"

SONG: I’m not Catholic, so I don’t feel a personal stake in the discourse around Leo XIV. But to mark the beginning of his papacy, I offer this surging, spirit-lifting ode to the city of his birth by another non-Catholic Christian.

ALBUM: It would be too reductive to say that Arvo Pärt’s music sounds timeless solely because its subject is the eternal. But there’s clearly an inspired match of content and form here, which I hear anew in this hushed, gorgeous record of choral works.