Music Diary, Vol. 78

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 June 30-July 6, 2025

LYRICS: The Chicks, "A Home"

SONG: Apparently an attempt to make a hit record, this strummy Velvet Underground track from 1970 kind of blows that with its second chord, a VII (G# from the home key of A), which shades the word “sun” in a way I find utterly endearing but can’t have helped it on the pop charts.

ALBUM: Though it’s hardly a lost masterpiece, I get the fuss about this rescued-from-obscurity LP made by 2 brothers in a home studio in 1979: Donnie Emerson’s plaintive falsetto vocals, his brother Joe’s intuitive grooves. The whole thing has a garage pop purity about it.

LYRICS: Lucinda Williams, "Lake Charles"

SONG: Two things to note about this Tampa Red blues standard from 1939: the self-knowledge of the chorus, in which the narrator admits that his woman's lying makes him "evil as a man can be"; though still couched in a threat, it's a bracing concession. Also: It's got a blazing kazoo solo.

ALBUM: He may be best known for composing the iconic "Mah Nà Mah Nà," but Piero Umiliani's film scores, as on this soundtrack for a 1963 Italian sci-fi caper, put him in the pantheon of Space Age lounge auteurs alongside Esquivel and Martin Denny.

LYRICS: Sam Fender, "Seventeen Going Under"

SONG: Not the famous graduation Pomp and Circumstance march but a remarkable simulation, also by Elgar—one of 5 such marches he wrote. I first heard it as the recessional at Charles and Di’s wedding, which my mom and I got up early to watch when I was 13.

ALBUM: Great records don’t just collect good songs; they also create a sound world unto themselves. By that standard, Horsegirl’s new jangle-pop disc is a keeper—the kind that makes you want to play it on a loop, as I’ve done for the past few days.

LYRICS: Elvis Costello, "Suit of Lights"

SONG: I once made the dire mistake of trying this Johnny Cash standard at karaoke, without realizing that behind its seeming nursery rhyme simplicity are wild modulations (F, Bb, Eb, Bb, F) and staggering vocal range (the final verse is a full octave below the first). Not so easy to be true.

ALBUM: The new Dirty Projectors disc came out before Brian Wilson's passing, but listening to it now I can't help but hear it as a cousin of the eccentric, vocally ambitious work Wilson made; it's also a return to David Longstreth's orchestral mode.

LYRICS: Paul Simon, "American Tune"

SONG: Dancing to keep from crying would be one way to describe this funky, unsettling Brittany Howard breakdown. The fiercely incanted lyric “History repeats and we defeat ourselves” is only partly belied by that defiant fierceness.

ALBUM: Ferde Grofé’s most famous piece is an expert bit of musical scene painting about the most famous landmark of my home state. Listening today and thinking anew of Arizona, where the temp in the canyon today is remarkably similar to NYC (in the 80s).

LYRICS: Cisco Houston (Woody Guthrie and Martin Hoffman), “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)”

SONG: The lyrics of this hypnotic Chloe x Halle jam deliver a carpe diem message, but the woozy music—a relentless I-III-IV progression on an effects-drenched keyboard—suggests that the next day may involve a nasty hangover.

ALBUM: Steven Wright’s belated second album is in some ways weirder and darker than his first (particularly a few oddball “songs”), but it still delivers the goods. “I bought one walkie talkie. I didn’t want anyone to hear what I was saying.”

LYRICS: Rob Kendt, "Suspicious Parties"

SONG: I wouldn’t push the analogy too far, but in much the way Milton’s “Paradise Lost” made Satan the most compelling character, this sweet gospel waltz about the empty rewards of a dissolute, Godless life paradoxically makes them seem precious, especially the way Emmylou sings about them.

ALBUM: The rich polyphony of this mass by Flemish composer Jacob Obrecht is both tactile and otherworldly, enveloping and expansive, as if it were sung by earthly angels. Music of great contemplation and comfort (at least that’s how it worked for me).