Music Diary, Vol. -81

For the rationale behind this mad effort, explanations here. The full series of Music Diary posts are here. The full playlist is above, also here.

Week of June 20-26, 2022

LYRICS: Rebecca Naomi Jones, Mary Testa, Ali Stroker & Mallory Portnoy (Rodgers & Hammerstein), "Many a New Day"

SONG: A breakneck 11-plus minutes of ecstatic jamming to an inscrutable triple meter, this track by Ivo Papasov and his Bulgarian Wedding Band somehow goes hard yet has a light, funky touch. You’ll never hear the accordion the same way again.

LYRICS: Rush, "Entre Nous"

SONG: One of the all-time great album openers, this Thin White Rope banger evokes an angry drunk swatting a hornet’s nest, or a head-on collision of swamp blues and grunge.

LYRICS: John Hiatt, "Lipstick Sunset"

SONG: If I couldn't (more or less) clearly hear its Italian lyrics, I wouldn't have pegged the nationality of this percolating, chanson-like polka (or is it a polka-like chanson?) by Paolo Conte. It's pan-European, I guess? Whatever you call it, it slaps.

LYRICS: Coley Jones, "Drunkard's Special"

SONG: The most far-out music I heard on my local Phoenix classical station KHEP, back when I was capturing music from my clock radio with a cassette recorder, was this thorny, discursive, yet somehow delightfully song-like Elliott Carter chamber piece.

LYRICS: Sam Phillips, "Strawberry Road"

SONG: Some of my happiest music discoveries have come from reading profiles of musicians I like. In one about the alt-funk band Khruangbin, they cited reggae star Barrington Levy’s album “Robin Hood.” This sunnily hypnotic track is my fave.

LYRICS: Lesley Gore, "You Don't Own Me"

SONG: Kd lang, funk, freedom.

LYRICS: Rob Kendt, "The Lamb I Am"

SONG: Imagine you’re at Calvary Chapel in Orange County in the early 2010s and a 17-year-old gets up and plays an otherworldly song that sounds like the love child of Joni Mitchell and Jeff Buckley. Yes, Madison Cunningham was this good from the jump.