Music Diary, Vol. 96

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 Nov. 3-9, 2025

LYRICS: Neil Young, "After the Gold Rush"

SONG: Is this lilting, infectious Lila Downs jam simply a mole recipe set to music? Basically, and a tastier blend of cumbia and norteña you are unlikely to find.

ALBUM: I somehow missed this 2011 k.d. lang record entirely. It's a gratifying half-return to her early Americana sound, which I prefer to her pop era. It comprises mostly excellent originals, plus brisk covers of Talking Heads' "Heaven" and Little River Band's "Reminiscing."

LYRICS: Todd Snider, “Ballad of the Devil’s Backbone Tavern”

SONG: This twee sunburst of a tune was the B-side of Styx’s “Renegade,” a 45 I cherished in 1978. Hearing its flute-y synth and 6/8 strum again today takes me back, with some affection, to my 10-year-old brain full of Tolkien, Star Wars, and AM radio.

ALBUM: You don't hear a preview of all that Janelle Monáe would go on to do on this 2007 EP—it doesn't even tease all the styles on her stunning full-length follow-up, The ArchAndroid—but it's remarkable how fearlessly eclectic and rangy she was from the jump.

LYRICS: The cast of Fiorello! (Bock/Harnick), "The Bum Won"

SONG: Feeling this Ace Frehley classic today, Bo Diddley beat, stomping chorus, and all. (Fun fact: It's a cover of a song by a Brit, Russ Ballard, who wrote it as an ode to the Big Apple.)

ALBUM: Feels like a good day to revisit Lou Reed's love/hate letter to the city I'm happy to call home. His unique blend of deadpan street poetry and rock grit always gives me a lift, and this record's added layer of civic crankery also hits the spot.

LYRICS: Björk, “Alarm Call”

SONG: This breathtaking Arooj Aftab piece came up on shuffle this morning, and despite its length I didn't think once about skipping. The interweaving of her delicate voice and Maeve Gilchrist's harp is positively soul-suspending.

ALBUM: Been spinning this lively, boisterous Kodály suite for the past few days. I love its manic high points, of course, but I also key into the lush cimbalom passages in movement III. The wild moments hit even harder by contrast with the lyrical flights.

LYRICS: Ella Fitzgerald (Rodgers & Hart), "My Funny Valentine"

SONG: Still processing the kaleidoscopic genius of Rosalía's new record, but on first listen my ears perked up at this sweetly tuneful, Gaby Moreno-esque waltz (backed by the sierreño trio Yahritza y Su Esencia), which happens to deliver a bitterly sarcastic kiss-off to an ex.

ALBUM: One of the great privileges of my life is to play regularly with the outlandishly talented singer Catherine Brookman in the Greenpoint Reformed Church band. Her beautifully layered new album, out today, gives you a chance to hear why I’m so fortunate.

LYRICS: John Prine & Iris DeMent (Prine), "In Spite of Ourselves"

SONG: The cues in Bill Lee’s great jazz-orchestral score for Do the Right Thing that I especially cherish are the 3 he wrote for Ossie Davis’s character: Like Da Mayor, they have an old-school sweetness, courtliness, and pathos to them.

ALBUM: Imagine M.I.A. narrating a Mike Leigh film, and you’re roughly halfway to what Kae Tempest achieves on this riveting concept album about a sex worker and the hapless men who try to save and/or control her. I would not hesitate to call it a masterpiece.

LYRICS: Jeff Buckley, "Eternal Life"

SONG: The Texas streetcorner preacher/musician Washington Phillips mostly recorded renditions of gospel standards for voice and a homemade zither he called a manzarene, but this original tune about a mother’s blessing for a departing son is almost unbearably sweet and sad.

ALBUM: Celestial harmonies, yes, but also whiffs of sulfur—apocalypse as well as rapture—course through this expertly curated and performed collection of sacred choral works by Ralph Vaughan Williams. The G-minor Mass is the centerpiece but it’s all compelling.