Music Diary, Vol. -28

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 26-July 2, 2023

LYRICS: Paul Simon, "Oh, Marion"

SONG: The sample underlying Janelle Monáe’s “Only Have Eyes 42” led me to this 1970 Derrick Harriott classic, which sounds a bit like Curtis Mayfield doing reggae. Its main draw, though, is that dissonant piano splash chord (I hear it as an Eb7 over a C).

ALBUM: I had to reconstruct as a playlist the alternately sleepy and jaunty compilation CD that introduced me to the finely shaded interpretive genius of Juliette Gréco. It was worth it.

LYRICS: O.C. Smith (Russell/Miller), "Little Green Apples"

SONG: Not sure how the 1988 collection YOU ARE MINE, by Algerian singer Chaba Fadela, first came into my hands, but I’ve loved this ebullient track ever since. The best translation I can find for its title is “These eyes are the nest.” Feels right.

ALBUM: Thanks to Greg Kot for steering me to an underrated gem: this 2000 record by Adam Schlesinger’s other band, Ivy. It’s packed with as much dreamy pop goodness as their more popular APARTMENT LIFE, but with a more spacious, melancholic sound.

LYRICS: The Walker Brothers (R. Newman), "Looking for Me"

SONG: Just spent the morning figuring out the twisting, evocative, Kurt Weill-ian harmonies of Elmer Bernstein’s great score for THE GRIFTERS. The end credits have the most distilled main theme. I hear roughly: Bbm  Ab6 / C#m  B6 / C#m  F#  Bm / C7  D  G

ALBUM: Their follow-up record is still one of my faves ever, and their preceding Black Flag-inspired album is aces too, but this mind-blowing 2009 collection was my central Dirty Projectors conversion text, and it still slaps.

LYRICS: Lone Justice, "Dixie Storms"

SONG: To the relatively short list of great pop songs in triple meter, I’d add this infernally catchy Steve Lacy track, an equivocal apology/breakup tune buoyed by falsetto vocables and bossa percussion.

ALBUM: I was slightly more into the current CAMELOT revival than many of my peers. With news that it's closing, I'm grateful that its excellent performances have been preserved, as it's a score I cherish despite an apparently unsalvageable book.

LYRICS: Fred Astaire (Kern/Fields), "The Way You Look Tonight"

SONG: The TICK TICK BOOM movie finally almost made me a Jonathan Larson fan. Now my 13-year-old is teaching himself this tune on piano and I don’t hate it.

ALBUM: I wore out her first record, of course, but Suzanne Vega’s arresting follow-up may be even better. It certainly holds up well against today’s crop of guitar-wielding singer-songwriters, all of whom owe her a debt.

LYRICS: Flanders & Swann, "The Gas Man Cometh"

SONG: Used to have a dog named Ben, and we sometimes called him Super Ben Ben in a nod to this very 1990s yet still irresistible Soul Coughing banger. 

ALBUM: The album’s title is a bit misleading—it’s not so much jazz as café orchestra music, with a jagged piano concerto thrown into the mix—but it gives me no end of pleasure to imagine Shostakovich taking this vacation in the land of the dance band.

LYRICS: Iris DeMent, "Let the Mystery Be"

SONG: Even with just two chords, Prince could summon genius. That he is lifting up his faith here in the most stark and unsettling terms has something to do with this song’s rough majesty too.

ALBUM: “U2 is what church should be,” T-Bone Burnett once said. Let us pray.