Music Diary, Vol. 38

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 (minus the Rush cut; they seem to have taken their music off of YouTube).

Week of Sept. 23-29, 2024

LYRICS: Rolling Stones, "Loving Cup"

SONG: The fluttering falsetto and nonsense lyrics of this cursed/brilliant pop hit by Vitas aren’t even the most notable things about it—I’d nominate the fact that the melody of the chorus is lifted from Rimsky-Korsakov’s Kalendar Prince tune.

ALBUM: Heard now with the benefit of hindsight, Neko Case’s guitar noir classic from 2006 sounds like the bridge from Lucinda Williams to Adrianne Lenker—old weird Americana blooming hard and sweet. Not surprised to learn it was recorded in Tucson.

LYRICS: Courtney Marie Andrews, "Border"

SONG: With its mix of guitar jangle (that insistent, slightly off-kilter G9 chord!) and bouncy falsetto funk, this Steve Lacy track is an irresistible ear-bender. And then somehow, in its last 40 seconds, it goes even deeper and higher.

ALBUM: I previously touted my fave track, “Adieu,” from this 1993 Raï classic by Khaled, but the whole record is worth a spin: big beats and soaring choruses, indelible synth and sax hooks, and a bracing sense of drama as well as pop ebullience.

LYRICS: Phil Ochs, "Iron Lady"

SONG: This minor-key banger from Pixie Lott has unmistakable traces of Winehouse, but that’s all upside in my book. I can seldom resist a tune that makes so much out of so little. Uh oh indeed.

ALBUM: I would never say that only Czech musicians can fully interpret Janáček’s great string quartets, but there is an unmistakable vigor and frisson in the Škampa Quartet’s recording (as there was in the M. Nostitz version I used to have on LP).

LYRICS: Twain & The Deslondes, "Run Wild"

SONG: I swear by LaVern Baker in sunny mode—“Tweedle Dee,” “Jim Dandy”—but my favorite cut of hers is this foreboding 1960 track vowing revenge on a hurtful lover, with its dirty guitar and tinkling bells and her snarling delivery of the word “evil.”

ALBUM: With Remi Wolf’s debut record, JUNO, it was love at first listen. Her brassy follow-up took me longer to love—roughly 2 spins. It has a swing-for-the-fences pop ambition as well as plenty of quirks. Fave track today: “Cherries & Cream.”

LYRICS: Gram Parsons, "How Much I've Lied"

SONG: I first heard this Nappy Brown classic on the essential CRY-BABY soundtrack, and it never fails to lighten my spirits. The stop-start vocal, the ambling bounce of the beat, the offhandedly gritty sax—it is a clinic in apt simplicity.

ALBUM: Fell down a J.J. Cale wormhole yesterday, and as much as I relish later records where he fleshed out his Tulsa sound, the unfussed ease and sidelong elegance of his demo-like debut LP maintain a unique downhome allure.

LYRICS: Rush, "Tom Sawyer"

SONG: I don’t think I ever noticed Frank Sinatra’s hymn-like rendition of this uncanny Eden Ahbez standard until Rob Preuss pointed out that it was recorded a cappella in 1948 during a notorious musicians strike. Its note of severity somehow makes more sense.

ALBUM: Minnie Riperton’s lush 1970 debut sounds like she (and producer/writers Charles Stepney and Richard Rudolph) heard Warwick/Bacharach and said, “Hold my wine.” The result: stunning intimacy and delicacy against a maximalist orchestral canvas.

LYRICS: Stevie Wonder, "Jesus Children of America"

SONG: Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, and Jim Dickinson wrote this song for Freddy Fender to sing on the soundtrack of the 1982 film “The Border,” but it is Cooder’s languid later rendition that brings out the song’s quietly anguished spiritual dimension.

ALBUM: “I’ll Be There” is the hit from this 1972 collection, but the whole record is a must—further proof, it it was needed, that the Staples Singers never had to choose between sacred and secular, pop and protest. They did it all well, all at once.