Music Diary, Vol. -42

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 March 20-26, 2023

LYRICS: Lou Reed & John Cale, "Nobody But You"

SONG: It takes a certain kind of magpie genius to hear a showtune in this restless Borodin scherzo. You might even call it kismet.

ALBUM: Film scores that are works of art quite apart from the films they were made for—it’s not a long list but this one by Alex North has to be at or near the top.

LYRICS: n/a

SONG: I love a song as musically twisted as it is lyrically barbed, and this gleefully mean Sondheim outtake absolutely fits the bill. Bonus: In this rendition, Kaye Ballard's voice sounds like it could cut diamonds.

ALBUM: Following up yesterday's Alex North film score, this is an indispensable collection of music by one of North's mentors, Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas, conducted by one of his great champions, Esa-Pekka Salonen.

LYRICS: Millhouse, "Shake Before Opening"

SONG: I can take or leave most of Chris Cornell’s oeuvre but I’ll be damned if this 1999 single isn’t as perfect a piece of songcraft as anyone’s ever produced, and freighted with bittersweet feeling to boot.

ALBUM: How to describe the unique musical alchemy of Ljova? Folk forms fused to spiky improvisation, rigor meets abandon but leaves room for lyricism—he contains multitudes, and this 2008 collection captures his work with the peerless Kontraband.

LYRICS: David Bowie, "★"

SONG: My 13-year-old's musical tastes aren't an exact match for mine, but occasionally he turns me onto something good. Case in point: The bedroom pop polymath Derivakat, whose subject in this hypnotic track is internet insomnia.

ALBUM: Today is an IDLER WHEEL day, I can just feel it.

LYRICS: Paul Simon, "Further to Fly"

SONG: I hear anarchic pop polymath glee in this banger from 100 gecs, but leave it to my 10-year-old to put an appropriately weird spin on it: “It sounds like sad kids in a hospital making music with the equipment.” Okay then.

ALBUM: This gently steely 1995 record fusing the simpatico sound worlds of Jerry Douglas's dobro and V.M. Bhatt's veena deserves to be as widely known and beloved as Bhatt's "Meeting by the River" with Ry Cooder.

LYRICS: Adrianna Hicks (Shaiman & Wittman), "At the Old Majestic Nickel Matinee"

SONG: I always loved this heart-tugging Judds song about a mother cheerfully visiting her son in prison, but since I caught the Cocaine and Rhinestones episode on how tough Naomi had made life for Wynonna, I hear it with a new kind of bittersweetness.

ALBUM: I guess I shouldn’t be surprised how perfectly Bryan Ferry’s louche mid-career rasp fits the great American songbook, but every time I put on this peerless collection it sounds fresh to me.

LYRICS: Sam Phillips, "I Need Love"

SONG: Sister Rosetta Tharpe doesn't just rock her electric guitar here (definitely stick around for the solo at around 2:05), she also acts it all out and manages to get a French audience to clap along for a song about Jesus. A miracle.

ALBUM: Though it was inspired by the Book of Revelation and composed (and first performed!) in a German POW camp during WWII, this Messiaen classic remains a spirit-lifting, even beatific idyll.