Music Diary, Vol. 45

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. 11-17, 2024

LYRICS: Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"

SONG: The unsuccessfully repressed regret of this Hoagy Carmichael/Jane Brown Thompson standard isn’t just conveyed by the lyrics—it’s also in the iterative, sleepwalking-in-circles 20-bar form of the verse. Chet Baker’s rendition floats like a lost balloon.

ALBUM: Dennis Potter was as much deejay as dramatist, collating irresistible grab bags of vintage vocal pop, novelties, and jazz sides for his darkly ironic quasi-musicals, including his 1986 masterpiece miniseries The Singing Detective (here as a playlist).

LYRICS: U2, "Acrobat"

SONG: Getting strong New Wave vibes from this breezy yet circumspect Rachel Chinouriri breakup song from 2022. It’s one of those earworms I sometimes hear where I think, “Surely this is on the pop charts somewhere.”(It’s not.)

ALBUM: Apropos yesterday’s #dailyalbum, here’s more where that came from: This collection comprises all the B-sides of the throwback gems on The Singing Detective soundtrack. Some truly eccentric finds here.

LYRICS: Elvis Costello, "The River in Reverse"

SONG: Just discovered another essential Peggy Lee deep cut: this silky, shimmering web of a tune, which she co-wrote with Victor Young for the 1951 movie Bullfighter and the Lady. I challenge you not to get caught in it.

ALBUM: I used to own this resplendent CD, fuzzy leopard skin sleeve and all. It absolutely lives up to its packaging: This is extravagant, grabby, novel, self-referential music from an era whose groovy futurism still sounds to me as vibrant as it is kitschy.

LYRICS: Peter, Paul and Mary (Eric Anderson), "Rolling Home"

SONG: I don’t believe that minor keys signify “sad” or “dark” in all cases, but there is something about this Turtles classic (wisely slowed down from the Byrds’ original) that tells us this new affair must be a kind of irresistible but bittersweet torment.

ALBUM: I hear this brilliant, prickly 1980 record as a cap of Bowie’s career to that point, looking back without a trace of sentimentality on Major Tom, glam, the Thin White Duke, blue-eyed soul, Berlin. (His pop reboot would come 3 years later.)

LYRICS: Dirty Projectors, "Just From Chevron"

SONG: I seem to be the only Elvis Costello superfan who has never warmed to his piano ballad record North. But I do love this tasty outtake, with its Latin horns and vertiginous chords, which wouldn’t have fit the album’s mood at all but absolutely suits mine.

ALBUM: This 1990 record was Salt-N-Pepe’s breakthrough, and a fresh spin shows why: The grooves are choice, the verses have a confident flow, the mix of playful and serious that would characterize this group comes into sharp focus. A great pop/hip-hop crossover.

LYRICS: Los Lobos, "The Hardest Time"

SONG: It’s hard to define what sets one delicate two-chord folk song from another and makes it soar and sear, but whatever it is, this sweet, melancholy track by the Nigerian singer Lánre has it.

ALBUM: In 1958, in the midst of albums with big bands and the hit single “Fever,” Peggy Lee released this quiet record of folk tunes, art songs, and poetry accompanied only by harp and harpsichord. It’s a disarmingly lovely curiosity.

LYRICS: Patti Smith, "People Have the Power"

SONG: This in-this-world-but-not-of-it Sam Phillips cut makes the apocalypse sound kind of groovy, though it retains an edge of prophetic anger as well.

ALBUM: Non-programmatic concert music only really works for me when there’s a strong animating impulse driving it, an emotional intelligence organizing it. Your mileage may vary, but I hear Bruckner’s open-hearted, worshipful spirit in every note of his 7th symphony.