Month: April 2021

I’ll take suggestions

Eclectic Playlist Series 8.04 – April 2021

The unexpected centerpiece of this month’s mix is the meditative “Mohabbat,” a steady, subtle, seven-plus-minute composition from Arooj Aftab’s new album, Vulture Prince. Bathed in grief–“This sadness equals all the sadness in the world,” is the translation of one key line–the song fuses traditional Pakistani musical forms with gentle, deft instrumentation anchored in the middle ground between folk, new age, and classical; I invite you to sink into it and see where it takes you. This is the Brooklyn-based composer’s second album. Two other 2021 releases provide additional highlights this month: “Cellophane (Brain)” from the stellar Australian trio Middle Kids, and “Cool Dry Place,” the impressive title track to singer/songwriter Katy Kirby’s debut album. The Texas-born Kirby works now from Nashville. She is slated to open for Waxahatchee on a much-delayed tour, beginning (get vaccinated, people!) this fall. Beyond the new stuff we as usual go skipping through the decades and genres, with everything from classic rock and Philly soul to alt-country, Swampers-animated R&B, and the underappreciated New Romantic end of the new wave. And hey, if you’re out there listening, it’s true: I’ll take suggestions.

“Once Around The Block” – Badly Drawn Boy (The Hour of Bewilderbeast, 2000)
“The Love I Lost” – Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes (Black and Blue, 1973)
“Cellophane (Brain)” – Middle Kids (Today We’re the Greatest, 2021)
“Oh Well Maybe” – The Grays (Ro Sham Bo, 1994)
“I Caught You In a Lie” – Robert Parker (b-side, 1967)
“Cry Wolf” – Adia Victoria (Silences, 2019)
“All Of My Heart” – ABC (The Lexicon of Love, 1982)
“Ghosts In My Machine” – Annie Lennox (Songs of Mass Destruction, 2007)
“You Know It’s For You” – The Bee Gees (To Whom It May Concern, 1972)
“Mohabbat” – Arooj Aftab (Vulture Prince, 2021)
“Arlington” – the Wailin’ Jennys (40 Days, 2004)
“Any Other Woman” – Greg Kihn (Greg Kihn, 1976)
“Tell Mama” – Etta James (Tell Mama, 1968)
“Calypso” – Suzanne Vega (Solitude Standing, 1987)
“She Will Have Her Way” – Neil Finn (Try Whistling This, 1998)
“Cool Dry Place” – Katy Kirby (Cool Dry Place, 2021)
“Staring at the Sun” – U2 (Pop, 1997)
“Reason to Believe” – Tim Hardin (Tim Hardin 1, 1966)
“In Undertow” – Alvvays (Antisocialites, 2017)
“One Day I’ll Fly Away” – Randy Crawford (Now We May Begin, 1980)

Strays notes for the extra curious:

* I still have a vivid memory of the first time I heard “Once Around the Block,” which happened to be in my local Starbucks in the fall of 2000. (Remember: all we had for decent coffee was Starbucks back then; it seems so innocent in so many ways.) So this swinging bit of music came over the sound system, music that sounded neither old nor new, neither a copy of something else nor particularly original, but instantly memorable. It took me quite a while to find out what this song was and who was singing it, the internet not yet being in 2000 what it was to become. And then, lo and behold, for a short period of early-aughts time Damon Gough stood in as the prototypical lo-fi slacker-rocker, complete with woolen hat. In retrospect he fell off the cultural radar as quickly as he had arrived. But I see now that he released an album just last year called Banana Skin Shoes, and (lo and behold) it was widely acclaimed. Shows you yet again how fragmented the music scene has become. I for one am going to go check it out.

* I recently watched the Muscle Shoals documentary that was released in 2013; it’s just called Muscle Shoals and it’s available on Netflix. In addition to being an enjoyable and educational experience, the movie reminded me what a vigorous talent Etta James was, and how good that Muscle Shoals album of hers still is. Digging into it, I discovered that James herself didn’t like singing “Tell Mama”; in her 1995 autobiography, she wrote, “Maybe it’s just that I didn’t like being cast in the role of the Great Earth Mother, the gal you come to for comfort and sex.” There’s no denying the magnetic power of the song, but in recognition of James’ qualms, I’ve paired it here with Suzanne Vega’s role-reversing take on the Calypso myth, telling that portion of Homer’s Odyssey from her historically and culturally neglected point of view.

* Apparently Adia Victoria told producer Aaron Dessner at some point that she wanted her album Silences to sound like “Billie Holiday got lost in a Radiohead song.” That certainly gets my attention.

* Released in 1972, To Whom It May Concern was already the Bee Gees’ tenth studio album. Musically the group was still in their early stylistic mode, advancing from Beatles-influenced pop into perhaps a bit of prog-rock-inflected pop, with Robin and/or Barry on most of the lead vocals. While there was a hit single here (“Run To Me”), the album itself didn’t exactly burn up the charts, and it kind of precipitated the band’s slow slide out of stardom–until, that is, disco rocketed them back to superstardom a few years later. Lead vocals on “You Know It’s For You” were handled by Maurice, as a change of pace. I like the song’s airy yet contemplative vibe, and–my idiosyncrasy only, perhaps–far prefer this to Barry’s falsetto-driven hits of the later ’70s.

* Greg Kihn had his moment or two in the pop cultural spotlight (“The Breakup Song,” “Jeopardy”) in the early ’80s, but his previous work, in the second half of the ’70s, was sharp and often irresistible. “Any Other Woman” is from his self-titled debut album in 1976, and shows him at his power poppy best. His breakout hits steered him slowly but surely onto a rather too self-consciously commercial path (with decreasing success), in particular with a series of ’80s albums that over-employed a once-cute idea–the album title Rockihnroll led to Kihntinued, Kihnspiracy, Kihntageous, and (are we there yet?) Citizen Kihn. Kihn faded from the music scene through the ’90s, devoting his energy to writing novels (he wrote six of them between the mid ’90s and the mid ’10s). He at long last found his way back to the recording studio a few years ago, releasing (what else?) Rekihndled in 2017.

Free and legal MP3: The Deathray Davies

Reanimated indie rock

“Oh Stars” – The Deathray Davies

“Oh Stars” launches with an understated old-school backbeat, revolving around one insistent chord that recurs with “ta-da!”-like charm; the music sounds like the feeling of something marvelous about to happen. And in a subtle way it does; “Oh Stars” may not at first knock your socks off but it succeeds with a mature “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” poise. And, it clocks in at a tidy 2:53, which is less unusual than it used to be in a Spotify/TikTok world, but in the verse-chorus-verse universe this still indicates admirable restraint.

Front man and songwriter John Dufilho, meanwhile, himself employs an understated vocal style to match the established vibe; he could surely cut loose were he not in this contemplative mood, looking at the stars and pondering life. It ends up feeling a bit like a magic trick, how Dufilho creates substance out of almost nothing I can specifically point to. Maybe it’s his melancholy but determined tone, maybe it’s the way the sing-song-y melody complements the resolute flow, or maybe it’s something as basic but unexpected as the piano which grounds the song in a series of unfussy chords that seem to be hiding in plain sight–you won’t necessarily hear them until you listen for them.

If “Oh Stars” feels like a bit of a throwback, there’s good reason for it: the Dallas-based Deathray Davies were a project born in the late ’90s, with a heyday coinciding with the heyday of indie rock in the early to mid-’00s. “Oh Stars” comes from a new album, Time Well Wasted, released last month after what Dufilho has called “a 15-year nap.” The Deathray Davies leader hasn’t himself been napping in the meantime, having been busy through the years with a series of other Dallas area musical projects, including the bands Clifffs, Cantina, and Motorcade. He was also, as of the late ’00s, absorbed into the Athens, Georgia-based musical collective Apples in Stereo, a band that itself has mostly been on hiatus for 10 years or so as well.

You can listen to Time Well Wasted, and purchase it, via Bandcamp. The band was featured once before on Fingertips, way back in 2005.

Free and legal MP3: The Antlers

Lovely bittersweet chamber pop

“Solstice” – The Antlers

Here’s another indie-rock darling reemerging after a hiatus. In this case, the Antlers were a group that had truly hit the big-time–glowing reviews, two appearances on The Tonight Show, etc.–and yet decided to put the enterprise on ice for quite a while.

While operating generally within their familiar soundscape–a reverby, unhurried package of tender vocals, acoustic orchestrations, and electric atmospherics–the Antlers are here in 2021 with perhaps a less angst-driven sound. “I think this is the first album I’ve made that has no eeriness in it,” front man Peter Silberman has said, of the new record, Green to Gold. No eeriness, and maybe a gentler tone overall, but there remains an underlying aura of bittersweet tension that seems all but inherent to Silberman’s wavering tenor. Even a song as pure and lovely as “Solstice” doesn’t deliver an unalloyed feeling of contentment as much as the sense of a slightly apprehensive respite and/or a determination to keep the spirits up in the face of life’s inevitable travails.

But pure and lovely this surely is: Silberman delivers a deeply gratifying verse melody, that fragile voice of his navigating strong upward and downward intervals, the melody in the process exploring the breadth of the octave–an often effective songwriting maneuver. The accompaniment here is provided by deftly arranged stringed instruments and bolstered by a digital wash blurring backing vocals into white noise. The song is little more than the bewitching verse melody and a chorus comprised of wordless vocals and the two-word lyric “Keeping bright bright bright.” And yet even this super simple chorus feels rich with craft and intention, with strings providing both rhythm and texture. A beautiful effort from beginning to end.

“Solstice” is the third track of 10 on Green to Gold, which was released in March on Anti- Records. This is the first Antlers album since 2014’s Familiars. The Antlers were previously featured on Fingertips in 2009, when the Silberman solo project first became a genuine band. MP3 via KEXP.

Free and legal MP3: The Great Emu War Casualties

Crafty songwriting, dynamic arrangements

“I’m a Yes Man” – The Great Emu War Casualties

For all its loose, swinging atmosphere, “I’m a Yes Man” is a highly disciplined exercise in catchy late-period rock’n’roll. The swing comes from melodies consistently centered off the first beat of the measure, while the sense of looseness is propelled by a dynamic bass line down below and wailing electric guitars up top. The discipline, meanwhile, can be felt in the tightness of the performances (random example: that tiny dead-air pause in the proceedings at 0:19), including the disaffected, precise vocal stylings of front man Joe Jackson (yup that’s his name). His rhythmically astute phrasing is impressive, maybe nowhere clearer than on the standout line “I’ve got half a mind to half-remember half the time” (1:14). The song is written to encourage his careful, clever singing, which doubles back to highlight the crafty songwriting. I like, as an example, how the line “And could you offer in a helping hand?” at 1:24 extends beyond the confines of its musical phrase, which strikes me as a confident bit of composition.

The arrangements, with their intertwining guitars and savvy dynamics, reinforce the air of a band in complete control. This might have a fair amount to do with producer Alex Newport, who has worked with a number of heavy-hitting outfits, among them Death Cab for Cutie and Bloc Party; in any case, the song is continually enlivened by not only the particular instrumental mix in use at any given time but the push and pull of volume and accompaniment. One small example: not only does the swell of sound drop away at the start of the verse (0:40), but we also get a guitar playing notes that imply chords that do not match the melody in the vocal–an enticing bit of passing dissonance. This is one of those songs that you can take a slice of at pretty much any moment and find something interesting going on. I suggest you try it.

The Great Emu War Casualties is a trio from Melbourne. “I’m a Yes Man” is a track from their five-song EP, Vanity Project, which was released at the end of February. You can check out the whole thing, and buy it, via Bandcamp. Oh and in case you’re interested: the Great Emu War was actually a thing, involving the Australian government employing the military to control a runaway emu population in 1932. You can read more here. Executive summary: the emus won.