Suddenly it’s summer time and, for some of us fortunate ones, it’s also rather suddenly semi-normal again. Disconcerting but encouraging. Turns out it’s super easy to get used to walking around without a mask and without steering clear of fellow pedestrians. And smiling at people!: if only the anti-mask lunatics had centered their arguments around the idea that being unable to smile at people is really harmful to one’s psyche they might at least have been making a reasonable point. As for this month’s mix, I’m just going to get out of the way and let it unfold for you. Part of me feels it’s a bit of a strange ride, and yet I kind of needed all these songs in this particular order, which is as follows:
“Act of the Apostle” – Belle and Sebastian (The Life Pursuit, 2006)
“You Better Move On” – Arthur Alexander (single, 1961)
“I Want To Run” – Mates of States (You’re Going to Make It, 2015)
“School Days” – Stanley Clarke (School Days, 1976)
“When I Get It Right” – Joan Armatrading (Walk Under Ladders, 1981)
“Here Today” – The Beach Boys (Pet Sounds, 1966)
“All I Want” – Sarah Blasko (As Day Follows Night, 2009)
“Barbed Wire Heart” – The Sinners (Piece By Piece, 1990)
“Satta Massagana” – The Abyssinians (Satta Massagana, 1976)
“Serpents” – Sharon Van Etten (Tramp, 2012)
“Somewhere Down the Crazy River” – Robbie Robertson (Robbie Robertson, 1987)
“Unleashed” – Christine Fellows (Roses on the Vine, 2018)
“Live As You Dream” – Beth Orton (Trailer Park, 1996)
“Children of Coincidence” – Dory Previn (We’re Children of Coincidence and Harpo Marx, 1975)
“Hey Now Now” – The Cloud Room (The Cloud Room, 2005)
“Me and My Machine” – The Easybeats (demo, 1968; released on The Shame Just Drained, 1977)
“Forget Me Nots” – Patrice Rushen (Straight From The Heart,1982)
“Monday” – Wilco (Being There, 1996)
“On Melancholy Hill” – Gorillaz (Plastic Beach, 2010)
“Glenfern” – Kathleen Edwards (Total Freedom, 2020)
Stray observations:
* The internet tells me that Arthur Alexander is the only songwriter whose songs have been covered on studio albums by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan. If true it’s a fine bit of trivia. In any case, Alexander was a much admired songwriter in the early ’60s who never really got his due as a performer; he died in 1993 at the age of 53. “You Better Move On” was, in fact, covered by the Stones, whose version is styled rather precisely after Alexander’s original.
* While Sharon Van Etten’s profile has grown mightily in the past few years, it was the 2012’s Tramp that put her onto my personal radar–in particular the single “Serpents,” which I featured in December 2011. You can read what I made of it at the time (“sizzling, guitar-driven drama” were among the words employed); she’s had a mysterious pull on me ever since. (Note that the free download is still available.)
* As much as Pet Sounds has been revered and discussed, almost more here in the 21st century than in the preceding decades, one song that seems ever to slip through the cracks is “Here Today.” Me, I love it to pieces. That wordless vocal section, with its galumphing orchestral accompaniment and its ascending melody line, and the way it separates the word “Here” from the word “today” (as well as “gone” from “tomorrow”)? So so good; despite the ostensibly negative message, the song feels uplifting and smile-inducing to me.
* Kathleen Edwards re-emerged in 2020 after eight years away from music, most of which she spent running a coffee shop in suburban Ottawa. I wanted to love Total Freedom more than I (so far) do, but “Glenfern,” the opening track, is vintage KE. The rest may yet grow on me.
* The Easybeats were a Kinks-adjacent mid-’60s-ish band from Australia whom no one here would have heard of in the slightest were it not for their having written and recorded one of rock’n’roll’s signature “can’t-wait-for-the-weekend” songs, “Friday On My Mind.” Here in the US that was pretty much all we got from them until someone decided to put out a B-sides and stray tracks compilation in 1977 called The Shame Just Drained. The two creative forces behind the Easybeats, Harry Vanda and George Young, went on to form the strange but compelling band Flash and the Pan, where their knack for writing catchy melodies found an interesting new setting. “Me and My Machine” is on the one hand a throwaway, and on the other hand a marvelous bit of semi-dramatic, vintage pop-rock with the rarely encountered “killer verse” (as opposed to the more pedestrian killer chorus).
Fingertips 