Month: February 2024

You might not recognize me tomorrow

Eclectic Playlist Series 11.02 – February 2024

The extra day this month allows me to sneak February’s playlist in under the wire, if just barely. Running out of time here, I’ll keep the introduction to a minimum. Here’s what you’re in for this month:

1. “Sometimes, I Swear” – The Vaccines (Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations, 2024)
2. “Love is Gone” – Carlene Carter (Carlene Carter, 1978)
3. “Alpha Shallows” – Laura Marling (I Speak Because I Can, 2010)
4. “Miami” – Randy Newman (Trouble in Paradise, 1983)
5. “I Don’t Know What to Do” – Richard Anthony (single, 1965)
6. “The Turning Ground” – Tara Clerkin Trio (On the Turning Ground, 2023)
7. “Holland, 1945” – Neutral Milk Hotel (In the Aeroplane, Over the Sea, 1998)
8. “Firewalker” – Liz Phair (Liz Phair, 2003)
9. “Anna (Go To Him)” – Arthur Alexander (single, 1962)
10. “Greatest Dancer” – Nadine Shah (Filthy Underneath, 2024)
11. “Strange Angels” – Laurie Anderson (Strange Angels, 1989)
12. “Rod’s Song” – Shelagh McDonald (Stargazer, 1971)
13. “I Don’t Want to Let You Down” – Sharon Van Etten (single, 2015)
14. “Walk a Straight Line” – Squeeze (Play, 1991)
15. “Someone Great” – LCD Soundsystem (Sound of Silver, 2007)
16. “Goodbye” – Dusty Springfield (originally unreleased, 1970; much later available as a bonus track on Dusty in Memphis)
17. “Charlotte Anne” – Julian Cope (My Nation Underground, 1988)
18. “Poem for Eva” – Bill Frisell (Good Dog, Happy Man, 1999)
19. “Our Time” – Dear Euphoria (single, 2019)
20. “Carpet Crawlers” – Genesis (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, 1974)

Random notes:

* Short anthemic rock’n’roll is still occasionally being delivered here in the 2020s, and few late-stage rock bands are as adept at it as the London-based Vaccines. Their new album, Pick-Up Full of Pink Carnations, released last month, is a candy box full of reverby nuggets of succinct catchiness (longest track time here is 3:49). Check the whole thing out, and buy it if you like it, at Bandcamp. I particularly like “Sunkissed” and “Another Nightmare” as well.

* I’ve said it before but it always bears repeating: no one in rock history has written songs like Randy Newman. Above and beyond a fluky hit single or two, his albums over the years are sprinkled with offbeat musical treasures that have been largely forgotten by now, including “Miami,” from the 1983 album Trouble in Paradise. “I Love L.A.” was that album’s big hit, and is surely fun, but “Miami” is the real pièce de résistance. The arrangement alone is stunning, a wonderful match for a song that masks its complexity via effortless melodicism. The structure eludes easy explication–there’s a verse, and a sort of secondary verse, and then also maybe a pre-chorus, leading to a chorus that cuts the rhythm abruptly in half and offers one of Newman’s great instrumental countermelodies–a musical gift that no one in the non-classical world would even think to do, never mind have the arrangement chops to pull off. He’s so good at it that he even uses this instrumental refrain as the basis for musical joke later in the song, when the motif delivers a false entry into the chorus at 3:00.

* A somewhat indescribable ensemble from Bristol, the Tara Clerkin Trio traffics in atmospheric jazzy folk, or maybe folky jazz, with elements of electronic music and, even, classical music thrown in for good measure. “The Turning Ground,” hypnotic and captivating, is from their five-song EP On The Turning Ground, released last year. I found this one via Said the Gramophone’s annual list of favorite songs, always an enlightening read.

* Liz Phair has I think (I hope) had the last laugh regarding her self-titled 2003 album. Lambasted by hipsters at the time for how it supposedly abandoned her lo-fi roots, the album 20 years later sounds like a pretty wonderful batch of well-produced songs. And, sheesh, doesn’t anything she sings sound great? That voice. The one thing that stands out in retrospect about the haters is that the idea of “selling out” was apparently still something you weren’t supposed to do back in 2003. Times have surely changed.

* The young Shelagh McDonald was either an early fan of the young Joni Mitchell or was tuned into a similar wavelength over there in Scotland; in any case, “Rod’s Song” is a wonderful, energetic, Joni-like creation (think “Chelsea Morning”). McDonald’s is an odd story: she released two albums in the early ’70s, when she was in her early 20s, and seemingly a rising star on the British folk-rock scene. In the middle of recording her third album, in 1971, she disappeared. As in left the business, no contact info, whereabouts unknown. Fast forward forty-some years, to 2005, when a reissue of her first two albums prompted some newspaper coverage, which she eventually saw. She decided to tell her story to a Scottish newspaper, revealing that her departure from the music scene was due to the after-effects of a bad LSD trip. It wasn’t until 2013 that she at long last released a new album, but it was sold only at her concerts, and isn’t available digitally. Another album was reported to be in the works around 2017, but has yet to see the light of day.

* I used to think I didn’t like LCD Soundsystem’s music, but I finally realized I mostly just haven’t connected to how unnecessarily long James Murphy’s songs tend to be, at least to my ears. I just don’t think one needs quite so much repetition if you’re not on MDMA in a club at three in the morning. So when I stumbled on a sub-four-minute version of the song “Someone Great,” I could enjoy it without getting to where I’m just waiting for it to end. An excellent song, when properly lengthed.

* As a FYI, the well-known Genesis song that closes out the mix here has been alternately titled “Carpet Crawlers” and “The Carpet Crawlers,” at various points of release, re-release, and re-recording. There was, among other things, a new version recorded in 1999 as “The Carpet Crawlers 1999.” And while it was (sort of) fun to hear Peter Gabriel reuniting with Genesis, and sharing lead vocals this time with Phil Collins, the cover, with its series of small but annoying changes, was entirely unnecessary, to my ears. Stick with the awesome original, which appeared without the “The” on the 1974 double LP.

“Mirrors” – Babel

MInimalist synth pop

“Mirrors” – Babel

Introduced over a series of delicately fingered piano chords, “Mirrors” begins as a minimalist, moody ballad before refashioning into a sprightly piece of (still) minimalist synth-pop. It’s a lucid, appealing song start to finish, with slowly accumulating parts and no sound wasted or out of place. What holds everything together, to my ears, is the recurring sidestep the melody takes, a motif first heard at 1:00 when vocalist Karin Mäkiranta sings the phrase “where nothing goes wrong.” This quiet but potent musical moment seems both to resolve and not resolve at the same time, and weaves through the piece like a shy friend.

While the piano continues underneath, the synthesizers move to the center of the song beginning at 1:23, when an electronic tone with the feel of a plucked string provides a syncopated pulse that picks up the pace. At 2:00 a synth wash begins to fill the back of the mix, while at 2:24 we get a descending synthesizer countermelody; both are elements that keep the vibe electronic but also light-footed. An extra payoff arrives at 2:55, when Mäkiranta begins cooing a wordless vocal line, which continues underneath the song’s coda-like final verses.

Babel is the duo of Mäkiranta and Mikko Pykäri, who are based in Helsinki. Each of them have been involved with other musical projects; this is their second release as a twosome. “Mirrors” is the title track to an EP that came out back in August. You can check it out, and buy it, over on Bandcamp.

“Monts et merveilles” – Le collage de France

Easy-going, wistful, French

“Monts et merveilles” – Le Collage de France

“Monts et merveilles” is an easy-going French-language head-bopper with an unhurried backbeat and a wistful undercurrent. While acoustic at its core, the song is enhanced by soft and knowing electric touches–a plucked guitar here, a chiming synthesizer chord there. The title is part of the French idiom promettre monts et merveilles, which literally means to promise mountains and marvels–in other words, to declare that you’re going to deliver something especially awesome to someone. If this is akin to the English expression about promising the moon, the phrase likely has a baked-in sense of disappointment about it: no one who promises the moon, after all, ever delivers the actual moon. In translation the song’s lyrics evade close explication, offering instead a general sense of resignation at the whims of the universe and the injustice of so-called civilized society. Front man and songwriter Rémi Nation tells me the song has to do with the failure of trickle-down economics as well as the more general failing of Western society in its relentless equation of success with wealth. Still, the more I listen to the music, the more I sense, maybe, an insouciant sort of fortitude in the overall vibe.

A highlight among the song’s charms is the sing-song-y chorus, which finds Nation backed by Marie Pierre singing in unison rather than harmony, an effect one doesn’t often hear, especially with a male-female combination. I also really like the guitar break (2:21 to 2:41), in particular the low-register solo that begins at 2:32. It’s from the “less is more” school to be sure, but the tone and character is precise and, in this day and age, quite refreshing.

Le collage de France is the latest musical project helmed by Nation, who delighted us here while leading the band Orouni, featured on Fingertips in January 2017. Le collage de France’s bio reveals love and politics and language, and the ambiguities inherent in all three intertwining arenas, as areas of focus for this intriguing endeavor. “Monts et marveilles” is a track from Le collage de France’s debut LP, Langage Ment (“Language lies”), which was released late last month. Check it out, and buy it in various formats, on Bandcamp.

“Beside You” – Magana

MIdtempo rocker w/ distortion & heart

“Beside You” – Magana

A bashy midtempo rocker with instant character, “Beside You” has a circular melody, a distorted wall of background sound, and the compelling voice of Jeni Magaña leading us through a very ’20s narrative of personal and cultural uncertainty. And while these are themes that could strike a listener as over-familiar, there is something about Magaña’s tone and resolve that grabs at the soul here. Give it a few listens and see if you don’t feel it too.

A central, potent feature is the juxtaposition of a double-time verse with a half-time chorus, the latter of which gives the song a recurring place of aural (and lyrical) solace to land. And take a listen to the variegated guitar work. First, there’s the ringing guitar line that provides the instrumental hook in the introduction; next we get some blurry guitar noise in the second half of the verse, contributing to the aforementioned wall of sound; we also get some high squawky notes livening the verses starting around 0:58, sounding nearly (but not nearly) like mistakes, and then, not to be outdone, some low buzzy accents rising up around 1:48.

Another of the song’s primary characteristics is its outpouring of lyrics in the double-time verse, which seems an of-the-moment singer/songwriter technique (an excellent model here is “Kyoto” by Phoebe Bridgers). Magaña puts such tender heart into both the words and the performance that she finds the authentic core in a songwriting mode that can veer towards the stale or robotic in the wrong hands.

Jeni loses her first name, and her tilde, to perform as Magana. Originally from Bakersfield, and now in Los Angeles, via Brooklyn, she has most recently been on stage as the touring bassist with Mitski. She is also part of the intermittent duo pen pin, with Emily Moore. As a solo artist, she was previously featured on Fingertips in October 2016. “Beside You” is the lead track from her new album, Teeth, which comes out in a month on the Audio Antihero label (whose tagline, for the record, is “Specialists in Commercial Suicide”). You can check more of it out, and pre-order it, on Bandcamp.