It was so clear to me

Summer may be over, but tell me if there isn’t a dark-ish, summer’s-over feeling coursing through the Santo & Johnny version of the Gershwin classic “Summertime.” The famed sibling instrumental duo, from Brooklyn, turned a song that typically evokes languid sunshine into something introspective, spooky, intermittently discordant, and, somehow, maybe, autumnal. In any case, I didn’t manage to get a playlist up in August so here it is one way or another.

There are two other evocative covers in among the mix this month, and one fake cover: the Concretes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love” is not the Motown nugget but its own incisive thing. The real covers are discussed below, along with many other things, so I’ll keep the intro short this time. For those who don’t like surprises, here’s what’s on tap in 11.07:

1. “Becoming All Alone” – Regina Spektor (Home, Before and After, 2022)
2. “Revolutionary Kind” – Gomez (Liquid Skin, 1999)
3. “The Riddle” – Nik Kershaw (The Riddle, 1984)
4. “Cathedrals” – Cry Cry Cry (single, 2018)
5. “La Bambola” – Patty Pravo (Patty Pravo, 1968)
6. “Big Tears” – Elvis Costello & the Attractions (b-side, 1978)
7. “You Can’t Hurry Love” – The Concretes (The Concretes, 2003)
8. “Coast” – Kim Deal (single, 2024; Nobody Loves You More coming 11/24)
9. “Every Shining Time You Arrive” – Sunny Day Real Estate (How It Feels To Be Something On, 1998)
10. “Everybody Plays the Fool” – The Main Ingredient (Bitter Sweet, 1972)
11. “Any Way You Want It” – Clem Snide (Clem Snide’s Journey EP, 2011)
12. “Annie” – Kirsty MacColl (Real, 1983; released 2023)
13. “Get Yourself Together” – Small Faces (Small Faces, 1967)
14. “Not a Job” – Elbow (Cast of Thousands, 2003)
15. “What Now” – Brittany Howard (What Now, 2024)
16. “Life is Sweet” – Natalie Merchant (Ophelia, 1998)
17. “Amor Fati” – Washed Out (Within and Without, 2011)
18. “You Never Come Closer” – Doris (Did You Give the World Some Love Today Baby, 1970)
19. “Summertime” – Santo & Johnny (Santo & Johnny, 1960)
20. “Middle Cyclone” – Neko Case (Middle Cyclone, 2009)

Random notes:

* Clem Snide front man Eef Barzeley has proven over the years to be a master of rock’n’roll covers. Nowhere was the skill in more evidence than in his specially-released 2011 EP, Clem Snide’s Journey. A tour de force of transformational interpretation, the all-Journey EP was inspired by his version of the song “Faithfully,” covered as part of the intermittently wonderful AV Club Undercover series. I featured this song at the time, and stand by my characterization of the man as some sort of mad genius. These days the EP is available to his Bandcamp subscribers only, with no playback options. However, three of the six songs are available to listen to on Spotify, including “Any Way You Want It.”

* The Swedish pop singer Doris Svensson was a curious case. Billed by her first name only, she released one solo album in 1970 and pretty much retreated from performing after that. The album initially was a commercial flop, but a re-release in 1996 captured the attention of hipsters, and hip-hop artists, and brought the album back into the cultural flow. The album is an idiosyncratic mix of pop, soul, funk, psychedelia, and jazz, with a Dusty Springfield-esque vibe–well worth a listen if you’re into that kind of thing. It’s not only available on the streaming services, the whole thing can be downloaded for free via the Internet Archive. Svensson died last year at the age of 75. Thanks to the blog James Writes Stuff for the head’s up on this one, which I otherwise hadn’t heard of. And yes it’s very ’00s of me, offering a hat tip to another blog, but James like me has a very ’00s thing going over there, with his observant, personal, well-written album reviews; his blog is a relatively rare example of an algorithm- and commercial-free web site just doing its thing here in the corrupted, over-stimulated world of internet 2024.

* The brilliant Kirsty MacColl was taken from us, tragically, some 24 years ago. But it was only last year that we saw the long-awaited release of an album she had recorded in 1983 that was shelved by Polydor, her then record company; they felt it wasn’t commercial enough. It would have been her second album. She and Polydor parted ways after that. She had a UK hit single in 1985, with a dazzling version of Billy Bragg’s “A New England,” recorded for Stiff Records, but soon it got complicated: Stiff went bankrupt, there were contractual complications and personal complications, leading to a lot of session work–including her indelible star turn on 1987’s “Fairytale of New York”–but no record deal. The song “Annie,” from Real, was one of three songs from the ill-fated LP that Polydor saw fit, in 1985, to tack onto a re-released version of her debut album. A handful of other songs from Real surfaced years later on a posthumous 2005 compilation album. I’m not sure what took quite so long for Real to emerge as its own thing, but I’m glad we finally have it–it’s not a classic but a treasure for Kirsty fans nonetheless. The album is available on its own digitally; for the devoted fan, all the album’s tracks are on CD as part of the lavish, eight-disc, 161-song box set called See That Girl 1979-2000, released by Universal Music in a limited edition last year. But good luck finding it: I don’t see any for sale in any of the usual places at this point.

* “Cathedrals” was something of a radio hit for the North Carolina band Jump, Little Children back in 1998. The dormant singer/songwriter trio Cry Cry Cry ended a long hiatus in 2018 with a cover of the song, and they did three helpful things in the process. First, they removed the strings, which had added a bit too much saccharin to a song teetering already on the edge of schmaltz (if I may mix my food metaphors). Second, Dar Williams sings lead, transforming the somewhat overwrought original into something more pensive and substantial. Lastly, the stellar harmonies provided by band mates Lucy Kaplansky and Richard Shindell lend warmth and depth that the original’s vocal performance lacked. Oh and as a bonus, the Cry Cry Cry version is 20 seconds shorter, almost always a good thing.

* I’ve put Elvis Costello songs on a playlist more or less once a year here, but I’ve been leaning in the direction of his 21st-century output. I’ve done that consciously, because I feel his later-career stuff is relatively overlooked–wide-ranging musically, his 21st-century albums are maybe harder to pin down than the “angry young man” material of the late ’70s and early ’80s, and so over the years they’ve kind of piled up into a corner that his loyal fans have pretty much to themselves. So I like to give the newer songs some sunlight here. That said, I haven’t meant to entirely ignore his seminal work from back in the day. But as ever I tend to avoid the obvious. You don’t need me to give you the likes of “Pump It Up” or “Watching Detectives,” but maybe slipping a muscular B-side like “Big Tears” into the mix is a fine idea every so often. The man is surely one of the great songwriters of our time; I wish this were more universally recognized, but it remains one of those “if you know, you know” things.

* “Coast” is such an effortlessly confident song: quirky, inscrutable, and mysteriously catchy, with smile-inducing horn charts and the lackadaisical charm of a one-off jam session. Kim Deal, as you likely know, was an original member of the Pixies and the front woman for the Breeders. While she has released a few solo singles, “Coast” is a song that will be on her debut solo album, called Nobody Loves You More, which is due out in November.

* Patty Pravo is the stage name adopted long ago by the Italian singer Nicoletta Strambelli. Pravo, now 76, was in her heyday in the late ’60s through the late ’70s. One of her signature songs, “La Bambola” was number one on the charts in Italy for nine straight weeks. To my ears, it retains its energetic appeal these many decades later. Pravo has had a long and idiosyncratic career, not to mention personal life, including a stretch where she lived in the United States and recorded a new wave adjacent LP in the early ’80s. Her most recent album, Red, came out in 2019.

* The mighty Neko Case closes us out. I guess I like quirky and inscrutable songs; this one’s power comes from its restraint, its poignant turns of phrase, and Ms. Case’s ever potent voice. Her most recent album of new material remains 2018’s vibrant Hell-On. She’s got a memoir coming out in January, entitled The Harder I Fight the More I Love You, and, apparently, a new album on the way shortly thereafter.