jeremyfingertips

Free and legal MP3: The Innocence Mission

Gorgeous & soul-stirring

“On Your Side” – The Innocence Mission

The trio of Karen Peris, Don Peris, and Mike Bitts have been doing their beautiful and timeless thing, as The Innocence Mission, out there in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, since 1989. Pretty much all of their work is exquisitely crafted and touching; some of it, like this new single, is soul-stirringly gorgeous. Karen sings with a slurry, fragile power that augments the melancholy tones baked into the band’s melodies and chord changes. In her masterful hands, even a sprightly, upturned melody, such as when she here sings, “Some days we are not sure where we’re going” (0:21), can bring tears to the eyes from the poignant power of it all.

And, to be sure, this song draws on a deep well of feeling, rooted in the potency of life-long love, including love that extends beyond the grave. The song’s surface-level simplicity is its grace, that up-skipping, recurring melody its super power. Note too how intimate the recording sounds—husband and wife Karen and Don record the band in their house—yet also how well built and nimbly crafted. With care and vision and talent (and technology), The Innocence Mission manage to do this impossible thing: they make the internet seem peaceful, helpful, and generally Okay.

“On Your Side” is a song from the band’s eleventh album, See You Tomorrow, which was released last week. Listen to the whole thing and buy it via Bandcamp, where it is available digitally, on CD, and (most fittingly, to my ears) on vinyl. This is the fourth time the band has been featured here on Fingertips, dating all the way back to November 2003. MP3 via KEXP.

Free and legal MP3: The Sweet Serenades (both anthemic and understated)

One of the things I love most here is the ongoing tension on display between this song’s anthemic inclinations and front man Martin Nordvall’s palpable restraint in presentation.

“Out of Time” – The Sweet Serenades

Opening with a nostalgic electronic flourish, “Out of Time” pulses into an appealing synth rocker with a driving backbeat and a seductive sense of understated drama. In fact one of the things I love most here is the ongoing tension on display between this song’s anthemic inclinations and front man Martin Nordvall’s palpable restraint in presentation. The chorus, first heard at 0:31, has all the makings of an emotive earworm, but listen to how delicately Nordvall uses his baritone here—he’s all but whispering. He’s also setting you up: when the chorus returns (1:24), we get the same melody, but Nordvall now sings it an octave higher. See for yourself what a difference this makes. With that staccato bass line, revolving synthesizer riff, and now-majestic chorus, I’m getting a strong scent of the New Romantic movement here, which sounds oddly refreshing in 2020.

At the same time: this no mere ’80s retread. The Sweet Serenades have been at it since 2002, for many years as a duo; by now, Nordvall brings his own gravitas to the table. I’m always amused—and sometimes even entertained—by young musicians sporting some sort of throwback ’70s or ’80s look and sound. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with that sort of homage; all musicians worth their salt are inspired by sounds that came before them. But I feel much more convinced when someone with an ear for a bygone time proceeds to sit with it, live with it, develop it. Musicians who learn to let their influences breathe in new ways often end up having the most, themselves, to say.

Nordvall hails from the village of Timrå, some four hours north of Stockholm. “Out of Time” is a track from the band’s forthcoming album, City Lights, which was recorded last year in Stockholm and due out in March. The Sweet Serenades were featured once before on Fingertips, in May 2009; the band was a duo back then.

Free and legal MP3: Liza Anne (concise, cathartic)

“Devotion” – Liza Anne

“Devotion” is a crashing wave of a song, two minutes and twenty-four seconds of concentrated intention, with Nashville’s Liza Anne singing about re-establishing her sense of self after a break-up. If she sounds more than a little agitated, it reflects the mindset of someone waking up to how diminished she had become within the relationship—working now, as she sings, to “find the bits of me I shook off/to appease you.”

Launching off a three-note bass line introduction, “Devotion” means business from the start, with as authoritative an opening line as I’ve heard in a while: “I’m gonna try because I need to/Be the woman who doesn’t need you.” Liza Anne’s voice is conspiratorial, fluttery, attention-grabbing; the music throbs and itches, with guitars scratching around the edges. The chorus lays out the song’s central thesis in an impressive 15-second journey from calm reflection (“Devotion/Return to me”) through expansive supposition (“Who I was before I was in love”) into cathartic, idiosyncratic declaration (“I’ll do anything for her now/She’s my longest love”)—the last lines, which refer to herself, an uninhibited outburst more spoken than sung, an endearing cross between Debbie Harry and Annabella Lwin, for you old-school folks.

By Liza Anne’s own account, “Devotion” was written in 10 minutes; there are occasionally arguments to be made, in rock’n’roll, for not over-thinking things. The song was released as a single back in October. Her debut album, Fine But Dying, dates back to October 2018; check it out via Bandcamp.

MP3 via The Current (see note below).

(MP3s from the Minneapolis public radio station The Current are available in files that are 128kbps, which is below the established 192kbps standard, not to mention the higher-def standard of 320kbps. I personally don’t hear much difference on ordinary equipment but if you are into high-end sound you’ll probably notice something. In any case I always encourage you to download the MP3 for the purposes of getting to know a song via a few listens; if you like it I as always urge you to buy the music. It’s still, and always, the right thing to do.)

Maybe I know that

Eclectic Playlist Series 7.01 – January 2020

Hey, this is exciting, or weird: for the first time since the Eclectic Playlist Series was launched in 2014, we now have, or very shortly will have, a new decade to represent in the playlists. I hadn’t thought about this until right now. As you probably know, the mixes here have always incorporated music from six decades, the ’60s through the ’10s, and have sometimes reached into seven, when the ’50s (or earlier) are intermittently sampled. But now, soon, I will be able to offer up playlists blending together music from eight different decades. That seems crazy. But fun! Let’s see the robots do that.

So, the new decade grabs the early headlines, but a more recurringly relevant fact here at the Eclectic Playlist Series is the new year, which yet again sets the artist roster back to zero. By which I mean: outside of mistakes (hey, it’s happened), no artist is featured more than once in an EPS mix in any given calendar year. Come January, everyone is available again. Even so, for those keeping score at home, you’ll note that 14 of the 20 artists featured in this month’s mix are brand new to the Eclectic Playlist Series, even now, as we launch a seventh year of these things. There’s so much good music that, by my reckoning, only four artists have had a song in a playlist in each of the first six years (and this quartet did not, somehow, include sure-fire favorites like Elvis Costello, They Might Be Giants, or Radiohead; trivia answer below). Moral of the story: there’s so much good music. Secondary moral: look how hijacked by the confluence of marketing and lowest-common-denominator tastes most music outlets are by comparison. Final moral: worshiping quantity without considerations of quality makes everyone grumpy without even knowing why. And remember, at the end of the day, the robots can only determine quantities. Because when all is said and done, a computer only knows the difference between zero and one. That’s why they’re making everyone grumpy.

A smattering of notes:

* The Late Show was a power pop band founded in the heart of new wave’s power pop era, right there in the heart of the U.S. (Indiana, to be specific). Their debut album, 1980’s Portable Pop, was something of a cult classic; “I Won’t Play the Clown” always struck my ear as the standout gem, but there are a bunch of superior power pop numbers on the album. I’d long considered the thing lost to the ages, but here are two unexpected postscripts: first, Portable Pop has been available on Bandcamp since 2012 (I only just noticed this); second, a more recent news flash is that the band in 2018 released its (very) long-awaited follow-up to Portable Pop, called Sha La La, which is also available on Bandcamp. I’m not inherently a huge fan of decades-after-the-fact band reunions but there’s no harm checking it out.

* Jenny Hval’s 2019 album The Practice of Love is a record thick with ambition, intellect, electronics, and, somehow, through it all, great warmth. The resplendent “Ashes to Ashes” may be the most accessible song (of hers, ever?) but the entire 35-minute work from the Norwegian avant-garde singer/songwriter is worth your directed attention.

* I am fascinated by the twisting history of pop standards from the pre-rock’n’roll era, especially as many of them illustrate how elusive the dividing line between pre-rock and rock actually was. “You Belong To Me” had its origins as a WWII love song (originally conceived as “Hurry Home To Me”), written by an amateur female songwriter in Louisville. Via her work at a radio station, she had a pre-established relationship with a pair of professional songwriters—“Tennessee Waltz” their previous calling card—and allowed them to promote the song and oh, by the way, change the lyrics around a little, with the idea of making it more universal. The song grew into a beloved, often-covered standard. Jo Stafford had the first hit with it in 1952; a Dean Martin version released around the same time was also a hit. The tune’s torchy swing lent itself to versions by both early rock’n’rollers—Gene Vincent released it as a single in 1958—and big-time country stars (Patsy Cline put it on a 1962 album of hers). But when the song found its way into a doo-wop arrangement it arguably found its peak setting, as you’ll hear here in what became a top-10 hit for New Jersey harmonists, the Duprees—their first and most successful release, coming rather on the tail end of the doo-wop era. But, not to be missed, check out, too, the 1990s Bob Dylan version, just because:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eyIZsQSDU0.

* Radiohead’s attempt at a James Bond theme probably never had an honest chance with the film’s producers, but it runs laps around the Sam Smith song sadly selected instead—especially if you look at the work of some dude on YouTube who edited the Radiohead song into the movie’s actual title sequence, in place of Mr. Smith. Wow. Oh and while “Spectre” is not necessarily the most notable thing you’ll find graphically pinned to the band’s brand new “Radiohead Public Library” web site, it’s definitely there, along with plenty of other links to videos and streams from the band’s long history. If you’re a fan, the “in the basement” performance of In Rainbows is a particular treat.

* Dee Dee Sharp found the soul hiding in plain sight in “I’m Not In Love,” which was no small task. I mean, the original 10cc song is an all-time great rock’n’roll single, for sure, but I would never have heard it as soulful without Ms. Sharp’s wide-ranging and emotive take, released the same year as the original.

* I knew nothing about Bill Fay before seeing this recent article about him in the New York Times. Just when you think the internet has found all the great lost musical geniuses of the ’60s and ’70s, another turns up on the doorstep. Fay’s 1971 album The Time of the Last Persecution was never originally released in the U.S., but a 1988 re-release of Fay’s first two (and at that point, only) albums ended up (long story) on Jeff Tweedy’s radar; Wilco began performing the Fay song “Be Not So Fearful” on stage in 2002. Eventually (another long story), Fay found his way back into the music industry; the indie label Dead Oceans has released three new albums of his here in the 21st century, including 2020’s Countless Branches, which came out last week.

* Regina Spektor often strikes me as a talent in search of the right material but the urgent, appealing “All the Rowboats” is a hint of what happens when the stars align for her.

* C’est C Bon is the most neglected release of Carlene Carter’s long and eclectic career, and maybe with good reason. It was the last of her rock-era albums; she was still married to Nick Lowe, still operating in the Rockpile universe, still produced by Roger Bechirian, but the end result—dominated by what now strike the ear as ’80s production touches gone wild—didn’t quite gel. This is a nice little song though, well worth rescuing from the slush pile of overlooked 20th-century pop music. That’s what I’m here for.

* The four artists who have each had one song per year for each of the first six years of the Eclectic Playlist Series: David Bowie, Kate Bush, The Kinks, and Jane Siberry. Behind them, only Björk, Elvis Costello, Sam Phillips, Prince, and Matthew Sweet have been here five times in the six years.

Full playlist below the widget.

“All the Rowboats” – Regina Spektor (What We Saw From the Cheap Seats, 2012)
“I Don’t Want to Cry” – Chuck Jackson (single, 1961)
“America’s Boy” – Broadcast (Tender Buttons, 2006)
“Love Like a Glove” – Carlene Carter (C’est C Bon, 1983)
“Ashes to Ashes” – Jenny Hval (The Practice of Love, 2019)
“Love to Love You” – Caravan (In the Land of Grey and Pink, 1971)
“Hell = Other People” – Bettie Serveert (Bare Stripped Naked, 2006)
“Murder or a Heart Attack” – Old 97s (Fight Songs, 1999)
“You Belong to Me” – the Duprees (single, 1962)
“Bags” – Clairo (Immunity, 2019)
“Time of the Last Persecution” – Bill Fay (Time of the Last Persecution, 1970)
“Ghost” – Indigo Girls (Rites of Passage, 1992)
“In a Manner of Speaking” – Nouvelle Vague (Nouvelle Vague, 2005)
“I Won’t Play the Clown” – The Late Show (Portable Pop, 1980)
“The Heel” – Eartha Kitt (Down to Eartha, 1955)
“Spectre” – Radiohead (single, 2015)
“I’m Not In Love” – Dee Dee Sharp (Happy ‘Bout the Whole Thing, 1975)
“On The Way Home” – Buffalo Springfield (Last Time Around, 1968)
“Can’t Forget” – Yo La Tengo (Fakebook, 1990)
“Calling You” – Javetta Steele (Bagdad Cafe [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack], 1988)

I’m still over here (Eclectic Playlist Series 6.11 – Dec. 2019)

So you already know that I don’t buy into the internet’s addiction to one-type-of-music playlists. Turns out this holds true for me even for holiday music. Personally, I’d rather hear a few choice holiday nuggets sprinkled into a diverse playlist than an unending parade of Christmas songs. As such, this isn’t a holiday playlist in any meaningful way. And yet, I do like how the seasonal offerings mixed in here seem sometimes to infuse a subtle holiday spirit—joyful or melancholy, it can go either way—into their secular neighbors. “My Heart is a Drummer,” “Everybody Come Down,” and even the decidedly temporal folk song “Sally Ann,” these all seem to take on something of the season here, as, maybe most of all, does the Paul Simon masterpiece “Something So Right.” And then the even more interesting twist: I like how much more naturally we can hear the Christmas songs as actual music in this setting. Fittingly, I guess, we end with a Christmas song in name only: “Anorak Christmas,” from the reclusive and now-retired Sally Shapiro, makes the barest mention of a “cold December night,” but other than that, there’s no Christmas here, and no anorak either—unless (this is a stretch!) we go with the informal British meaning of “a person who is extremely interested in something that other people find boring,” and figure that the singer is commenting on an incomprehensible crush. I doubt it but it’s a theory.

Lots of other stuff:

* Payola$, eventually known as the Payolas, were a Canadian band formed in the late ’70s. Born with a punk-ish sound, they signed with A&M Records and evolved into more of a mainstream outfit over the course of four albums. According to the internet(!?), they never made much of a dent in the U.S. because radio stations didn’t want to say their name on the air (because: guilty consciences). I always loved this simple, new-wave-y Christmas song, and can’t remember ever hearing it anywhere except on my record player. The album, Hammer on a Drum, released at the tale end of the original vinyl era, has never been released on CD, and isn’t on Spotify either.

* I’m still absorbing the new New Pornographers album, released in October, but I’ll admit that I so enjoy the opening track, the second song you’ll hear in this mix, that I haven’t given the rest of it as much attention as I know I should. I just keep playing this one, which features the mighty Neko Case on vocals, and the sort of wonderful melody A.C. Newman is supposed to be known for but (to my ears) doesn’t deliver as often as he’s credited. This one is great.

* There was a strange and unheralded moment in the history of American rock’n’roll radio when pure, free-form progressive formats were morphing into the more commercial album-oriented rock (AOR) concept. This soon enough turned into an artistic disaster, but for a few years there, before the consultants kicked in with their tiny playlists, there were commercial FM stations that were simply trying to play good, album-track songs, with more playlist discipline than free-form idiosyncrasy favored. It was during that era in the mid-’70s that a beautiful and distinctive song such as “Love and Affection” ended up an FM staple, and a popular one at that. Imagine hearing something like this on the radio now. Of course you can’t; hell, it was bumped off the radio within three or four years, thanks to Consultant Rock, rarely to be heard from again.

* Vanity Fairy is the newer musical incarnation of a 2010s Fingertips favorite artist, the musician previously known as Daisy Victoria. She was featured three times between 2014 and 2016, then seemed to disappear. When she reemerged in 2018, she had changed her name to Daisy Capri, and began to put music out as Vanity Fairy. Moving beyond her earlier, Kate-Bushian soundscape, Daisy has embraced her inner disco diva and now pays homage to a different type of ’80s music. But to my ears, talent is talent. I’m glad to have found her again. Check out what she’s done so far at https://soundcloud.com/vanityfairy.

* This playlist contains within it an unplanned salute to three of the most notable and long-lasting musicians of the classic rock era. All three were launched in the context of a group setting; all three here are presented via overlooked songs from later endeavors of theirs. We have Paul McCartney’s terrific “To You,” from the last, little-regarded album he made with Wings, Back to the Egg, released in 1978. Further down you’ll stumble upon one of the great lost tracks of rock’s aforementioned AOR phase, Pete Townshend’s “Slit Skirts,” from what I believe to be his best solo record, 1982’s All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes (okay, not a wonderful title). That forced on me a segue into Paul Simon’s “Something So Right,” which was on his popular There Goes Rhymin’ Simon album, of 1973. It was not single material, and as such was overshadowed by the huge hits “Kodachrome” and “Loves Me Like a Rock,” not to mention the downcast, resonant beauty of the progressive-era favorite “American Tune.” “Something So Right” makes a series of thorny chords sound as natural as an in breath; and those lyrics!:

When something goes wrong
I’m the first to admit it
The first to admit it
And the last one to know
When something goes right
Oh it’s likely to lose me
It’s apt to confuse me
It’s such an unusual sight
Oh I can’t, I can’t get used to
Something so right

Full playlist below the widget.

“The Invisible Man” – Elvis Costello & The Attractions (Punch the Clock, 1983)
“You’ll Need a New Backseat Driver” – The New Pornographers (In the Morse Code of Brake Lights, 2019)
“The Man in the Santa Suit” – Fountains of Wayne (Out-of-State Plates, 2005)
“You Beat Me to the Punch” – Mary Wells (single, 1962)
“To You” – Paul McCartney & Wings (Back to the Egg, 1978)
“My Heart is a Drummer” – Allo Darlin’ (Allo Darlin’, 2010)
“Good King Wenceslas” – Dixieland Ramblers (Dixieland Snowman, 1998)
“Walk Away” – The English Beat (Wha’ppen, 1981)
“Love and Affection” – Joan Armatrading (Joan Armatrading, 1976)
“Overture (Nutcracker Suite)” – Duke Ellington (Three Suites, 1960)
“Sally Ann” – The Horseflies (Gravity Dance, 1992)
“The Fading” – Joan Shelley (Like the River Loves the Sea, 2019)
“Everybody Come Down” – The Delgados (Universal Audio, 2000)
“Christmas is Coming” – Payola$ (Hammer on a Drum1983)
“You’re Absolutely Right” – The Apollas (single, 1965)
“He Can Be Your Lady” – Vanity Fairy (single, 2018)
“Field of Fire” – For Stars (For Stars, 1998)
“Slit Skirts” – Pete Townshend (All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, 1982)
“Something So Right” – Paul Simon (There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, 1973)
“Anorak Christmas” – Sally Shapiro (Disco Romance, 2006)

Free and legal MP3: Smug Brothers

Charming, GBV-adjacent indie rock

“Every One is Really Five” – Smug Brothers

They are probably tired of Guided By Voices comparisons, but what the heck: here is a scruffy indie-rock band from Dayton who specialize in inscrutable yet melodic lo-fi compositions, many not even two minutes long (sample song titles here: “Antenna Chariot Quarterfinals,” “Fuel for the Maypole Osmosis”). Oh and the drummer used to be in Guided By Voices. So, you can’t blame me for using GBV as at least a point of reference.

That said, if Smug Brothers are inspired by Guided By Voices, they also seem somewhat more interested in recording songs you don’t have to try quite so hard to like (or feel like a failure if you don’t). Although still lo-fi, the mix is a bit cleaner, the melodies super-agreeable; this is the sound of a band inviting you very happily down its rabbit hole rather than seeming indifferent to whether you’ve dropped in or not. Charming from beginning to end, “Every One is Really Five” launches off rock’n’roll’s primal backbeat, yet puts us from the start in the middle of a mundane but intriguing scenario: “I recall/You were heading the other way/I recall/I was just starting my day.” You might wonder just what is going on here, and you probably won’t really find out—by the time the chorus gives us the titular assertion that “every one is really five,” I’m not sure that will make any more or less sense than the rest of it. But the completed couplet—“We’re all just lucky to be alive”—is sung with such poignant good humor that you can let the whole thing make sense in that way that has nothing to do with how unintelligible the words mostly are. This is one of music’s super powers and these guys have it going. The song chugs along with a general sense of band noise in the background until around 1:30, when a couple of nonchalant guitars decide to speak up, just a bit—clanging out some measured melody lines before fading back into the good-natured swirl of sound.

Smug Brothers have existed in one form or another since 2004, at that point consisting of Kyle Melton and Daryl Robbins. Drummer Don Thrasher (great name for a drummer!) came on board in 2008. The lineup went through a major turnover in the 2017-2018 time frame; Melton and Thrasher remain, the others are new to the party. Because these guys love their sub-2:00 songs, their discography presents a challenge in determining what’s an album versus what’s an EP; they can put 11 songs on a 20-minute record. In any case, they’ve released 15 different stand-alone recordings, six or seven of which seem to be full-length endeavors, including their most recent, Serve a Thirsty Moon, which was released earlier this month via Gas Daddy Go Records. You can check it, and the entire Smug Brothers catalog, out via Bandcamp. “Every One is Really Five” is the 21st track on the 21-track album.

Free and legal MP3: Theater Kids (Enticing groove, accomplished debut)

Musicians that have enough confidence in their material so that they don’t have to fill our ears with sounds in every moment are usually worth paying attention to.

“Pratfall” – Theater Kids

Delectably groovy and smoothly melodic, “Pratfall” is an accomplished debut single from Philadelphia duo Theater Kids, fronted by Benny Williams. Call me a sucker for a classic chord progression, but here we have a well-known harmonic pattern wrapped in a wonderful sort of DIY sleekness (an oxymoron? actually not) which is right in my wheelhouse.

There’s something wonderfully old-school in how the introduction slowly builds the song’s soulful sound-world in way in which each addition seems inevitable, and with Williams’ vocal entrance, at 0:32, feeling as much like a resolution as an opening salvo. The lyrics are set against the back end of each measure, creating that enticing little space at the end of each line where the new measure starts musically but not lyrically. A lot of presence is created here without a lot of sonic embellishment; one of the beautiful things this song does is allow a certain amount of space around the notes being played (the bass offers a particularly lithe example). Musicians that have enough confidence in their material so that they don’t have to fill our ears with sounds in every moment are usually worth paying attention to.

I would like to articulate why this sort of chill but steady groove, these sorts of carefully laid-together textures, combined with a sterling melody, affect my ears so much much more positively than the beat-centric, effects-heavy tunes, so often about the most surface-oriented subjects, that dominate both the hipster blogs and the pop charts. (This has been an unprecedented alliance; that’s food for a separate post.) But there’s probably no useful way to put this into words. It all would appear to come down to individual taste; but, what I guess I’m always on guard against is when individual tastes have been unduly shaped and warped by larger, profit-oriented interests. Paul Weller said it most incisively a generation ago, in a song in which the lyrics initially say “The public gets what the public wants,” only to have the line flipped later, as a conclusion: “The public wants what the public gets.” The internet has made this an all the more unwieldy and complicated situation, combining technology that can make and record music without regard to an individual’s actual musical talents, with algorithms that amplify surreptitiously, and with an audience now trained to respect and notice quantity more than quality at every turn.

I digress. This is all to say that underneath “Pratfall” I sense human and musical intelligence, and I want to remember to applaud that as often as possible. I am happy to know there are individuals out there who can absorb today’s inputs and influences and still create something that feels removed from the thoughtless hubbub of SoundCloud uploads and Spotify links.

“Pratfall” was released in September. Theater Kids have released a second song, “Echoes,” earlier this month. Check everything out via Bandcamp. Thanks to the band for the download.

Free and legal MP3: Katy Vernon

Americana, with ukulele, and grandeur

“Undertow” – Katy Vernon

December approaches, which means that it’s time here to take stock of those songs I’ve been listening to for a good part of the year but which somehow never broke through to a feature. This can happen for any number of random reasons, often just because a song doesn’t seem to want to fit in with the other songs being presented in a given month. (No one else might, but I always listen to each group of featured songs as a linked set; I like them to work well when heard, in order, one after the other.) Needless to say this is all an idiosyncratic mess, but it’s my mess.

So, here at long last is Katy Vernon, a London-born singer/songwriter/ukulele player who has been living in Minneapolis since the late ’00s. “Undertow” has a casual but distinctive grandeur about it; listen, for instance, to the lap steel intro: sure, a standard motif in country or Americana music, but the tone here is both keening and a little whimsical. It sets your ears up for something wonderful, somehow. Maybe this has something to do with the lap steel’s partner here, which is Vernon’s omnipresent ukulele, a less standard companion. When she starts singing (0:12), her voice traces a stately verse melody bookended by two half-interval descents; this feels grounded and inevitable but, after the second pass through, primes us for something grander, which we receive in the chorus.

Now then, the chorus. First, that lap steel swell that brings you in is pretty great. Second, you are not imagining it if you hear a strong melodic echo of June Carter’s “Ring of Fire” here—it’s not only that upward leap by thirds, tracing a D chord, on “Took me down” (0:36), but also the follow-up descent (“way along the shore”); the melody is quite similar to the chorus melody in the Carter classic but the altered rhythm and feel transform it into something distinct. And, whether intentional or not, the way Vernon veers off into new territory in the resolution (starting with the words “till you” at 0:52) keeps sounding like a deft and welcome surprise. I can attest that the song is definitely a grower; I’ve been listening since March, when the Current featured the download in the “Song of the Day” feature. Something about it kept it hanging around, prompted me eventually to investigate the rest of the album (which is good!), and now, finally, here you go.

“Undertow” is the ninth of 12 tracks on Vernon’s third album, Suit of Hearts, which was also released in March. But, to make things nominally current, the last track on the album is called “Christmas Wish,” and has just been put online as a single. Visit Vernon’s Bandcamp page to listen to everything, and buy what you’d like.

(MP3s from The Current are available in files that are 128kbps, which is below the established 192kbps standard, not to mention the higher-def standard of 320kbps. I personally don’t hear much difference on ordinary equipment but if you are into high-end sound you’ll probably notice something. In any case I always encourage you to download the MP3 for the purposes of getting to know a song via a few listens; if you like it I still urge you to buy the music. It’s still the right thing to do.)

Another day in product placement hell

Warning: I’m going to steer out of my lane here, because every now and then I feel the need to apply my skills as a writer and my temperament as a compassionate human being to matters that extend beyond digital music. I’m signalling first, so you don’t have to follow me if you’d rather not.

So, I’ve come here today, first, to consider the phenomenon of product placement. By 2019 product placement has been a standard-issue capitalist strategy for a long time. While there are examples of real-life products seen on camera in movies that date back to the earlier part of the 20th century, the idea didn’t become a conscious, proactive corporate advertising strategy until the 1980s; the famous story of how Hershey’s agreed to do a major advertising tie-in for Reese’s Pieces with E.T. in exchange for the candy’s use in the movie remains a bellwether moment. (M&Ms had been the first choice, but Mars, the parent company, either didn’t want to make the investment, or didn’t want to create this association, or both.) Decades later, we all know that corporations spend millions of dollars annually to slip their products onto movie and television screens as naturally as possible. What better advertising, the theory goes, than to have a character, in the context of a story being told, drinking a Diet Coke or driving a BMW or otherwise engaging, however briefly or tangentially, with an identifiable consumer product?

A prominent example from recent years is how Heineken paid 45 million British pounds to change James Bond’s drink of choice from the famous “shaken, not stirred” martini to a familiar green bottle of Dutch beer in the 2012 movie Skyfall.

Heineken, and all the other corporate entities who push their products, for pay, into movies and TV shows, do not do this for their health, or to subsidize the art of movie-making; they do it because they believe there is behavioral impact. You may think that you personally are immune to such huckster-ish ploys, and you, personally, maybe are. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t many more millions of others who, consciously or not, are influenced by the appearance of recognizable brands within films and TV shows.

The bottom line is that product placement would not exist if it weren’t working.

Which makes me wonder, with an aching heart and accumulating rage, why so few people seem to think twice about the impact of violence in movies, and gun violence in particular. The relentless parade of characters incessantly pulling out guns and firing them at will has become so commonplace that maybe collectively we don’t even seem to see it any more.

So: Heineken paid big money to have James Bond drink a Heineken, because it assumed that real-life people will be influenced by this particular screen behavior. And yet we’re supposed to think that people are not at all, ever, influenced by screen behavior that involves firearms?

The NRA must be laughing all the way to the bank. Consumer product companies have to pay a pretty penny to have their products placed on screen. When it comes to guns, Hollywood is perfectly happy inserting them however and wherever they can and the NRA doesn’t have to pay a dime.

Now then, many people point out that we in America are hardly the only ones exposed to gun violence in our daily entertainment, which is obviously true. This argument is used quickly and incessantly to deny any link between on-screen behavior and real-life mayhem. If the movies and the video games were the problem, goes this theory, then there would be gun violence everywhere, not just in the U.S.

But this is rhetorical sleight of hand. To conclude that exposure to relentless violence via entertainment has no impact on actual behavior is to ignore at least two important differences that afflict American audiences uniquely. First is the general environment of gun worship that exists pretty much only in the United States among so-called “advanced” countries, which has been accelerated in recent decades by how the 2nd Amendment has come to be interpreted, regardless of its original intent. (Only two other countries include a right to bear arms in their constitutions—Mexico and Guatemala—and in both cases severe restrictions are involved.)

The second difference is the obviously related fact that it is far easier to own a gun here than just about anywhere else on earth.

And so it is sophistry at best to say that real-life gun violence in the U.S. must, without question, have no connection to the preponderance of on-screen gun violence simply because everyone around the world watches the same violent movies and plays the same violent video games. This argument continues to conveniently overlook the fact that people in other countries don’t watch these movies and play these video games within a culture that fetishizes guns, and within the boundaries of a country that shamefully disregards the inherent danger of firearms by allowing these products to be so easily purchased and so flimsily regulated.

Meaning that on-screen gun violence simply can’t provoke real-life violence in other countries the way it can here. This is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

(Note that I am avoiding arguing against gun violence in entertainment on the merits. I am not saying it is almost literally insane to be so consistently entertained in our movies and in our games by things that would in real life be horrific. Well actually I guess I just said that but that’s not the point of this particular post.)

Let’s assume as so many seem to that there is in fact not a thing wrong with gun violence in the entertainment sphere. But let’s put aside this collective delusion that the truly lunatic amount of gun violence we are subject to on the screen can’t possibly be influencing gun violence off the screen, not in a guns-for-everyone-all-the-time country such as ours.

Side note: remember how movie characters always used to smoke in movies? Once the cultural tide shifted, as the ’80s blurred into the ’90s, and it was clear to one and all that smoking cigarettes presented a major public health risk, Hollywood stopped the ubiquitous presentation of characters matter-of-factly smoking cigarettes. Cigarette smoking is common now only in period pieces—so we can all say, “Wow, in the ’60s, look how much everyone smoked!”—and (think about it) to signal bad behavior in a particular character. Movies by and large never feature heroes who smoke all the time for the simple reason that Hollywood doesn’t want to be seen as endorsing something known to be so harmful. Because everyone knows that what people watch on a screen as entertainment can affect personal behavior. Everyone knows this but stops knowing it when it comes to gun violence.

With common-sense—which is to say, strict—gun regulation, sure, okay, if you must, bring on the violent entertainment. Make it all but impossible for someone to be behaviorally influenced by heroes (and anti-heroes) firing guns in movies and we won’t have to worry about the influence. The way most other countries don’t really have to worry about it, because they have the common good of their citizenry in mind via restrictions and regulations in place regarding the ownership of deadly products.

But without anything resembling a responsible or rational approach to gun ownership, the ceaseless and often outright mindless use of guns in our entertainment vehicles is nothing more or less than product placement for the NRA.

When a gun in some cases is as easy (or even easier?) to buy than a six-pack of Heineken, I can’t see how there aren’t people out there taking all the gunfire to heart. We of course can’t know, without close and careful study, the extent of the connection, but it is morally and intellectually bankrupt to turn a complete blind eye to the issue, to look at the horrific norm we’ve created around gun violence in our entertainment and just say “Nope! Nothing to see here!” Remember: product placement wouldn’t be a thing if it didn’t work.

Every dream has a name (Eclectic Playlist Series 6.10 – Nov. 2019)

Iteration 6.10 of the Eclectic Playlist Series, featuring music from seven decades, and many genres. Because you can handle it.

As noted in my recent review of a song by Sarah Lee Langford, the Ken Burns documentary on country music, recently airing on PBS here in the U.S., pretty much blew my mind. I may not have been actively anti-country but I was never a fan, just generally ignoring the whole genre. Sixteen hours of spellbinding television later, I have, to paraphrase Hank Williams, seen the light. Not because I now love everything I used to not like, but because I now know the genre’s origin story—the fascinating and circuitous paths both the music and the musicians took through the years, and the differing branches of music that too often gets glumped into one generic bin. It brings a neglected but huge area of music into my range of knowledge and interest and that can only be a good thing. I somehow especially loved learning that the stereotypical look and sound of what most generically has come to be seen and heard as “country music” (the cowboy hats and clothes, the twangy vocals, the banjos and fiddles) was, from the very start, a self-consciously inauthentic effort to sell “old-time” music to everyday people suddenly equipped with radios and record players. The fact that the mainstream version of country music has always been a bit of a marketing ploy was oddly reassuring in a way I can’t exactly explain.

Anyway, yes, here’s a Hank Williams song, in and among the more usual (but still unusual) array of genres and decades, as the Eclectic Playlist Series nears the end of its sixth year. As maybe a tie-in to what I’ve generally done here, I didn’t select a Hank tune from the documentary, but one that I had first heard via Elvis Costello: “Why Don’t You Love Me,” slightly re-named, was the super-short lead track on his out-of-left-field, widely misunderstood record of country music covers back in 1981. Elvis’s version rather defiantly upended the original in a way that in retrospect seems brilliant. If you’ve never heard it, here it is via YouTube. As different as they are I now love both versions.

More stuff:

* You’ll notice that this mix includes three tunes that offer up 21st-century re-boots of artists associated most closely with the 1970s: Jeff Lynne, Blondie, and Robert Plant. Mr. Plant I salute in particular, for managing in our current century to create a new and mature version of his musician self that feels strong and secure. The other two present trickier situations, first and foremost because it’s hard not to suspect economic motivations. But then again, William Shakespeare wrote for money. What counts is the output when all is said and done. Blondie’s 21st-century oeuvre strikes my ears as erratic at best but this little-heard song, from their 2003 album The Curse of Blondie, is mysteriously compelling. As for Jeff Lynne, as off-putting as it is that he has clearly been required to label his new stuff “Jeff Lynne’s ELO” versus Electric Light Orchestra (lawyers no doubt were involved), and as un-hip and written-off as his old band has variously been through the years, the man’s musicianship (he’s playing all the instruments these days), ear for melody (always superb), and vocal chops (I mean, that voice! come on!) seem undiminished by the years. This new one, laced with melancholy, is very ELO-y indeed, and I see nothing wrong with that.

* The new Bon Iver record is nearly as thick with texture and inscrutability as the band’s last one, but with more straightforward vocals and a bit more of an organic feel. It seems to be rewarding repeated listens, but the stately “Hey, Ma” was an immediate winner, to my ears.

* Many years after the somewhat confusing back story marring the True Stories album by Talking Heads has faded from memory, the songs remain in place, and some of them, including this long-time favorite of mine, “Dream Operator,” are terrific indeed. The 1986 album, the band’s seventh, consisted of songs David Byrne had written for a movie of the same name, which he directed and co-wrote. In the movie, the songs were sung by the actors (who included John Goodman and Swoosie Kurtz), in situations that you would have no clue about just listening to the band’s versions. At the time it was all seen as kind of a mess, the movie not well received, the band’s album seen as something betwixt and between, somehow not a “real” Talking Heads album. Adding to the muddle was the release that same year of the album Sounds From True Stories, which was a partial soundtrack recording. In retrospect, the film has gained a bit of cult status, and the album, taken on its own terms, while not the band’s best, is actually pretty good. Hey, Thom Yorke and friends liked it enough to name their band after one of its songs; that’s an impressive seal of approval right there.

* Generally speaking I aim for these playlists to be composed of songs that are each accessible and easy to absorb, because that’s generally my taste. And yet there are times when a song that’s a bit more ornery and/or less straightforward seems like just the thing—especially when couched inside a generally easy-going playlist. Towards that end, we this time encounter Kate Bush’s “Sat In Your Lap,” the lead track from her rather ornery and unstraightforward album, The Dreaming. The album is not an easy listen from start to finish but the more you give yourself over to it, the more engaging it becomes. Plus, if nothing else, this was the album that led, three years later, to the treasure that was and is Hounds of Love, which makes me inclined to keep digging into The Dreaming after all these years.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Tilted” – Christine and the Queens (Christine and the Queens, 2015)
“This Old Heart of Mine” – The Isley Brothers (single, 1966)
“Dream Operator” – Talking Heads (True Stories, 1986)
“Being Number One” – Black Box Recorder (Passionoia, 2003)
“From Out of Nowhere” – Jeff Lynne’s ELO (From Out of Nowhere, 2019)
“Alison” – Slowdive (Souvlaki, 1993)
“Four on Six” – Wes Montgomery (The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, 1960)
“Crayon Angels” – Judee Sill (Judee Sill, 1971)
“3 Bells in a Row” – Tenpole Tudor (Eddie, Old Bob, Dick and Gary, 1981)
“Why Don’t You Love Me” – Hank Williams (single, 1950)
“Freefall” – Laurie Anderson (Bright Red, 1994)
“Rules for Living” – Blondie (The Curse of Blondie, 2003)
“Songs Out of Clay” – Al Stewart (Orange, 1972)
“I Got My Baby Back” – Lorraine Ellison (b-side, 1966)
“Hey, Ma” – Bon Iver (i,i, 2019)
“Sat In Your Lap” – Kate Bush (The Dreaming, 1982)
“Shake Some Action” – The Flamin’ Groovies (Shake Some Action, 1976)
“The Highest Tree” – The Eighteenth Day of May (The Eighteenth Day of May, 2005)
“Power World” – Sam Phillips (Omnipop (It’s Only a Flesh Wound Lambchop), 1996)
“The May Queen” – Robert Plant (Carry Fire, 2017)