Author: jeremyfingertips

Honest, I started this playlist last month, intending to upload it in October. But plans changed, and now the post-Election-Day timing renders the opening song all the more haunting. The tracks that follow may or may not relate; you decide.

And I will otherwise spare the hand-wringing; there’s enough of that going around, and I for one aim to keep the deranged manbaby from invading my headspace over the coming weeks, months, (sigh) years. I will just note this: the election of a convicted felon, cheater, and predator who had previously attempted to overthrow an election indicates that there is something terribly wrong with our basic, collective ability to inform, organize, and govern ourselves. And that something has everything to do with unregulated capitalism and its various discontents, most specifically the widespread inclination to prefer revenue to virtue. Things fall apart precisely from there.

Anyway, the music:

1. “When the Devil’s Loose” – A.A. Bondy (When the Devil’s Loose, 2009)
2. “Pinned” – Unknown Venus (single, 2024)
3. “That’s the Way” – Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin III, 1970)
4. “You Gotta Be” – Des’ree (I Ain’t Movin’, 1995)
5. “Cry Baby” – The Motels (Careful, 1980)
6. “Lorlir” – Kaki King (Modern Yesterdays, 2020)
7. “Play With Fire” – The Rolling Stones (b-side, 1965)
8. “Salt Eyes” – Middle Kids (New Songs For Old Problems EP, 2019)
9. “Black Star” – Gillian Welch (single, 2005)
10. “The Card Cheat” – The Clash (London Calling, 1979)
11. “Australia” – Manic Street Preachers (Everything Must Go, 1996)
12. “The Witch” – Kaia Kater, featuring Aiofe O’Donovan (Strange Medicine, 2024)
13. “Helplessness Blues” – Fleet Foxes (Helplessness Blues, 2011)
14. “Bring Back the Love” – The Monitors (Greetings!…We’re the Monitors, 1968)
15. “Half Asleep” – School of Seven Bells (Alpinisms, 2008)
16. “Cornerstone” – Richard X. Heyman (Cornerstone, 1998)
17. “In Between Days” – The Cure (The Head on the Door, 1985)
18. “Afraid of Everyone” – The National (High Violet, 2010)
19. “Swampland” – Alex Winston (Bingo!, 2024)
20. “I’m Going to Tear Your Playhouse Down” – Ann Peebles (single, 1973; I Can’t Stand the Rain, 1974)

Random notes:

* This is very likely the least classic-rock-y playlist on the internet that nevertheless manages to include songs from both Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.

* Gillian Welch’s incandescent cover of Radiohead’s “Black Star” is a classic, presenting the song in a totally different setting while retaining and enhancing its poignant essence. I’ve poked around a bit and still can’t determine how she came to record this and why it exists as a standalone single but she did and it does and it moves me every time I hear it. I don’t think I’ve previously featured a live recording on an EPS mix but this only exists in a live version and it’s pretty much perfect as is.

* I am not inherently a fan of instrumental tracks but I can’t help being ongoingly fascinated by what the experimentally-minded guitar virtuoso Kaki King has released over the course of her iconoclastic career. Her 2020 album Modern Yesterdays was recorded just as COVID-19 was identified and lockdowns beginning; everyone who worked on the album came down with it (and recovered, thankfully). The album itself arose as a side effect of a planned live project called Data Not Found, which got scrapped due to the lockdown. While Modern Yesterdays finds King finger-picking in the Fahey/Kottke lineage, the album also expands into evocative electronic soundscapes, incorporating alternative guitar sounds and spacious synthesizer beds created by sound designer Chloe Alexandra Thompson. “Lorlir” offers King’s brisk finger work on top of electronics so gentle that they seem, somehow, part of the guitar itself. While the song’s title is a mystery–I can find nothing that explains it–other titles on the album bring the listener straight back to that disastrous time (e.g., “Can’t Touch This or That or You or My Face,” “Sanitized, Alone”)–a time which, I might add, seems to have been forgotten by the misled half of the US population who voted to bring back the cruel and inept leader who tragically bungled the country’s response (and pretty much everything else). In this context an instrumental seems about right, as words become inadequate.

* There exists an all but endless trove of R&B tracks from the 1960s that were not hits but one wonders why the heck not. “Bring Back the Love” has the melodic drama, confident vocals, and sure groove of a classic Four Tops tune–perhaps not a complete coincidence, as one of the four songwriters credited here is Brian Holland, the music-oriented Holland of the famed songwriting trio of Holland-Dozier-Holland (his brother Eddie did the lyrics). Those three were responsible for some of the finest songs recorded by the Four Tops–not to mention the Supremes, and Marvin Gaye, and a number of other first-tier Motown acts. This one sounds like a winner, even if it wasn’t.

* Not a lot of information is available online about the singer/songwriter calling herself Unknown Venus, which is probably (given the moniker) how she wants it in this day and age of intrusive, overzealous fandom. (Perhaps there’s a new generation of musicians arising who intend to forge a road back to some semblance of reasonable privacy.) In any case, what she has revealed online: her name is Annie Lancaster, she is based in Los Angeles, plays the harp, and has released five singles to date, most recently “Pinned.” The song is at once dreamy and straightforward, complete with an actual instrumental hook by way of the distorted guitar line that we first hear in the introduction. Who does this anymore? Not enough people, that’s who. Not enough people make this sort of well-constructed, effortlessly melodic music either, but they’re out there and I always aim to find them. Hat tip to the Luna Collective’s weekly, off-the-beaten-path playlist for this one.

* There are a half-dozen or more well-known, widely-regarded songs from the Clash’s seminal London Calling, and then there’s “The Card Cheat.” A loping, keyboard-driven song, launching off a decisive Hal Blaine drumbeat, “The Card Cheat” is pleasingly enigmatic in a Dylanesque sort of way–vague characters speak, specific locations are cited, you sense something important is going on but you can’t put your finger on it. A little burst of horn adds to the mystique along the way, and Joe Strummer’s urgent/friendly voice holds it all together. Perhaps part of my attraction to the song has to do with the fact that it isn’t as well-known as the album’s other highlights, but for one reason or another it remains a big favorite after all these years.

* Richard X. Heyman made an appearance here last year when I pulled the Doughboys’ oddly endearing “Rhoda Mandelbaum” out of obscurity for EPS 10.8. Heyman, the band’s drummer, was a teenager during the Doughboys’ late-’60s, garage rock heyday, but re-emerged as a power pop-oriented singer/songwriter in the late ’80s. He got as far as signing a deal with the prestigious Sire Records label, which released one album of his then dropped him for lack of sales. He had to finance Cornerstone himself, and played most of the instruments on most of the tracks. Since then he’s been releasing albums regularly on his own label, most recently 2022’s 67,000 Miles an Album. The man has a preternatural knack for melodic rock’n’roll, an appealing baritone, and, unhappily, little to no commercial appeal. But maybe he’s okay with that, doing his own thing for his own audience in his own corner of internet. (Some of us are.) Note too that the Doughboys have had a second wind in the 21st century, reviving their garage rock sound–fine if you like that kind of thing but I’ll stick with Heyman’s solo albums, which I aim to investigate further in the days to come.

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.

What a difference a month makes. The mood is (cautiously) lighter. I remain stupefied that a convicted criminal who orchestrated an attempted coup can be considered a viable candidate for president of this country. Can be popular despite his track record of various despicabilities. Is continuing to be treated by mainstream media as pretty much normal. This is not just frightening but also goddamned puzzling. How did we get here? But wait a minute: I said the mood is lighter, and it certainly is. The dreaded rematch has been short-circuited. I’m with her.

Now then, I can’t claim that this month’s playlist has anything to do with this. Or does it? “If I Can’t Change Your Mind”; “The Next Time Around”; “Don’t Change On Me”; “Don’t Come Running to Me”; “Then Came You”: a suggestive batch if looked at a certain way. But seriously unplanned. Consider it the zeitgeist at work. In any case, here’s where we’re going together this month:

1. “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” – Sugar (Copper Blue, 1992)
2. “Patterns” – Laura Marling (single, 2024; Patterns in Repeat, coming 10/24)
3. “The Next Time Around” – Little Joy (Little Joy, 2008)
4. “Gag Reflections” – Wild Moccasins (single, 2012)
5. “Don’t Change On Me” – Ray Charles (Love Country Style, 1970)
6. “Don’t I Know” – Sinéad Lohan (No Mermaid, 1998)
7. “Nowhere” – Swaying Wires (I Left a House Burning, 2016)
8. “A Little Respect” – Erasure (The Innocents, 1988)
9. “Don’t Come Running to Me” – Madeline Bell (Bell’s A Poppin’, 1967; bonus track on the 2004 re-issue)
10. “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” – Klaatu (3:47 EST, 1976)
11. “Shenandoah” – Anaïs Mitchell (The Brightness, 2007)
12. “Hot Sun” – Wilco (Hot Sun Cool Shroud EP, 2024)
13. “Zoeira” – Joyce (Hard Bossa, 1999)
14. “You Can’t Take Love For Granted” – Graham Parker (The Real Macaw, 1983)
15. “Then Came You” – Dionne Warwick and the Spinners (single, 1974)
16. “Like I Say (I runaway)” – Nilüfer Yanya (single, 2024)
17. “Red Rubber Ball” – The Cyrkle (Red Rubber Ball, 1966)
18. “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” – Spoon (Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, 2007)
19. “Afternoon in Kanda” – Jesse Harris (Sub Rosa, 2012)
20. “Find My Love” – Fairground Attraction (The First of a Million Kisses, 1988)

Random notes:

* The Houston indie outfit the Wild Moccasins had a bit of an internet moment earlier this century. Fronted by Zahira Gutierrez, the band started up in 2007, released three albums between 2010 and 2018 on the reasonably high-profile New West label, got some love from NPR among other places, but quietly disappeared after their last release. Gutierrez has recently reemerged as a solo artist, with more of a pop orientation, using only her first name. “Gag Reflections” was a single released in between their well-regarded first and second albums.

* Sinéad Lohan recorded two albums in the mid- to late-’90s, the first of which was released only in Ireland, the second of which got full distribution on a major label and earned her a good amount of attention and airplay back in the day. And that was pretty much that: she got married, had two children, and at one point sooner than later decided that she had zero interest in continuing on as a professional musician. Wikipedia reports that she did work on a third album in the 2004 to 2007 range but it never saw the light of day. Her one widely-released album, 1998’s No Mermaid, remains a quiet classic of sorts, full of songs of depth and quality. “Don’t I Know” is the third song from the album that I’ve featured in an EPS mix over the years.

* Well known by now as the composer, playwright, and brain child behind the hit Broadway show Hadestown, which won eight Tony Awards in 2019, Anaïs Mitchell began her career as a singer/songwriter in the early ’00s. Hadestown started as a concept album in 2010; it was Mitchell’s fourth release at the time. Then came a long and winding road to the Broadway stage, which occupied a lot of Mitchell’s time and creative energy along the way; she’s only released two albums of original material since then, in 2012 and 2022. “Shenandoah” is a song I’ve always loved, from 2007’s The Brightness. I’m a bit of a sucker for songs with asymmetrical melodies–and here I mean the way the first line of the verse stops, melodically, at 0:30 but when the melody repeats in the next line it extends itself (0:40). There’s something timeless in that, with the vibe of an old folk song. Mitchell has a confident, distinctive singing voice, which sounds at once innocent and full of wisdom. A longtime visitor or two might remember seeing the beautiful “Flowers (Eurydice’s Song)” featured here back when it first appeared, on the 2010 Hadestown concept album.

* The new single from Laura Marling is gorgeous. What a songwriter she is. And she can sing, too.

* Madeline Bell was born in New Jersey and began singing gospel as a teenager; her professional career, however, took her in another direction. On tour with a gospel act in Europe in 1962, Bell ended up being introduced to a number of notable British performers, including Dusty Springfield, who not only went on to employ Bell as a backing vocalist but by some accounts began to model her singing style after Bell’s. Bell stayed in the UK, recorded a few more albums, and later became known as vocalist for the pop group Blue Mink, which had a half-dozen hit singles in England in the early to mid-’70s. You’ll definitely hear something Dusty-ish in “Don’t Come Running to Me,” a track included on the 2004 re-issue of Bell’s 1967 solo debut Bell’s A Poppin’. While Bell moved into more of a smooth pop-soul direction later on, this debut album is much more of a Bacharachian pop recording, very much an artifact of a particular (and particularly wonderful) moment. For those with a soft spot for the so-called “Swinging London” era, check out this performance of the song from British TV in 1967“.

* The background story of many a long-ago rock band can be more interesting than anticipated. Take the Cyrkle, a one-hit wonder ensemble from Easton, Pennsylvania. Originally called The Rhondells, they ended up being managed by none other than Beatles manager Brian Epstein, who changed their name to the Cyrkle–exotic spelling suggested by John Lennon himself. They even opened 14 times for the Beatles on their 1966 tour, including the Fab Four’s final-ever concert performance, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. “Red Rubber Ball,” meanwhile, was a song co-written by Paul Simon and Seekers’ guitarist Bruce Woodley, offered to the Cyrkle when the band was opening at one point for Simon and Garfunkel. Cyrkle singer and bassist Tom Dawes had a subsequent career writing commercial jingles, including Alka-Seltzer’s omnipresent “plop plop fizz fizz” refrain. According to an over-long, un-sourced write-up on Wikipedia, the band managed to reunite in 2016 and were still performing live as recently as 2022. Over on Spotify, there are four new singles posted since 2023, including the nostalgia-laced “We Were There,” which was released in May.

* Speaking of bands unexpectedly reuniting, the Scottish group Fairground Attraction, fronted by the wonderful Eddi Reader, has reemerged here in 2024 with their first new material in 34 years. Known best for the soft, swinging single “Perfect,” from their 1988 debut, the group offered up only one follow-up release–a collection of b-sides called Ay Fond Kiss (1990)–before disbanding. Reader went on to an artistically rewarding if off-the-beaten-path solo career, which has slowed down in recent years–there were 10 albums released from 1992 to 2009, and only two since then, most recently Light Is In The Horizon (2022). Meanwhile, Fairground Attraction has put out two singles in 2024, including “Beautiful Happening” in June, the title track to a forthcoming album. “Find My Love” is one of a number of delightful, light-spirited songs from their late-’80s debut.