Category: playlist

There’s a meandering quality to some of these songs. Some may make you smile. Smiling is good. Of the 20 artists represented, 16 had yet to be featured on a playlist here. And we made it back to the ’50s for the first time in a while. Also good. Less good: Samsa the band seems no longer to exist, but “Throw My Weight” remains one of the early great finds on Fingertips, back from the retrospectively innocent mid-aughts. Then there are all those amazing soul numbers, still aching to be discovered, some so elusive there is no telling when they were actually recorded. (“I’ll Never Stop Loving You” may not have been released in 1967, but it sounds like it.) “The Wild Places” is as evocative a song from my young adulthood as I can call to mind. I did not visit many wild places at the time, and received no consolation prize. Life goes on, with or without revolutions. We are led on, we are let go of. Are you with me now? You’re a bit early, but I know how you feel.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Throw My Weight” – Samsa (First, The Lights EP 2005)
“I’ll Never Stop Loving You” – Carla Thomas (single, 1967?)
“Lights Are Changing” – Mary Lou Lord (Got No Shadow, 1998)
“Don’t Dictate” – Penetration (single, 1977)
“Driving Through” – Jennifer O’Connor (The Color and the Light, 2005)
“She Took Off My Romeos” – David Lindley (El Rayo-X, 1981)
“Where’s the Revolution” – Depeche Mode (Spirit, 2017)
“Etude No. 2” – Philip Glass (Etudes For Piano, Vol. 1, 2003)
“I Only Have Eyes For You” – The Flamingos (single, 1959)
“The Wild Places” – Duncan Browne (The Wild Places, 1978)
“Est-Ce Que Tu” – Dusty Trails (Dusty Trails, 2000)
“I”ll Feel a Whole Lot Better” – The Byrds (Mr. Tambourine Man, 1965)
“Consolation Prize” – The Ocean Blue (Davy Jones’ Locker, 1999)
“Pendulum” – FKA twigs (LP1, 2014)
“Let Me Go” – Heaven 17 (The Luxury Gap, 1983)
“Powerhouse” – Don Byron (Bug Music, 1996)
“Lead Me On” – Gwen McCrae (single, 1970)
“Are You With Me Now?” – Cate Le Bon (Mug Museum, 2011)
“Cigarette of a Single Man” – Squeeze (Babylon and On, 1987)
“At The Beginning Of Time” – Jane Siberry (When I Was a Boy, 1993)

A certain number of big names and kinda-big names made their way onto this month’s list, and yet it still feels quirky and off-center to me somehow. And just so it’s clear: I have nothing against big, “popular” names; I just feel they should arrive in sprinkles rather than floods. I would have little interest in listening to a playlist that was all Led Zeppelin but getting one well-chosen Led Zep song in a multi-decade mix? That’s what I’m here for. You too?

And I have to say, while I obviously have no objective perspective at all here, this playlist makes me particularly happy in some elusive way. A few of the segues are inadvertently awesome (Snider to Radiohead, Ace Spectrum to Poliça, to name two), and it always seems to be a bit special when They Might Be Giants show up, especially the disconcertingly metaphysical “Where Your Eyes Don’t Go,” a perennial personal favorite.

But what do I know? I keep making these very humanly curated lists, and if a few of you kind folks show up and listen, I’m happy. In some elusive way.

Other random notes:

* “The Lotus Eaters”: As gorgeous and effecting an amalgam of contemporary classical and non-classical music as I have heard.

* “Pyramid Song”: Forget all the internet explanations as to this song’s time signature. My ears tell me there is precisely no time signature at all for this song, which adds to its subtle miraculousness.

* “Don’t Send Nobody Else”: The half a hit from the one-half-hit wonder Ace Spectrum, this song was written by Ashford and Simpson, for those keeping score at home. Never all that popular during their recorded lifespan (1974-1976), Ace Spectrum have had a second life in the world of Northern Soul, which has rescued untold numbers of great songs from semi- and/or complete obscurity.

* “Troubles Won’t Stay”: The great Sam Phillips remains great.

* “St Agnes and the Burning Train”: This is a Sting song, so allow me briefly to defend Sting against his many and varied detractors. Whatever his personal and interpersonal flaws might (or might not) be, there is a talented musician and composer at least sometimes alive in this man. I think he has often let lazy Sting do the work but when he’s on his game he can be brilliant. Thanks to Radio Paradise for alerting me to this particular version, which isn’t that different from the original, but the strings add some oomph, and the cover version will allow me to offer up the Stingster himself later in the year here if I so choose.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Quick Painless and Easy” – Ivy (Apartment Life, 1997)
“I Surrender” – Eddie Holman (b-side, 1969)
“Both Ends Burning” – Roxy Music (Siren, 1975)
“She Turns to Flowers” – The Salvation Army (The Salvation Army, 1982)
“The Lotus Eaters” – Sarah Kirkland Snider feat. Shara Worden (Penelope, 2010)
“Pyramid Song” – Radiohead (Amnesiac, 2001)
“La Dolce Vita” – Sparks (No. 1 in Heaven, 1979)
“Speed the Collapse” – Metric (Synthetica, 2012)
“See a Little Light” – Bob Mould (Workbook, 1989)
“Amanhã” – Luciana Souza (Brazilian Duos, 2002)
“Don’t Send Nobody Else” – Ace Spectrum (Inner Spectrum, 1974)
“Lime Habit” – Poliça (United Crushers, 2016)
“Where Your Eyes Don’t Go” – They Might Be Giants (Lincoln, 1988)
“Hard Lesson” – Suddenly, Tammy! (We Get There When We Do, 1995)
“I Got Love” – Viola Wills (single, 1966)
“All These Things That I’ve Done” – The Killers (Hot Fuss, 2004)
“Troubles Won’t Stay” – Sam Phillips (Human Contact is Never Easy EP, 2016)
“St Agnes and the Burning Train” – Soweto String Quartet (Zebra Crossing, 1994)
“D’yer Mak’er” – Led Zeppelin (Houses of the Holy, 1973)
“Tres Cosas” – Juana Molina (Tres Cosas, 2004)

The Sara Bareilles composition, “Seriously,” written at the behest of the formidable public radio show This American Life, imagines the thoughts Barack Obama might have been thinking as the 2016 presidential campaign came to a climax. Hamilton star Leslie Odom, Jr. sings. It speaks for itself, and demands to be heard, maybe even more so now than in October.

But hey everything feels political right now, doesn’t it? Seeking the meaning of life, trying to stay grounded in love, honoring a rock’n’roll icon, even just grooving to a retro beat, anything done mindfully feels like a defiant gesture when the occupant of the White House is so willfully ignorant, so apparently devoid of empathy, so blind to both beauty and mercy. The world doesn’t owe us a thing but each individual human being owes any other human being a recognition of their inherent dignity. Well, what goes up must come down. I have no idea what becomes of us collectively with this awful specimen of human being daily defacing the office he holds, but I know that in the end, he will personally fail, and fall, hard. Gravity is an implacable mistress; may we all fly forward into the light, sooner than later.

Full playlist below the widget.

“I’m Happy But You Don’t Like Me” – Asobi Seksu (Asobi Seksu, 2004)
“Seriously” – Leslie Odom, Jr. (2016)
“What Is Life” – George Harrison (All Things Must Pass, 1970)
“The Universal Song” – Kim Carnes (Café Racers, 1983)
“Tennessee” – Arrested Development (3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life of…, 1992)
“Nadine” – Chuck Berry (single, 1964)
“There Isn’t One Way” – Patty Griffin (Servant of Love, 2015)
“Oh Really” – Goldheart Assembly (single, 2009)
“United State” – Daryl Hall & John Oates (Voices, 1980)
“I Love You” – John Coltrane (Lush Life, 1957)
“Gravity” – Terri Hendrix (Wilory Farm, 1998)
“Public Image” – Public Image Ltd (Public Image, 1978)
“Aviation” – The Last Shadow Puppets (Everything You’ve Come to Expect, 2016)
“Alone Again Or” – Love (Forever Changes, 1967)
“Slave to the Rhythm” – Grace Jones (Slave to the Rhythm, 1985)
“No Need To Cry” – Neko Case (Furnace Room Lullaby, 2000)
“Hall of Tragedy” – Linnea Olsson (For Show EP, 2017)
“The World Don’t Owe You a Thing” – Freda Payne (Band of Gold, 1970)
“Miss America” – David Byrne (Feelings, 1997)
“Tomorrow on the Runway” – The Innocence Mission (Befriended, 2007)

This is the 33rd playlist in the Eclectic Playlist Series; there are only three artists in this month’s mix that have been featured here before, in one of the other 32 lists (and each has been featured only once previously). There’s really that much music out there, folks. That so much of it is squandered by the relentless reductionism of internet algorithms…well, let’s just say it’s a shame, and that if you’re reading this you’re in luck because it doesn’t happen here. This month’s playlist is another case in point, ranging reasonably far and wide in genre and decade, but also dancing through some serendipities of sound, feel, and outlook. The segues are occasionally challenging but I did my best to have the songs make sense even if they initially seem to be bumping into each other. And it’s all okay in the end because of the twin, Spector-ish culmination: the Ronettes into “Just Like Honey.” First we get an epic with as heart-rending a resolution, musically speaking, as has pretty much ever been written; then we can float off, Scarlett-Johansson-ly, to the indeterminate tones of The Jesus and Mary Chain. Everything, in the end, is lost in translation, most of all our heart’s desires. But it’s alright. Everything is everything. We make contact. The building may be burning but it’s we who are ablaze.

Full playlist below the widget.

“Around the Bend” – Martha Wainwright (Goodnight City, 2016)
“Everything is Everything” – Lauryn Hill (The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, 1998)
“Victim of Love” – The Eagles (Hotel California, 1976)
“You as You Were” – Shearwater (Animal Joy, 2012)
“Don’t Leave Me This Way” – Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes (Wake Up Everybody, 1975)
“This Is The House” – Eurythmics (Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), 1983)
“Moving to L.A.” – Art Brut (Bang Bang Rock & Roll, 2005)
“But It’s Alright” – J.J. Jackson (single, 1967)
“Ablaze” – School of Seven Bells (SVIIB, 2016)
“Girls Talk” – Dave Edmunds (Repeat When Necessary, 1979)
“Contact” – Brigitte Bardot (Show, 1968)
“Lover’s Waltz” – A.A. Bondy (American Hearts, 2007)
“Mia & Sebastian’s Theme” – Justin Hurwitz (“La La Land”: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, 2016)
“Dim” – Dada (Puzzle, 1992)
“Jerry’s Pigeons” – Genya Ravan (Urban Desire, 1978)
“Nothing Burns Like Bridges” – Penny Century (Between a Hundred Lies, 2007)
“Let X=X” – Laurie Anderson (Big Science, 1981)
“Go, Hippie” – Fountains of Wayne (Utopia Parkway, 1996)
“I Can Hear Music” – The Ronettes (single, 1966)
“Just Like Honey” – The Jesus and Mary Chain (Psychocandy, 1985)

In 1978, John Prine released a wonderful album called Bruised Orange. According to a story he told a couple of years later, the record company, doing that record-company thing back in the day, sent him a case of oranges as part of some kind of promotional effort or another. When it came time to make his next album, he figured he would call it Storm Windows. Because he needed some. This, at least, is the story he told at the time. And I’m guessing he actually had no idea what kind of future we were going to end up in when he sang the song that closes out EPS 4.01.

This playlist, I feel compelled to report, was created in an unusual flow. I’m not sure if it’s any better or worse than my previous output but I will say that I found myself feeling no need to edit or tweak the way I normally do, even if it meant rather inexplicably returning to Bonnie Raitt after just a couple of months. Nothing against Bonnie she’s just not that close to the top of my list normally! And now I also don’t seem to feel the need to comment other than to say that the more time goes by the more I love Liz Phair. And the more David Bowie seems to represent the apotheosis of rock music.

These opinions are my own and do not represent the views of the current Administration. And never will.

p.s. “I Live My Broken Dreams” really does end that abruptly. An impossible segue.

“Opus 23” – Dustin O’Halloran (Piano Solos Vol. 2, 2006)
“No Plan” – David Bowie (No Plan EP, 2017)
“Lorelei” – Cocteau Twins (Treasure, 1984)
“So You’re Leaving” – Al Green (Let’s Stay Together, 1972)
“Silence Kid” – Pavement (Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, 1994)
“I Live My Broken Dreams” – Gramma’s Boyfriend (PERM, 2015)
“Butch and Butch” – Oliver Nelson (The Blues and the Abstract Truth, 1961)
“Alison Gross” – Steeleye Span (Parcel of Rogues, 1973)
“Run Back to You” – Marshall Crenshaw (The 9 Volt Years, 1998)
“I Just Can’t Live My Life (Without You Babe)” – Linda Jones (single, 1969)
“Birth, School, Work, Death” – The Godfathers (Birth, School, Work, Death, 1988)
“But Will Our Tears” – Soy Un Caballo (Les Heures de Raison, 2007)
“Surf’s Up” – The Beach Boys (Surf’s Up, 1971)
“Baby Mine” – Bonnie Raitt and Was (Not Was) (Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films, 1988)
“Time to Dance” – The Jezabels (The Brink, 2014)
“E-Bow the Letter” – R.E.M. (New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996)
“I’ll Stop At Nothing” – Sandie Shaw (single, 1965)
“When You Find Out” – The Nerves (The Nerves EP, 1976)
“My Bionic Eyes” – Liz Phair (Liz Phair, 2003)
“Living in the Future” – John Prine (Storm Windows, 1980)

So this is not really a holiday playlist, because I, like a lot of people I know, don’t feel especially festive this year. But I snuck a couple of seasonal songs in anyway, both of which I appreciate for their arrangements, however vastly different they are. This is in fact a list about differences: beautiful and jarring, old and new, angry and gentle, it’s all here. Some things you might want to know: Vegas was a one-off effort by Terry Hall (the Specials) and Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) that sank commercially but soared artistically (thanks to George from Between Two Islands for this one); Sad13 is Sadie Dupuis, front woman for the band Speedy Ortiz and “<2” (say “Less Than Two”) is from her first solo album; “Lily” is one of only a handful of stand-alone older songs Kate Bush performed at her now-legendary concerts in London in 2014, and I wasn’t there but I wish I had been, and I’m buying the new album, and she’s amazing; yes the new Bon Iver is pretty outré but oddly compelling (and note the song title is supposed to have two symbols after it but they are not translating properly here in WordPress so I left them out); yes this is the “clean” version of “We the People…” but it seemed a reasonable gesture given that by and large these playlists are safe for work and young children–I encourage you on your own to check out the whole album, in its explicit form; and yes I had just featured Leonard Cohen two playlists ago so the rules prohibited a direct homage to the great man but I really like what Christina Rosenvinge has done with “Famous Blue Raincoat,” and adore its Spanish title, “Impermeable Azul,” and like Christina Rosenvinge in any case so here you are.

And yet, that said, 2016 has come to an end and I did in fact repeat one artist this year. So much for rules. Anyone notice?

“Open Your Eyes” – The Lords of the New Church (The Lords of the New Church, 1982)
“Walk Into the Wind” – Vegas (Vegas, 1992)
“<2” – Sad13 (Slugger, 2016)
“Alchemy” – Richard Lloyd (Alchemy, 1979)
“Lily” – Kate Bush (The Red Shoes, 1993)
“I’m Gonna Git Ya” – Betty Harris (single, 1967)
“10 d E A T h b R E a s T” – Bon Iver (22, A Million, 2016)
“Evil Urges” – My Morning Jacket (Evil Urges, 2005)
“Talk of the Town” – The Pretenders (Pretenders II, 1980)
“The Catastrophe and the Cure” – Explosions in the Sky (All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone, 2006)
“Someone to Lay Down Beside Me” – Karla Bonoff (Karla Bonoff, 1977)
“We The People…” – A Tribe Called Quest (We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service, 2016)
“Philadelphia” – Magazine (The Correct Use of Soap, 1980)
“L’estasi dell’oro” – Ennio Morricone (The Good, The Bad & The Ugly: Original Motion Picture     Soundtrack, 1966)
“We Three Kings” – The Roches (We Three Kings, 1990)
“Run” – Amy MacDonald (This Is The Life, 2007)
“God’s Children” – The Kinks (Percy, 1971)
“Strange Things Happening Every Day” – Sister Rosetta Tharpe (single, 1945)
“Lt. Kijé: Troika” – Caliban Quartet of Bassoons (Caliban Does Christmas, 2005)
“Impermeable Azul” – Christina Rosenvinge (According to Leonard Cohen, 2012)

How Fabrizio De Andre sounds in the song “Il Testamento di Tito” is how I want to sound right now: weary but centered, soothing and heartbroken, resigned to the wickedness of the world while standing up to it. The narrator is Titus, one of the two thieves in the New Testament said to have died on the cross with Jesus, who here slyly annotates the Ten Commandments, one by one, by relating his personal experience with each. A rich, flowing, Italian-language narrative, “Il Testamento di Tito” is a subtle miracle of texture and pacing, and is well worth further investigation (you might start here; translation of the lyrics here). The other songs this month are all in English and speak (directly or indirectly) for themselves, haunted, as has everything been since 11/9, by the the deep shadow of lunacy, bigotry, and corruption spreading across our unhappy country, and by the resilience we are called upon to embody in its wake. Sorry to get heavy here but this is heavy shit and music does, somehow, help. Be careful out there.

“Walk This World” – Heather Nova (Oyster, 1995)
“Inwards” – Big Country (The Crossing, 1983)
“The End of Our Love” – Nancy Wilson (b-side, 1968)
“I Don’t Want to Know” – Matthew Sweet (Kimi Ga Suki Raifu, 2003)
“Changes” – Stars (The Five Ghosts, 2015)
“Il Testamento di Tito” – Fabrizio De Andre (La Buona Novella, 1970)
“Flower Girl” – Joe Henry (Trampoline, 1996)
“Passerby” – Quilt (Plaza, 2016)
“Call It Something Nice” – The Small Faces (The Autumn Stone, 1969)
“Side of the Road” – Lucinda Williams (Lucinda Williams, 1988)
“Worn Me Down” – Rachael Yamagata (Happenstance, 2004)
“Play It Safe” – Iggy Pop (Soldier, 1980)
“Dawned on Me” – Wilco (The Whole Love, 2011)
“Kiss My Love Goodbye” – Bettye Swan (b-side, 1974)
“Into the Fire” – Sarah McLachlan (Solace, 1991)
“Out of the Blue” – The Band (The Last Waltz, 1978)
“My Mistakes Were Made For You” – The Last Shadow Puppets (The Age of the Understatement, 2007)
“Trouble Down Here Below” – Lou Rawls (Carryin’ On!, 1966)
“Nightingale” – The Honey Trees (Bright Fire, 2014)
“Book of Days” – Enya (Shepherd Moons, 1991)

I’ve been pretty much only thinking about one thing lately and I am not enjoying that this is all I can think about, in fact it is disturbing me at a deep psychological level. Talk about transcendental blues. And I am trying not to personalize it and say there’s just this one man I’ve been thinking about pretty much all the time because in the end it’s not him. It’s not him. It’s the people who believe him. This is the freaky place we’re alone in, you and I, though not entirely alone. We are alone together, wondering who these freaky people are, are they our neighbors, are they our friends, our family?; what world are they looking at that they see what they see, believe what they believe?; how far have we come from where we thought we were heading all this time? We are alone together, you and I and all of us who understand that we are humans together, that being darker or lighter or thinner or fatter or from one place or another place doesn’t add up to trouble and stupidity but to strength in our amazing diversity. What ails these people, how afraid and wounded and uninformed have we let our fellow citizens become? And how certain they now are in their unseeing, in their not-knowing, who accuse the tolerant of intolerance, the wise of ignorance, the compassionate of depravity?

And yet. Think of the good that exists, think of the positive energy we have here on the side of humanity and respect, on the side of love and understanding. Sometimes I think that the terrifying energy we’ve seen unleashed by the amoral swindler currently doing business as the Republican candidate for president of the United States is somehow required by the universe as a kind of balancing out, yin-yang-ishly, for all the amazing progress we have made, interpersonally, in so many gratifying ways, over the last few decades. The trick is not to lose sight of the light, even as the dark persists, and wants to yell at us and call us names and beat us up and keep us down.

Here is a playlist for listening to alone but together, a group of songs that for mysterious reasons are stronger together. Just like us.

“The Magnificent Seven” – The Clash (Sandinista, 1981)
“Longer” – Lydia Loveless (Real, 2016)
“Autumn Sweater” – Yo La Tengo (I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, 1997)
“Les Filles C’est Fait Pour Faire L’amour” – Charlotte Leslie (single, 1967)
“Mr. Understanding” – Pete and the Pirates (Little Death, 2008)
“You’ve Been in Love Too Long” – Bonnie Raitt (Takin’ My Time, 1973)
“Bodies” – Farao (Till It’s All Forgotten, 2015)
“Since I Held You” – The Cars (Candy-O, 1979)
“T.H.E. Cat” – Al Hirt (The Horn Meets the Hornet, 1966)
“John Paul’s Deliveries” – Nathan (Key Principles, 2007)
“Christine” – Siouxsie and the Banshees (Kaleidoscope, 1980)
“To a Forest” – They Might Be Giants (Phone Power, 2016)
“Leavin’ This Town” – Terri Binion (Leavin’ This Town, 1997)
“To Be Someone” – The Jam (All Mod Cons, 1978)
“I Got a Feeling” – Barbara Randolph (single, 1967)
“The Opera House” – The Olivia Tremor Control (Dusk at Cubist Castle, 1996)
“Transcendental Blues” – Steve Earle (Transcendental Blues, 2000)
“Kimberly” – Patti Smith (Horses, 1975)
“Don’t Let It Trouble Your Mind” – Rhiannon Giddens (Tomorrow Is My Turn, 2015)
“Everybody Knows” – Leonard Cohen (I’m Your Man, 1988)

September is the melancholy part of the summer, the summertime we never remember or conjure when we use the word “summertime.” It’s either still too warm for all the things we now have to do or abruptly too cool when we’re not quite ready for it. For no reason I can quite put my finger on this is a playlist for this time of year, and for 2016 in particular, when we are collectively holding our breath to see which way we’ll go, what new world awaits us. Be brave while acting breezy. Beware of snakes. Believe in miracles. Etc.

As for specifics, we begin with a song from the 1958 album that is generally credited with being the first bossa nova album, Canção do Amor Demais, and a song that features the guitar work of João Gilberto, who almost single-handedly created the bossa nova sound. Consider it here a fond if complicated post-Olympics farewell. If you haven’t previously come across Chris von Sneidern, purveyor of power-pop-oriented indie rock before anyone called it indie rock, there is a 2009 documentary called Why Isn’t Chris von Sneidern Famous? that makes an effort to understand why mainstream success can elude very talented musicians. Not that we needed a movie to alert us to that particular news flash. Then, the other side of the coin—the musical recluse, two of whom populate the playlist this month: the semi-legendary Canadian songstress Mary Margaret O’Hara, who recorded one album in 1988 and pretty much left it at that, and the anonymous Swedish singer who took the pseudonym Sally Shapiro. The singer’s musical partner, Johan Agebjörn, acknowledged “Sally”‘s disinclination for the business in 2009, writing in a blog post, “What if you just want to be a normal person with a normal job, record songs in the weekends, and spend the holidays picking blueberries instead of going on tour?” After 10 years of intermittent music, Sally Shapiro quit once and for all.

And then, somewhere in between famous and reclusive we have Look Park, which is the name Chris Collingwood has given to his solo project. For at least some of you, Collingwood’s voice should be easily identifiable as the long-time lead singer for Fountains of Wayne. But the man has had a checkered history of being ready and willing to record. You can’t rush things, or force them onto the right track. In the end, you have to do what you want to do, and the trick isn’t that it always comes easily but that it should always sound like it does.

“Outra Vez” – Elizete Cardoso (Canção do Amor Demais, 1958)
“Open Wide” – Chris von Sneidern (Sight & Sound, 1993)
“If You Should See” – Wye Oak (Tween, 2016)
“Tales of Brave Ulysses” – Cream (Disraeli Gears, 1967)
“Anything, Anything (I’ll Give You)” – Dramarama (Cinéma Vérité, 1985)
“Benton Harbor Blues” – The Fiery Furnaces (Bitter Tea, 2006)
“Betcha By Golly, Wow” – The Stylistics (The Stylistics, 1971)
“Breezy” – Look Park (Look Park, 2016)
“Tony Adams” – Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros (Rock Art & The X-Ray Style, 1999)
“Anew Day” – Mary Margaret O’Hara (Miss America, 1988)
“Divers of the Dust” – Marissa Nadler (Strangers, 2016)
“Right Track” – Billy Butler (single, 1972)
“Love Doesn’t Just Stop” – Standard Fare (The Noyelle Beat, 2010)
“Rattlesnakes” – Lloyd Cole (Rattlesnakes, 1984)
“Which Way” – The Sorrows (single, 1968)
“Slow Dog” – Belly (Star, 1993)
“Miracle” – Sally Shapiro (My Guilty Pleasure, 2009)
“Any Way That You Want Me” – Evie Sands (Any Way That You Want Me, 1969)
“Do Anything You Wanna Do” – Eddie & The Hot Rods (Life on the Line, 1977)
“New World” – Björk (Selmasongs, 2000)

Let’s start as unfashionably as possible—say, a nuanced, thoughtful, beautiful Jackson Browne song from the mid-’70s. I wasn’t sure where it would all go from there but I can see that the West Coast kept reasserting itself, in various guises. In the end, a distinct if unconscious dialogue emerged between Britain and the U.S., between idealism and resignation, between joy and melancholy, all the back and forth we internalize and externalize every day, invisibly. Do I cast my fate to the wind? Do I learn to let go? Do I stay a little longer? Do I review the situation? (And how’s *that* for a cover, by the way, Oliver going all swinging London?; too bad the single got canned before release when the record company went out of business.) Underneath it all I think most of us just want to be Kate, too.

“Your Bright Baby Blues” – Jackson Browne (The Pretender, 1976)
“Skeletal Blonde” – The Awkward Stage (Slimming Mirrors, Flattering Lights, 2008)
“Anchorage” – Michelle Shocked (Short Sharp Shocked, 1988)
“Big Me” – Foo Fighters (Foo Fighters, 1996)
“How Are Things in California?” – Nancy Sinatra (single, 1970)
“Shoot My Mouth Off” – Bread & Butter (Bread & Butter, 2015)
“Cast Your Fate to the Wind” – Vince Guaraldi Trio (Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus, 1962)
“Airport” – The Motors (Approved By The Motors, 1978)
“Nobody’s Empire” – Belle & Sebastian (Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance, 2015)
“I Can’t Let Go” – Linda Ronstadt (Mad Love, 1980)
“Dance of the Dream Man” – Angelo Badalamenti (Music From Twin Peaks, 1990)
“Nothing Stays the Same” – Elastica (The Menace, 2000)
“Reviewing the Situation” – Jacki Bond (unreleased single, 1967)
“Kate” – Ben Folds Five (Whatever and Ever Amen, 1997)
“In Deep Water” – Dot Allison (Exaltation of Larks, 2006)
“Louder Than Words” – Pink Floyd (The Endless River, 2014)
“West Coast Blues” – Wendy Waldman (The Main Refrain, 1976)
“You’ve Got Your Troubles” – The Fortunes (single, 1965)
“Please Let Me Stay a Little Longer” – The Dirty Dozen Brass Band (Funeral for a Friend, 2004)
“Invisible” – Alison Moyet (Alf, 1984)