Music however remains something we can all access, and something that may be more necessary than ever. Music is about human connection (sorry, robots!), and operates across space and time–surely helpful treatment in the face of the disconcerting and unprecedented current circumstances. This month’s playlist wasn’t constructed with our abrupt new collective lifestyle in mind but it’s somewhat suggestible, from stalwart attempts to remain hopeful–cf. Lindsey Buckingham’s soaringly catchy “In My World” and Ian Dury’s evergreen, smile-inducing classic “Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3”–on through Pet Shop Boys timeless lament (complete with a star turn from Dusty Springfield) and Norah Jones’ plainspoken, open-ended final word this month.
If you enjoy this sort of mixed-genre playlist, don’t forget there are dozens of similar (but different!) mixes available via my Mixcloud page.
Full playlist below the widget; widget below the following bonus explanatory notes:
* As ubiquitous as Dionne Farris was for a while there back in the ’90s, between her featured vocal on Arrested Development’s “Tennessee,” her big solo hit “I Know” in 1994, and a variety of high-profile soundtrack placements, she has had a very low 21st-century profile. It’s kind of great to hear the big hit again.
* Speaking of someone else with a history of laying low musically, Canadian singer/songwriter/activist Sarah Harmer released an album last month that was her first since 2010’s Oh Little Fire. I’m still absorbing the new one; here in the meantime is the terrific single that emerged from the last one.
* I am not often a fan of Baby Boomer musicians putting out new music after a long absence, and this album featuring Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie, from 2017, wasn’t stellar from top to bottom, but the song “In My World” is a wondrous thing that just didn’t really capture a lot of attention at the time. But any song is new that you haven’t heard before.
* Sam Phillips has long been among my uppermost favorite singer/songwriters, as much for her literate, borderline spiritual lyrics as for her musical inventiveness. On the Beatleseque Martinis & Bikinis album, produced by then-husband T Bone Burnett, “I Need Love” stands out to me as one of the best-ever Beatlesque songs because in my mind it’s one of the best-ever songs of any kind. Gorgeous, concise, mysterious, memorable.
* If you’re of a certain age and/or a fan of Americana music, I heartily recommend the new Robbie Robertson documentary, Once Were Brothers. Yes it is a history of the Band seen pretty much only through Robertson’s eyes, but what a compelling story, and what historic and evocative music. After enjoying the movie, I couldn’t resist throwing a Band song into the mix this month, and went with one of the deeper tracks, from their near-mythic debut album, Music From Big Pink.
“Genesis” – Jorma Kaukonen (Quah, 1974) “Romance” – Great Aunt Ida (Nuclearize Me, 2011) “Revenge” – Ministry (With Sympathy, 1983) “One of These Days” – Jill Sobule (Pink Pearl, 2000) “Mi Chiquita Quiere Bembé” – Tito Puente (Lo Mejor De Lo Mejor, 1958) “I Found Out” – John Lennon (John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, 1970) “I Know” – Dionne Farris (Wild Seed – Wild Flower, 1994) “In My World” – Buckingham/McVie (Lindsey Buckingham Christine McVie, 2017) “Why” – Gina Villalobos (Rock ‘n’ Roll Pony, 2005) “Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3” – Ian Dury & The Blockheads (single, 1979) “Ferry Cross the Mersey” – Gerry & The Pacemakers (single, 1964) “I Need Love” – Sam Phillips (Martinis & Bikinis, 1994) “Take My Heart” – Kool & The Gang (Something Special, 1981) “Captive” – Sarah Harmer (Oh Little Fire, 2010) “We Can Talk” – The Band (Music From Big Pink, 1968) “Never You Mind” – Semisonic (Feeling Strangely Fine, 1998) “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” – Pet Shop Boys feat. Dusty Springfield (Actually, 1987) “Good Girl” – Astrid Swan (Poverina, 2005) “If They Left Us Alone Now” – Wool (Wool, 1969) “Uh Oh” – Norah Jones (Begin Again, 2019)
Researchers from Georgia Tech have created a robot called Shimon that can write songs, play music, and sing. The marimba-playing robot is going on tour to support a new album that he has composed and sings.
Slashgear.com, Feb. 26, 2020
Among the many and varied innovations that digital technology has brought into our lives is an increasing capacity to produce various types of content in a variety of automated ways. Some of this is as (seemingly) innocuous as Gmail’s “Smart Reply,” which generates responses to emails; others are provocative, such as the “Bot or Not” web site, which challenges you to figure out whether a poem was written by a human or a computer. Visual imagery is another area in which computers have been turned loose to create what some may call “art.”
And then there’s the land of sound, where the computer’s increasing ability to generate music, versus merely assist in its composition and production, presents a deep and murky Pandora’s box of issues, from the artistic and the financial all the way to the ontological. Shimon, the singer/songwriter robot, was inevitable.
As we have collectively become at least a little warier of techno-utopianism than we used to be (thanks, Facebook!), discussions of how computers can create things that previously only humans could write, draw, paint, compose, or otherwise design and produce seem now to take a stance somewhere between the gee-whizzy and the maybe-slightly-concerned—as in, “Wow, look at what computers can donow, or very soon!; I guess we better get used to it?”
Regardless of any given commentator’s assessment of computer-generated writing and artwork and what the future may hold, the one thing everyone holding forth on this topic has in common is a relentless focus on surface output. Discussions are framed around whether an image looks like something a person might have created, whether a poem might be mistaken for something a person might have written. Mimicry is posited as the goal.
What is ignored when considering computer-generated content, of all kinds, is that human-generated art is never simply about the surface of what has been created. The point of a poem isn’t the manifest reality of one word placed after another on a page, it’s that the words were put there, consciously, by a human being with a life history, with connections to and relationships with other human beings, and with an awareness, both instinctive and unique to each person, of the excitement and the fragility of organic existence. Human beings inherently, inescapably bring depth to artistic output; one could argue that that is in fact the whole point of artistic output: the reaching of one individual consciousness towards another, or an audience of others.
Machines programmed to generate output that looks like something a human might have written (or painted, etc.) achieve their task based on massive computational capacity—typically, artificial neural networks designed to mimic, in a limited way, the neural networks at work in the brain, as far as science understands them (which is an incomplete understanding at best). There is nothing resembling “thought” and even less here resembling “feeling” in what the computers are doing to generate these poems or images or songs. Which means that, inherently, there is no depth to it; it’s all surface.
Georgia Tech can happily post a video of Shimon the robot’s “song”—here, if you must: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHl-Cg2KDbg—and, sure, it (kind of) sounds like a normal song. But is that all that music is: sound? Is all we’re hearing when we hear a song simply a sequence of notes, and a series of words?
The same, but different
Let’s try a thought experiment, which at this point doesn’t sound far-fetched. Let’s say that a computer programmed to produce poetry ends up generating a poem that is, word for word, what a human poet somewhere on earth has in fact written. (Maybe this has already happened!) On the surface, the identical words. Underneath: very different. To pretend that the computer’s poem, regardless of its word-for-word match, is the “same” as the human’s is to conflate surface with depth. The human poet dives into their inner world, choosing words to communicate thoughts and feelings—thoughts and feelings that are rooted in the reality of being a thinking, feeling human being who lives and breathes and eventually dies, a human with a family of origin, with a network of friends and loved ones, with a sexual drive and egoic demands, a human who daily struggles with the reality of the aforementioned fragility of human existence. (I re-emphasize this last part because it seems overlooked when considering whether computers can produce human-like art. )
The “gee-whizzy but also worried” folks who confuse the surface of computer-generated content with the depth of art produced by human beings are misdirecting you from the actual trick being performed here. Because the trick isn’t that a computer can write poetry, the trick is the sleight of hand employed to assure us that the surface of the end product is all that matters. Once you buy that, sure: a computer is writing poetry.
But we shouldn’t buy that. Depth is everything here, and nothing that a computer can offer. And note that while the depth inherent to a work of art begins within the consciousness of the artist, it by necessity ends within the consciousness of the observer sensing this depth-to-depth connection. Whether you are aware of it or not, what most engages you, when you look at a painting, or read a short story, or hear a piece of music, is the bridge that any work of art creates between the consciousness of the artist and the consciousness of the viewer/reader/listener. The communication is implicit, even if the art work often prompts more questions than answers. But as the viewer/reader/listener, the reality that another human has reached inside their being to create something that they want you to experience is, in the end, as noted, the purpose of art. And it’s what computer-generated content cannot, by definition, provide.
This missing element of one human seeking contact with another is, perhaps, what underlies that “uncanny valley” sensation that people talk about when encountering an object that seems nearly human but also off in some disconcerting way. Or, for you Philip Pullman fans, think of how the humans in His Dark Materials are instinctively repulsed by the reality of a person walking the earth without their daemon. Computer-generated art or writing creates the appearance of soulful enterprise minus the soul. It should repulse us.
And let me make it clear that I’m not talking about the use of computers to assist in art-making. At that level, the computer is another tool, and a powerful one at that. I’m talking about the concept of the computer creating the art on its own, via programming that removes all direct human input from the end result.
Now then, in a world in which people interact with content in a rapid-fire, look-share-and-forget kind of way, the essential difference between computer-generated and human-generated content may end up unnoticed or disregarded. If so this will be a symptom of a culture that is losing ts capacity for any sort of interior reflection, and with it the desire to seek genuine contact with one another.
The point at which human writing and computer writing become indistinguishable on the surface may mark an inevitable moment in technological development. The question is whether we will have the resolve required to stay informed—to demand transparency in our content sourcing much as we have been learning to know where our meat and produce come from. I contend this will always matter, but am not all that optimistic that the average American, ever intoxicated by convenience, will agree with me.
The ineffable connection
Music actually presents a bit of a special case, because, in a way, we’ve been confronting a related surface-versus-depth issue in the music world for quite a while, long before Shimon came along. Because whether or not we are dealing with computers writing music themselves, we’ve had a corresponding circumstance in the context of sound generated via digital programming versus human hands on physical instruments.
Another thought experiment: program a computer to generate the exact sound of Kenneth Pattengale, of the Milk Carton Kids, playing lead guitar, and then record Pattengale actually playing. These two recordings may be impossible to tell apart. But they are different. The pleasure of Pattengale’s guitar-playing is intimately tied to the knowledge that a human being is producing these amazing sounds in real time and real space. (This is why watching him play versus simply listening to the sound intensifies the joy of the experience.) You don’t have to know Pattengale personally to sense the ineffable connection between performer and audience when you are witnessing his physical effort (which by the way he makes look effortless). Note, however, that you don’t have to see him playing; as long as you know an actual person was playing an actual guitar, the effect on the listener is real.
This is why the “Look: a computer can do the same thing!” framework is dishonest. In an age of consummate computer-generated mimicry (“deepfakes” represent the malicious end of this spectrum), being able to tell, merely by looking or listening, whether a computer produced something or not becomes a false benchmark of validity.
And yes, there certainly exists a lot content in our information-saturated world that requires, for its creation, nothing beyond surface input, content that can therefore if necessary be produced without concerns about lack of depth. I’ll be sorry to know that this may cause human beings to lose their jobs in various arenas, but, sure, send the robots in there and let them do their thing if they must. Just stop writing poetry please. And, dear god, no singer/songwriter tunes. I mean, a human creating art via the filter of his or her own psyche and history, versus a computer “studying” thousands of songs to learn to produce human-sounding lyrics: which would you rather spend your human life listening to?
Truth be told, this is one of the main reasons why I resist the urge to use Siri or Alexa, above and beyond the privacy issues. When I talk to someone, I want to hear, in return, a voice attached to the baked-in reality of conscious human life, with all its history and emotions and frailties. To hear words spoken based on algorithms and machine learning leaves me feeling not spooked but profoundly sad. When Forster said “Only connect,” he didn’t have a USB cord in mind.
And what of the day when computers themselves are in some meaningful way sentient? Oh, don’t get me started. I don’t personally believe that a construction of metal and plastic that ultimately bases its experience on an on-off switch of 0s and 1s, a machine lacking the innate awareness of its tissues’ organic fate—because it has no tissues and no organic fate—can ever be sentient in a way that equates to human consciousness. When computer “consciousness” arrives—if it arrives—it will be its own territory (located, no doubt, somewhere in the uncanny valley). How much you might or might not be interested in learning about and hearing from this new kind of consciousness will be yours to determine.
Me, I’m sticking with the humans. They still have so much to say and I so much to learn about this existence of ours, fated to decay and disappear, and yet requiring neither a plugged-in power source nor ever any operating system updates. Our eventual deaths, to borrow Silicon Valley promo-talk, turn out to be not a bug but a feature. A defining component of our consciousness, this knowledge of our own mortality is what undergirds our artistic inclinations, and, paradoxically, fills our lives with the capacity for profound meaning and connection. The smartest computer in the world will never know what this is like. I don’t need it to write me a poem or sing me a song.
“New Year, New Me,” already pithily arranged, strips down even further, shortly after the halfway point, allowing front woman Haley Shea to draw attention to the following lyrics:
I keep playing my own therapist
And I’m convinced I’m good at it
Packed into these lines is the layered theme of this appealing midtempo rocker. With a blasé crispness suited to the matter at hand, Shea initially sings of the inevitable disappointments of unfulfilled new year’s resolutions. But this isn’t a cynical pity party. If, yes, we annually set ourselves up for failure by making new year’s resolutions in the first place, then maybe this inevitability is itself worth pondering. Most of us want to be better people but at some point have to confront the reality that you don’t get there via new year’s resolutions. Being convinced that one can be one’s own therapist is a poignant part of the wistful predicament, but recognizing that this is what one keeps trying to do is, maybe, a first step towards actual change. And maybe approaching the self with compassion rather than reproof offers a new hope, having nothing to do with making fated-to-fail “resolutions” (a word Shea does not in fact employ here).
So yes I guess every now and then I am engaged by a song’s lyrics, however much that is not normally the case for me here. As for the music, the first thing I like a lot is the laid-back lead guitar line, which comprises the introduction: it’s concise, melodic, and self-assured. The verse unfolds so casually as to seem spontaneous, with a couple of nicely-placed chord changes (e.g., 0:25), then launches into the chorus on a riff itself so understated as to be nearly nonexistent (0:37)—a musical reinforcement, perhaps, of the self’s predicament here: does stasis make change impossible, or is there some oh-so-gentle way to accept the self that can lead to transformation?
Sløtface is a band based in Stavanger, Norway. Although consistently identified as a punk pop (or a pop punk; is there a difference?) band, Sløtface (original name Slutface, and that’s still how you pronounce it), presents more accurately as a band that knows how to write and perform crafty, accessible rock songs, their guitar-laced volume consistently tempered by musical know-how and Shea’s approachable vocal style. Note that Shea has American parents, but grew up in Norway; the band’s other three members are Norwegian. “New Year, New Me” can be found on Sløtface’s new album, Sorry For The Late Reply, released late last month via Nettwerk/Propeller Recordings.
The oddly inviting instrumental “Home Shore Highlights” intermingles the organic and the electronic with idiosyncratic aplomb. Listen, for instance, to how the synthesizer takes the lead at some moments, a homely glockenspiel at others. The overall effect is a singular type of unsophisticated sophistication—it feels both homespun and skillfully assembled. On the one hand, the song is little more than a variety of recurring, related melodies on top of an unhurried tropical beat; on the other hand, things feel ongoingly off-kilter and endearing. As different sounds take turns in the spotlight, one consistent underlying element is the hands-on percussion, mixed with a bashy spaciousness that adds three-dimensionality to the aural landscape.
What might be the song’s signature moment, if not an actual hook, is that repeating place in the unfolding melody in which we get an even-tempoed march up the scale: a full, eight-note ascent that, in fact, occurs in pairs—when it happens once, it happens again a few seconds later (first at 0:43/0:51). Once this progression gets in your head, you tend to anticipate it in a variety of spots in which it doesn’t show itself. This makes its final appearance, at 3:04/3:12, seem particularly gratifying
“Home Shore Highlights” is the first single available from Rain Patch, the second Rewilding album, which is due out in April. Rewilding is masterminded by the Philadelphia-based musician Jake McFee, who wrote and recorded the bulk of the album in Glacier Bay, Alaska, where he decamped for a few summers starting in 2017.
You can pre-order the album (digital, vinyl, cassette) via Bandcamp.
A balm to the jangled-nerve world of 2020, “The Only Ones” is two guitars and two voices, all four elements interlacing with masterful ease. The end result is a song at once gentle and sturdy, with a lullaby-like loveliness that helps nudge the lyrics over the edge from despair into something closer to hope. Weirdly enough, I’m hearing an almost Springsteen-esque conviction at the center of this un-Springsteen-like composition, something maybe in the mettle of the chorus’s descending melody, and its ambiguous but stirring lyrics.
The Milk Carton Kids are the duo of Joey Ryan (the tall one) and Kenneth Pattengale (the shorter one). Known for their impressive guitar skills, consummate harmonizing, and amusing stage banter, the Kids have, since 2011, been almost single-handedly in charge of keeping the time-honored “singing duo” concept alive in our 21st-century musical awareness. Written accounts of the Kids turn inevitably to talk of Simon & Garfunkel and the Everly Brothers, both of which have no doubt influenced these guys. But to me, the back-in-the-day musicians the Milk Carton Kids evoke far more directly is the duo Aztec Two-Step, who featured not only the gorgeous harmonizing but, crucially, the interplay of twin acoustic guitars, including some virtuosic finger-picking.
If you by the way have some time on your hands you could do much worse than to watch the Milk Carton Kids concert DVD, “Live from Lincoln Theatre,” which is streaming on YouTube. Pattengale’s facility as a lead guitarist is all but miraculous, and is almost as much of a visual treat as an aural one.
“The Only Ones” is the title track to the most recent Milk Carton Kids recording, an EP released this past October. MP3 via The Current.
(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.)
While I will admit to not being the world’s biggest Who fan, I had not meant to leave them off of an Eclectic Playlist Series mix until this, the seventh year of our mutual adventures. And so they make a belated appearance with one of their earlier classics, when the band seemed nearly to be inventing power pop versus the brash, anthemic material they generated as Tommy led to Who’s Next led to Quadrophenia. Now that I think about it, I guess my playlists have in fact been resistant to including much in the way of recognizable classic rock, even as I always dip into the classic rock time frame, chronologically. What can I say?: I have a hard-wired distaste for songs that have been over-exposed and over-played, and most everything considered to be canon in the classic rock realm at this point qualifies. (Thus my effort to construct a playlist of “classic rock you aren’t tired of”: see “Rescuing Classic Rock,” posted back in June 2018). Anyway, here’s the Who, along with a fair number of artists, this month, you’ve likely heard of (Stevie Wonder, PJ Harvey, Miles Davis, New Order, Suzanne Vega, et al.). I think I needed some reassurance during these challenging times. Does democracy lead inexorably to cravenness and idiocy? Historians may some day sort that out; in the meantime, aural comfort food is, sometimes, the order of the day.
Notes for the extra curious:
* This is the second time I’ve opened a playlist with a Warren Zevon track, both of which, now, have been songs that were side-one/track-one offerings from the late great singer/songwriter. He was especially good at crafting songs with the ineffable introductory panache ideally characterizing an album’s first song. Probably half of the songs I’ve launched playlists here have themselves been side-one/track-ones. That said, I also do like hearing opening-track potential in songs buried deeper down on an album, turning them into opening statements. I guess I draw no conclusions.
* Accidental discovery while constructing this playlist: the song “It Would Be So Easy,” from Cassandra Wilson’s 2006 album Thunderbird, has incorrect lyrics posted, across the entire web. That is, every single lyrics site has the same lyrics posted for this song, and these lyrics are wrong—they’re for an entirely different song (which for no apparent reason is “I’ll Find a Way,” by Rachel Yamagata). It’s a bizarre enough mistake, but the fact that you’ll see these same wrong lyrics posted on every lyrics site in existence is not only aggravating, but disconcerting. Sure, let’s put the robots in charge. What could possibly go wrong?
* PJ Harvey released the album Let England Shake back in 2011, years before the country’s current challenges…or, maybe not.
* I’m not sure there’s ever been an artistically and commercially successful band as able as New Order to combine scintillating music with really ditzy lyrics. What they seem to have been able to do is take the well-established reality that rock lyrics, read on their own, can seem insipid, and just flaunt it. I mean: I’d tell the world and save my soul/But rain falls down and I feel cold/A cold that sleeps within my heart/It tears the Earth and sun apart ?? And yet the song is sheer magic from start to finish. (Bonus: don’t miss the segue into “Doctor Monroe”: it’s an accidental keeper.)
* This web site’s namesake is the multi-track epic “Fingertips,” by They Might Be Giants, but I’ll take Emiliana Torrini’s very different song with the same name under my wing here too.
* Speaking of side-one/track-ones, “Look Around” opened the album Where I’m Coming From, which in 1971 became the first Stevie Wonder album that the artist (only 21 at the time) was able to produce without interference from Berry Gordy. This underrated album—unfavorably compared at the time to Marvin Gaye’s concurrently released What’s Going On, for its social consciousness—contains songs ranging from very good to classic, and even so merely hints at the brilliance soon to come in albums like Talking Book and Innervisions.
* Gone, tragically, now for nearly 20 years (!), Kirsty MacColl will always live on in my musical life. This Billy Bragg cover is definitive: she took a skeleton of a tune, layered it with harmonies, and even got Bragg himself to add a verse because she thought it was originally too short. And just to show that not all rock lyrics are insipid, is this awesome or what?:
Once upon a time at home
I sat beside the telephone
Waiting for someone to pull me through
When at last it didn’t ring, I knew it wasn’t you
Full playlist below the widget.
“Johnny Strikes up the Band” – Warren Zevon (Excitable Boy, 1978)
“If You Wanna” – The Vaccines (What Did You Expect From the Vaccines?, 2011)
“A New England” – Kirsty MacColl (single, 1984)
“So Sad About Us” – The Who (A Quick One, 1966)
“It Would Be So Easy” – Cassandra Wilson (Thunderbird, 2006)
“Fingertips” – Emiliana Torrini (Love in the Time of Science, 1999)
“To Cut a Long Story Short” – Spandau Ballet (Journeys to Glory, 1981)
“Let England Shake” – PJ Harvey (Let England Shake, 2011)
“You’re Gonna Miss Me” – Cletus Marland (single, 1965)
“All I Need is Everything” – Over the Rhine (Good Dog Bad Dog,1996)
“Windows” – Utopia (Oops! Wrong Planet, 1977)
“Carmine St.” – Kaki King (Everybody Loves You, 2003)
“Sunspots” – Julian Cope (single remix, 1984)
“River of Dirt” – Marisa Nadler (Little Hells, 2009)
“Look Around” – Stevie Wonder (Where I’m Coming From, 1971)
“World Before Columbus” – Suzanne Vega (Nine Objects of Desire, 1996)
“Shellshock” – New Order (single, 1986)
“Doctor Monroe” – Casey Dienel (Wind-Up Canary, 2006)
“Seven Steps to Heaven” – Miles Davis (Seven Steps to Heaven, 1963)
“Me at the Museum, You at the Wintergardens” – Tiny Ruins (Brightly Painted One, 2014)
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.
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.
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.
“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.
(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.)
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)
Fingertips 