“Something Wrong” – Hand Habits

Hypnotic veneer, melodic core

“Something Wrong” – Hand Habits

Thumpy, minimal, and deliberate at the outset, “Something Wrong” turns melodic and bittersweet in the chorus. The song’s instrumental and structural diversity is a subtle super power here; we get gently strummed acoustic guitars and crunchy electric guitars mingling agreeably, with austere synthesizer lines waiting in the wings, while the time signature bump in the verse, with its 6/4 insertions, keeps the ear off-balance (in a good way). The brief a capella break at 1:01 resets the vibe and leads into some subtle but terrific vocal harmonies. That insistent instrumental lead at 1:26, running through the verse without the vocals, is either a synth or a processed guitar of some kind; at 2:14, it’s definitely the synthesizer, offering a new melodic line and–listen for it–a plucky banjo in the background mix. The song’s hypnotic veneer masks over its variegated elements, coalescing in the plaintive beauty of the simple chorus.

Hand Habits is the name guitarist Meg Duffy uses for their solo work. Highly credentialed as a session guitarist for the likes of the War on Drugs, Weyes Blood, and Perfume Genius, they were also lead guitarist in Kevin Morby’s live band from 2015 to 2018. “Something Wrong” is a track from the six-song EP Sugar the Bruise, which was released in June. MP3 via KEXP.

“If You Care” – Post Modern Connection

Sprightly feel, melancholy undercurrent

“If You Care” – Post Modern Connection

There’s a refreshing Haircut 100 vibe to this sprightly romper with a melancholy undercurrent. Two guitars in interplay anachronistically drive us forward–crisp skittery guitar for the rhythm, a bright finger-picked guitar on top for the lead. I’m really connecting to the maturity of the sound here, and while I’m not even exactly sure what I mean by that, I’m guessing it’s to do with a few different details: the dusky tone of front man Tega Ovie’s wistful voice, delivered without electronic gimmickry; the aforementioned guitar work, which you’re not hearing much if any of in the music aimed at and consumed em masse by the TikTok generation; and also something in the lyrics, which seem at once simple and elusive and conjure a scenario that feels miles removed from the uncurbed rhyming and pouty relationship micro-management stories that infect pop music produced by and/or aimed at the aforementioned generation. On the one hand this is old guy talk; on the other hand, if musical standards have any long-term meaning, there is good reason to be dispirited by a lot of what’s out there getting millions of streams here in 2023. In this context, “mature” is a major compliment and breath of fresh air from a new-ish band.

Post Modern Connection is a duo from British Columbia, with Georges Nasrallah alongside Ovie. Theirs is a multicultural partnership–Ovie is from Nigeria, Nasrallah from Lebanon. PMC used to be a larger band but they seem to have reduced post-COVID. “If You Care” is a single released in September. Post Modern Connection has one EP under their belts, 2021’s Clustered Umbrella, and a second one coming out in November, entitled A Welcome Change, which is where you’ll find “If You Care.”

“Creampuff” – Soltero

Homey and unhurried

“Creampuff” – Soltero

“Creampuff” lopes along with an attractive offhandedness; the 18 or so seconds the song takes to settle into its spangly, lo-fi groove is a good indication of how simultaneously casual and purposeful things are going to be here. Tim Howard, Soltero’s front man and general mastermind, sings with a waver that is not to be corrected or denied; I think he skates pretty close to losing pitch here and there as well, although my ear isn’t perfect on the one hand so I can’t be sure, and on the other hand I enjoy loose, human voices like this, so the wavery voice and pitch are fine by me. Vocal perfectionists be warned.

In any case, “Creampuff” is homey and unhurried, positioning sneaky-strong melodies on top of a twangy, off-kilter accompaniment–all instruments, it should be noted, played by Howard. Structurally, the song is an amiable parade of interrelated sections; how much are repeats and how much are different iterations–never mind what’s a verse and what’s a chorus and hey is that a bridge in there too?–is difficult to work out without a lot of careful listening, but that itself is part of the charm. The overall effect is a friendly musical saunter–until, that is, the song crosses paths with an unexpected gong and muted alarms around 3:49. A tremulous, winding-down coda ensues, by the end rendering the bulk of “Creampuff” something of a dimly remembered dream. My immediate inclination is to hit the play button again.

Tim Howard is an American who has been living in Germany since 2018. “Creampuff” is the first English-language song he’s recorded since 2017. Soltero through its extended lifetime has been both a band and a solo project for Howard. This is now the fifth time Soltero has been featured here, dating all the way back to 2004; see the Artist Index for details.

Maybe another way would have been better

Eclectic Playlist Series 10.9 – Sept. 2023

Hop-skipping as usual through the decades and musical styles, I seem to have unconsciously leaned in the direction of “interesting juxtapositions” this time around. There’s Lana Del Rey into “Telstar,” for one, and “Telstar” into Depeche Mode, for another. The opening duo is another sort of juxtaposition, offering power pop from 30 years apart, back to back. Then there’s the offbeat sense made from Carole King leading into Jill Scott, or Veruca Salt into that luscious Lydia Luce song. And what to make of Elvis Costello into Buddy Holly? I didn’t adjoin them on purpose but realized afterwards how much Elvis in his early incarnation was identified with his Buddy Holly glasses and wardrobe. I was instead going here for comparing and contrasting the pre-rock’n’roll vibe of the Elvis song with the early rock’n’roll potency of Buddy Holly’s (posthumous) release.

And there’s more, as you’ll see. As always I encourage listening all the way to the end, even if it takes a few sessions: unlike old vinyl albums, the songs don’t get any worse towards the end of side two. The Roches song that concludes (and lends a title to) the mix is in particular a distinctive, overlooked treasure:

1. “Girl of My Dreams” – Bram Tchaikovsky (Strange Man, Changed Man, 1979)
2. “Carly (Goddess of Death)” – The Capes (Hello, 2006)
3. “Twilight” – Shawn Colvin (Cover Girl, 1994)
4. “Mariners Apartment Complex” – Lana Del Rey (Norman Fucking Rockwell, 2019)
5. “Telstar” – The Tornados (single, 1962)
6. “Everything Counts” – Depeche Mode (Construction Time Again, 1983)
7. “Quiet” – Lucy Bell (Emotion Pending EP, 2023)
8. “Pleasant Valley Sunday” – Carole King (demo, 1966; The Legendary Demos, 2012)
9. “Hate on Me” – Jill Scott (The Real Thing – Words & Music, Vol. 3, 2007)
10. “Jimmie Standing in the Rain” – Elvis Costello (National Ransom, 2010)
11. “Love’s Made a Fool of You” – Buddy Holly (demo, 1958; released 1964)
12. “Got to Get You Back” – Sons of Robin Stone (single, 1974)
13. “No Substitute” – The Shivvers (unreleased single, 1980)
14. “Seether” – Veruca Salt (American Thighs, 1994)
15. “Occasionally” – Lydia Luce (Dark River, 2021)
16. “Sorrow” – The Merseys (single, 1966)
17. “(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais” – The Clash (single, 1978)
18. “Capacity” – Charly Bliss (Young Enough, 2019)
19. “Hang Down Your Head” – Tom Waits (Rain Dogs, 1985)
20. “So” – The Roches (Can We Go Home Now, 1995)

Random notes:

* “Girl of My Dreams” was one of a handful of late-’70s new wave nuggets to hit the US top 40 (just barely: it peaked at #37), and one of the best of the bunch. Bram Tchaikovsky was the stage name adopted by British guitarist Peter Bramall, first as a member of the great pub rock band The Motors and then as leader of his own band, to which he also lent the name Bram Tchaikovsky. The rest of the band’s debut album, Strange Man, Changed Man, thanks in part to the leader’s appealingly resonant voice, was above average guitar rock, but has long since fallen into obscurity. Even the indelible power pop gem “Girl of My Dreams” has but 75,000 streams on Spotify; I guess it has yet to find its way onto a streaming TV series. By comparison, its 1979 new wave top-40 compatriot, Nick Lowe’s “Cruel to be Kind,” has some 27 million streams. Numbers never tell the whole story.

* Along with her masterly strengths as a singer and acoustic guitar player, Shawn Colvin has long displayed a preternatural gift as a covers artist–perhaps, I’m guessing, because of those previously mentioned strengths. In her early years as a performer, many a concert highlight moment came from how she interpreted songs–songs that often arrived from much more of a rock setting than her “girl with a guitar” milieu. And while her cleverly named 1994 album Cover Girl may be a bit too much of a good thing–one or two well-placed cover songs in a concert may have a bigger impact than 13 in a row–there’s no question that the good stuff is top-notch. I’ve always been partial in particular to her transformative cover of the Robbie Robertson song “Twilight.” How she even heard what she does with it in the Band’s slightly (and oddly) perky, organ-frilled arrangement is something of a miracle. But boy does she nail this one–an all-time great cover.

* Veruca Salt has a long, involved history, with a little bit of everything: buzz band status, critical and popular backlash, intra-band feuding, a long hiatus, and, more recently, the unexpected rapprochement and return to form. “Seether” is the song that introduced the Chicago quartet to the world, but American Thighs, the grunge-influenced debut, is possibly not quite as good as the band’s surprise reunion album, 2015’s Ghost Notes. In any case, check that one out if you enjoy their sound and missed the memo. And now the latest news from Verucaland: in June, front woman Louise Post, after all these years, released her first solo album, Sleepwalker. Sounds intriguing after a quick, abbreviated listen–definitely a broadening and/or mellowing and/or 2020-ing of the Veruca Salt palette, with a couple of characteristically crunchy numbers in the mix. I hope to go back and listen more closely.

* While the Monkees made some noticeable tweaks to “Pleasant Valley Sunday” when they did their big hit version, there’s something in Carole King’s delivery of the song she co-wrote with Gerry Goffin that really hits home. She and Goffin were writing from their own experience of having moved out of New York City to the suburbs and their distaste for the lifestyle encountered there. (There was in fact a Pleasant Valley Way in their New Jersey neighborhood.) As for the Monkees’ version, King was reportedly unhappy with the changes that were made, which included a faster pace and some new and shifted words in the bridge. Admittedly the lyric changes robbed them of a bit of sense but this wasn’t Pulitzer Prize winning poetry in the first place. And the musical changes, which included the electric guitar line that opens the song and later recurs, helped flesh out and solidify a song that was a bit on the short side. King apparently made peace with the alterations over time; on her 2005 live album, she sings the song the Monkees’ way, complete with the introductory guitar lick (done here on an acoustic guitar).

* The Lydia Luce song, featured here in 2020, is just gorgeous. The laid-back verse eases you in but that chorus is thrilling, with its melancholy chord changes, dramatic build, and perfect resolution. If you didn’t hear it the first time here’s another invitation.

* Power-pop-oriented Milwaukee band the Shivvers had a brief, shining moment of regional fame in the early ’80s, which included being named best local band by readers of the Milwaukee Journal in 1982. But they never managed to get a record deal during their lifespan, which involved but one officially (self-) released single and a batch of other songs recorded but tucked away for years on (so I imagine) dusty boxes of tape reels. In 2006, a record label specializing in–hang on, this is a mouthful–“rare, obscure, independent and undiscovered punk, post-punk, D.I.Y., and power-pop groups from the U.S. and the U.K. 1977-1984” released an album called–hang on, another mouthful–Lost Hits from Milwaukee’s First Family of Power Pop: 1979-82, featuring every bit of recorded Shivvers material in existence. “No Substitute,” written by front woman Jill Kossoris, is one of 21 tracks. A song very much rooted in its jangly, new-wave-y time, it also has that timeless quality built into power pop, if only because the genre persists against all odds into the current day. You won’t find any on the charts, you’ll see classics generally ignored (see “Girl of My Dreams,” above), but the genre does not die, perhaps because the human yearning for melody, also against all odds, survives even the harshest, unmelodic pop cultural moments, however long-lasting. I’m waiting for the current one to end but am not holding my breath.

* The Philly-based Sons of Robin Stone were also mostly a local, unrecorded phenomenon, but they did at least briefly have a record deal: “Got to Get You Back” was the B-side of their one single for ATCO Records. The song eventually found its way to Northern Soul aficionados, as many great B-sides eventually did and still do. Note that on Discogs it’s listed as an A-side but according to a relative of one of the original band members, in a note on an internet forum from 2002, this was actually the B-side. (I do my homework here.) Note too that the original label does not have an A or a B on either side, but the item number on the label for this song ends in “1” while the number on the flip side ends in “0,” which suggest this is in fact the B-side. (More homework.) These guys were typically classified as “blue-eyed soul,” which was the emergent euphemism in the ’70s for white groups aligning sonically with music Black artists were making at the time. Whatever: it’s a pretty cool early disco song, complete with a time-signature oddity in the chorus that adds a gratifying twist and yet somehow doesn’t interrupt the groove.

* If the opening lines of “Sorrow” ring some sort of distant bell in your mind, it’s probably because George Harrison launches into them, non-sequiturishly, in the extended coda to the great Beatles song “It’s All Too Much”–check it out at 4:17. Like many hits from the past, “Sorrow” has a backstory. Its recording life began, unassumingly, as a B-side of a single by the American band The McCoys, released in 1965. The Liverpool-based band The Merseys (formerly The Merseybeats) recorded their own version in 1966, and this one became the big hit in the UK that Harrison quoted. Digging deeper: the song was co-written by Bob Feldman, Jerry Goldstein, and Richard Gottehrer, the team that had written “My Boyfriend’s Back” and the McCoys’ big hit “Hang On Sloopy,” among other songs. They also briefly recorded as a group called the Strangeloves, where they had a hit with the song “I Want Candy” (later revived indelibly by the band Bow Wow Wow). Gottehrer was arguably the most consequential of the three, going on to found Sire Records in New York with the late Seymour Stein, a formative moment in the American new wave scene. He would go on to produce albums for Blondie, the Go-Go’s, Marshall Crenshaw, and, more recently, two 2010s albums by the Dum Dum Girls.

“Gray Apples” – Sarah Morrison

Meditative, idiosyncratic, approachable

“Gray Apples” – Sarah Morrison

“Gray Apples” is the kind of artful, meditative, idiosyncratic yet approachable song one rarely hears here in the algorithm-choked 2020s. A direct spiritual descendant of the ’80s and ’90s work of the great Canadian singer/songwriter Jane Siberry, “Gray Apples” offers metaphysical musings within the container of a three-and-a-half minute pop song, held together by Sarah Morrison’s airy and elastic voice.

Similar to Siberry at her finest, Morrison deals in unorthodox musical and lyrical interruptions, such as what first happens between 1:00 and 1:16, when the heartbeat pulse of the verse stops, the time signature disappears, and Morrison’s lyrics take on a spontaneous, spoken-poetry feel. And not to drive the Siberry comparison too far into the ground, but I’m even noting specific words here that directly call back Siberry songs (apples and Bessie, to name two), and likewise see Morrison’s evocation of what she calls “The Holy Comforter–indifference” as an echo of Siberry’s discussion of “The Great Leveler” in her epic “Mimi on the Beach.”

That all said, you don’t have to be familiar with any of this to appreciate “Gray Apples,” but if you happen to know Jane’s work you’ll get an extra kick out of what’s in store for you here. In drawing consciously or not (I’m betting consciously) on the work of an underappreciated luminary in the history of singer/songwriter music, Morrison has composed and recorded something with a subtle sparkle all its own.

“Gray Apples” is a song from Morrison’s debut album, Attachment Figure, which is coming out next month on Ramp Local Records. Morrison is based in Tallahassee, and has previously been the live keyboardist for Locate S,1, playing there alongside Clayton Rychlik and Ross Brand, who are also in the band Of Montreal. Rychlik and Brand play with Morrison on Attachment Figure, and co-produced the album with her. You can check out one other song and pre-order the album over on Bandcamp.

photo credit: Chris Cameron

“Conquering Kangaroo” – Aaron Hunter Dennis

Arcane but good-natured

“Conquering Kangaroo” – Aaron Hunter Dennis

With its acoustic groove and delightfully arcane lyrics, “Conquering Kangaroo” nestles into an agreeable Guided By Voices meets Sufjan Stevens vibe, with a perhaps unexpected nod in the direction of Lindsey Buckingham. The song has two strong, competing characteristics: Aaron Hunter Dennis’s good-natured story-telling voice, and lyrics that tell no discernible story whatsoever. Many songs succeed either because of or in spite of unintelligible story lines; this is an especially successful one, a few tart phrases standing in for narrative clarity: “baseball cap but no team name”; “the pills have been helping, too”; “a company run by brutes.”

And while I mentioned the “acoustic groove,” careful listeners will note there’s more going on here than strummy acoustic guitars. There are scratchy high-necked guitar accents, wordless vocal flourishes, and a chorus in 7/4 time; the abstract (and sometimes unintelligible) lyrics further disrupt any idea of this being just a mellow toe-tapper. Probably my favorite recurring moment is the lovely way the verse melody resolves into the end-of-verse rhyme (first heard around 0:22) only to partially disconcert the ear with those 7/4 measures that follow in the chorus. Keeping the ear off-balance is a potent maneuver if a song likewise delivers some counter-balancing comfort. A parallel tactic: Dennis gives the cryptic lyrics an intelligible, if idiosyncratic, structure, in which the last word of each verse all rhyme (or slant-rhyme, to be more precise). This also underlines the idea that the songwriter knows exactly what he’s doing, even if the listener remains slightly bamboozled.

As for what the phrase “conquering kangaroo” means or refers to, all that pops in my head is a cartoon concept of a kangaroo with boxing gloves on. Is this a metaphor for the human condition, us poor souls stuck fighting battles we shouldn’t even be involved with? Your guess is as good as mine.

Aaron Hunter Dennis is a singer/songwriter based in San Diego. “Conquering Kangaroo” is his first single as a solo artist. He was previously in the 2010s band Tan Sister Radio, which had a song of theirs placed on the Showtime series Shameless; the royalty check funded a makeshift studio for Dennis, who there began to record his own material. Thanks to the artist for the MP3, which came courtesy of Tennessee Kamanski. Kamanski is half of the engaging duo of Allen LeRoy Hug, who have been featured here both in review and playlist. Kamanski and Dennis are engaged to be married. He’s played and recorded with Allen LeRoy Hug, she’s now helping with promotion, and so sent me the song, and here you are. Occasionally it’s that easy.

“Francine” – Brandon De La Cruz

Hushed and minimal

“Francine” – Brandon De La Cruz

Fingertips veteran Brandon De La Cruz returns with another of his intimate and tremulous gems. Possessing a whispery, minimalist style that can veer in an ill-fated direction in less capable hands, De La Cruz quietly mesmerizes, transcending the seemingly straightforward setting.

“Francine” launches off a classic folk-guitar riff, swinging gently into a subdued tale of (I think) long-distance love. De La Cruz’s minimalism extends to his storytelling: he’s short on concrete details, long on suggestive phrases. And, as I can’t help but continue to mention, the man is a master of using simple words to skip at the surface of deep meaning; here, the entire song, besides the name “Francine” and two exceptions (“between” and “apart”), is composed of one-syllable words. This is not as easy as it may look, and works with the gentle music to create a trance-like vibe. (De La Cruz’s Bandcamp bio notes an interest in Japanese haiku, which makes sense.) One telling, self-referential line comes near the beginning: “Words don’t say what I mean.” And yet they’re all we have to go on, to quote Tom Stoppard.

In and around the hushed and humble setting you may notice some stray sounds in the background. Towards the beginning, underneath the finger-picked guitar, an echoey string effect (0:12) hints at the tweaks to the audioscape that De La Cruz uses to ever so subtly distort the vibe. Throughout most of the song, if you listen for it you’ll hear a low ambient rumble that gives the impression of his playing in an empty warehouse or maybe an amphitheater. There’s a sound resembling a backward guitar loop beginning around 0:54 and continuing softly from there. Later, a couple of unexpected voices, with a “found sound” character, float in and out of the mix. De La Cruz reports that his inspiration in this case is rooted in his time working part-time at Mississippi Records in Portland, which puts out a lot of folk and country reissues; he sees the sampling as a creative way to collaborate with artists who are long gone from the world. The end result to my ears has the collage-like feel of something you might encounter in an art gallery.

“Francine” is a track from De La Cruz’s new album, Two Kilos of Blue, which was recorded in New Zealand in 2020, and released last month. De La Cruz was in New Zealand visiting friends when the pandemic broke out; he ended up stuck in there for a year. However inconvenient that might have been personally, it seems to have been amenable artistically–Two Kilos of Blue is the second album he recorded while marooned, and is a collection of songs he’d written over the previous ten years. De La Cruz is based in Portland; this is his third full-length album, coming after four previous EPs, the first recording dating back to 2010. He has been featured on Fingertips in 2011, 2013, and 2020.

Some things just don’t get through

Eclectic Playlist Series 10.8 – August 2023

Seems only fitting that I’m breaking the rules this month for Sinéad O’Connor, who was something of a rule-breaker herself during her eventful and sadly troubled life. I’m breaking two interrelated rules, in fact: the rule I have about not featuring an artist more than once in a calendar year (I’d already placed “John I Love You” in a playlist in April this year), along with the rule about not featuring an artist more than once in any given playlist (which of course breaks the first rule too). As you’ll see, I open and close this month’s mix with the late great Irish singer/songwriter, and it’s surely not enough of a tribute to the artist and human being that she was. The abrupt news of her death late last month prompted a lot of salutes that one can only wish had happened more thoroughly and supportively while she was alive. She had more than her share of challenges during her years on Earth but in some important ways she was a pure and searching spirit; and boy oh boy oh boy could she sing. Here’s what I wrote in April:

Sinéad O’Connor has one of rock’s most indelible singing voices, and this tender but intense song off her somewhat disregarded Universal Mother album shows it off brilliantly. Spiritually and psychologically complex, she has for decades presented as someone neither critics nor the mainstream public quite know what to do with; her career has in any case ricocheted through any number of controversies. But that voice. And let’s not overlook her capacity for writing some mighty tunes. Last year she announced her retirement from the music industry. And yet (there’s always more with her) this year she surfaced with a new version of “The Skye Boat Song,” which has been the theme song for the show Outlander; O’Connor’s impressive version will be heard during the upcoming seventh season of that popular TV series.

I stand by what I said but for one sad detail: it turns out that there was not, tragically, much more with her, or from her. But that voice: it would move me every time I heard it; it may well be my favorite singing voice in the history of rock’n’roll, which I know is saying a lot. But to my ears, she was that great. And an underrated songwriter to boot. Which relates to this: among the tributes I read, nothing dealt in any detail with her 21st-century output–everyone seemed stuck on “Nothing Compares 2 U” (a landmark recording to be sure) and the SNL/Pope photo episode (she was cancelled decades before that was even a thing). Usually the narratives merely made passing reference to how her albums didn’t sell well after that, which is such a reductive and stupid way to summarize the work of an actual artist. Me, I find Faith and Courage (2000) and I’m Not Bossy, I’m the Boss (2014) to be really satisfying, the latter in particular, coming entirely out of the blue, with Sinéad as confessional and pointed as ever, but also a bit cheeky (check out that album cover). Most of the songs on both albums were well-built and approachable. Music critics seemed not to like it when her music was too accessible, which is elitist nonsense as far as I’m concerned.

RIP Sinéad O’Connor. And the cliché in this case is very true: we really did hardly know you.

But yes there are 18 other songs here between the two Sinéad offerings. It’s a bit of a journey, as usual. Notes on a few of the songs can be found below the widget. Here’s what you’re in for:

1. “The Emperor’s New Clothes” – Sinéad O’Connor (I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, 1990)
2. “Little By Little” – Radiohead (The King of Limbs, 2011)
3. “24 Hours” – The Chefs (single, 1981)
4. “I’ll Always Love You” – The Spinners (The Original Spinners, 1967)
5. “Sinner” – The Last Dinner Party (single, 2023)
6. “Fall At Your Feet” – Crowded House (Woodface, 1991)
7. “Birmingham” – Randy Newman (Good Old Boys, 1974)
8. “Many Miles Away” – Kenny Drew (Kenny Drew and His Progressive Piano, 1954)
9. “Boots” – Noe Venable (Boots, 2003)
10. “Get Up Jake” – The Band (B-side, 1969)
11. “Do You Really Wanna Know” – Papercuts (Fading Parade, 2011)
12. “Terry” – Kirsty MacColl (single, 1983)
13. “California Baby” – Carrie Biell (We Get Along, 2021)
14. “Rosemary” – Suzanne Vega (Tried and True: The Best of Suzanne Vega, 1998)
15. “Tuesday Heartbreak” – Stevie Wonder (Talking Book, 1972)
16. “Small Town Crew” – The Brunettes (Structure & Cosmetics, 2007)
17. “Rhoda Mendelbaum” – The Doughboys (single, 1967)
18. “O Pamela” – The Wake (Testament, 1985)
19. “I May Not Be Your Kind” – Garland Jeffreys (Ghost Writer, 1977)
20. “Trouble of the World” – Sinéad O’Connor (single, 2020)

Stray comments:

* Apologies for that first segue; there was no good way–I tried and tried–to transition between track one and two even as I liked, more generally, how the one followed the other. I’ll ask you to overlook that particular clunker, even as it happens right at segue number one.

* There’s another song honoring a recent passing in here, and this was not planned: I had “Get Up Jake” slotted in the playlist a week or two before the startling news broke of Robbie Robertson’s death. I would not necessarily have picked this song as the one to stand in for his brilliant career, but then again it’s perfectly characteristic of the Band’s classic sound. It was recorded for the eponymous second album, but ended up not included, and released as a B-side. I think it’s a fine little song–better, perhaps, than a couple of the songs that made it onto the album. Don’t miss the excellent, twangy guitar work from Robertson.

* Speaking of fine songs not included on an album, check out Suzanne Vega’s “Rosemary,” which to my ears stands with the very best of her work. Hers is another voice I have always loved dearly–the plainspoken beauty of her tone combined with the acuity of her lyrics can be all but mesmerizing. And I’m particularly taken with the way she aspirates her “wh’s” (listen here for the word “why” around 1:38), which reinforces how clearly she enunciates her lyrics. “Rosemary” was released as one of two non-album tracks on 1998’s Tried and True: The Best of Suzanne Vega, which is an unusually top-notch “best-of” album. The record company released a similar album a few years later, entitled Retrospective, which updated the collection with a few songs from her 2001 release, the excellent Songs in Red and Gray. Either one is a great place to start if you’re unfamiliar with her music and might be curious.

* The Brunettes were an appealing duo from New Zealand, active between 1998 and 2009. Their 2007 album, Structure & Cosmetics, was released by Sub Pop here in the U.S. It didn’t seem to help their career too much in the long run but it brought them to my attention; “Small Town Crew” was featured on Fingertips in December 2007, back when reviews were presented in weekly threesomes. Other songs this month that have appeared here previously in a posted review are Noe Venable’s “Boots” (2005), “Do You Really Wanna Know,” from Papercuts (2011), and “California Baby,” from Carrie Biell (2021).

* AllMusic identifies the Scottish band The Wake as “painfully obscure but highly influential.” Sure enough, I’ve only bumped into them recently. I see that they are a band with a long and relatively complex history, and while their recordings date back to the post-punk ’80s, a re-grouped version of the band came back in 2009. Their most recent album is 2012’s A Light Far Out; a single entitled “Clouds Disco” came out in 2015 as a Record Store Day release. “O Pamela” has a forlorn, hypnotic momentum that keeps it engaging for me despite its length; the song opens 1982’s Here Comes Everybody, a keeper of an album for those in the know. But painfully obscure for everyone else.

* Randy Newman is pretty well-known on the one hand but, in my opinion, radically underappreciated on the other. His fluffy compositions for the Toy Story movies are one thing; the deep and quirky songs he’s written for his own albums are entirely another thing. He has specialized over the years in songs featuring unreliable narrators; his 1974 masterpiece Good Old Boys was full of them, including the jaunty, vaguely aggressive fellow who addresses us in “Birmingham.” Two other striking things about Newman, as a composer, are on display here: his unrivaled flair for orchestration; and his gift for mining a sound that hits the ear as unquestionably “American,” a gift he shared with a small handful of classical composers, including John Phillip Sousa and Aaron Copeland. And even his piano parts present like orchestrations; listen to the way the verses finish lyrically but feel incomplete until the piano swings into its run towards resolution. No rock music or pop music songwriters write like this; I don’t think they would know how. The song is a casual miracle.

* The Doughboys are another obscure band with a long and involved history. They hailed from central New Jersey and started as a garage unit doing covers of British bands like the Kinks and the Animals. They released two singles of original material during their initial run from 1965 to 1968, one of which was the curiously appealing “Rhoda Mendelbaum.” The band has had an unlikely second life since 2000, releasing seven 21st-century studio albums to date. Their most recent is 2019’s Running For Covers, on which they cover songs from other bands as well as their own; the version of “Rhoda Mendelbaum” found on Spotify is this much newer rendition. The version you hear on this playlist is the original. I should note that front man Richard X. Heyman has had a extensive solo career, including over a dozen albums to date, the most recent coming in 2022. He veers towards power pop on his own; some of the albums are well worth seeking out if you’re a fan of that durable genre.

* The Sinéad O’Connor song that closes the mix, by the way, is a cover of an old American spiritual, made famous by Mahalia Jackson when she sang it in the Douglas Sirk movie Imitation of Life, in 1959; the scene is available (of course) on YouTube. O’Connor recorded her version in 2020, to support the Black Lives Matter movement. She was quoted as believing the song to be hopeful rather than bleak, but it does take on an eerie resonance here in August 2023.

“The Aaron Waters Show” – Midwestern Dirt

Instrumental-forward journey

“The Aaron Waters Show” – Midwestern Dirt

At once brisk and pensive, “The Aaron Waters Show” keeps a steady pulse even as it diverts through a series of instrumental breaks between verses, along with a one-plus-minute interlude between the third verse and the ensuing bridge, and a one-minute instrumental coda. The song has no chorus, which I think contributes to its restlessness, a sense of looking for something that isn’t arriving. The unusual amount of instrumental time does that too; the vocal sections, together, carry a purposeful undertone of wishing somehow they could do more than they get to do. And they don’t do anything that isn’t laid out first by an instrumental part.

The song’s main riff (first heard at 0:21)–a gently descending guitar line finished with a decisive two-note upturn, the piano and bass joining in–repeats four times in the introduction before it becomes the verse melody at 0:47. Patrick Kapp, reminiscent of Nils Lofgren (anyone?), sings sweetly, with character; he makes the most of the relatively limited time he has to sing. The instrumental breaks keep trying to upstage him–each break following a verse features a different guitar sound. And then comes the long instrumental break after the last verse, which delivers a subtle shift via a new chord pattern introduced between 2:35 and 2:47. It repeats once and then becomes the foundation for the bridge when the vocals resume at 3:02. The lyrics at this point slow down, aiming towards some kind of resolution, even as the background cadence remains, driven by a bass line grown increasingly hyperactive. The vocals wrap by 3:57, and the song proceeds for nearly another minute, finally relaxing the tempo for the last 30 seconds. There’s a strong sense of a journey coming to an end, or maybe at least some kind of adventure ride. Which maybe makes sense given the song’s provenance: the title is a pun on the annual Air and Water Show held every summer in Chicago. The song, says Kapp, was inspired by the way each summer he is initially unnerved by the war-like noise of the aerial practice that precedes the show, only each year to remember it’s only the show, everything is more or less okay.

Midwestern Dirt began as a studio project for Kapp while he was living in Brooklyn, with recordings fleshed out with the help of family and friends. After he returned to Chicago in 2019, and then after the worst of the pandemic, the project became a full five-piece band. “The Aaron Waters Show” is a song from the album Twilight at a Burning Hill, coming out next month.

“Sorry I Can’t Stay” – La Faute

Whispery vocals, echoey arpeggios

“Sorry I Can’t Stay” – La Faute

Echoey piano argeggios lead us into Peggy Messing’s up-close, whispery vocals and how can you not be captivated? The melodies are lovely, the mood bittersweet, reinforced by the repeated titular phrase in the chorus. As a series of words, “Sorry I can’t stay” is both strikingly conversational and evocatively ambivalent, the former accentuating the latter. When we talk we are rarely as conclusive as songwriters might often portray us to be.

The arpeggios, in constant motion, contribute to the song’s watery insistence, which in turn presents in conflict with lyrics that seem to reinforce the main phrase’s equivocation. Perhaps the most plaintive lyrical moment comes with this hushed request, in the delayed second verse: “I know what you always say/ But can you say it again?”

At 1:26 a semi-discordant synthesizer offers a slow-motion solo, laying bare the song’s hidden waltz rhythm, after which it haunts the soundscape with distant, roomy sounds; these become somewhat more audible and outer-space-y around 2:15. The synthesizer touches stand in for how, in general, Messing does so much with not a lot of different elements. She seems to like offering up moments that contribute so subtly they don’t necessarily even register, such as the vocal harmonies which delicately adorn the chorus. I can’t help but relate this to the incisive way she identifies, on social media, as “an undersharer and overthinker.” (Side note: there are more of us out here than people may realize.)

Messing, originally from Winnipeg, does musical business as La Faute (“the mistake”). A visual artist, multi-instrumentalist, and singer-songwriter, she released her debut album Blue Girl Nice Day towards the end of May. Check it out via Bandcamp and buy it if you like it, which is very possible. You might in particular want to check out her cover of Paul Simon’s indelible “The Only Living Boy in New York,” which closes the album.