Steel drums & sirens are the soundtrack of the season, it seems. Here is everything we love about MIA in one 3 minute package: addictive shoutalong chorus, completely bonkers beat that somehow is still rhythmic, indecipherable/political lyrics, harsh noise-as-pop nonsense. The official anthem for any & all Bingo players in the world; a global call to arms. Snitches get stitches. MIA gets rough. We buy it cos we can dance to it.
Sollee is no perfect stranger to this site. The only solo album he has released so far is perfect autumnal aural candy, its soft string work & jaunty guitar lines contrasting sometimes as sharply as yellow spined leaves against the sky. This is music for a gentler volume, its lyrics begging delicacy & its drifting layered violas fleshing out themes & escalating emotion with an unexpected vigor. When it really gets going, its start & stop rhythm is nearly enrapturing.
Welcome back, we’re hitting it again in full swing. Don’t let me slip again, faithful!
I never liked Steely Dan so much as I liked them as a sample, & there’s no one better to take a recognizable sound clip & turn it into a damn fine groove than Prince Paul & the boys of De La. I’m not always a big fan of their approach to hip hop, but there are tracks on 3 Feet High & Rising that are untouchable. There’s something so gentle & refined in the delicacy of this beat, & yet more bumpin’ than a butt on a dance floor through & through. Hello sweet hip hop history, why have we ever glazed over you.
A woman so steeped in history you almost forget she once made physically startling, wholly heartful soul music that is still just as shocking to dance to today as it was in ‘67. This one’s been on repeat in my kitchen during cook time, & I wouldn’t ask for a better blues tune. It’s astounding how well that old guitar work battles with the high hat & brass section all at once. Goddamn this is a SONG.
One of our greatest contributions to American folk history, Blind Willie’s voice was & will forever be one of a kind. Beyond gravel of a broken Texas road & untuned bottleneck strings, it is the heart laid truly bare, the throat completely emulsified. If it weren’t for the call & response with the female counterpart that made many of his interpretations signature, this might seem like madman jibberings – & perhaps the naked soul would be even more curiously evident. This is the core of the American underground, all else is merely hype. If we take the history of recorded blues to heart, Robert Johnson is our unfortunate praised Clapton while Blind Willie’s insanity merely echoes Beefheart’s brilliance.
This is why it’s sometimes said The Stooges ushered punk rock into the underground, & I won’t stand in the way of that argument. Abrasive experimentation in their live shows translates without pause on Funhouse more so than any other of their albums (the most criminally loved of which is Raw Power, for reasons I’ve never gotten), & “L.A. Blues” is the prime example of that improvisatory racket captured in its brilliance. It’s a free-jazz track pretty much through & through, but with pre-punk aesthetics behind it & a mad man drug addict for a frontispiece. Truly something that history has forgotten, & one of noise rock’s most shamefully unknown pieces.
I believe at one time I wrote that “Ruby Falls” was an example of a great song by a mediocre band, but after further investigation I think in fact it may be one of the all-time best examples of this. There are a ton of Guster songs I genuinely think are worth far more attention than they receive from anyone but gushing girls (who gush perhaps rightfully so), but it took me dozens & dozens of listens to get to that point for many of those songs. Keep It Together is a grossly underrated grower of a pop album, & it warrants years of listens, but I wouldn’t say it’s one of my favorites. “Ruby Falls,” on the other hand, is one of those newfangled rock songs that kicks ass right off the bat & keeps kicking ass 7 minutes in. The pop-sensical harmonies, the strangely synthesized organ work, & the breakdown about halfway through are all moments of pure joy. If it’s not your cup of tea, at least give it until the bass riff hits its stride & the trumpet lays in on you – this band has never had a more magical moment than that right there, & gushing girls maybe are all right after all.
The opening track from their yet unreleased newest album, “I and Love and You” perfects one of the greatest hidden secrets in album construction – begin with a song that builds beautifully & presents the album as a package instead of raising the bar so high the rest of the album seems flat & inconsequential in comparison. The Avett Bros. are really hitting their stride with this album – the entirety of which can be heard right now on NPR Music – & this track is a wonderful sample of it: graceful piano work becoming in turns pounding rising melodies; completely devastating harmonies always when it means it most; complete control of dynamics through & through. What sounds like a folk song is really a complex mastery of songwriting. What seems simple is perhaps love at its most misunderstood.
Embrace your inner Emerson tree-lover. Find the hippie on your coattails & put him soundly on your shoulders. Today is just another diamond day, like the day before it, & these melodies aren’t kidding. Has the recorder ever begged to be taken more seriously? Has one voice ever felt more like tender glass? Look – flowers calling – put them round the crown of your head. If I die young if it will be from simply beauty like this.
A song that feels more than it plays, a somehow soothing foray into delicate notions of nostalgia & cyclical love. Nine & a half minutes of a breeze softly whispering, of a river somewhere that babbles & you walk to; a cellist in the woods, a voice of patience gently luring you perhaps to be cast. Not many songs are indescribable meldings of beautiful things – this is certainly near the top of that list.
