Just re-listened to: Supernatural (1998) by DC Talk, an album whose release was the first one I can remember anticipating with excitement, prompting me to assemble something resembling a listening party before I knew those were a thing. (Primary reaction: “Let’s go figure out the weird chord progression on ‘My Friend (So Long)’!”)
Yet I don’t post it to recommend it—despite its considerable formal, vocal, and especially harmonic virtues, it comes off sonically bloated, smugly identitarian, lyrically derivative, and vapidly devotional instead of inventive, moral, artistic, or Christian—but rather to wonder: How am I only just now realizing DC Talk was a boy band?
Just re-listened to: Love Is The King (2020) by Jeff Tweedy. The homey, sentimental sound of a veteran American songwriter, fifteen years sober, sitting on the front porch of his family home at sunset with his amps, his sons, and his elder son’s drum set, strumming perfect little gems of songs into existence on his many guitars, but especially his nylon-string Martin, because he has pandemic time to kill. Some of the songs are sung to his wife. Half of them are honky-tonk. The album gets a touch sluggish toward the end, but that’s because the sun has set and it’s time to go to bed.
Just re-listened to: Carried Along (2000) by Andrew Peterson. Carefully arranged, folk-esque acoustic pop marking the arrival of the most skilled evangelical songwriter of the century. Peterson’s fanboyism for Rich Mullins is evident—and quite welcome. The album’s only flaw is the fanboy’s reedy vocals.
Just re-listened to: Return to Cookie Mountain (2006) by TV on the Radio. Thick, noisy, wordy, loopy apocalyptic post-rock that manages to maintain pop leanings. (We observe once again that minimum viable pop is catchy melodies plus reliable rhythm, which this album has in large, dirty piles.) An excellent would-be Bowie album, as if Bowie had been taking Peter Gabriel-administered steroids in a cavern and as an eerie side effect had developed the ability to sing in two voices simultaneously from his one mouth as long as those voices were separated by octaves or some other such wide harmonic interval.
It all makes for an excellent Halloween album. But despite its spook and force, the pathos is what lingers. And I haven’t even yet paid attention to the lyrics, of which there are plenty. Love is kinda crazy with a spooky dirtywhirl like you.
The album art depicts a nest, but it sure looks to me like a crown of thorns.
Just re-listened to: Jesus Freak (1995) by DC Talk. Is it nostalgia that enables me to delight in it? Surely in part. I was 13 years old and well ensconced in evangelical subculture when it came out. But Smitty’s fellow CCM platinum release I’ll Lead You Home came out that year, too, and you don’t see me writing about that now, do you?
Look, the ingredients that make for pop-rock I like—shapely melodies, generous harmonies, three lead vocalists, and verve—are present here on every track. There’s so much smiling energy—so much more than on their non-CCM contemporaries’ albums—not to mention highly skilled session playercraft on offer that it’s very easy for me to listen past a few awkward rap bars and the album’s religious superiority complex. It’s a pop tour de force. And besides, I’m not really spinning this for the lyrics, although I don’t care what you say, I don’t care what you heard: “Colored People” is a great song.
Just re-listened to: Carrie and Lowell (2015) by Sufjan Stevens. When Christgau wrote of this album, “How best expiate a conflicted grief? Surely something with more tensile strength than musical flower arrangements,” he did capture its aural beauty, but he clearly wasn’t listening to its devastating lyrics. As far as grief albums go, this one is better even than Funeral and Tonight’s the Night. My favorite Sufjan by a substantial margin.
Just listened to: The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow (2024) by Charles Lloyd. Easygoing, desultory, flute- or breathy-tenor-sax-led freeish modal jazz for inspiring hippies at night. Bonus point of interest: The esteemed saxophonist/flautist is 86!
Just listened to: Silence & Music (2017) performed by Gabrieli’s “Rolls-Royce” of a choir, conducted here by their artistic director Paul McCreesh. This is fifteen 20th-century secular British partsongs exquisitely sung and perfectly recorded, thereby gratifying my anglophilia, audiophilia, and love for small-choir singing all at once. Hat tip to the late David Vernier for the recommendation.
Just listened to: Open Your Heart (2012) by The Men. Noisy, abrasive rave rock. Sometimes like Sonic Youth, but often faster and shoutier, hence punk-er. I like it best when droning, as in “Oscillation” and “Presence.”
Hypothesis: A big reason we love books, movies, and recorded music is that they offer to our lower brains a passable simulacrum of company. Inspiring, beautiful, mind-expanding they can be. But they are, at their root, an inferior substitute for basic emotional and relational goods that come from real, live, human company…
…writes the man whose wife of twenty years hasn’t been home in a week and is currently incommunicado on a sailboat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Just listened to: Traditional Techniques (2020) by Stephen Malkmus. My first Malkmus solo album listen. His lyrics are as weird as in the ’90s, but I had no idea he could make such pretty music. A very good late-night psych-folk stoner album. The effect is similar to hearing The Velvet Underground’s self-titled album. Also, I’m a sucker for 12-string guitar and playfulness with words.
Just listened to: The State Of The Tenor: Live At The Village Vanguard, Vol. 2 (1985) by Joe Henderson. Heavy saxophone improvisation served over a delicious bed of bass and drums. Are there key signatures? Who cares! Free your mind. Come for the improv sax tremolos, growls, and melodic flights. Stay for the bassist.
Just listened to: Puts: The Hours (2024) by Kevin Puts, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, The Metropolitan Opera, Renee Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, Kelli O’Hara, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. I don’t know opera, so I don’t know what to say. But as a cap for all the emotional and musical color and drama that comes before, that final triois remarkable.
Just listened to: Alive in the Wilderness (2020) by Endless Field. New-age, occasionally jazzish, occasionally groovy acoustic guitar-and-bass record made outdoors in Utah using a solar-powered recording rig. Ambient if you want it to be. A fascinating, short write-up on the making of the album is available on the Bandcamp page.
Just listened to: False Lankum (2023) by Lankum. Irish folksters whelming their traditional ballads with walls of dark sound. They start off most tracks playing, singing, and often harmonizing rawly and beautifully. (The color of the harmonies sometimes gives gives a clue of what’s to come.) Then they keep singing while they bury the songs in mountains of dark, wrenching sonic peat harvested from the banks of the five rivers of Hades. They do it often and consistently enough to call it a schtick, but to call it that is to undersell its power. I can’t recommend the whole without reservation because there’s sometimes too much noise for my taste. However, the album deserves the raves it has received, as well as a good single listen from you and a place on your Halloween playlists. As for me, I’m sure as hell going to dig into their back catalog.
🎧 🎵 The Monkees (1966) by The Monkees: Sunshine, melodies, Micky Dolenz’ voice, energetic session musicians, contemporary Beatles imitation, and a heap of goofballism. One of several album-length reasons I count 1966 as my one favorite years in pop.
🎧 🎵 The Band (1969) by The Band: If rock music had emerged in the 19th century instead of the 20th. Rootsy dad-rock of the first order, always loose yet somehow always tight, featuring three different lead vocalists—always a plus in my book—as part of a rock quintet who is also on the record playing fiddle, mandolin, accordion, trombone, tuba, various saxophones, melodica, and slide trumpet.
🎧 🎵 slutte og byne (2020) by Valkyrien Allstars: Generously arranged Norwegian prog folk rock fronted by a winsomely simple-toned, frequently double-tracked alto named Tuva. Winner of a Norwegian Grammy Award in 2020. My favorite musical find during our family time in Norway. Also my most recent CD acquisition.
An oddball, trifling McCartney album I enjoy front to back. (One of only two.) Proof that music need not be deep to be good. The most Beatlesy of all their solo albums, full of fun melodies, interesting chord progressions, charmingly goofy singing, and production that’s generous without ever falling into schmaltz. It’s fun to picture Paul enjoying cutting records with his wife! (And I’ll listen to Linda over Yoko any day.) The album is not the headwaters of indie pop, as has been claimed; that’s the Beach Boys’ two 1967 albums. But it is a very good early exemplar. The only criticism I’ll brook is that it may come across at times a tinch too self-consciously mannered.
As I age, I find I’m less of a Lennon guy and more of a McCartney guy. Is that progress? Is that common?
🎧 🎵 I’m glad I kept my CD copy of Superchic[k]’s Karaoke Superstars. Cute, catchy, honest, lightly theistic punk-pop whose lead vocalist was clearly in her early twenties when she wrote it but was nevertheless equipped with the kind of wisdom that twenty-somethings need.
🎧 🎵 I happened across a CD copy of local bluegrass stalwarts Tussey Mountain Moonshiners’ 2016 album SHINE last year at the AAUW used book sale. It cost me a dollar. It’s (more than) good enough to make me feel as if I have stolen from them.
One of the main ways we cheat ourselves out of creating is the widely held belief that we need the right amount of time to make something of value—to make something worthwhile. We often resist a moment of inspiration because we’re aware of a limited time window that might interrupt the flow and therefore think, “It’s not even worth it to get started because I know I won’t be able to finish it.”
But all the time spent creating, if I’m in the right frame of mind, is not really so much about “Is this good or bad?” There’s just a lot of joy in it, in having created something at all. I don’t feel as bad about other things. I don’t necessarily feel high, or overly joyed. I just feel like, “Oh, I’m not wasting my time.”
On writing without thinking about what you’re writing about:
Creating something out of nothing is the important part. And maybe, like me, you’ll discover that you’re often better off learning how to write without much concern for what you’re writing about. And through that process, you’ll discover what is on your mind. “Jesus, Etc.” was never about anything specific to me until I sang it live for the first time and learned how sincerely it conveyed my wish for a better sense of unity with my extremely devout Christian neighbors. So do some free writing. Write without thinking. I’m sure there will be some things that will surprise you, along with some nonsense.