The return of Faute de Mieux! plus space jams and some other stuff.

I need distraction from all this, you know, catastrophe. Which is how I ended up re-watching Community, even the mediocre fourth season.*  And also how I have now played through about ten thousand levels of Two Dots. Please don’t judge. But as much as I need that, I also need art that addresses this moment. Art that sees things as I do and offers me solidarity, and art that offers me a different way to understand and feel about all this. Art that soothes and art that inspires and art that makes me dance. So I’m really grateful for new music that has accompanied me through the lockdown. Here’s some recent favorites:

Fiona Apple, Fetch the Bolt Cutters. First a caveat: I’m not thrilled about her oh-boo-hoo-women-are-mean-to-me shtick, which is hella retrograde (I mean, this was a widely discussed issue early on in 1970s feminism) even though it serves as a rebuke to 1990s Lilith Faire sisterhood-is-powerful soft rock. It’s too late for that, is what I mean. Lilith Faire no longer needs rebuking. But that aside, this is just as great as all the reviews said it was, and just as appropriate for this endless moment. And I can’t get the title song out of my head. Plus: if, like me, you were a fan of Soul Coughing, their bass player appears on Fetch the Bolt Cutters too and continues to be an unusually melodic bassist, and sensitive ensemble member. Worth hearing for him alone, leaving aside all the other wonderful things about this record.

Next: I’ve been meaning to make a post here about Afrofuturism for a few years now. It’s a thread connecting much of my favorite music of the past decade, especially Janelle Monáe and clipping, and most especially the 2016 clipping record Splendour and Misery, which tells the story of a human kidnapped and enslaved by aliens, who kills everyone else on the aliens’ ship in the process of liberating it, and dooms himself to an endless voyage through space with only the shipboard AI for company. Maybe I still will. Meanwhile, someone at the National Air and Space Museum had the clever idea of getting a bunch of astronauts, celebrities and musicians together to perform music and spoken word stuff about space as a metaphor for the isolation we are all going through now. A lot of it is pretty good (Bethany Consentino! Edward James Olmos!) and some of it isn’t, but clipping gives a brilliant socially-distanced performance of the best song from Splendour and Misery, “A Better Place” and it just really, really fits how things are for me right now. I don’t know why that makes me feel better, but it does, and maybe it will work for you too. Bonus: it will give you a glimpse of what Daveed Diggs looks like six weeks into lockdown in a baggy white hoodie. I mean if that’s your kind of thing.

Finally, I’ve I’ve posted here before about the fabulous Faute de Mieux, which is really one woman and her ukulele in her New York apartment, singing smart songs about current events. These songs were hilarious and empowering three years ago – they were the very reason I finally learned to spell ukulele – but this new one,  “Freedom Waltz,”  is something more. It’s like she’s tapped into a song-writing vein that Cole Porter and Aimee Mann have mined too: somehow combining witty wordplay with real rage and grief.

So go! Listen! and then tell me what you think! Please and thank you. It’s awfully quiet around here.

 

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*If you ever wanted a lesson in whether show-runners really make a difference, watch all six seasons of Community. It turned out that the show could struggle along without Chevy Chase or even Donald Glover, but Dan Harmon was irreplaceable.  I love the show so much, you guys, but the season he didn’t do was hard to watch. It wasn’t even bad: it was a perfectly standard, very competent sitcom. Feh. By the way, you should know that when they wrote Donald Glover off the show (with love and respect and the possibility of coming back later) they sent him off in a yacht named the Childish Tycoon. Childish, get it? Get it?

This was supposed to be the New World

Socially mediated, socially distant greetings to you all. How are you keeping? I am holding the terror and confusion at bay by spending even more time on the internet than I used to. (And sleeping less than I have since late 2016 but I don’t want to talk about it.)

Anyway, speaking of distance and alienation, of all the rabbit holes I have fallen down in the past two weeks and six days (what, like you’re not counting too?) this is the best so far: Radiohead’s new “public library” where you can stream approximately a zillion hours of concert footage, videos, all their albums and singles plus some raw material, and – my favorite – fan-made videos. Or maybe my favorite is all the crowd shots in the outdoor shows. All those sweaty people crowded up against each other in the summers of 1998, 2001, 2016. I haven’t been to that kind of show in decades but I hate that they won’t exist at all this summer or maybe ever again.

Well, anyway. I’ll be back eventually with some other stuff but since the last time I said that was October 2018 I don’t advise holding your breath, unless you’re within hockey-stick distance of another human, in which case definitely do.

Day 12 of 12: The New Pornographers, Mac McCaughan, David Bowie, Dolly Parton + Linda Ronstadt + Emmylou Harris

“Falling Down The Stairs Of Your Smile” The New Pornographers

Another delightful, nonsensical, there’s-no-way-this-is-not-the-single track from some of my favorite purveyors of modern harmonies.

“Happy New Year (Prince Can’t Die Again),” Mac McCaughan

Written and released at the end of 2016, this captures where we all were then, and maybe where we are now, too.

“The Man Who Sold The World (ChangesNowBowie Version),” David Bowie

According to the NME, this is a 1996 track that was released in 2020 for what would have been Bowie’s 73rd birthday. I don’t know if he went into the recording session and said “let’s make this sound like Nirvana’s Unplugged version” in exactly those words, but that’s how it came out.

“After The Gold Rush,” Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris

The recent documentary on Linda Ronstadt, The Sound of My Voice, showed footage of Parton, Ronstadt, and Harris singing this song. It also showed how Ronstadt befriended Harris; it seems she realized she’d need all the real allies and friends she could get in the music business. I’m glad she did.

Day 11 of 12: Joni Mitchell, Jamila Woods, The Dream Syndicate

“Cactus Tree,” Joni Mitchell

A friend once pointed out to me that this song has all of Joni Mitchell writ in six lines–“She will love them when she sees them / They will lose her if they follow / And she only means to please them / And her heart is full and hollow / Like a cactus tree / While she’s so busy being free” –and I’ve never forgotten it.

“GIOVANNI,” Jamila Woods

There’s a lot to like about this song, a tribute to poet Nikki Giovanni, but I think what makes it stick in my head is that you could have just Woods’ vocals and the bass and it would still be good.

“Black Light,” The Dream Syndicate

A riff to get lost in: repeated enough to lull you, syncopated enough to disorient you.

Day 10 of 12: Jimmy Eat World, Buddy Miller + Brandi Carlile, The Decemberists

“All The Way (Stay),” Jimmy Eat World

It’s good to know Jimmy Eat World can still write a major-key power pop song for you to sing along to in your car.

“Angel From Montgomery,” Buddy Miller, Brandi Carlile

I have sort of Boy-Who-Cried-Wolf myself into the position of saying good things about hundreds of songs every year, so I’m not quite sure how I can convey my feelings that this is one of the greatest songs written in living memory. This is far from the only version–and I’ve spent an afternoon listening to every version I could find on Spotify–but it’s the one that I thought best showed off. I’ve had mixed feelings about John Prine, but no longer. The line “If dreams were lightning / and thunder was desire / this old house would have burned down / a long time ago” is superb. Putting it in the same song as the line “How the hell can a person / go to work in the morning / and come home in the evening / and have nothing to say?” is brilliant. To put both of them in the same song as “Just give me one thing / that I can hold on to / To believe in this living /  is just a hard way to go” is absolute top-tier songwriting, best of the age. In contrast to my praise-belabored writing, look at what Prine does: “old,” “long,” and “one,” and “hard” are the only adjectives in those lines, a story unto themselves.

 

“January Hymn,” The Decemberists

By the time you’re reading this, it won’t be January (at least, not January 2020), but late January was when I added this track to the mix. Even when winter doesn’t feel pretty and sparkling, this song sounds like how a good January day feels.

Day 9 of 12: Lana Del Rey, Taylor Swift, The Hold Steady

“How to disappear,” Lana Del Rey

One of these months, I’m going to have a lot more to say about Lana Del Rey’s Norman Fucking Rockwell. Some of that is going to be about the feat she pulls off of always making her voice bob and drift along the top of the music, without ever being submerged. This is the track where I first realized what she was doing.

“The Man,” Taylor Swift

Can you really disagree with any of this? It makes a good single; I’m glad she’s released it as one. And the music video is a delight.

“T-Shirt Tux,” The Hold Steady

Plenty of songwriters have written about doomed disconnection between couples. But who other than Craig Finn has written an exchange like this? “A boy and a girl were draining their beers. He said ‘Stalin was a weatherman to start his career. And Johnny Cash was in the service when the news came through the wire. And it’s weird how you feel when bad people die.’ She said ‘Yeah, I guess, whatever. All your fun little facts aren’t going to keep us together.’” Whew! That’s a gun to a knife fight if I’ve ever heard one.

Day 8 of 12: Richard Thompson, Dessa, Death Cab for Cutie

“1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” Richard Thompson

Approximately eight lines into this song, my reaction was What the hell is this and is it a ballad that’s been passed down or did Richard Thompson actually write this? The latter: Thompson wrote this song of a young outlaw boy in love with a young red-headed girl. And it spends exactly as much time on his dying as on their courtship, so you know it’s a proper ballad.

“Good Grief,” Dessa

The more I listen to Dessa, the more I like her ability to compress observations like “night falls, day breaks / time / has a funny kind of violence” into the first half of a line. Months after first listening to Chime a lot, I came back to this track for the question it asks: what is this “good grief” people talk about? How do I get it? Can I skip this dumb, ugly, endless version of grief I get stuck with instead?

“Kids in ’99,” Death Cab for Cutie

This is the first Death Cab for Cutie song that I think has ever caught my attention for the drum fills–and the way they completely drop out the first time Gibbard sings “gone, gone.”

Day 7 of 12: The Replacements, Charly Bliss, Simple Minds

“Achin’ To Be,” The Replacements

It is a truth unimpeachable among Replacements fans that the best Replacements album is Let It Be, the next best is Tim, and it’s all downhill from there. Maybe. But I’d heard Don’t Tell A Soul maligned so much I was gobsmacked when I put this album on. I think it’s my favorite after Tim, and this song encapsulates why: Westerberg’s gifts for portraits of people who have so much going on inside their heads that they can’t let out to others (how do you say goodnight to an answering machine?), or that they can only let out wrapped in self-destructive semi-fake bravado. It would all just be autobiographical if it weren’t so simply and powerfully stated: “She opens her mouth to speak and / what comes out’s a mystery / Thought about, not understood / She’s achin’ to be.” She is very much a subject in her own life, waiting for a partner, a peer, a friend.

“Blown to Bits,” Charly Bliss

This is the least heartbroken anybody has ever sounded when talking about something that will break their heart. The music is all anticipation. This is the Young Enough album opener for a reason.

“Let There Be Love (7” Mix)”, Simple Minds

Three of the last four mixes have featured Simple Minds songs. I apologize for nothing.

Day 6 of 12: Beth Hart, Japandroids, The Popguns, White Reaper

“Bad Woman Blues,” Beth Hart

This is an almost-by-the-numbers groove that doesn’t let up.

“In A Body Like A Grave,” Japandroids

Maybe it’s because I’ve been listening to Angel from Montgomery so much–to believe in this living is a hard way to go–but hearing the closing track off 2017’s Near to the Wild Heart of Life acknowledge that living is hard and death-bound and still joyful has felt very good to me the last several weeks.

“Carrying The Fire,” The Popguns

I cannot possibly improve upon the Popguns’ own description of the EP on which this is the second (and title) track:
The Popguns’ Carrying The Fire EP borrows its title from Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins’ autobiography and contains 5 songs forming a Space Operetta, if you will. It imagines a higher intelligence welcoming the humans into space with advice to put their faith into reason if they want to succeed.

It all begins with a piano prelude before the guitar-rock title track Carrying The Fire erupts with barely controlled power. The higher intelligence wonders, “What Do You Seek?”. Orbit is established and the Laws Of Motion narrated by the very distinguished David Brand plays to a hypnotic backdrop of electronica until the question is put, “One Step, Are You Ready To Go?”.

The operetta finishes on a light-hearted note with an acoustic bar-room sing-along “Drop Me Off In The Ocean” which compares the return journey to your basic Friday evening commute home whilst looking forward to a beer in the bar. 

“Raw,” White Reaper

I’ve been quoting song lyrics throughout these notes to make my case for this or that track. I have absolutely no idea what this song is about and I do not care. Actually, I take that back. It is about the guitars. That is all.

Day 5 of 12: Bonnie Raitt, Drive-By Truckers, Michael Stipe + Courtney Love + Jackshit

“Need You Tonight,” Bonnie Raitt

There was a trend once on social media of proclaiming that a single photograph or tweet “is my sexual orientation.” If anyone is planning to bring that trend back, may I offer up this song for you to use? Bonnie Raitt covering INXS’ come-on is definitely someone’s sexual orientation.

“What It Means,” Drive-By Truckers

My dad bequeathed to me a taste for songs of extravagant lament, usually due to the singer’s own folly. This one is a long lament, all right, but it’s one for the state of peoples’ minds, concluding with a line as effective as it is crude: “There’s no sunlight in our asses / and our heads are stuck up in it.”

“Rio Grande,” Michael Stipe, Courtney Love, Jackshit

I recently messaged a friend and said “Have you ever heard this Michael Stipe + Courtney Love sea shanty? (Yes, all those words are supposed to go in that order.)” It pulls the same trick as all the best R.E.M. songs, making the backing vocals indispensable. You might not be singing the melody by the last “oh….oh, Rio!”, but you’ll definitely be singing the harmony.