Listening • As Reviewed by My Mother

We occasionally invite guests to review the best songs we’ve discovered that week while surfing around the mp3-blog universe. This week, I invited my mother.

Ann Baldwin loves music new and old but doesn’t pay much attention to what the PR people are shilling. As she told me, she grew up listening to and studying classical music. As a teenager, she started getting into Buddy Holly and moved quickly on to the Beatles, even styling her hair so she’d look like Ringo. The Rolling Stones followed and so on through the great music of the ‘60s, both American and British. As a Chicagoan she saw many great blues performers in small clubs and bars. She was also greatly influenced by her siblings living in Palo Alto at that time and loved the Jefferson Airplane and many other groups out of California.

I asked her what she’s got loaded on her iPod these days. “I am pretty much open to any music as long as it’s really good. Right now I’m enjoying listening to U2, Howie Day, Michelle Branch, Anna Nalick, Patty Smyth, and Don Henley. A month ago I sat three rows away from Eric Clapton at Madison Square Garden and the level of his musical skills truly astounded me. Thinking of how well he performed definitely colored my opinions of these songs.”


* * *

“Love Me or Hate Me” by Lady Sovereign

I’m not crazy about the “fuck you” lyrics, but it’s obvious that the song centers around them. And the vocals are excellent and really clear. So the “fuck you” part doesn’t bother me, but it does. Obviously these are talented musicians. I thought as a song it was really well done; composition-wise it’s very well put together as a package. It would be fun to dance to.

Via Pop Tarts Suck Toasted

“Sound of the LES” by Drrtyhaze

Ugh. It’s very robotic sounding. There’s absolutely no singing, per se, just voices. And it doesn’t go anywhere. I had no emotional response to this at all. I didn’t even smile listening to it. I was like, eh. I don’t think you file this under music.

Via Music For Robots

“Mad Love” by Belles Will Ring

Now this was really engaging. I liked it. It has decent music with lots of depth, and the vocals were really good. There were a lot of complimentary elements. I put stars next to it. I could listen to this again. I could buy it. I thought it was great.

Via Fat Planet

“Keep On Smiling” by 120 Days

This I didn’t like at all. To me it sounded like techno music, like it didn’t take any talent to produce. It was “interesting” sounding. I liked the singer, but I wish his voice had shown up somewhere else, because in this song it wasn’t important at all. The singing had some depth to it, but otherwise the song was all surface.

Via 5 Acts

“Ash Wednesday” by Elvis Perkins

You file this under music? This was more about the lyrics than the song—he uses music to express his poetry. And the poetry was good! I wanted to listen to it over and over to figure out the context. But the music was very repetitive—very repetitive. I give the music a blegh. Maybe this guy should give up on music and try writing poetry.

Via So Much Silence

 —Rosecrans Baldwin, Oct. 25, 2006

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Listening • Mp3 Digest: September 27, 2006

I went to college in central Maine, a small school on a hill overlooking a rusted-over textile town where Richard Russo used to teach (the town’s river and shirt factory popped up on the cover of Empire Falls). The winters were long, the springs were soggy, and there seemed to be lots of discussions about sex; theorizing about it; hoping for it and despairing for it; attending seminar classes about sex taught by shoeless massage instructors; sludging through muddy farm fields in April toasting beer to it; bragging to friends how it had been secured or, more likely, at night and alone, worrying why not and whose fault that was.

One girl I had a crush on and talked to a lot, about sex and other things, also liked to talk about bowel movements. Hers, mine, her roommate’s. She was two years ahead of me in school, a pretty girl who ice-climbed and always seemed half-asleep. I remember one cold winter afternoon in February lying on her bed while she described why she took fiber supplements.

“You’re supposed to poop at least three times a day—at least,” she said. (She always said “poop,” never “shit.”) “Otherwise you’re not cleaning out the plumbing. How often do you poop?”

“Once a day?” I managed, afraid I’d disappoint her.

We didn’t have Sufjan Stevens when I was in college. We had Elliott Smith, pre-Good Will Hunting. But I can imagine being 19 again in a dorm room, walled in by snow, listening to Sufjan and wondering why in the world I was always talking about shit instead of doing it.

» “Sister Winter” by Sufjan Stevens (via Bows Plus Arrows)

(See also, “He Poos Clouds” by Final Fantasy.)


* * *

My wife has much better musical taste than me. She earned it; her teenage years, involving a period living abroad in bleak and soggy England, required the consolation of the Smiths, the Cure, James Brown. Where was I? Holed up in a Connecticut suburb memorizing John Coltrane solos at 15, or trading bootlegs, by mail with strangers, of a then-unknown band named Phish my cousin’s husband had heard play at a restaurant in Burlington.

After we met, my wife introduced me to Al Green, the Cocteau Twins, Otis Redding, Sade, and Dwight Yoakam. I introduced her to the internet. “Love is too young to know what conscience is; yet who knows not conscience is born of love?”

» “Lorelei” by the Cocteau Twins (via Marathonpacks)


* * *

Inspired by hearing Wynton Marseilis talk about Louis Armstrong yesterday, and then remembering Woody Allen cite Louis Armstrong’s “Potato Head Blues” as a reason life is worth living, my ten unranked most favorite audio things (songs, albums, so forth) I love as of this morning listed quickly so I can’t over-think:

1. The Duke Ellington Orchestra, Live At Newport
2. “Ringing In My Ear,” Adem
3. Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash on the same record
4. “Mushaboom,” Feist
5. Luna, Pup Tent
6. Ambient Thrill Jockey albums (Brokeback, Pullman) I loved in college
7. “Everything I Got Is Done in Pawn,” Elizabeth Cotton
8. “I May Hate Myself In The Morning,” Lee Ann Womack
9. “Radio Lab” on WNYC
10. Sound Team, Movie Monster

This was also inspired by seeing Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond list her top ten favorite songs (via Music Is Art).

(See also the Decemberists’ favorite things, though a certain TMN T-shirt goes unmentioned.)


* * *

We recently went to a birthday party where I discovered how easily I can be hypnotized by Daddy Yankee. The party was held in the backyard of a friend’s house in Bed-Stuy and she wasn’t messing around—pro DJ set-up, catering, Astroturf, cocktail tables, many candles and an outdoor sofa and plants, and then the fact that more than half the guests, like the birthday girl, were professional modern dancers.

Not that I was intimidated. But at one point no one was dancing except me. The DJ had switched to reggae, or what sounded like reggae but was more up-tempo and skuzzy, and I was by myself eating chicken wings when I realized my thighs were involved in some high-stepping motion. My head nodded, my arms swayed up and down like a show dog’s legs loping forward. I was possessed. I thought, Excuse me, drum major? You are embarrassing yourself and your wife. But then I noticed the birthday girl’s boyfriend, in from Philadelphia, standing in front of an eight-foot-tall speaker, doing the exact same dance.

This song was neither played nor is it in any way Reggaeton, but it would have fit the party:

» “Smile a Lil Bit” by Oh No, featuring Posdunos (via So Much Silence)


* * *

P.S., About those ten favorite music things, I’ve already changed my mind about half of them (how did I forget to include U2? Renee Fleming singing Strauss? “Semi-Charmed Life”? Oasis? Lovers Rock?), but Dylan and Cash remain.

» Many songs performed by Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash (via Little Radio)

 —Rosecrans Baldwin, Sep. 27, 2006

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Listening • Observing Expectations

In a college film class, we watched the opening to The Shining first with its soundtrack, second with the audio portion muted, third while a student turned off the television volume and used a boombox to overdub music a little more Disney. The point was even paranormal homicide can be amusing when you’re listening to Judy Garland.

I’d like to see the new Lindsay Lohan vehicle use Grizzly Bear’s “Marla” the next time she and one of the Wilson brothers are about to kiss; Lohan is a good big-screen actress, but she needs more testing, less tasty, and a lot more impending doom. Lohan should not be cast as fireproof.

» Hear “Marla” by Grizzly Bear (via Said the Gramophone)


* * *

For all his attention paid to web sites and rumors, does Ryan Adams have time to write music? He should try extracting his head from the juice machine. I’ve never been a fan because I’ve never heard a song because too many soothing airline magazine profiles made Adams seem to be trying so hard and delivering so squishy. But I like this song’s title and I like a barbershop quartet and now I like Ryan Adams:

» Hear “Do Miss America (Live)” by Ryan Adams (via rbally)


* * *

Good looking guy, bodybuilder, well-dressed and moisturized, boards the train at West 4th. His iPod’s in and up—sitting catty-corner I can hear a little bleed. Our man’s juking his head back and forth. His cheeks sweat. He grabs the metal pole and feels the music: left shoulder drops and juts on two and four while he bites his lip. By 14th Street he’s unbuttoned his shirt to his navel. By 23rd it’s in a pile on the seat and Baryshnikov, sopped and bare-chested, throbbing in his jeans, is ready to screw the earth. I left him at 59th Street and by then he was standing to dance, drenched in sweat, but the C train seat didn’t feel his vibe and most people weren’t covering their mouths anymore while laughing.

“Girl and the Sea” was probably his come-down music, two weeks later.

» Hear “Girl and the Sea” by the Presets (via gabba)


* * *

And there are some songs you link because you like them. Story end.

» Hear “Town Called Ivanhoe” by Mountaineer (via Music for Robots)

 —Rosecrans Baldwin, Sep. 13, 2006

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Listening • The Week in Music, guest-edited by Sasha Frere-Jones

A Remnick addition to the New Yorker’s masthead, pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones must have been the first person to sneak the phrase “inscrutable batphones” into the magazine (as in, “not all musicians below the age of 30 are getting tattooed with runic symbols and sending viruses to each other on tiny, inscrutable batphones”). For this week’s mp3s Digest, we asked Sasha to comment on some of our favorite songs found around the web.


* * *

Bob Dylan, “Nettie Moore”

I didn’t drink the Bob Dylan Kool-Aid until I was 35 years old. It was fun being the non-believer, but there was always this big hole in my map, and ‘60s Dylan plugged it just so. It was him, it was that guy. “Don’t Look Back” made it clear. He changed the channel on the century; turned the “She Loves You” Beatles into the “Norwegian Wood” Beatles; established the right of the entertainer to be a petulant boob; traded yes for no; was first punk; etc. “Visions Of Johanna” = crack water! (Last week, I was in Atlanta with a songwriter who said “crack water!” in response to anything he liked, especially his own songs.)

I have trouble with the Alive Dylan of today. I’ve seen him play live three times in the last two years, and I walked out once, mostly because I couldn’t hear anything he was singing or playing. The music around him was just a big mash of blues-rock that hurt my teeth. “Modern Times” worked well when I played it last Saturday during a dinner party. I enjoy it more than the last two, if I have to listen to Recent Bob. The quiet, Joe’s-Pub-style setting works for Dylan’s voice, because he doesn’t have much of a holler left; his instrument is burnt. “Ha, ha, I cheated death” is a good look for Bob. “They say whiskey will kill you, but I don’t think it will. I’m ridin’ with you to the top of the hill” is a good turn of the verb. He needs the “will” for the “hill” rhyme, but he also gets to say (1) that whiskey hasn’t killed him yet, and (2) that his bad ass still knows where to find it. Dylan tells the overly faithful not to seek his advice, and warns everyone else to “think twice” before calling him names. Not Dead Yet, and I don’t treat that sentiment lightly. We’ll all, hopefully, get this old, and I wouldn’t mind sounding like this.

I am entirely OK with this.

Danity Kane, “Showstopper”

Diddy’s MTV band doing a snap tune. No reason to listen to this unless you don’t have a copy of “Do It To It” by Cherish. I saw Cherish doing a CD signing at a Best Buy in Atlanta last week.

Leaders of The New School, “Case of the PTA”

This one was big for me in 1990, 1991—whenever it came out. My friend Dave Reid and I got into the (terrible) habit of saying “Always misbehaving and mischievous!” with great zest. Do women do that same kind of Monty Python-style quoting? Though I never did it with Monty Python movies—the TV show was great; never felt the movies—I have quoted too many things too many times, including the Samuel L. Jackson Chapelle’s Show skit. It’s unbearable, and I must stop. But. 1991: Picking Busta as the member who should go solo felt like some super-smart A&R shit. Obviously this was not a unique take on his work. Rap bands? Where’d they go? Songs about being teenagers? Samples? A different planet.

Sub Pop Records, The Singles Club

“Touch Me I’m Sick” was such a big deal when it came out. I cannot summon up the synaptic zaps and zings that would bring me back to the frame of mind that I/we were all in then. It works fine as scuzz-rock ephemera, mostly because of Mark Arm’s voice, but it’s also just a badly recorded paraphrase of Iggy Pop’s “I’m Bored” (until the bridge), which I just watched on the “Old Grey Whistle Test” DVD. Ultra-retarded. (“Must..take…off…shirt.”) I appreciate Christmas singles, so I’ll give a gold star to the Blues Explosion and Jesus and Mary Chain, who I am becoming convinced had a much longer and stronger career than anyone noticed. Or than I noticed.

Though I was mostly cursor-dropping, the second run of the Singles Club (late ‘90s, early ‘00s) is much less enjoyable than the first run. Whatever historical mojo indie rock had in 1988 was gone by 2000. Someone asked me the other day, “Have we forgotten Eddie Murphy?” Someone must ask this of Urge Overkill. Babes In Toyland have a better shot at a second life.

E-40 f/ Big Boi & Big Gipp, “Ham Sammiches & Coup Devilles”

When Jeff Chang, Dave Tompkins, Hua Hsu, and I started Sticker Shock, I am sure one of us had it in mind to post this song. (We were lazy and folded, and since Cocaine Blunts and 25 others do their thing so well, little has been lost.) This track is one of the reasons that being a music critic sometimes feels like having the super-retinal-scan pass to the Platinum Goodies Chamber. A bunch of us got this promo, and ran straight away to put it in a vault because we knew it was hellishly good and wasn’t coming out officially. The backing track is more active than anything we’d hear on the radio now, but it doesn’t change what you can find in the vocals—a little string of dotted fourth notes that stretches between the Bay and ATL, between 2002 and now. Swing is what hip-hop spent five years becoming, and now simply is. Big Boi and 40 have gotten larger, and Gipp is floating nicely. (I just found out that T-Mo’s dad works for HUD.) The Dipset get over in the South because they have some swing, a little bounce in their dystopia. Funerals that sound like parties—holler, Magnolia.

Cornelius, “Gum”

I love how Pro-Tools porn Cornelius is: all that micro-editing, the hard edges and hi-fi tweaking. Also: back to the motorik beat, why not? Not a song. Even though it’s short, it should be shorter. Or be finding a hook. I’ll still play it a bunch.

Clipse & Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, “Wamp Wamp (What It Do)”

A nice addition to the steel-drum-and-garbage-can genre—Pharrell’s work with N.O.R.E. and Clipse, 50’s “Pimp”—and modified nicely in the masher-upper. The Clap Your Hands keyboard line adds the harmonic motion hip-hop resists because it likes the landing strip: long, flat, and steady. Are the Clipse the easiest rappers to understand, sonically, today?

Lily Allen, “Cheryl Tweedy”

I am partial to any light ska, and the “not trying” affect of Lily Allen’s voice. She stacks up harmonies because it’s easier than singing another line. Unlike “LDN” and “Alfie” and “Nan,” though, this song doesn’t tell a story, and I have no idea who Cheryl Tweedy is, unless I ask a computer.

Beastellabeast, “The Final Mistake”

Fannypack made Bad Rap its own thing. This track just doesn’t have the enthusiasm or noise to get over its own ineptness. Tigarah has an interesting take on Bad Rap, boosted with a few M.I.A.-cred moves. I still prefer Fannypack to either. Plastic Little is too mean to be good Bad Rap. Eww.

 —Rosecrans Baldwin, Aug. 30, 2006

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Listening • Dread and Fire

Last night a pothole exploded on our street. Or so we think. No one I talked to on the block is positive about what happened. Here’s what we know: Around eleven last night, the lights in our apartment dimmed to brown and there was a massive explosion; our landlady, napping downstairs in front of the television, was launched off the couch. A crowd gathered outside around a parked Honda. Some large rubber-like blocks had appeared under the car. New York’s proudest and bravest showed up immediately. The fire chief pointed his flashlight at the rubber blocks for 20 minutes. Half an hour later, they all left, the Honda was moved and its parking space taped off, and everyone went home to bed.

Around twelve-thirty, two Con Edison trucks appeared labeled EMERGENCY down the sides. Around twelve-thirty-five, we heard one of the workers yell loudly to another, “you fucking moron!” and a second later there was another explosion, louder this time and followed by fire. The power went out. A rectangular opening in the street, previously under the Honda, burst into flames. The Con Edison guys tried several times to douse the fire with extinguishers, but it kept relighting. The chasm roiled orange and red, as though there was a bonfire in the sewer tunnel. Manholes at either end of the block began to smoke. The firemen returned and hosed water down the hole for 30 minutes. This morning the power came back on and now our street smells like someone spent the night streaking tire rubber down the asphalt.

The New York City blackout a few years ago was a night for open parties, communal spirit, and street bonfires. We invited friends over and cooked all the food in the freezer. We turned an iPod and a pair of headphones dropped into a paper grocery bag (to amplify the sound) into a stereo and either of the bands Sleep Out or Pink Mountaintops could have played on the soundtrack. But last night, trying to get work done on my laptop which depended on electricity, I was in a much more self-pitying mood; John Lennon, practicing his pity in a studio, would have been better.

» “It Wasn’t Darkness” by Sleep Out (via Music For Robots)
» “Can You Do That Dance?” by Pink Mountaintops (via gabba)
» “Isn’t It A Pity [Unreleased]” by The Beatles (via Moistworks)


* * *

How many luxury vehicles can you fit in a diner’s parking lot? Does a one-and-a-half bedroom house on a quarter-acre of land really need a privet hedge? Do only some surgically-enhanced men and women resemble fuselage, or do they all, once you get them down to their skiivies on the beach?

It was my third trip to the Hamptons. I always forget, in the intervening periods, how much I want an E-Class Mercedes. Have you been there? Have you seen the lunacy and the magnificent sunsets? Have you seen the free magazines they leave on doorsteps around the Hamptons? Look for the one with Devorah Rose’s column featuring the rose-petal photoshoot—I was permanently altered.

Not Hamptons: “Esoterica of Abyssynia” by Sir Richard Bishop (via Vinyl Mine)
Maybe Hamptons: “Strange Games and Things” by Love Unlimited Orchestra (via Bumrocks)


* * *

Certain performers you want to hear in a church, a New York church where you can walk in right off the sidewalk and be someplace, perhaps one of the 18 places in Manhattan, where envy doesn’t creep. Tenth street has a number of beautiful old churches, one on Broadway and another on Park, and at the right time you can just stroll in, sit down, and be quiet.

I walked into the Park Avenue church Monday morning and enjoyed a few minutes doing nothing. Next time, I’ll leave a request card for St. Vincent.

» “Paris Is Burning” by St. Vincent (via Gorilla vs. Bear)


* * *

Dear Netflix,

You tell me The Wire: Season Three is now available on DVD. The subway ads from HBO say the DVDs have been available for several days. Yet you will not let me rent them. You will not send them to my house. It is the best show on television, leading Deadwood by two lengths, and yet you tease me, saying that I can have the DVDs and also that I can’t.

Please, Netflix, Wire me soon.

Best,
Rosecrans Baldwin

P.S. If you’re in touch with David Milch, tell him Erik Friedlander’s “Airstream Envy” would make a great opening song for Deadwood in case he ever revises that ridiculous tits-and-pony reel.
 —Rosecrans Baldwin, Aug. 16, 2006

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Listening • A Mix for the Heat

I just spent two and a half weeks submerged in the woods and there wasn’t much music besides frogs and a neighbor’s chainsaw. Radio stations were few; the local NPR broadcast was locked in a fundraising drive; my iPod wouldn’t talk to the tape deck in the car, and my working brain (I was submerged in the woods with a laptop, I should have said) only responded to Schumann, Handel, Brad Mehldau, and the Grateful Dead.

And I forgot to bring any mixes with me. I love mixes in the summer. It’s good weather for jubilation. As a kid I’d hide in my bedroom during summer break to make cassettes. For lack of a record collection, or a world that contained mp3 blogs, the mixes weren’t big on variety—Beatles, Michael Jackson, Beatles, Belinda Carlisle—but at least the songs were never in the same order.

Here’s a mix for this afternoon, dedicated to the lack of air conditioning in my office:

1. “Wildcat” by Ratatat (on Gorilla vs. Bear)

2. “To Go Home” by M. Ward (on Fingertips)

3. “Get Myself Into It” by The Rapture (on Work For It)

4. “Morning Sun” by Al Barr (on Moistworks)

5. “Reconstruction Site” by The Weakerthans (on I Am Fuel, You Are Friends)

6. “I Can’t Say Goodbye” by Bravo Silva (on My Old Kentucky Blog)

7. “Time Will Tell” by Eddie Holman (on Green Pea-Ness)

8. “Private Eyes” by Towa Tei (on Berkeley Place)

9. “Here I Am Baby” by Marcia Griffiths (on Soul Sides)

10. “When The Day Is Done” by Elton John (on La Blogothèque)

11. “In the Corner, At the Table, By the Jukebox” by James Hand (on Big Rock Candy Mountain)

12. “You’ve Been Foolin’” by The Roulette Sisters (on Pre-War Blues)

13. “Some Things Never Stop” by The Alarmists (on Music For Robots)

14. “Seulement Toi” by Cuizinier (on Fat Planet)

15. “Get Off (Urge Mix)” by Prince & The New Power Generation (on The Number One Songs In Heaven)

16. “Crazy” by The Raconteurs (on Stereogum)

17. “One-eyed Cloud” by The Weird Weeds (on Gorilla vs. Bear)

 —Rosecrans Baldwin, Aug. 2, 2006

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Listening • Mp3 Digest: July 12, 2006

Last weekend, my wife and I had two perfect New York days. We had friends over for dinner and stayed up late. We saw a very moving Douglas Gordon survey and ran around Manhattan. We visited with more friends, we had dinner in a restaurant, stayed up late and slept in, and on Sunday we visited with friends, ate in a restaurant, then watched our team lose the World Cup from the heart of an Italian neighborhood where the winners—the little kids outside—ran around blowing air horns to rub it in. Afterwards we had dinner in a restaurant with friends.

Brazil was disappointed a lot earlier than we were when it comes to soccer. When it comes to music, Cansei de Ser Sexy (CSS) seems to completely lack disappointment (i.e., there’s no disappointment in the songs; whether you’ll be disappointed depends on how much you love big Brazilian oddball collectives).

» Hear CSS on Gorilla vs. Bear


* * *

My Brightest Diamond, otherwise known as Shara Worden, has infiltrated my head. First showing up gradually on lots of music blogs, then appearing yesterday on Soundcheck and sounding terrific, and now playing on Friday at Joe’s Pub. The album’s not due until August, but tracks are being leaked. “Some of an End” reminds me of Kate Bush. Enough said.

» Hear My Brightest Diamond on Brooklyn Vegan


* * *

I find writing about music impossible and frustrating. It’s pointless and silly. That previous “enough said,” which may look like typical magazine copy—i.e., a cozy paragraph-end kicker—is meant literally. Truthfully, I can say no more. Music is unrelatable. It’s unnatural, it doesn’t exist in nature. Music journalists write about the artist or the concert, or how the music was composed and how its structure works or who it compares with in music history, but the music itself? The impressions of the sound? Put your head in the oven.

But why not? Oranges in a bowl. Then night. Yellow headlights. Why I’m excited for new mail even when most days it’s catalogues and credit card offers. The number nine. Twins with different parents. Ana Morelos. All the windows open. Street in a headscarf.

» Hear Sol Seppy on Shake Your Fist


* * *

From Otterhouse:

The famous German conductor Otto Klemperer who was making records for the Vox company, was complaining to its director George Mendelssohn, a descendant of the composer, that he could not find any of his [records]. “That can’t be,” Mendelssohn answered. “I will take you to the biggest record shop downtown and you’ll see by yourself.” They both arrive at the shop. Klemperer asked a shop girl [for] Beethoven’s 5th symphony conducted by Klemperer. The shop girl looked at the records and said: “I am sorry. I have it by Toscanini, by Walter, by Furtwaengler but not by Klemperer.” Then Klemperer turned toward Mendelssohn and shouted: “You see, I never can find any of my records in the shops and it is the same thing everywhere in the world.” He turned toward the shop girl again and said: “You are stupid, you must have records by Klemperer, they are wonderful records and I am Klemperer myself.” Then the shop girl, thinking she was dealing with someone more or less insane, said to him: “Oh yes, and your friend must be Beethoven.” Klemperer shouted: “No, you are stupid. He is Mendelssohn!”

Ah, Klemperer humor.

» Hear Otto Klemperer on Otterhouse


* * *

Eight bars into Andrew WK’s “Pushing Drugs,” I’m laughing. I’m listening to it again and it’s even funnier. If I’m not quiet, I’ll wake up the whole house, but this is insane. Someone is stomping on the horns. Someone is strutting. This calls for white jeans with the cheeks cut out.

(And, finally, am I the only one who thinks, while hearing snacks from the new album, that John Legend is transforming himself into the next Tom Jones?)

» Hear Andrew W.K. on Fluxblog
» Hear John Legend on Soul Sides
 —Rosecrans Baldwin, Jul. 12, 2006

SHARE THIS • EMAIL THIS • FILE UNDER: Andrew W.K., Cansei de Ser Sexy, John Legend, Ludwig Beethoven, My Brightest Diamond, Otto Klemperer, Sol Seppy, Tom Jones

Listening • Mp3 Digest: July 5, 2006

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson is dead at 52. I want to dig a hole, erect a church on top, play her “Handel Arias” on repeat, and eat shirred eggs. Her Handel Arias are their own cathedral. I never saw her sing in concert. Tomorrow I will disappear, track down Martha Argerich carrying flowers, and convince her to trade my savings account for a private recital.

» Preview Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s “Handel Arias” on Amazon


* * *

Other music for your own private AWOL: Hank Levine’s “Image, Part One” as the on-ramp to summer seasides you never saw in a California that never existed; Del Reeves, your fellow road-tripper; Carla Bozulich’s “Steal Away,” the curtained loft you’ve always wanted to rent just for disappearing to when work deadlines loom; Jose Gonzalez, perhaps the only person in the world when he plays “Hand On Your Heart.”

» Hear Hank Levine and the Orchestra on Soul Sides
» Hear Del Reeves at Big Rock Candy Mountain
» Hear Carla Bozulich on Honey, Where You Been So Long?
» Hear Jose Gonzalez on rbally


* * *

After last night’s fireworks, from the top of an apartment building in Brooklyn, once the finale’s explosions stopped, there was the oddest chord in the air. We thought someone had brought an organ up to the roof. But it was the combined notes of a thousand cars and boats blaring their horns.

We walked to the subway and passed 18 nationalities of families who’d spent too much money on whirly-noisemakers for their kids. I was trying to remember all the different types of explosions we’d seen but got stuck on “Firecracker Catalogue,” a list of exquisitely named fireworks (Bomb of Heaven Singing, Jumbo Christmas Missile, Pink Carnation Dynamite) I half-remembered from Jay Hopler’s new book Green Squall, which is its own sort of explosion, especially if you read his poem “Of Passion And Seductive Trees” out loud.

What excitement Hopler draws from reading firecrackers accurately named, Airto Moreira draws from me.

» Hear Airto Moreira on Bumrocks

 —Rosecrans Baldwin, Jul. 5, 2006

SHARE THIS • EMAIL THIS • FILE UNDER: Airto Moreira, Carla Bozulich, Del Reeves, Hank Levine, Jay Hopler, Jose Gonzalez, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson

Listening • Maine Accent Chairs

My great-aunt Mary lives year-round on an island off the coast of Maine and still smokes while she watches the tennis or enjoys a nightcap. It’s given her an amazing speaking voice: her register’s permanently cracked from the cigarettes, with bass-y wobbles, but her Maine accent so often vaults her voice up over vowels it sounds on the phone like she’s simply got bad reception.

To my ear it’s part Boston, part Chicago, and part Copenhagen, and sounds nothing like Jimmie Dale Gilmore’s Texas accent, but I’m reminded of her when I listen to him sing—I can’t imagine mistaking either voice for somebody else. (For a while I confused Gilmore with the character “Smokey” from The Big Lebowski, then I found out that it was Gilmore in the movie.) Gilmore’s most recent record, Come On Back, is a terrific collection of country hits; some songs are available for listening on his web site.

» Hear Jimmie Dale Gilmore at his web site


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Other voices? Ira Kaplan’s, of Yo La Tengo, is an Eames Chair of sorts—iconically comfortable for a certain set and long celebrated. I remember back when pushing YLT records made me feel very in-the-know and indie-meister; now, pushing a new YLT single, I want to buy a Passat.

» Hear new Yo La Tengo at Music For Robots


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Seeing Sound Team last year, my friend Dmitri and I tried to place lead singer Matt Oliver’s voice. There’s wonderful brio and lots of thistle in there, but for some reason we went more for Elvis Costello than Bono, probably for earnestness-as-badge rather than earnestness-as-plea. Costello’s recently been jotting around with Allen Toussaint, a mish-mash that makes me wish Steely Dan would call up Manu Chao.

» Hear Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint at Soul Shower


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Speaking of Manu Chao, and thinking of voices, I’m reminded of one of my favorite albums from this past year, 16 piano themes called Solo Piano by Gonzales, the Paris-based Canadian producer/instrumentalist/rapper/sasquatch. Sort of Eric Satie-like, sort of a soundtrack to a missing early Woody Allen silent picture—a sample of the sound can be found in his deconstruction of Feist’s “One Evening.”

» Hear Gonzales at And Through The Wire


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And, for the big finale, a ludicrous movie trailer dub that reminds me of Josh Allen’s “Behind the Scenes: The Minority Report Trailer.” Happy Wednesday.

» Hear “Voice Over” by Brian Joseph Davis at WFMU

 —Rosecrans Baldwin, Jun. 21, 2006

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