Turn It Up - 1/13/2025

Earworms, obsessions, recommendations

It’s a new week, so we’re back to share some things we’ve been listening to. David goes first, then Charles, and we’ve got a bunch of reading recommendations at the end.

Ian Munsick – “Good Dogs & Sad Songs” (single, 2024)

I’ve planned to recommend this one nearly every week for the last several months, but I never pulled the trigger simply because I couldn’t think of anything to say about it. And I still have nothing to say, beyond noting that this Big Sky country songwriter continues to impress. Ian Munsick consistently finds fresh ways to express common wisdoms and universal home truths. He says here that what makes life living are those title gifts—and a partner to love them with. Of course, you can lose the dogs and the lover. That’s why the songs, even a happy one like this one, have to all be a little sad. –DC

Gary Louris – “Getting Older” (single, 2025)

A teaser in advance of Gary Louris’ new solo album, Dark Country, “Getting Older” borrows the patient, loping groove of his former band’s greatest cut, the Jayhawks’ “Waiting for the Sun.” Here, though, he strips all sheen from the production and harmonizes only with himself instead of Mark Olson as he sings an apology to a less famous partner he’s neglected: “You’re no mere chauffeur, cook or maid…” No more time for waiting, Louris implores. “It’s time to make a new start, we’re just getting older.” -DC

Akil the MC – “Can the Church Say Amen” (single, 2024)

Akil the MC dropped a handful of singles last year, often working with his old Jurassic 5 mates and hopefully all leading to a full-length in ’25. For this gently funky, humanist devotional, “Can the Church Say Amen,” Akil keeps it old school, dropping science to a flow that identifies Akil as the elder he now is. His beloved community here includes Cee One, Shaheed and DJ Supreme, but the real star this time out is Miss Undastood: “All human beings deserve respect… All human beings are valuable…” And the church says Amen.

Brenton Wood – “A Changed Is Gonna Come” (single, 1969)

Louisiana soul-pop singer Brenton Wood died on January 3^rd. He was 83. Best known for two 1967 crossover hits, Wood wrote both “The Oogum Boogum Song,” which critic Dave Marsh placed among the 1,001 greatest singles ever made, and “Gimme Little Sign,” which NFR-friend Stephen Thomas Erlewine recently declared to be “my favorite single ever.” Just a pair of perfect records, but Wood had a career that lasted, albeit in fits and starts, for much longer. His last charting R&B single, a disco reimagining of the Fleetwoods’ classic “Come Softly to Me,” was in 1977. His final album, the self-released Classic by Design, came out in 2000. One of my favorite Wood cuts was this 1969 version of “A Change Is Gonna Come.” In Wood’s hands, Sam Cooke’s majestic ballad is retrofitted with a danceable groove, the anthemic original’s call answered by a private determination to keep on keepin’ on. R.I.P., Brenton Wood. –DC

Ringo Starr (feat. Molly Tuttle) – “Can’t You Hear Me Call?” (from Look Up, 2024)

Ringo Starr’s delightful Look Up is billed as his return to country decades after Buck Owens covers with the Beatles and his Nashville-recorded solo debut Beaucoups of Blues. And it is that. But what Look Up most recalls is the mid-‘60s intersection between post-British Invasion pop-rock and post-Bakersfield country of bands like the Byrds, Monkees, and, well, Beatles, which led to a couple generations of melodic country-rock. Appropriately, Look Up is a loose and friendly set where Starr – sounding awfully good given his current age and longstanding vocal limitations – is surrounded by warm arrangements from producer T-Bone Burnett and collaborators like Billy Strings, Alison Krauss, and Molly Tuttle. I’m particularly fond of the Tuttle duet “Can’t You Hear Me Call.” The two trade phrases on the loping love song, with Tuttle’s supple twang supporting (and outshining) Starr’s seasoned baritone. (As always, her expert guitar playing is a highlight.) I wish there was a whole Ringo & Molly album; maybe our old Liverpool pal will stay in Music City long enough to make that happen. – CH

Samora Pinderhughes – “Am I Human?” (feat. Jamila Woods, Elliott Skinner, Keith Lamar, Bobby Gonz, The Healing Project Choir, Dani Murcia & Jehbreal Jackson)(single, 2024)

Composer and musician Samora Pinderhughes released a fine album near the end of last year and followed it up with this piercing condemnation of forced labor and mass incarceration. Developed in collaboration with The Healing Project and Worth Rises, accompanied by a remarkable group of collaborators that includes Chicago’s great Jamila Woods and formerly incarcerated rappers Bobby Gonz and Keith Lamar, Pinderhughes poses the abolitionist-remixing titular question over aching piano and swirling electronic percussion. The fierceness of the critique and desperation of the struggle is matched by the blues-impulse affirmation of Pinderhughes’ insistence that, despite all this, “I will survive,” a sentiment echoed in the verses of Gonz and Lamar and animated by the urgency of the arrangement. It’s a compelling listen and an urgent lesson. – CH

Sam and Dave – “I Thank You” (from I Thank You, 1968)

Sam Moore, who died a few days ago, was one of the last of the great ‘60s soul men. With his partner Dave Prater, Moore recorded some of the best and most enduring southern R&B of the period, steeped in gospel fire and driven by the interplay between Moore’s clarion tenor and Prater’s grounded baritone. Among their many masterpieces, “I Thank You” (written, like most of their hits, by Isaac Hayes and David Porter) is my favorite. It’s perfectly crafted, from Moore’s call at the beginning to how he and Prater punch through the smoky Stax arrangement in subtly funky call-and-response to the lyric that just barely separates the hot love of romance from the deep devotion of the church. (Or perhaps reveals how similar they are.) There’s nothing better than “I Thank You,” and Sam & Dave’s catalog, in capturing why the music from Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and other southern hotspots became so transformative as it made its glorious way around the world. – CH

Bruce Springsteen (feat. Sam Moore) – “Man’s Job” (from Human Touch, 1992)

Bruce Springsteen loved Sam & Dave, and they became a key influence on the rock-n-soul that The Boss built on E Street. On 1992’s soul-drenched Human Touch, Springsteen brought Sam Moore in for appearances on three tracks, part of a decades-long collaboration that continued on albums by both Moore and Springsteen as well as live performances. My favorite is “Man’s Job,” a slick, pounding track where Moore serves as respondent to Springsteen and main duet partner Bobby King. Moore’s not on the track a whole lot. But whenever he emerges, adding his unmistakable tenor behind or alongside the song’s main melody, he becomes its essential element, somehow adding both gravitas and buoyancy to its love-struck sentimentality. His final descant of “it’s a man’s, man’s job” – delivered on the song’s last chorus – is the knockout blow, a brief and powerful reminder of why Springsteen loves Sam Moore and why so many other listeners do too. – CH

Sam Moore – “When Something Is Wrong with My Baby” (live) (from Only the Strong Survive, 2003)

This heart-wrenching gospel ballad understandably became a showcase for Moore whether paired with Dave Prater or in his solo years, and he made it a centerpiece of live performances well into the 21^st century, when he used it to reaffirm his status as a soul elder who could still wreck the stage with the same intensity as his heyday. My favorite latter-day version is from the soundtrack of the 2003 soul-reunion documentary Only the Strong Survive. Moore stretches the song to its near-breaking point with a vocal marked as much by precise dynamics as climactic high points. He swoons, soars, and sermonizes, before stepping away from the mic to let the background singers take it home. But don’t be fooled: Sam Moore knew very well that, even when he ceded the spotlight, his astonishing talent would keep him at center stage. It always will. – CH

Recommended readings:

-Barry Mazor on the new album from Ringo Starr, for The Wall Street Journal

-Andrea Flores on a University of Wisconsin history professor’s contributions to Bad Bunny’s new album, for Los Angeles Times

-Rose McMackin on the Chicks’ relationship to contemporary country, for The Barbed Wire

-Austin McCoy on the history of rap beefs and capitalism, for Public Books

-Justin A. Davis on Blaze, house music, and post-Civil Rights Newark, for Hearing Things

-D. Patrick Rodgers talks to Ringo Starr and T-Bone Burnett, for Nashville Scene

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