Turn It Up - 11/4/2024

Earworms, obsessions, recommendations

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

Kathleen Edwards (feat. Bahamas) – “Human Touch” (single, 2024)

I’d like to make a motion. Now that Nebraska and Born In The U.S.A. have been covered to death, I’d like to suggest that more artists follow the lead of country-folk stalwart Kathleen Edwards and revisit songs from Human Touch and Lucky Town, the twin Springsteen albums from 1992 that still remain somewhat marginalized or even maligned within his catalog but both contain so much great material. Edwards’ spare arrangement of “Human Touch” sacrifices the brooding R&B undertones of the Boss’s original, but she makes up for it with a hushed intimacy that lets her burrow inside the lyrics like a late-night phone call. With piano, guitar, and violin washing around, and Bahamas boss Alfie Jurvanen adding careful harmonies, Edwards’ “Human Touch” memorably foregrounds the song’s quiet, passionate desperation. A great way to (hopefully) inaugurate more versions of songs from this still-underappreciated period of Springsteen’s career. – CH

Tyler the Creator (feat. GloRilla, Sexxy Red, and Lil Wayne) – “Sticky” (from Chromakopia, 2024)

The remarkable Chromakopia is an unsettled and unsettling trip, and “Sticky” manages to be both a temporary relief from its paranoid vibes and one of its strangest moments. Teaming up with a true dream team of GloRilla, Sexxy Red, and Lil Wayne, Tyler delivers a track as humid and fungal as the title image suggests. Driven by a ghostly whistling hook and pushed forward by piledriver drums, “Sticky” lets each MC do their shit with region-specific signifiers (dig the “Whoop that trick” from Memphis, or the way the New Orleans horns kick in when Lil Wayne shows up) as the track builds into a screaming whirlwind that’d be scary as hell if it wasn’t also so much fun. Which, come to think of it, is one of the modes that’s made Tyler such a compelling figure since his emergence with the wolfgang antics of Odd Future, of which this track is a welcome reminder. – CH

JD McPherson – “The Rock and Roll Girls” (from Nite Owls, 2024)

Oklahoma’s JD McPherson has made some of the freshest throwback rock ‘n’ roll of the last decade, bouncing through the sounds of the ‘50s and ‘60s without getting bogged down in retro reenactments. His new album, Nite Owls, centers in the ‘70s, with a gleaming set of power pop and crunchy-riff glam that loses none of its luster by bringing McPherson’s talents slightly further in the chronology. “The Rock and Roll Girls” is the album’s highlight, a Dave Edmunds-style romp that finds the narrator doing that most rock ‘n’ roll of activities – driving around – and looking back on his past with both fondness and a bit of frustration. But the vroom-vroom guitars and McPherson’s soaring vocal keep it from collapsing into “remember when?” melancholy, instead propelling McPherson’s protagonist as he sends his best (and hopefully some of those guitars) to the title subjects. It’s an immediate grabber that deepens on subsequent listens, and – maybe best of all – it’s got a great beat and you can dance to it. A pick to click, in any era. – CH

Megan Thee Stallion – “Fell in Love” (from MEGAN: ACT II, 2024)

Megan Thee Stallion already released one great album this year and has now added to it with an additional excellent collection. On ACT II, she cements her case as the best in the business with the range of her expert rhymes, and the glorious throwback “Fell in Love” is a boom-bapping highlight. Tackling the realization that a good time has turned into something deeper, “Fell in Love” bursts with joy and surprise, and the often-ribald sentiments in Megan’s mash note are both legitimately lovely and laugh-out-loud funny. (The lyric that’s punctuated with a magician’s “Ta-da!” makes me cackle every time.) The go-go-infused track amplifies the pleasure, and the whole thing is done in less than two-and-a-half-minutes. What a glorious trip. – CH

Woody Platt – “Still Be Around” (from Far Away with You, 2024)

My favorite Uncle Tupelo song gets a bluegrass makeover on the debut solo album from Platt, a Steep Canyon Ranger whose warm, clear baritone has been a highlight of the group’s music both live and on record. That voice is on full display here, as Platt delivers Jay Farrar’s heartsick ballad with a tone that’s somewhere between declaration and confession. Platt lets the melody do its thing, a smart move that’s assisted by an arrangement that doesn’t require much reinvention. The chiming, thrumming acoustic guitars that draped Farrar in the original version find their high-lonesome analog here in a descanting banjo and mandolin that fill the spaces around Platt’s echoing lead. A welcome reminder of an old favorite, and a new way to hear it. – CH

Amythyst Kiah (featuring S.G. Goodman) – “Play God and Destroy the World” (from Still + Bright, 2024)

When they were children, Amythyst Kiah declares, and S. G. Goodman seconds, they were so angry they wanted to destroy a cruel, hypocritical world. Even as an adult, Kiah remains enraged by racism, homophobia and the rest: “I want to burn every cross that you hide behind.” But then the chorus kicks in, with steadfast and unflagging 500-mile Proclaimers intensity, to remind that we’ll all be dead soon enough and life is precious. So: “In the darkness, find the green.” Play together and remake the world. – DC

Latimore – “Let’s Straighten It Out” (from More, More, More, Latimore, 1974)

Fifty years ago this week, No. 1 on Billboard’s “Hot Soul Singles” chart was “Let’s Straighten It Out,” a gloriously slow-grind and slow-hand slow jam that could only manage No. 31 on the pop chart. The electric keys tickle and tease and the only guitar is buttery bass. Old-school R&B was notably grown-ass but Latimore is all in, noticing his woman’s not quite right and entreating her to join him in, uh, talking it over: “Instead of lyin’ there cryin’ your eyes out, baby, you and me oughta be gettin’ it on.” The single was edited down to a taught 3:39, but if you’re serious about getting everything worked out, I recommend the 5 ½ minute album version on repeat. – DC

Chris Jones & the Night Drivers – “What If You’re Wrong” (single, 2024)

Co-written by Chris Jones with former Night Driver (and friend of the newsletter) Jon Weisberger, “What If You’re Wrong” imagines questioning a conspiracy theorist—or maybe our entire gullible culture. It’s a playful conceit but a serious one too, a point emphasized by Jones’ razor-sharp lick and heavy Lightfoot-ish vocal, and timely too, what with references to “chem trails” and “false flags,” “rabbit hole[s]” and doing “your own research.” Of course, the question can always be turned around, so all Jones wants to know is—when it turns out that the world isn’t ending anytime soon or that, say, the Dems really aren’t running a Satanic pedophile ring out of the basement of a pizza parlor—will the conspiracist admit they were wrong or will they double down. – DC

Barbara Dane – “It Isn’t Nice” (from Barbara Dane and the Chamber Brothers, 1966)

Barbara Dane, who died last week at 97, was inspired by Pete Seeger, cut several folk-revival era albums and sang with Bob Dylan in the Greenwich years. She released several blues albums, as well, including one and a half of those with Lightnin’ Hopkins and, as she demonstrated on 2002’s What Are You Gonna Do When There Ain’t No Jazz?, she could swing it, too. All her work was socially engaged, radical, both detailing the cruelties of this world and fighting for a better one. I first learned about her because of her very earnest 1973 title track, “I Hate the Capitalist System,” a cut that even today still sounds like its fighting the long revolution. (The genre-fluid radical singer-songwriter Carsie Blanton is basically a modern Barbara Dane with jokes and post-punk influences.) Her heavy, warm and big-hearted alto was worth hearing no matter what she was up to, but I think my favorite from her is this lead track from her album with the pre-psychedelic Chambers Brothers. Protests and jailings and all the other political work aren’t nice, as in they are neither polite nor any fun, but the necessary stresses and incivilities of freedom’s price are worth it. And, as you may discover while singing along with the Chambers’ doo-wop backing and Dane’s I-dare-you lead, it turns out the fight is fun after all. R.I.P., Barbara Dane. – DC

Willie Nelson – “Keep Me in Your Heart (from Last Leaf on the Tree, 2024)

I’ve thought for a while now that Warren Zevon’s farewell ballad was bound to become a new pop standard. Here’s hoping that this version from a superstar like Willie Nelson—I’m going to go ahead and call it the most moving version I’ve heard—will jumpstart the process. Willie’s voice is hoarse but tender, and I think replacing Zevon’s “Sha la-la las” with Trigger dancing happily before quickly collapsing is a smart musical choice and an emotionally wise one, too. My bet is that Willie’s “Keep Me in Your Heart” is going to prove an enduring gift of a song to me, a hard one to hear without tears. And as I, and those I love, age and leave, it’s only going to get harder. – DC

Recommended readings:

-Natalie Weiner on glimpsing a better world at a Willi Carlisle and Creekbed Carter Hogan show, for Don’t Rock the Inbox

-Carl Wilson on seeing Richard Thompson and Billy Bragg, on affinity and hope, for Crrritic

-Alex Williams on the late folk, jazz and blues singer Barbara Dane, for The New York Times

-Robert Christgau on Louis Jordan, for And It Don’t Stop

-Sheldon Pearce on Ka, for NPR

-Stephen Thomas Erlewine on the expanded version of Elvis Costello’s King of America, for his And So It Goes

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