Turn It Up - 11/6/2023

Earworms, obsessions, recommendations

We’re back again to start the week with some things we’ve been listening to. Charles goes first this week, then David, and we’ve also included some reading recommendations at the bottom.

“Thieves In The Temple” (Live at Glam Slam ‘92) – Prince and the New Power Generation (from Diamonds and Pearls: Super Deluxe Edition, 2023)

This live version comes from a new deluxe reissue of Diamonds and Pearls, documenting a show from 1992. (The show’s also available in a stand-alone version). It’s stunning – but, then again, was there ever any other kind of Prince live set? The Artist and his band dance, drive, and dig deep through a Pearls-heavy set that makes room for a few older songs near the end. The relentless “Thieves In The Temple,” from Graffiti Bridge, is particularly compelling. Focusing the song’s desperation into a whirling semi-acoustic pulse, the musicians break down halfway through into a furious groove that splits the difference between revival meeting and motorik trance. Over this maelstrom, Prince and Rosie Gaines build an escalating call and response that climaxes with Prince unleashing gospel shrieks as Gaines and the crowd support him with enthusiastic (though not entirely reassuring) repetitions of “Alright!” And then they’re out, on to the next highlight of a show that might end up being one of Prince’s best 1990s recordings of any kind. - CH

“Byrd and Shepard” – Kam Franklin (single, 2023)

Kam Franklin, frontwoman of great Houston R&B band The Suffers, bears witness to James Byrd, Jr., and Matthew Shepard, both of whom died at the hands of violent bigots a quarter-century ago. Over a restless arrangement punctuated by weeping guitar, Franklin’s mission goes deeper than even this necessary tribute. With her repeated declaration that “they want to ban the books, but we won’t forget you,” Franklin aims her words at those around the country who would erase the histories that chronicle the lives and deaths of Byrd, Shepard, and so many others. It’s angry, sad, desperate, and insistent all at once: a perfect soundtrack for this new and newly troubled era. - CH

“Biko” – Silkroad Ensemble (feat. Rhiannon Giddens and Mazz Swift) (from Phoenix Rising, 2023)

Giddens assumed artistic directorship of the Silkroad Ensemble a few years ago, and this new EP – drawn from a larger work that the group describes as “collective grieving and clarion call” – is the first recorded evidence of the partnership. The standout is their version of Peter Gabriel’s “Biko.” Giddens delivers one of her best vocals, aching and insistent, but equally powerful is that of Silkroad’s Mazz Swift, whose glowing urgency on the second verse sends the song soaring. Behind them, the ensemble swirls and dances, supporting Giddens and Swift’s voices with tender persistence. Evoking in both sound and spirit the work of Sweet Honey in the Rock – I especially hear their tribute to Harry T. Moore, adapted from a Langston Hughes poem and released in 2003 – this invocatory “Biko” gives the song renewed power in this new and newly troubled era. - CH

“Papa Please!” – Talibah Safiya (feat. MadaameFrankie) (single, 2023)

Skittering drums and throbbing bass announce the arrival of this slow-burning funk gem from Memphis-based artist Talibah Safiya. Trembling guitar joins the chorus as Safiya calls out and calls for her man over a loose-change rhythm that, like the song’s protagonist, seems always on the verge of falling apart but somehow pulls it together every time. “Feel like I got the fuckin’ blues,” she testifies, a perfect mission statement for a track that stands in the tradition of testimonies from Bessie Smith to Chaka Khan and beyond. When her voice rises to the climactic “Come home to mama,” it’s hard to imagine how anyone could resist. You won’t be able to. - CH

“Now and Then” – The Beatles (single, 2023)

I’m not here to defend or dismiss “Now and Then,” the “new” Beatles song where the most distinguishing feature is the lack of distinguishing features. I wish it was as good as “Real Love” (the best of the “new” Beatles songs, now almost thirty years old itself), and I won’t listen to it as much as “Free as a Bird” either. But there’s nothing that turns me off, or (worse) that makes me turn the song off. And there’s one moment that takes my breath. It’s on the chorus, when their voices go up together on “I miss you.” It’s sad and sweet, the one part of “Now and Then” that feels both like the old Beatles and – crucially, beautifully – like the old Beatles. Some are dead and some are living, but it’s the one reminder here of the many reasons why – in my life – I’ve loved them more. - CH

“What Is the Color of the Soul of a Man” — Jimmy Driftwood (from Voice of the People, 1963) and “What Is the Color of the Soul of a Man” — The Black Legacy Project (from Black Legacy Project Vol. 1, 2023)

The song is from Jimmy “The Battle of New Orleans” Driftwood and he originally delivered his sly 1963 civil rights protest in a heavy Ozark twang, set to a folky voice-and-guitar arrangement and a melody that is children’s-song-catchy. This reinvention of the song by The Black Legacy Project, associated with non-profit Music in Common and devoted to advancing “racial solidarity, equity, and belonging,” could not sound more different or more necessary—with tinkling, twinkling piano and overcast backing vocals; a gospel lead from Jeron Marshall-Isbell; a jazzy Quiet Storm groove, plus a rapped verse from keyboardist and MC Willie Rollerson. Driftwood’s title is a trick question, of course, but it’s never been posed with as much gravitas and urgency as this. – DC

“Do It Again” – Eli “Paperboy” Reed (from Hits and Misses: The Singles, 2023)

“Paperboy” Reed has gained quite a reputation for reinventing other folks’ music himself, turning songs by everyone from Merle Haggard and Motorhead into deeply felt and danceable soul music. But “Do It Again” is perhaps his most unexpected transformation yet, twisting the Dan’s hit from naughty but knowing Yacht Rock into a dizzying spook house of your own shivering psyche, where you can’t buy a thrill and where every closet is full of skeletons you recognize all too well. -- DC  

“Let Me Prove Myself to You” and “For What It’s Worth” – Piper Road Spring Band (from The Gainesville Session, 2023)

With their new The Gainesville Session, the bluegrass Piper Road Spring Band is celebrating half a century together, so I’m a little embarrassed to confess I’d never heard them until Charles reviewed the album here last month. It’s fantastic. Their “For What It’s Worth,” for example, gifts us with a rhythmically fresh approach (mandolin chop, for the win!) to a song that’s both tied to a very specific moment yet perpetually on point for revival. My favorite track, though, is “Let Me Prove My Love to You,” a cowrite from Shawn Camp and Piper Road co-founder Bob Mason. The song’s melody keeps pushing the song’s vocalist, Barry Reise, to his tenor’s tip top. He’s having to work hit that highest note—“Let me prove myself to YOU”—but he hits it, poignantly, embodying the song’s message perfectly in his performance. – DC

“Better Off Apart” – Martin Zellar w/ Presley Haile (from Head West, 2023)

Capturing a couple admitting to themselves it’s past time to call it quits, Martin Zellar’s “Better Off Apart” is one of the sharper breakup songs I’ve heard in years. No new ground broken, just a conversation that happens countless times every day. She says she’s changed. He says, “I don’t think it’s fair of you to expect I was gonna change too.” They both sound exhausted. Zellar’s and guest Presley Haile’s voices join one last time, then their slow-and-steady time together dribbles to an end. No fault, no tears. Regrets only. – DC

“Less Lonesome” – Presley Haile (single, 2023)

Haile is a young singer-songwriter, just turned 21, out of Texas, who has a knack for choosing the right details—“Less Lonesome” begins with “Finding faces in the bathroom tiles, constellations from the water drops on the glass”—and a voice that makes you feel them. The melody is melancholy, the brushed beat somber, the pedal steel just barely holding in its tears, but it’s Haile’s heavy alto, depressed and taken to its bed, that brings the room down. Haile’s singing here about a loss that the lyric leaves unnamed —a sibling, a lover, a friend—but her heart’s companion, in any case. I’d guess that, like me, this the first you’re hearing of Presley Haile, but it will not be the last. – DC

Recommended reading:

Rachel Cholst on making festivals safer for trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming artists, for Nashville Scene

Jack Reidy on Sly Stone’s ‘80s Chicagoland bar band, for Chicago Reader

Mikael Wood talks to Jason Aldean, for Los Angeles Times

Robert Christgau on the class origins of 50s rock and roll, for And It Don’t Stop

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