Turn It Up - 2/24/25

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.

Joan Baez – “Diamonds and Rust” (live, 2025)

It’s missing the first lyric, but this unofficial recording from the recent “Sweet Relief” concert salute to Joan Baez is still one of the most stunning things I’ve heard all year. Standing solo at center stage, Baez sings her signature 1975 hit with a poise and beauty that reflects both the song’s deepened significance with time and – more importantly – its careful crafting over six decades of performance. For my money, Baez’ voice has only grown richer as it’s settled into her elder alto, and she finds every crack and soft spot in the rise and fall of the melody. It’s her best song, and this is as good a version as I’ve heard. Also, of course, “Diamonds and Rust” is famously about Bob Dylan, and it’s hard not to hear this also as a response to A Complete Unknown, especially when Baez repeats the middle verse or ends with a laughing rework of the final lyric. But this is her story. She’ll take the diamonds. And she deserves every single one. – CH

(As you can see below, you have to visit YouTube to watch the clip - it’s worth it, so click through!)

Brother Ali and Ant – “Head Heart Hands” (from Satisfied Soul, 2025)

David already turned up one great track from the new release by Rhymesayers stalwarts Brother Ali and Ant, and I can’t stop listening to another one. “Head Heart Hands” is pure, pulsing testimony, with Ali bearing witness to the work of trying to do and be better, over a track drawn equally from gospel organ and – to my ears, at least – the psychedelic rock of the late-‘60s. (It even bears a slight melodic similarity to Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man.”) Brother Ali remains rooted in faith, signaled from the opening blessing of “Bismillah,” and he works the shared terrain between spiritual traditions in both specific rhymes and prayerful atmosphere. He’s earthbound, too, like when he admits that his “big-ass head” contains both “big ideas” and the tendency to get pushy about them at the cost of how he’s treating those around him. “Head Heart Hands” is a deep, reflective groove that speaks to the universe without losing its grounding in the hard world that we occupy. – CH

Hurray for the Riff Raff – “Pyramid Scheme” (single, 2025)

“This is not a scene,” Alynda Segarra insists at the beginning of their new single, “it’s a pyramid scheme.” Ain’t that the truth. It’s hard not to hear our larger societal catastrophe in the uncertainty of that lyric, or its immediate follow-up (“This is not a joke, there’s a hole in the boat”), but Segarra roots the big strums and sneaky feelings of “Pyramid Scheme” in a more specific (though not unrelated) context. Their primary concern here is the internet, and – as a press release notes – “the alienating, undermining effects it has on artists and outsiders.” Segarra invokes Calamity Jane, Frida Kahlo, and Darby Crash over a humming arrangement that’s particularly animated by organ from Phil Cook. “I don’t know what you want me to be,” Segarra reveals halfway through, striking both for its directness and for how it juxtaposes with an artist who’s made some of the most sure-footed records of the last several years. Not to mention some of the best. – CH

Jerry Butler – “He Will Break Your Heart” (single, 1960)
Jerry Butler – “I’m A-Telling You” (single, 1961)

Soul statesman Jerry Butler died last week. His elegant records – made first in Chicago, then in Philadelphia – are as gorgeous and sustaining now as they have ever been. Emerging first as a founding member of The Impressions alongside Curtis Mayfield, Butler co-wrote and sang their first hit – the towering “For Your Precious Love” – before going solo in 1960. He kept working with Mayfield, though, and most of his early hits were co-written (and often sung in harmony with) his former partner, whose airy falsetto proved a winning complement to Butler’s striking baritone. And, indeed, what a voice. Butler’s deep resonance captured the dynamic between strength and vulnerability – a kind of tough tenderness – that characterized most of the great soul men of this era, and his most affecting performances come in songs that barely masked the heartbreak just underneath their brave faces. “He Will Break Your Heart,” one of the many Latin-influenced ballads that marked early-‘60s R&B from Sam Cooke to Ben E. King to Arthur Alexander (all of whom should be heard in conversation with Butler), is an aching plea to a lover who Butler is desperately trying to hold onto. Over Mayfield’s cascading guitar and supportive harmonies, Butler clocks the titular new fella as a callous phony – or maybe he’s just trying to say whatever he can to keep from ending up alone. “He uses all the great quotations,” Butler points out, before adding the self-lacerating realization that “he says the things I wish I could say.” It’s a simple but astonishing vocal, with Butler slipping between half-spoken asides and full-voiced declarations in a manner befitting the song’s troubled protagonist. There’s less ambiguity in “I’m A-Telling You,” also co-written and accompanied by Mayfield, but it’s just as powerful. Here, Butler relates his version of the workingman’s blues, from long days on the job to stressful nights at home. Butler’s got the blues for sure, burrowing into the minor-key melody like he’s got his head in his hands as the band swirls around him. But he remains hopeful that “maybe someday, Lord, I'll find satisfaction and peace of mind,” even as the cracks in his voice show that he’s far from convinced. Butler’s cool poise earned him the nickname “the Iceman,” but records like “I’m A-Telling You,” or “He Will Break Your Heart,” show that his music works so well because of the warmth he exudes in so many great performances. – CH

Jerry Butler – “Alberta (Let Your Hair Hang Low” (from Folk Songs, 1963)
Jerry Butler – “Only the Strong Survive” (from The Ice Man Cometh, 1968)

Jerry Butler will be best remembered as a civil-rights era soul singer. That’s understandable, of course, but he cut all sorts of stuff across his career. Working at Motown in the late 70s, he sang sexy slow burn Barry White-style seductions such as “I Wanna Do It to You” and cut funky disco sides such as “The Devil in Mrs. Jones.” He charted duets throughout his career, too, with Betty Everett, Brenda Lee Eager, Thelma Houston and Patti Austin. He had a hit with Mercer and Mancini’s “Moon River,” of all things, and maybe his most unexpected turn, he cut an entire folk-revival set in 1963 simply called Folk Songs. His version of “Alberta (Let Your Hair Hang Low)” highlights the vocal warmth that Charles praised above. An overlooked highlight of his catalog, “Alberta” lays bare the ways he deployed phrasing, texture and tone to express the most urgent intimacies. His career record, “Only the Strong Survive,” has thankfully not been overlooked. Dave Marsh put it all the way up at #89 in his The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1,001 Greatest Singles Ever Made, noting that this Butler co-write with Gamble and Huff “uses motherly wisdom about love as a code that signifies black power.” NFR friend Craig Werner cited it as a Black power anthem and as an exemplar of the gospel impulse. It’s all that and more, an old civil rights anthem as urgent as this morning’s breaking news. You know the single edit, but the version below marches that indomitable groove 45-seconds stronger: “Keep right on pushin’!” – DC

Emily Zeck – “Loud Mouth Woman” (single, 2025)

Zeck is a Cali-based, Nashville-recording singer-songwriter who cuts low-key retro country-styled pop, so sure I checked her out. She also self-identifies as a social media entrepreneur/influencer, so ick. But it’s the contradictions here that help make this one work for me. Zeck’s styled for kitschy midcentury femininity, singing coy and cutesy and a little breathy like she’s an ironic Kasey Musgrave, but her song is earnest and on point and the picking is southwest spare and perfect, like a lib fronting Marty Robbins’ old band: She phrases the title line in a way that keeps teasing me into “Devil Woman,” so funny and smart at the same time. “When the going gets rough, you can count on us to step up to the plate / We've taken the vow and we're plenty proud to speak for those who can't.” Not loud at all. But clear. – DC

310babii and James Brown – “Bad” (single, 2025)

Nothing new here. Just 310babii, a dance-focused teen hip hopper (even Travis Kelce’s been known to borrow his The Squabble for end zone celebrations) rapping about a girl so fine he’d steal for her. What really moves the crowd here, though, is the rhythm track that he, uh, steals from James Brown. That’s nothing new either, but I still find it refreshing that babii wants both to connect with the old heads and to teach his fellow kids about the Godfather of Soul—even to the point of sharing the label credit with him. Nice touch: This babii papa promises to get his bad girl a brand-new bag, Chanel no less. And if I’ve learned one thing in this life, it’s that James Brown is always worth revisiting. So after you turn “bad” up, treat yourself to the source, “The Boss” off JB’s 1973 Black Caesar soundtrack. – DC

Dyan – “Midwest” (from Midwest, 2025)

This week’s chill vibe for chilling times is also a little chilly: A lovely synth pop, highway trance of a record by Alexis Dyan Marsh, a TV and film composer who releases solo music as Dyan. The title track from her second album finds her driving the interstates away from the coasts, fleeing LA, vowing never to return to New York, returning to a heartland home in the country. “I am working on the inside where I’m going to have my baby / It’s a new myth that you have to find your dreams till it ends you.” Billboards and miles fly by. “Have I been away for too long?” – DC

Recommended reading/listening:

-Ann Powers talks to Allison Russell, at Folk Alliance

-Craig Werner talks about Joni Mitchell, at Wisconsin Public Radio

-David Suisman on seven songs that tell the story of the Iraq War, for Good Authority

-Stephen Thomas Erlewine on DIG! XX, for his So It Goes

-Hunter Kelly on Semler, for his Untethered Southerner

-Caryn Rose on Bruce Springsteen’s 2/23/1975 show, part of a series of Springsteen concert retrospectives, for her new Radio Nowhere

-Mark Anthony Neal on Jerry Butler’s Chicago Songwriters Workshop, for Medium

(from Billboard 8/17/1968)

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