Turn It Up - 2/4/2025

Earworms, obsessions, recommendations

Feb 04, 2025

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.

Marianne Faithfull – “Something Better” (single, 1969)

Marianne Faithfull died last week. My favorite in her great catalog is neither one of her early hits or later resugence, but rather a kind of bridge between them: “Something Better,” one of her final ‘60s singles. A swaying bit of folk-rock from Brill Building dream team Gerry Goffin and Barry Mann, “Something Better” washes through its brief, lightly psychedelic verses in just over two minutes, aided by an extended outro that cops the trumpet descant from “Penny Lane” and drifts across like an epilogue more than an afterthought. But, as with so many of her recordings, Faithfull’s vocal animates the song. She’s still the clarion songbird of her early hits, but Faithfull also imbues “Something Better” with the kind of knowing world-weariness that would define her later work and which gives the title sentiment – “you know there’s got to be something better” – a layer of wise resignation that extends beyond her years but certainly not her artistic reach. Going forward from this, she moved across a difficult decade and emerged as survivor and then venerated elder. As she did this, Faithfull became an expert in uncovering both cracks and threads in the songs she interpreted. That’s all there in “Something Better,” alongside the waning hours of the Swinging-London sunburst she helped inaugurate. What a great artist, who deserves all the tributes she’s getting. And more. – CH

Bonnie “Prince” Billy – “One of These Days (I’m Gonna Spend the Whole Night with You)” (from The Purple Bird, 2025)

Will Oldham’s new Nashville-recorded new album is quickly becoming my favorite thing he’s ever done. That’s not hard, since I’ll admit that I’ve always admired his work more than connected with it. But I find The Purple Bird entrancing, with its warm arrangements and cozy productions serving as perfect complement to the wispy resonance of Oldham’s voice. David wrote about “Downstream,” his fine duet with John Anderson. Another track I’m particularly fond of is “One of These Days (I’m Gonna Spend the Whole Night with You),” a 70s-style slow burn where Oldham unfurls a smiling come-on that barely conceals the aching heart underneath. With cascading keyboards and gentle percussion, “One of These Days” is a twangy quiet storm that cuddles up and won’t let you go. – CH

FKA Twigs (feat. Koreless) – “Drums of Death” (from Eusexua, 2025)

It’s almost impossible to live up to the booming implications of the song’s title, but the clattering glitches of “Drums of Death” pull it off. A highlight of FKA Twigs’ new album, “Drums of Death” is an old trick – an invitation to a friend and/or lover to find freedom on the dance floor – delivered with sweaty anticipation and swirling, shifting arrangement. “Relax and ease your mind,” FKA Twigs insists, “'cause you work so much,” making this – like so many of its dance-floor counterparts across era and genre – a labor song as well. Emma Goldman would approve. – CH

Amanda Fields and Megan McCormick – “Wild As a Flower” (single, 2023)

I’ve written about this beautiful song before, and it meant a lot to me again this weekend. My sweet cat Nico died on Saturday after an illness that worsened in the previous week. When she came to live with us in 2009, it took some time for this cautious creature to decide that we were to be trusted. Since then, she revealed herself as a warm, gentle, and quietly assertive spirit who I sometimes - without kidding - referred to as my boss. I will miss her a great deal, but I am glad that she’s now free to explore all the corners of the universe, where I’m sure she’ll find at least one warm, dark corner to make her own. Fields and McCormick’s lovely song – written after they lost a beloved animal – has been a particular source of comfort for me both because of how well it captures the bonds we build with these furry family members, and because of how it reminds us to cherish our time with these souls who find their way to us for just a little while. – CH

Helene Cronin – “Dear Life” (single, 2025)

Helene Cronin is what you and I would call a singer-songwriter but what she conceives as a “story singer.” I must admit she was new to me even though she’s been releasing albums for years, at least three of them over the last decade. Her “Dear Life” is now out ahead of her forthcoming fourth set, Maybe New Mexico, and the song reminds me melodically and vocally of Brandy Clark, lyrically and thematically of Mary Chapin Carpenter—good company. Like those story singers, Cronin takes an earnest premise that in lesser hands might lean a tad precious but then toughens things up with a moody piano-with-chamber-strings arrangement and a bridge that admits to contemplating ending it all. Life is hard. Hold on. - DC

Willow Avalon – “Country Never Leaves” (from Southern Belle Raisin’ Hell, 2025)

I Turned Up two Avalon tracks last year, “Getting’ Rich, Goin’ Broke,” which is recycled on her new album, and “Honey Ain’t No Sweeter,” which ain’t. Her full-length debut makes good on the promise of her earlier releases and then some. Avalon’s voice is her own. I mean that literally (her soprano has a singing-into-a-box-fan vibrato that likes to pop out now and then unexpectedly) and artistically. Her hipster dad jokes laugh with themselves without laughing at anything except maybe her own corny sincerity: “Yodelayheehoo do you think you are?” Demure or coy she ain’t. “I’m just like you / Got big titties and a big heart too,” she sings in “Hey There, Dolly,” a tossed-off novelty that’s part true-fan’s love letter and probably part networking. “Country Never Leaves” shows her serious side, returning a character to a little one-stoplight hellhole she fled years ago in hopes of not ending up addicted or pregnant like her young friends. Like a less winsome “Merry Go ‘Round,” Avalon’s song swallows hard, recalls her small-town past, faces the truth. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she concludes. Which is good because, in this song, there isn’t one. – DC

Brother Ali – “Name of the One” (from Satisfied Soul, 2025)

Minnesota rapper Brother Ali’s 2009 track “Tightrope,” where he strings together a series of dramas about how hard it is to keep on keeping on in America, goes on my short (well, short-ish) list of favorite 21^st century tracks. I dig his new one less for its stories than for its sonics: That circling razor-blade guitar lick, the slinky kick drum groove, the hook. In line with the album cover’s hot-wheels-and-mosque shot, I suspect Ali’s name of the One is Allah. As a secularist, I’m going say it’s the One as in on the one. Funky. – DC

Parlor Greens – “Driptorch” (from In Green We Dream, 2024)

Can’t have enough great organ trios, says me, and Parlor Greens might be the best working today. Drummer Tim Carman, guitarist Jimmy James and organist Adam Scone merge MGs with Jimmy Smith to produce the chill, pulse-slowing vibe I need to know is there for me these stressful days. - DC

Lizzie No – “Banks of the Rio Grande” (from Commie Country, 2024)

So far I’d been more of an admirer of Lizzie No, her songwriting and politics particularly, than I’ve been a fan. No’s latest, though, cut live at Chicago’s The Hideout, feels like it’s working on a whole other level. On stage, her voice packs more strength and more vulnerability, achieves greater urgency because she’s shouting yet at the same time greater intimacy. Performing back in May, she intros “Banks of the Rio Grande” with a promise to teach the billionaire boys club their days are numbered—and hearing her confidence in that coming revolution was thrilling. Listening again, after monitoring the grim news this long, miserable weekend, I wasn’t so sure. But then her commitment to dreams, and to drums (!), and especially the punkabilly explosions of guitarist Will Green, made me want to believe. Unclear if “Comrade Lizzie” means Commie Country as a new land of freedom or a new musical subgenre. Sign me up for both. – DC

Turn It Up - 2/4/2025

Earworms, obsessions, recommendations

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