Turn It Up - 2/5/2024

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.

Adia Victoria – “Went For A Ride” (from My Black Country: The Songs of Alice Randall, 2024)

It’s hard to imagine that there will be better news in 2024 than the return of Alice Randall. In April, Randall – bestselling novelist, scholar, and groundbreaking country songwriter – will release a memoir called My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music’s Black Past, Present, And Future. And Oh Boy! Records will drop an accompanying album featuring an all-star team of Black women doing their versions of Randall songs. And what a way to kick things off: Adia Victoria, whose reckonings with the Southern and American past and present have marked her as one of this moment’s most vital voices, offers a smoldering version of Randall’s “Went For A Ride,” which she co-wrote with Radney Foster. Foster’s version – stately, declarative, major-key – is just fine. But Adia Victoria unsurprisingly explores a vast new territory. Her eerie testimony, offered over a hazy-horizon arrangement, adds extra weight and mystery to the song’s recounting of a freedman who found work with both the “Buffalo Soldier” frontier regiments of the U.S. Army and as a performer in “Wild West” shows. Engaging both reality and mythology of Western expansion, Victoria sings of the caging of the prairie and the “blood on the leather” with the vivid lyricism of the linked traditions of which Randall and Victoria are such crucial parts. With her final, repeated “I swore at the devil, and went for a ride,” Victoria nods back to the crossroads while committing to ride ‘til she can’t no more. What a track. What a project. - CH

Stephanie Lambring – “Good Mother” (from Hypocrite, 2024)

Stephanie Lambring knocked me sideways with her 2020 debut album Autonomy, and the first single from her follow-up suggests that she’s not ready to let up. “Good Mother” is the kind of song that unfolds like a flower, as Lambring reveals this devastating portrait of a woman who questions whether having a child was the right decision for her. She builds this deep-blue rumination around the barest pulse of percussion and keyboards, which swell alongside her voice, and she drives it home with unadorned lyrics that underline both depth and conflict: “I count down to nap time/I let her sleep late/That’s twenty less minutes/She’ll be calling my name.” The key to this – beyond the spare arrangement and Lambring’s nuanced delivery – is that the woman depicted here actually does seem to be a really good and loving mother, which both emphasizes her ambivalence (from which Lambring’s lyrics don’t flinch) and makes “Good Mother” all the more beautifully poignant. Not to mention all the more heartbreakingly familiar. - CH

Lucinda Williams – “Stolen Moments” (from Stories From a Rock N Roll Heart, 2023)

David’s wonderful essay about Lucinda Williams got me thinking about and listening to her catalog again. This highlight of her most recent album stuck out in particular. “Stolen Moments” is a stirring eulogy for a true-hearted companion – it’s apparently about Tom Petty, but it could be about just anyone with whom you’ve shared the road and the ride. With punching drums and guitars supporting Williams as she offers one of her most sure-footed vocals in recent years, she reminds listeners that even the longest, most meaningful friendships often come back to us in unexpected bursts that puncture the everyday with their sad, sweet, loving reminders. And then – just as quickly – they’re gone. It’s hard-won wisdom from a self-proclaimed “rock ‘n’ roll heart,” and it’s just as poignant in celebrating the survivors as those who’ve moved on. Happy (belated) birthday, Lucinda Williams. Here’s to many more. - CH

The MC5 – “Ramblin’ Rose”/“Kick Out The Jams”/“Looking At You” (live, 1970)

Speaking of survivors and friends that have moved on, Wayne Kramer died this week at 75. One of the mighty MC5, Kramer lived through that band’s remarkable, chaotic run, and then made it through addiction and prison time, to emerge on the other side as a beloved elder and committed activist. (He founded the organization Jail Guitar Doors, named after The Clash song about his darker days, and he showed up for causes from worker’s rights to peace to anti-racism and beyond.) He brought his joyous buzzsaw of a guitar with him as he kept old flames burning, started new fires, and – perhaps most importantly – helped others gather kindling as they built their own. (My little story: when I was an undergraduate, I got ahold of his number and interviewed him for a paper about the connections between punk and jazz. He was so generous and lovely talking about Sun Ra, Detroit, and more. It doesn't mean much in the scheme of his storied career, but it meant a lot to me then and still does now.) The outpouring of love and respect on social media after his passing suggests that my experience was no exception. He was, in other words, a man with a “rock ‘n’ roll heart.”

So let’s rock. It’s very hard to watch this astonishing footage from Michigan in 1970 and not conclude that the MC5 were the best rock ‘n’ roll band in the world at that moment. Or to disagree with the claim that his longtime friend and fan Dave Marsh made in 2006: “If Kramer didn’t invent punk, he and his band perfected it long before Malcolm McLaren ever laid eyes on Johnny Rotten.” Three thundering songs, with Kramer on stage right strutting and mugging and wielding that guitar (“Chuck Berry meets Pete Townshend at more than maximum volume,” wrote Marsh) like he really did believe it could kill fascists. He was then and he remained a live-wire provider of true testimonials. I’m so glad we got to hear him “be who I am” and kick out the jams (motherfucker!) for as long as we did. Stay free. Rock on and on, Brother Wayne. - CH

F.L.Y. (Fast Life Yungstaz) – “Swag Surfin’” (from Jamboree, 2009)

With apologies to the catalog of the team’s most famous fan, the closest that Chiefs’ Kingdom has had to a theme song this season is “Swag Surfin’,” by Fast Life Yungstaz. The record has stuck around in the black community ever since it was a hit in the early Obama era--a simple, collective, and celebratory dance commonly cranked at HBCU sporting events and which also became known late in the last decade as a Chicago Bears locker room jam. The track got played some during Chiefs games at Arrowhead Stadium a couple years back (the Bears head coach, Matt Nagy, who returned in 2022 to KC as an assistant, may have had something to do with that?), but the song hadn’t been heard for a while until late last year when linebacker Willie Gaye, with the Chiefs in a slump for months and trailing Cincinnati in week 17, sent a request for the song to be played after the next defensive stop: “We really need that!” Teammates danced about the sidelines when “Swag Surfin’” blasted through the stadium, fans joined in, and the Chiefs haven’t lost since. And that moment in the frigid wildcard game against Miami, when the national television audience had to endure a few seconds of Taylor Swift bouncing to the song, arm in arm with Donna Kelce and Brittany Mahomes, is precisely when, I’d estimate, the cruelest anti-Taylor backlash really kicked in: Swift swaggin’ joyously to hip hop did not sit well with a certain kind of white male football fan. How ‘bout those Chiefs? –DC

Tom Odell – “The End of the Summer” (from Black Friday, 2024)

I’ve fallen hard for the self-important and self-berating songs on Tom Odell’s new one Black Friday.  Sometimes it’s the lyrics that pull me in—like the way that, on “Loving You Will Be the Death of Me,” it’s never entirely clear if his cries of “Jesus Christ” are querying a deity or just exclaiming his bewilderment at a relationship that has him doing things he hates. Other times it’s the studied-and-swollen pain of the music that pops hardest, such as when, on the title track, Odell extends a falsetto leap into a fragile little aria, then makes the line a scream on its melodic return. My favorite moment, though, is the album’s simplest. “The End of the Summer” finds Odell leaning into his delicate Ray Davies-recalling lilt, keeping its big broken-hearted emotions small, its melody elegant and familiar, its strings and ooh-ing choir evoking some old musical. “Can’t believe I used to get to kiss you in front of everyone,” he says, not simply at all. “Now those days are gone,” he adds both familiarly and like he’s never felt loss before. –DC

Wonderlick – “Otis Redding’s Disco Album” (single, 2024)

The premise is a hoot—a scientist has proven the existence of other Earths by discovering a copy of the titular Big O release in a Berkley record store—and the song’s retro synth-pop is a hooky laugh-along delight. In a world where Otis Redding lived to make a disco album, Wonderlickers Tom Quirk and Jay Blumenfield ask, is that the tragedy that his death was in ours? A so-smart-it’s-poignant touch that may or may not have actually made me tear up: Turns out “the album’s not that bad. It kind of makes me glad.” –DC

Bruce Springsteen – “The Wish” (from Tracks, 1998)

Adele Springsteen, who died last week at the age of 98, was a working mom. “The Wish” starts out as a Christmas song with Adele saving to make sure little Bruce finds “a brand-new Japanese guitar” under the tree. But it builds from there into a grateful tribute: Adele was resolute and optimistic, an inspiration and a source of pride, a buffer between Bruce and his depressive dad. The studio version on the Tracks box is touching and perfect. The Springsteen on Broadway version, piano only and with a narrative preamble, is perhaps even more poignant still, performed as it was when Adele was already “seven years into Alzheimer’s” and when Bruce can’t entirely hide from the loss he knows is coming. “The sound of your makeup case on the sink” might be his most world-conjuring detail in a career full of those. His “Well, it was me in my Beatle boots, you in pink curlers and Matador pants / Pulling me up off the couch to do the Twist for my uncles and aunts” just has to be his most perfect couplet—a thank-you note that, it turns out, can double as a career summary. The wish came true. No sad songs tonight. R.I.P. Adele Springsteen. –DC

Reading recommendations:

-Joseph Fenity talks to Melanie in her final interview, for Hollywood Reporter

-Ann Powers on Laufey, for NPR

-Erin Osmon on Howdy Glenn, for Los Angeles Times

-David Dennis Jr. on Megan Thee Stallion, for Andscape

-Nadine Smith on Pitchfork and hip-hop, for The Fader

-Brianna Younger on Swag Surfin’ and black culture, for The New Yorker

-Robert Christgau on “We Are the World,” for Village Voice

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