We’re back again to start the week with some things we’ve been listening to. David goes first this week, then Charles, and we’ve listed some reading recommendations at the end.
MacKenzie Porter – “Coming Home to You” (from Nobody’s Born with a Broken Heart, 2024)
Some records reveal more than their songwriters may have intended. So I’m not sure it’s deliberate, but it seems exactly right to me that Canadian Mackenzie Parker’s list of things she hates about her house (a back door that sticks, “scratches on the hardwood from moving that couch,” an “off-white fridge,” and so on) feel so much more lived-in and specific than the generic details of the better life she’s wishing for (whiter fences, redder roses, greener yards, bigger houses, blah blah blah). This for-better-or-worse country love song feels right too when it turns, inevitably, at the chorus to the anthemic. Sounds like someone trying really hard to convince themselves they’ll be happy settling for the circumscribed conditions they’re going to have live with anyway. – DC
Graham Barham – “Lights on Nobody’s Home” (single, 2024)
We don’t get many decent broken-hearted country drinking songs these days, especially ones where it’s the guy who fucked up and knows it. Best line: “Worst part is she was probably right...” So I’m rooting for Barham here as he lines up empty shot glasses instead of heading home to an empty house, even if he may be more upset by “the thought of being single” than by the knowledge he’s lost this particular woman. The music swirls appropriately, dizzier as it goes, so I’m also giving him the benefit of the doubt and assuming the annoying vocal fry he attaches to the end of each early line is just drunk wallowing. And that the absence of that affectation as the song progresses hints that he may be both wising and sobering up—even as the rounds keep coming. – DC
Alejandro Escovedo – “Bury Me” (from Echo Dancing, 2024)
Escovedo’s upcoming album, Echo Dancing, will find him reworking old material from throughout his career. The original version of “Bury Me,” from his solo debut, Gravity, in 1994, was too long, too arch and fussed over by producer Stephen Bruton, and too romantic about what it might mean to die too young. This new version is tighter, rawer and noisier, danceable and joyous though still no fool. More miles than money but miles and miles to go—and still going. – DC
Steve Lawrence – “Fraulein” (single, 1957)
Years before he committed to an entire album’s worth of country tunes on 1963’s Swinging West, crooner Steve Lawrence tried an in-the moment cover of Bobby Helms’ crossover hit “Fraulein.” Peaking at #54, it didn’t fare any better commercially than did most of his early sides, did worse than many of them in fact, but it shows Lawrence doing what he did best and what he’d become known for: Singing smoothly, agreeably, not swinging as much he would later but just trusting the melody and producer Dick Jacobs’ horn-and-string charts to sell the song. Lawrence lopes through this as-catchy-as-it-is-corny country lost-love song like an uptown Eddy Arnold. Just ahead were a short string of Top Tens in the early 1960s—“Pretty Blue Eyes,” “Footsteps,” “Portrait of My Love,” the chart topping “Go Away Little Girl”—that led to some sixty albums, dozens of Johnny Carson and Carol Burnett appearances, regular Vegas engagements, and (a personal favorite) his role as Jack, Steve Martin’s swinging frenemy in 1984’s The Lonely Guy. Rest in peace, Steve Lawrence. – DC
Leyla McCalla – “Love We Had” (from Sun Without The Heat, 2024)
Leyla McCalla’s diasporic jukebox has made her into one of our most striking and original artists. From Carolina Chocolate Drops to Our Native Daughters to the acclaimed run of solo albums that she’ll add to in May, the Haiti-born, New Orleans-based McCalla remixes and remakes legacies around her clarion voice, expert multi-instrumentalism, and – crucially – her great talents as a record maker. Her latest single is a cover of influential Oromo artist and political activist Ali Birra, which McCalla describes as “an African Diasporic declaration of sonic freedom in the face of all that has kept us apart from one another.” With a bubbling polyrhythmic arrangement that draws from both hemispheres, and electric guitar ringing out in response to her vocals, “Love We Had” is both thesis and bop. Can’t wait for the whole album. - CH
Amanda Fields and Megan McCormick – “Wild as a Flower” (single, 2024)
Partners in love and music, Amanda Fields and Megan McCormick have released a series of beautiful collaborative singles that trace the winding streams of country, bluegrass, and folk, and drink deeply from their shared wellspring. As Steacy Easton wrote in a great recent Good Country profile of Fields, much of her work bespeaks “a rootlessness across genre or time, which lands on something contemporary sounding,” and “Wild as a Flower” is no exception. There’s the aching steel and Carter-descended vocals that root it in the traditions, but also the shimmer of cosmic California and the same-gender pronouns that reflect the welcome expansion of country love songs and storytelling. In close harmony, Fields and McCormick (whose smoky alto anchors her own fine and adventurous solo work) sing the kind of sweet, lonesome tune that could be about a lover, or a friend, or a family member, or – as they suggested to Justin Hiltner – a cherished animal. Or maybe it’s all those beloveds. The song’s expansive grace, and the duo’s remarkable music, makes room for everyone. - CH
Taj Mahal (with Trey Hensley) – “Lovin’ In My Baby’s Eyes” (live) (from Swingin’ Live at the Church in Tulsa, 2024)
Now 81, Taj Mahal is still swinging. On a new live album recorded at Leon Russell’s studio in Tulsa, Mahal’s core quartet is joined by stalwart bluegrass pros Trey Hensley and Rob Ickes for a vibrant set of old favorites from rangy blues to instrumental Hawaiian reveries. This addition proves particularly valuable on two songs where Hensley duets with Mahal; while they do a fine job with “Sittin’ on Top of the World,” most affecting is their take on Taj’s swooning original “Lovin’ in My Baby’s Eyes.” The playful counterpoint of Mahal’s friendly growl and Hensley’s soaring twang, underpinned by Mahal’s echoing finger-picked guitar and subtly skanking drums from Kester Smith, creates a joyous chorus of adoration for the song’s subject(s). When Ickes comes in with a bouncing Dobro solo halfway through, he sounds just as excited. “Lovin’ in My Baby’s Eyes” here becomes a kind of praise circle for a person, certainly, but also for the kind of healing energies that a community of love can create. And even though that feeling may only last as long as the song’s four minutes, it’s still an awfully nice place to be. - CH
Cary Morin – “Killing The Blues” (from Innocent Allies, 2024)
Every few years, somebody records a new version of “Killing the Blues” and I’m reminded of what a devastating, perfect song it is. John Prine, Chris Smither, Shawn Colvin, Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, and others have all done wonders with Rowland Salley’s aching ballad, not to mention the excellent cut from Salley himself. Now, on his very good new album, Cary Morin adds his own distinctive version. (For more on the album and Morin, read this fantastic interview with Justin Hiltner over at Good Country.) Morin, a Crow/Assinibone artist whose esteemed career as a “Native Americana” foundation is now in its sixth decade, finds both intimacy and epic sweep in the song’s smolder. Duetting with Celeste Di Iorio, Morin’s sweetly weathered baritone approaches the lyric with both regret and inevitability, as guitar, piano, and drums walk supportively alongside. Morin’s a remarkable songwriter, but – like Prine, Smither, Colvin, Plant/Krauss, and the other members of the “Killing the Blues” canon – he feels just at home with this song as any of his originals. Maybe because it’s one of those songs that kinda sounds like it’s always been here, or – more likely – because Rowland Salley wrote something that feels like home to everyone. Because we’ve all been there. - CH
Reading recommendations:
-Rachel Cholst talks to Lizzie No, for Nashville Scene
-Nadine Smith on Dragon Ball Z and hip-hop, for The Fader
-Natalie Weiner on Kacey Musgraves, for Texas Monthly
-Stephen Thomas Erlewine on the late Eric Carmen, for Los Angeles Times
-Stephen Thomas Erlewine on The Waterboys, for And So It Goes
-Emily Yahr on Beyoncé and country radio, for Washington Post
-Alfred Soto shares his Pop Con paper on the rise and fall of the greatest hits compilation, for Humanizing the Vacuum
-Robert Christgau shares his Pop Con paper about what to do with his huge record and book collection, for And It Don’t Stop
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So much to catch up on… the Escovedo is incredible. I really love this new, older, and wiser version of “Bury Me”. The “Mystery Train” riff is jettisoned from the original, which actually makes it all the more mysterious.