Turn It Up - 5/13/2024
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 listed a bunch of reading recommendations at the end.
Johnny Burgos and Jeremy Page (feat. Liza Colby) – “Old Man” (single, 2024)
Well, this works. Brooklyn-based artist Johnny Burgos delivers a smoldering soul take on Neil Young’s classic youth-angst anthem. He and producer Jeremy Page ground it in the luxurious 1970s, with oozing keyboards, tremulous guitars, and a tender-desperation vocal that is often presented in haunting conversation with Liza Colby. It’s a perfect fit, recalling rock reinventions by The Isley Brothers, LaBelle, and others. Hearing how effectively this fits together, it’s kind of astonishing that no one’s tried it before. But maybe that’s okay, since I can’t imagine anyone doing it better than Burgos and his collaborators. – CH
Emily Nenni – “Amarillo Highway” (from Drive & Cry, 2024)
Country singer-songwriter Emily Nenni’s new album is a real pleasure, a honky-tonk-rooted set that doesn’t lose itself in tradition. At the end, Nenni rides away with the great Terry Allen’s “Amarillo Highway.” She mixes the grinning, piano-driven lope of Allen’s original with a vibrant assurance all her own. It’s the usual closing song at her club sets, and you can tell. She relishes each internal rhyme and punching alliteration, strutting along with her road-tested band as they find their grooving way back to the chorus’ anthemic stomp. It’s a fitting homage to an iconoclastic Texas genius and a joyous affirmation of Nenni’s talents. Ride on. – CH
Mdou Moctar – “Funeral for Justice” (from Funeral for Justice, 2024)
Right about now, this blazing track from Tuareg guitar hero Mdou Moctar is sounding like the sound of our times. Bursting forward from a repeating-rifle drum intro, “Funeral for Justice” (the title of our times, perhaps) is a lightning bolt of sound and vision. The translation reveals that Moctar’s lyrics are about the continuing effects of colonial dispossession, calling on African nations to throw off the violent interventions of both France and the United States by no longer listening to their promises and turning on each other. But even without understanding this particular message, the pleading and anger in Moctar’s voice requires no context. And then there’s his guitar, a swirling squall that bounces against the drums like it’s trying to escape. Turn it up. And take ‘em down. – CH
Tonya Dyson (feat. MonoNeon) – “Closer” (single, 2024)
Tonya Dyson is a staple of the Memphis music community, building worlds from her directorship of the Memphis Slim Arts Collaboratory to her radio show “Welcome to NeoSoulsville” and an ongoing series of curated performances and arts collections. She’s returned with a new single to remind us that, on top of all that, she’s a great recording artist as well. With a crack local band that includes eccentric local genius (and Prince collaborator) MonoNeon on bass, Dyson offers this snapping love song that finds the same simmering bounce that propelled Dyson’s forebears like Al Green and Ann Peebles. With a hook that won’t quit and a Dyson vocal that registers each degree of the song’s burning love, “Closer” should be a swinging staple of summertime playlists. – CH
Joy Dragland (feat. Folklorick) – “Beautiful Dreamer” (single, 2024)
I met Joy Dragland back when we both lived in Madison, Wisconsin in the early 2000s, and – from that moment – I became a forever fan. This astonishing singer-songwriter had a Top 40 hit in Spain back in the day, recently competed on Norway’s edition of The Voice, and has released a series of wonderful recordings that are all worth checking out. Her latest is this gorgeous version of Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer,” which proves a perfect showcase for Dragland’s softly entrancing singing. Over graceful backing from Folklorick, she calls to a lover who is lost to the world – maybe forever, in some interpretations – and both begs them to return while also casting herself (and her listeners) out into the same blue distance. It’s a lullaby, a love ballad, a meditation, and a funeral song all at once. I will listen to Joy Dragland sing just about anything, but I’m glad she chose this song to sing for us now. – CH
Sasha Alex Sloan – “Highlights” and “Kids” (singles, 2024)
Singer-songwriter Sloan sings and writes songs more sharply felt than observed, in-my-room depression dramas that vary little melodically and often distinguish themselves musically only by their atmospheric color instruments: moaning cello on “Me Again,” mumbling piano on “Older.” Her always breathy, always hushed vocals make everything sound more the same than it should but also more like her. She’s always feeling sorry for herself but sings so quietly, like she’s the only audience and is content to keep her complaints to herself. Honestly, I don’t think I would like to spend much time with the character(s) in her songs, but: I like her songs. I especially like these two recent singles from her forthcoming album. “Highlights,” where the color instrument’s a guitar that sounds like someone winding up a music box, is about a parent who only shows up for good times but is AWOL when really needed. “Kids,” with a gentle Liz Phair-styled guitar drone placed way back in the mix somewhere far away, is about how parents will eventually become the ones who need to be taken care of, even if they were never very good at taking care of you. “And if I ever have them, I hope someday they’ll take care of me like I’ll take care of them.” She’s singing to herself again, humming herself a lullaby or wishing on a star. It’s a good wish. – DC
Samara Cyn – “Moving Day” (single, 2024)
By her telling, every day has been moving day for Samara Cyn—as in moving on up, as in her journey has most definitely not been for nothing. If you don’t think she’s special the way her folks did (“My parents really shoulda been vlogging since I was little”), or the way her teachers did and the way her preacher did, then it’s you who need to be moving—as in out of her face and her way. And I guess any questions about exactly where her special self is moving to should be saved until some future release. A slam poet-cum-hip-hop lyricist, Samara sounds, here and there, a little like a Doja Cat sound-alike, but less arch and distant, more charged, and as if produced electric-midtempo-funky by Dr. Dre. Cyn & Juice. – DC
House of Large Sizes – “Sox on Spot” (from My Ass-Kicking Life, 1993)
While doing prep for last week’s “The Best Country Albums of 1994,” I kept coming across early nineties albums that didn’t count as “country” (sez me) but that were in heavy rotation at our house in that moment just the same. One album I was glad to be reminded of was House of Large Sizes’s My Ass-Kicking Life. HOLS was an Iowa power trio—wife-and-husband team Barb Schilf (on bass) and Dave Deibler (guitarist), with drummer Dave Berg—and their springy, high-pitched alternative rock always reminded me of Superchunk a little, except they were way poppier and more playful. I wish their way of feeling and performing the Midwest was more widely known, and I especially wish their finest (and only major-label) album was easily streamed to make the case—a few of its tracks are on the Tube but in uploads that are frustratingly muddy. Post-Nirvana, though, Columbia Records apparently ponied up the cash to make this video for the album’s lead-off track, “Sox on Spot,” and it sounds great—bigger than life in their human-sized way, sick of it all and loving it. “This life ain’t worth the price of a piece of pie,” Diebler sneers, and he lays down a rock guitar solo that sounds every bit as heartland “classic” as it does punk. Schlif’s harmonies have his back and know his heart. Bonus: The vid stars a dog! – DC
The Staple Singers – “Come Go with Me” (from Africa 80, 2024)
I had the Staple Singers’ 1973 Top Ten, “If You’re Ready (Come Go with Me),” on 45 RPM as a kid. Back then I didn’t know that it was cut in Muscle Shoals just like “I’ll Take You There,” also in my collection, had been. But I did at least understand it was a sort of encore to that earlier record, echoing its sound and message albeit with shimmering strings and a slightly quickened pace—as if Mavis Staples’ gospel-impulse-fueled train was even then pulling out of the station. This live version of the song, cut like everything on this new album while the Staples were on a State Department-sponsored tour of Africa, does its own thing. The power this time is somebody playing a (possibly) acoustic (possibly) guitar or (maybe) slap bass, and the funky stripped-down sound anticipates a bit where Talking Heads were about to head with their own live sound—and four years before the Staples cut the Heads’ “Slippery People.” Mavis, of course, remains steadfast in her message. Take her hand and she’ll lead us to a place without disaster, war, or economic exploitation—but plenty of love and, sign me up for this revolution, dancing! – DC
Reading recommendations:
-Marissa Moss on Kaitlin Butts, for Rolling Stone
-Matt Mitchell on Weezer’s “blue album,” for Paste
-Rosie Tebay on queer country and queer parenting, for Rainbow Rodeo
-Natalie Weiner on The War and Treaty, for Billboard
-Lauren Michele Jackson on Drake and Kendrick Lamar, for The New Yorker
-Andrea Williams on Willie Jones and Shaboozey, for The Tennessean
-Bill Friskics-Warren on mandolinist Frank Wakefield, for The New York Times
-Bill Friskics-Warren on Duane Eddy, for The New York Times
-Stephen Thomas Erlewine on Duane Eddy, for So It Goes
-Chris Willman talks to T Bone Burnett, for Variety
-John Maggiore talks to Chris O’Leary about his David Bowie projects, for Maggiore on Bowie
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