It’s another week, so we’re back to share some things we’ve been listening to. Charles is up first, then David. As always, we’ve listed a bunch of reading recommendations at the end.
Rolling Stones – “I’m Gonna Drive” (from Voodoo Lounge: 30th Anniversary Edition)
As I’ve written here before, the Stones’ 1994 Voodoo Lounge is both strengthened and hampered by its commitment to the bit, as the group works through a sturdy set of workhorse moves that takes precious few chances. That solidity extends to the single B-sides that accompany the album’s new thirtieth-anniversary reissue. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t been hearing them as part of the album proper for three decades, but they all sound like they would’ve improved it by their inclusion. This is especially true of the slinky “I’m Gonna Drive,” where Mick Jagger – in fine voice, especially on the rising final verse – plots his escape over a hurtling, twangy arrangement. It’s got a looseness that’s missing on the sometimes-stuffy Voodoo Lounge, and it offers a welcome reminder that much of the band’s most enduringly pleasurable music is their least obviously ambitious. – CH
Amythyst Kiah (feat. S.G. Goodman) – “Play God and Destroy the World” (from Still + Bright, 2024)
Amythyst Kiah is back with a new album coming soon, and her first release from it is this pounding, piercing duet with another great young artist, the Kentucky-based S.G. Goodman. This dream team doesn’t disappoint, interlocking around lyrics that reference The Matrix in their confrontation with illusion and search for the refuge of a literal and figurative underground. Kiah started writing the song years ago, and this new version –finished with Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ and 400 Unit stalwart Sadler Vaden – bespeaks both youthful visioning and adult reckoning. And it sounds fucking great, with Kiah and Goodman centered in a full, sparkling production from Butch Walker. Brooding and invigorating, “Play God and Destroy the World” is an anthem for our times, with all that implies. Can’t wait for the whole album. – CH
Mxmtoon – “I Hate Texas” (single, 2024)
This isn’t Tanner Adell’s “I Hate Texas,” one of my favorite tracks from one of my favorite albums of 2023. Nope, it’s a whole different treasure, from YouTuber-turned-pop-prodigy mxmtoon. This is millennial pop in the best sense, from the song’s lyrics about laptops and video games to its warm mix of analog and digital textures that includes Shania Twain-recalling twin fiddles. Dancing around the arrangement and building up an extended melodic hook, mxmtoon weaves lyrics that are funny and heartbreaking in equal measure. Like the same-titled gem from Adell, this “I Hate Texas” is a reminder of both what country music is and what it can be, regardless of where mxmtoon has been or is headed next. – CH
Joy Oladokun – “Drugs” (single, 2024)
Joy Oladokun can’t miss right now. Her new single “Drugs” is another stunner, a gospel-inflected meditation on the search for temporary relief and permanent refuge. The lyric’s gravity – even bleakness – is complemented by a track that combines an unforgettable hook with an arrangement that trends towards hand-clapping jubilation. It’s a clever trick that taps into the ambivalence explored particularly within the R&B tradition, one of the many that this powerfully synthetic artist draws from and remixes. The sound tells one story, the lyric tells another, and the combined effect is one of personal plea transferred to communal prayer. (In this sense, it’s not unlike “We’re All Gonna Die,” the Noah Kahan duet from her fantastic last album.) I bet “Drugs” will sound great in concert, when our shared desperation can transform into testimony and even catharsis. And I know it sounds great cranked up on a stereo, where I can sing along with Oladokun as we express our shared burdens. Another great track from one of my current favorites. – CH
Sandy Posey – “Why Do We Carry On (The Way We Do)” (single, 1976)
Sandy Posey died on July 20th. In the 1960s and 1970s, Posey traced the paths between Memphis, Muscle Shoals, and Nashville with records that demonstrated the overlaps between pop, country, and R&B for which these cities and their studios became famous. She had a few hits (including the classic “Born a Woman”), worked sessions behind Elvis Presley, Percy Sledge, and others, and collaborated with many of the famed musicians who gathered in studios in what I’ve elsewhere termed “the country-soul triangle.” There are a lot of great Sandy Posey tracks – some famous, some not – but my absolute favorite is 1976’s “Why Do We Carry On.” A self-penned lamentation of a world riven by personal and societal discord, “Why Do We Carry On” was released during her period of moderate success on the country charts and should’ve been a way bigger hit than it was. Produced by triangle pro Tommy Cogbill and featuring a bubbling arrangement that gestures towards multiple genres at once (even disco), the track is anchored by Posey’s distinctive blend of brittle vulnerability and deep-rooted strength. (I’m particularly struck when she sinks down in her range to remind us that “the good Lord is gonna judge us too,” presaging her later turn to gospel music.) Now that she’s gone, I’ll continue to sing her praises as a great recording artist and an under-appreciated contributor to this legendary moment in popular music. Her discography is very much worth your time, and I hope I’m not the only one revisiting it right now. – CH
Orville Peck (with Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway) – “Papa Was a Rodeo” (from Stampede, 2024)
Stephin Merrit’s original version of “Papa Was a Rodeo” from 69 Love Songs builds to a surprise ending—both musically, with the last verse entrance of a duet partner, and thematically, as the distancing title leads to finding a soul mate. Kelly Hogan’s excellent version with the Pine Valley Cosmonauts followed Merrit’s example. Orville Peck and Molly Tuttle, though, sing it like a traditional duet, trading and sharing lines from the jump, and it’s a smart move. The surprise ending lost its surprise long ago for those who know the song, and this arrangement maintains the poignancy for those new to the song. It’s a fantastic performance that’s made all the better by Tuttle’s tender flat picking. And is it just me or is this least arch, most unmasked, vocal of Peck’s career? –DC
Mavis Staples – “Worthy” (single, 2024)
Solo or with the Staples Singers, Mavis has long been identified with her positive message numbers. A subset of that tendency in her work is the self-esteem anthem, from “Respect Yourself” and “I Got to Be Myself” from back in the day to more recent numbers such as 2013’s “I Like the Things about Me.” Her latest single, produced and written by Mark Ronson-collaborator MNDR, falls into that I-don’t-know-who-needs-to-hear-this category. All scratchy groove and gospel affirmation, Mavis, who turned 85 last month, encourages us to embrace our smiles, our grace, our space; wherever we find ourselves, we’re worthy of all we have and more. MNDR’s track is appropriately familiar and funky, which is to say it lands as both universal and distinctive. Just like Mavis, just like you and me. –DC
Joe Ely (featuring Bruce Springsteen) – “Odds of the Blues” (Driven to Drive, 2024) and Zach Bryan (featuring Bruce Springsteen) – “Sandpaper” (from The Great American Bar Scene, 2024) – DC
Bruce Springsteen has been paying it forward lately, showing up to guest with famous heroes and contemporaries (Dion, Mellencamp) and with lesser acolytes (the Gaslight Anthem, the Killers). Zach Bryan falls in the latter category. You can hear the Springsteen influence, but to me he always sounds most like Ryan Adams—and disappointingly even then since Adams, all his extra-musical bullshit aside, is a far superior songwriter and a genuinely arresting vocalist. “Sandpaper” is a good example of Bryan’s weaknesses. It starts out as a love song to the woman he’s scared to lose, then shifts for no reason—or at least for no reason the song shares—into being a love song to Zach Bryan. “They’ve been trying to smooth me out for 27 reasons now,” he sings. You want to trust that unexpected “27 seasons” must surely mean something more than just almost-but-not-quite four years, but all it signifies finally is Bryan’s pretension. When Bruce’s unmistakable rasp enters it sends a jolt though the song, momentarily, but Bryan can’t keep up and from what I can tell the song only really matters to Zach Bryan. By contrast, Ely’s “Odds of the Blues,” like a lot of Ely songs to tell the truth, is just a string of ideas and images you’ve heard before; it shouldn’t amount to anything. But you’re with Joe even before Bruce enters: His emotional presence and distinctive phrasing sell the cliches; he feels them like you’ve known them, and it works. When Bruce joins in harmony, straining high atop Ely’s twang at the top of his range, the song’s blues chill but also comfort in their universality. The song ain’t much, but for as long as it lasts, Joe and Bruce know how to sell it. –DC
Killer Mike – “Humble Me” (from Michael & the Mighty Midnight Revival, Songs for Sinners and Saints, 2024)
Mike’s recent turn to the autobiographical has resulted in some of the best work of his life, Run the Jewels joints included. “Humble Me” fronts as a prayer for God to keep him down to Earth but notably devotes most of its rhymes to boasting about why humility’s so rough for Mike in the first damn place. Some of his brags will make you laugh. He’s got so much cash (“I got the real estate ventures, I got vacayin' adventures”) and so much pull and respect (“I got the Governor’s ear, I am Muhammad Ali”) that even the Devil kicked him out of hell for being “fire.” But a synth bass grounds him amidst all the sampled chaos and stress, the haters and the jailtime and the ego. And then out of nowhere he’ll make you cry: “The Devil put me on his whipping post / The Lord did not 'low him to whip me / …[T]he next day, my son got a kidney.” –DC
Aerosmith – “What It Takes” (from Pump, 1989)
Aerosmith announced their retirement from the road last week. Their big ones when I was growing up (“Walk This Way,” “Sweet Emotion”) were built around guitarist Joe Perry’s killer riffs, but I think I prefer, if only slightly, their 1980s reinvention as power balladeers. My favorite-ever Aerosmith cut—seriously, it’s not even close—is “What It Takes,” one of the singles off 1989’s Pump. Always on brand, Steven Tyler preens lecherously, but here for once he also sounds hurt and scared, and I’m still surprised when that accordion-sounding keyboard enters at the chorus. The song itself is about Tyler’s inability to believe he never meant anything at all to his ex, and you can tell he’s been obsessing over the loss: He and his co-writers, Perry and hired-gun Desmond Child, mix a series of metaphors in the second verse: He scream-rants his pain alphabetically, penally, financially, cleanly, deceitfully and theologically all in less than four lines. Then he stretches what’s already an over-wrought ramble into one of those thrilling, screeching, all-in-one-breath staccato runs that Perry, who fractured his larynx last year, can’t pull off anymore: “Tell me how it is you can sleep in the nigh-eeet without thinking you’ve lost everything that was good in your life to the toss of a diiiii-eece!” I was never able to sing successfully along with Tyler on that one, but I was also never able to resist trying. I recommend the tighter College Hit Radio edit—a minute shorter than on Big Ones, two shorter than the version from Pump itself—if only so you can hit replay sooner. –DC
Recommended reading:
-Stephen Thomas Erlewine on the Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera, for the AV Club
-Elizabeth Nelson on the “fraudulent” new documentary How Music Got Free, for The New York Times
-Elizabeth Nelson on Neil Young’s On The Beach, for The Atlantic
-Wesley Morris talks to Meshell Ndegeocello, for New York Times
-Jonathan Bernstein talks to Meshell Ndegeocello, for Rolling Stone
-Chris Molanphy on the success of Shaboozey’s “Bar Song (Tipsy),” for Slate
-Joel Anderson on Ice Cube in the Trump era, for Slate
-Alfred Soto ranks Rolling Stones albums, 1980 to 2005, at Humanizing the Vacuum
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Joe Ely's new album is in the queue. Thanks for the other recommends! ❤️
Good call on the Killer Mike track!!!