Olivia Rodrigo – You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl so in Love: Rodrigo and Dan Nigro created a perfect summertime album, the kind you can imagine a generation of kids recklessly dancing to as they celebrate a day out and then mourning to as they process the tragedies of their day. I’m excited to dig deeper.
goat (jp) / Ricardo Villalobos – Without References / Cindy Van Acker (Ricardo Villalobos Variations): Villalobos is one of my favorite DJs and producers but I’d be lying if I said I can hear enormous differences in all his work. His three variations of two pieces (“Orin” and “Factory”) by goat (jp) don’t particularly stand out, but they provided a good soundtrack for a sleepy drive home. His first variation of “Factory” is the highlight, in part because it conjures the factory rhythms that I hoped to hear when I first heard the term “industrial music.”
Mouse on Mars & Lee “Scratch” Perry – Spatial, No Problem: Except for one song (“Fire Dali”), Spatial, No Problem faded into the background on my first listen. I’m so glad I tried once more, because this album has some stunning moments. The horns in “Economic Train” conjure Fela and the groove of “Spatialee” just begs for a bong and a subwoofer.
Isaac Hayes – Hot Buttered Soul: The novelty (both in the sense of something I hadn’t heard before and something that brought me fleeting amusement) of “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” drew me to this album in my 20s, but the exceptional instrumental performances by the Bar-Kays on “Walk on by” and “Hyperbolicsyllabicsequedalymistic” grabbed me hard this time and made me appreciate the record in a new way.
Nina Nastasia – Dogs: I could dissect any track on the record to show why Dogs is so good, so I’ll pick “Judy’s in the Sandbox.” My favorite part of the song is how the cello doesn’t simply enter as a benign background but instead screeches in with a jagged imperfection that underscores the tension in the lyrics. The innocence at the beginning of the song erodes into something disturbing, peaking with wordplay that sounds like “and waits to hold her hand” but all the online lyric sites spell it as “weights,” which has a much darker implication. (FYI, someone with the printed lyric sheet confirmed it’s “waits.”)
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD”: As much as I like Godspeed’s early records, this might be their best album. By exploring a range of themes—light and dark, mourning and celebration, despair and joy—it avoids the traps of anger and sadness that define many political protest albums and instead becomes a testimony of life, a witness to war crimes and new life alike.
Mitski – Nothing’s About to Happen to Me: I’m still slowly unpacking this album, and I find new things to like about it each time I listen. This week it stayed in the background but even then, a couple of songs peeked through and said, “hey, pay attention to me.”
Jeff Buckley – Live À L’Olympia: Sides 1 and 2 overflow with raw power and side 4 (“Hallelujah” and “What Will You Say”) overflows with beauty. But what’s with moving the resolution of “Lilac Wine” to the beginning of side 3?
Grateful Dead – 5/1/81 (Hampton, VA) | 5/13/73 (Des Moines, IA): The 1981 show gets better the more I listen to it. Even “Drums” is exciting. As for the 1973 show, it might contain the most joyfully beautiful performance of “He’s Gone” that I’ve ever heard.
Old friends who made it into rotation this week: Sigur Ros: Atta;
Record store finds this week: We hit a bunch of shops in Wilmington DE, where I found records by Springsteen and The National to fuel my newfound appreciation of both, a copy of Dire Straits Making Movies, a handful of singles, and perhaps most excitingly, the debut CD by a local Newark band called Monopod that was recording their second record in Wonderland Records while we were there and is supposedly exploring the wide open spaces that exist between Angine de Poitrine and King Gizzard.