Feels like it likes to feel

You won't catch me digging drum solos often, especially when they kick off songs. But then there's nothing normal about Henry Threadgill — the music or the configuration of musicians he chooses to play it. Who says jazz can't sound like a monster movie?

Henry Threadgill - Like It Feels

Positively hot

There's a lot of evidence to think that this world is in decline. Hell, it probably is, and in ways that even our mightiest collective efforts can't do much to affect. And yet...you hear a song like this and all that dreariness goes away. I'll also refer you to a more personal take on this particular character who graces the 'blague today.

Harvey Scales - Keeps Getting Better

Sybaritic sounds

Combustible Edison deserve some love. Not only did they make themselves expertly versed in Lounge/Exotica/Space Age Pop conventions well before it was remotely hip, but they themselves helped make it all hip for a time. And they were pretty good craftsmen about it for the little window in which they had an audience. All that smoky, musty kitsch has actually aged pretty well for me. This tune in particular feels like swimming through an underwater dream waiting for my next Manhattan to be delivered via mermaid.

Combustible Edison - Carnival Of Souls

Choose or lose

Hesitant adult despair gives way to wholesome adolescent angst. I never would've thought that this slight (and terribly named) band would've popped up a second time on the 'blague. But these kids have good pop sense and a dorkiness you can't help but nod along to, even as you tune out the insipid words.

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Dead Right

He who hesitates is lost

Happy post-Txgiving. Hopefully, you're sated, not-quite stuffed, and well caught up with family and friends whom you want to enjoy good cheer with. Seems like a good enough moment to offer up a tale of adulterous desire in nautical surroundings. I've always loved the image of seagulls taunting the song's poor hesitant sap. This one may be a minor Andy Partridge winner, but it shows the level his craft is working on.

XTC - Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her, Kiss Her

When they wrote it on the wall

It's Thanksgiving time, and you'll be lucky if you don't find yourself scrambling for something Hallmarkish to offer as they go 'round the table reciting the things life has blessed us with. And you draw a blank, which is a terrifying moment because you feel like a base ingrate, not even able to identify a single honest object of gratitude. But then you realize all the miseries you're not suffering (that maybe someone else is) and all the banal moments of non-hardship are worth appreciating together, and deserve a big collective shout-out if you can hold them all together in your mind for a second. I'll be working on a way to capture that in my moment of table time. Oh, and also, I thank the Lord for giving us Steely Dan.

Meanwhile, have a happy one. Back next week.

Steely Dan - The Caves of Altamira

Miles of pavement

Highway to highway to New Jersey and back, through industrial mysteries and then between the trees, it's easy to fall into a hypnotic trance. Complementary songs need just one chord to sooth and disturb.

Cedric Im Brooks - Give Rasta Glory

A voice is a home

There are so many reasons to love this song. Great vintage rock n' roll groove. Louisiana roots. Dude playing the girl and frog parts with equal gusto (or at least the very fact that there is a frog part). Corey Haim singing along with it in the bathtub in The Lost Boys. Take your pick. But the best thing is that Mr. Henry seems pretty aware that these will be the best 2:20 of his life.

Clarence "Frogman" Henry - Ain't Got No Home

Life is but a memory

I don't care how somber or lonely he sounds, Nick Drake is always the magic elixir for washing away the hectic static of the day. Or the week. And he's great at reminding how ephemeral everything is. So let him usher in the weekend.

Nick Drake - Fruit Tree

How am I ever gonna know my home?

Gotta let it ride with Joni Mitchell. We pick it up with her mid-roadtrip in a state of serious mental dishevelment and feeling no sense of home. Interesting how much this rocks without the benefit of drums and only Jaco Pastorius riding shotgun on bass. Thank God that crazy bastard wasn't behind the wheel.

Joni Mitchell - Black Crow

Hey Joni

Inevitably, the switch would flip, and my appreciation for Joni Mitchell's mid-'70s jazz odyssey would flash on blindingly. Not just the fancy chords and incisive lyrics, but the whole sound world that vanquishes past prejudice against boomer folky caricatures. I've had that damn Summer Lawns album on repeat for days, and I can't help but share a couple nuggets of this overdue pleasure.

Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns

Joni Mitchell - The Boho Dance

Holding hands in the dark

Lady Nite Jewel sure is making a play for diva status. She's taken a big step out of the lo-fi basement. But who knows what's waiting in the rest of the house. I had this song on repeat while waiting in the long voting line. It was lovely enough to lift me out of that environment for a time. And wouldn't serendipity just compel to bring it as the answer to yesterday's lights.

Nite Jewel - In The Dark

Getting to the light

Apologies for the extended silence. It was quite the eventful week, and 'blaguetime became a victim of prioritization. I'm not sure if today's song has any overall resonance with recent goings-on, but between the election result and overall mobilization for post-hurricane recovery, I'm laying the most optimistic meaning on the song title. Of course, its moody grays will hold in check any notion that the sun has found its way out from the clouds yet.

Siouxsie and the Banshees - Into The Light

Decided?

Well, here we are at Election Day — the merciful end to this chapter in the slo-mo theater of American decline, replete with all its absurd characters and narrative of non-issues/non-debate brought down to reality show proportions. Hopefully, it'll also mean releasing the tension of that 2+ year buildup, so we can have about 2 weeks of aftermath and then start getting ready for the next go-round. But what if it doesn't? What if we can stay locked in this mental stalemate and just keep sliding along on its grim inertia. Here's a song for that future.

Sonic Youth - Death Valley '69

Spirited

There's been a lot of talk about "the new normal" for life in a post-Sandy world. Maybe we can expect killer storms every year or two, landscapes reshaped, and all modern comforts exposed for how fragile they are. Scary obviously, but also a little bit liberating if you're inclined to fall into ruts. And on the positive side, maybe it's also a world where volunteers wrap around the block and you don't honestly consider yourself satisfied unless you've done something for someone who has lost more than you. On the musical front, it seems I've entered a world where this song has suddenly become appealing.

Patti Smith - Smells Like Teen Spirit

Adrift

The storm hit and ran, but left so many shards of its impact that it'll keep wounding us for months. Or years. Or many years. The relief I felt when my neighborhood was spared was quickly overwhelmed by the sense that our bones have been broken to a degree that is just becoming apparent. Which leads to a feeling of general sickness, even as my pseudo-staycation allows me to stroll my immediate streets throughout a couple mild afternoons and enjoy wine-softened evenings full of easy electrical comforts. A sickness exacerbated by the knowledge that while my hometown is maybe less underwater now, it has been distorted in a permanent way, and still lacking in eyewitness reassurance of basic stability. 

The good news is that this kind of anxiety beyond my own personal well-being makes me confident that I'm generally a decent human being. And also I found some music that resonates with my current unmoored state of mind. I'll be tied up the rest of this week, so enjoy this one until Monday.

Loose Fur - Chinese Apple

The storm approaching

The big storm is set to pounce. Noisy wind and rain aside, this is actually the least interesting part. The anticipation is where the mind does its worst. And where my own tendency to envision cataclysmic events is free to run terribly wild. Hopefully, none of those visions will turn to reality. And if they do, hopefully we can live in the mental eye until it all passes.

Carlos Maria Trindade/Nuno Canavarro - Segredos M

Snuggle sounds

Can't get myself out of this Library trip I'm on this week, so I'm not even gonna fight it. This one may be a bridge too far for some in terms of its audio gumminess. But again, when you're this far down the rabbit hole, your moral compass is mostly useless. So many ridiculous made-for-TV moments come to mind, but I'll let my friend Terence's reaction be the word on it: "perfect accompaniment to a sumptuous dinner, prepared tableside by an expert waitstaff, in a rotating restaurant that offers commanding views of both the marina and municipal airport." Indeed-o.

Unit Six - Snuggle

Genetic sequencing

Why do I love sequenced synth patterns so much? The way they've been deployed since mid-70s Tangerine Dream, they're basically a tacky form of the warm, interlocking melodic rhythms of the Steve Reich school. They're also so central to the sounds of film music I grew up hearing that they feel like a part of myself. Some say we live in a culture of chintzy illusions, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I'm attracted to cheap knockoffs like a moth to light. Here's a fine example of such a dinky pleasure. Plus, a synth fretless bass solo!

Frederic Rousseau - ADSR

Mystery ambient

Maybe it's a symptom of an overly multi-tasked life, but these days I often just want music that floats in the air and doesn't shock or even tug at my attention. Interestingly, it's the music that doesn't seem to care much about what I think that perks my ears up the most. There are many obvious ambient classics out there, but I really love it when Library composers step up and take me to a new, happily mysterious place. I wonder what documentary or French commercial might've put this to use.

Guy Boulanger and Edgar Vercy - Cormoran Blesse

Harmolodic happening

It's like Ornette Coleman said — if you've got a band of great improvisers, let 'em fly all at once. I'm paraphrasing. Bad-ass drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson clearly modeled his Decoding Society on Coleman's "harmolodic" approach and very un-snooty welcoming of electric instruments into the party. The band's records — sometimes dense, often super-energetic, always colorful — are absolutely worth checking out. 

Here are a couple tunes from the bizarrely-jacketed Barbecue Dog, which features not only a young Vernon Reid (on banjo?!), but also that sweet anomaly of a drummer-penned piece without a single drum to be heard.

Ronald Shannon Jackson and The Decoding Society - Yugo Boy

Ronald Shannon Jackson and The Decoding Society - Mystery At Dawn

Do your time, then come home for good

It's hard to listen to rock n' roll these days. Now that everything is given some sort of digital lift — if it wasn't a purely digital product to begin with — rock bands are falling all over themselves to show just how raw and primal they are. Which is a pretty sad sight/sound. It's like when someone tells you how funny he is. Makes me enjoy bands that just made rock music in the style of people they grew up listening to and didn't sweat their audience's reaction. Sloan didn't make much of a claim to originality, and I'm fine with that since it yielded songs like this.

Sloan - Everything You've Done Wrong

Plan ahead

Funny how few musicians explore even a fraction of what synthesizers can do. Of course, I love synth pop as much as anyone (why do pop hooks sounds so good on keyboards anyway?), but I also appreciate those who actually use them to synthesize sound. Residents-inspired Der Plan were luminaries of the art synth scene in '80s Germany, and I'm kicking myself for not knowing that until recently. Making up for it with a double dose here, from both ends of their run. The first sounds like it was made by factory machines, the other like something out of a twisted version of Disney. Both seem ahead of their time. And ours.

Der Plan - Hans Und Gabi

Der Plan - Space Bob

Give the drummer some

Bill Bruford was one of my first big influences when I was learning to play drums (coincided with a first exposure to prog rock). Happy to say his precision and tastefulness still stand up when I put on those Yes and King Crimson records now. His solo career is a bit less sterling. He jumped on the fusion train pretty hard in the mid-'70s, and most people never really looked good wearing those pants. And yet, well, how can you not find something to admire in a drummer competently taking a bandleader role. And writing songs, no less! As noodling goes, this band kept it relatively tight. Then there's that bass solo commencing at 4:22. Don't know whether to love or hate, but I can't turn away.

Bruford - QED

And you know it's alright

Well, I would never have foreseen the Bats having three songs up here on the 'blague. But then, serendipity has always been a big part of the project. This is a driving, feedbacky one from the excellent benefit album for Chris Knox, released in the wake of his tragic stroke. As much as I never believe it when songs tell me "it's alright," I kinda gotta go with them here.

The Bats - Just Do It