Gillian Welch – The Way It Goes
That’s the way that it goes
everybody’s buyin little baby clothes
Gillian Welch is in as fine a form as ever. The train’s moving on, let’s not get all sentimental about it.
There’s something about a song that comes in pieces like this, a song that doesn’t quite gel (until it does). It’s at once too camp and not camp enough, teetering on the edge of some larger sophistication but not quite sure why. And then the hooks, and it doesn’t matter.
Wouldn’t have touched this with a ten-foot pole a decade ago, but here we are. Thank you, London.
The Mills Brothers – I Got Her Off My Hands
I’m up with shadows playing hide and seek
The Mills Brothers were something special. Here they are in 1951, singing about when things don’t go exactly to plan; as a bonus you get some mouth trumpet and “now I’m the crying-est kind.” Yeah, this.
The National – All Dolled-Up in Straps
My head plays it over and over
“Are you trying to make me cry?” she asked. Probably. But things get away from me after this much one-track repeat. Where have you been?
Don’t interrupt me
Metric’s “Old World Underground, Where Are You Now?” is nearly ten years old now but of course this is the one I can’t shake. It’s in my muscle memory permanently, my right hand playing the synth line on any available keyboard but it never comes out quite right, Emily’s never there to poke her head around the corner and sing. “But it’s for the best.”
Cold as numbers but let’s dance
Twin Shadow – Tyrant Destroyed
And who was I to think that on a Saturday night
That you would really bike home alone
Unrequited teenage love that finally culminates years later, then collapses horribly? Sure, heard it. But not with shape like this.
This is how to open an album.
The Lucksmiths – The Cassingle Revival
Because you promised when it happens / you’ll return
Earlier today I was checking out an album by Jeremy Messersmith and noticed that, like many others, he’s selling cassette tape copies next to the downloads and the vinyl.
The Lucksmiths of Melbourne had our burgeoning tapestalgia pegged way back in 2002. But instead of another sly dig at what, even then, must have seemed inevitable, by its last verse this song becomes something altogether more wistful.
This is the soundtrack to every sun-dappled hipstamatic photo of city treetops you took last year, and as usual I didn’t understand the weight of that until much too late.
(The way they sing “noticing” in the opening line still hurts.)
The Stone Poneys – Different Drum
“They’re not oldies,” she said. “They’re classics.”
Songs that open albums in my parents’ record collection, part thirty-seven. AM gold.
“Sabians” is by Shimmering Stars, a Vancouver band who make the sort of spring-reverbed throwback garage pop we seem to need right now.
They have other, catchier numbers (try them with some video accompaniment here and here), but “Sabians” finds them at their most run-down. It’s the end of the night and a dozen of us are left in the cavernous gymnasium; the band are tired and want to go home.
But we’ll press together, they’ll sing, and at the last possible moment we’ll wring out some sweetness, barely.
Also, hey. “Back to the Future” is in theatres again.
