#i answered these listening to joni's hits album and the track list just came to an end. perfect timing <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[cactustreesmotel]

10, 17!

10. something that made you cry this year?

agh. june 4 2023. the seattle thunderbirds fall 0-5 to the quebec remparts in the memorial cup final. everyone on the ice cried buckets and so did i. no, i haven't been ok since.

17. post a picture from the end of the year

i love this stupid city

[markrichardson]

My Year in Spotify Listening

Like a lot of people I checked out the Spotify year-end summary thingy, and since Spotify is only a certain percentage of my listening, the results were surprising, and I tried to figure out what it meant. In general, I listen to new music via iTunes, if I am sent promos. That only encompasses a certain amount of new music of course, but if I’m sent a download, I tend to use that for my listening all year long. Often, I’m “done with” an album more or less by the time it comes out, but sometimes I’ll keep listening (as w/ DJ Koze this year) and I do that with my promo files. My Spotify listening tends to be a mix of things I stick on a few different playlists based on mood or genre, and they could come from anywhere (but they aren’t usually new). 

In terms of my favorite artists (Bill Evans wound up in my top spot, somehow, followed by Joni Mitchell) it was hard to figure out how it’d happened, because I didn’t spend the year obsessed with either. Then I looked at my 100 most played songs, and that did bring back a few things. I’m not sure if the whole list is in order, but the first 5 songs in the playlist are the 5 listed when Spotify gave me my most-listened-to tracks of the year, so I think so? Anyway, that’s what I am going with here. This is how my Top 10 songs show up on the playlist, in order, with one exception: in the middle of the list was Bow Wow Wow’s “See Jungle,” which I already wrote about on Tumblr 8 years ago (and about which I have very little to say now, except that yes I do still listen to this song a fair amount), so I’ve omitted that and included No. 11. 

Wussy: “Runaway” This was my favorite song of the year, it has 600 plays on Youtube and 5,400 on Spotify, which makes me a little sad. Technically it’s not from this year—Wussy put this out on a small-release tape or CD-R a few years ago—but I’m still counting it. This is the rare case where the streaming media playcounts tend to match the responses of folks I’ve talked to about this song—I mentioned to 4 or 5 people, and in each case they said “Yeah that’s kind of nice I guess...why do you like it so much?” I’ll try to answer that here.  

First I should say that I have no real interest in or knowledge of Wussy. They’re an indie rock band from Ohio, most notable at this point for the fact that Robert Christgau loves them, and has written rapturous reviews of their work over the years, which surely has helped them to achieve whatever small amount of notoriety they have. I checked them out here and there but they didn’t make much of an impression on me. I wish I could remember how I came across this particular song, but I can’t, probably either Twitter or a streaming media algorithm. But I loved it immediately, like, stop-what-you-are-doing-and-listen kind of loved. It just clicked. 

The first thing that comes to mind is the chorus: “I love you, let’s run away.” That’s the theme of so many of my favorite songs, I mean, the first album I bought in my life was “Born to Run,” and if you could sum up the first three Springsteen albums in in 6 words, “I love you, let’s run away” wouldn’t be bad. And I think I liked that this song didn’t try for poetic phrasing, just said it in the simplest way possible.

But the romance of a song like this has a shade of darkness to it, and that draws me in even more. Escape is never a long-term strategy. Eventually you have to figure out how to make life work when you’re in the thick of it. So while it’s such an appealing dream to exit the world with someone you’re crazy about, there is a shelf life to that sort of gesture. I relate to this idea of being fed up with everything in the moment and wanting to jump in the car with the only person who gets you, but eventually, the car is is going to need gas. What then? 

I didn’t know when I first heard this song that it was a cover, so the immediate impact of it was as a Wussy song. But I learned that it was written and recorded by another Ohio artist that people in the band had known, a woman named Jenny Mae. She died last year. Pitchfork did a news story on her passing. She was 49. And when I found that it was her song, I listened to her version and I loved it almost as much (but not quite), though her take also made my Spotify Top 20. I did think enough of her version to order the 7-inch, which was her first release. When I read about Jenny Mae’s life, the song took on another layer of meaning. She suffered from mental illness and self-medicated with alcohol. And she was described by people who knew her as brilliant and creative and hilarious but also impulsive and self-destructive. Which for me gives a sentiment like “No one likes us anyway / I hate my job / Sweet, sweet are the innocent / I love you, let’s run away” and “40 ounce between your legs/ Shakin up my heart / Turn around and look at me / Light another smoke” a different tint. These are the kinds of things you say when in the throes of a rush of feeling, but they’re not impulses you can safely follow for a lifetime, even though goddammit, sometimes I want to.

Bo Diddley: “Nursery Rhyme” In Richmond early this year I bought an old Bo Diddley album called The Originator. I saw it in a used bin, it was $20, and, it was pure instinct, I had a feeling it was interesting. For me, buying used records, $20 is a fair amount of money, I don’t pay that for something I’ve no idea about, typically. But something compelled me to pick it up. I was intrigued that it had none of the hits I knew. And I took it home and when I put it on a short while later it blew my mind. This surprised me because on the one hand it sounds so much like the idea of “Bo Diddley” I keep in my brain, the one rhythm we know from the song he named after himself, but this was just so controlled, so well rendered, with so much atmosphere. The whole thing is brilliant. I became particularly obsessed with this cut from the record, and then I started exploring the “Bo Diddley” beat in general, reading whatever I could about it and listening to examples. This kind of random deep-dive is the best thing about the internet era for a music fan. 

Mulatu Asatke: “Tezeta (Nostalgia” At nights when I hang out with my Mom at her condo in Michigan I play music over a Bluetooth speaker I bought a year ago. My Mom’s default has for a while been to put the television on, but at some point I asked her about playing music instead so we could talk or just hang out, and she grew to like it. Sometimes we’ll chat about stuff, and sometimes she will play Candy Crush on her iPad while I do things on my phone, which sounds distant but is actually very comforting to me. One of the things I’m doing on my phone during these evenings is finding songs to play. It’s quite fun (and interesting) for me to say to myself “What is a playlist that would make my Mom happy?” and then try and figure out what that might be on the fly. She was never really a music person so I don’t have a lot to go on, mostly her age, a story or two about a song she liked, and a vague knowledge of what she might have heard on the radio in my lifetime. 

In September, my Dad died, and I stayed with my Mom in her condo for a number of days that month. I felt a strange mix of feelings. On the one hand, he was father, I missed him, I thought about never being able to talk to him again, to not be able to share the things in my life. I thought about the fact that I wouldn’t be able to learn more about his life, my knowledge of which is pretty sketchy. There were all the usual things a person would be sad about. But then there was the fact that he had a severe and debilitating case of Parkinson’s disease for the last eight years, and at times he suffered so terribly. I remembered how on a few occasions he called me while he was delusional, he would tell me that he was sure he was going to die. One time, he told me that he saw someone in the driveway who was going to kill him. Another time, he said that it was hard to explain but that he had been split into two people, and he couldn’t take it, he was terrified. I told him that it would be better tomorrow and he yelled, “I’m going to be dead by tomorrow!” I would get calls like this while I was walking to work in Brooklyn 700 miles away, and I would feel so helpless. And so when he passed, I thought about him during situations like that, and also felt like maybe not he had some peace. 

A night or two after my Dad died I was sitting with my Mom, talking, and playing music. She dug out some old photos and we were looking at them, pictures from her in high school that I had never seen. I wanted to see everything, learn every detail. And over that Bluetooth speaker I was playing some random playlist I had found called something like “Jazz for late night.” I wanted background music. And while we were hanging out and talking, this song came on, “Tezeta” by the Ethiopian jazz bandleader Mulatu Astatke. And man, it’s hard to describe, but the mood of this song so perfectly captured the exact feeling I had. The phrase that comes to mind is “bombed out,” that’s the way it seemed, like I’d been beaten up and thrown in a ditch and my ears were ringing and now I was trying to reorient myself after all that had happened. There was a feeling of weariness and sadness but also a feeling that life continues, that we have to gather our memories and keep on. And this impossibly beautiful song captured every bit of that, the one-chord riff moving ahead, in spite of it all, while the sax line captures all the sadness dripping off everything at the same time. I listened to it constantly in the weeks afterward.  

Galaxie 500: “Fourth of July” (live) One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite band in my favorite version. This song is indicative of how (as with all songs on this list) when I’m in the mood I can listen to one track over and over. On a couple of occasions in 2018, I listened to this maybe 8 or 9 times in a row, immediately hitting “back” when it had finished. And the thing I was typically listening to was Naomi Yang’s bassline, which to me holds the lion’s share of the song’s feeling. Her bass playing in Galaxie 500 is so incredibly emotional to me, and it was never more so than here. 

Pusha T: “Infrared” The one truly “new” song on here.” I didn’t have an advance of this record so I listened on Spotify when it came out and I loved it. And this song in particular seemed so perfect, the carefully constructed rap, executed as if it’s coming off the top of his head, the sample—I listened to this many times in a row on a few occasions, and it also sent me to revisit Clipse, which brought me a lot of joy. 

Joni Mitchell: “Carey” Another song about freedom, but here it’s real. Blue is a perfect record but I probably revisit this one more than any other single song because I’m so in love with the production—that bass, that hand percussion...sonically, an album recorded almost 50 years ago simply cannot be improved upon. I remember hearing this one on AM radio when I was very young. It was a single, b/w “This Flight Tonight,” one hell of a 7-inch. I’ve always thought the picture it painted was so incredibly romantic—”Maybe I’ll go to Amsterdam, maybe I’ll go to Rome / And rent me a grand piano and put flowers 'round my room.” Hey, why not! And if Carey is indeed keeping her in this tourist town, we know it’s only for another hour, another day, another week, whenever she’s ready, she can’t be tied down. But then, that’s the future: this night, now, is a starry dome, and we’re alive, inside it. 

Arthur Russell: “That’s Us/Wild Combination” Sometimes w/ my favorite Arthur Russell songs you can hear the strain as he creates a new genre trying to get a particular unnamable feeling across. But not this one. Sitting in a room with his friend Jennifer Warnes he made a song that feels as natural as a breath. 

Carole King: “Pleasant Valley Sunday” I’m in awe of Carole King’s ability to write songs that sound perfect on the radio. Even if her prime hitmaking years only lasted a bit over a decade, the number of her songs with her name on them that left a huge mark on culture is staggering. Her demo for the Monkees hit “Pleasant Valley Sunday” shows how perfect everything was before the artist who would bring the song to the public got anywhere near it. I found this one on Youtube 8 or 9 years ago and it’s been in regular rotation since. 

Hank Williams: “The Angel of Death” In February and March I was doing research my Pitchfork Sunday Review on Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. It’s one of my favorite records, and I’ve wanted to write something long on it for years, so spending time w/ it as the winter wound down was an intense pleasure. It’s common knowledge that Springsteen was listening to a lot of Hank Williams when he was writing the album, and when I came across this song, I became obsessed with it. One, the melody sounds right off Nebraska, and “My Father’s House” (another song I listened to a lot this year) especially seems directly modeled on it. But this song has so much going for it on its own. It’s about death and the moment of judgement, but Hank’s melody and phrasing don’t sound frightened. It’s hopeful, a prayer instead of an admonishment. 

Guided by Voices: “Motor Away” I’ve loved this song for years but I listened to it intently around the same time I was playing the Hank Williams, when I was thinking about leaving Pitchfork. I’ve never been a big fan of Robert Pollard’s lyrics (though I love many of his tunes), but he second line here is the one I couldn’t put out of my mind: “When you free yourself from the chance of a lifetime.” That’s where I felt I was. Editing this music magazine that I cared so much about was the culmination of a dream that took a long time, a ton of work, and a fair amount of luck to realize. When the chance of a lifetime comes along, you’re supposed to hold on to it as tightly as possible for as long as possible, until someone finally pries it away, which will happen eventually. I knew that. And yet, deep down, I knew that after 11 years, I wanted to try something else. Run away, motor away, drive away. Sometimes a song can give you the tiniest push.

[fuckyeahnerinapallot]

ZAZU INTERVIEWS: NERINA PALLOT

If being famous was based solely on talent, Nerina Pallot would be a global household name by now. At one point, around a decade ago, when she was nominated for a BRIT Award and an Ivor Novello in the same year for her song "Sophia", it looked like that might have been about to happen.

It was a world-class song, and since then, though her following has become more cult than mass, she has released four more albums of world-class songs - the sort you imagine would have fit-in much better in the eras that gave us Kate Bush and Joni Mitchell.

Robert O'Connor caught-up with the singer/songwriter about her latest record, 'Stay Lucky', why she'd rather starve than have to co-write more hits for pop stars, and what she really thinks about disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein.

Nerina, first of all thank you for taking the time to talk with us. We’re big fans of yours going all the way back to ‘Fires’ – which by the way we can’t believe was 12 years ago! We all know how tough it is to last this long in the music industry – how do you think you’ve managed to stick around long enough to be now releasing your 5th album?

You know what’s scary? Stay Lucky is actually my 6TH album! And if you count up the Year of EPs and include them, it’s more like 11 albums. I don’t have an answer. Or maybe it’s that even though I have my own label and am signed to a publisher, I make a conscious effort to stay out of the industry. I’m quite sensitive (actually, no, I’m really bloody sensitive) and if I engaged too much with the bullshit of the industry I’d go bananas. It has absolutely nothing to do with music. Nothing to do with my motivations for making music. I’d make music whether it was a good living or bad. If I’ve had commercial moments and a few of the songs I’ve written have been lucrative it’s been entirely accidental - whereas the industry is all about monetising. I think I’ll stick around for as long as I’m emotional because music is my only real outlet so I don’t have a choice about making music or not, if that makes sense.

The music industry has changed drastically during your time as an artist – do you feel like the internet has helped or hindered you as an artist when you consider how people consume music nowadays with streaming etc.

That’s a really good question. The positives for me are that I can reach and maintain my fanbase relatively inexpensively through the socials. So keeping people up to speed about what I’m doing is a lot easier than it might have been ten, twenty years ago. It also allows me to engage in the way that suits me, because I do like chatting to people, and I do like sharing other bits and bobs about my life - within reason. Maybe I should have cultivated a more aloof persona - I know I was urged to do that by one of my old mangers - but that never felt right to me, and the internet suits my personality. The negatives are obvious - downloading and streaming has made music cheaper (from a consumer point of view I bloody love that and listen to loads of things because I can just stream them) but that means that it’s hard to make decent money because streaming pays so appallingly. I also think that because so much music is now available, you just have so much to plough through. And nobody knows who the gatekeepers are anymore because places like Spotify are very cagey about how they make their playlist choices and you can’t plug them the way you can plug radio producers. I have absolutely no idea how I got on some of the bigger streaming playlists I have been on - it was sheer pot luck. Also, far from democratising music, if you look at the streaming charts they are more or less entirely comprised of artists on major labels. It’s never been harder for the Indies to get a look in.

You’ve always sort of genre-hopped, and that’s what’s kept it interesting as a fan – has that always been a natural progression for you, or were you pressured in the past by labels to go in a certain direction as artists often are?

That’s a great question. I think it’s a bit of both. I’ve genre hopped because I am into so many different kinds of music, and always want to try things I haven’t done before. But yes, label pressure has had something to do with it. The most profound influence was probably when I got dropped by Polydor because my first record hadn’t worked and I knew in order to keep going I had to hit pay dirt. So I made the conscious decision to make at least one radio single on Fires because I wanted to have enough commercial success to keep making records. Because it worked on the second album, I went into overdrive on my third album, trying to chase another hit, and my heart wasn’t in it so it didn’t work. But the pressure always came from myself, if I’m honest.

There’s quite a jazzy vibe on some of the tracks on the new record, such as the gorgeous “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter”. Was this the plan from the outset with this project, genre-wise?

No! I started off programming a lot of stuff on my own and was initially thinking I’d make an electronic album. But then I got cross with myself because I was being so premeditated and the music felt sterile and too thought out, and at odds with how I was actually feeling. If I’m honest, I got into the music business because of a very respected jazz musician who I started to write with when I was still a university, and it was through him and his brother I got my first record deal. The weird thing is that it’s taken me sixteen years to make a record that sounds like who I actually am, musically. So it was a relief to ‘give myself permission’ to make the record I’d always wanted to make deep down.

'Stay Lucky' looks on course to enter the Top 30 this weekend in the UK. Do you feel like, since you’re an artist without the massive marketing budget of the Adele’s and Ed Sheeran’s of the world, that’s a testament to the strength and loyalty of your fanbase? It sort of seems like they’re on this journey with you, and as long as you make albums, they’ll be there to buy them…

I think it will be a miracle if we get in the Top 40 to be honest! But to even be in the game when the midweeks came out is absolutely a testament to my fanbase, because my sales are largely physical. Which means there are all these amazing people prepared to put their money where their mouth is and support me in that way. It’s very humbling actually, and is definitely a huge comfort to me when I’m going about my business. I think the connection between me and my fans is special, and I think it’s because it is quite cultish. I’m not convinced it would be that strong if I had been more commercially successful, and I would hate to have that dislocation between us.

We were obsessed with your Year of EPs project that you did a couple years ago – and now EPs are becoming the new normal for lots of artists. What was it like working at that rate versus the normal “single-album-single” approach that we’re so used to?

The recording process was pretty easy - I’ve always enjoyed performing live and am pretty solid, so that process wasn’t an issue. The writing enough good songs a month? That was very bloody hard!!! I think I wrote about 8 songs a month for the 5 that got released, because I was determined not to release any old rubbish. Honestly, when artists take a long time making albums, I think it’s because the writing is what is taking up the time. And it should. The song should always be the most important thing. And the funny thing is, when the songs are well written enough and the melodies flow and the lyrics have good imagery, the recording kind of takes care of itself. It’s when there are holes in the writing that the production process becomes arduous.

You’ve written for other popstars, Kylie for instance. What was that like as a process and would you consider doing more of it? Sia’s certainly managed to do well out of diluting her recipe and selling it to A-list non-writing pop stars!

No, my writing for hire days are well and truly over. I lucked out with Kylie and she very graciously took songs I had written for her, rather than with her. The thought of sitting in a room with another human with the express purpose of writing a song to make money makes my blood run cold. I’d rather starve.

Your recent single “Man Didn’t Walk On The Moon” is just sublime. It feels almost from another time, sitting comfortably alongside the likes of Fleetwood Mac. When you’re writing new songs, do you find yourself inspired by other acts from the past or present, because truly there’s no-one else out there doing what you’re doing at the moment!

Wow. Thank you! You know what’s funny is that everyone says Fleetwood Mac when they hear Man Didn’t… but I honestly, honestly didn’t listen to a note of Fleetwood Mac while I was writing or recording the album. Maybe they are somewhere in my musical DNA and popped up to say hello, but it wasn’t a conscious effort. But I think because I allowed myself to make the album my heart so desperately wanted to make, all my real, longest lasting musical influences surfaced - like Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan etc. Those are the records that I still put on time and time again and outlast the latest new album that captures my imagination for about a week.

Markus Feehily provided backing vocals on a couple tracks on ‘Stay Lucky’. How did that come about?

I worked with Markus a few years ago and was floored by his voice. I had no idea what a gifted singer he is. And after that I had it in the back of my mind that when I made the right kind of thing, his voice would be amazing singing with me. He was so supportive too while I was making the album, because I was scared - you know, I was aware I was kind of committing commercial suicide, but he (and everyone else who worked on it) were genuinely getting into the music in a way I hadn’t experienced while making a record before and that was such a comfort.

Your song “Real Late Starter” was covered by X Factor winner Joe McElderry a few years back. How did you feel about that, and how do you feel about those types of shows in 2017?

I was flattered but also quite confused because the song is about being a loser and Joe had just won something. I think those shows need to go away for a bit because the public are bored now and it’s not the greatest vehicle to set up sometimes truly talented people (Kelly Clarkson, for example) in the right way.I think it’s starting to ruin people’s futures before they’ve even really begun. And what was the last truly great song that came out of it?

Your song “If I Had A Girl” on the last album was kind of a feminist anthem, so we’ve gotta ask about the recent news in Hollywood about Harvey Weinstein and all of those allegations. Do you feel like there’s similar situations happening to women working in the music industry?

Me too, me too, me too. It’s not just women though - I know of some young gay men who have been victim of some predatory men in both the film and music industry. It’s worth mentioning that because I think they’re even less likely to speak up. Just look at the way women are marketed in general, and the way that we are marketed to. I’m so heartened to see so many women speaking up (although it’s kind of horrifying how many of us there are), but this is genuinely the most positive I’ve felt about women being treated equally in a long time. It’s awful that it’s taken something as monstrous as Weinstein (who I’ve met by the way, and he radiated sleaze I have to say) but a change is happening. I would like to make the point though that I have never ever encountered misogyny in my day to day creative workplace - the male musicians and engineers I’ve worked with have always treated me as an equal and have never thought I wasn’t as capable as them because I have a vagina.

Let’s talk about getting you to Ireland – can your fans here expect to see you live in Dublin during the course of this album cycle at all?

I live in hope. It’s been quite a while since I played in Dublin, but if I can come over next year when I plan on touring more extensively, I definitely will. Tell your friends, and if enough people want to see me, I shall be there!

Finally, is there anything left on your musical bucket-list? A producer you’d like to work with or a goal you dream about achieving, etc?

I just want to keep making records that move people. That’s it. I might hop about styles or moods but my main aim is always to connect. Everything else is just gravy.

[silkclient90-blog]

Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

When nothing but time can still the pain, a Lucinda Williams song will see you through. In her dry Louisiana drawl, she sings plaintively of abusive childhoods and bad marriages; of drunken bar brawls and suicidal poets; of her own heart that shatters and mends and shatters again, like a puzzle, down-and-out. A magnet for the kind of unrequited love that seems to stop the Earth from turning, Williams persists. Then she’s onto the next town.

Williams was born a rolling stone. Her late father, the poet Miller Williams, was a college professor and the family moved often, to Mexico and Chile and a dozen Southern towns. After Williams was expelled from one New Orleans high school in part for refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance in protest of Vietnam, dad gave her a list of 100 great books to read instead. (Williams’ family of civil rights activists and union workers passed on that spirit of dissent as well.) Miller’s profession brought a young Lucinda into contact with Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, and, most influentially, Flannery O’Connor. Williams would never let go of her O’Connor-inspired fantasy of writing a Great Southern Novel. Instead, Williams set hers to music, becoming an itinerant Southern Gothic beat.

At 18, she left home and belonged nowhere. There was no alternative country in 1974, no alternative rock, no Americana, and in at least one Austin bar were Williams hoped to perform, no room for another “chick singer.” Nashville told her she was too rock’n’roll. Los Angeles said she was too country. Galvanized by Bob Dylan, Williams’ songwriting evoked his poetic ambition, Bruce Springsteen’s every-people, Joni Mitchell’s confessionalism. The lonesomeness of jukebox country met the darkness of an outlaw. The whiskey-stained tenacity of the blues was spiked with the honey of AM pop. She released two albums, a 1979 covers collection Ramblin and 1980’s thrilling Happy Woman Blues, but did not catch a break until a punk label, Rough Trade, came along and signed her (making her labelmates with Stiff Little Fingers, on the one hand; Leadbelly, on the other). Lucinda Williams, in 1988, was her third album and first masterpiece. Ten years later, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road was her second.

Williams was by then 45 and over two decades into her career at the fringes: touring small clubs, working with small labels, the life of an ’80s indie band more than a country star. She had released only four albums, filled with female characters who wanted it all—sung by a woman who wanted it all, too. The cool girls in Lucinda Williams songs were always packing up, pawning possessions, saving their tips to split town. There was “Maria,” in 1980, who was “wild and restless” and “born to roam.” There was the small-town waitress Sylvia, in 1988’s “The Night’s Too Long,” who resolutely declares “I’m moving away/I’m gonna get what I want.” “One Night Stand” was like a long-lost string-band ancestor of Liz Phair’s “Fuck and Run.” These were mini-manifestos for a female life. Williams’ feminism rang with no stronger conviction than when she used the first-person to narrate her own desires: “Give me what I deserve cause it’s my right!” she longed on her eventual hit, “Passionate Kisses.”

If what she wanted was recognition, or fulfillment, or money—with Car Wheels, she got it. But the road there was almost comically difficult. Labels combusted in her wake: Rough Trade, Chameleon, and American all fell apart after she signed. RCA head Bob Buziak brought her to that label and then got fired. Williams and the music industry seemed allergic to one another. Lucinda Williams was an astonishing album—a classic from a renegade songwriter who never grew too hardened to admit “I just wanted to see you so bad”—but you couldn’t blame the greater public for being somewhat oblivious to it, since Rough Trade went bankrupt shortly after its release. Better-known fans kept the songs alive, with covers from the likes of Tom Petty, Patty Loveless, and Mary Chapin Carpenter. In 1997 the Los Angeles Times wrote: “It’s a good thing Williams has gotten a boost from others, because her own luck as a recording artist has been miserable.”

The six-year gap between 1992’s Sweet Old World and Car Wheels is now charged with myth. By one account, Car Wheels took six tedious years, recorded three times in three cities with three different producers. In reality, there were two years in the studio, from 1995 to 1997, and one scrapped attempt. After Williams started the album with her longtime guitarist and co-producer Gurf Morlix, she felt it was “flat, lifeless, not up to par” and chose to re-record with country fixture Steve Earle and his production partner, Ray Kennedy. She liked their warm, scratchy old equipment and how prominently Kennedy had produced the vocals on Earle’s 1996 album, I Feel Alright. When time ran out, Williams finished the album in L.A. with Roy Bittan, a member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, adding keyboards, accordions, guitar, and backing vocals. (Though Bittan claimed, “We redid most everything.”) A tornado hit Nashville just as Williams was mastering the finished analog tapes; someone had to race to the studio to save them.

Unlike her hero, Dylan, Williams was mapping directions home. But home, never fixed to one place, was a profound in-between, more like the breeze that pushed her. Car Wheels is a raw, exquisite travelogue of her American South, from Jackson to Vicksburg, from West Memphis to Slidell, from the Louisiana Highway to Lake Ponchatrain. She searched for novelistic detail in back roads and cotton fields and dilapidated shacks. She played furious bluegrass stompers alongside clenching Memphis soul. Williams and an ex-lover drive through Lafayette and Baton Rouge “in a yellow Camino listening to Howlin Wolf.” Loretta, Hank, and ZZ Top are called out by name. “I see the whole thing like a pitch for a little movie,” Williams once said.

But like Flannery O’Connor asserted, “Southern identity is not really connected with mockingbirds and beaten biscuits… an identity is not to be found on the surface.” Worlds exist beneath Car Wheels’ dazzling edges and monumental hooks. As “Concrete and Barbed Wire” evokes its thorny title, Williams wonders about human divides: “This wall is not real/How can it be real?” she sings, nearly cracking a yodel, a possible polemic. (The track was once covered on the compilation Sing Me Home: Songs Against Prison.) And Williams took bold risks: The opener “Right in Time” includes some of her most irreducible, eloquent poetry—“Not a day goes by I don’t think about you/You left your mark on me, it’s permanent, a tattoo”—before becoming a moaned narrative of a woman alone in bed, pleasuring herself. It is unbelievably sensual, a daydream.

The honky-tonk title track is a sung memoir of an uncertain childhood, set in a Macon, Georgia kitchen with Loretta in the air, the smell of eggs and bacon lingering. At the whim of a disgruntled parent, a young Williams watches the world blur from a car window. When she sings of a “little bit of dirt mixed with tears,” she underscores the vulnerability and toughness at the heart of her character—the shy sense of human imperfection that makes her so heroic, unsettled already from a fixed place. There’s an innocence to this phrase, “Car wheels on a gravel road.” Williams’ melodic wording is sensitive to the bumps you feel, bumps that manifest as chaos and grief and troubled men: drunk men, self-destructive men, men in bands, men doing time, ghost men. Her voice cracks and quivers, allowing ugliness when her subject so demands.

Earle was deeply inspired by rap in the mid-’90s, particularly Dr. Dre’s ’92 gangsta rap gamechanger The Chronic. And while there remains no word if Williams shared in that affinity, it’s an illuminating prospect: On Car Wheels, her words are dramatically upfront, suspended, locking into mellow grooves. That’s especially true on “2-Kool 2 B 4-Gotten,” where Williams sings a nonlinear stream of images of rural Mississippi, her most audacious attempt at a surreal, Dylanesque poetry collage. The title of “2 Kool 2 B 4-Gotten” was taken from a phrase scrawled on the wall of a Washington County juke joint—the social gathering spaces of Black Americans in the segregated Jim Crow South—which she found in a 1990 book, Juke Joint, by the photographer Birney Imes.

But Williams sets her scene 50 miles north, in Rosedale, perhaps in homage to bluesman Robert Johnson, who she namechecks in the song and who sang of the same town in his “Traveling Riverside Blues.” Markings from the wall of yet another Juke Joint photo are scattered through Williams’ lyrics: “No dope smoking no beer sold after 12 o’clock,” “No bad language no gambling no fighting,” “Sorry no credit don’t ask,” “Is God the answer YES.” Williams is like a documentarian of these spaces, which incubated the Delta blues and are extinct today. A humble Imes photo of a juke called Turks Place, in Laflore County, also graces the cover of Car Wheels.

Williams sings “2 Kool” with a toughened poise and a dash of nihilism. “You can’t depend on anything really/There’s no promises, there’s no point,” go its opening lines, and while she continues weaving her Southern patchwork—pointing to a serpent handler outside—“2-Kool” ultimately becomes a eulogy for Williams’s ex-boyfriend, Clyde. The jumbled narrative seems to mirror the impossibility of making sense of death; it never quite resolves, feels diffuse, feminine even. When Williams sings of “Leaning against the railing of a Lake Charles bridge,” of how her former lover “asked me baby would you jump in with me,” it recalls another Southern epitaph: Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe.” Williams wrote the easeful, bittersweet Car Wheels ballad “Lake Charles” for Clyde as well: “Did an angel whisper in your ear?” Williams cries. “And hold you close and take away your fear/In those long last moments?” It is as close to perfect as elegies come.

The soaring, strummed-out build of “Drunken Angel” suggests an opening blue sky. Williams’s most iconic song is another eulogy, this one for her Texan acquaintance, the outlaw underdog Blaze Foley. She wonders why it had to happen, why he had to die in senseless shootout at 39. Williams’ characterization is masterfully vivid: Foley’s outcast glory, his slovenliness. As she describes his “duct tape shoes” and “orphan clothes,” “Drunken Angel” becomes an anthemic honoring of these hidden people—too eccentric, too outside, too much—who cannot bear this world and who this world, in turn, cannot hold.

Car Wheels pivots, by side B, to a fully blistering breakup album. Williams knows what belongs at the soul of these pristine songs about merciless heartache, placing them at a nexus of obsession, rejection, and occasional delusion. “Metal Firecracker” is a flawless vagabond love song: As she is wont to do, Williams turns two people sitting in a car into a film treatment of just eight lines, remembering when she was his “queen,” his “biker,” curling that last word with so much effortless twang you can feel the sun in your eyes. “Once I was in your blood and you were obsessed with me,” Williams pines. “You wanted to paint my picture/You wanted to undress me/You wanted to see me in your future.” Love that is anything less than life-changing infatuation feels fraudulent in Williams’ world.

A gentle and foreboding ballad, “Greenville” is the resilient sound of a betrayed woman trying, with impossible grace, to keep a toxic man out of her life. The quiet of the song is in stark contrast to this aggressor who screams and fights and lies, who “drinks hard liquor and comes on strong,” who compels Williams to imagine “empty bottles and broken glass/Busted down doors and borrowed cash.” “Looking for someone to save you,” Williams sings, conjuring the feeling of being used, “Looking for someone to rave about you.” Strength and tenderness are rarely entwined so consequentially. The angelic harmonies from Emmylou Harris feel like solidarity, like another woman carrying her safely through.

The rootless rhythms of travel are survival mechanisms on Car Wheels. The album’s finger-picked closer “Jackson” is like a drifting Carter Family hymn. The deeper she gets on the road, Williams sings, the less she will miss yet another ex-lover. It’s clear this woman knows the game, the fiction, that time alone repairs a wrecked heart. “Once I get to Lafayette, I’m not gonna mind one bit,” she sings, convincing herself. “Once I get to Baton Rouge, I won’t cry a tear for you.” Car Wheels ends in motion, Williams crisscrossing the country in pursuit of herself, the thing she can count on.

Car Wheels topped the Village Voice’s Pazz and Jop critics poll, earned the Grammy Award for Contemporary Folk Album, and entered the Billboard Top 200. In a four star review for Rolling Stone, Robert Christgau began: “Sometimes it seems Lucinda Williams is too good for this world.” Still, other critics turned mocking eyes at the supposedly “nutty” and delirious “perfectionism” Williams demanded. These criticisms would never so beleaguer a male artist—or as Emmylou Harris put it, “When a guy takes a long time to make a record, he’s a genius. If a woman does that, it’s a different matter.” A Times profile from 1997 illustrated a scene in which Williams’ male collaborators questioned her creative decisions and she proved them wrong. When, in ‘98, someone asked Williams what she learned from the process of making Car Wheels, she said, with some reluctance, “I need to learn to assert myself more in the studio environment because I’m dealing with all men. I wish I had more women to work with.”

Reading the tales of how Williams worked on Car Wheels with a record exec knocking, I’m reminded, again, of her heroine Flannery O’Connor, who refused to open the door of her Georgia home until she had completed her morning writing, even with visitors waiting. “I live in my head, pretty much,” Williams said in 1998. For all of its journeying, Car Wheels on a Gravel Road emerges as eternal proof that home, inside you, is worth fighting for.

Source: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/lucinda-williams-car-wheels-on-a-gravel-road/

[bpoole500]

The 100 List: Albums

Even more than books, music can be a strong shared experience.

“What are you listening to?” has probably been one of the earliest question in any number of friendships. A song or album can immediately tag a particular time or place in your memory. A concert can bring thousands of strangers together and bond them over the course of a couple hours.

In this day of downloading and streaming, one might be tempted to wonder if the concept of the album is even still relevant. It may not be, and yet many artists continue to release music that way. The delivery system may change, but the artistic impulse remains. The days of monster album sales may be a permanent relic of the past (unless you’re Adele or Taylor Swift), but even if fewer people feel compelled to get the whole thing, an album, an entire work of musical inspiration, can still be a powerful statement from an artist.

People have strong opinions when it comes to their favorite tunes. That’s why I’d never dream of offering a “best” list. That’s not just asking for trouble, it’s pretty much demanding it, while saying something rude about trouble’s parentage. You’re better off not going there.

But if you’re asking for some of my favorites, the albums I’d recommend, the answer to the question “what are you listening to,” then these are likely to be the answer.

1. A Few Small Repairs – Shawn Colvin

2. All That You Can’t Leave Behind – U2

3. Anthology: Through the Years – Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

- Some might feel it’s a cheat to put hits collections and other compilations on a list like this. I disagree, as compiling songs that weren’t recorded together into a coherent, compelling collection is an art all its own. And when the songs are as good as, say, Tom Petty’s output of hits,  a compilation can easily make the transition from commercial project to art.

4. August and Everything After – Counting Crows

5. The Austin Sessions – Edwin McCain

- McCain can be an inconsistent artist, but this stripped down collection, including a killer cover of the Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet,” may be the most effective recording of his career.

6. Babel – Mumford and Sons

7. Back to Black – Amy Winehouse

- It’s easy to get caught up in the tragedy of Winehouse’s senseless, far-too-premature death. But instead, remember the fierce, intelligent and beguiling woman who caught the world’s attention with this retro-pop stunner.

8. Bare – Annie Lennox

9. Barton Hollow – The Civil Wars

10. Bella Donna – Stevie Nicks

- You’ll see a lot of Stevie on this list, both solo and with Fleetwood Mac. There’s a reason she’s one of the most revered women in the world of rock.

11. Blue – Joni Mitchell

12. The Body Acoustic – Cyndi Lauper

13. Breakaway – Kelly Clarkson

14. Bringing Down the Horse - Wallflowers

15. Building the Perfect Beast – Don Henley

16. The Civil Wars – The Civil Wars

- It’s not difficult to believe that the two people who recorded this turbulent, fascinating album stopped speaking to one another immediately thereafter. Their fans may never know what broke up The Civil Wars, but as a parting statement, this works pretty damn well.

17. The Color and the Shape – Foo Fighters

18. Come Away With Me – Norah Jones

19. Cry Like A Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind – Linda Ronstadt

20. Dizzy Up the Girl­ – Goo Goo Dolls

21. Drastic Fantastic – KT Tunstall

- People who stopped listening to Tunstall after “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” have missed one of the most compelling artistic trajectories in recent pop/rock music, one that’s still going strong, even if the artist doesn’t get the attention she merits.

22. The End of the Innocence – Don Henley

23. Essence – Lucinda Williams

24. Everyone Is Here – The Finn Brothers

25. Fat City – Shawn Colvin

- Colvin’s recorded a lot of great music, but this collaboration with producer Larry Klein ranks among her best work.

26. Final Straw – Snow Patrol

27. Fleetwood Mac – Fleetwood Mac

28. Forever Blue – Chris Isaak

- Heart Shaped World was a bigger hit, but this pithy heartbreak song cycle perfectly captures Isaak’s musical mission.

29. 40 Acres – Caedmon’s Call

30. Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand

31. Fumbling Towards Ecstasy – Sarah McLachlan

32. Garden State – soundtrack

- One of the strongest movie soundtracks in recent memory (it’s final track by a badly outclassed cast member notwithstanding).

33. Give Up the Ghost – Brandi Carlisle

34. Greatest Hits – Bruce Springsteen

35. Happenstance – Rachel Yamagata

36. Heart Like A Wheel – Linda Ronstadt

- Several albums into her career, this is where everything came together for Ronstadt, crystalizing her approach. More than four decades later and it’s still a pristine exemplar of its era.

37. Hopes and Fears – Keane

38. Hot Fuss – The Killers

39. Hotel California – Eagles

- This is one of those albums that musical snobs enjoy dismissing as “overrated,” but its reputation is well-earned, practically defining the sound of late ‘70s album rock.

40. How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb – U2

41. How To Save A Life – The Fray

42. In Time: The Best of R.E.M. – R.E.M.

43. Indigo Girls – Indigo Girls

44. Invisible Empire/Crescent Moon – KT Tunstall

45. Jars of Clay – Jars of Clay

46. The Joshua Tree – U2

- Most bands would kill for the trio of high profile hits this album produced, but it’s so much more than just those three songs. If you haven’t listened to it in awhile, it’s worth revisiting.

47. Kaleidoscope Heart – Sara Bareilles

48. Karla Bonoff – Karla Bonoff

49. Like A Prayer – Madonna

50. Lost In Space – Aimee Mann

- Mann got screwed by the major labels worse than just about any artist of the past 30 or so years. But she never let it get her down. This is a perfect example of the independent approach she embraced once she finally extracted herself from the wreckage of her former recording home.

51. Marc Cohn – Marc Cohn

52. Merry Christmas – Mariah Carey

- There are many valid criticisms one might level Carey’s way, but this Christmas collection is her indelible highlight and “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is a much deserved modern standard.

53. Mirrorball: The Complete Concert – Sarah McLachlan

54. Mr. Lucky­ – Chris Isaak

55. More Than Just A Dream – Fitz and the Tantrums

56. New Constellation – Toad the Wet Sprocket

- Few bands come back from a break of well over a decade with music as compelling as what Toad presented here.

57. New Miserable Experience – Gin Blossoms

58. O – Damien Rice

59. OK Computer – Radiohead

60. One Moment More – Mindy Smith

61. Our Version of Events – Emeli Sande

62. Poseidon and the Bitter Bug – Indigo Girls

63. Purple Rain – Prince and the Revolution

- To admit that you don’t have a favorite song on this album is to admit that you don’t like music very much.

64. Raising Sand – Robert Plant and Alison Krauss

65. Rearviewmirror (greatest hits 1991 – 2009) – Pearl Jam

66. Recovering the Satellites – Counting Crows

67. Recurring Dream: The Very Best of Crowded House – Crowded House

68. Relish – Joan Osborne

69. The River of Dreams – Billy Joel

70. Rock Spectacle – Barenaked Ladies

71. Rumours – Fleetwood Mac

72. Running on Empty – Jackson Browne

73. Sam’s Town – The Killers

- After their crowd-pleasing debut, The Killers grew into one of the more polarizing bands on the modern rock scene with a commendable refusal to do what anyone expected of them.

74. Sand and Water – Beth Nielsen Chapman

75. Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings – Counting Crows

76. Scars on 45 – Scars on 45

77. Screamin’ for My Supper – Beth Hart

- If you don’t know blues/pop belter Hart, this is an ideal way to begin your acquaintance.

78. Shimmer – Kim Richey

79. Sigh No More – Mumford and Sons

80. Some Mad Hope – Matt Nathanson

81. Songs in the Attic – Billy Joel

82. The Sound of White – Missy Higgins

83. Sycamore Meadows – Butch Walker

84. Tapestry – Carole King

85. There Is Nothing Left To Lose – Foo Fighters

86. This Desert Life – Counting Crows

- Even if the collection as a whole wasn’t pretty near flawless, the sprawling, singular “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby” would demand its inclusion on this list.

87. Tiger Lily – Natalie Merchant

88. Tinsel and Lights – Tracey Thorn

89. Trouble in Shangri-La – Stevie Nicks

90. Tuesday Night Music Club – Sheryl Crow

91. 21 – Adele

- Proof that people will still buy (or download or stream) full albums. Even Adele seemed shocked at what a nerve these songs touched with a diverse array of fans.

92. Twentysomething – Jamie Cullum

93. Twister – soundtrack

94. The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner – Ben Folds Five

95. Under the Covers, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 – Matthew Sweet and Sussana Hoffs

- The one time alt-pop wunderkind and the erstwhile lead Bangle might seem like odd collaborators, but their three albums putting their own spins on the songs of different decades (‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s) are a total blast.

96. The Very Best of the Eagles – Eagles

97. The Very Best of Jackson Browne – Jackson Browne

98. VH1: Crossroads – various artists

- These live performances, taken from VH1’s late ‘90s franchise, featured the likes of k.d. lang, The Gin Blossoms, Tori Amos and Son Volt, providing a nice encapsulation of the state of adult alternative music at the time.

99. White Ladder – David Gray

100. Young Love – Mat Kearney