monday, september 7th
Dad rock, spiritual jazz, Katy Perry, & more
Hello there!
Happy Monday, Happy Labor Day!! I hope everyone is sleeping in and enjoying a nice long, beautiful weekend. I certainly have. There is a brand new mixtape below as well as a few thoughts from me on last week’s mixtape. Enjoy!
POV: You, being interrogated about your favorite dad rock album by me.
The masterful Peter Braunstein is out here trying to flatter me with this week’s cover art! And it’s working. THANK YOU, PB!!
Last Week This Morning
In this weekly section I’ll walk through the previous week’s mixtape: a track-by-track and sound-by-sound guide to what you heard, what you might have missed, and all the extracurriculars to go along with it. Today, we’ll look back on last Monday, August 31st.
Sleepwalk
For this season (at least) I’ve decided to start every mixtape off with a warm up song of sorts, which I’ve been calling the “sleepwalk” to myself (quarantine will do things like this to you). The song will always be an instrumental/wordless and will run for about a minute just to tickle the ear a bit before we get into the heart of the matter.
Last week, we opened with “Forty Miles of Bad Road” by Lyn Taitt and the Baba Brooks Band. Released at some point between 1964 and 1966 on Jamaica’s Treasure Isle record label, the song is a lively ska cover of American rockabilly artist Duane Eddy’s song of the same name. Eddy’s original was released in 1959 and peaked at #9 on the pop charts.
Though my preference is Taitt’s version as it feels like the perfect opener, balancing in equal parts immediacy, slack, and strut, in listening to Eddy’s “Forty” again, I could really hear the impression his campy stomp-and-clap opening made on those leaning towards the histrionic side of glam rock a dozen years later. For example, one you know and one you don’t. (Also, if you’re unfamiliar with Gary Glitter look him up and then maybeee never listen to his music again.)
All sleepwalk songs will be housed on the Spotify playlist below.
The first song we hear on the mixtape is Bruce Springsteen’s “Two Faces” off of his 1987 record, Tunnel of Love. This is proceeded by a clip of music journalist Lindsay Zoladz appearing on the podcast Spectrum Culture to discuss her recent piece in The New York Times, “I’m Not a Dad, But I Rock Like One.” Zoladz is insightful and routinely hilarious in both her piece and the podcast in discussing her reckoning with a love of “dad rock” (something I’ve also been coming to terms with in 2020) via her acceptance of Steely Dan. The clip, in which Zoladz explains “how much fucking baseball” she’s been watching (another sign of early on-set dad-dom) felt like a natural segue into one of the kings of dad rock and lover of the old ballgame himself, Bruce. // Though, having said that, “Two Faces” might be better labeled as “divorced-dad rock.” Tunnel of Love is Bruce’s most easily identifiable “break-up album” as he had recently parted ways with his first wife and recorded nearly the entire album alone, without the assistance his long-time group the E-Street Band. On a record that generally doles out equal blame to both parties in doomed marriages of all kinds, “Two Faces” suggests that the true fault of one unsatisfied mind undermining the whole operation. The bridge, which relies heavily on trope-y Greek comedy/tragedy imagery, is a stand out in this way:
One that laughs, one that cries
One says “hello,” one says “good-bye”
One does things I don’t understand
Makes me feel like half a man
Of course, he’s a dad, so he’s bound to fall into oversimplified platitudes (particularly those about manhood), but there’s a sincerity in the vocal delivery of his personality crisis that allows him to pull off the cheese effectively. It succeeds where something like the first instrumental break, which is supposed to be dissonant and rupturous (<— not a word, but it should be), feels uninspired because it doesn’t commit to these ideas in full. // Because for Bruce, masculinity has a lot to do with self-control. It’s what makes “I’m On Fire,” from 1984’s Born in the U.S.A., feel like the direct predecessor to Tunnel of Love on the whole. Moody and synth-laden (the definitive aural textures of ToL, making it a black sheep in the Springsteen discography), “I’m On Fire” is supposedly sung from the perspective of a war veteran scarred by the traumas he’s faced while hoping that sexual satisfaction will provide some kind of emotional rehabilitation. It’s a dangerous premise and it results in a character that is simultaneously lonesome and menacing, out of touch and out of control. This character bears a slightly different face, this one masked contempt from sexual rejection. Even the song’s refrain (“Oh, oh, oh, I’m on fire”) is sung with a calm that betrays the statement’s meaning. // This man is falling apart from the inside out, as is the character from “Two Faces.” Both look outward to purge their demons, but “Two Faces” comes off as far more adult (perhaps why it is the lesser of the two). Whereas “I’m On Fire” recklessly seeks sexual triumph and expects few consequences (which, as I write, brings me to the realization that this is Bruce’s “Delia”), “Two Faces” is burdened by an awareness of the problem and what’s to lose. Whereas “I’m On Fire” ends with the maimed whimpering of resolute defeat, the character from “Two Faces” is ultimately defiant and faith-filled (“He swore he’d take your love away from me/Well, go-ahead and let him try”), without ever fully rejecting any part of himself. In that sense, “Two Faces” reveals itself to be a marriage, albeit an internal one, in its own right: an exercise in compromise.
The second piece is “Truth” by Kamasi Washington. Released as the first single ahead of 2017’s Harmony of Difference, “Truth” was the longest song on last week’s mixtape, clocking in at over 13 minutes long. (If you like long songs, last week’s tape was for you.) Given its length, there is much to be unpacked here, but two things sprung out in my many listens. First is the main melody, which is striking in its ease (despite being jazz, it feels singable) and translatability (it gets played by an electric guitar, strings, and a choir, among others) while also coming across as broad and imbued with meaning. It is beautiful, in a word. Part of this beauty is owed to the second prominent aspect of the song, which is its orchestration. The reliance on the electric guitar to be our initial guide is a peculiar choice, as is the inclusion of a xylophone shortly thereafter (though I’m no expert on Kamasi, what I have listened to indicates that this is not a common instrument for him). Horns, strings, and the choir all kick in, creating a sound that is lush and grand, something much larger than the sum of its parts. For me at least, it’s hard not to get absorbed in its grandeur and miss the individual performances. // Two more thoughts: I’ve particularly enjoyed the beginning of the second section, when the two drum sets switch to the new time signature (I think? I don’t know theory, so don’t quote me on that) which sounds like an engine turning over a few times and restarting, getting the piece going again before kicking into full gear. The interplay between each other and the bass for those few seconds is a nice moment. Second, I’ve always been fascinated by Kamasi’s use of choirs. It’s part of his trademark sound, and it’s always so prominent to the point where it may be off-putting to unexpecting listeners. It certainly helps create the massive sound that he is usually going for, but I wonder if there is something more to having human voices in jazz pieces that appeals to him.
The nearly-as-long “Oldie” from Odd Future (2012) was proceeded by a clip from the podcast Dissect which breaks down modern classics like Lemonade and To Pimp A Butterfly on a track-by-track basis by highlighting their musical ingenuity from a theory standpoint and contextualizing them culturally. (The show’s newest season kicks off tomorrow, September 8th.) Recently, I’ve been listening to the season on Tyler the Creator’s Flower Boy, and while I’m still trying to reach the record on its own terms, the podcast has definitely given me a much deeper appreciation for what’s going on musically and thematically. The clip, which is from the season’s first episode, outlines the importance of Odd Future, Tyler, the Creator’s Los Angeles-based hip-hop collective that largely proceeded his work as a solo artist. // The song has very big throwback, Nineties, pass-the-blunt-then-pass-the-mic hip-hop vibes, which I was a bit surprised about on first listen (I’ve not really barked up the OF tree to this point, so perhaps this is their sound), but has grown on me tremendously. I love the idea of this song: that it doesn’t try to be a four minute rap song in a ten minute rap song’s clothes. It leans into the format wonderfully in a way that most hip-hop artists wouldn’t have the patience to execute effectively. // Frank Ocean’s verse stood out among the rest to me, not because it is necessarily the best, but because his phrasing feels like it was taken directly from the Nineties West Coast playbook. Specifically, his lazy attitude toward vowels (in no way a criticism) is very reminiscent of Snoop’s languid approach and C-PO’s verse from “Picture Me Rollin’.” Frank handles it well, but I always try to to hear Snoop’s voice lightly sing-rapping “smoke a gram of that haaaze.” You get the picture.
Justin Townes Earle, son of country star Steve Earle and a successful Americana musician in his own right, passed away in late August from a probable accidental drug overdose. He was 38. JTE was never someone I listened to, but had always been aware of due to his appearances at the Newport Folk Festival. In listening to some of his work over the past few weeks, I found it to be fairly conservative from a musical standpoint, not particularly attention-grabbing in any way. When he passed, this video of his performance of “Harlem River Blues” from 2011 on Letterman began circulating across my socials. (A rough looking Jason Isbell is on lead guitar.) I found it to be leagues better than the original studio version, with greater energy and a bigger sneer. // This is a strange phenomenon that Newport has. It’s not uncommon for me to be somewhat unenthused by the records put out by the festival’s performing artists only to truly enthralled by their live performances at Newport. It almost feels like the opposite issue of many music festivals in which artists have the songs, but lack the requisite stage presence to genuinely engage an audience.
Do you have thoughts, comments, or questions on last week’s mixtape? Listen again and leave a comment below! I’ve provided the link to the mixtape on SoundCloud as well as the playlist on Spotify for ease of listening.
A Tweet I Loved
Long-reads
1: With the release of her new album Smile, The Atlantic ran an article that positioned Katy Perry as the commercial marker for the slow gravitation away from the upbeat, dance-friendly pop music that she mastered in the early 2010s and inspected what has changed in the ten years since Teenage Dream.
For the younger class of today’s stars, Teenage Dream seems like a faint influence. The Billboard Hot 100 is largely the terrain of raunchy rap, political rap, and emo rap, with a smattering of country drinking songs thrown in. Ultra-hummable singers such as Halsey and Billie Eilish are still on the radio, but they cut their catchiness with a sad, sleepy edge. Almost nothing creates the sucrose high of Teenage Dream.
I’m Outta Here, Y’all
I hope you all have a great week. You can find the monday, september 7th mixtape below via SoundCloud! You can visit the MMM substack page here. Stay safe and hit me up with any questions!
With love,
TG