After some slim pickings last time, the options are bountiful here. Just look at the songs with the title “Ohio.” You’ve got CSNY’s response to the Kent State massacre, Modest Mouse’s off-kilter take on traveling the highways across the nation, and Damien Jurado’s story of homesickness and longing. Then consider “Look at Miss Ohio,” a smoldering Gillian Welch song, also performed beautifully by Miranda Lambert. Or the twangy, jangly goodness of R.E.M’s “Cuyahoga.” Or the breathtaking “Bloodbuzz Ohio” from The National, one of my favorite songs of the last decade, which only doesn’t get the pick here because it’s a little too abstract, and because there’s an even better pick.
“Youngstown” is one of the quintessential Springsteen songs. The acoustic version of this song is fine. But it doesn’t really convey the feel of the place. Here, with dirty guitars and an ominous, looming sense of menace, is the real Youngstown. The history just seeps out of it like a thick sap. And the anger is evident in his snarl.
And, like all things Springsteen, of course this is nostalgia. It’s not meant as a political treatise on the political economy of coal, nor is it a demand for the restoration of a city that is gone forever. It’s just the expression of a palpable frustration. And it’s a call for us to exercise our memory, to recognize those who have been left behind in this brave new world. It’s all too easy to just cast them aside as the detritus of progress. But everything we are now depends on the sweat and the blood and the pain of those who came before.
I’ve been dreading North Dakota for awhile now, hoping that I’d be able to turn something up. I’ve searched Spotify lists of songs with Dakota in the title, trolled lists of ‘great North Dakota songs,’ and cast about fruitlessly on social media.
I never expected that every state would produce an all-time classic, or anything, but my standard has always been that I had to pick a topical song I genuinely liked. And, well, North Dakota is where the well finally ran dry.
Lyle Lovett’s “North Dakota” (which is actually about the Texas borderlands) is fine, but not much more. Sinatra has a song about a girl in ‘North and South Dakota,’ which is at least 50% on the mark. Nanci Griffith wrote a treacly song about hope and change in the wake of Obama’s election that mentions ‘the plains of North Dakota.’ Dolly Parton has a song about getting away from the cold. And…that’s about it?
And so, I’m going with this lovely Ashley Monroe tune, which is only tangentially about North Dakota (which, again, features primarily as something to be escaped). But at least it’s a beautiful song.
There’s a surprisingly rich vein of North Carolina songs, particularly given how sparse the options are for their similarly-named neighbor to the south. Especially since the vast majority of ‘Carolina’ songs are really about the northern version.
You can start with the persistent earworm of Wagon Wheel (“Heading down south to the land of the pines / I’m thumbing my way into North Caroline), continue with one of Ryan Adams’ loveliest ballads (“Oh my sweet Carolina / What compels me to go?), and then join Sonic Youth for a tale of a bookstore owner inChapel Hill who was murdered (for his radical politics?).
But there was only ever going to be one pick here. Taylor wrote it while he was off in old England, one of the first signees to the new Apple record label, hoping to make good on that incredible opportunity. When he sings, “with a holy host of others standing around me” he’s literally talking about the Beatles, who were busy recording the White Album just down the hall. Paul and George even contribute to the original recording of the song.
Ultimately, it’s a song about homesickness. The literal homesickness of being an ocean away from everything familiar and comfortable. But also the deeper anxiety that arises when you’re taking your first big step toward greatness, when you’re filled with worry about what you might be leaving behind. It’s a song full of hope: that you might still find a way to stitch together your past and your future, to hold onto what you love, without being trapped by it.
Picking one song for New York is an impossible task. There are probably a couple dozen that deserve the honor, with all-time classics from the likes of LCD Soundsystem, Nas, Paul Simon, They Might Be Giants (via Cub), Lou Reed, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday, just to name a few. Of all the places in all the world, New York City is king when it comes to musical tributes.
Still, there’s one place that you simply have to start, and that’s with Sinatra. Even if you don’t ultimately pick him—as I don’t—you have to pause to acknowledge the significance. In so many ways, Sinatra is New York—at least the New York of a certain timeframe.
Of course, “New York, New York” is actually a much more recent song than we often think. It was written in 1977 for a Scorsese film and recorded by Liza Minnelli. Frank didn’t record his version until a couple years after that. But as someone born in the early 80s, it’s simply always existed, and in many ways has defined my understanding of the city. For those who were around when it was released, it may hold a specific place in time and history. But for me, it’s timeless, eternal.
All of which leads to my actual pick, another song that will feel specific to many of us who lived through its explosion onto the scene, but which has quickly taken on an iconic status, and will probably endure for decades. Maybe centuries. Is it the best song about New York? I don’t think so. But it’s become the most iconic. In part because it’s so clearly a response to the classics that came before. If Jay sees further, it’s because he stands on the shoulders of giants. And yet…he does see further. His New York is glittering bright – the city of the future – but it’s also the grim, dark place that birthed hip-hop. It’s still the fast-paced city of Madison Avenue. It’s still the city of immigrants, of towering hopes and broken dreams. The city against which everything else is measured.
p.s. – Biggie, Patti Smith, Ryan Adams, The Beastie Boys, Billy Joel, Run DMC, Leonard Cohen, Interpol, Joni Mitchell, Gil-Scott Heron, Ben E. King, Grandmaster Flash, The Pogues.
I don’t know what they’re putting in the water in Philadelphia, but it seems to be the heart and soul of modern American rock and roll. This record from Restorations is another strong entrant into the field. It evokes the punk side of Springsteen, with rich guitar riffs dancing and weaving between machinegun bursts of percussion. It was produced by Jon Low—who has worked with some of my favorite contemporary artists: The War on Drugs, Frightened Rabbit, and The National, to name a few. And you can absolutely hear those references.
LP5000 has the same sheen as a War on Drugs record, the same crisp percussion as a National record, and the same clean and dynamic guitar sound you’d expect from Frightened Rabbit. But it’s not just about its references. This is also very much a record about its own space and its own time. A time of great doubt, great pain, and an almost limitless sense of fear about what might come next.
These themes are expressed in specific terms. It’s emphatically not a record about how everyone is experiencing 2018, but merely a document about their own tiny sliver of the universe. But that specificity is open. It’s an invitation: tell your story, commiserate. And maybe together we can find a way to hold it all together.
Because the deep truth here is that these songs are absolutely full of pent-up rage, which is tightly coiled, never really finding any sort of release. In many ways, this makes for a frustrating listening experience. There are movements that promise catharsis and refuse to deliver. It’s agonizing. On the other hand, there is a feeling of deep pathos in the performance of these tight circles. To listen is to edge ourselves around the anger, trying to maintain a grip on your sense of self, insisting on a sort of stability in the face of a world that is completely, relentlessly careless.
Twenty years and almost a dozen albums into their prolific career, Alkaline Trio are putting out some of their best work in a very long time, maybe ever.
On Is This Thing Cursed?, the trio bring all the propulsive energy of their early work, without ever sounding like a mere throwback. The melodies are great, the songwriting is top notch, and while it doesn’t have quite the same degree of untrammeled audacity as the songs they were writing in their early 20s – how could it? – it more than makes up the difference with a healthy dose of wisdom.
More than anything else, it feels necessary in a way that nothing from this band has ever quite achieved. There’s an emotional heft here, a weightiness of spirit and subject, keenly balanced against the raucous energy of the music.
It’s a heavy album in many ways – dealing with subjects like depression and self-destruction (both personal and political) – but also a joyous one. A record which knows that music can’t release us from the pain that plagues us, but can help keep us afloat while we work on that slow process of self-healing. “I know you’re hurting,” it says. “I’m hurting too. But let’s sing together tonight anyway.”
I got a chance to see the band last winter in San Francisco. It’s always a little strange seeing an old favorite for the first time when they’re well past the prime of their career. There’s less raucous, combustive energy, and the crowd tends to be full of 30-somethings ready for a nice show that will still let them get to bed by 12:30. But with good performers, as soon as the lights go down and the drums start rattling, all that stuff goes out the window and you get to just live in the moment.
It’s always fraught to describe a record as ‘mature.’ Even with the best of intentions, the word conveys a certain listlessness. Artists make ‘mature’ records when the vibrant, provocative energy that used to drive them has faded away, we tend to think.
But in spite of the danger, I want to take the risk and say that Foxhole Prayers, the latest from (longtime favorite of the blog) Vanessa Peters, is a mature record. That doesn’t mean there’s no fun here, and it certainly doesn’t mean that there’s no energy. But it would be impossible to think seriously about these songs without drifting into a contemplation of mortality, morality, and all things in between. And it’s a record that demands some serious thinking.
Peters has always had a wonderful capacity to communicate oceans of meaning with a single deft phrase. Her songs are filled with people who lead rich lives who are merely drifting past for the moment, like rafters on the old Mississippi who wave from a distance as the river carries them slowly over the horizon.
All that ability is still in evidence here. And yet, this record feels different. These songs do not glide by; they pull up to the shore, set up shop, and urge you to come forward. Hear the news. Because these are songs with purpose, which seek to illuminate, perhaps even persuade. They are deft, able to argue without ever coming across as didactic, and introspective. They are also urgent, defined by a sense of dread at the conditions of our world, but also infused with a deep and generous hope. More than anything, it’s a record that challenges us to stop being careless: to take ourselves and our country seriously. To feel compassion, even when the pain threatens to drive us mad. To do something, no matter how small, to make the world a kinder place.
All of which is to say: this is a powerfully topical record, one very much centered in 2018. But it’s also a timeless record. Because time is a great wheel and there’s nothing truly new under the sun. So if we want to understand why there is so much pain, we have to look inside, to seek out those parts of ourselves that we keep hidden for fear of what they might reveal. The dark parts, where fear dominates and suspicion reigns. But also the parts that remain hidden because we’ve never truly needed. Reservoirs of hope, compassion, faith, and resolve. We run from all of these pieces, both the dark and the light, because life is so much simpler without them. But in the end, she says in the final track, we are all “what we can’t outrun.” For good and for bad.
The theme is touched on in many of the songs. “Foxhole Prayers” describes the universality of loss, the way that pain drives us to a sense of self understanding. And the terrible combination of hope and despair that fuses together in these moments. Meanwhile, “Fight” describes the aftermath, when you gather together your resolve, get up off the floor, and take that next determined step. “Just One of Them” describes the feeling of discovering yourself to be a fraud—a false prophet to values that you aren’t truly willing to defend. It asks us to consider: what would you fight for, against all odds? What would you sacrifice? It’s a terrible question, and an important one.
This is a dark record, but it’s not a cynical one. Nor is it joyless. It asks big, important questions, but does so with an incredible generosity, and playfulness. It’s a room with a fire and a warm meal for a weary traveler on the road. An offer to listen, in a world full of people all too ready to talk. A restless spirit pacing long into the night. And a challenge to all of us to remember: those who are careless with the hearts of others will often find great success, but they will rarely find satisfaction.
Nicki Minaj is the Queen, with all the good and bad that implies. In this case, it means an album that could have used some heavy editing, but which still contains enough pieces of genius to deserve serious attention. Because at the end of the day, Minaj is an exciting artist precisely because she’s willing to take on so many roles, so many perspectives, so many chances.
And if the final product is a little overstuffed, it just means every listener is free to construct their own 11 track ‘just the good bits’ version of Queen. For me, that means shying away from a lot of the processed pop stuff, which mostly falls pretty flat to my ears. But my condensed Queen is filled with gems, starting with the opener Ganja Burn – the chillest diss track I’ve heard in a long time – and the gloriously meta Barbie Dreams. The middle is held up by the beautiful Bed, a collaboration with Ariana Grande, the strutting Chun-Li and the compact aggression of Good Form. And it’s all brought together at the end by the blissed out breakup anthem of Nip Tuck and the I’ll-see-my-way-out torch song Come See About Me.
I’ve been a big fan of Brandi Carlile for a long time. In fact, one of the very first posts on this very blog, all the way back in the spring of 2006, was an enthusiastic endorsement of her debut album. But over all these years, I’m not sure she’s written another song as beautiful as this one. Certainly none as likely to bring a tear to your eye. It’s a love letter to her daughter, one framed by a bracingly honest assessment of what it actually means to become a parent. And this is critical. By dwelling on the difficulties–the terror of knowing that you are now utterly responsible for someone else, the need to organize your life around someone else’s whims, the jealousy of seeing your friends still out enjoying all their free time–Carlile brings home just how powerful the experience really is.
It’s not simply that all those things are worth sacrificing for the sake of her daughter. It’s that having Evangeline in her life helps her to understand that every path comes with loss, that every choice carries the weight of all the roads not taken. But this choice has brought something precious into the world, whose simple presence is able to transform those feelings of loss into something very different. To give them purpose.
The result is a song that’s almost framed as an internal argument–a reminder that it’s okay to sometimes feel the weight as a burden, so long as you also keep in mind the new possibilities that it creates. As she sings:
And they’ve still got their morning paper and their coffee and their time And they still enjoy their evenings with the skeptics and the wine Oh, but all the wonders I have seen, I will see a second time From inside of the ages through your eyes
And every time I hear it, my heart fills up so much that it feels ready to burst.
A little bit dream pop, a little bit shoegaze, and a little bit ambient. It’s a time-tested combination, and while Dustings doesn’t add anything particularly new to the equation, that doesn’t make this album any less affecting.
I haven’t been able to find out much about this band, which in many ways feels appropriate. This is not a record that reaches out and shakes you by the shoulders demanding your attention. It’s one that sneaks up quietly, nudging its way toward the edge of your consciousness. Pleasant, but elusive. Friendly, but mysterious.
On the whole, it’s an album of small gestures and whispered missives. And while it does let loose more than a few times, the explosion always feels tightly contained–like a tornado that whips through town and destroys one building while leaving the ones on either side completely untouched.
And I see from this interview, that Daniel Fritz, the artist behind Dustings lists Sadstyle by S as one of their all-time favorite albums, so it makes a lot of sense why I enjoy this record so much.
Charles Olney, Associate Professor of Constitutional Law and Judicial Politics at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley (academic website). This is a blog about music, politics, and the law. I also write about women’s soccer at Backline Soccer and Stars and Stripes FC.
