Tag: Paul McCartney

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 2/16/25

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: We’ve got Paul McCartney and a song about a dog on the docket, but nowhere is “Martha My Dear” involved. Sorry, gang.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 2/16/25

“Jimmy Fallon Big!” – Japanese Breakfast

Michelle Zauner jokingly referenced this song when posting about her recent appearance on the Tonight Show to promote “Orlando in Love,” the first (excellent) single from her forthcoming album For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women). But before she got Jimmy Fallon Big, someone else tried to—Deven Craige, the bass player for her former band, Little Big League; Zauner wrote the song about how he split the band after his other band was, in his words, about to go “Jimmy Fallon big,” and decided to put his energy into that instead of Little Big League. The move left Zauner crushed: she told NPR in 2017 that “it felt like losing a brother, and there was this shame, feeling like I was never going to get there myself.” There’s truly something more than bittersweet about it—the passion she poured into every bit of the vocals shows a deep devotion to her former bandmate, and yet the resentment sloughs off of the chorus in relenting waves: “Why walk/When you can show up on time?” I mean, they’re on good terms now, but BURN.

I promise this segue will become relevant, but I recently listened to the first episode of Björk’s excellent Sonic Symbolism podcast, where she frequently refers to the history of music as a great tree with thousands of interspersed branches that connect and diverge from one another. Listening to “Jimmy Fallon Big!” is one of those 21st century moments where I can so clearly see the tree rings, the ancestry and lineage where an evolutionary branch broke off. Michelle Zauner has been crafting intricate, emotional dream pop for quite some time now (see: “Sit,” which I talked about back in July), but this track has the Cocteau Twins written all over it. It’s not just the warm, dreamlike drone of the instrumentals, but the way that said instrumentals obscure the meaning of the chorus almost completely. It makes the opening line of “We aren’t bound by law/We aren’t bound by anything at all” make all the more sense artistically. On the first few listens, I almost wondered if it was born from the same songwriting method that Fraser used to craft her nonsense miracles. Where they break off—besides having a clearer anchor tying the music down to earth, is how Zauner grounds the emotion; not many people can get to the level of Fraser, and I don’t think Zauner is one of them, but she’s got the clear talent of crafting the most elaborate musical smoke screen to cloak her misgivings.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Radio Silence – Alice Oseman – painful secrets, fractured friendships, and a mysterious podcast.

“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” – Paul & Linda McCartney

credit to @DannyVegito on twitter

Memes aside, shoutout to Paul McCartney and his joyous whimsy. I’m fully aware that I use the phrase “joyous whimsy” with the same frequency of congresspeople emailing you saying that you have a MIDNIGHT DONATION DEADLINE and it’s URGENT, and I don’t want to repeat myself, but I think the world needs more of it. And who’s got it? PAUL!

BUTTAH PIE!

BUTTAH PIE?

THE BUTTAH WOULDN’T MELT, SO I PUT IT IN THE PIE, ALRIGHT?

As far as Beatles lore goes, I feel like Ringo gets more of the credit for whimsy, and for good reason—the dude saw the other three tearing at each other’s necks and decided to write a song about an octopus. But as obnoxious as Paul got during a lot of those sessions, over the course of his career, he had a gentleness to his artistic soul too, and it showed in his songwriting.

“Admiral Halsey notified me/He had to have a berth or he couldn’t get to sea/I had another look and I had a cup of tea and butter pie?” C’mon. That sounds like something straight out of some 1940’s British children’s book with yellowing pages and inked illustrations. But uptight is the opposite of how McCartney and McCartney—Linda deserves the brunt of the credit for the sheer jubilation she brings to the “Hands across the water, Heads across the sky” refrain—delivers this song. Plus, the Admiral Halsey in question was loosely based off of an American admiral from World War II, and McCartney painted him as a stiff authoritarian who is “symbolic of authority and therefore not to be taken too seriously,” so it’s making him uptight just so you can stick your tongue in his face. It’s just so infectiously jolly. There’s an orange-hued, sunlit laughter to the whole bit. It’s got the warmth of reuniting with an old friend, or being back in some rose-tinted decade and sweeping your lover off their feet on the dance floor, particularly the “Admiral Halsey” section. It’s hard to think of a song so wonderfully carefree, in every sense of the word. Hands across the water, heads across the sky indeed.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Tidesong – Wendy Xu – hands across the water, as well as a hearty, healthy dose of childlike wonder.

“Falling to Pieces” – Faith No More

Hoooooowhee. Going straight from Paul & Linda McCartney frolicking through a field to Faith No More…I don’t think whiplash even begins to describe that. Well. Welcome to my shuffle.

Faith No More seem to have been on the fringes, even where hard rock is concerned, and it’s easy to see why even the freakier people weren’t as willing to embrace them—Mike Patton’s voice and their mishmash of rock and early hip-hop influences stand out immediately. As does the goofy video. The lyrics and subject matter are standard fare for any kind of alternative music of the time (“Indecision clouds my vision/No one listens/Because I’m somewhere in between/My love and my agony”), but everything else is just off the walls. Directed by Ralph Ziman, the video is the last thing you’d expect to match the song’s aesthetic—neon colors aplenty, Mike Patton in a bowler hat and some kind of clown suit for half the video, and enough fish that I imagine the storyboarding process went something like this. Patton’s distinct vocals rangefrom a nasally standard to a hint of the heights he’d later reach on “Midlife Crisis,” and they stand behind a bassline that holds all of the instrument’s resentment for being in the background for decades. Even in a subgenre that’s already weird, this is real weird, unpredictable, unabashed weirdness. Somebody needs to bring back green-screen goldfish back into hard rock.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Shadow Speaker – Nnedi Okorafor – the lyrics are broad enough that I couldn’t narrow it down to a specific theme, so I added the mood—and came to this book, a bold, chaotic punch to the face.

“Sylvia” – Julien Baker & TORRES

On April 18th, I’ll have to show where my allegiance lies…Thee Black Boltz and Send A Prayer My Way come out on the same day. Well, okay. I’ve already decided. My allegiance is to Tunde Adebimpe, to the republic! But I’ll stagger my listening. The former has a priority over Julien Baker & TORRES, but I’ll give both a listen.

“Sylvia” is the second single Send A Prayer My Way, and it proves a valuable point: we need more good, wholesome songs about our pets. Why not write love songs for the little creatures that enrich our lives? I mentioned “Martha My Dear” earlier, but we need more songs about our furry (and not furry) friends, if you ask me. (See also: Jim Noir’s “My Little Cat”) TORRES takes the lead on this track, which recounts their experience with a foster dog and how a puppy can touch your heart in the way that only a puppy can: “anyone who has ever had the honor of sharing a home with a beloved pet knows that a pet is family—they’re the best friends you could ever have.”

They recalled an experience of taking Sylvia on the road and feeling as though they were truly meant to be. There’s something special about holding a puppy when you’ve just brought them home, and not just in the warm-and-fuzzy way. There’s an immediacy you feel, the knowledge that you’ve got a little heartbeat next to yours, a furry, helpless body that you’re suddenly in charge of. It really is a new member of the family, and one that you have the responsibility to protect. Puppies are exhausting—the time my boy Ringo slipped out of his collar, ran down the street, and evaded me for a solid five minutes before showing up on my porch with a shit-eating grin comes to mind. But “Sylvia” taps into that feeling of knowing you have more than a companion: “Haunted by all the goodnights that I’ve missed/Every time your cheek goes unkissed/A day for me is a week for you/And my life’s already halfway through/Tomorrow, today’s worries might turn out to be regrets…” It taps in to being conscious of your pet as something you can keep around for amusement, but a deeply ingrained part of your life, while retaining the simultaneous fear and joy of giving them all the love you can in their short lives.

And because we NEED a picture of sweet Sylvia…

BABYYYYYYYYYY

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Book of Lost Things – John Connolly – “Sylvia” had me thinking of fictional dogs—as far as books go, my first thought was of Boswell, David’s loyal dachshund that accompanies him on his adventures.

“Love Spreads” – The Stone Roses

Really and truly Severance-pilled rn…CAN WE TALK ABOUT SEVERANCE? The deepening of existing friendships and yet also the storylines of corporations driving a wedge in their workers to discourage them from solidarity? Unity…unions, perhaps? HELLY WOULDN’T BE CRUEL? SHAMBOLIC RUE? THE WORST MELON PARTY YET? A CHILD? PAPERCLIPS? THE TENDENCY OF CORPORATIONS TO SHOW PROGRESS AS MARGINALIZED PEOPLE SIMPLY SWALLOWED INTO THEIR SYSTEM? GOATS? THE—

Oh, wait, there’s a song here? ALL THE BETTER TO PUT INTO SEVERANCE—

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Song of Salvation – Alechia Dow – “Let me put you in the picture/Let me show you what I mean/The messiah is my sister/Ain’t no king, man, she’s my queen…”

Since this posts consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 12/24/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, and a very merry Christmas Eve to all those celebrating!

As far as my book reviews go…yeah, well, I’ve been a bit of a Scrooge, but you can’t blame me. The finals reading slump comes for us all. Some days you just have to air out the dirty laundry. But despite the dreary color palette that ended up happening this week, I hope there’s enough jolliness here to assure you that yes, my festive cheer remains steadfast, and so does my love of ’70s guitars.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 12/24/23

“No Matter What” – Badfinger

1970 was probably the worst year for trying to beat the “copying the Beatles” allegations, and the fact that these guys named themselves after an early title for “With A Little Help from My Friends” (originally titled “Bad Finger Boogie”…yeah, the name change was a good idea, John) doesn’t help their case. But I feel like being signed to Apple Records and having both Paul McCartney and George Harrison separately produce two of their other hits gets them a Get Out of Jail Free card. This once.

That aside, it also doesn’t help their case that Pete Ham sounds like the slightly growly middle ground between Paul McCartney and John Lennon, and the same nearly goes for the backing vocals, which try to hit somewhere between Lennon and Harrison. But it’s not every day that you can hit it that close to such legends, and it’s commendable no matter how (oops) you look at it. I’ve really underhyped all of this, but…there’s seriously something about this song. I swear that “No Matter What” is laced with something…oh, maybe it’s the guitars. My god, it’s barely 1970, and the ’70s guitars already sound so crisp…so full…do not get me started. But even if the guitars weren’t so sharp and full of dance-inducing warmth, there’s something so undeniably pure about this song. It’s no lyrical groundbreaker or generational anthem, but there’s a contagious joy to it—a good pop song does that. ”No Matter What” is the perfect end-credits song—the guitars start chugging in at the final shot of the movie, and everything goes black the minute that Pete Ham begins to sing. Come on, now. You can’t not go along with the clapping at 2:18. Beauty in simplicity. These guys get a pass for having either the best or the worst band name of all time. I genuinely can’t decide.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

1971 – Never a Dull Moment: The Year Rock Exploded – I…dammit. I totally thought No Dice came out in 1971. I was two months off—November of 1970. Oops. But either way, this book is a little drily written for a book that claims to “never have a dull moment,” but it’s nonetheless a fascinating insight into the absolute goldmine of good music in 1971. (There was never a better high note than ending the year with the release of Hunky Dory.)

“Harness Your Hopes” – Pavement

Apparently I have another “I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams” situation on my hands here, since this blew up on TikTok sometime back in 2020 (after Spotify’s autoplay seems to have dug it up out of nowhere), and I didn’t find out until now. Maybe that was the period when the thumbnail for the music video kept popping up on YouTube and I ignored it until it went away? Little did I know what I was in for…

Also like “I Just Threw Out the Love of My Dreams,” I can only describe “Harness Your Hopes” as pure, bottled joy. As soon as the sighing, psychedelic-tinged intro gives way to some truly squeaky-clean guitars, I felt a rush of sheer happiness course through me. Stephen Malkmus seriously pumped this song with nothing but whimsical joy…and yet it was a B-Side? Not only that, but a B-Side that faded into more obscurity than the indie obscurity they were (probably) going for, so much so that Malkmus didn’t even recognize it when he heard it playing in a bakery? Nuts. Seriously. Not that I have any beef with the guy, but when you produce something as curiously delightful as this, you don’t let it slip through your fingers. It has that freeform, Marc Bolan kind of nonsensical lyricism written all over it, with more than a little pretentious affectation (“Leisure, a leisure suit is nothing/It’s nothing to be proud of/In this late century”), but somehow, it feels less pretentious when most of the lyrics don’t make a ton of sense as a whole. (Or maybe there’s some super deep hidden meaning that only Stephen Malkmus and co. can decipher, and it’s nothing to us normies…who knows) And like Bolan, it’s the kind of wordplay that occasionally leads to something unexpectedly romantic—”And I’m asking you to hold me/Just like the morning paper/Pinched between your pointer, your index, and your thumb.”

And paired with Malkmus’ strained, cracking voice on one end and the guitars (so clean that they’re practically still kicking up bubbles) on the other, it’s a capsule of warmth, practically radiant. Bottled joy, truly.

Speaking of Stephen Malkmus’ voice…

skip to 2:11

Please tell me I wasn’t the only one in theaters who laughed way too hard at this (besides my mom). Please.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

This Is How You Lose the Time War – Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone – for the most part, this novel lends itself more to something more cosmically sweeping and Romantic in both senses of the word (probably Spiritualized?), but lines like “and I’m asking you to hold me/Just like the morning paper/Pinched between your pointer, your index, and your thumb” might as well be straight out of the letters between Red and Blue.

“Hey Joe” (cover) – Charlotte Gainsbourg

hnnnnnnnnnnngh me when Noah Hawley puts a song in Fargo that connects thematically in a deeply creative way hnnnnnnngh

good god I love this season of Fargo. no complaints, this show has made me feel alive again

where were Roy and Gator Tillman on January 6th

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Conspiracy of Tall Men – Noah Hawley – maybe I’m cheating since I got this song from Noah Hawley. It’s fiiiiiiine. To be fair, this is his debut novel and predates the first season of Fargo by a full 16 years (it’s kind of a mess, but lovably so…mostly), but it’s got all the cross-country conspiracies and paranoia you could ever want.

“Road to Joy” (Bright-Side Mix) – Peter Gabriel

I meant to review this all the way back in June or July, when this single was first released…I forget what about it made it slip out of the roster, but I knew that it had to come back eventually. Now that all of I/O is out…it’s a great album, but I can’t help but be a little disappointed at how it was constructed. I thought that the deal was that the final organization of the songs was going to be a surprise, and that they’d be reshuffled from the order they were released in with each full moon this year, but the order just ended up being the same order they were released in. (I stand by my belief that “Playing for Time” would have been the perfect closing track.) I have similarly mixed feelings about the Bright/Dark-Side Mixes—I haven’t listened to the In-Side mix yet, but I also thought that each mix of the 12 songs would be more radically different, but the differences between the mixes are often very subtle. Some of them fit more clearly than others (ex. “I/O” is clearly more fit for Bright-Side, while “The Court” lends itself more to Dark-Side), but the tweaks between mixes are sometimes barely distinguishable.

That’s not to say that I/O isn’t a great album—it’s a beautiful picture of one of the most innovative artists alive today moving into old age and still being able to produce a relentlessly creative vision of love, mortality, and the nature of connectivity. Now that I’ve seen it live, the experience is all the more enriched, what with the stunning visuals that went along with it, as well as Peter Gabriel toeing the line between a theatrical showman (how’s reenacting the creation of life itself for a show opener?) and the wise, humble figure we’ve known him to be over the years. Songs like this one really showcased both the energy and creativity that clearly haven’t waned with age. “Road to Joy” is a highlight, without a doubt; for me, this one lends itself more to the Bright-Side mix, with the funky, “Fame”-esque guitar riffs and energetic burst of the chorus, like Gonzo firing off cannons without warning. But if the pink-shaded joy doesn’t immediately jump out at you, you know what should? The fact that this song is proof of yet another deeply creative project that Peter Gabriel’s been cooking up since the production of OVO—so, give or take, around 23 years. The man just can’t be stopped. But according to Gabriel, “Road to Joy” is part of a story about the human mind, and this song chronicles a character being woken up after experiencing locked-in syndrome; the triumphant declaration of “You were sure I was gone” has the defiant flair of someone beating the odds, and it’s impossible not to feel the joy from that.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Under the Earth, Over the Sky – Emily McCosh – nothing like adopting a human son to awaken your frosty, dormant heart and put you on…the road to joy, maybe? Certainly some “love call[ing] through the walls.”

“Grace” – IDLES

“Grace” has made my expectations for TANGK skyrocket, but whether or not the album turns out to be as adventurous as I feel like it’s going to be, I think I’m almost certainly going to enjoy it. It’s a change in form, even if a fleeting one.

I thought I knew what Joe Talbot sounded like when he wasn’t singing; “A Hymn” certainly gives us a hint, but there’s still the restrained growl to it that roars to life when he’s normally screaming on every other song. But “Grace” showcases his voice at its most vulnerable. Somehow, before the chorus kicked in, I almost mistook it for Mike Hadreas from Perfume Genius. I was scrambling to find the featured list for this, because…there was no way that this is the same guy who screamed at us all to never fight a man with a perm all those years ago. And I love this change in form. IDLES always mean bah-bah-business (in case you cannot tell from their tone) with their message, but this stripped-down feel that “Grace” shifts into suits their ethos just as well as their harder songs—Talbot described the song as “a call to be held,” and the quiet vulnerability really does feel like a gentle embrace. And it’s here that you can see what their change in producer has done to the sound—TANGK was co-produced by none other than Nigel Goodrich (of Radiohead fame!!), and the staccato of the drum machine and the wash of cloudy haze peeking out from under the curtain shines in the quiet places on this track. Talbot’s voice lowers into wavering smoothness, as though he’s singing from a place where no one can hear him, save for when he declares the song’s rallying cry: “No God/No king/I said, love is the fing.”

Man…I’m so excited for this album. IDLES have said repeatedly that their mission was to make an album that was purely about love and warmth—as Talbot said, “I needed love. So I made it. I gave love out to the world and it feels like magic. This is our album of gratitude and power. All love songs. All is love.” And if that isn’t exactly what we need…not to be all hippy-dippy about it, but as much as I indulge in my sad bastard music, I’m gonna go out there and say that IDLES is exactly what we need right now. I hate it that I have to say “not to be all hippy-dippy” when I’m talking about love and warmth and being kind and loving life…you’ve heard me go off about grimdark and frankly, how astoundingly dumb it is that we often think that sadder = deeper and that being happy or consuming happy media equates to stupidity somehow, but I’ll say it again. There’s nothing stupid or naïve about wanting love, giving love, and having love in your heart. IDLES get it. Love is the fing.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1) – Becky Chambers – Love. Love is the fing, man.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Uncategorized

Sunday Songs: 6/25/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

This week’s batch originally included a cover of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” but for several obvious reasons, I omitted it since I feel like that would be the absolute worst possible timing. Whoops.

quick trigger warning: there are mentions of suicide in part of this post, so if you don’t want to read that section, skip over “Evening Star Supercharger.”

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/25/23

“The Sensual World” – Kate Bush

Here I was thinking that “Come Talk to Me” and my 8th grade graduation were the only times that pipes of some kind (bagpipes and uilleann pipes, in this case) would ever make me feel anything…

This time, I wouldn’t say that said feeling evoked by “The Sensual World” isn’t the same kind of visceral, scoop-my-heart-right-out-of-my-ribcage of said Peter Gabriel song; this time, it’s more of a “how could she make that sound so incredibly cool” feeling. Normally, I wouldn’t be on board with these kind of fiddling, dressing up in medieval outfits kind of tunes, but I have to keep reminding myself: if anybody can do it, of course it’s Kate Bush. Of course. My favorite songs of hers make me feel like growing my shaved head all the way back out and running through the woods in a white dress (see: “Burning Bridge”), so I’m glad that she and Peter Richardson channeled that for the music video. And even without knowing much of anything about James Joyce’s Ulysses, I can’t think of a better way to adapt a monologue from a classic like that—this version is a mishmash of Molly Bloom’s monologue and Bush’s own lyrics, since Joyce’s estate didn’t grant her the rights to make the song all Joyce. (She later re-released it as “Flower of the Mountain” as a sung version of Molly Bloom’s monologue, once she was granted the rights.) I would’ve passed it off as Kate Bush and nothing but—the silky, airy cohesion throughout, the rush of joy once the fiddle and uilleann pipes kick in at the start of the chorus…everything. The chorus remained faintly in the background of my childhood memories, the title and the rest of the song lost up until a few years back, just like my favorite song was up until around two years ago. And while it’s hard to compete with my favorite song of all time at the moment, I’ve enjoyed every minute that I’ve spent with this unearthed song.

“6’1” – Liz Phair

Complete coincidence—I had no idea that Exile in Guyville just turned 30 a few days ago! Perfect occasion to talk about this song, I suppose.

Most of my Liz Phair exposure prior to a few weeks ago came from two moments: seeing this album cover in passing on our iTunes library while my brother and I were trying to make a playlist for our dad ages ago, and two Whip-Smart tracks (“Supernova” and “Whip-Smart”) that defined a specific chunk of 8th grade. Listening to either of them instantly transports me back to a bus ride in the early hours of the morning, driving out to the middle of nowhere with my school to watch the total solar eclipse. And for years, I thought that that the Exile in Guyville cover was an illustration, and that the hood over her head was her actual hair. But the other day, my mom mentioned in passing, while we were listening to Palehound, how much it sounded like Liz Phair. I believed her, having a vague memory of said two songs.

And then my mom put on the first four tracks of Exile. Holy crap, dude.

I haven’t even gotten halfway through this album, but I haven’t fallen in love with an album this quickly in ages. This track is the one that keeps coming back to me—the minute the guitars kicked in, I was reeled all the way in. And even without the context of the last half of the album, this song seems to encapsulate its thesis perfectly—daring to have the courage to break into a male-dominated indie scene and make an irreplaceable mark on it. There’s the sly turning of the Rolling Stones’ lyrics back in their faces. And of course, there’s the references to height—”and I kept standing 6’1″/instead of 5’2″” isn’t just Phair keeping her head above the water after a nasty breakup, but a joking reference to her own height—she calls this song “the bravado that [she] manifest[s]” that seemed to confuse everybody once they saw how short she is. And…yeah, if I had a nickel for every person who’s said “I thought you’d be taller” to me, I could probably buy Amazon from Jeff Bezos. Liz Phair still has an inch on me, but…yep. The short king (queen?) experience.

So, to my mom, who talked about how cool it was that we were listening to the same knds of music at the same ages: I think it’s cool too. This one’s gonna be in heavy rotation once I listen to the whole thing. I love listening to music with you too.

“I Will” – The Beatles

Happy week-belated birthday to Sir Paul McCartney! Another song that ended up on here by coincidence, but I won’t argue against doing something for the occasion.

The White Album has something for everybody. Over the course of both sides, you have classic epics of songs (“While My Guitar Gently Weeps”), nursery rhyme-style political commentary (“Piggies”), eight and a half minutes of experimental discomfort (“Revolution 9”), and everything else under the sun (here comes the). It’s part of why this album is my favorite of the Beatles’ discography—there’s no shortage of songs that you can come back to, and each time, it feels like reuniting with an old friend. Yes, even “Wild Honey Pie.” I will defend that song with my dying breath. It’s hilarious.

But it’s some of Paul McCartney’s quieter, acoustic moments that have stayed with me the most whenever I revisit parts of this album. It has the pleasant simplicity of their earliest, poppiest songs, but with McCartney’s added experience, there’s a weight to it that would’ve been difficult to achieve in their very early youth. I just now realized that the bass part is just his gentle singing—there are so many moments of quiet brilliance on this album. I added this to my playlist when I went up to Washington, and every listen felt like a warm hug—and every subsequent listen still does. 1:45 of nothing but comfort. Paul McCartney just seems to have that effect.

“Describe” – Perfume Genius

I saw the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the beginning of the month, and it was EXACTLY as phenomenal and soul-healing as I’d expected it to be. Karen O brought an infectiously joyous energy to every minute of the set, complete with her glittery, Elvis-but-cooler outfits and confetti cannons aplenty. It genuinely warmed my heart to see the giant smile on Brian Chase’s face every time the camera panned over to the drum kit—the whole band just felt so, so happy, and that made the show all the better. Even with how damp that night generally was, I enjoyed every second.

Of course, you can’t really live up to that as an opening act, but I enjoyed parts of Perfume Genius’ opening set, without question, even only knowing one song of his beforehand (“Queen,” which…apparently he does a whole strip tease to that one normally? I guess the weather only permitted him to make generally strip tease-like motions while dragging an itchy-looking gray sheet around…the spirit is willing, but the flesh is a bit too chilly?). Every song wasn’t a winner for me, but “Describe” certainly was. Both on streaming and live, Mike Hadreas (a.k.a. “Mike on the Mic,” according to Karen O.) seems content to let his voice take a more understated backseat, which suits the propulsive guitars that wall this track in. The combination of these driving, battering rams of guitars and Hadreas’ whispery voice form a unique sound—a song that simultaneously feels sharp and prickly like porcupine spines, but smoother than a silk sheet. Hadreas toes that line of juxtaposition exceedingly well on this song—the two contrasting sounds blend only at the edges, making for a song that never feels like it’s teetering one way or the other—it’s content to plant one leg on either side of the fence and keep them there. My only real complaint is the minute-odd ending of muttering, synth-y silence, but it’s short enough to skip, and not long enough to be a major qualm. It’s probably a transition between songs on Set My Heart On Fire Immediately, but I wouldn’t know.

“Evening Star Supercharger” – Sparklehorse

I always struggle with posthumous album releases. At their worst, they’re blatant ways to capitalize off of an artist’s death and keep the nostalgia machine running, even if it’s just a collection of demos that were never meant to see the light of day. Even in David Bowie’s case—he’s my favorite singer, if I haven’t gone off about him for years on this blog, but even then, officially releasing his shelved 2001 album Toy felt weird—and it wasn’t his best work, either. I’m comforted by the fact that Bowie did actually want that album to see the light of day and seemed to be heartbroken by the fact that it got shelved, but I’m still dubious on whether or not that was Warner Music Group’s rationale for releasing it. I can say about the same for Prince’s Originals, even though I haven’t listened to it all the way through—especially with him and Bowie’s death being so close together, there’s definitely a 2016 pop-icon grief nostalgia machine running.

But Mark Linkous wasn’t necessarily a Bowie or a Prince. He wasn’t a worldwide superstar who changed the course of rock music—I can’t even think of anybody outside of my immediate family who might know about Sparklehorse. He’s gained significant renown in the indie community, but this feels different—given his history, it doesn’t seem like a cash grab at all. It seems like a genuine endeavor by Linkous’ siblings to revive some of his unreleased catalogue, not for reasons of greed or nostalgia. Toy felt somewhat off-putting; Bird Machine feels genuinely touching.

And the result of “Evening Star Supercharger” is purely Sparklehorse, without the touch of greed but still polished enough to sound smoother than a demo. It doesn’t feel far off from what I’ve heard off of Dreamt For Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain—the music has a polish of tinny glitter like a string of Christmas lights, but retains the unmistakable melancholy that ran through all of Linkous’ music. There’s an undeniable wish for stability and peace without the drugs and self-medication, but he still describes being wrenched through “the grinding metal gears/from a carnival of tears.” Knowing that he never achieved that kind of stability, leading him to take his own life in 2010, makes this unreleased material all the more heartbreaking; through the Christmas lights, it’s undeniably the sound of a damaged man. If anything, I hope Bird Machine allows us to celebrate the undeniably creative spirit that he had.

We miss you every day, Mark.

Suicide and Crisis Lifeline – 988

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Music, Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 3/26/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

It’s finally spring. Sprouts are crawling out of the crumbly earth, the fog is lifting, and I have a depressingly gray color scheme to show for it. My overexcitement for getting Peter Gabriel tickets (HUUUAUAAAAAAAAAAAAGGHGHGH BIG THANK YOU TO MY PARENTS) trumps any hope of a springtime aesthetic for this post.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 3/26/23

“Darkness” – Peter Gabriel

Picture this. It’s early in the morning. You have a 9 AM class you have to get ready for. You’ve decided to listen to Up, so you put it on while you start putting your makeup on. Track 1. You turn the volume up, because nothing much seems to be happening. 0:29 hits. All hell breaks loose.

And yet, even though I do my SPD jumpscare dance every time it rolls around, I find myself listening to this song like an adrenaline junkie. Peter Gabriel knows how to open an album—lulling you into near-silence, then hitting you with a concentrated, almost industrial opening that probably keeps Trent Reznor up at night wondering how he could top it. More than that, “Darkness” is another song I’ve added to my internal list of reasons why Gabriel is such a uniquely talented musician—he makes creating a musical atmosphere that mirrors the lyrical story look so easy. As he speaks of being consumed by fear, the instrumentals crash in, enveloping all else as his voice grinds to a gravel-edged plea for solace. It was enough to give me a heart attack, and, if I’m going by the YouTube comments, enough to give people nightmares. Gabriel whispers of fearing “swimming in the sea/dark shapes moving under me/every fear I swallow makes me small,” and in the edges of the near-silence, a strained moan sounds, like a distant whale call or the grinding of a boat. The imagery is startling in its clarity—if I had the patience, I’d jump at the chance to make some kind of stop-motion or claymation music video. Unlike other artists, Gabriel’s instrumentally darker, more abrasive side doesn’t surprise me—after the first listen, all I could think of is that it was the next natural evolution of “Intruder.”

But over two decades after the release of “Intruder,” (which, unlike this song, was enough to keep me up at night—on the first night alone in my dorm, no less…good times) Gabriel has a deeply nuanced understanding of fear. Even as these fears swallow him like the whale in Pinnochio, he finds a way through the tangled woods, knowing that fear will pass—”I have my fears/but they do not have me.” Well. I needed to hear that. Sometimes it’s hard to hear these things when we’re swallowed up so easily—which I can relate to a little too well, with my experience with general fear over various things, as well as the truckload of anxiety that came along with making the move to college—but as the song ebbs and flows from monstrous crescendos to something more bare and gentle, so too do our fears. It’s all too easy for me to think that there’s no light at the end of the tunnel when I get in a place like this, but fear, like everything else, is impermanent. And when we look back, like Gabriel, we can “cry until [we] laugh.” Maybe that’s why I find myself seeking out this song so much—I love when I can give myself a musical mantra. It has no control over me.

“Nobody’s Fool” – Shakey Graves

I’ve been meaning to listen to Shakey Graves and the Horse he Rode In On solely because of how much I love that name, but I’ve got more motivation (not that I didn’t have any—the eternal album bucket list waits for no man) after hearing this one in my brother’s girlfriend’s car. Shakey Graves can make anything seem natural, be it the more experimental wanderings of Can’t Wake Up to the classic folkiness of this song. And like a classic folk song, there’s something inherently haunting about it—even without the lines about drinking and deep-seated regret, there’s an off-kilter waver to “Nobody’s Fool,” a shadow creature that’s emerged from under the bed, hanging over Alejandro Rose-Garcia’s shoulder. If that’s the case, he’s probably given said creature a banjo or something since this song, but here, it lingers. “Nobody’s Fool” is a song so atmospheric that it feels like there’s a tangible coat of dust over it—again, the lingering eeriness about it, but something of a good kind of dust, given this song’s bizarre pull.

“Love Goes Home to Paris in the Spring” – The Magnetic Fields

I love the irony in the fact that I just got an ad claiming that “99.9% of women will chase you when you do this” above the search results for this song. At that point, you can’t even say that YouTube has bad gaydar—it just doesn’t have any gaydar whatsoever…

There’s a solid chance that I’ll be blabbing about The Magnetic Fields for the next week or two afterwards, but I had the incredible privilege of seeing them last Friday night! At a small venue, too—no annoying drunk people, no jostling for a good view, just cellos, sad gay breakup songs, and Stephin Merritt’s three mugs of tea. And other than the pure genius of playing “The Book of Love,” getting everbody sobbing (it’s me I’m everybody), and then launching into “The Biggest Tits in History” (IT’S ABOUT THE BIRD IT’S ABOUT THE BIRD I SWEAR GUYS GUYS) directly after, this show made me remember how many pockets of Merritt and co.’s genius that I hadn’t heard of, or just forgotten about. Take this song; with the amount of wry, folky breakup songs that they’ve produced, you’d expect for there to be an eventual formula. Bitterness is a constant, but it’s delivered in such a clever, creative way that I can’t help but smile and nod along as if Stephin Merritt is singing about rainbows and kittens. He’ll never outright say “you broke my heart” or “I can’t forgive you for what you did”—like clay, he pulls that core emotion into “don’t you know love/goes home to Paris in the spring?” That’s the kind of wry, tongue-in-cheek magic that draws me to The Magnetic Fields again and again—Stephin Merritt never has any boring ways of interpreting love and heartbreak. Still, it’s been a few decades since they’ve started the band—I just hope he isn’t in for any “I Don’t Believe in the Sun” relationships anymore. Dude deserves a break.

“Playing for Time” – Peter Gabriel

Before I get into the song itself…another reason why I admire Peter Gabriel so much—skip to 1:00 in the video and you’ll see him performing an early, unfinished version of “Playing for Time” without any lyrics. The prospect of performing…well, anything is already nerve-wracking enough for me, but playing something that you haven’t even finished live? That’s a feat, but I guess you can just do that when you’re Peter Gabriel. I can barely even make myself share in-progress bits of writing with friends.

Onto the song itself…I’m not gonna survive this album. I barely survived this song. Gabriel’s ability to dig into our most base emotions has never faded away, and “Playing For Time” is no exception. It’s a meditation on aging, on time, and on the memories we share between loved ones. He envisions a planet comprised of the memories made by a couple— “any moment that we bring to life/will never fade away.” It’s a song that came tragically late for Arrival, but maybe that’s the way it should’ve been—the movie, and the message that mirrors this song, already made me ugly cry three separate times. I could barely hold it together after listening to this twice. But along with this song and this movie, it’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot; I’ve always treasured moments with my loved ones, but moving to college and being alone and independent for the first time has made me realize how precious it really is. But it’s also made me realize that these memories really do never quite go away, as long as we keep them close. Don’t let these things pass you by.

Okay, I need to stop. I think one sitting is the only time frame that I can listen to this song without curling up in a ball.

I need a minute…

“Pencils in the Wind” – Flight of the Conchords

“And people are like paper dolls/paper dolls and people, they are a similar shape…”

“Hey Jude” who? Paul McCartney wishes he could’ve come up with a line as raw as that. The voices of a generation, truly peerless.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!