Amy Gerstler, Penguin poet, author of Dearest Creature
After a winter of unexpected sorrows, I’ve found myself listening this spring to songs from the past, seeking solace via the tried and true rather than the new. So here are two from the archives aimed at a spirit in need of balm and urging-on this season.
Prince’s cover of Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You”: Listening to Prince’s male and female selves wrapping themselves around each other while harmonizing in this song cleanses my mind, focuses my longing, and calls me back into the world. I love his flawless, soul scouring, silvery falsetto. “I Wanna Be Your Lover” (also Prince): this upbeat, irrepressible plea for the holiness and primacy of the unabashedly erotic restores lost animal heat and confers energy and courage.
Ella Fitzgerald, Amy Winehouse, Anna Netrebko and Aimee Mann have also pitched in.
Prince’s cover of Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You”: Listening to Prince’s male and female selves wrapping themselves around each other while harmonizing in this song cleanses my mind, focuses my longing, and calls me back into the world. I love his flawless, soul scouring, silvery falsetto. “I Wanna Be Your Lover” (also Prince): this upbeat, irrepressible plea for the holiness and primacy of the unabashedly erotic restores lost animal heat and confers energy and courage.
Ella Fitzgerald, Amy Winehouse, Anna Netrebko and Aimee Mann have also pitched in.
Katy Henriksen, music editor of The Rumpus, NPR arts producer
I was born into music. Awash with it. And I do not like to classify it. Rad music is rad music. The mix I just put together of song obsessions opens with a Scarlatti sonata performed on harpsichord and closes with the Mali duo of Amadou and Mariam performing "Ko Be Na Touma Do.” In between is everything from the bittersweet and lonesome bluegrass of Hazel Dickens with “West Virginia, My Home,” which appeared on Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People in 1981, over-the-top synth bliss from Aussie Geoffrey O’Connor, Nina Simone covering Bob Dylan”s “I Shall Be Released” with a predominance of jangly-rose piano and the New Century Chamber Orchestra performing Mahler’s Adagietto from his Symphony No. 5, a luxurious minor-keyed swelling of strings, which the composer wrote as a love letter to his soon-to-be wife Alma. There’s always a heavy-hitting indie singer-songwriter presence and this time I chose Sharon Van Etten’s “Serpent” and Damien Jurado’s “Museum of Flight" each of which completely rip out my heart. Emmylou Harris nearly always make an appearance. This time it’s Emmylou’s early ‘80s-era cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Racing in the Streets.” I’m not conscious of it, but I end up with more tunes by women than men, including the Berlin electronica of Barbara Morgenstern and all her majestic looping and ecstatic beats. Gillian Welch put out her first album in seven years and “The Way It Goes” has been something of an anthem for me this year. Certainly I have a propensity for the dramatic, but I’m not against lightness. London-based Allo Darlin’ prove masters of the sweet pop gem (okay so there is sadness here too) in “Tallulah,” Smith Westerns get me dancing with their uptempo “Dance Away,” probably the straightest indie rock song I included. Then there’s an epic doom metal piece (disclosure: I rarely listen to anything that could remotely be classified in that genre) from Little Rock band Pallbearer. A good song hits me hard, fast and straight to my core. These are all songs I’ve listened to on repeat for sometimes up to an hour at a time. I can’t get enough of the swelling bliss, the piercing aches. I put the headphones on and disappear.
Brian Lauritzen, host & producer at KUSC, Los Angeles
A couple of years ago, DJ and record producer Stefan Goldmann released an “edit” of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring that consists of 146 samples from dozens of different recordings mashed-up to form a complete performance of the work. Goldmann’s edit stays completely true to Stravinsky’s score—not a single note gets left on the cutting room floor—but every few seconds you are thrust into a different interpretation. (Not to mention the shifts in concert hall/recording studio acoustics, timbre, microphone placement, audio fidelity.) I only wish Goldmann had included a list of the recordings he used and maybe an edit sheet for the true music nerd within me.
Timo Andres, Mozart's Coronation Piano Concerto
Another musical re-imagining I love is Timo Andres’ “recomposition” of Mozart’s Coronation Piano Concerto. Mozart never wrote down the left-hand part, so the only versions we’ve had until now were completions by composers trying to imitate the style of Mozart. (It is never advisable to imitate Mozart. Just ask Dittersdorf.) Andres doesn’t touch the right-hand part or the orchestration, but squeezes his own unique stylistic voice into a thoroughly original left-hand part that somehow, almost inexplicably, fits perfectly side-by-side with Mozart’s music. A complete performance exists on Vimeo. 1st movement. 2nd movement. 3rd movement.
Orango, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Esa-Pekka Salonen
I went to this performance last fall at Walt Disney Concert Hall and, even though it was early in the LA Philharmonic season, I knew this would be one of the concerts of the year. A world premiere of a recently-discovered Shostakovich opera about a human-ape hybrid which, as Esa-Pekka Salonen told me in an interview for our broadcast of the concert, “is really wacky stuff.” As exciting as new Shostakovich is, the performance of the 4th Symphony steals the show. Searing, haunting, and at times downright terrifying, this music is not for the faint of heart. Buy this recording when it comes out June 19th. If you’re still not convinced, I’m happy to loan you my advance copy.
I don’t know if it’s because I grew up in Tennessee, but I have a soft spot for what a composer friend of mine calls “dirty South” music. Delta Rae is a new band from North Carolina that’s gearing up for a debut album release (Carry the Fire) June 19th. The two singles that have been released to date (Bottom of the River and Fire) both showcase an incredible vocal technique and a musical swagger that makes you think they’ve been knocked down, beaten up, spit on, and are coming back swinging. I guess that’s to be expected when you write one song about drowning witches and another about a gossiping ex-boyfriend. The latter, says singer Brittany Holljes, is “an anthem for ass-kicking.”
I’m also listening to the new album (Magic Hour) from the Scissor Sisters, because who doesn’t love a band named for a sex position? Edgy, poppy, and everything we’ve come to expect from a group that was “spawned by the scuzzy, gay nightlife scene of New York.”
There’s a new EP from composer Nico Muhly (Drones & Piano) that I’m crazy for. Hilary Hahn’s latest effort—a completely improvised recording with prepared piano virtuoso Hauschka (Volker Bertelmann)—is absolutely brilliant. And I love the new Sigur Rós album Valtari because, well, it's Sigur Rós and, well, I'm predictable.
I don’t know if it’s because I grew up in Tennessee, but I have a soft spot for what a composer friend of mine calls “dirty South” music. Delta Rae is a new band from North Carolina that’s gearing up for a debut album release (Carry the Fire) June 19th. The two singles that have been released to date (Bottom of the River and Fire) both showcase an incredible vocal technique and a musical swagger that makes you think they’ve been knocked down, beaten up, spit on, and are coming back swinging. I guess that’s to be expected when you write one song about drowning witches and another about a gossiping ex-boyfriend. The latter, says singer Brittany Holljes, is “an anthem for ass-kicking.”
I’m also listening to the new album (Magic Hour) from the Scissor Sisters, because who doesn’t love a band named for a sex position? Edgy, poppy, and everything we’ve come to expect from a group that was “spawned by the scuzzy, gay nightlife scene of New York.”
There’s a new EP from composer Nico Muhly (Drones & Piano) that I’m crazy for. Hilary Hahn’s latest effort—a completely improvised recording with prepared piano virtuoso Hauschka (Volker Bertelmann)—is absolutely brilliant. And I love the new Sigur Rós album Valtari because, well, it's Sigur Rós and, well, I'm predictable.
Mathias Svalina, writer, editor of Octopus Books
It’s June first, twenty-twelve & I’ve listened to A Jumper’s Handbook from Doomsday Student, according to my i-tunes counter, nine times in the last forty-eight hours. The band is gloriously multi-layered skronk-rock lunacy led by Eric Paul of the legendary noise-core-freaks Arab on Radar. While Arab on Radar erred on the side of ear-destroying noise, Doomsday Student has a solid rock rhythm base & it’s thinking of this as simple rock gone haywire that makes me love this record. I want Rock to always be about to lose it, to teeter at the edge. I want to want everything to collapse into the hobby & agony I know we deserve, like I could open my own throat with a box cutter & let the blood fill the kitchen sink. Don’t we always want the hero at the climax of the movie, when the villain is hanging from the edge of the building, cliff, helicopter rail, whatever, when the villain says “you’re not like me,” when we know that the hero will reach out at the last minute & pull the villain in alive & defeated thereby allowing order to prevail, don’t we always want the hero to watch the villain fall to his death & not even smile?
Angela Veronica Wong, poet, author of how to survive a hotel fire
I'm excited for new music this summer, but then I'm always excited for music and the summer. Portable speakers and car radios. Flip flops and ferry rides. Old favorites are releasing or have just released albums: Garbage, Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, Metric, to name only a few. This past week or so I’ve been listening to the new Walkmen album, Heaven. Some Walkmen fans may be disappointed by an album that seems more mellow and settled, less restless. But settled doesn’t have to mean throwaway or boring, and the more I listen to it, the more I appreciate the album’s deliberation, the artistry in the way Heaven moves from track to track. I yearn for the hopefulness that shines through the sadness. There are tracks I’ve already listened to on repeat—“We Can’t Be Beat,” and “Song for Leigh”—but it seems more of an accomplishment, at least nowadays, that I’ve listened to the whole album, from beginning to end, many times. I already know it’ll be a great summer album, perfect for sunglasses and pensive long drives up and down highways with the windows rolled down, perfect to pair with tank dresses and bottleneck beers on the beach as the sun is setting, but also one that will transition well through seasons. I can’t wait to listen to Heaven in the fall with the smell of apples and wood burning fireplaces while wearing a long cardigan over my short skirt and tights. I'm pretty sure it'll fill me with the same warmth and simultaneously, the desire to hold the person next to me close, because I'll need them to know just how much I want them to stay.
