Pick Out the Jams: January 2024
Not pretending I have more to talk about than music this month.
While I normally have a list of things to share with y’all, this month I found myself with a monster newsletter full of music and just a couple of other bullet points. In the interest of time and space, I’ll be sharing my music picks for the month in this newsletter, tentatively titled Pick Out the Jams. Enjoy!
LOLA YOUNG
One of the books I read this month was critical of algorithms (Filterworld), but Lola Young is one standout example of how sometimes they know me better than I know myself. She’s a delightful mix of Amy Winehouse’s voice and Lily Allen’s quippy-ness (in “Stream of Consciousness” she confesses This isn't a stream of consciousness/
This is more like a big, fat fucking "No one asked"). Every song isn’t a hit, but the ones that are—holy shit!
It’s almost hard to believe that the person who released Renaissance (unfortunate album title choice in retrospect) is the same who released the wailing “What Is It About Me?” and the snarky and vicious “Wish You Were Dead”, the latter of which has a chorus that draws a lot from Miss You by Oliver Tree. Her most recent album, My Mind Wanders and Sometimes Leaves Completely, was largely inspired by her schizoaffective disorder diagnosis, and she’s vulnerable and self-conscious in a way that feels intensely personal yet still universal.
Her music videos are also creative, and one of my favorites is shot through a Ring doorbell. Hate Ring doorbells in every use case but this!
YOU AND ME: PENNY AND THE QUARTERS
Aside from an all-time band name, this song is an earworm perfect for late winter days with a touch of sun and warmth. It comes from an early-70s unreleased demo found on tapes at a studio owner’s estate sale (and apparently features in Blue Valentine, which I haven’t seen to confirm). The group was composed of Nannie (Penny) Coulter and her three brothers, and her voice could easily hang with The Shirelles or The Ronettes.
HEART OF MY OWN: BASIA BULAT
The Canadian child of Tracy Chapman of Joanna Newsom plays the autoharp and has one of the best folk voices of the past couple of decades IMO. This acoustic session is filmed absurdly close to her face and with doors opening and closing the background, but it manages to capture the relentless forward march of this song (propelled by the stomping drumming from her brother) beautifully. Having a great voice is just one piece of the puzzle in folk, and her writing more than backs it up (There are roses that come without seeking/There are the ones that I have to sow).
To watch her absolutely kill it on the autoharp, a phrase I’ve never written before, this live performance of “Gold Rush” is a great pick.
LIVE AT THE GARAGE: JEFF BUCKLEY
I’m a massive Jeff Buckley fan and I’ve exhausted much of what is out there formally and on YouTube. However, I recently stumbled upon my white whale—Buckley’s performance at The Garage in London on September 1, 1994. This performance is infamous, as Thom Yorke and Colin Greenwood both attended and later cited it as inspirational to them. Thom partially credits Buckley with his own use of falsetto, and Greenwood remembers leaving The Garage gig and going to the studio to record a version of “Fake Plastic Trees” that later ended up on the album. While Radiohead is one of many groups inspired by Buckley (Jimmy Page named Grace his favorite album of the decade), there’s something particularly special about getting to listen to the same show they did.
The set Buckley plays at The Garage is an achievement. “Lilac Wine” is one of my favorite Buckley covers. He takes a lot of vocal influence from Nina Simone, and Lilac Wine is one of a handful of songs he covered that she also released versions of (see also the transcendent “I Shall Be Released”. His tone and articulation in the live version of “Lilac Wine” really show the Nina Simone influence.
His version of “Hallelujah” eclipses the original Leonard Cohen version, which is part of why it is unfortunate most people only know either the original or Rufus Wainwright version from the Shrek soundtrack. The sound he’s able to generate with just a telecaster and his voice is impressive, but his band more than keeps up on songs like “Lover You Should’ve Come Over”.
I’m so pleased Lover made the cut for this set because it’s one of his strongest songs lyrically. It’s a break-up song at the end of the day, but it’s also about the unique restlessness that comes with feeling like you have no options (“Too young to hold on/But much too old to break free and run”) and desperately wanting to go back to how things were (“My kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder”). The song builds on itself until it reaches a gospel-like crescendo, and then he exits. Delightful set.
FROM HERE TO UTOPIA: RAMSHACKLE GLORY
I will never leave my punk roots behind, and I’ve been dwelling in the greater Pat the Bunny Universe (PTBU) recently. This song distills down so much of his music into about seven minutes, and the bolded portion below is the type of stuff that just blows your mind when you’re 17 and pissed off at the world and the people living in it.
My friend William came to me with a message of hope
It went, “Fuck you and everything that you think you know
If you don’t step outside the things that you believe, they’re gonna kill you”
He said, “No one’s gonna stop you
From dying young and miserable and right
If you want something better, you gotta put that shit aside”
I thought about how for thousands of years
There’ve been people who told us that things can’t go on like this
From Jesus Christ to the Diggers, from Malthus to Zerzan
From Karl Marx to Huey Newton
But the shit goes on and on
And on and on and on and on and on and on and on
And on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on
I’m not saying that we can’t change the world
Cause everybody does at least a little bit of that
But I won’t shit myself
The way I’m living is a temper tantrum and I
Need something else, need something else, need something else to stay alive
And on the night when I play my last show,
I’ll be singing so loud that my heart explodes
And I’ll be singing, I’ll be singing 'We are free!'
Oh, but won’t you promise me that we won’t ever
Forget what that means?
I know it’s hard to give a shit sometimes, but promise me we’ll always try
Cause I don’t wanna hate you, and I don’t wanna hate me
And I don’t wanna have to hate everything anymore
A treatise against the shame you feel for giving a shit in the face of hopelessness and nihilism? In 2024?
That’s all! Love you! Don’t be afraid to scream back about what music you’ve been loving this month.