Tag: Song of the Week

Will Hoge, ‘Anchors’

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The idea of an “anchor” is one of perfect duality, especially when it comes to song: An anchor keeps you from drifting away, but it also holds you back from moving along with the tide. We all drop anchors at one point or another — we might buy a house or get married, go to college, have children, just settle into the purest versions of ourselves. And sometimes, the anchors grab us, keeping us cemented to a spot we never really wanted to be in the first place, like a small town or a job that didn’t feel quite right but came along just to pay the bills. These weights are the steady pull of adulthood and can heal us just as much as they can hurt us. But inertia doesn’t always have to be about simply plummeting forward. There’s so much to be learned by just standing still. Even motionless, we can grow.

This is the lesson of Will Hoge’s Anchors, an album about recognizing the layers of beauty that come with the subtle gloss of maturity — growing old with a loved one in a romance that might not always be perfect, watching the world bloom new while our skin starts to wrinkle, and learning to enjoy the permanent frays on the fabric of who we are or thought we might be. Hoge’s always studied how small towns and flawed but flourishing relationships can be the most complex of anchors, and he tackles this again on the title track, set to a tale of two lovers running to their future while being snagged by the weight of the past. “Oh, the sins of the father drag like anchors on the kids,” he sings. Like rips on the ocean floor, our upbringing can be washed over with waves and shifted in the sand, but it’s always a part of our story. Like in “Anchors,” it’s up to us if we want to break free and drag that broken rope or learn to live more comfortably in its confines.  

Marlon Williams, ‘Vampire Again’

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In the age of Instagram, everyone looks as if they’re constantly having the time of their lives. Traveling to sandy beaches and being #blessed. Leaning casually against a wall in a small, increasingly hip city — preferably with a mural. Smearing avocado on toast, while poor butter looks on. It all seems glorious, glamorous, and free … except, beneath all that shimmer and sheen, it’s not. Not even close. We’re all so worried about being perfect, about being caught in the act in a less-than-presentable way, that having fun and being ourselves, just for the sake of it, is going the way of the wooly mammoth.

Marlon Williams wasn’t too worried about what anyone else was thinking when he ventured out one Halloween in Los Angeles in a vampire costume (to a screening of Nosferatu, nonetheless), only to find himself in a room of people who didn’t even bother to dress up. It’s an experience he turned into his newest single, “Vampire Again,” that puts on full display the unique way that the New Zealand native melds a smooth, Roy Orbison-style croon with a quirky theatricality. “Everybody’s looking like they’d wished they stayed insideand they were watching Frankenstein in their beds and on their phones,” he sings to a steady snap. “Not me, baby. Tonight, I’m really living.” “Vampire Again” is about just that: learning how to put aside appearances or self-consciousness, or what other people might think (online or off), and just start really living once again. Williams’ melodies — and his capes — are out a-swinging, and we should be, too.  

Cory Chisel and Adriel Denae, ‘Just Pleasing You’

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It’s Indigo Girls month at the Bluegrass Situation, and it’s hard to talk about that dynamic duo without addressing one of the most potent components of their magic: harmony. It’s one of music’s most primal things — no instruments needed, just voices ringing together in a mysterious pattern that sounds perfect but takes true mastery to actually perfect. Few do it as well as Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, who meld themselves like two bodies of water intersecting, yet somehow retain their own individual clarity along the way. A good harmony is true wizardry to the ears. It really is.

Cory Chisel and Adriel Denae’s debut duets LP, Tell Me True, is dedicated to the magnetism of those harmonies. Romantic partners in life and craft, they blend their vocals in both natural and unexpected combinations, volleying in a seamless game with lyrics that chart their life, love and struggles together. “Just Pleasing You,” a sparse and strikingly beautiful ode to what we leave behind to follow a romance — the good, the ugly, the staggered parts of ourselves — is built on Chisel and Denae’s ability to lace their words around each other in that magical way, teetering together with just some simple guitar to pull it all along. “Just pleasing you, is the last thing I’ll do,” they sing, the melody moving and the key escalating with each breath. Pleasing each other, but our ears, too … true wizardry, indeed.   

The War on Drugs, ‘Strangest Thing’

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My mother just doesn’t get the “electronic” songs, as she puts it. Never did, really, especially when things started getting really wispy, super synth-y, shoegaze-y to the nth degree: Growing up on Janis Joplin and the Rolling Stones, she likes her music with an emotional drive that makes the bones rattle, not one that shoots you into the clouds. And it’s true that, sometimes, heavily electronic music can be difficult to make a visceral connection with, especially if you are used to the organic reverberation of real drums and wood instruments — or especially if you don’t have any hallucinogenic substances to nudge you along on the way to submission.

Part of what has always made the War on Drugs so powerful is the way they bridge that modernity — particularly dreamy splashes of synth — with the organic core of rock and folk (Bruce Springsteen and ’80s Bob Dylan are common references). Lead by the voice of Adam Granduciel, the band’s newest single, “Strangest Thing,” sounds like a song made for those who enjoy being both grounded to the earth and united with the air. Rolling in to a slow, plaintive beat with synth and keys that ring like darts of sunlight, Granduciel asks questions that transcend those generational splits: “Am I just living in the space between the beauty and the pain?” he sings. From their forthcoming release, A Deeper Understanding, it’s the perfect swirl of acoustic and electric to reflect a time obsessed with the past but raging fast into the future.

Nicole Atkins, ‘Sleepwalking’

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“Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?” Edgar Allan Poe once asked, meditating on one of life’s most perplexing phenomena: the fine line that could exist between reality and fantasy, and between what happens when our eyes are closed and when they are open. We’re programmed to believe that dreams are just that — flashes that occur when we hit the pillow and dissolve into sleep, and let our subconscious take over. But what if we can’t be so sure? What if dreams are more than just snapshots during slumber, or the line between asleep and awake isn’t really a line but a sieve, where one side constantly seeps through to the other?

Nicole Atkins contemplates this unsettling part of human existence on “Sleepwalking,” a new single from her forthcoming LP Goodnight Rhonda Lee, written with Reno Bo. With striking neo-soul horns and orchestration that would make Amy Winehouse proud, Atkins opens by bending the imagination from the get-go. “My past lives have got me weary,” she sings. Is she talking about past experiences or other incarnations? It doesn’t really matter: We’re all haunted by something, wherever it comes from. For Atkins, those ghosts surface in dreams, dreams that mingle with her daily existence. But they carry over into the daytime, too. Sleepwalking doesn’t have to only happen at night, and nightmares are not the only time we live with the weight of our own trials and the shadows of our own mistakes. On “Sleepwalking,” Atkins just makes that nagging psyche sound a little bit sweeter. 

Steelism, ‘Lonely Game’

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Instrumental music is sometimes approached with hesitation: Will it move me as much as a song with lyrics? Will it be catchy or interesting? And will it be — crime of all crimes, no doubt — boring? Thing is, to those really listening, songs without words can be transporting in ways that others can’t. They force you to let something more primal take over your emotions and to become in touch with those deeper senses that pick up on the subconscious: The strings of a guitar can speak just as much as a string of sentences, but it can often be in code. You have to surrender yourself to the language of the instrument, and then let the message float — or riff — its way on in.

Steelism — guitarist Jeremy Fetzer and steel guitarist Spencer Cullum, Jr. — made lyrics seem almost extraneous on their debut LP, 615 to Fame, which stood alone as one of the most creative, virtuosic endeavors into the instrumental canon of late, never borrowing too heavily from the intellectual column in favor of fun. On 615 to Fame, the duo certainly earned the right to proceed forever without the help of singers, which is part of what makes the follow-up, Ism, so enjoyable: When lyrics are an addition, not a necessity, they take on a whole new magic. And “Lonely Game,” featuring vocals from Jessie Baylin and Andrew Combs, is indeed magical. Baylin and Combs (who wrote the words to Fetzer and Cullum’s music) are two of the best vocalists around — not only in their capabilities, but in sheer, gorgeous tones — and their push-pull around Steelism’s freewheeling playing is the perfect fix to something that was never broken to begin with. “Love gone wrong’s a lonely game,” Baylin and Combs sing together, before a solo meanders away to tell the rest of the story.

Nick Delffs, ‘Song for Aja’

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There are a few things that come instinctually to humans, at the earliest of ages. Crying, drinking, smiling — the bare bones of staying alive and growing, really. But there’s another reflex that happens before most children can even walk or crawl, and that’s how babies, sitting on the floor or in their cribs, react to music: They’ll grin, shake, rock back and fourth, clap their hands. Before they even know the meaning of a song, they will dance. To a young child, that rhythm almost feels as essential as a taste of milk or a restful nap; it feeds them and pleases them like none other. It’s the essential proof, maybe, that music isn’t just enjoyable and nourishing, but necessary, too.

Nick Delffs, of the Shaky Hands, has a young son and, on Redesign, his forthcoming solo LP, he pays tribute not only to the joy of childhood but the melodies that make us move with “Song for Aja.” With hints of Paul Simon and Phosphorescent, it grooves with that sort of tribal rhythm that anyone — child or grown person — would have trouble not nodding along to. But cased in that beautiful syncopation is a track about balancing the magical moments of parenthood with the demands of adulthood and all that we must leave behind, at home or away, to be the best mother, father, and version of ourselves that we can be. “Work is done, it’s time to play, say ‘so long’ to a terrible day,” he sings. Delffs’ joyful hollers and rolling lyrical style, alongside infectious percussion, form a something that’s visceral and nearly primal — just like the way those babies, before they can even walk or talk, react to a steady beat.

Glen Campbell, ‘Adiós’

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There are two milestones in the career of a songwriter that stand out from the rest: the first album and the last. Everything from birth on builds into that debut opus — how you have lived, how you breathe, how you have figured out your unique place in the universe thus far. But, at the end, things look different. Maybe you’re wiser, but you’re worn, too. If you’re lucky enough to make it to the point where you can declare decidedly, before letting the inevitable have its way, that a collection of songs will be your final message, it’s a moment to not only make your last mark but, also, to simply say “goodbye.” It’s what Glen Campbell, the Rhinestone Cowboy, is doing on his last LP, Adiós.

“I’ll miss the blood red sunset, but I’ll miss you the most,” sings country legend Campbell on the title track, as he succumbs to the debilitating effects of a battle with Alzheimer’s disease. His voice sounds aged but still holds gorgeous, quivering notes; and, somehow, it’s a goodbye that doesn’t wallow in the morose. Maybe Campbell knows just how special it is to have these final moments, these final albums, to look back and say goodbye. But here’s the thing: Music is never really a goodbye. Though it’s his last LP, it could very well be someone’s first — the first notes of a Campbell record they ever hear, or the first album they buy. “Adiós” could even be the song that someone listens to as they bid farewell to a first love, a first school, a first kiss, before the rest of their life unfolds. It might be Campbell’s “Adiós,” but perhaps the eternal nature of music makes bidding goodbye its own special breed of even sweeter sorrow.    

Benjamin Booker, ‘Truth Is Heavy’

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Sometimes it feels like gambling a thousand dollars at a blackjack table seems a more sensible risk than opening up to love. Money can be remade, but broken hearts shatter like a vase: They can be repaired, but it’s hard to ignore that bumpy seam where everything was once plastered back together. It’s no wonder that so many of us, when confronted with relationships or romance, run the other way. Loneliness hurts, but maybe not as much as letting love in and then letting go.

“I don’t ever get this far, by now I’m always gone,” sings Benjamin Booker on “Truth Is Heavy,” a stirring track from his sophomore LP, Witness. Much of the album is devoted to responsibility — social, personal, philosophical. Written amidst the endless slaughter of innocent people of color by the police and the dawn of the Trump era, Booker reflects back on our belief systems and what it means to just sit back and watch. Can we do more, ask for more, be more than just a witness? But on “Truth Is Heavy,” he boils this down to the micro level: Instead of running from love, maybe he can find a way to stick around, even if it’s the hardest dice to roll. “I’m trying to hold on,” he sings to a syncopated, soulful groove in his soft and raspy delivery. Because, really, aren’t we all?

Bobby Bare, ‘Things Change’

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There was an under-appreciated movie that hit theaters in 1999 called Entropy, starring Stephen Dorff and, strangely enough, the members of a teeny Irish rock band named U2. Dorff stumbles around the reality of a fleeting romance and the pressures of artistic aspirations, but the whole thing was largely lost to film lore as the millennium drew to a close. In it, though, was a quote lobbed by Dorff’s character that has long out-lasted what was otherwise a short shelf life: “There are three truths in life,” he says. “You are born, you will die, and things change.” It’s simple but profound, and true. Things change. They just do.

Bobby Bare, one of country’s greatest citizens and arguably one of its most under-appreciated, is in a unique position to mull this most certain phenomenon: At 82, he’s seen so many other legends come and go, leaving nothing but their songs and legacies behind. On “Things Change,” he explores that certainty, but it’s not all maudlin or morose. Things change to get better, things change and get worse; things change, and time ticks on. But change is also what makes life matter. “If winter bums you out, just wait for spring,” Bare sings, spiking the tune with some lyrical old-time fiddle amongst his well-aged scruff. “In the middle of a drought, just wait for rain.” Bare’s always known something about humanity’s most central truths, and he’s also always been able to see reality with enough humor to help the medicine — or the poison — go down a lot easier. Things change: for bad, for good, and forever.