Seven Songs for May

With no preamble or excuse, I bound back to it: picking up where I left off on both this little newsletter and my attempt to chronicle the specifics of my month-by-month music consumption.

(To access the playlist, please follow these links to Apple Music and Spotify)

Something brought me back to The White Stripes last month and while downloading De Stijl and White Blood Cells I noticed their self-titled debut record. I had no clear memory of ever giving this album time and was delighted to listen. This song, however, floored me. There used to be an old joke that went around that Jack White had saved Rock & Roll. There was vocal opposition to this by devotees of the garage-rock revival crowd who claimed The White Stripes to only be the most visible element of a thriving sound. I believe the former. There is something distinctly different from what I consider garage rock in these tunes. It seems obvious put up against The Oblivians and other popular groups. To me, it feels as if you took the pure rock of one end of the garage rock spectrum and the bluesy-twang from the other and subtracted everything in the middle. It feels so innately Rock & Roll, so much for the stage and not for a dive-y bar. There is a bit of the unpolished feel that comes from the garage, but there is power and punctuation and melody layered on top of the sloppy guitars and yelling. From closer to the ground, it is just a great and fun song filled with its Detroit associations and strange modern commentary. It just all works.

Sharing a drink with Jerry Cunningham at the Barn in Port Clyde, he told me that he had never listened to much Pavement and was learning Spit on a Stranger from Terror Twilight. First, of course, I showed him my Pavement tattoo, then, I immediately put the record back on my phone. Driving the main road up the Saint George peninsula, it came to this song and I remembered what it did to me. An uncomfortably tight and true verse led to two things - first, the drastic and shockingly epic power of the mediocre line "I saw you reading in a parking lot." Then, the song followed with one of the most Rollingstoney of Rolling Stones guitar solos slowly translating from 1969’s Keith Richards to everyone's favorite awkward brat-poet, Stephen Malkmus.

I don't get the chance to interact with Drew Hendrickson as much as I like or as much as I should, but most of those interactions involve text threads where we just send each other things to listen to. When he suggested Ratboys, I think it had been in response to something garage-y I mentioned and I was expecting something in the realm of King Tuff or Jacuzzi Boys. Instead, and with this song in particular, we get a weird Juliana Hatfield/Jesus and Mary Chain vibe overlain with well-paid Nashville sessionist sensibilities. This whole record is great, but it's the weird showtune-y epic harmonic swells towards the bridge of this song and end that really did it for me. Thanks again, Drew.

The first time I heard this song was live in the crowd of the Whitewater Tavern a month or so back. It was haunting to hear performed without a band. Haunting. I am not going to get too much into Rose here because I have been working on an essay trying to vocalize my impression and reaction to her February release: Year of the Slug. So more to come on that. But for now, this honest little ditty moved into my brain for a few weeks.

I end up with dozens of unplayed, new-to-me records on my phone. Often, I have no recollection of how I came by them. I am really good at marking or recording songs I hear or bands I am suggested while I am out or driving or sitting at a bar. I will go back and put them on my phone and then later, I will come across them with no idea how they got there. This record is one of those. Driving around and tired of most of the downloaded music I had, I gave it a listen. It's a tasty sound, filled with a skirting of horns and strict rhythm and change. It feels like it keeps going somewhere but it is all just the same as it's been. It allows itself to add and modify its components, feeling like a progression of some kind but without being too rigid and breaking. It has a slow drive, like a large rock rolling downhill that never really gets to speed. If you are the reason I know about this band, please tell me so that I can thank you.

Yeah, I know. But let's be honest, we all know that I am a cornball. While watching the first season of the Bear the appearance of this song and of Impossible Germany by Wilco both did something for me. I am in love with a song tied to a place or a time; maybe I am an anthemic apologists, but I can't help it. Carrie and I were leaving Chicago after going to my nephews college graduation and I knew that we were going to be sludging through the loop early in the morning on our way back to Kansas City. My silly romantic heart decided if that were to be the case, that I would be stuck staring at the skyline, I might as well be listening to Come on Feel the Illinois. "How are you so upbeat in this traffic?" Carrie asked. I made a lot of mistakes, but this was not one of them.

This has always been one of my favorites and yes I will say that during a recent trip to Key West for the time, while reading the story of the 70s there in William Mckeen's book Mile Marker Zero, my feelings about Jimmy Buffett just kind of came together. Much like Rose, this is going to be something longer so I wont get exactly into that except to say this little rocker showcases the simplistic genius of Buffett and his band and their ability to turn a passing thought of exhaustion into a twangy drive into the dawn with hints of the ocean, cocaine, and an absolute dedication to bardcraft and a love of the grind.