NEW MUSIC FOR OLDS #59
Calgon, take me away
Hello, dear rerader. Happy second-day-of-Summer! As befitting seasonal leisure activities, today’s newsletter is packed to the gills. THE VERY GILLS, I TELL YOU.
To wit:
Smarm-free bar rock!
Bubblebath luxuriation!
A pleasant jostle!
As perfect a song as has ever been recorded!
Words of praise for a tragic genius!
And, Fictional Band Madness offers its Elite 8!
Let’s do this. Time’s a-wasting.
GOOD STUFF
Hey look, it’s a Glossary of Terms!
Webbed Wing, “My Front Door”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Vol. iii
Nutshell: Bar band rock
Voltage: 7
Thoughts: There’s something refreshingly un-fresh about Philly’s Webbed Wing, who specialize in what was once known as “college rock”. The Replacements are an easy reference point, but the band that keeps popping into my head is the eternally under-appreciated Buffalo Tom. There’s no ironic genre-hopping to be found here, no art-school smarminess. Now if you’re a longtime NMFO reader, you’re aware that I adore me some art-school smarm. But there’s also something to be said for earnest dudes plugging in their amps and banging away. This is the kind of tune that makes me really miss beer.
Pairing Suggestion: Riding that perfect buzz
Fana Hues, “Apple Picking”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Moth
Nutshell: Dreamy Neo Soul
Voltage: 4
Thoughts: Fana Hues has a voice that floats around in your ear like a hummingbird, never staying in one place for too long. According to my friends at Google, this is the result of debilitating tonsillitis and scarlet fever. Soooo…score one for childhood maladies, I suppose? Beyond that, Hues threads a stylistic needle, landing somewhere between Beyonce and Erykah Badu, with a dash of trip-hop thrown in. Her song structures are always unpredictable and the production is chock-full of inventive flourishes. This is a real “Calgon, take me away” kind of album.
Pairing Suggestion: Luxuriating like an overwhelmed 80s housewife
Crowded House, “I Can’t Keep Up With You”
Listen on Apple Music // Listen on Amazon Music
Album: Gravity Stairs
Nutshell: Sophisti-pop
Voltage: 5
Thoughts: Pop songwriting doesn’t come sturdier than Neil Finn. This is once again one of those times when I miss early VH1, the primary venue for medium-impact adult pop smarts. Not every song needs to rock your world—at times, I rather prefer a pleasant jostle. The 2024 version of Crowded House includes original bassist Nick Seymour, two of Finn’s sons and super-producer Mitchell Froom, who’s responsible for a few of my all-time favorite albums. Will this song change your life? Not likely. But it’s got cool production flourishes and a sticky chorus. It’s also not lost on me that a song called “I Can’t Keep Up With You” literally exhausts itself at the end. I see what you did there, fellas.
Pairing Suggestion: Casual stroll, with accompanying head-bob
NOTE: For your viewing enjoyment, VH1’s 1985 debut. (Don fucking Imus? Bowser from Sha Na Na??)
In the immortal words of Canadian power trio Triumph, lay it on the line.
And if you have any pent up anger towards me, or praise for this week’s songs, express it here:
NEWS TO ME…
As I cannot stop reminding you, Paid Subscribers receive a special edition of NMFO (just about) every off-week. In it, I have a section called NEWS TO ME…. It functions identically to GOOD STUFF, with one rather self-explanatory difference. It’s where I dig into stuff that slipped by me, music from around the world and legacy artists I’ve never gotten around to checking out.
Oh, you’d like to be a part of that, you say?
It’s in this context that I tell you that, while I genuinely dig this week’s songs (they’re great!), I will remember June 2024 as the month I discovered “The Kiss” by Judee Sill, as perfect a song as has ever existed.
I beg you: set aside a bit of calm, uninterrupted time to appreciate this immaculate recording. The melody. The lyric. The production. The string arrangement. I’ve spent the last two weeks basically living inside these four and a half minutes.
I’m sure I’d scanned past Judee Sill’s name over the years, blithely lumping her in with Judy Collins, Joan Baez and other female-folkies-who-are-not-Joni-Mitchell. With all due respect to those artists, Sill exists in a realm of her own. A multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and arranger, Sill was a Prince-level savant. Her all-too-short discography blends elements of rock, gospel, country, classical and the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriter scene.
And then there’s Sill, the human being. I try my best to appreciate an artist’s work independent of her personal biography, but…hoo boy. She was a fascinating, frustrating personality whose life included multiple periods of incarceration, armed robbery, drug addiction, prostitution, religious fervor and wounds both random and self-inflicted. Sill never caught fire with the general public and she allowed her spirits to curdle while watching her (lesser) peers achieve the love and attention she so desperately craved.
I highly, highly recommend ponying up $4 to watch Lost Angel: The Genius of Judee Sill on YouTube.
While I’ve been absolutely obsessed with “The Kiss”, it’s by no the only evidence of Sill’s genius. Here, a short playlist of my current faves:
This playlist on Apple Music // This playlist on Amazon Music
Okay, rant complete. If even three of you becomes Judee Sill fans, I will consider this entire endeavor a rousing success. What say you?
Better yet, why not spread the gospel?
Oh, you thought I forgot?
NMFO FICTIONAL BAND MADNESS: The Nittiest of the Gritty
And then there were eight! A reminder of where things currently stand:
Let’s whittle things down even further, shall we?
The Vegas Buzz: This one could be a barnburner, but I ultimately expect the Gen X nostalgia to overcome Elder Millennial nostalgia.
The Vegas Buzz: Genuinely torn. In purely musical terms, it’s Hedwig in a walk. But I’ve seen Almost Famous so many times, I basically know it by heart. “Almost Famous??”, you exclaim, slamming down the phone in disgust. “The kid’s on drugs.”
The Vegas Buzz: Your Wichita State vs Creighton matchup. Seeing these two would-be Cinderellas reach the Elite 8 warms my heart (and also makes me think I should have re-seeded everything after the first couple of rounds.)
The Vegas Buzz: Is there any stopping Spinal Tap? Has this entire exercise been for nought??
Okay, Substack is telling me that this thing needs to end. So…THE END.
As always, I thank you for your support.
Those Apples you picked are sweet. I hope they're organic.
Take it to 11, Spinal Tap.