Play/Listed Weekly, Oct 23rd
Today’s new music feels particularly October-y, somehow. We’ve got a lot of singer-songwriter, folky witchy vibes, and I don’t know if it’s because it’s what I’m drawn to right now, or if that’s the music that’s being released today, or perhaps a beautiful synergy of the two. Also, half of my song highlights made their way into one of my current most played playlists, Here and Queer in 2020, so queer artists for the win!
Anyway, as usual, today’s song highlights will be added to the October playlist embedded below, but if you’re looking for older selections, my Spotify page has all my earlier month highlights in separate playlists. Okay! Let’s get to it!
My Music Highlights…
Damage - H.E.R.
There are very few days that H.E.R. releases new music that I don’t love. “Damage” gives me old school 90s R&B vibes, and I am predictably obsessed.
Cool Girl - Dodie
My YouTube algorithm plays Beyoncé music videos and Tiny Desk performances almost exclusively, so instead of discovering Dodie Clark through her ukulele covers on her popular vlog, I found Dodie in my Tidal recommendations. This is a really catchy tune, exploring the sad irony of the “cool girl” feeling pressure to fit a palatable mold in order to be truly loved… which isn’t love - or cool - at all.
Green Eyes - Arlo Parks
Not the first or the last time I’ll highlight an Arlo Parks song. I’m just so happy we’re getting originals and they’re as mesmerizing as her quarantine covers. “Green Eyes” is a coming of age track about learning to trust and love yourself, and it’s already making its way onto multiple playlists.
Oh No - Biig Piig
I had never heard of this artist before and clicked on this song out of curiosity. Apparently Jessica Smyth chose the name because she didn’t want to have any expectations for her songwriting, and I think it works. I certainly had no idea what’d I’d get, but I like it!
No Good - Tafari Anthony
I’m pretty excited to get to introduce some of you to Tafari Anthony with this slick, Sam Smith-ish track. Tafari Anthony has been slowly releasing singles, and has shown up on my Pride playlists for the last 2 years, since a mutual friend told me to check him out, and “No Good” might be my favourite offering yet.
Faith Healer - Julien Baker
Apparently a certain pocket of twitter exploded this week when my favourite music retailer, Vinyl Me Please, announced a new album, and somehow Adele and Ariana fans thought that this indie vinyl pressing company would be announcing these international mega stars? Anyway, they were announcing Julien Baker’s upcoming album, and I’m super excited. In the meantime, this song about addiction and relapse has everything I love about Julien’s songwriting and I can’t wait to see her perform it.
Songs - Adrianne Lenker
Lol - my redhead really thought there was a chance that the new Adrianne Lenker album simply entitled Songs wouldn’t be one of my album highlights today? Cute. Babe, when you introduced me to this brilliant human, you created a fan. You aren’t dragging me anywhere. ;)
The entire album was composed and recorded during the spring of this year in a small, remote cabin in Massachusetts, soon after the pandemic began and her most recent dating relationship ended. The product is a deeply intimate, fully analogue recording that sometimes feels awkward - like we shouldn’t get to be part of such personal reflection. As we come to expect from Adrianne, whether from her solo projects or Big Thief collaborations, her lyrics are like paintings that make you think you can taste and smell the subjects. Even if the subject is a dead horse, as it is in “Ingydar”, where the repeated hook is “everything eats and is eaten - time is fed”.
The album leads us directly from this somber thought to “anything,” the sweetest love song that I’ve already highlighted back in early September. I also particularly like “dragon eyes” which was also released ahead of time, but sounds even better in the collection.
This is definitely an album to submerse yourself into, but there are a few other songs that stop me in my tracks for different reasons. “heavy focus” begins with an opening tag, before funnelling into a swirling repetition of the word focus … it’s as though the song is helping us focus in on the word itself, and I can’t help get pulled in to the experience.
Two tracks later, “come” reminds us of our cabin setting, and now the rain has started pounding overhead as it seems Adrianne is messing around with guitar licks until she finds just the right pattern for this slow sad song about someone asking their daughter to help them die. Yeah, this is not Saturday road trip music. Unless maybe you are headed to a funeral and want to bask in melancholy along the way.
“zombie girl” might be the most break-up-y song on a record that I was expecting to be a break-up record. It contains my favourite line so far; “Oh emptiness, tell me about your nature / maybe I’ve been getting you wrong”. This personification of emptiness, and idea that it may be understood reminds me of Jomny Sun’s brilliant little graphic novel, Everyone’s a Alibn When Ur a Alibn Too.
Beware that the ending is abrupt, perhaps a comment on how surprising the ending of relationships can be? Depending on what your streaming service decides, it can be almost traumatizing, so I recommend turning off the auto play wherever you’re listening. If you’re a vinyl fan, I think this is the perfect album for that particular experience.
Did I mention that there’s an accompanying album containing two 20-minute tracks called Instrumentals? It’s also lovely, although I’m partial to Side A’s “music for indigo” (her ex) over the appropriately titled “mostly chimes”.
Woman In Color - Raye Zaragoza
There were 3 other albums that I was anticipating hard today (see my footnote), and yet I was happily surprised by this new-to-me artist, Raye Zaragoza. Her latest record Woman in Color is as much a beautiful personal look into her heritage and identity as it is a political statement about living life as an indigenous Japanese-American woman under enormous systems of oppression.
I think the best comparisons to Raye are classic protest-folk-songwriters like Tracy Chapman or Buffy Sainte-Marie, who can mix their story-telling with memorable hooks. We learn this right away, with the opening track “Change Your Name,”which is written in the voice of her mother remembering coming to the USA from Japan, and being given a heads up by her mother (Raye’s grandmother) that her name will be changed to be easily pronounced by white folks. It’s sad and honest, and reflects the resilience asked of immigrants everywhere.
The next couple of songs continue in the resistance theme, where in “Fight Like a Girl” she places herself in a long line of feminist fighters, calling on those who have gone before us for strength and wisdom as we continue to fight for new and expanded human rights.
I really enjoy the love songs, whether they’re directed to a person (as in “He Calls Me River,”) or the land itself (“Run With the Wolves”). But Zaragoza is strongest when addressing difficult topics. Possibly the highlight of the whole album is the staggering “Red” where she sings plainly about the many missing and murdered indigenous women across Turtle Island.
Meanwhile, “They Say” is the late thesis statement, also released as the main single. After directly addressing sexism, racism, ineffective policing, and murder, she turns around and powerfully critiques the elitism of folk music itself. Though its roots are in truth telling and sticking it to The Man, these rich white liberal fans are complicit in the power structures they used to fight. I love the boldness of this call out in the middle of an album that has potential to be heard in those spaces.
As she began with her mother’s immigration story, she ends with “Ghosts of Houston Street,”- a nostalgic track about her childhood neighbourhood which is also an acknowledgment and indictment of gentrification caused by capitalist colonialism. Yeah, she can fit all of that into a folk song/album, and probably so much more since I’ve only fully listened to this record twice.
In a world full of noise, Raye Zaragoza’s powerful, steady voice is 100% worth a listen. Or several.
Some of you may have been waiting for an announcement about Girlhood’s anticipated self-titled record, which also came out today! I will 100% be diving into this too, as well as Ben Harper’s new instrumental album Winter is for Lovers, and BLACKSTARKIDS’ latest, Whatever Man. Lots of great new music today - good thing we have a whole week to catch up! Plus last week I missed highlighting Only Child from Sasha Sloan, which has since been in regular rotation in our house.
See you next Friday!