Thanks to Claire for pointing me in the direction of this cover of Love’s “Alone Again Or” (I posted the original the day before yesterday).
Calexico moves “Alone Again Or” from urban California to rural Arizona, from Spanish classical to drunken mariachi. Love’s sunny folk-pop is subtly reconceived as a down and out Ennio Morricone epic. The loneliness dealt with in this version is deeper and more desolate, deriving not from social alienation but from physical isolation. The song is a brief respite from a long desert travel.
Clap your hands for hand claps (i.e. every time you hear a hand clap, clap your hands. That way we’ll keep it going forever.)
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From soft static emerges the Microphones’ signature panning guitars and very careful closed mouth singing. Elvrum sings like a curious kid, his eyes fixed and incredulous, his mouth twisted down. “Solar System” is an investigation, a reflection on the infinite possibilities of the infinite universe, of our relative insignificance, of divinity and mortality.
Celebrate the drum at 1:03.
Embrace the phasing that plays the role of the “solar wind.”
And the snare chains that represent water.
The Phonemes - "Steeples and Peoples"
It's kind of like running on the spot. But also more than that. It's like running on the spot while your friends perform a carefully choreographed and highly precarious dance/ritual in a circle around you. Some of your friends are spinning plates and others are "riding" stick horses, a few of them are somersaulting or pretending to be monkeys. This is not chaos or without purpose, this is culture battling entropy (culture wins (what?)).
The singer already sounds tired when she counts the whole rigmarole in. And at 1:41, when the dense guitar/vibes/high-hat/bass drum/organ/bass/hand claps/piano/found-whatever action is dispersed by the cymbal swell and the clear voice explains "we have to take care of each other," we understand that she was already tired because the whole thing goes on and on with breaks to take breathers and to express gratitude to those around the on-the-spot runner for pulling their weight in order to preserve the delicate balance that relies on the tenuous interconnection of all the players, before restarting the dance/ritual like it's an OK thing to do (it is not). You know?
***
There's something of the lounge singer in Kurt Wagner (Lambchop's front man). If you took early Tom Waits out of a dingy New York bar and put him in an upscale Nashville wine bar (with a twisted clientele, mind you) you would have something like Wagner.
The production on "Is A Woman" is so clear, so intimate that if you listen to it in your bedroom with the lights off, you might think he is speaking the song just to you. That maybe if you shined a spotlight into the corner you would find him there at his piano, sweating (the light is hot and he's working hard), with his bow tie slightly undone. At 1:26 after he asks "can you be sure," he leaves you four seconds of heavy silence to answer. He stares at you (now you're not so sure you want him in your bedroom) and though you don't understand his question exactly, panicked, you think of how you should respond. Then he continues with the song (relief). And then, at 2:32 when the song turns Caribbean, the spotlight broadens its focus, encompasses the whole band. Now you can see that there are a lot of people in your bedroom. Backup singers even. I don't think you'll be getting to sleep tonight. But it's OK. You have nothing to do tomorrow anyway.