21 August 2021 - Kristin Hersh - Sundrops

This is the stepsister I told you about yesterday.  

This performance is from MTV and I remember watching it in 1994 when it first aired.  I was quite excited about the Kristin Hersh debut solo album, Hips and Makers.  You see, her previous band, Throwing Muses, was my favorite (still is), so I was expecting another album like that, maybe with less drums.

Lyrically, that's exactly what it was, but musically, it was far more acoustic-guitar driven.  This song exists in both an original version, which is pretty much Kristin with a guitar, and a "strings" version, which adds a few more, well, strings.  This performance is the former.   

20 August 2021 - Belly - Now They'll Sleep

Look, I know.  I said yesterday that all the pieces were important.   However, today, we're going to dive a little deeper into one of those pieces.  

That piece is Belly lead vocalist, guitarist, principal songwriter, and postpartum doula Tanya Donelly.  This song, the second single off the band's second album, King, it was co-written with fellow band member Tom Gorman.  

Prior to Belly, Tanya was in a band with her stepsister who shall not be named here because we are talking about Tanya (and who I've written about pretty extensively).  Her songs with Throwing Muses were excellent - her songs with Belly better showcase her unique voice and signature guitar style, an instrument for which she is criminally underrated.  

This song was not terribly commercially successful, but history has been kind to it.  It is a classic power-pop song that sounds as fresh today as it did in 1995.  

19 August 2021 - The Breeders - When I Was A Painter

So, I know what you are thinking.  I mean, I know what I'm thinking.

There's nothing at all guilty about this pleasure.  

Or, maybe, this isn't the Breeders song I know.  

This song was from their debut album, Pod.   At this point, the band was essentially the trio of women you see here - Josephine Wiggs (of the Perfect Disaster) on bass, the incomparable Tanya Donelly (of Throwing Muses and later Belly) on lead guitar, and Kim Deal (of the Pixies) on vocal.  If you look closely, you'll see fourth member Britt Walford (of the Slint) on drums in the other room. 

This very fuzzy rock song is lesser if you take any of these pieces away.  Without Deal's desperate vocal, Wiggs's perfect bass, or Donelly's distinctive guitar, it's a lesser song.  Together, it was pure magic.   

18 August 2021 - Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever

Boy, isn't it a shame that no one makes good, complex music anymore?

Anyone who knows this blog knows we don't actually believe that.  There is excellent music being created, and Billie Eilish's latest single - released July 30th, from her 2nd album of the same name - is what we'd use as Exhibit A.  It starts off quietly - a cool throwback to 60s vocal-heavy ensembles like The Mamas and The Papas. Getting a real Mama Cass vibe here.  At about the 2:30 mark, it smoothly switches genres to be more of a 90s alternative tribute, before really exploding at the 3:00 mark and ending with a huge sonic deconstuction.

Lyrically, it's not a happy song, despite the title.  Not only is the music complex, but the words express complex emotion - being happier without someone than with them, and articulating that in a way that captures the true range of emotions related to that. 

As with most of her music, this song was co-written by Billie and her brother/producer Finneas.  She's only 19, folks.  She's likely to have a long career ahead of her, and she's ALREADY flexible enough to reinvent herself.

As you do when you are the biggest star on the planet, it is customary to perform your hit songs on late night talk shows.  Which Billie did - last week, on The Tonight Show.  

17 August 2021 - The GAP Band - You Dropped A Bomb On Me

I was thinking over this past weekend that I had been remiss in posting 80's R&B on this blog.  It's woefully underrepresented, and that's wrong.  

The Wilson Brothers from the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, OK were The GAP Band.  Despite urban legend, this song is not about the 1921 bombing of that neighborhood, but rather about a surprising end to a relationship.  The song WAS considering questionable because of this - and the origin of the band's name, as "GAP" in the bands names came about from the names of the streets where the bombs were actually dropped, Green, Archer, and Pine.

Yeah.  I went dark.  But this song went a different kind of dark - sadness sung over synth.  It ended up sparking one of their biggest hits, hitting the Top 40 on the pop charts and #2 on what was known as the Black Singles chart - and is now the R&B chart - in 1982.  

16 August 2021 - Sam Phillips - I Need Love

This song, the first single from Sam Phillips's critically acclaimed Martinis and Bikinis album - her 3rd as Sam and 7th overall - was a true departure from her Christian music days.  The line "I need God, not the political church" is really a slap in the face to that world.  However, it's also some of the most critically acclaimed music of her career, and a revelation of what was to come.  

And by a revelation of what was to come, I mean it is said that the photos of Sam used in the album art directly led to her role as a mute terrorist in Die Hard With A Vengeance.  Yep, that was her.  You didn't know that, did you?  You learned something today.

Now listen to this and learn some new good music.  

Did you like that?  Well, here she is performing the song on late night television in 1994. It sounds strange to hear the song without the background vocals (which were also Sam, by the way), but it's also a pure rendition.

14 August 2021 - Pixies - Isla de Encanta

Story here. 

So when I was younger, I studied Spanish linguistics.  That's true.  One of my classes was about the evolution of the language, and an assignment of ours was to choose a Spanish language song from a different part of the world and run with it - basically dig into the different dialects.

This was the song I chose.  Los Angeles Spanish from a Massachusetts band.  

I was ridiculed because it's a little Spanglishy, but really, that's what LA Spanish IS - there is English mixed into the Spanish.  

Plus, it's a great song.