A Terrible Gift Given in Confidence

9/16/2021

1. Blue Sheen - Provoker
   Provoker vocalist Christian Petty’s metallic growl bewails indecisiveness, communication breakdowns, misapprehensions, and regret—the minefield of inescapable hang-ups underlying the far-stretching no man’s land that separates our normal operating hysteria from the boundless blue skies of enlightenment.

2. Class Historian - BRONCHO
   I was reminded of this mid-2010s indie standard when it popped up on the first episode of FX’s Reservation Dogs, one of the most exciting, refreshingly original new shows I’ve seen in many a minute. Biggest possible shouts out to the show’s music supervision team, who bowled a perfect game, had their portraits hung up on the alley’s Wall of Fame, and were recognized for their superlative skill with a series of signature cocktails named in their honor available at the bar by the claw machine and the Big Buck Hunter Pro arcade unit.

3. Music de Carnaval - Magdy Al Hussainy
   A snarlingly groovy garage rock jam scaffolds the Egyptian composer’s certified yawper of a lead electric organ, an instrument that I’ve fallen hopelessly in love with lately.

   🚨This is an Official Tent House Radio APB: The Czar is requesting information on your favorite electric organ showpieces. Any tips leading to the discovery of certifiably yawping electric organ performances will be rewarded with $15 million in tenthouseradio.com site credits.🚨

4. Such a Night - Dinah Washington
   Dinah has me thinking a lot about memory here. About the uncomfortable truth that even our most vivid recollections are actually just reconstructions of reconstructions of reconstituted figments of sidelong glances at transient perceptions. Was it really “Such a Night,” Dinah? Or was the Suchness of the Night magnified during the mystifying, piecemeal process of memory making?
   
   All that said, if the past only exists inasmuch as its outflowing ripples affect our present selves, then maybe our memories—fallible and fabricated as they may be—are as real and true as they would be if we had a solid-state drive humming between our ears.

5. Look Around - Tune-Yards
   ***CONTENT WARNING: SENTIMENTAL POST BELOW***
   In addition to being maybe the best song Merrill Garbus has released under the Tune-Yards mantle, Look Around is also at or near the top of the list of tracks that Haley (aka Ms. Czar aka Fleur Face aka Your Honor) and I would jointly classify as “Our Song.” It’s an agonizingly beautiful tune that gets at something elemental about what it means to be a committed partner, to be the ballast upon which another person’s emotional life is anchored, and to have that person do the same for you. It’s a song that, like the immortal feelings that can only be smelted in the furnace of utter devotion, I know will stay with me forever. I take extreme comfort in that knowledge!

6. 12 Études, Op. 10: No. 8 in F Minor - Frédéric Chopin, Milos Magin
   I recently learned that études are musical exercises, typically composed for a solo instrumentalist, designed to improve a player’s facility and technique. In my imagination, the pianist who banged this one out has fingers that look like biceps.

7. わたし、フィクション - mekakushe
   From mekakushe’s solid new record, a breezy pop joint with some gymnastic syncopation that pays off in a cloud-break chorus. I’ve submitted my translation request to the Bear but he’s not returning my calls.

8. Option Despair - Straw Man Army
   The two-man outfit telling hard truths on a runaway train of a song that rattles at treacherous speeds along a downhill track.

9. Kamali - Priya Ragu
   When the tablas hit, I see God.

10. Samba Night - PIPER
    As we conclude this week’s list with a cut from from city pop dancefloor maestros PIPER, off their 1983 album “Summer Breeze,” we give a valedictory wave to summer 2021. Let us raise a glass to long days of honeyed sunshine, to shorts, to arriving to work every morning in a full-on mid-workout sweat. Fare thee well, you season of full blooms and solstice celebrations. Autumn conquers all.
    
    "Summer Breeze” is an incredible beach record. I feel like I was at the beach all the time during my childhood summers. This was obviously a product of growing up in Florida—the beach was a cheap and exciting diversion that could both keep us entertained and completely drain us of our excess energy. But there have been considerably fewer beach days as I’ve gotten older. I don’t think I visited a beach once this summer. The result is that, in my roiling mind galaxy, the beach has become associated with my fast-retreating youth, such that the imagined feeling of warm sand between my toes conjures a pained nostalgia for a time when life was a lark and the future abounded with possibility.
    
    Summer is ending. The beach days are behind me. That illimitable expanse of possibility has narrowed to something like a tunnel. I am impossibly fortunate in all conceivable ways, but time metes out her terrible justice to all of us with blind and dispassionate finality. Autumn conquers all.

⛺