Songs of the Week 06/02/2023

So, nobody was going to tell me the titles have been off center for two months shy of a year?

BURNING BRIDGE | Kate Bush We're now approaching the one-year anniversary of my Kate Bush awakening (you fools have no idea what's coming), but even after eleven months of worship, I'm still piecing together the last, obscure crumbs of her discography. While I'm not going to pretend my listening was ever chronological, I do think it's sort of a full-circle moment that I'm starting this June listening to a Hounds of Love bonus track—the album that started it all. And make no mistake, even as the b-side to "Cloudbusting," "Burning Bridge" is about as Hounds of Love as it gets—it's one of those songs that makes you go "that didn't make the cut?" It's truly a testament to Bush's boundlessly passionate imagination that her bmaterial has this much raw, leaping romanticism. While that's far from exclusive to Hounds of Love, it is the album on which her vocals are perhaps their most wild and religious, with jazzy rhythms almost involuntarily exploding from what would've been a held note in anyone else's lungs. It's an almost supernatural soul that reflects this album's unbound optimism, somehow turning soft tenderness solid and tangible while staying purely earnest. You guys, I love Kate Bush.

Pairs Well With: "You Want Alchemy" (Kate Bush), "Cloudbusting" (Kate Bush), "Big Sky" (Kate Bush)

I'M NO RIVER | Esmé Patterson Learning Esmé Patterson would be opening for Haley Heynderickx at the Globe Hall last month was like realizing you recognize someone at an unfamiliar party—you may not know them very well, but since they're friends with some of your friends, you end up saying "fuck yea, Esmé Patterson" like you both bear the twin scars of a blood oath. Or, like, I don't know, maybe you guys actually go and talk to people, but I’m cool being leashed to my emotional support acquaintance, thanks. Previously, I'd only heard Patterson's voice indirectly, featured on one of Shakey Graves's most deliberately “country” songs, "Dearly Departed." I may not be a fan of country, but I sure as hell am a fan of Shakey Graves, and the story he tells of the two of them writing “Dearly Departed” after trying to scare each other with animal noises is just too endearing to deny. Luckily for Esmé, any skepticism I still harbored before she came onstage was totally unfounded, especially since I was expecting far more twang than I got. While she no doubt has range, Patterson's work actually skews far more toward indie rock, if her opening cover of Prince's "Sign 'O' the Times" wasn't enough of a signifier. That's not to say there isn't a heavy helping of folkiness to "I'm No River"— from its structure, to its diction, to its repetitive chords, this song has all the components to have been passed down from someone's great-great-grandmother—but its straightforward, upbeat spirit feels free from the mysterious shadows of Shakey Graves or the manic melancholy of Haley Heynderickx. Instead, "I'm No River"'s flavor comes from Patterson's voice, powerfully raw even at its most casual, and the subtle but strange choices of instrumentation behind the traditional guitar (what is that pipe-like scritching in the background of the chorus?) If I'm being honest, I haven't been hooked by much else in her discography, but considering "I'm No River"'s virulent catchiness and Patterson's genuine charisma, it's safe to say I'll keep giving her chances. Like, did you know her main gig is as a librarian? Badass, right? Also a hilarious juxtaposition with We Were Wild’s album cover, but go off, I guess.

Pairs Well With: "Out the Door" (Esmé Patterson), "Oom Sha La La" (Haley Heynderickx), "(I'll Never Be) Your Maggie May" (Suzanne Vega)

DON'T LEAVE ME THIS WAY | The Communards (feat. Sarah Jane Morris) covering Harold Melvin & The Blue NotesThe very concept of a “guilty pleasure” is something of a guilty pleasure for me—like, I’m too righteous to think anyone should feel guilty for anything reasonable that brings them pleasure, but I’m too proud to admit that all joy is created equal. When I call something "silly" or "goofy," there's this snide invocation of superiority that, no matter how lighthearted, I'm not really sure I'm a fan of. Though I think there's some goofiness in any lab-grown pop that's pantomiming artistic sincerity, in my mind, it doesn't get any goofier than the pop of the eighties. No matter how many of my all-time favorite musicians and their influences had their heyday in the eighties, the decade's art is unmistakably marked with excess, vapidity, and hyper-capitalism—practically a checklist of everything I stand against as an artist and as a person. Maybe I'm too cynical, but even despite their classic status, I've always seen the modern love for your Rick Astleys and your A-has as at least halfway-rooted in internet irony, satirizing the immaturity of the time's garish values. Even then, of course, I can only honestly say "half-rooted," because who's going to claim they're not having fun when "Take On Me" comes on?

Enter the Communards' cover of "Don't Leave Me This Way"—a synthpop song as silly as they get, yet one that never fails to make me smile. From the first time I saw the name "Communards" in faux-Cyrillic text on the album cover—in the eighties, no less, and I need not say more—I thought there was no way these guys weren't tongue-in-cheek. Juxtaposed with the high eighties notes they were hitting, it certainly wasn't a stretch. Like, come on, you can’t tell me this isn’t camp. Yet even if this cover was entirely sincere—and I suspect it was—it sounds so much more joyous and genuine than the original ever did. Perhaps for the Communards, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes's original was something of a guilty pleasure itself—credit where credit is due, Melvin's voice is amazingly strong, yet to me, it doesn't sell the lyrics' seemingly desperate yearning. Ten years earlier, the sleazy seventies were still plagued with Bee Gees cliches, and despite its bombastic climax, Melvin's "Don't Leave Me This Way" falls flat like a forced romance scene (though I'm certainly in the minority for that take, and they’ll string me up for this someday). While the Communards' take still avoids the emotionality of the lyrics, their cover drives "Don't Leave Me This Way" into an entirely different key and tempo, completely redefining the song's mood for the better. It may be a barrage of club-remix sixteenth notes, but there's something so peppy and prancy about this style that turns "Don't Leave Me This Way" into nothing short of a blast. Like I once assumed the Communards did, I always start this song with a bit of a sneer, but by the first harmony on "baby" (0:59), there isn’t a shred of irony in my body.

[EDIT: okay, folks, so it looks like I missed the mark on this one—serves me right for just using wikipedia for my research, which, so far as I can tell, totally lacks any mention of Jimmy Sommerville's sexuality. So... happy pride? The Communards and Sommerville's earlier band, Bronski Beat, were hugely influential for their openly gay lyricism in a time when doing so was particularly bold. Also, with their current band setup, they're looking a lotlike Erasure would eventually. So much for originality, Erasureheads. I've re-paired this one with the wonderful "Chains of Love," because I can't believe I didn't think of that. Also, I somehow forgot to mention that incredible piano breakdown?? Anyways, kudos to my mom for schooling me on 80s culture (source: she lived it)—check out her comment below for the full lowdown.]

https://www.youtube.com/embed/1RHBAd5YUR8

Pairs Well With: "Chains of Love" (Erasure) "(Looking For) Cracks in the Pavement" (Duran Duran), "Let My Love Open the Door" (Pete Townshend)

YAMA YAMA | Yamasuki Oh, boy. Speaking of guilty pleasures… let me back up. I know we talked pretty extensively about a song from Noah Hawley's psychoactive TV series Legion last week, but since you guys are still here (I'm as surprised as you are), I'd be remiss not to praise his equally fantastic needle-dropping in his first show, Fargo. Like, okay, check this out—this is a totally inconsequential opening montage in just the third episode of season two. Why does it go so stupidly hard?!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/mF5yL108yLQ

I'd venture to guess that this opening milks excitement from the totally mundane because it's brimming with emotion most filmmakers might leave to subtext. That's not to say subtext isn't one of the most valuable tools in the writer's kit—where would tension be without it? Here, though, I'd argue that despite being unsubtle, the juxtaposition of these restless but still innocent figures with the pounding timpani and gongs of Yamasuki's "Yama Yama" is practically boiling over with tension. As militant as a war march yet sung by a children's choir, "Yama Yama" bellows with all the power of a brewing storm, but none of the punch. Like the best of funk rock, it's an intensity that still isn't threatening, mirroring these gangsters’ currently toothless chest-puffing. I kind of hate when people say something is a "bop," but this one certainly bops, and I thought that's simply why Hawley chose it—it follows the soul of the scene it accompanies, and affects the expression of the scene itself. Whenever I think I get Fargo, though, I untwine some new thread that makes me question how anyone besides Hawley could have crafted this show so immaculately. Dude's a genius, and if you need proof of his dedication to an existing IP which previously existed as a standalone movie, you need look no further than this song choice. It turns out, this is a callback to Kumiko the Treasure Hunter, an unrelated 2014 movie about a Japanese woman who goes hunting for Steve Buscemi's buried briefcase from the 1996 original... which featured Yamasuki's song "Yamasuki" from the same album, Le Monde Fableux des Yamasuki. Isn't that nuts?! Talk about deep cuts.

Unfortunately, you might have already picked up on something that gives me pause about exploring Yamasuki's discography further, even as much of a blast as this song is. I've featured this song twice on previous Songs of the Week that predate my written reviews, but I keep coming back to “Yama Yama” because, as I think Hawley saw, it is a dense nugget of weirdness. As my J-pop bigotry last week might have suggested, I know frighteningly little about Japanese culture beyond cuisine, but with a multilingual title like Le Monde Fableux de Yamasuki and the blend of traditional and then-contemporary styles in their sound, I'd assumed Yamasuki were just as weird in Japan as they were in the west—exactly my kind of people. Hell, I was almost ready to fall in love when I dug deeper and found that "Yama Yama"'s lyrics were nonsense words—how frabjous, callooh callay! But the wind beneath my wings was an assumption, and one far more generous than I’d expected: that Yamasuki was actually a Japanese band.

Let's take a momentary detour to talk about Daniel Vangarde—musician, producer, and father of Thomas Bangalter, one of the Daft Punk duo. Despite never ascending to fame and fortune, Vangarde's career was as vast as it was varied, and Yamasuki (or the Yamasuki Singers) was just one of his diverse exploits. As this Aquarium Drunkard article details, Yamasuki was a multi-pronged concept involving a five-step dance craze and marketing graphics accompanying the LP itself, Le Monde Fableux. So far as I can tell, no one involved in this process was actually Japanese, but the associated graphics make it unsettlingly clear that the image of the Japanese Vangarde and company were selling to children was... well, I wouldn't be a zoomer if I didn't call it racist. On the surface, Le Monde Fableux certainly doesn't read as malicious or prejudiced—it has all of the well-meaning eccentricity and exoticism of western orientalism, especially for 1971—yet what I had once perceived as whimsical weirdness from a Japanese band suddenly skewed sour. What once seemed like tongue-in-cheek callbacks to one’s own ancestral culture (see Adam Ant's "Stand and Deliver" for a western analogue) now reads as somewhat condescending, as though Japan still wore its imperial face through the seventies. What once seemed like playful, Carrollian neologisms Frankenstein-ing the phonemes of one's own language to create foreign yet familiar lyrics now reads as a lazy facsimile at best; a mockery of the unknown at worst.

To be as crystal-clear as I can be: I’m not qualified to label Daniel Vangarde as a bigot. Especially considering the time, this reads as oblivious racism rather than targeted racism, yet even taking the music on its own terms, the usage of gibberish Japanese is only a pinch of deliberate mockery away from saying “Ching Chong.” Such reduction might seem far away for those of us speaking Germanic languages, but if some foreigner arbitrarily liked the aesthetic of English—the very form of my every thought, my every expression of love and creativity and agency—and created an imitation to be passed off as the real thing that just sounded like “ooga booga,” I think I’d be royally pissed… or maybe just confused. Taking inspiration from other cultures is one thing, but masquerading as a halfhearted imitation of them is another beast entirely, and even if the Yamasuki Singers crafted this beast with utmost sincerity, the magic of their music has certainly lost its luster for me. Sadly, there’s still a lot to enjoy here, and I will never claim to be the sole arbiter of what should offend people, especially without a drop of Asian blood in my veins. This is a long shot, but if any Japanese-Americans stumble across this, I’d love to hear the verdict, if there is a single one. Sometimes, prejudice sounds innocuous when it’s serious; other times, what might seem hugely offensive from the outside isn’t even a faux-pas.

Pairs Well With: "Your Racist Friend" (They Might Be Giants), "MARIACHI SYNCOPY" (Yankee Escape System), "Taiko Drumming" (Kaoru Watanabe)

ALL BECAUSE OF YOU | U2 Compared with Yamasuki, I'm not sure U2 even falls under the same definition of "guilty pleasure"—I know their "moment" has passed, and likely had passed before I was even born, but I grew up with them, no matter how cool or uncool they are. Now's about when I let Jeff Tweedy do the rest of the talking for me, though, because he's been doing what I do here but with better words and better sounds (I set a pretty low bar for those, though) over on Starship Casual. When it comes to U2, he had this to say:

"There was a period where U2 (and Bono in particular) got to be a pretty convenient and irresistible punching bag for a lot of snobs like myself. [...] They fundamentally changed people’s perceptions of what a guitar-based rock band can sound like. Which would have made them an important band even if they had chucked their instruments into the River Liffey after their first few records. They stuck together for fifty-plus years and now they’re an institution with virtually no peers. And like a lot of institutions, they’re easy to take for granted. That’s probably why they get so many punches thrown their way. Institutions get to be institutions by proving year after year that they’re able to withstand the slings and arrows of cruel criticism alongside self-inflicted missteps and embarrassments, yet still retain appreciable value."

I first remember hearing U2 at probably around the age four, and back then, I don't think I was exactly on the pulse when it came to celebrity discourse. Nevertheless, my dad was far more indie than me, so U2 were among the first voices I heard sing. Actually, it’s sort of cosmic that the first U2 song I remember is about Bono's relationship with his Dad—a strikingly more positive one than is portrayed in most music. Standout phrases like "I saw you in the curve of the moon / In the shadow cast across my room / You heard me in my tune / When I just heard confusion" stuck with me even before I knew what they meant, but I've come to really appreciate them even beyond their evocative imagery. It’s not the sort of sentiment I’d expect to be expressed with the Edge’s slashing, electric strings, and yet Bono’s belted admiration for his dad—how his dad knows him better than he knows himself, it seems—really mirrors how I’ve always felt about my own. As a kid, though, my brain liked to linger on "intellectual tortoise" (why does he say it weird?) and all of the snappy sounds in "Some people get squashed crossing the tracks / Some people got high-rises on their backs / I'm not broke but you can see the cracks / You can make me perfect again." Again, it's really quite tender for the sleek, shrieking guitars and the sharpness of Bono's voice, but then and now, these elements shoot flawlessly forward. No guilt about it, this is one of my favorite rock songs ever, from its first slap of guitar that could silence a crowd, to the sly, soundalike vocals, to the strong spirit in its lyrics. Oh, and this one gets a weird scream check, too—I'm working on a definitive ranking system, you’ll hear more soon. In the meantime, thanks to my Dad for raising me on this one.

P.S.—I swear to god there is a faint Minecraft zombie sound somewhere around 0:30. I know this song predates Minecraft by seven years. It plagues my mind.

Pairs Well With: "City of Blinding Lights" (U2), "Kool Thing" (Sonic Youth), "2020" (SUUNS)

I'm not super sure how this stuff works, but I hope Julie Buffalohead's "Blood and a Single Tree," on display now in the Denver Art Museum's Indigenous Art of North America exhibit, cancels out my Yamasuki showcase. Antiracist karma or not, I am fascinated by the variable anthropomorphization of animals in Buffalohead's work (don't take that the wrong way, though). The last time we talked about Julie Buffalohead, I’d seen her art with a convenient placard that made interpretation much easier, but when it comes to "Blood and a Single Tree," I'm a little more lost. That said, her continued motif of representing her Ponca heritage as more traditional animals and her white side as strange, human hybrids immediately lends an extra layer of eerie to this piece, if the blood-red walls weren't already doing it for you. While Trump Bobcat might initially draw viewers' attention, I'm personally fascinated by the crows etching graffiti on the walls—graffiti that, as it turns out, mirrors traditional Ponca ribbonwork. Food for thought, if nothing else.