on the cusp of a breakthrough
may 2024
the cicadas emerged. did anyone else feel the onset of a minor existential crisis? glimpsing a scrap of wing on the bathroom floor or the brief flight of a triumphant adult, surveying this fresh, new world after thirteen years below deck—only to end in a puddle. their deafening, jet-engine roar portending what? pair that racket with the seemingly impossible to predict bruised-sky thunderstorms we've had and you might think the world is ending. i mean… the world is ending. i don’t understand weather anymore.
i’m open to the possibility that some might find the following section a bit navel-gazey. “just give us the playlist, malcolm,” you might be saying. fair enough. feel free to skip to fun part of the playlist. i’ll never know.
people around me questioned the point of the cicadas. i wondered myself when i witnessed the cicada-as-icarus moment described above. i’m sure they serve certain ecological functions. they must, right?
must we? my friend Alex, for instance, believes that we’re some kind of virus meant to infect the planet.1 i’m not sure that theory explains why we make music. cicadas do it to mate, which is definitely part of the appeal for the modern-day musician. but to my knowledge cicadas don’t have an entire industry built around the creation, recording, distribution, and performance of their songs. and that’s where things get tricky.
CINDY LEE canceled the rest of their tour, which rendered my trip to nyc and philadelphia a bit less purposeful, though not meaningless. the openers FREAK HEAT WAVE could only say the tour ended “for reasons beyond our control" and i haven’t seen much else by way of explanation. footage from the few concerts LEE did play was bemusing… NPR’s Meaghan Garvey described LEE’s on-stage expression as “too severe to be called shy, but deeper than disinterest. Happy? Well, no.”
ever since the announcement (and the cicadas) i’ve found myself puzzling over the link between art and suffering 🤢.
SPARKLEHORSE ended up on my 5/24 playlist by way of Katie Crutchfield’s playlist HOUSE MUSIC 🩸. the band’s leader, Mark Linkous, died by suicide in 2010. JUDEE SILL’s soaring, ornate “THE LAMB RAN AWAY WITH THE CROWN” had me singing but i laughed so hard i cried right along with her, dizzily triumphant. she died from an overdose. the first verse in Jason Molina’s song “HAMMER DOWN”—recorded under his basically-SONGS-OHIA-project MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO.2—ends with the lines: sometimes i forget how i’ve always been sick/and i don’t have the will to keep fighting it. still, there are glimpses of tender, bashful hope in the song too. i listened to PURPLE MOUNTAINS a lot this month but refrained from throwing it on the playlist to limit the despair.
all i can come up with is the recognition that making great art seems to require exposing oneself to the full spectrum of human feeling. in the case of CINDY LEE, i wonder about the way in which the art is then consumed and shared and claimed—what happens to the artist when they come to embody the complex emotional landscape contained in their music?3
shout out to Katie Crutchfield (WAXAHATCHEE) for her beautiful playlist (Spotify) featuring a range of incredible artists. i checked it out after catching her at The Ryman. WAXAHATCHEE has adoring, expectant fans, and for good reason. true to the parasociality of stardom, folks in the pews screamed and wept and begged her to never stop writing songs. she threw a “KC” trucker hat into the crowd during the opening song, “3 SISTERS”. i caught it. i briefly wore it, to feel something, and then gave it to someone who loved her more than me.4
Crutchfield owned the stage. her bassist, Eliana Athayde, sang dialed-in harmonies. JEFF TWEEDY’s son Spencer was on the drums. MJ LENDERMAN periodically shuffled onto the stage like a fifth grader giving a presentation in class. true pandemonium struck when WYNONNA JUDD and LUCINDA WILLIAMS each sang a duet with Crutchfield for the encore. talk about an endorsement. the melbourne-based opener, GOOD MORNING, swapped the lo-fi sound i typically associate with their songs for a heartfelt, buoyant set. check out their new album “GOOD MORNING SEVEN”.
NEIL YOUNG played a few days later, and actually postponed due to those pesky thunderstorms. my parents and i schlepped down to the FirstBank Amphitheater, which i will forever call the Poor Man’s Red Rocks.5 he opened with “CORTEZ THE KILLER” and the rest was kind of a done deal. humongous sound coming from a humble four-piece band. a surfeit of guitar solos from a seemingly tireless 78-year-old YOUNG. a stretch of solo acoustic songs in the middle of the set. i overheard more than one person say they could die happy having heard YOUNG play “VAMPIRE BLUES”.
i wonder if artists with careers like WILLIAMS and YOUNG serve as a kind of counterpoint to the notion that artistry and tragedy are inevitably intertwined; that bright flames always burn out quick. maybe longevity demands its own sacrifices and compromises. maybe NEIL’s kind of a dick in person, maybe he’s impenetrable. maybe he’s blissed out. i pictured him finishing the second encore and wordlessly walking back to the fleet of tour buses i glimpsed on my way in, unfeeling, workmanlike, settling in for well-earned sleep. who knows. LUCINDA WILLIAMS is an oft-referenced north star for some of today’s most effective songwriters, like WAXAHATCHEE, who covered “FRUITS OF MY LABOR” on “SAINT CLOUD +3”, and ADRIANNE LENKER and BUCK MEEK, who apparently just had a co-writing session with their BIG THIEF bandmates and WILLIAMS. i much prefer connecting artistry with survival.
SUN KIL MOON’s searching, dreamlike fourteen-minute song “ONE DAY IN MAY” works its way toward a similar kind of meditation on longevity, on persistence; on intimate connections, new connections, creative idols, etc. it’s a shame Mark Kozelek is a creep.
FUN PART OF THE PLAYLIST
clear vibe shift (for the most part, i’ll never fully be rid of sad songs) with “BOYS”, a track off of AMEN DUNES’ new album “DEATH JOKES”. maybe the weather finally warmed up. maybe Amanda Petrusich’s pieces on DUA LIPA and OLIVIA RODRIGO, highlighting each woman for their respective brands of maximally pleasurable megapop made an impression on me. so, i give you YOUTH LAGOON’s BLUE NILE fever dream “LUCY TAKES A PICTURE”; all of CRUMB’s new album “AMAMA”, but especially “GENIE”; CHARLI XCX not being bothered by anything; BILLIE’s horned-up “LUNCH”; DUA LIPA’s effortlessly cool “FRENCH EXIT”; and (holy shit why did nobody tell me about her?) CHAPPELL ROAN.
i can’t forget HOLLY HUMBERSTONE, who kicked off her tour at Basement East and opened the set with “PAINT MY BEDROOM BLACK”. everyone’s favorite quirked up dude MEDIUM BUILD came out for “COCOON” wearing a green wig. at great personal cost i missed a CRYSTAL EGG/JOE’S TUBATORIUM show at Rosie’s Twin Kegs to see KARA JACKSON and JOY OLADOKUN at (should i be putting this in bold???) Soho House. it was worth enduring the strangeness of that place pantomiming as a music venue to see OLADOKUN sing with big-stage energy to a room of maybe twenty people. in the middle of her song “LOOK UP”, with eyes closed, she began playing “BLACKBIRD”, beautifully and possibly in a nod to BEYONCÉ’s important rendition of the song. i actually had to check and make sure OLADOKUN wasn’t one of the singers featured on BEYONCÉ’s version.
i felt pretty chuffed to be closing the playlist out on a high note. and then i regressed and got around to talking to a friend about shoegaze—a label that nowadays feels liberally deployed and often misapplied.
we reminisced on DEERHUNTER (i know, shoegaze came around way before they did) and wondered why they haven’t released anything since 2019. i went on a mission to listen to all of their songs and indulged in some of their best (“HE WOULD HAVE LAUGHED”, “VOX CELESTE”). “NITEBIKE” was a new song for me and an affecting one. the lyrics felt so perfectly relevant to the gauntlet of professional musicianship that i couldn’t quite believe it. but it be like that sometimes.
waiting in line for beers at The Blue Room, my friend meaghan asked me for my top show this month. we were about to see BUCK MEEK play; JOLIE HOLLAND had just finished her set, where normal, english words shapeshifted under the spell of her otherworldly voice. i wagered that it was going to be BUCK. sorry NEIL and WAXAHATCHEE.6 i was right. if you weren’t there, i sure am sorry you missed guitarist ADAM BRISBIN do things on a Telecaster that, as BUCK said when they came out for the (four song!) encore, “may not be legal in Nashville”. it was lickfest 3000. two of the best indie rock guitarists sharing the stage, their guitars breathing life out onto the crowd and my empty beer can rattling in my hand all the while. listen to any guitar solo on BUCK’s album “HAUNTED MOUNTAIN”, but especially BRISBIN’s solo on “CUERO DUDES”, to get a feel for the way these guys create a delirious, gasping space between the dissonant and distorted notes they manage to find on the neck. i’d like to see their pedalboards. they played a handful of unreleased songs (“OUT OF BODY”) and by the end, when the houselights finally came on, BUCK smiled and said: “i want to remember everyone’s faces.”
they don’t do $4 40s in the big apple. and i didn’t find any backyard pools in philly. it’s summer in nashville. let it rip.
SHOWS IN MAY: WAXAHATCHEE / HOLLY HUMBERSTONE / NEIL YOUNG / CINDY LEE / KARA JACKSON & JOY OLADOKUN / REAL ESTATE / BUCK MEEK / ANNIE WILLIAMS + SHRUNKEN ELVIS + STYROFOAM WINOS
SHOWS IN JUNE: SOCCER MOMMY / MEDIUM BUILD / UMBRELLAS + ORNAMENT / wait why so few shows??? / whatever you invite me to
thanks Eli Motycka for helping me edit this
Alex also tried to start a religion called zig-zag
and produced by Steve Albini, rip
says the guy with a music blog
as part of my lifelong apology campaign for not giving it to the man who brought me to the concert, Tyler King, i want to say sorry again. i should have given it to you. let the record show i’m a dumbass. Tyler is a fucking huge WAXAHATCHEE fan.
just kidding it’s actually pretty beautiful, NEIL said so himself (“pretty nice place you got here”)
ANNIE WILLIAMS’ album release lovefest at Soft Junk might actually be a close second. felt like a big hang with a bunch of friends cheering on one of the kindest, most genuine singer-songwriters we’ve got in Nashville. and she jumped her dirtbike. make sure you listen to her album “VISITOR”. it’s special.
i'm just happy to be included