Music Monday
Is Music Monday a thing? I don't know, but it's alliterative, so I'm going with it.
First up, a new discovery: Jeremy Dutcher and his Polaris Prize-winning debut album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwokonawa. Dutcher is a First Nations classically trained tenor, musician, and composer, whose album is sung entirely in the severely endangered language of Wolastoqey. I first heard him on NPR's All Songs Considered, and if the introductory blurb they gave him about how he'd based his album off century-old wax cylinder recordings of Wolastoqiyik songs hadn't already captured my interest, his voice certainly did. Dutcher's got a stunning, lovely voice, almost operatic, and he builds a sweeping and beautifully clear soundscape right from the start of opening song Mehcinut. What really got me though, was the moment in Mehcinut when the old wax cylinder recording first cuts in. I don't even know how to fully describe it, but it's just this absolutely transcendent moment. Knowing that Dutcher is singing his ancestors' songs, bringing his ancestors with him to the present to sing what amounts to a duet with one of them...I don't know. All I know is it gave me that rare, amazing frisson that the best music sometimes does.
Next up, an old favorite: Hozier released his long-awaited second album! It can be summarized as Sex Jams for the End of the World, however it is, technically, titled Wasteland, Baby! Please allow me to go on at length about each song below.
Nina Cried Power (feat. Mavis Staples!!!): a stirring call to action and tribute to all the activist musicians of the Civil Rights movement and onward, complete with gospel choir. This one is kind of A Lot, but like, MAVIS STAPLES.
Almost (Sweet Music): This one is another kind of throwback, with frequent references to classic love song standards sprinkled throughout the song. Reminds me of Jackie and Wilson from his debut, the same kind of good-natured, catchy blues-inflected rock and roll. Not my favorite out of the possible moods of Hozier, but it's charming enough.
Movement: I saw Hozier live last year, and this is one of the songs he played from this album, and I loved it RIGHT AWAY. Because this is a smooth as hell, slow dance SEX JAM. There is something unspeakably sexy about the lyric when you move, I'm moved the way Hozier sings it. One of my favorite verses from the whole album is from this song: you are a call to motion, there all of you a verb in perfect view. Like Jonah on the ocean, when you move, I'm moved. Anyway, here is one of my favorite performances of it, a particularly languid and sensual take.
(As an aside, Hozier puts on a great live show! I don't know why that surprised me quite so much, but I guess I wasn't expecting something quite so high energy. It was a great set though, with a perfect balance of his slower and more folky songs and his more rollicking bluesy numbers.)
No Plan: the first Sex Jam for the End of the World on the album, aka the song where Hozier basically sings "god is dead, the heat death of the universe is inevitable, let's bang." Somehow, this is simultaneously sexy, depressing, and wryly funny. Also he namedrops astrophysicist Katie Mack, which is delightful. There's no plan, there's no kingdom to come, but I'll be your man, if you've got love to get done.
Nobody: a Bop! Charming and summer-y.
To Noise Making (Sing): a joyous ode to just belting it out, whether you've got a great voice or not. You don't have to sing it nice, but honey, sing it strong. I feel like this one's gonna be fun at live shows, it's obviously made for audience participation, but it's just a bit too saccharine for my preference.
As It Was: GLORIOUSLY SPOOKY. Though, uh, weird and abrupt transition from the prior song to this one. Anyway, can't tell if Hozier's beloved baby is the eldritch creature in this song, or if it's Hozier himself, or both, but either way, I'm into it. Whatever here that's left of me, is yours just as it was. Just as it was, before the otherness came. This is lovely, dark, and deep little song, and I love it.
Shrike: I feel like only Hozier would build a love song around how he's a shrike, and his beloved is the thorn bush upon which he impales...his prey? Remember me love, when I'm reborn, as the shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn is a pretty lyric and all, but I'm honestly not sure how this metaphor holds up (what does the prey symbolize???). Still, it's a gorgeous, folky song.
Talk: Hilariously, this song is basically meant to be a fuckboy using fancy allusions to hide his unseemly dirty intentions, and yet judging by tumblr, all us Hozier fans are twirling our hair around our finger and giggling all ha ha, yeah, I totally get it. but like, fuck me?
Be: Another sex jam for the end of the world! This one gets political and sacrilegious, it's great. I love how it reframes the expulsion of humanity from Eden, turning disobedience into a rebellion and an act of love. Be the hopeful feeling when Eden was lost, and has been deaf to our laughter since the master was crossed. Which side of the wall really suffers that cost? Lover, be good to me.
Dinner & Diatribes: IT'S ABOUT PEGGING. maybe? anyway, this one had me from that excellent guitar line and four on the floor beat. a bonus is the implied pegging post-tedious social obligations. anyway, if it's NOT about pegging, then maybe Hozier will get a little huffy about it and write a song that's legit about pegging, because APPARENTLY that's kind of what happened with the song Moment's Silence (Common Tongue). Which, detour:
Moment's Silence (Common Tongue): this didn't make the album, but it was on the Nina Cried Power EP, and according to Hozier, he wrote it as something of a response to people on Genius thinking Take Me to Church was about oral sex. It was not, said Hozier! And thus did he write Moment's Silence, a song that is EXTREMELY OBVIOUSLY about oral. All of me is a prayer in perfect piety, a moment's silence when my baby puts her mouth on me. Well done, Hozier, you've written a swingy and rollicking, bluesy song about vaguely blasphemous oral.
Would That I: this one's a playful and delightfully constructed excuse for some wordplay. Hozier sets up a whole metaphor about his old loves being like trees that the fire of his new love has burned to ash, until he ends with: so in awe there I stood as you licked off the grain, though I've handled the wood, I still worship the flame, as long as amber of ember glows, all the 'would that I'd loved' is long ago. Wood that I'd loved/would that I'd loved! I love that.
Sunlight: this one's a bit too repetitive for my taste. I suspect it might be more impressive live.
Wasteland, Baby!: and here is our final sex jam for the end of the world, albeit a sweet and quiet lullaby of one.
And another bonus from the EP, which I'm sad didn't make the album: NFWMB aka Nothing Fucks with My Baby, which, uh, let's not talk about how when Hozier sings ain't you my baby? ain't you my babe, I feel SOME KIND OF WAY. Andrew Byrne-Hozier is approximately 60% responsible for why I now find the endearment baby sexy. Ugh.
This entry was originally posted at https://yasaman.dreamwidth.org/478750.html, with
comments there.
First up, a new discovery: Jeremy Dutcher and his Polaris Prize-winning debut album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwokonawa. Dutcher is a First Nations classically trained tenor, musician, and composer, whose album is sung entirely in the severely endangered language of Wolastoqey. I first heard him on NPR's All Songs Considered, and if the introductory blurb they gave him about how he'd based his album off century-old wax cylinder recordings of Wolastoqiyik songs hadn't already captured my interest, his voice certainly did. Dutcher's got a stunning, lovely voice, almost operatic, and he builds a sweeping and beautifully clear soundscape right from the start of opening song Mehcinut. What really got me though, was the moment in Mehcinut when the old wax cylinder recording first cuts in. I don't even know how to fully describe it, but it's just this absolutely transcendent moment. Knowing that Dutcher is singing his ancestors' songs, bringing his ancestors with him to the present to sing what amounts to a duet with one of them...I don't know. All I know is it gave me that rare, amazing frisson that the best music sometimes does.
Next up, an old favorite: Hozier released his long-awaited second album! It can be summarized as Sex Jams for the End of the World, however it is, technically, titled Wasteland, Baby! Please allow me to go on at length about each song below.
Nina Cried Power (feat. Mavis Staples!!!): a stirring call to action and tribute to all the activist musicians of the Civil Rights movement and onward, complete with gospel choir. This one is kind of A Lot, but like, MAVIS STAPLES.
Almost (Sweet Music): This one is another kind of throwback, with frequent references to classic love song standards sprinkled throughout the song. Reminds me of Jackie and Wilson from his debut, the same kind of good-natured, catchy blues-inflected rock and roll. Not my favorite out of the possible moods of Hozier, but it's charming enough.
Movement: I saw Hozier live last year, and this is one of the songs he played from this album, and I loved it RIGHT AWAY. Because this is a smooth as hell, slow dance SEX JAM. There is something unspeakably sexy about the lyric when you move, I'm moved the way Hozier sings it. One of my favorite verses from the whole album is from this song: you are a call to motion, there all of you a verb in perfect view. Like Jonah on the ocean, when you move, I'm moved. Anyway, here is one of my favorite performances of it, a particularly languid and sensual take.
(As an aside, Hozier puts on a great live show! I don't know why that surprised me quite so much, but I guess I wasn't expecting something quite so high energy. It was a great set though, with a perfect balance of his slower and more folky songs and his more rollicking bluesy numbers.)
No Plan: the first Sex Jam for the End of the World on the album, aka the song where Hozier basically sings "god is dead, the heat death of the universe is inevitable, let's bang." Somehow, this is simultaneously sexy, depressing, and wryly funny. Also he namedrops astrophysicist Katie Mack, which is delightful. There's no plan, there's no kingdom to come, but I'll be your man, if you've got love to get done.
Nobody: a Bop! Charming and summer-y.
To Noise Making (Sing): a joyous ode to just belting it out, whether you've got a great voice or not. You don't have to sing it nice, but honey, sing it strong. I feel like this one's gonna be fun at live shows, it's obviously made for audience participation, but it's just a bit too saccharine for my preference.
As It Was: GLORIOUSLY SPOOKY. Though, uh, weird and abrupt transition from the prior song to this one. Anyway, can't tell if Hozier's beloved baby is the eldritch creature in this song, or if it's Hozier himself, or both, but either way, I'm into it. Whatever here that's left of me, is yours just as it was. Just as it was, before the otherness came. This is lovely, dark, and deep little song, and I love it.
Shrike: I feel like only Hozier would build a love song around how he's a shrike, and his beloved is the thorn bush upon which he impales...his prey? Remember me love, when I'm reborn, as the shrike to your sharp and glorious thorn is a pretty lyric and all, but I'm honestly not sure how this metaphor holds up (what does the prey symbolize???). Still, it's a gorgeous, folky song.
Talk: Hilariously, this song is basically meant to be a fuckboy using fancy allusions to hide his unseemly dirty intentions, and yet judging by tumblr, all us Hozier fans are twirling our hair around our finger and giggling all ha ha, yeah, I totally get it. but like, fuck me?
Be: Another sex jam for the end of the world! This one gets political and sacrilegious, it's great. I love how it reframes the expulsion of humanity from Eden, turning disobedience into a rebellion and an act of love. Be the hopeful feeling when Eden was lost, and has been deaf to our laughter since the master was crossed. Which side of the wall really suffers that cost? Lover, be good to me.
Dinner & Diatribes: IT'S ABOUT PEGGING. maybe? anyway, this one had me from that excellent guitar line and four on the floor beat. a bonus is the implied pegging post-tedious social obligations. anyway, if it's NOT about pegging, then maybe Hozier will get a little huffy about it and write a song that's legit about pegging, because APPARENTLY that's kind of what happened with the song Moment's Silence (Common Tongue). Which, detour:
Moment's Silence (Common Tongue): this didn't make the album, but it was on the Nina Cried Power EP, and according to Hozier, he wrote it as something of a response to people on Genius thinking Take Me to Church was about oral sex. It was not, said Hozier! And thus did he write Moment's Silence, a song that is EXTREMELY OBVIOUSLY about oral. All of me is a prayer in perfect piety, a moment's silence when my baby puts her mouth on me. Well done, Hozier, you've written a swingy and rollicking, bluesy song about vaguely blasphemous oral.
Would That I: this one's a playful and delightfully constructed excuse for some wordplay. Hozier sets up a whole metaphor about his old loves being like trees that the fire of his new love has burned to ash, until he ends with: so in awe there I stood as you licked off the grain, though I've handled the wood, I still worship the flame, as long as amber of ember glows, all the 'would that I'd loved' is long ago. Wood that I'd loved/would that I'd loved! I love that.
Sunlight: this one's a bit too repetitive for my taste. I suspect it might be more impressive live.
Wasteland, Baby!: and here is our final sex jam for the end of the world, albeit a sweet and quiet lullaby of one.
And another bonus from the EP, which I'm sad didn't make the album: NFWMB aka Nothing Fucks with My Baby, which, uh, let's not talk about how when Hozier sings ain't you my baby? ain't you my babe, I feel SOME KIND OF WAY. Andrew Byrne-Hozier is approximately 60% responsible for why I now find the endearment baby sexy. Ugh.
This entry was originally posted at https://yasaman.dreamwidth.org/478750.html, with
comments there.