NPR Music - Laufey, Fiona Apple, Lord Huron, more: The Contenders, Vol. 11

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

We've got another update to our running list of the year's best songs with the return of Fiona Apple, Laufey, deep reflections from Lord Huron and more.Featured artists and songs:1. Fiona Apple: "Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)" (single)2. Jerskin Fendrix: "SK1" (single)3. Lord Huron: "Looking Back," from 'The Cosmic Selector, Vol. 1'4. Eph See: "Malachi The Uber Driver" (Tiny Desk Contest entry)5. Kacy Hill: "Please Don't Cry" (single)6. Laufey: "Tough Luck," from 'A Matter Of Time''All Songs Considered' 25th anniversary segment: Our No. 1 songs from 2013Weekly reset: Neighborhood birds on a spring morningEnjoy the show? Share it with a friend and leave us a review on Apple or wherever you listen to podcasts. Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] Hear new songs from past episodes in the All Songs Considered playlists in Apple Music and Spotify.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

How are you doing, Sheldon? Let me get a level on you here. I'm doing, uh, okay, I think. The enthusiasm is staggering. That's, uh, that's about, that's about the best I can muster. Is that the best you can do? Yeah. I gotta be honest, it's hard sometimes not to think that we live in just the dumbest time. Um, I think we, we literally do.

I don't think that, I think there's more an argument for than it gets at this point. Facts matter. I, uh, I thought this can't just be. the grumpy old man syndrome that my wife is certain I suffer from. Yeah, I mean, it always seems like there are fresh horrors. I think that's probably been true through most of history. I think what we're experiencing now, though, is like fresh horrors that it feels like we don't need to be experienced. And as a result, it's like, this is really, really, the avoidability of so much of it is what makes it exceedingly dumb. It makes me think of that onion essay, guest essay from This has been years ago, but the headline was you learn something new and depressing every day.

Yeah. And the whole angle of it is sort of like, wow, you just can't imagine. How many depressing things, you know, no matter how much, how many depressing things you learn, there's still something new and depressing. Just when you think you've seen it all, there's another one around the corner. Is the first song that we're going to play on your mind in this? Yeah, actually it is because there are so many things in it. that if you think about for very long, become very, very maddening.

Yeah, the first song's already one of my favorites of the year. It's by Fiona Apple. Her first song, in five years, it's called Pre-Trial. It's about the cruelty and stupidity of the cash bail system. They wouldn't let her. They wouldn't let her. They wouldn't let her go home. They wouldn't let her go home.

They wouldn't let her go home. her go home. They wouldn't let her go home. And now there's no more home. On extra shifts, still couldn't pay the bail. No danger, no flight risk, but she will stay in jail. She was not convicted of anything. She was not convicted of anything. Won't you let her go home? Won't you let her go home? Won't you let her go home? She's got two kids And grandma needs her care

Who packed the lunch you give meds If she's in jail not there They already took the only daddy That they ever had Shot him then put a gun near him That he never had Wouldn't let him go home Wouldn't let him go home

So rents passed two And grandma took a fall The kids been missing school to see her at the hospital When the teacher saw that they were not in school again today She called CPS and CPS and took the kids away Wouldn't let them go home wouldn't let them go home Inside the news hits hard She's never been more alone

Can't afford a new phone card besides nobody's home Shame and isolation, economic deprivation. And there's no more home. Hearing short. Only witnesses the cop. He doesn't even show in court. And all the charges get drop.

One of all the fuck. I mean, it's all that line. They wouldn't let her go home. And now there's no home to go to. It is just absolute insanity. Yeah. And it was informed by real. life experience, Fiona Apple spent over two years attending bail hearings in Prince George's County,

Maryland as a court watcher. And she volunteered with the Free Black Mama's DMV campaign, which rages money to bring people home from jail. The song ends up being this like amalgamation of the experience she's seen over and over and over again, where women, especially black women, who are caretakers for others are then sort of criminalized for being poor. They are charged with the crime, and even though you're presumed innocent, you end up in a situation where you can't pay bail. As a result, the dominoes of your life start falling apart. And then by the time you are released, everything is in chaos and you have to start

picking up the pieces again. Yeah. So, you know, my first thought when I saw the Fiona Apple had a new song out and when I saw what the song was about, I thought, wow, that is so specific. The cash bail system, and, you know, and it's honestly not the first thing that comes to mind when I think about writing a song about injustice in the world. Right. But basically it ends up containing the whole world. Yeah, yeah.

I think that's what's really beautiful about it. It's not just about the cruelty and stupidity of the cash bail system itself, which is inherent to the process as she runs through the way that it destroys this woman's life. It's also just about the ways in which classism can, like, crush a person. And you get a sense of just how excruciating it can be and how much of an impact it can have on people. Well, this was one of the great surprises in the last couple of weeks to get new music from Fiona Apple. You know, she's one of those artists who so much time can go between releases. You never quite know if, all right, well, maybe that's the last, we're going to, you know, And that's okay.

It's because it's been a great run and we've gotten so much great stuff. And then every time she pops up, every five, six, seven, sometimes eight years was something new. In this case, it's been five years since she released. Fetch the bolt cutters. Yeah, fetch the bolt cutters. And you want to know what she's been doing for the last five years? Being a court watcher, yeah. Being a court watcher.

Well worth the wait. And I will always be standing by whenever she's ready to put more music out into the world. If it's five years before the next one, I will wait. patiently. Shelton, do you ever see that movie Poor Things that came out about a year and a half ago? I had not seen it. That Yorgos Lanthamos film had Emma Stone in it. A very weird movie, and I didn't like it as much as a lot of my friends did. I like Yorgos Lantamos work a lot, but that one I didn't

like it. I was about his movies are weird movies. However, one thing I did love about that movie is its score written by Jerskin Fendrix. Jerskin Fendrix is someone who was putting out music, his own solo. work, you know, before he got into film scoring. He had a debut album in 2020 called Winter Iza. And Jerskin is back with more music of his own, some solo work. He's put out a couple of singles so far this year. The latest one is the one that I want to play. It's called SK1. And it's a song that honestly, for like the first minute or so that I was listening to it, I wasn't entirely sure

about it, but I stuck with it. And man, does it pay off? Again, it's called SK1. It's time to leave the party. Charge my drool, finish off the bailies. Fopar in my friend's apartment. Wake up, exit through the garden, but I'll change my mind about you now. The place he takes that song is just blows me away. You know, I'm not always a fan of that sort of bassy sort of speak-singing style that he starts off with.

And I think if he just camped out there, I probably wouldn't have fallen for the song as much as I have. But the contrast between that and the noise that he brings in is just incredible. Yeah, I was going to say, I would have been surprised that you brought this. to the show otherwise. This doesn't normally seem like you're jam, but I do agree that it's really the dynamic shifts that make it. The lyrics, when you key into them,

are so abstract, so weird. I believe that you're an artist pregnant with a shelf of hardbacks. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think whoever the narrator is in this song that says Jerskin is very conflicted, and there's a lot of clouded thinking going on in this song. I really honed in on the party that he said that he was at and where some sort of faux pa was committed.

Yeah. And he's just, he's thinking, okay, well, it's time for me to go. Yeah. And I just let me, you know, charge up my vape pen here. And I'll finish just Bailey's real quick. And then, but like, what happened at the party exactly? And, you know, there's something kind of, I don't know, a little unsettling about it all. But I guess I'm always a sucker for the kind of song that gets you trapped in that kind of thinking where there's no real clear way out.

I like ambiguity. Yeah. Well, Jerskin Fendrix, he does have a full album coming out at some point. We don't have a lot of details on it yet. But he, you know, in addition to the poor things score, he did a couple more Yorgos Lantamos films. He did kinds of kindness. I think that came out last year. And there's another one coming up called Bogonia that the Internet tells me.

coming out maybe in the fall. All right, keep listening. We've got a new cut from Levee coming up along with Lord Huron and some more tunes. Plus, we look back at our number one songs from 2013. That's part of our 25th anniversary retro we've been doing, plus your weekly reset.

All of that's coming up. You know, Sheldon, if you like this show, did you know that you could share it with a friend? I did know that. Yeah, you could share it with a friend. Send it to somebody who you think might enjoy this. Or, you know, at least tell them about it. You can also leave us a review in Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts.

But what else do you got? Well, Rahman, I did want to ask you something. Have you ever sort of had a band that existed on the periphery of your musical listening? And you know that they exist. All of them. Well, I mean, you know that they exist. And you're sort of keyed into the idea of other people being into this artist. But you've never sort of given them any time.

And then suddenly you're like sucked into their orbit randomly and you have you have this greater appreciation for what they are. Oh, yeah, all the time. And some big ones too. First one that comes to mind is like Bob Dylan. Everybody loved Bob Dylan. I couldn't listen to Bob Dylan. And then I had a moment with Bob Dylan.

And I totally got pulled into Bob Dylan's world. And yeah. I mean, that's kind of how I've been feeling about Lord Huron lately. The band's been around for almost a decade and a half now, maybe almost two decades now, actually. and I had sort of heard people were fans of this band. It was completely passing me by. And it wasn't until I saw the tour announcement

in which bands that I was very familiar with were opening for them. Right. Waxahatchee, Indigo DeSuzza, S.G. Goodman. And they're playing venues like Madison Square Garden and Maryweather Post Pavilion. And it's like, oh, this is a big band a lot of people like this band.

Oh, yeah. And then all of a sudden I'm like, okay, so what is it about this band that people like? And I heard their new song and I get it. The new one is called Looking Back. I think this is a pretty Lord Hurony kind of song. I'm wondering what finally broke loose for you. Yeah, I think it's sort of the displaced sense of time,

the way it's like sort of written like a little fable. It seems to unspool in so many different directions. It isn't just like this quiet, almost whimsical sound, but the way that it's like drawing you into the center of it, it's structured so carefully, so precisely, that you can only be sort of obsessed with the details. Yeah, yeah. And I think it has a theme that kind of is through this whole album, right?

That it's from the album, Cosmic Selector, Volume 1. And that is the idea or the question of what your life would look like if you had simply made different choices. Yeah. Yeah, I think what's really interesting is the way that the verses seem to not only, like, build out different directions that this life could have taken, but there's also sort of an interplay between them, like in the first verse, he's like, you know, if I get a little money, I'd set myself aside, I'm going to this quiet place, and I'm going to stay there out of the way,

just think by myself. And then verse two comes and he's like, you know, being in a quiet place is not really for me. It hasn't worked out. I spent all my money on weed. And now I'm looking for a noisy place that I can drink and sort of have that drowned out my thoughts. Yeah. And the chorus is going back and forth. It's like he spent his whole life looking back wondering who he was.

And then he spent his whole life looking up wondering who he is. And both phases, it's like something, somebody else shifted the trajectory of his life. I mean, it's that whole idea you can't escape yourself. Yeah. You can go to the cabin in the woods, the mountaintop, or go to the noisy city or whatever. But wherever you go there, you are, you're still stuck with yourself. You've got to be with you anywhere you go. So this is Cosmic Selector Volume 1.

It's out July 18th. Have you heard anything? So it's this part of a package? There's going to be a volume two. I think there's supposed to be a second volume. I like the music on this one a lot. I'm curious to see how much further they can take the concept. Well, again, that is volume one of the cosmic selector from Lord Huron,

and that is out July 18th. Well, Sheldon, you probably saw that we just announced the winner of this year's Tiny Desk contest, a rapper and spoken word artist from the Bay Area named Ruby Abara. Everyone should go and check out her entry. she's an incredible artist we all loved her entry so much but you know we got thousands of entries this year it was a record year in fact

did you see we got nearly 7,500 I do keep in mind that's 7,500 videos to watch it was just a staggering number of entries but as we go through them there are so many entries that grab us

even if they don't go on to win the contest and we do feature some of them in a YouTube series we do along the way called Top Shelf. Anyway, there was one in particular from this year's contest that I have been wanting to play on the show because I did love it so much. It's by a singer named FC. They're from Boston and the song that they send in is called Malachi the Uber Driver. I cannot tell you how many times I have ugly cried to this song and not because it's sad but because it is just so beautiful and I was, you know, thinking, I should I play it on the show. And if the contenders' episodes are about the songs that we love so much they could end up

on the best of the year, if it's not a song that can wreck me like this song does, then I don't know what it would be. They only wrote this song a couple weeks before sending it in, so they actually don't have an official, you know, like a studio recording of it or anything. It's never been officially released. So this is the audio from their actual entry. So you're going to hear FC at the top here introducing the song. One, two, they, and. Hello Tiny Desk. My name is FC and this song is called Malachi the Uber Driver. Inspired by Malachi the Uber Driver who inspired me one night. Malachi the Uber driver picks me up half path.

I just had the time of my life and he just spent. The whole night Think of what driver jokes and says He's world wide He only drives to pass the time And I believe him He calls me to strive But don't make a time

If they do, that's fine They're still rented pain not to mention the hatred it's all in your face I guess what I'm saying is Malachi the Uber driver were not so different you and I both had tough times in grades four and five and took to art to eat These are minds you told me about your grandma and how she would send you our supplies to try out then it slowly became about business and fame and you weren't any good unless folks knew your name and if you're not any good It is well quit

Even if the pen keeps you From flitting your wrist And it's a sick Chyther's all could be love Thank you so much, Tiny Desk I don't know Maybe we don't live in the stupidest time ever Where somebody can

Have that kind of clarity of thought And have a moment like that Where the whole universe opens up to them In a Uber ride Yeah You know, we talk a lot on the show about big ideas and small moments, and that's certainly something that's happening in this song. But really, it's about unity. You know, we live in a world with a lot of

divisions, and here FC is in this moment and song, taking note of the similarities between them and their driver, finding real and lasting and meaningful connections with the people around them that are otherwise very easy to ignore, as FC even says at the top of the song, they were out having the time of their lives while Malachi, the Uber driver is just spending all of his time being ignored. Yeah, I mean, when I first hit play on this, I was like, this is a Robin Hilton song, if I've ever heard one. This is right up your alley.

But I totally see what you're seeing in this. It's so fragile and yet so strong, so resilient at the same moment. at the same moment. It has that quality where you feel like you can see the whole world in an instant. You are drawn into this very small, very intimate, very familiar scene. But in this moment, they find this captivating connection, this love of art that has pulled them in. For FC, it's like a passion that they are still pursuing for the Uber driver. it's this thing that exists on the outside of their life now

because they find that they can't make it work that connecting with a larger audience is not possible and therefore it's not worth doing and FC finds themselves trying to communicate with this person the love of the thing itself. A friend of mine was complaining recently, he's a musician and he wishes he was playing in a band again and he's like, I'm all rig, no gig.

And I said, you know what, man, the rig is the gig. Yeah. The rig is the gig. If you're not enjoying the rig by itself without the gig, then I don't know. You got to do it for the love first before anything else. All right, I still have that levy cut that I want to play, but Sheldon, I think you've got one more cut you want to play. Yeah, I want to play something from the artist Casey Hill. Casey Hill. I've been following Casey Hill since she was the most random outlier on the good music label.

She only released one record on the label, but she has self-released, really beautiful indie pop music since then, up until the last album bug, which was released in 2024. And now she's making a pretty dramatic sonic shift with her new music. It started in March with the single When in Rome, which was more of a folk Americana sounding song. And she has continued that with her new single. It's called Please Don't Cry. I pick up in a daydream, autumnly and green tea tea is a formal month this week. And I'm thinking about They hold me

We're just in time I'm watching from the glass I'm back inside To let him die And dad is sick I'll try not to Yeah I mean that's really lovely And I have to tell you

It is such a departure For her That when I was doing a little research I thought, is there another Casey Hill? Maybe I've got the wrong Casey Hill Is this the same Casey Hill who was like she was on a Travis Scott cut, right? And Boni Vair and when I think of like that album, she had 2020s, is it selfish if we talk about me again?

Right. It's almost like 80 synth pop or something. Like where did this come from? It's a complete left turn. I mean, every time I listen to this song, I'm like, how could this be? Yeah, this is like straight up like a little bit of Laurel. Canyon, like Americana Folk. Yeah.

Wild. The shock of it is that it is so incredibly competent and beautiful. It sounds like something she's been practiced in for like 10 years. It's like completely out of left field and yet so, so fully embodied. I mean, I'm no audiophile, but the mix on this record is crazy. And then thematically, I think this song, it reminded me a little bit of the Lord Huron, actually, kind of gets into some of those. ideas of thinking about your past.

Yeah. You know, the person you used to be, the person you want to be, and sort of how much our present and future, how much those things are controlled by our past. Like, you know, sort of fate versus free will or, you know, are we sort of destined to be who we are because of who we used to be? Yeah. Well, this is a really beautiful direction for her to take her music. And as you say, it works so well.

The song, Please Don't Cry. Let's get to that Leve cut that I know you've been dying to talk about because you're such a huge Levei fan. Well, you're not. And we can talk more about why you're not and what works and what doesn't work in Leve's music. But, you know, I think she is not an artist that is easy to sum up with any one label. She gets labeled with a lot of different things, jazz singer, crooner, you know, someone who draws on the American Great American Songbook, you know, all those sorts of labels. I think those are all labels that she would like to get away from. And I think on this new song, an album that Levei has coming up, you can hear her pushing back against all of that and pushing further and further away from it.

The album is called A Matter of Time. The song is called Tough Luck. Just try to follow the very subtle shift that Levei makes from where she starts the song and where she ends the song. tell that you're tired. Your eyes turn gray. You beg me to be sad. You said I can't read your mind, but I'm reading it just fine. You think you're so mid the black. Oh, look, my boy, your time is up. I'll break it first. I've had enough of waiting and cheat, just like you Did actress before She doesn't Even though

Does your mother eat just two feet Go when you're screaming at the Cussing out opposing foot As a listener, you know what you are? As a listener as you're taking this song in, You're the frog in the pot of water And she, you don't realize you're getting boiled alive Until the end of the song

Because she eases you into it so perfectly Like the first minute of the song, getting everything that people think of with Leve's music, you know, a little bit of jazz, the Great American Songbook, all that. She's crooning so beautifully, a little bit of Broadway. But then comes in an acoustic guitar, an acoustic guitar kind of chugging. And then about a minute after that, then now you're getting electric guitar, and it's starting the chug. And she's just pushing it and pushing it until the very end. I love this so much. Yeah, I think this is playing with the idea of her sound in a very interesting way.

To your point, it does feel like pushing back a little bit against the narrative of her music, which I do think the narrative is true. There is a sense that I think a lot of her songs were a bit displaced from time, very evocative of the standards that we're used to. Is that what drive you crazy about it? Yeah, it's very much like, I think I was,

a bit put off by how practiced and deferential it seemed to history. It very much. I mean, it's like too perfect? It's very much, it felt like an homage to the past in a way that didn't feel very forward-looking to me. But I think this record feels quite the opposite. I think this is a very smart and perfectly executed, move on her part. You know, I haven't heard the full album yet,

but it's not hard for me to imagine her moving more and more in this direction to the point where, you know, like in a couple of years, her sound might be completely unrecognizable from what it is now. Yeah. You're not on social media very much,

so you may be okay as far as the Leve fans go. I don't want smoke with the Leve fans. Let me just put that out there. I think she's very talented. I see what they see. her. It just has not been for me up until this point. Let me tell you something. I went to go see Ben Folds play at the Kennedy Center and Doty was going to be performing with him. And I noticed while I was sitting in the audience, wow, there sure are a lot of young people here. That's amazing.

Wow, Ben Folds really finding a new audience. He's been around a long time. That's incredible. Good for him. And at some point, he's on stage and he says, all right, well, look, I've been up here long enough. I think I know why everyone's here. And everyone just freaks out. Everyone's just screaming. I'm like, what is happening? And he's like, okay, you've waited long enough. Here she is. Leveh. And the crowd was out of its mind. It was like when the Beatles came to America. I mean, it was complete freak out. I get it. Like, and I think it's admirable that she's been able to connect her own reverence for these forms with a music that has reached. so many people. Well, you're going to have to wait a little while until the whole album comes out

because it is not out until August 22nd, which I cannot believe we're already talking about albums coming out at the end of August. It goes by so fast. But Sheldon Pierce, thanks so much for hanging out and sharing all these great tunes. It's always a pleasure. Always a great time, Robin. So as I mentioned, we've been celebrating the 25th anniversary of all songs considered by looking back at some of the songs that define the show over the years. We've been doing a different year at the end of the show each week. And Stephen Thompson back here again to talk about 2013. We're up to 2013.

Hey, Stephen. Hello, Robin. So 2013, another great year for music. There are so many things that we could pick, but what's the first thing that you think to reach for? I'm going to go right here. Well, I know it's Casey Musgraves, and I remember the song very well, but I cannot for the life when we come up with the name. If you save yourself from marriage, you're... Follow your error.

Follow your error. Second before she said it. Really, that's incredible, Robin. Your powers of recognition. It's encyclopedic. One of the reasons why I hate playing this name that tune game is because it just... It exposes all the cobwebs. I've forgotten so much, and I'm so terrible with names.

But, yeah, Casey Musgraves and this, you know, and obviously an artist who's gone on to be very near and dear to our hearts. Yeah, this was one of the first singles from same trailer, different park, her big breakthrough record. She went on to win album of the year at the Grammys. She went on to basically become an A-Lister, put out a great record called Deeper Well just last year. But this was the record that put her on the map.

And, I mean, having a country singer singing a song where it's basically, you know, kiss lots of boys, kiss lots of girls, I don't care. Right, yeah, yeah. felt, you know, in 2013 was a fairly revolutionary sentiment coming from a, you know, from a mainstream country singer, kind of trying to make a breakthrough as a country artist. And I remember a couple years later, when Oberfell, the Supreme Court decision, legalized same-sex marriage, that decision came down the day Casey Musgraves was playing the tiny desk. Wow. And she played that song with her band, and we kind of put it out as a freestanding, here's what we were

listening to, you know, as that decision was handed. down. And so this was my favorite album of 2013. I completely loved it. What, you know, what a song. Well, I want to pick something that is also from what I think ended up being a breakout album for an artist who had already had one self-titled album out before this one, but this is the one that I think really sort of solidified their position as a sort of a mega talent. This is James Blake. Yes, this is retrograde. So he had had had that. self-titled album out,

uh, whatever a couple years before this one. But yeah, overgrown to me is the, is peak James Blake. His voice could not be more perfect. More, it's like crystalline.

It's warm. It's resonant. He's just crooning. But with real emotion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not just a perfect voice. It's a perfect voice that is taking you someone. And this was a song I remember when it came out. I could go very, deep in talking about all the things happening in this song. You know, like, you know, thematically and sonically, retrograde is when an object appears to be moving in the opposite direction of the other objects around it.

And, you know, in this song, when he goes high on the chorus, the music has this falling thing. So they're moving in opposite directions. But this song, and it's an incredible video for this song, too, that people should check out. But there were so many other things I could have picked from this year. I thought about going with a look, the sun is rising by the flaming,

lips because you, from their album, The Terror, because the Terror was 2013. Because you gave me so much grief for how much I love that, that song. You were obsessed. I absolutely obsessed with that song at the time. And I still love it. But, yeah, we'll go out on this retrograde from James Blake. And until next time, thanks, Stephen. Thank you, Robin.

And for NPR Music, I'm Robin Hilton. It's all songs considered.