NPR Music - The Contenders, Vol. 19: The songs we can't stop playing this week

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

We debate the pros and cons of small-town living through the music of Christian Lee Hutson, Youth Lagoon, Bartees Strange and more in our biweekly update of the year's best songs.Featured artists and songs:1. Christian Lee Hutson: "Carousel Horses," from Paradise Pop. 102. Youth Lagoon: "My Beautiful Girl" (single)3. Memorials: "Cut It Like A Diamond," from Memorial Waterslides4. Bartees Strange: "Sober," from Horror5. Sam Phillips: "I Wanted To Be Alone," from A Boot And A Shoe (20th anniversary edition)6. Immanuel Wilkins: "MOTION" (feat. June McDoom) from Blues BloodEnjoy the show? Tell a friend and leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.Questions, comments, suggetions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] 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

Sheldon, would you say you're a country mouse or a city mouse? Uh, you know, probably more towards city mouse. Yeah. You ever feel like just saying, that's it, I'm done, you know, and just moving out? I think I have this sort of idealic fantasy of the cabin in the woods and like being off to yourself and spending your time with records all day, every day and tuning out the outside world. Yeah, I'd love to get it. a cabin in the woods. And I told my kids and my wife that none of them are interested. And I said, well, you don't have to be there. It's funny. My wife and I, so, you know, I grew up in this real

remote area of Kansas and rural Kansas. And we used to drive back for visits all the time. And she's a real city mouse. She hated going to Kansas. But there was this donut shop in my old hometown. And one time we went back for a visit. And there was a for sale sign in the window when we thought, You know what? We could just cash out of this whole DC thing, buy this donut shop, and just live a nice, calm, quiet life, making donuts and living in this little town. You know, we totally over-romanticized that idea. I'm actually getting to music here, believe it or not, because there's this new album from Christian Lee Hudson that is inspired by a really small town and the idea of, of kind of being who you really want to be and, you know, like, how you think that, well, maybe if, maybe if I just get away from this life and go live in this little remote area, I can finally have the life that I've always wanted. This new album, it's called Paradise Pop 10, and Pop Stans for Population. So Paradise, Population 10, it's named after this town called Paradise in Indiana. More on all of that, and this music after we hear some from it. This is the noisiest track from the album, and this song is called, carousel horses. So the story that Christian Lee Hudson tells is that when he was a kid in Indiana,

his dad would drive him to this town called Paradise, mostly just for the novelty of the sign that was outside the city limits, the city limits that announced the town, it said Paradise, Pop 10. And he says that on one side of the road were five houses. On the other side of the road was a graveyard. And I really, really want to believe that that's true. Yeah. And to this point, about retreating to this place and starting a new life, there's an idea there that it is disconnected from everything else, that it is sort of a safe haven or a refuge from everything else. Yeah.

And as a result, it's like its own place. As someone who spent the first half of his life in small town, I mean, I get, it's definitely its own bubble, living in a really small remote area. And you do feel very disconnected sometimes from what's happening and the rest of the world. But you actually enjoy it. You're like, I'm very happy to not be, you know, connected in any way to all of that

because that's why I'm here. Right. I want to get away from all of that. Yeah, and that's the appeal, really, to be able to get away. So all these ideas came to Christian Lee Hudson when he was working on the album because apparently his dad would say to him when they'd see this town of paradise. He'd say, I don't know, man, maybe if things just get too crazy for us, we could move to paradise, this little town, and finally live the lives that we were meant to live.

And on this album and in this song, and Christian Lee Hudson explores the idea of who are we supposed to be and how do we get there. Speaking of ideas about small town versus city, one of my favorite albums of last year was Youth Lagoon's Heaven is a junkyard. Youth Lagoon is the project of Trevor Powers who grew up in Boise, Idaho. And the album sort of draws on his relationship to home. But there's a new song called My Beautiful Girl that sort of plays into that even more. We want to hear. what else you have to say about what this is about? Because I was really moved by this song,

but I don't think it was for any of the reasons why Trevor Powers wrote it. You know what I mean? It's like it really hit me, but I don't think it hit me for any of the reasons that maybe he would have intended for it. Yeah, so it's interesting. He said that there was a near ghost town

in western Idaho called Idaho City, about 30 minutes from where he lives. And he would go there to swim in the river and pray and be alone in the country, quote unquote. And he found a gravestone that was dried over with weeds that simply said, my beautiful girl. It didn't have a name on it. Oh, wow. He didn't have a date. And he was overcome by the idea of this marker of love.

And he was wondering who this beautiful girl was. And so he opened up and wrote this song. there's like a incandescence to it, I would say. And a sweetness, too. And I think the sweetness and a little bit of playfulness. Yeah. So I think there were a few things that were kind of playing on how I received this song. One, it's very sweet.

Yeah. Two, it's a little playful. Yeah. Three, it's got those sort of found sounds and almost like home recordings that bookend it. And then, of course, it's called My Beautiful Girl. I thought this was written for a daughter, like a young daughter. And, you know, from best I can tell, he's not a dad. Yeah, he's not a parent.

But it really struck me in that way. And it's just how I imprinted on the song because I have a young daughter. And it really just tapped into those feelings in a really beautiful way. But I love that story, how he found that. That's wild. I think your idea of the song sort of connects directly to his idea of the song. I mean, it could be. The idea of that monument that my beautiful girl is it could be about anybody.

It could be about a lover. It could be about a daughter. It could be about a sister. And I like that in its sort of abstractness, there are also like these very specific images. in this song, like a dollar store rubber Jesus on the mantle and mom screaming, but dad being deaf and not being able to hear the screen door,

presumably, like, they're arguing about that. This is all very small town Midwestern here. To the previous point about him, like, resonating with your image of the country mouse life and, like, being home, it is in that sort of title of Heaven is a junkyard. But I think the whole point and purpose of the song is to just sort of be in awe of the broad strokes power of love, the way that it can connect people even after somebody is lost, and the way that you don't have to know it by name to feel it. So my beautiful girl, it's just a single, one-off single right now from Youth Lagoon. I haven't heard anything about a new album, maybe.

I haven't either, but I'm hoping. Was it just last year? Yeah. Oh, okay. I mean, he had been away from the project for six years. So any new Youth Lagoon music is welcome. So we've been talking a lot about spooky season on the show this month because it is spooky season. Sheldon, is this, do you like get into this time of year?

I know some people really hate it, but do you, do you? I wouldn't say I'm overly invested in it. I do love, you put that. I'm not overly invested in Halloween. I do love a great horror movie. Oh, okay. I am a fan of spooky things. I just don't feel the need to invest in them seasonally.

Well, if you haven't already, you need to hear the episode, Hazel and I did just this past week on horror movie scores. A lot of good stuff in there. I have really fallen for this debut album from a duo called Memorials that I think fits really perfectly with this time of year, the short days, the chilly nights. It's kind of creepy, kind of moody in all the best ways. You know, even when this band is in a deep groove, I think they've got that nice kind of moodiness to them. We can talk more about the band and the music after we hear a cut from them.

Again, Memorials is the band. This is a song called Cut It Like a Diamond, and it's from their album, their debut album, called Memorial Water Slides. Like a diamond, chop in the knives, we'll get things ready. And then forget to go. Oh, it's a lot of... Moment when everything drops out in the song,

you think maybe it's over, and then that sax kicks in. Yeah. Oh, so many wild, weird sounds across this album. You heard a little bit of them on this cut. So good from this band Memorials. Yeah, such a crazy song. To your point about the spookiness,

there's, like, definitely something almost, like, Phantom of the operae about like those, what, it's like synth organs in the background, some kind of, something of that sort. But also the song just simply rips. Yeah, yeah, it is so good. It has such a crazy balance between this eerie, disembodied vocal performance and just like the full weight

and force of it that is constantly press. sing on you. It's so good. Yeah, I don't even know what the song is about. I was going to ask you, what is happening in the song? I don't know, but you know. What is being cut like a diamond? Well, I don't know if I would say that there are, well, one, this is just one take on it and that's sort of informed by its creepy vibe, I think, but there are hints or maybe threats

of violence in it. There's a sharpening of knives. There's a preparation for something that's coming for you happening in the song. And then the question at the end, is there an end to loneliness? Yeah. And, you know, so it definitely feels like it's got hints of something very unsettling happening in it. Yeah, definitely something is looming. Yeah.

Something is just behind you coming into view. And it's terrifying, whatever it is. Yeah. So it's a debut album from Memorials, but two veteran artists in it, Verity, Sussman, and Matthew Sims, Sussman front of the band, Electra Lane and Matthew Sims as a guitarist. He was in the band Wire for a while. I didn't mention this because I was waiting to see if you would, but I certainly thought of Crungman. Do you hear that? Yeah. I mean, it's definitely got that same vibe in the grooves and everything. But Memorials is the band, a duo, their debut album, Memorial Water Slides, and that song was Cut It Like a Diamond.

Well, speaking of spooky season, there is a new album from Bardi Strange, literally called Horror. Yes. And the first song from it is Sober. It was inspired by Strange's experience growing up black and queer in Oklahoma, taking it back to ideas that we've been having all this show about small towns, living there, what it's like to be there and grow up there. This record is called horror because it's about the terror that that experience inflicts having people be afraid of who you are and then being afraid to be who you are in that kind of setting.

And this song, Sober, is just sort of the first taste of that experience. You talk about sticking the landing. Yeah. Man, when he lights back down to Earth after that giant buildup at the end, that little coda at the end, that's perfect. Oh man, I could live in that little, that little groove forever, man. Record is co-produced by Eves and Lawrence Rothman

and Jack Antonoff. And there's almost... Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, there's almost, I think in it you can hear sort of like an 80s pop rock influence. Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah. Which is sort of a bit of a curveball for Barty Strange,

but, I mean, it feels like his whole career is curveball. he is constantly like retracking where he wants to go with his music. I mean, that's the thing. I find his stuff to be very elusive. Some of the most elusive stuff I've heard in recent years. It is so, it's kind of mysterious. It's like it's completely impossible to pin it down to anyone era or genre. Even his narratives have a way of feeling very familiar, but like the more you sit with them,

the more puzzling they become. But, I mean, that said, I'm so glad that you set this up with a little bit of context because it really reframed the way that I was receiving this song. Yeah, it's sort of interesting because it's clear fear is very prevalent of an idea on this record. He talked about struggling with sort of a doomed feeling throughout his life and this record being an opportunity to connect, he said that it's easier to navigate the horrors and strangeness of life once you realize that everyone around you feel the same. And I think many people can, relate to a failing relationship just dragging on and seeing drinking as a sort of tonic to

the issues that are plaguing you. And that is a very particular fear that he is sort of navigating throughout this song. I love the belted chorus here where he's just like fully leaning into this idea that there's, it's, it's hard to to main. maintain a clear head when all of your thoughts are about the possibility of losing somebody you care about. Well, it's also hard to not self-medicate when you feel so uncomfortable in your own skin. Yeah. So the album from Bartis Strange is called Horror, not out until next year.

It's on Valentine's Day, right? Isn't it come out on Valentine's? Which can be its own kind of horror for some people. Fair enough. And that cut we heard was called Sober. So I mentioned on a recent contenders episode how there are all these incredible albums that are celebrating their 20th anniversaries this year. And a lot of them have been remastered and reissued or put out on vinyl or, you know, they have deluxe versions or whatever. And I said at the time that I want to try to trickle some of these out.

I started with the artist Gem a couple of weeks ago. And this week I want to play something from the singer Sam Phillips. She released an album back in 2004 that just made a lot. me absolutely swoon. Every time I heard it, it's called A Boot and a Shoe. This was an album that was in super heavy rotation on all songs considered back in the day. Sam Phillips, she's just got such a distinctive kind of like a ramshackle earthy sort of vibe to her music, which I think you can hear in this cut that I want to play from a boot and a shoe. This song is called I Wanted to Be Alone. This whole song is such a T.

right I mean it's perfect the way she just keeps changing up what you think it's about you know she says I want to be alone and over and over again so how could it be anything other than I want to be alone I told you I want to be alone and then she says well with him I want to be alone with him and then it's he wants to be alone but he wants to be alone with her and then she wants to be alone with me yeah it's really interesting how circuitous the song is both lyrically and I think musically, it sort of mimics this like snake-like structure and keeps like curling back around and around and around. It's a little puzzle. What is your sense of what is taking place here? I don't know that she would even herself have any answers for exactly who the players are here. I think she just likes the idea of this sort of play. Yeah.

You know, I think she likes the idea of this kind of a puzzle. Yeah. Because all three people are very stuck, right? No one's going anywhere here because no one really want... There's no reciprocity at all. Right. There's no... Yeah, there's...

No one is in agreement here in this song. But that whole sort of cluttered kind of junk shop shuffle that it has. And a lot of her music, particularly on this album of Buton Ashu, has that, is in no small part to the percussionist Jay Belarus. He's the one. If you listen, seek out Jay Belarus's work. You'll hear that sort of rattling and, you know, sort of stumbling around that he has sort of very off-grid time signatures and beats and everything. But Sam Phillips, some of the stuff on this record ended up on some TV shows like it was featured very heavily on Gilmore Girls.

Sam Phillips most recently worked on the music for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which I haven't watched. Everyone says I should see it. But knowing that she did the music for it is enough to make me want to tune in. Yeah, you should definitely at least watch the first few seasons. Yeah, anyway, Boot in a Shoe, it has just been reissued and out on vinyl for the first time. I think back in 2004, vinyl hadn't hit its renaissance yet. We were still like, why would I spend money on scratchy old record when I can get it on CD? You know, but now it's out on vinyl for people who want that.

Well, in memorials, we had sort of a great sax moment. It gives me an opportunity to ask you, Robin, are you a big fan of stuff? saxophonists? I am and in fact, uh, I have a lot of personal baggage with it because I desperately wanted to learn the saxophone. I do think I remember you mentioned when I was a kid. Yeah, I brought this up before and, you know, the only way to learn an instrument in my town, you know, like I wanted to play violin. There's no one to teach violin in my town. We didn't have an orchestra in school. Back to, back to small the pros and time, the pros and cons of small towns. See how we do this? It's this in, in fact, is like jazz. It's so smooth the way we're doing this. But I want, the only way you could learn

is in school, if you, we're in the school band, I wanted to play sax. And when I told the band teacher, I want to play sax. Well, we already have a lot of sax players. Why don't you take up trumpet? We need trumpet players. I'm like, okay. So I spent, you know, seven years playing trumpet and never really enjoying it because all I really wanted to do was play sax. Well, you have the opportunity to live a bit vicariously through the artist and Emmanuel Wilkins, who is one of the best saxophonists working today by far. Oh, yeah. The jazz star, whose two albums as a leader, Omega and the seventh hand, are among the best of the 2020s.

The seventh hand in particular was really captivating with ideas about connections between improvisation and spirituality. He's back thinking about the continuum again on his new album, which is called Blues Blood. It's co-produced by Michelle Indegiocello, who has been on a tear in her own right over the last few years. The album is said to explore blues as a symbol of radical optimism in the face of adversity and blood as a symbol of all things ancestral and generational. You know, honestly, this album, there's so much going on in it and it is so multilayered. I thought, you know, we could just do the entire show just on this record, if not just this song. motion is the song

but I guess the thing that I would say you know is whether you're a jazz head or not sit with this one because I think this is a great example of how wondrous music can be and how much you can do with it when you're really just talking about the most human music elements

you know no studio effects or trickery or wizardry or post production or anything like that it's so raw so human and yet they kind of turn music inside out in just the most magical ways. Yeah, the vibrancy of everybody being in the room together, recording in a single studio.

Yeah. But this record is definitely more direct, more forward, and maybe more accessible if that's not your thing. So I would recommend anybody give it a chance and feel that groove. Well, thanks Sheldon, for hanging together and just geeking out with me over some great new music. Yeah, always great to be here. And for NPR, MPR, I'm Robin Hilton. It's all songs considered.