NPR Music - The Contenders, Vol. 2: The songs we can't stop playing this week

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Japanese Breakfast (Michelle Zauner) is back with her first new album since her memoir, Crying in H Mart, blew up. We've got the first single from it, plus a Sufjan Stevens-produced Denison Witmer track and more.Enjoy the show? Share with a friend and leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail] Hear the songs in our Apple and Spotify playlists.Featured artists and songs: 1. Deep Sea Diver: "Shovel," from Billboard Heart2. SPELLLING: "Portrait of My Heart," from Portrait of My Heart 3. Japanese Breakfast: "Orlando in Love," from For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women)4. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek, "Hop Bico" from Yarın Yoksa5. Denison Witmer: "A House With," from Anything At All6. DARKSIDE: "S.N.C," from NothingSee 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

For NPR Music, it's all songs considered. We are not Robin Hilton. I'm Dawood Tyler Amin, an editor at NPR Music. And I'm Ann Powers, Critic and Correspondent. We're here because our beloved Robin Hilton is down with a little bit of an illness, and we are swooping in like the superheroes we are. Poor guy. He made it one show into the new year and then got struck down.

Maybe if we put our heads together, we could, like, I don't know, become Robin-ish, Robin-esque for... Oh, sure. A Voltron-esque proposition. But it's fun to be on this show because we get to talk about songs that we love. And you've got a really good one to start us out, I think. I know. I was so, so happy to come back to work after the winter break and be greeted with this banger in my inbox. There is a new record from one of my faves, Deep Sea Diver, Jessica Dobson, by birth. Her new record is called Billboard Heart.

It is out February 28th. and this song is called Shovel. Air in a shovel, it's pointed at the tip like Mount Everest, like Mount Everest through shards of soil. The voice, and what a special thing it does

at the top of its range. Jessica Dobson's voice reminds me of the way that guitar players will talk about how an amplifier breaks up at the top of its range, meaning like when you're pushing it to the, you're pushing the gain to the limits of what the circuits and tubes and stuff can handle. And you get an effect where you start to crackle

and crunch a little bit. It's distinct from just the full-on distortion that you'd get from stepping on a pedal. It's just this, you know, it's this kind of very physical signs-of-ware thing. And I think she can do that with her singing voice. And I love how she's doing that on that chorus, on the word, I think it's a word carry, right? So, you know, it's got a lot of power. You know who it reminds me of is chnade. It's got a chnade quality to it. Yeah, good pull. Which is the highest compliment that I can possibly give. Totally. Also, some of the most satisfying use of echo and delay that you'll find, those time-based effects,

they're a given in a lot of her music, but it often really feels very integrated into the composition. I sort of imagine that she is thinking about that stuff from the second she picks the guitar up. It's not just an afterthought. Do you feel like this is like a leap for her, the song? I mean, it is a leap in a very literal sense in that this is her first record on subpop. And I think she, you know, I at least hope that that will put her into a lot more people's ears. It is also a collaboration with Andy Park, a producer and engineer who has been David Bazan's co-pilot on these last few Pager the Lion records, which makes sense. Oh, which we love. We are such a huge fan of those records. Well, I have a song that,

fits so perfectly with this, because this song is also a leap for a really great young woman singer-songwriter. And it also makes me think of like someone standing on a rooftop with the wind blowing back in her hair. Just like that song does. It's a portrait of my heart by spelling. Oh, I love to talk drums. That's why I brought this song here. There's a whole lot going on. And so right off the bat at the top, you know, we could be going anywhere. I actually thought of early Interpol and the way that Santhogarino's drums used to sort of, you would do this thing where it would seem like he was interrupting himself mid-thought and would come up with something that was a loop, but you couldn't totally tell where the loop point was.

You know, it was just very sort of like purposely disorienting. Then once things get lush, it's like, okay, now we've got a little bit of a direction, but she subverts that again at the top of the second verse doing one of my favorite things, which is just pulling like the closing the filter on it, and sounds like pulling down the bit depth so that, you know, it sounds like it's coming out of, you know, an old Nintendo or a speak and spell or whatever. Man, what a way to manage tension and release? Well, I love spelling.

This is the project for those who don't know of Christia Cabral. And I put her album, The Turning Wheel, on my best of 2021 list. I think Hazel, our colleague, Hazel Sills, also did. At the time, she was more in this kind of, like, witchy, lyrical, pastoral. Did you ever listen to spelling back then? Well, I learned about spelling, we should say, spelled S-P-E-L-L-L-L-I-N-G,

in 2022 because she was sort of the central character in a news story that we ran about the effects of COVID on touring musicians. Oh my gosh, that's right. It was sort of about the, you know, six months or so into the press cycle for the turning wheel, she, you know, was on tour and had a case of COVID in her touring party and had to shut the whole thing down.

And it was, you know, there were, I mean, there were many things of value to be gleaned from that story, but it also introduced me to the artist, yeah. It's interesting you should bring up that story, Doud, because this record, even coming, you know, much later than the period of lifting the lockdown, God, it just has that feeling of like bursting out. This song, it just bursts out.

I mean, to me, you were talking about Interpol. I feel like it's got this like 80s quality. It's not 80s style production. I don't think you wouldn't call those gated drums, right? No, it's more that kind of like tight, like post-punkky sort of drumming. Right, right. But at the same time, there's like those whooshing synthes like kind of grandiose. And the song, you know, it's about like creative turmoil.

She's still writing those Kate Bushy lyrics. She has this couplet in there where she says, now I sit here with my colors painted so odd because I dare to fiddle with the work of God. That is like so Kate. I just love this rock turn for her. I cannot wait to hear the rest of the record. This is all I've heard,

but it just was a burst of energy that I absolutely needed right now. All right, and we started with a bang. So I think it's time to slow things down just a little bit. and talk about another artist. We're always excited to hear from Japanese Breakfast. She has become much more of a household name

since the last time we heard from her in 2021 with her record Jubilee. She had a song called Jimmy Fallon Famous, and now she has talked about that song with Jimmy Fallon. And she's like an esteemed author with her memoir, Crying and H-Mard award-winning memoir. So, yeah, Michelle Zahner, you own the world. Where is she taken us right now?

Well, the place she's taking of might be telegraphed by the name of her new album, which is called For Melancholy Brunettes and Sad Women. I don't know any of those. And the very first single is called Orlando in Love. A whole lot of texture there, no surprise. When we were all first listening to this song when it came out a couple of days ago, and you mentioned that it sounded to you like a man. Magnetic Fields track, which I think I agree with, but tell me what you meant.

I guess it's like the mix of beautiful lyricism, poeticism, and humor. I feel like there is a droll quality to this song that reminds me so much of Stephen Mary. You know, it's just got that slight distance, even as it is so romantic. Do you feel that? No, I agree. I mean, I'm just realizing now, and I can't believe I didn't clock it early. earlier, that there is a 69 joke in like the second line, which is...

Oh, my God. I didn't even recognize that. That's a quintessential magnetic fields joke. But not only in the literal sense, but also just in the sense of their humor. Stephen Merritt really does like to sort of joke around with, I would say, some of the more absurd aspects of human desire and sexuality. Yes. I also love the video where she's wearing this kind of crazy, what do they call those revolutionary war type hats, you know.

Like a tri-corner. Yes, thank you. And then there's a dancer doing this beautiful dance embodying the subject of the song, the elusive woman who she's singing about. And I don't know, she's just a multimedia star. So I hope she does really cool visuals for the whole album. And this song makes me hopeful that this album will kind of have that kind of cinematic quality and scope. Also, must mention.

having released this song, she announced a track listing, and one of the songs features Jeff Bridges. I saw that. The dude. I mean, yeah, speaking of cinematic. And yeah, he's sung in a movie before. It's true. So, yeah, can't wait. But it's like, I mean, you know, that's the thing.

It's like, you know, once you have a bigger platform, what do you do with that? How do you cash that blank check? And yeah, that's, you know, that's a hell of a stuff. I have a song for you, though, now that's similarly quiet and meditative, but this guy has, like, very small platform. So I'm taking you to a different place. You ready to go? Yes, let's scale down. So this artist is named Dennis and Whitmer, and he's one of those your favorite songwriter's, favorite songwriter type guys. He's made a bunch of albums. He's been around for long time since early 2000s. And there's a particular favorite songwriter.

for whom Dennis and Whitmer is your favorite songwriter, and that's Sufion Stevens. They're old friends. Denison has released a bunch of his records on Asmetic Kitty, Sufian's label. But this new song signals a new phase because it's from an album that's produced by Sufian Stevens. And I think it's a perfect marriage of Denison Whitmer's writing style and Sufion Stevens production style. So let's hear it. It's called A House With. I bought feeder bags of seas and chain and hung them all around the yard, just outside of every window.

Cardinal, sparrow, junk, flattered, wax, flayed, and hard again, every room. That's gorgeous. So this song fits in, in my head, within a tradition of songs about, home about an idealized picture of home. So I'm thinking on the one hand of stuff like, you know, wouldn't it be nice by the Beach Boys or My Girls, the Animal Collective song, or Our House by Graham Nash? No, totally. And then on the other side, songs about a creative workspace and a source of sort of inspiration. So stuff like in my room by the Beach Boys, again, or in the garage by Weezer or Little Room by the White Stripes. I love it. You're making a playlist.

even as we speak. But I don't know if this song fits on that playlist because it seems to occupy a third category. I don't know if this song is about either of those things exactly. It is about finding life at home, but a different kind of life.

Yeah, well, I think one reason this song hit me hard right now is, of course, the horrific catastrophe of the fires in Los Angeles. You know, I used to live in L.A. and I lived in Mount Washington in northeast L.A., which at the time we're speaking, though, thankfully, is safe. But Altadena, a neighborhood I love, I used to walk all the time in Eaton Canyon. And I'm thinking of everyone in L.A., but I'm thinking specifically of that neighborhood of Altadena,

which has so many had, I hate to say had, so many magical, beautiful homes. You know, this incredibly diverse and magical neighborhood of these homes. where artists had made beauty and I can't believe it's gone. So I'm taking some comfort in this song. And specifically, though, in the care with which the song is built, you know, the mix of these perfect lyrics that do something that I absolutely love in songs, which is uses lists, uses lists, you know, those where he just lists a bunch of flowers or lists a bunch of birds, you know.

Yeah. I love songs that do that. But then in the final verse, he basically is like, I created this beauty. I did it incrementally, and I realized it could go away at any minute. It's just what I need to hear right now. And how nice that the song is called A House With, and it allows you to fill in that blank with whatever the thing is

that makes you feel at home. I know so much. And the perfect combination of Denison's writing and Sufion's production, the way it builds with those, the children's choir, that signature Sufian move, you know. Yeah. I love it.

I love it. That's Dennis and Whitmer's song, A House With from his beautiful album. I have heard the whole thing and everyone's going to want to hear this one. It's called Anything at All. It's out February 14th. So one of the things I did over the break was I started falling down this rabbit hole of Arabic music, music from the Levant. I got interested in what's happening with artists in that region considering all of the conflict that's happening there. Now, but from that, I jumped over to Jordan and to Morocco and all over the place.

And then this song landed in my inbox, just as I was in this rabbit hole, it's called Hopico. That is Daria Yilderim and Grupo Shimshik with Hopiko. And it's an Anatolian folk tune, but, Diode, what do you think about how they gussied it up? I mean, I think we're both in agreement that that synth is pretty, out of this world. It's a little bit of a misdirect at first because you hear it and it's like, oh, okay, like Rick O'Casek probably own that synthesizer. It's a very sort of like classic, you know, like 80s pop kind of sound and it's doing

those sort of classic wee-wee-wee-wee-like octave leaps. And then the Eastern influence starts to slip in. And it starts moving at intervals that you're like, oh, okay, this is not where I thought it was going to go. Right. but it also kind of reminds me of Rai music, you know, back in the day, like Cheb Mami and other party music that's come from the Arabic world. This group, they call themselves an outer national group,

and they're a bunch of people from different places come together. The singer, Darya Yilderim, was born in Hamburg of Turkish parentage. So they mix a whole bunch of stuff. The record's called Yaring Yokesha, by the way, it's coming out March 14th. Well, one more before we close out, that is a weird, introspective new tune from a weird and introspective band that I love called Darkside. This is the project of Nicholas or Nico Jarre, who's sort of, you know, electronic man about town does a lot of, you know, his own solo compositions, is a big collaborator.

Dave Harrington, who was a, I think, a jazz bass prodigy. And then when he met Nico Jarre, Nico Jar was like, cool, you're playing guitar in this band. And really asked him to sort of like take that sort of single note approach and think about establishing groove with a guitar the way that he would have with a bass. On this record, they are joined by a new member, Tla Kela Sparza playing drums. These are all guys that actually when I was a New York indie rock kid, I would see them at shows. I would see them around. Some of them were friends of friends. And, you know, they've taken a very long break since their last outing together.

but they have a new record coming in February called Nothing. I got to ask you, because you're going to play this song, is this Jazz Fusion? Do you call this Jazz Fusion? I think if you think it is, then it is. You're a better arbiter of that than I am. I will say, I mean, there's a clavonet or a clavonet-like sound is introduced in the middle of this song.

You have no sense that anything so Stevie Wonder is headed your way. And then it shows up and it really fits. Well, I definitely think Stevie is Jazz Fusion. And he's the many. And Stevie is everything. So I'm going to say, thank you for bringing some jazz fusion to us today, Dowd. Well, happy New Year to, Anne. It's great to talk to you and great to usurp the throne for a second with you.

Absolutely. But Robin, we're sending you love and chicken soup. All right. So this is the track, S&C, from Dark Side. I've been Dowd, Tyler Rameen. And I'm Am Powers. From NPR Music, it's all songs considered.