Summer Obsessions
Summer is a strange time. The sun stays up a little longer, a couple flowers bloom, the sun gets a little hotter, and suddenly everyone you know, and everyone you used to know, is trying to get you to commit to events, and your calendar suffocates. I am suffocating, currently, and I am enjoying it. Luckily, my creative juices get tapped into just managing all of the various things I am committed to. Unluckily, I don’t have much time to write, or to dig in crates for cool songs, or to rent weird, unheard of 1940’s noir films from Movie Madness, or to read books that don’t pertain to my other obligations.
It’s not totally a loss, it’s a trade-off. I wish I had the capacity for all of my little things, but I don’t, and no one does, and no one will, and I shouldn’t worry about it.
So I won’t worry, and I won’t force anything into being that doesn’t move me. But I will send out art that I am enjoying, because that act moves me, even if just a little.
Guitar Music
I discovered an artist who is going to perform locally yet one I cannot see. But I can hear his music, gorgeous and inventive acoustic guitar picking music that fits perfectly with a lazier sunny day, or an evening drive, or with a dark room and a negroni.
It’s an album called I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away, by Hayden Pedigo. He is 31 years old and this is his 11th release, and I’ve heard none of the first ten. But this 11th is stellar, and moving, and intricate, and delicate, and really good.
It hits me like another artist whose album I was cramming earlier this year: Luis Bonfa’s Introspection. Bonfa died in 2001, and would have been 103 years old today, and Introspection was his 50th official release, and I’ve heard none of the first 49.
Both artists are worth your summer time.
Little Simz / KOKOROKO
On the thicker, fuller, more produced side of things, I have been very into the bag of Miles Clinton James, a producer who just gave us Lil Simz newest record Lotus, which is lush British jazz rap of the highest caliber packed with great features. It’s one of my albums of the year, for sure. In combination, James works with the London-based septet KOKOROKO who, like Simz, are creating and handing over sounds that are thick and vibrant and exciting, and unlike anything else I’ve heard before. I love sinking into each of these artist’s sounds, which are both James’ sounds, too.
Throw one of these on when you get home from work, and let your kitchen knife and dishwashing gloves to to work, while your hips and shoulders mingle around the room with the beats of these bands.
Watch out! KOKOROKO has a new album coming out in 20 days.
60 Songs That Explain the ‘90’s (colon) The 2000’s
Rob Harvilla’s weekly exploration of a single song that used to be popular is reaching levels of avant garde and esoteric that no podcast has ever reached. His stories don’t take us from A to B to C, they take us from A to 6 to England to The Fifth Dimension to the fourth dimension to his childhood home to the original storylines written for General Hospital. It is loaded with wit and personal revelation, with grammatical experimentation and pin-point observations. It feels like talking with your best friend from grade school, but you’re both 45 and your in a loud bar, and he has had several drinks and several other things, and you have had the exact same amount of the exact same things, and you are finding each other on the same plane of heightened cultural existence.
So yeah, that’s what’s going on in a podcast that talks about The Fray, and 50 Cent, and Toby Kieth. His most recent episode, on The Fray’s How to Save a Life, his 23-minute universe-spanning introduction leads us to a teaser for what he’s going to talk about in another 23 minutes: the song in the title of the podcast episode.When I figured out what his introduction was getting at, which is the emotional connection that I, too, had with the song, I felt my soul swell. Then, he talked through his introduction for another 20 minutes.
That’s why no one else is doing it like Rob: because no one would ever think to.
There’s plenty more out there lighting up my life, but I’ll save those for another time. There is always light in the world, even if you have to dig through crates to find it. I hope you keep digging.