Five For Friday

Perhaps I’ve taken a page from Greil Marcus’ “Real Life Rock Top 10” columns from The Believer (and now Pitchfork), but life is more interesting when there’s a soundtrack set to it. This soundtrack comes from all sorts of places, from songs heard overhead at stores, wedged in the middle of movie soundtracks or found through a favorite Twitter or Instagram account. The ways we consume music in the 21st century are vast, and new and previously unknown (to us) songs and artists are at our fingertips at all times, thanks to the internet and apps like Shazam.

To aid in this discovery, here are five albums and songs I’ve kept in my rotation lately. There’s no rhyme or reason to why I like them, other than that their melodies and lyrics appeal to my ear. Maybe they’ll appeal to yours, too.

Drunk - Thundercat: Compared to 2016, 2017 has been a lackluster year for full albums. Then again, I say that at the beginning of every year and then several releases come along and prove me wrong. Maybe old school music is just better, but the best modern musicians take yesterday’s grooves and pair them with today’s minimalism and narrative song structure. Thundercat’s (real name Stephen Bruner) latest release Drunk is a dead ringer for a George Duke album, complete with drawn out funk grooves and short avant vignettes. The album’s high points are two singles - “Show You the Way” and “Them Changes.” The former is a collaboration with Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald, reuniting the blue-eyed soul legends for the umpeenth time. Loggins’ falsetto sounds as pure as it did on 1979’s “This is It,” and McDonald’s confident, comforting baritone soothes listeners along with the smooth groove, reminiscent of the soft sounds of a quiet storm radio station. The latter features the beatwork of Flying Lotus, and debuted on 2015’s The Beyond/Where The Giants Roam EP. The intro fakes out the Isley Brothers’ 1976 tune “Footsteps in the Dark” before progressing into a bottom-heavy funk number where Thundercat’s falsetto mimics that of Loggins - if it weren’t for the Funkadelic-inspired bass riffs, it could easily be mistaken for one of his halcyon hits. This is the beauty of Thundercat’s music, in that he takes things once dismissed as cheesy and embraces them because they appeal to his ear. And he makes them - and the musicians alongside him - cool.

“Sexy Mama” - The Moments: Musicians don’t know how to sound sexy anymore. Blatant musical overtures leave little to the imagination and don’t work in real life. That’s why The Moments’ 1974 slow burner “Sexy Mama” is still fresh. At the right time of the night, “Sexy Mama” is ambient. It sets the mood, taking things steady as it builds to a climax and fades into a slow burn, mimicking the progression of sweet caresses to heavy petting to lovemaking and then pillow talk. The minimal orchestration is driven by conga drums and strings which make the song sound like a beat poem sung by a soul balladeer. Much like the song’s content, this sonic palette is raw, primitive and urgent, as any good love song - and love songs are tunes driven by the instinct, not the mind - is.

“Time of the Season” and “Tell Her No” - The Zombies: Walking through the Mall of America on a Monday evening, I heard an adult contemporary rendition of the Zombies’ 1968 hit “Time of the Season.” The cover was mediocre, but reminded me it had been a while since I listened to this childhood favorite of mine, which aired often on the oldies station my father played in the car. Rod Argent and crew were masters of pairing psychedelic haze with organ-tinged melodies for an effect that was simultaneously enchanting and bewitching. Take a listen to “Time of the Season” and their 1965 hit “Tell Her No” and try not to be hypnotized - or at least intrigued - by their formula. Though they were released three years apart - and three years was a long time in the 1960s, with the Vietnam war, Civil Rights movement and hippie counterculture shifting musical styling at lightning speed - the Zombies’ sounds were on the pulse of cultural change and stayed that way until their dissolution.

“Love is Alive” - Gary Wright”: With his band Spooky Tooth and on his own, Gary Wright specialized in eerie, haunting ‘70s rock that was at times overdone and cheesy. I have a soft spot for his 1976 song “Love is Alive,” off The Dream Weaver, because all the overwrought musical tropes Wright relied on come together behind a great groove. On “Love is Alive,” Wright married glimmering glam rock orchestration with the pedal-to-the-metal intensity of arena rock to create a radio-ready anthem. And sell it did, hitting #2 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart that April. Strangely enough, I revisited “Love is Alive” because there were parts of the melody and chord progression in the Velvet Underground’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror” that reminded me of the hook, even though the two songs are as dissimilar as can be. Did Wright pick up “Love is Alive’s” hook from the Velvets? Who knows, but it’s proof that certain sounds and riffs appeal to us, no matter if they’re found on pop radio or at a lo-fi basement show with five other people.

“You Only Live Twice” - Nancy Sinatra: I first revisited “You Only Live Twice” through Shirley Bassey’s 2007 cover of the song, which played overhead at MartinPatrick3 as I shopped for grooming products several weeks ago. Though I’ve listened to Bassey’s version more, as it’s the shaken martini to Sinatra’s stirred, it’s Sinatra’s version that’s sultrier and more appealing. The presence of electric guitar amid the lush strings was a signature of Swedish cowboy Lee Hazlewood’s cinematic production style (he was a frequent collaborator with Sinatra, and the two made several duet albums together), and the Spanish Harlem-flecked vibraphone trills and quick, angelic harp runs lent “You Only Live Twice” the exotic mystery befitting the 1967 James Bond thriller it served as the title track for.

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