Saturday Songs - July 16

Happy Saturday! (Should it still be Saturday and you are perusing this…)

“Saturday Songs” is a feature I’d like to begin this week—Saturday, July 16. I aim to provide you with five songs that I’ve run into this week. I say run into because they won’t always be new songs…or old ones, for that matter…or even ones that I’ve heard many times before. Sometimes, I dare to say, they’ll be songs that I’ll just toss out there because they’ve been on my mind.

I can’t promise full biographical backgrounds on artists, nor can I promise any kind of fully informed review of the album or even of the song. I can only promise to share with you some of the interesting tunes that I’ve crossed paths with during the week.

1. “Towers” – Bon Iver

This song is relentless. The fourth track off Bon Iver’s recent eponymous album Bon Iver, Bon Iver, it has refused for three straight days to leave my head. It’s an “earworm” of the worst kind: a meditatively repetitive lick with the careful motion of a wave on a shoreline, the same gentle, washing rhythm over and over. My immediate comparison tends towards Mark Kozelek’s equally meditative soundscapes—if you like “Towers,” check out Kozelek’s album Songs for a Blue Guitar (recorded under his moniker Red House Painters), especially the track “Have You Forgotten.”

But Vernon’s music is a tad sharper than that of Kozelek. Where Kozelek sounds wounded and desperate with only his voice and an acoustic guitar, Vernon is a chorus of voices and sounds, not all of them easily definable. With his voice triple (quadruple-? quintuple-?)-tracked, he captures an orchestral grandeur not really mustered in any of Kozelek’s music, save the delicately layered “Si Paloma”)

The worst part about this song? I can’t sing it…not even close. Then again, Vernon’s aching falsetto travels into territory most people can’t properly muster.

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2. “Late Bloomer” – Allie Moss

(Unfortunately, the studio version is not available on YouTube, but bear with me - you can find it on Grooveshark as well here for the free download!) 

Probably better known as Ingrid Michaelson’s guitarist, Moss is a singer-songwriters in her own right. Not the strongest songwriting effort, the song is more interesting for its dynamic structure. Usually, I’m not a fan of the songs that value construction over composition…but for Moss I make an exception.

When the shuffling drum pattern of the first half of the song gives way to that louder, more vivid rock pattern—I forgive her the simply subject and trite lyrics. Then again, maybe the “late bloomer” is the song itself? How about that one?

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3. “The Dying Soldier” – Buell Kazee



I’ll go out on a limb and guess that this is probably one you all haven’t heard of before. I found this one foraging through a collection of old Kentucky Appalachian folk music. Along with musicians like the Carter Family, Kazee was one of the first famous country musicians in the 1920s and 30s. He found moderate success with the folk revival in the 1960s.

Kazee is known for his lonesome tenor voice, something showcased in this song. The tale (obviously) of a dying soldier, this one hit me from the first time I heard it. Something in Kazee’s voice rings true to the story he tells; it’s an awfully sad tune…

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4. “Love at the Five and Dime” – Nanci Griffith




It’s hard for me to imagine that someone could truly dislike this song. As one commenter on another YouTube clip of this song rhetorically asks: “Could she be more adorable?” Eh…probably not. Part of the reason I include a live performance and not the original studio track is that watching Griffith talk about the song before playing it is part of the magic (unfortunately I have not seen her in concert…). Playing the song, she has all these tiny facial expressions that, it seems to me, only add further nuance.

The song itself, I find, is a soothing story-song. Sometimes these doomed romance tales end up sounding too epic or overwrought for their own good (“Jack and Diane”; “I Don’t Want to Wait”), but Griffith evokes a neat pathos that never crosses that fine line.

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5. “As Flat As The Earth / Automatic” – Chris Whitley

(No "As Flat As The Earth"...my apologies...)



Something about listening to Whitley makes me imagine a very haunted man—sort of like a countrified Kurt Cobain. He never managed to maintain a consistent audience album to album. He was the kind of musician who resisted attempts at categorization and understanding. Was his music more blues, more rock, more country, or more alternative?

One really need only point at “To Joy (Revolution of the Innocent),” the lead track to his 2000 album Rocket House, which features banjo-picking, DJ scratching, electronic backbeats, and a swarm of voices and guitars that confuse as much as they delight, to see that he’s not an easy man to pin down.

These two tracks (sorry…I know they’re two…but one’s so short!), the first tracks on his album Terra Incognita, set two Whitleys side by side: the bluesy-country with the alternative rock. The slim opening track “As Flat As The Earth” features only Whitley and his guitar for just over a minute. It also includes the chilly call-and-answer line: “How deep is the ground? / As flat as the earth.” What does it mean? Beats me…but it sure sounds frightening.

“Automatic” picks up right where “As Flat” leaves off, blasting off from the trim acoustic playing of the first track into soaring electric riffing.

“Automatic love is all I want,

the end of the day.

Automatic love is all I got

to get away.”