DM Stith recently signed to Asthmatic Kitty, the same label as Sufjan Stevens, and has a new EP out this week titled Curtain Speech, featuring contributions from Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), Rafter, Sebastian Krueger and the string quartet Osso. Think Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear meets Arthur Russell.
The Shangri-Las / Out In The Streets
1:22 - 1:43 is a miracle. I’ve never been so obsessed with twenty seconds of high-hat and high school girl shrieks: it’s a raging teenage fantasy that all the composition notebooks in all the lockers of 1965 couldn’t write better. That the singers have managed to preserve their naivety perfectly in this three minute song may be the reason I feel recording pop music is worthwhile.
More Zajeni Se Ghiouro / Bulgarian Radio and Television Choir
I grew up listening to choir music — my dad was a choir director and my mother the piano accompanist — and I’ve always been really into close harmonic pairs used in lyrical passages. There’s something astonishing about the intensity of this piece, how much it relies on the exactness of their pitch. And the way it builds until that last swoop. They seem as focused on the silence between sounds as on the sounds themselves.
Mary Margaret O’Hara / Don’t Be Afraid (From Happy Ending)
In February last year I came down with a bad flu that was going around and I spent eleven days in bed, in Brooklyn, with a fever. I remember little except that I wandered into Mary MargaretO’Hara’s discography, mostly made up of contributions to compilations and one album of songs that went out of print ten years ago. Her singing is eccentric, bawdy, and her sense of rhythm takes some getting used to. But listen to a track a few times and it’s evident she knows what she’s doing. Listen a few more times and you’ll be convinced this is the most perfect melody.
Randy Newman / Laughing Boy
If you haven’t spent an afternoon sussing out Randy Newman’s first album, you’re missing out on some of the best unsung music of the twentieth century. I love his voice, I love his songs, but his production is what gets to me — it’s so ferociously NEWMAN, so caddy and raw. People talk with confusion about Randy’s lack of fame, say he’s the best songwriter in history, and he deserves more than he’s gotten, more than a hit song about midgets, more than a reputation as a feature-length cartoon jingle writer. There are good reasons he’s not America’s beloved: he’s terrifyingly direct in his songs. He’s a mid-Westerner’s worst nightmare.
Violeta Parra / Run Run Se Fue Pa’l Norte
This music seems completely effortless for young Violeta — for me, it’s always a strain to let a simple thing happen. Maybe it’s just that, maybe I love this song because it strikes me as something so alive and fluid. I learned about Violeta from a list of favorite songs by Juana Molina. It seems natural to spread this song further by the same means.
Belong / Late Night
The chord shifts are always clouded, initially, in something like a haze that, when they break through this haze, it makes my stomach drop. It’s so completely disorienting, so dazzling. I can’t stop listening to it.
David Bowie / Five Years
I found Ziggy Stardust on cassette at a Big Lots during a snow storm in Rochester, New York, six years ago. I was in college and I was recklessly searching for more interesting music. I didn’t think I’d find it in a junk store, but then this is David Bowie. I have a memory of driving home in the snow, rewinding and playing this song over and over and over, singing along until my throat was sore. It’s embarrassingly anthemic. It’s my favorite Bowie song.
Nina Simone / Nobody’s Fault But Mine
On the first birthday after meeting Shara Worden (of My Brightest Diamond), she gave me a three cd set of Nina Simone albums (six albums in all, I think). Nina doesn’t play around. She’s this brutal force of music, a completely uninhibited, menacing force. You see her just starting to wind up at the end of this song. And maybe that’s the best of it, that she teases you into this dangerous place and then
disappears.
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