Musical Hide and Seek
New Music 16/06/25
I’m currently reading a collection of essay’s by Ian Penman, one of our best living music critics. He’s as good on say Frank Sinatra (“a semolina dough Mickey Mouse”) as he is on Arthur Russell (“Russell was a one-man index of all the tempos modern music might use or try out”). One is left feeling slightly startled by his knowledge. How has he had the time to know so much about music ? To have listened to so much music? And then to have spun something as light and deep as these essays out of all his experience and knowledge? It’s miraculous writing.
In the introduction to the essay collection he writes:
“I might say that the current ideal I have for my own work is a kind of writing that is entirely accessible to whomsoever might happen by; but one that also repays repeated readings, if these occur. In other words: Anyone can dip in and out of the text . . . but at the same time, there may be a web of half-hidden clues, suggestions, portents insinuated between or behind the lines, there for you to find. If you catch them — great; if you don’t, that’s also just fine.
It’s a perfect description of not only exactly what he does, but of what, I want a lot of art, especially music to do. My favorite pieces of music are the ones that I can quickly hold onto, and that keep revealing themselves to me on further listening. There are a few artists who I think are masters of this. Kate Bush is the first that comes to mind, Brian Wilson is another and even though it’s probably overplayed I don’t think in my whole life I will tire of listening to ‘God Only Knows,’ and trying to get my head around the chord progressions. It’s a sort of musical hide and seek - suggestions, half-hidden clues; art that can exist on two planes: for those who speak its language and for those who don’t, that grabs your heart first, but can also get your brain ticking. I will not claim that the playlist this week is populated only by songs like this, there are definitely fleeting fancies on here, but surely one or two with clues for you to catch, if you want to.
Apple Music Playlist
This should have been on the playlist last week and I somehow kicked it off. I actually don’t know how that happened, because it might be my favorite release by her ever. Last year’s Perverts felt a bit like an experiment, like Ethel Cain got to stretch all the darkness and edge of previous albums into a shape that didn’t have to be totally recognisable. This song feels like a more natural continuation of 2022’s Preacher’s Daughter, but there’s a sweetness on this track that feels new.
Songs seldom come out fully formed. Often a chorus arrives before a verse and you spend the rest of the song playing catch up with your chorus, trying to lay the stones for the path that lead you to the door of your song, if you will. That’s the work of it, the thing you, the listener, should not be thinking about; a song should give the illusion of having been born fully formed, with all its hair and its teeth. I might have missed this song if I hadn’t waited for its chorus, that sweeps in, quite unexpectedly with its grand, jangly, minor chord nostalgia. I do just wish though that I could believe in the verse.
While we wait (for the rest of our lives) for new Frank Ocean, Frankophile’s (as Ian Penman once referred to Sinatra fans, and which I have stolen for this Frank) everywhere have a small reason to rejoice because this is a cover! When I talk about artists making a song that isn’t theirs their own, this is exactly what I’m talking about.
This song is so fuzzy, and wacky it feels like it was made by a bunch of school mascots in animal suits.
Sometimes David Byrne just has the energy of an energetic and peculiarly intelligent child. “Everybody laughs and everybody cries / Everybody lives and everybody dies / Everybody eats and everybody loves / Everybody knows what everybody does,” is the sort of thing a “difficult, but gifted” 5 year old might say to you right before you find them a therapist. It’s a sweet song, a hot air balloon of good cheer and joy, that’s not really trying to be anything else.
I can’t wait to watch this movie. Love triangles make me want to throw up. Who will she choose! I hope she ends up with Pedro Pascal. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie with Chris Evans in it, and I don’t think I could pick him out of a lineup. The only way that seems possible to describe him is that he looks like “a man.” Eyes, a nose, some hair etc. This song grew on me over the week, until I found myself waking up humming it (quite annoying). It’s not particularly special, but it’s a perfect movie song, just shy enough to sit in the background, but with enough charm to keep it in your head.