“Poetry And Aeroplanes,” by Teitur

Teitur’s pitch-perfect debut album, Poetry And Aeroplanes, would be the playlist Spotify would create for me, with its technical, robotic tonal algorithms. It’s a startlingly flawless embodiment of my sonic character. It feeds me. I return to Poetry And Aeroplanes often. It will always be a part of my life. It’s my aural DNA. If I were a musician, the tender songs on Teitur Lassen’s debut album would likely be the kind of music I would create.

Poetry And Aeroplanes tip-toed onto the music scene 11 years ago, in 2003, amidst monster radio hits by the likes of 50 Cent, Beyonce’, and Black Eyed Peas (who I met when they played a show where I used to work, just a few weeks before their single, “Where Is The Love?” blew up and made them a household name, and that night they expected me to drive them around Chicago into the wee hours after their performance. Yeaaaah...that didn’t happen. Sorry, Will. I. Am. not sorry), and while not making a big splash in North America, Teitur’s album certainly garnered the attention of key music industry insiders, including John Mayer, who wrote about the album, "…it may be one of the best albums to come around in the last five years...Music like this is jet fuel on the fire of a broken heart. Even if you think the flame has died, there's at least one lyric that'll hit that last hot spot, and then you'll find yourself as fucked as you were the day you lied and said you never wanted to see her again. Enjoy." Well said, Mr. Mayer. In fact, with radio trends o’ that moment belonging to the above-mentioned celebrities, this humble little record didn’t stand a chance. Who was going to hear it and how? Nobody was playing it.

Teitur’s mellow-gold styled, heartbreaking, melodic debut album has been a mainstay in my house since my partner and I serendipitously discovered it in a discount CD bin in 2004. Not joking: I bought it because I thought the cover art was cool, and it was a dollar, and what did I have to lose? The album is a modern take on the evergreen singer-songwriter stylings of the late 1960’s – early 1970’s, and as such, the album sounds remarkably fresh 11 years after its release, in spite of its modern musical embellishments. Teitur’s songs remind me of a combination of Nick Drake (“Pink Moon”), Al Stewart (“Year Of The Cat”), and Paul Simon (“Something So Right”). Quiet, contemplative, and navel-gazey (in the best, possible way). The lyrics range from tales of nervous courtship (“One And Only,” “Let’s Go Dancing,” “Shade Of A Shadow,” “To Meet You”) to productivity inhibiting, crying in my latte heartbreak (all the rest), with the lovesick protagonist probing minutiae connected to every painful memory.

Teitur’s tunes on Poetry And Aeroplanes are melodic, every one, which is part of why this record is so tasty and memorable (and hummable). It’s a whispered tour de force, and it deserves a spot in everyone’s music library.

Must-hear Holiday-Themed, Non-Holiday Songs

People seem particularly drawn to mournful, weepy, nostalgic songs to get them through the holidays. Maybe it’s the zeitgeist of these violent times, maybe it’s just being reflective as another year comes to a close, or perhaps just gluttony for punishment, but who hasn’t lost a friend or loved-one along the way, and aren’t the holidays the mandatory time for remembering the joy and pain that accompanies these complicated memories? Whatever your seasonal symptom, the songs collected here follow this motif. And to the best of my knowledge, not one of these tunes was written as a holiday song, specifically, although some have wriggled their ways into the canon, and all have found their ways onto my Yuletide playlist. So take a listen with me, gentle readers, grab a glass of eggnog, and let the holidays begin…

“Photographs and Memories,” by Jim Croce: I think had Croce lived, he might be on his third or fourth holiday album by now. In many ways, his mellow, acoustic-driven song stylings are perfect for bummed-out tributes to the Yuletide. “Photographs and Memories” is taken from Croce’s 1972 album, You Don’t Mess Around With Jim, and while never released as a single (it was the B-side to the title track for the album, which was released as a single and reached #8 on the Hot 100), it remains a perennial holiday favorite. Croce had a penchant for writing tunes that, while not Christmas songs, per se, embraced the season, like the melancholy, “It Doesn’t Have To Be That Way,” which sets the tone in the first line: “Snowy nights and Christmas lights, icy windowpanes, make me wish that we could be together again.” Sigh…

“Barandgrill,” by Joni Mitchell: Mitchell’s “River,” from her legendary 1971 album, Blue, would have been the obvious choice for this list, but it’s become so commonly covered by artists for their holiday collections in the last few decades (e.g., James Taylor, Sarah McLachlan, Shawn Colvin, and Linda Rondstadt, to name but a few), that the song is now effectively co-opted for the season. But “Barandgrill,” taken from Mitchell’s overlooked 1972 masterpiece, For The Roses, provides a stream-of-consciousness, lyrical snapshot of time spent in a local truck stop café around the holidays, where waitresses are talking about zombies and exotic cocktails and “…the guy at the gas pump, he's got a lot of soul; he sings Merry Christmas for you just like Nat King Cole.”

“Love Is Stronger Than Pride,” by Sade: Taken from her super chill, lighter than air 1988 album, Stronger Than Pride, this icy breakup song was culled as a single in the spring of that year, but (sadly) failed to gain much radio play, losing ground to disposable radio crap like “Never Gonna Give You Up,” “Could’ve Been,” and “Get Outa My Dreams, Get Into My Car.” Tragic, that, as the lugubrious, frost-bitten lyrics fashion the perfect atmosphere for heartbreak: “Sitting here waiting for you would be like waiting for winter, and it's gonna be cold; there may even be snow…”

“The Hounds of Winter,” by Sting: Taken from his 1996 album, Mercury Falling, this wintery, tormented song about lost love is perfect for the holiday season. Sting thinks so, too; he re-recorded the track as a Renaissance period madrigal for his own holiday collection, If On A Winter’s Night, 13 years later. The album sounds like it was recorded in a candle-lit, haunted castle by the ocean and, at times, seems more fitting for a Celtic Samhain celebration than for Christmas. 

“Brick,” by Ben Folds Five: Catchy as it is, this is the only pop hit in my recollection that recounts the impact of abortion for two young people: in this case, Folds and his high school girlfriend (and the procedure in question happens to take place on the day after Christmas, the day for returning unwanted gifts…). Not exactly something you’d expect to hear from the Biebs or Katy these days, but in 1997 it was a moderate hit for the band, reaching the top 20 on a number of charts. I saw Ben Folds in concert (remarkably good) in the early 2000s, and if my memory serves me correctly, he made a point to disavow any political leanings when he introduced the tune. Huh.

“Late-Great Johnny Ace,” by Paul Simon: Where were you when John Lennon died? I was 9 years old and at home on that frigid December evening in 1980. I remember hearing about the assassination on television that night after dinner and the radio being flooded with Lennon songs after that for the next several months. I really wasn’t such a John Lennon fan, but I felt bad all the same. And I still do. “…On a cold December evening I was walking through the Christmas tide, when a stranger came up and asked me if I'd heard John Lennon had died. And the two of us went to this bar and we stayed to close the place - and every song we played was for The Late Great Johnny Ace…”

“Same Old Lang Syne,” by Dan Fogelberg: “Met my old lover in the grocery store. The snow was falling Christmas Eve…” So begins one of the most bummed-out, nostalgic odes to ghosts of lovers past ever. A bold move for Fogelberg, to use the frozen foods section of a grocery store as the setting for a holiday-themed love song, but that’s how it actually went down on that Christmas Eve night in the convenience store at the top of Abington Hill in Peoria, Illinois in the mid-1970’s. The actual “old lover” came out of the shadows decades later, after Fogelberg’s death and after the end of her own, ill-fated marriage to the architect, a man of whom she’d like to have said she loved, but she didn’t like to lie. 

“Levon,” by Elton John: “He was born a pauper to a pawn on Christmas Day, when the New York Times said, ‘God is dead,’ and the wars begun…” A peripheral reference to Christmas, to be sure, but Levon’s son turns out to be named “Jesus,” after all, (apparently Levon really liked the name). And sadly, as it so often goes, the boy wants to leave home, leaving Levon far behind…to slowly die, which, again, pretty much sums up the holiday season; am I right? *I kid, I kid; I’m a kidder...

“My Favorite Things,” from The Sound Of Music: In the film adaption of the play, the song is sung to the Von Trapp children to calm their fears during a scary thunderstorm. “Favorite Things” suggests the best way to find peace in difficult times is simply to think about your favorites. In this case, things like, “warm woolen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with string, sleigh bells…silver white winters…snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes.” While never mentioning the holidays outright, the imagery is a nice fit for the season, which is, no doubt, why the song started finding its way onto holiday albums as early as 1964, a year before the film was even released. While the original version is upbeat, the melancholy lyrics and the wistful melody were highlighted in even the earliest cover versions, accentuating the inherent sadness in what has become a perennial holiday classic. 

“What A Wonderful World,” by Louis Armstrong: Released in October of 1967, in the midst of the Vietnam conflict and an ever-tumultuous North American political landscape, “Wonderful World,” like “Favorite Things,” spoke of optimism and hope in difficult times, definitely a theme for the season. Not initially a hit upon release, this unforgettable track was impossible to ignore, finally making it’s way onto a pivotal scene in the 1988 film, Good Morning, Vietnam, where it struck a chord with listeners and reached #32 on the pop charts that year, over 20 years after its initial release.

“Don’t Miss You At All,” Norah Jones: Norah Jones took the world by storm with her self-titled debut album, which sold a bajillion copies in 2002, swept the Grammys, and catapulted the musician kicking and screaming into superstardom. This heartrending song drips with irony, with Jones singing, “As I sit and watch the snow falling down…I don’t miss you at all.” This song closes her second album, Feels Like Home, and provides a perfect postscript to this endearing collection of songs. It also works perfectly on my “Melancholy Holly” iPod playlist and is my go-to song on the years when I can’t make it back to the farm for Christmas. 

“So Beautiful or So What,” by Paul Simon

Few pop music fans seem to realize that Paul Simon’s 2011 album, So Beautiful or So What, might very well be his best album ever. That’s right. I said it: best album ever. Seriously. Ever. But unfortunately, because it didn’t come out in 1977, and because its singles were up against the high school crap of LMFAO and Katy Perry that dominated the airwaves last year, the album went largely without notice (save for the ENTIRETY of the music critic community, who unanimously listed the album in their top ten album lists for that year). Hosting themes that reflect a man finding life “terribly strange” at seventy, So Beautiful asks questions for the angels about love, mortality, and God. And from listening to the brief album (under 40 minutes of music), one answer to these questions tap at the listener’s ear: love. Seriously, Mr. Simon? “Love?” Huh.

Simple, conventional, and persistent, Simon’s message is singular; he’s a real love-monger on this stunning album. In the tune, “Dazzling Blue,” he pays tender tribute to his marriage to (the remarkable!) Edie Brickell, and in the song, “Rewrite,” he paints a portrait of an American war veteran, who “hasn’t got a brain cell left since Vietnam,” pleading with God for a “rewrite” of his life since the war, “…Help me, help me, help me, help me – THANK YOU! I had no idea that you were there.” In the beleaguered veteran’s rewrite, love makes an appearance and ultimately redeems his life. The veteran outlines his do-over:

I'll eliminate the pages where the father has a breakdown

And he has to leave the family, but he really meant no harm.

Gonna substitute a car chase and a race across the rooftops

When the father saves the children, and he holds them in his arms…

The word “love” permeates the album, prominent in the songs titles or mentioned within the verses (or at least alluded to) on every song. On So Beautiful or So What, it’s all love, all the time. In the world Simon describes on So Beautiful, love is the mortar holding the bricks together, love is the foundation providing strength to the walls, love is the cement filling the empty holes as the musician reminds us to carefully consider our frame of reference: “Life is what you make of it,” he sings, it’s “so beautiful or so what?” I’ll take “beautiful,” thank you...

Death and growing older is another central theme on this exceptional album, and the topic is not a new one for Simon. In his mid 20’s, he reverently wrote about the prospect of growing older. In fact, Simon loosely dedicated an entire side of vinyl (side one) of the classic 1968 Simon and Garfunkel album, Bookends, to the cycle of life, most notably in the sweetly morose, “Old Friends,” in which his vocal muse and “frenemy,” Art Garfunkel sang, “Can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench, quietly? How terribly strange to be seventy…” and on the side one closer, “Bookends Theme,”

Time it was, and what a time it was;

A time of innocence, a time of confidences;

Long ago, it must be…I have a photograph;

Preserve your memories;

They're all that's left you…

Musings from a young and gifted musician, romanticizing the inevitability of growing older (and exquisitely so). Are such solemn romanticisms fleeting naivety? Are they the privilege of youth? I’m starting to suspect so, as more recently, seventy year-old Simon writes of mutability from a much more dispassionate and droll, albeit musical perspective, sometimes chuckling about the prospect of passing from this mortal coil, and sometimes taking on the voice of God, Himself, pontificating on the state of humanity, on ugly politics and talk-show hosts, on the sad state of popular music, and on the origin of life, itself. Simon sings “as God,”

Big Bang. That’s a joke that I made up once

When I had eons to kill,

You know, most folks, they don’t get when I’m joking;

Maybe someday they will…

And then, of course, there’s Music. Perhaps the world’s biggest music fan, Simon has said that he picked up a guitar for the first time, because he wanted to be Elvis. And following suit, Simon almost always includes musical imagery in his more recent deliberations on nostalgia, death and the afterlife (to wit, in the early 1980’s, Simon referenced everyone from John Lennon to the “Late-Great Johnny Ace,” as well as his evocation of the treasured do-wop groups of his youth, and he also recalled Buddy Holly in the early 2000’s, and on this album, he echoed early rock-and-roll nonsense lyrics on “The Afterlife”). Simon has contemplated mutability throughout his career, but since his 40s, Simon has replaced the sentimental heartache of his youthful ruminations with humor, irony, and derision.

I suspect there’s much to be learned from this philosophical approach, and I’ve been listening to Simon’s So Beautiful or So What almost non-stop for the past few weeks. I find it wholly comforting and relevant, especially as I've recently learned a beloved family member is facing his last months, and by all accounts, he’s addressing the prospect with characteristic humor, grace, and boldness – similar to Simon’s most recent reflections. It’s humbling, his courage. I wish I had it. Maybe it comes with one’s built-in character or personality; maybe some are just born heroic, or maybe it comes from years of hard-won wisdom. Either way, at 41, I don’t have it yet. I wonder if I ever will…

10 Songs About The Power of Music, Part 2

It's been a busy spring, but fans are waiting and have been asking for the second installment of "10 Songs About The Power Of Music." And since I try to accommodate, let's begin again...

“Dance To The Music,” by Sly & The Family Stone. Is it wrong that I first heard this song performed live by a certain, unnamed teen pop star in the summer of 1989? Sigh…probably wrong, but I don’t care. This 1968 single by Sly & The Family Stone was their first big hit, reaching #8 on Billboard and kick-starting a string of classic hit singles, including: “Everyday People,” “Hot Fun In The Summertime,” and “Family Affair,” among others. The song breaks down the elements of a rock song, starting with the drummer, adding guitar, then bass, then organ and horns, telling “all the squares” to go home. While that directive clearly included me, I never went home. I stayed. And I’ve never stopped returning to this classic track.

“Old Time Rock-and-Roll,” by Bob Seger. This iconic rock song about the power of music was co-opted by an 80’s teen movie in an (admittedly) iconic socks-sliding scene, which is, sadly, what it took to make this song a rock classic. Originally just cracking the top-40 in 1979, its inclusion in the 1983 teen flick, Risky Business, solidified the Bob Seger track as a radio staple, with its punchy opening piano riff and dirty guitar and drums, the tune perfectly expresses the sheer joy of “old time rock and roll.” That said, I never understood the lyric, “…in ten minutes I’ll be late for the door.” Seger doesn’t seem the type to make appointments…

“Sir Duke,” by Stevie Wonder. As the title suggests, this song about the power of music is a tribute by Wonder to his musical hero, jazz pianist, Duke Ellington, who had died a few years before Wonder wrote this transcendent song. Taken from his legendary 1976 album, Songs In The Key Of Life (if you don’t own this album, you’re just missing out), the single, released in the summer of 1977, topped the U.S. Billboard charts for two weeks and still sounds fresh today, due largely to Wonder’s other-worldly arrangement and playful horn section. It doesn’t matter the context: when this song is played, everybody starts moving.

 “Late In The Evening,” by Paul Simon. Taken from the obscure, semi-autobiographic 1980 movie, One-Trick Pony, this #6 Billboard hit is a rock classic. Andy Greene from Rolling Stone magazine recently noted, “Whenever (Paul) Simon sings the line, ‘I stepped outside and smoked myself a J,’ from "Late in the Evening," at a regular concert, the crowd goes absolutely insane.” And it’s true. I witnessed it firsthand when I saw Simon play live in June 2001. I guess folks like to have their fun. But I cheered at the next line about the rapturous joy of live music: “…I turned my amp up loud and I began to play, it was late in the evening, and I blew that room away!” Well said, Mr. Simon, well said.

 “Groove Is In The Heart,” by Deee-Lite. One-hit wonders get a bad rap. I argue that on one level, they do fans justice by delivering a careers-worth of music in one, all-encompassing song, sparing fans from enduring career highs and lows and inevitable “experimental” phases. Deee-Lite is such a one-hit wonder, arguably existing for the sole purpose of bringing “Groove Is In The Heart” to the world. The song features a Herbie Hancock sample (from “Bring Down The Birds”) as well as a sample from Vernon Burch's "Get Up" and rapping by Q-Tip, from “A Tribe Called Quest.” Additionally, the song features bass and backing vocals from Bootsy Collins. How could it not have become quintessential? Its message is universal. Music stems from the heart, and it’s impossible not to move to this remarkable dance tune. It was popular when I was in college and was THE song the women in my dorm listened to when they were getting ready to go out. In fact, every time I hear the song, I can still smell the Aquanet lingering in the air, mingled with the smell of beer, perfume, and the anticipation of another dumb night.