Morgan writes about songs

“Wond’ring Aloud” by Jethro Tull (from Aqualung, 1971)

As a little kid, I never quite took to most prog-rock like Rush, ELP, or Yes, but I’ve always had an attraction to Jethro Tull for reasons that are hard to pin down. At the core of the band is quite a bit of quintessentially 70’s silliness, but that’s kind of the point. Jethro Tull’s career created many of those prog touchstones; marathon-length songs filled with fantasy imagery and social commentary, classical and jazz influences (they have a cover of Bach’s Bouree), and Ian Anderson’s iconic, quirky persona. But there’s so much elegance and greatness to their whole discography - 8-10 or so of their albums are very dear to me. They never really sounded like anyone before them, and only lately has their sound crept into modern music (see The Decemberists’ The Crane Wife).

Their commercial peak Aqualung is punctuated by huge rock numbers, mostly decrying hypocrisy and decay in organized religion. However, the real treasures of the album to me are the short acoustic interludes that divide the album into thirds. “Wond’ring Aloud”, one of Ian Anderson’s finest works, is just a tender, brief, and lovely baroque-folk composition - one of my favorite out-and-out love songs there is. The imagery is vividly pretty; “Last night slipped the sunset / my hand in her hair”, and it ends with the gorgeously simple sentiment “And it’s only the giving that makes you what you are.” The dinosaurs/stalwarts of rock music they are, Jethro Tull achieve a timelessness by sometimes transcending those huge moments and massive ambition to bring things down to a personal, human realm. And “Wond’ring Aloud”, one of my favorite songs there is, nails it.

“Just Like A Woman” by Bob Dylan (from Blonde on Blonde, 1966)

My relationship with Bob Dylan’s music is a little convoluted - not really in a negative way, but in a pick-and-choose way. My favorite Bob Dylan songs are scattered from LPs Another Side Of Bob Dylan to Blood on the Tracks, a period of time where he ditched the protests and political banner-wavers and just focused on creating more mature, bold, and personal folk-rock songs. He really hit a beautiful stride when he decided to hang up his old musical ideologies and just write songs. “Just Like A Woman” is one of the most well-known Dylan songs ever for good reason; it has so much power to it. It’s been lyrically picked apart forever, but it could be about any of the high-profile women in his life and how their public personas masked fragility and pain. However, it doesn’t really matter by that achingly soaring chorus, which could apply to the circumstances of any relationship dissolution. Interpret it how you will, it’s the punch to the song that counts to me - that grinning way he sings “And you make! LOVE! / just like a woman.” Dylan dragging his music out of the parameters of folk music in the mid-60’s and imbuing it with electricity, personality, and a more bodily, physical energy only led to great things.

“Raised in the City” by The Replacements (demo version, 1980)

“If I’ve ever had a magic moment in my life, it was popping that tape in,” said Twin/Tone Records manager Peter Jesperson, upon hearing the first demo tape from scruffy Minneapolis quartet The Replacements. “I didn’t even get through the first song before I thought my head was going to explode.” A Beatles freak in love with the raw potential he found, it was this fateful decision that would eventually launch The Replacements to massive importance in alternative rock; within the next decade, they’d mature their songwriting immensely. But right at the beginning, they had hit a seam of hungry rock and roll energy. To say “Raised In The City” sounds confident is an understatement; how did they already know so damn much about writing perfect pop songs? Tommy Stinson, then 16, plays a great McCartney-esque walking bassline all over it, and his older brother Bobby Stinson contributes a fiery, melodic solo over the minor-key bridge. And leader Paul Westerberg sings with serrated, sly attitude throughout, even throwing out a wink and a Stones-ish double entendre - “Met a little honey with a nice tight rear / She gets rubber in all four gears”. I only feel like Peter Jesperson did when I listen to this demo; the pop music nerd in me gets overexcited. It’s just a nigh-flawless rock and roll song.

“Little Emma’s Smile” by Viking Moses (from Crosses, 2006*)

Brendon Massei, who has played music as Viking Moses for more than a decade, has always performed in obscurity, still touring DIY venues and house show circuits as diligently as ever. However, he is one of the most fundamental ancestors of modern indie- and freak-folk; he’s associated with or influenced major acts like Devendra Banhart, Deer Tick^, Will Oldham, Cat Power, Mirah, Phosphorescent, and many more. However, there’s a keen sense of humility, authenticity, and gentle melancholy to his songwriting unmatched by his contemporaries. Rather than employing turgid character studies or overly clever wordplay, his songs feel hymnal and joyful. Such is “Little Emma’s Smile”, an ode to, well, Emma, who’s been referenced in many of his songs yet not given a lot of concrete detail. It’s a love song through and through, yet the fluttery, pretty sound of it is tempered perfectly by Brendon’s frayed, sad, weathered voice. However, with the rest of Viking Moses’ catalog, an optimistic and holy light shines through.

*educated guess after research (no release date is printed on the CD sleeve)

^Brendon Massei took John McCauley on his first tour as Deer Tick, and Devendra Banhart featured Viking Moses on his 2004 self-made compilation The Golden Apples of the Sun.

“Love You To” by The Beatles (from Revolver, 1966)

About a year before The Beatles would don colorful outfits and declare to the world through international satellite hookup that “all you need is love”, they made the darkest, most inward-looking album of their careers. John Lennon’s contributions to their studio masterpiece Revolver were about drugs, staying in bed, avoiding other people, his own fractured mind, and other people not understanding him. Paul McCartney penned the brief, pained “For No One” and sang an ode to death and loneliness over naught but a stinging string section. Oh, but then there’s those greatGeorge Revolver songs.

George Harrison had worked his Indian influences into a few previous Beatles compositions, but “Love You To” was his first contribution to the band that was an out-and-out raga. But the inclusion of this sound isn’t merely meant to sound far-out or to have some sort of populist world-music appeal. It’s always sounded emotionally distant, droning, and glaring to me; not warm and enlightened like his subsequent Indian music excursions “Within You, Without You” and “The Inner Light”. It also has a lyrical feel to it that feels quintessentially 1960’s: mistrust of others as well as acknowledgement of life’s brevity and the quick passage of time. And then there’s the part that gets under my skin every time; George suggests “I’ll make love to you / If you want me to”, but it couldn’t sound less lusty or libidinous. He sounds so monotone, ice-cold, unfeeling in such a request. It’s more of a “hey, the world is going to hell, so why not?”. It’s a great moment.

“Everglade” by Antony and the Johnsons (from The Crying Light, 2009)

Antony Hegarty’s second and third albums, I Am A Bird Now and The Crying Light, work as a symbiotic pair because their narrative trajectories are so similar. In the former, Antony pleads to be a woman throughout, taking detours on every song to address different aspects of this powerful need, and finding redemption at the very end as a “bird girl”. In the latter, Antony cries out in grief for a raped, dying, pillaged earth, only to find paradise, “another world”, in the final song “Everglade”. While the whole album leading up to it shows complete musical restraint, “Everglade” absolutely swirls with gorgeously thick, dense orchestration, suiting the overwhelming, heavenly nature of the song. Maybe he arrives at this new, unfettered world in death or in a dream, but whatever it is, Antony has found it.

“Chelsea Morning” by Joni Mitchell (from Clouds, 1969)

In the late ‘60’s, Joni Mitchell was upping the ante with each of her consecutive solo albums. She would hit her absolute peak as an album artist with 1971’s Blue, but even from the very beginning, she was demonstrating incredible talent with vivid imagery and unorthodox acoustic guitar technique. Compared to her later albums, the solo acoustic guitar collection Clouds sounds a little bit bare and brittle, in need of a few embellishments. She’d hone her skills as an arranger quickly after, but there are several pristine gems on the album. “Chelsea Morning” has an especially indelible melody and lyric. Its domestic imagery was inspired by Mitchell’s room in the Chelsea neighborhood in New York City, which she and her friends would decorate with found objects such as mobiles made from broken stained-glass. Elsewhere, there’s “milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges too” and seeing how “the sun poured in like butterscotch”. Joni Mitchell would tackle some more tangled, complex emotions in her next few albums, but “Chelsea Morning” just feels like home.

“Lost Wisdom” by Mount Eerie with Julie Doiron and Fred Squire (from Lost Wisdom, 2008)

Phil Elverum is uncannily talented at making music that, without being loud in volume, sounds sweeping, gargantuan, quietly massive. “Lost Wisdom”, an impromptu album recorded on a tour break while all three members happened to be in the same area, is one of the most accessible, intimate, and powerful works Phil Elverum has recorded as either The Microphones or Mount Eerie. This album marks the beginning of Elverum’s infatuation with black metal, and while it doesn’t show in the sonics at all, it shows in the title (a Burzum homage), the album cover (another Burzum homage), the liturgical melodies, and the solemn, gnostic lyrics. But above everything, the song “Lost Wisdom” sounds majestically, massively alone. “I saw your picture out of nowhere and forgot what I was doing / Everything vanished in your eclipse / A constellation of moments comes to life in the void, lost wisdom”, intone Elverum and Julie Doiron. It’s a cold, grey psalm to oneself and one who might not be around any longer.