The Animal Orchestra

Last month I did a book talk with Bernie Krause at the Herbst Theatre in San Francisco. Bernie’s book, The Great Animal Orchestra, is sad but worth checking out. Over recent decades, he and a few others have been releasing beautiful recordings of soundscapes, some of which I played before the concerts St. Vincent and I did recently. This month’s playlist are those recordings. Sometimes people thought there were birds loose in the theaters—though there were also some recordings of a wild boar, possibly from Chernobyl, where Peter Cusack did some recordings (released as Sounds From Dangerous Places). Lastly, there are a couple recordings made by Chris Watson whose Mexican soundscapes on El Tren Fantasma are lovely in a strange way (but not included here—too industrial sounding).

Happy Holidays.

—DB
NYC

Post Sandy

No, this playlist is not a collection of storm themed songs, or songs about making do without water, power, garbage collection, public transportation and our friend, the Internet. It was a weird week. Uptown and in Brooklyn, and in many other places somewhat more remote, life went on as normal. I know, because I visited those countries and saw with this my own eyes. What was weird was that these other countries were so close—thousands of Recharge zombies would trek over the Williamsburg Bridge or up the avenues to visit friends who lived there with power, or they’d huddle around in a bank lobby or coffee shop with outlets… and a flushing toilet.

This playlist doesn’t reflect that storm, or it’s aftermath—it’s pretty much songs I added to my own pop category over the last 3 months, while I was on tour. I added songs to other categories—new Brazilian stuff, no surprise there—but there isn’t enough accumulated for a playlist, not just yet.

Included are some songs from Rodriguez, the subject of the recent documentary, “Searching For Sugarman”—worth checking out—and Coin Locker Kid, whom I’m sure is going to blow up in the press pretty soon.

—DB
Minneapolis

Classic Country II

It has been maybe a few years since my last playlist of this sort. Country AND Western, pre Brooks—Garth Brooks that is. After that, the hats.

This stuff goes way back. There are 19th century ballads in here and reworked folk songs about that wondrous thing, the railroad—not to mention that Louvin Brothers song about that “Great Atomic Power”. Some of this music was sneered at and made fun of by my generation of rockers. Although, acts like Gram Parsons, The Byrds and The Flying Burrito Brothers tried to show us that there's great poetry here, with skillful, near perfect, songwriting and unforgettable melodies.

There are also some oddities like Merle Travis' obsession with full figured gals and Red Simpson's truck drivin' songs (“Diesel Smoke” and “Dangerous Curves” was recently covered by The Little Willies). Travis invented a signiture way of playing the electric guitar that has been hugely influential.

This music might not be to everyone's taste I imagine but, for me, these are songs that have stood the test of time.

—David
Philadelphia

Brassy! Love This Giant Influences and Inspirations

When Annie Clark and I agreed to build our new record around the sound of a brass band (though there are some winds in there too), I began to make a playlist of all the various brassy and horn-like stuff I had to serve as inspirational material. We really wanted to try and have the brass BE the band, and not simply a source of color or punctuation, as they are often used. I wanted to discover how many different ways we could use these sounds, so the songs on our record wouldn't all sound too similar. Before too long, maybe after recording the first four tunes, we arrived at what would be a pretty consistent set of instruments for our project: tuba, saxophone, French horn, trumpet and trombone. Far from constricting, there are a lot of rhythms and textures one gets from this selection. I left out the obvious "Earth Wind and Fire" type horn riffs, but those kinds of stabs, though not the licks, found their way in as well.

Now, while maybe none of our songs sound like much of the selections in this playlist, these were definitely passed around and were something I, at least, soaked in during the long gestation of this record. There will be some stuff that might be painfully obvious, but I expect there will be some surprises in here as well.

—DB
NYC

Hot August Nights

This playlist is mainly comprised of new releases and stuff I've been listening to this month. I recently saw Micachu & the Shapes open for tune-yArDs at Terminal 5. I heard that the talented Ms. Apple is actually finishing her sets these days—the last show I saw of hers she walked off stage halfway through. Father John Misty is the former drummer of Fleet Foxes—I love that he describes the materials that go into a record in the verse of a song! Haim are three sisters. People Get Ready are friends from Brooklyn. I saw Buke and Gass at the BAM music festival curated by The National. Zammuto is Nick Zammuto, former guitarist and vocalist for The Books—a wonderful duo that combine video and audio samples in their music. A couple of months ago, Santigold put on the best show I've seen all year at MHW.

—DB
NYC

Here Lies Love Inspirations

I just got back from North Adams Massachusetts where we—with support from the Public Theater and Williamstown Theater Festival—mounted a full-length theatrical workshop production of Here Lies Love.

The story follows former first lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos, from her childhood up to the moment at the end of the People Power revolution when she and Ferdinand Marcos flee Manila (the infamous shoes were yet to be discovered, so they are not mentioned). Here Lies Love is entirely true and much of the lyric content comes from speeches and interviews the various characters gave over the years.

The production is a disco musical that I (with occasional help from Fatboy Slim) have been working on for many years. The production is directed by Alex Timbers and features a mostly Filipino cast of amazingly talented actors and singers. To make a long story short—it went amazingly well. Yes, there were problems, but all of them seem fixable. The main issues we were concerned with before the series of live performances were the following:

A. Can a story be imparted with almost no dialogue, and
B. Can we stage this "beast" (as Oskar at the Public Theater refers to it)—the reason Oskar calls the staging a “beast” is because the audience stands (and dances!) in the middle of the room while the action of the production takes place all around them.

The answer to both concerns is yes—the staging and the concept work. It works so well that I sort of cried at every performance. I attended all six performances, as we kept making small changes. To be honest, my tears at one show were because the sound mix was so atrocious, but at the others I cried because I was deeply moved by the story and emotions that the actors depicted. Now, one might say, “Sure, he knows the story inside and out,” and some might think that I got emotional because I was simply thrilled by seeing my vision finally realized—but I think some others may have had the same experience. In the end, I'd say it's the best thing I've done since the Stop Making Sense tour—which I guess is saying something.

The music, much of it done in collaboration with Fatboy Slim, is influenced by about 4 decades of dance music, much of which I have posted on this months’ playlist. Funk, electro, disco, house, go-go, techno, samba, zouk, dubstep... I could go on and on. The score doesn't follow any particular club style—it hops all over to better represent each character's moment. This playlist is long (over seven hours of inspiration!) and it could have been longer—but this gives you an idea of the many beats and styles that fed into this thing.

—DB
NYC

Southern Writers

I wouldn't call this stuff New Country, as that would normally be applied to a host of other quasi rock acts these days such as Taylor Swift or Trisha Yearwood. The folks on this playlist are really more akin to the great tradition of southern writers—Flannery O'Conner, Barry Hannah, Cormack McCarthy and Harry Crews. There is some honest feeling put into words and some decidedly oddball stuff as well. There are a few memorable tunes but nothing geared towards the marketplace. Some recordings on here are not even new—they might be seen as being precursors to the others in some ways.

—DB
42nd St. (Midtown)

How Did You Hear That?

I can't remember the dots that connected me to a lot of this stuff, but here are some likely guesses. Alabama Shakes might have been heard on Aurgasm, the MP3 streaming site. I immediately bought their songs at least a month ago from their EP. Bright Moments is on my former label, Luaka Bop—so no mystery there! Kelly Pratt, Bright Moments’ main guy, also arranged and played on the record St. Vincent and I just finished. Nicholas Krgovich came from Jan at Tomlab records in Cologne. I think fun. was written up in NY Times. Speaking of NY Times, Willis Earl Beal was recently reviewed for his late show at Mercury Lounge and was also part of the Shuffle Culture show Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson did at BAM a couple of weeks ago. Phillip Bailey did a song in Clockers, the Spike Lee movie, that sort of sounds like the song I chose for this playlist. Young Fathers may have been reviewed on Needle Drop. Theesatisfaction are connected with Shabazz Palaces. Gabriel Kahane was part of a benefit we both did for a program at the Public Theater. Miike Snow is not the guy's real name but he's everywhere, as is Odd Future.

—DB
Western Chelsea

Meta Nostalgia

For some odd reason, last month I had an urge to listen to some of the songs from Arthur, The Kinks’ concept album about the decline of the British Empire. Truth be told, pretty much all of their albums during this period were about the Empire’s decline, but Arthur was originally made to accompany a TV special that would make the band’s reoccurring theme explicit.

Here are songs from all of these albums, almost none of which are available for (legal) download in the U.S.—these tracks come from my CDs. Although, these tracks are available for download for folks who have access to Amazon in the UK, in which case you can click on the Amazon links below.

Anyway, these guys are great songwriters and this middle period is, for me, when they wrote an amazing number of memorable songs. Many of these songs are nostalgic and the characters in the songs, who are sometimes the songwriters (the Davies brothers), long for the good old days of Empire—school days, mansions in the country and the simple (English) life. It's often hard to tell who is being more sincerely nostalgic—the band or the character portrayed in the song. Though, most of it rings with an uncomfortable truth.

Sometimes these characters are also being satirized, which often makes the songs ironic—and the character singing is viewed as slightly pathetic. Or maybe, it's both the singer and songwriter who are pathetic? Maybe a slew of songs about pathetic and sometimes despicable characters might have ended up hurting these guys’ chances of scoring hits during that era. The fact that the world they describe is so very English might have hurt too. They were blacklisted from the U.S. during this fertile period. Apparently, the ultimate reason for their US ban was due to their refusal to pay dues to the American Federation of Television and Recording Artists before their appearance on a Dick Clark Special. But there were other factors too. They faded from the Woodstock generation's consciousness and only returned as a more boisterous and louder rock band. None of those later songs are included here.

The band is a little sloppy—our standards of what are acceptable for tightness in a pop song has changed—but the songwriting is consistent. I heard that there was drunkenness and the Davies brothers had periodic punch-ups, so life in this band wasn't a day at the beach, even a cold rainy English beach.

—DB
NYC

Eclectic Mix

Wow. I really amassed a lot of tunes since the last miscellaneous playlist! There are some older things snuck in that I wanted to listen to, but also some new things recommended by friends that I never would have known about otherwise.

—DB
Long Beach

World Psychedelic Classics

I realized I hadn't done a psychedelic playlist since 2005. Since then, it has vastly expanded and a lot of usual suspects have been added. This playlist is over 5 hours long! Maybe the longest I've ever done…

There are still some classic tunes from US and UK acts that will be extremely familiar (Kashmir, duh), but now these are joined by lots of contemporary artists mining that vein of free and "out" music that manages to stay within the boundaries of pop. Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kasabian, Mt. Eerie and Ben Cooper's Patients project are all here too—as well as stuff that came out in the last few decades—so it's not all 60s stuff by any means. There's a smattering of international psych funk as well. Some years ago when I was at Luaka Bop we did a sampler of West African psych funk called, Love's a Real Thing and we realized that this movement, along with its fuzz boxes and spacey lyrics, found roots all over the world. There are some Turkish psych funk tracks here that are just wonderful—good songs and excellent production (they make some of our home grown stuff sound pretty wimpy by comparison).

—DB
NYC

River of January

It has been exactly one year since I have posted a playlist of Brazilian stuff—so here is an update. This is a long playlist with more than 3 hours worth of music. Some tracks are very new and a few are quite old. Marcelo Jeneci performed in town last week—very nice show—and so did Criolo. I didn’t make it to Criolo’s performance but I heard it was great—he’ll be back and I’ll catch him then. I saw both Tié and Tulipa perform earlier this year—also very good. Thanks to Mauro for passing on their CDs.

—DB
Marfa, TX