1. In her cover of the classic 1965 Mamas & the Papas hit "California Dreamin'" on her upcoming album "Wallflower" (Verve), jazz singer Diana Krall takes the well-known melody down to a simple vocal line backed by piano and strings. On the second verse, a bass line and electronic rhythm track assert themselves and return us to the song's classic rhythms. Musical lifer Graham Nash supplies distant backing vocals. It's the immortal dream of a new California, on such a winter day.
Other covers on the album include "Desperado," "Alone Again (Naturally)" and "Sorry Seems To Be the Hardest Word." Sounds like our boyhood in the 1970s all over again. (Coming out in February 2015.)
2. "Nobody here but your body, dear" is the intriguing and suggestive hook-line to the danceable track "The Party Line" from the upcoming Belle & Sebastian album "Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance," out next month from Matador Records. You can already find the video online to whet your insatiable B&S appetite.
3. Contemporary composer Philip Glass began writing a series of etudes in 1991 to challenge himself as a pianist. He eventually completed two sets of 10 compositions, and now pianist Maki Namekawa has recorded them both, including the world premiere recording of the second book, Nos. 11-20, for the new 20-track double-album "Philip Glass: The Complete Piano Etudes" (Orange Mountain). An online video of Namekawa performing the Romantic Etude No. 20 shows the pianist's precision, grace, and her way with lush melody.
4. This week, electronic-musician Moby has re-released "Hotel: Ambient," the long out-of-print, limited-edition companion disc to the 2005 album "Hotel," in a remastered version, with the original tracklist filled out by previously unreleased tracks. Here's the pop star talking about the music: "I first heard, and heard about, ambient music on the B-side of David Bowie's 'Heroes.' As much as I've loved writing songs and dance tracks, I've always been obsessed with the ways in which ambient and instrumental music can transform the space in which they're being listened [to]. I also really appreciate the subtle and at times un-demanding qualities of ambient music, and the ways in which it can unconventionally reach people emotionally."
5. Late gay beat author William S. Burroughs is nobody's idea of a pop star. But consider this intriguing press release: "In 1980, Genesis P-Orridge and Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson [both of Throbbing Gristle renown] travelled to New York City to meet up at the fortified apartment, known as The Bunker, of famed beat writer and cultural pioneer William S. Burroughs and his executor James Grauerholz to start the daunting task of compiling the experimental sound works of Burroughs, which up until that point had never been heard.
"During those visits, Burroughs would play back his tape-recorder experiments featuring his spoken word 'cut-ups,' collaged field recordings from his travels. Dais Records is honored to have worked with the Burroughs estate to finally reissue, for the first time since its original release in 1981, a proper album reissue of Burroughs' "Nothing Here Now but the Recordings" in its original vinyl format to celebrate Burroughs' centennial anniversary, fully remastered from the original master tapes in a limited edition of 1,000 vinyl copies."
Frank Talk
We were reading the new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Ford "Let Me Be Frank With You" (Ecco), four interconnected stories featuring Ford's longtime creation Frank Bascombe. It's set in post-Hurricane Sandy suburban New Jersey. But upon reading a paragraph in the second piece, "Everything Could Be Worse," we were suddenly pitched forward in time to the present, post-Ferguson America. It's uncomfortably timely. This is the passage we mean:
"When the red-coated black woman at my front door realized no one was answering, and that a car had crunched into the snowy driveway, she turned and issued a big welcoming smile down to whoever was arriving, and a demure wave to assure me all was well here -- no one hiding in the bushes with burglar tools, about to put a padded brick through my back window. Black people bear a heavy burden trying to be normal. It's no wonder they hate us. I'd hate us, too. I was sure Mack Bittick was watching her through the curtains."
In some ways Ford's book is a poem-in-prose describing post-financial collapse America (thanks again, unscrupulous bankers and speculators!). Here Bascombe describes the long-range effects of the recession on his N.J. suburb: "Meanwhile Haddam itself is countenancing service cutbacks. Too much money's 'lost' to wages, the Republicans on the Boro council say. The budget gap's at fifteen mil. Many old town-fixture employees have been pink-slipped in these days before Christmas. The previous manger scene, mothballed a decade ago, the wise men all portrayed as strapping Aryans instead of dusky Levantines and Negroes, has been revived -- the rental company for the race-appropriate mangers having upped their prices."
Happy Christmas, one and all!