5 Songs Apr. 19

An hour late but the music's still great

Gladys Knight & the Pips – “I’ll Trust In You” 1962 from Letter Full of Tears. This was a freakin’ b-side!! It’s a vocal tour de force, an example of an 18-year-old Gladys Knight displaying bravura control, full of emotional resonance, delicate melisma, and powerhouse belting. The song is one of those early 60s things they often gave to young female singers, a kind of post-doo wop construction about the need for the girl to support her man under any circumstances. It’s kind of ridiculous, but Knight sells the heck out of it, with some neat harmony bits from the Pips behind her. The strings may not be necessary, but what else in 1962 could compete with Knight letting loose at the top of her lungs? “I’ll trust in you no matter what you do.” That’s what I’m thinking about Gladys Knight.

Wire – “Raft Ants” 2002 from Read and Burn 02. This is what you call art-punk. I had lost track of Wire by 2002, so I was surprised when I stumbled on to this particular track from 22 years back (and probably a dozen years at least after I’d last heard them) that it was such a noisy, raucous, punk rock kind of thing. Not nearly as tuneful as their classics from Pink Flag, “Raft Ants” is more of a hardcore punk approach. The lyrics are full of rapidly shouted rhymes, most of which go by so fast you hardly register them as anything but sounds. “Ebola, Coke Cola, Emil Zola, Motorola,” that sort of thing. (Thanks, genius.com.) There is one supercharged riff which slows down and inverts the rhythm for a couple bars of a bridge. You’ll also hear some weird squiggles and other synthesized sounds in the background. It’s all over in 2:04 seconds (though you can find an even shorter edited version that cuts out almost half of it.) Maybe not something I’d play all the time, but it’s a fun distillation of hardcore energy wedded to lyrics William Burroughs might have approved.

The Long Ryders – “Capturing the Flag” 1985 from State of Our Union. I was just thinking of these guys a couple days ago when a friend told me he had taken his granddaughter up in the Arch. I’ve lived in St. Louis my whole life, which predates the monument by a few years. The only time I ever went in it, though, was after I interviewed the Long Ryders when this album was new, and they invited me to join them. Anyway, this song sounds so much more organic than I remember it. In 1985, we all thought the production of this album, with its big-ass 80s drum sound and click track precision, was a sell-out. But it didn’t sell at all, so there’s that. And, honestly, while I could imagine it sounding better with a looser drum feel, it doesn’t feel right to change it. I can never remember which singer is Sid Griffin and which Stephen McCarthy, but whichever one this is is quite good at delivering the twangy roots-inflected melody. Somehow, the song is credited to all four Long Ryders and Will Burch (of the Records). It’s got a neat Rickenbacker twelve-string rhythm guitar, too. The lyrics are about a woman waiting home alone for her soldier husband and/or son to return. The poignantcy is lost, a bit, with such a buoyant arrangement, but it’s there if you pay attention.

Caetano Veloso – “Nature Boy” 2004 from A Foreign Sound. I covered a few weeks ago the Rickie Lee Jones version of this classic made famous by Nat King Cole. Caetano Veloso, one of the greatest of all Brazilian pop singers, had done this song before he put out this album filled with his interpretations of American songs. I love what he does here, stripping the music down to just heavily reverbed guitar and droning notes from a funky keyboard. His voice, as always, is beautiful, and he tells the tale of the young boy, living out in nature, who has learned the greatest thing is to love and be loved in return. There are way more mysterious versions of the song, but few that sound as absolutely entranced and in love with the concept as this one. Two minutes of tender beauty.

Peggy Lee – “But Beautiful” 1961 fromBasin Street East Proudly Presents Miss Peggy Lee Recorded at the Fabulous New York Club. Peggy Lee is a source of constant delight to me. She was a pop singer with jazz in her blood, and sometimes a jazz singer who held on to her pop credentials. This nightclub performance is a perfect example of her rhythmic control of a ballad, her ability to use vibrato at just the right moments to add resonance, her adoration of a song’s melody. “But Beautiful” is a song by lyricist Johnny Burke and music writer Jimmy Van Heusen, originally sung by Bing Crosby inRoad to Rio.”Love is tearful or it’s gay / It’s a problem or its play.” This is like a Marxist dialectic discussion of romance.I love the gentle jazz-based arrangement here, and there is a place in the middle where a harp glides across a melodic passage that is possibly my favorite use of the instrument outside of a Marx Brothers movie.