Neko Case

August ’07 – Neko Case’s albums are my favourite sing-along albums at the moment. I put her on when there is no one else in the house and sing along with all my heart, approximating the vowel sounds when I don’t know the words. I often don’t know the words. Sometimes there will be a single line that hits me – “I leave the party at 3am, all alone, thank god” or “In the end I was the mean girl, or somebody’s in-between girl” or “The most tender place in my heart is for strangers” – but the overall concept of each song generally eludes me. Sometimes I even fear she can be waffly. But the singing is amazing, with melodies flying off in all directions, and the performance is so uninhibited and hot-blooded, or sometimes scarily cold-blooded, that I can only love her music. But I have found a song (on the live album ‘The Tigers Have Spoken’) that is perfectly crafted…taking into account that perfectly crafted includes a few humanising blemishes and flaws. I told one of my brothers that he should download it. I watched over his shoulder as he typed in the song title; he typed “hecs”. I said, “No, the other sort – ‘hex.’” Danny (currently a student) said, “She’s obviously not Austalian.”

There is an impotent evil about a curse song; an evil that is born out of nothing more than scraps – unanswered phone calls, dates that fell through, words that turned out to be meaningless, love that was unvalued after the object got past the initial, thrilling ego-boost. The curse song is tiny fists pounding against the vast, nerveless back of someone who has simply, and finally, turned away. Neko sings, “You hear me calling your name out at night, do you run to your window thinking a coyote might be howling?” and, later, “When the stars in the sky begin to fade, do you tell yourself ‘Don’t be afraid, it’s just the night that’s dying’?” I have always believed that when you put a curse on someone, you run the risk of the toxic poison of the curse splashing back onto you. At the time, of course, you are prepared to take that risk, sure that it is impossible for you to feel any worse (or better) than you do. Later, you come to regret it. “You took my heart, cast it aside, laughed when I cried – like it was just no big deal! And here, all alone in the dark, I know just how you feel.” That last line is my favourite, for its double-edge. Has he been dragged down to her level of suffering, or has she been reduced to his level of baseness? - the curse of the curser, the heartlessness of cursing someone to heartlessness.

Jean Shepherd

July ’07 – ‘SATISFIED MIND’ is one of those songs that I almost knew, but didn’t quite, so a few weeks ago, I sat next to the CD-player and learnt it properly. I know Jean Shepherd’s version, but I’m sure lots of other people have covered it, too, because it’s just so enjoyable to sing and play. It feels best when you play it briskly, and sing it loudly and plainly – then it swings along with its own momentum. Some of the lyrics are a bit plodding, and I considered fiddling with the last verse, “When life is over and my time has run out/ My friends and my loved ones, I’ll leave them no doubt/ But one thing’s for certain, when it comes my time/ I’ll leave this old world with a satisfied mind,” mainly because I found the “leave them no doubt” perplexing – is it “leave them, no doubt”? But how can you then sing “But one thing’s for certain” if you have already said “no doubt”? Shouldn’t it be “Another thing’s for certain”? And I didn’t like the repetition of “time has run out” and “when it comes my time.” But in the end, I told myself not to be such a proof-reader, and just to sing it. And every time I sing it, I wonder how it feels to have a satisfied mind. And I think I know how it feels (occasionally).

Lucinda Williams

June ’07 – I was given Emmylou Harris’s ‘Wrecking Ball’ for Christmas when it came out in the early-mid ‘90s. I wasn’t sure about the production (Daniel “Turn Up The Reverb” Lanois) but there were some songs on it that I fell completely in love with: ‘Going Back To Harlan’ (my introduction to the McGarrigle sisters) and ‘Sweet Old World’. I had heard Lucinda Williams before and didn’t like the way she sang. She didn’t sing – she chewed. But I had to admit, ‘Sweet Old World’ was one of the saddest and most beautiful songs I had ever heard. Several years later, I gave Lucinda another go with ‘Car Wheels On A Gravel Road’. Same problem; I liked the album, but just wished that Emmylou had been singing it instead. Then, after ten or fifteen years of ambivalence, I bought Lucinda’s first album for $2 (from my local, at the Parramatta end of Glebe Pt Rd) and, after a few listens, finally understood. She is a difficult knot of harshness and sweetness. She brutally undermines her lovely melodies and neat word-plays, not because she wants to make things hard for the listener, but because she is trying, trying, to be honest; hoping that somehow we can accept the way she sees the world; and hoping that we won’t refuse to listen unless she comes back with a sugar-coated version. My favourite on this album ended up being ‘CRESCENT CITY’. I don’t even know exactly why; it captures some happy-sad, looking-back mood, “We used to dance the night away/ Me and my sister, me and my brother/ We used to walk down by the river.” And there is a fantastic, subtle chord change between the verse and chorus, and a melody that just makes me want to sing along at top volume.

Merle Haggard

March ’07 – I was on my way to play a show a few weeks ago and a woman, seeing my guitar, asked me what music I liked. I asked her the same question and she said “Country music, Aboriginal music.” She listed a few singers, including Merle Haggard, so, sometime later, although his conservative politics always bothered me, I got his Best Of down from my shelves and since have been listening to it a lot. I love ‘MAMA TRIED’ – it is a compact little life story, with brief but vivid character sketches, and a chorus so rousing and full of energy that you almost forget the meaning of the words that you’re singing along with: “I turned twenty-one in prison, doing life without parole”. Great guitar riffs, too.

David Blue

February ’07 - One song I listened to about ten times in a row recently was 'HOUSE OF CHANGING FACES', by David Blue. I thought only Townes Van Zandt wrote songs from such desperate places (like Sanitarium Blues, which makes me picture Townes buckled to a bed but still groping for a pencil, then scrawling lyrics on his green hospital gown, saving up the very last of his brain cells for a song). There is not a single wasted word in David Blue's song - “It wasn’t easy when I think about it, living in the house of changing faces. I still have the tracks to remind me what life was like high and wasted, when I wanted to die” - and his guitar, heavy, harsh and twanging, says even more, maybe all the truly awful but undramatic details which just can’t be conveyed by words. His vocals are double-tracked, which I think is often a mistake for really personal songs…but in this case, maybe he needed the moral support of another voice (and it could only be his own).

Prince

January ’07 – For $2, I bought Prince’s ‘Round The World In A Day’. I used to listen to it at a friend’s house when I was fourteen; ‘Raspberry Beret’ was a favourite, for the lines “and if it was warm she wouldn’t wear much more” and also, “the type you find in a second-hand store” (buying berets in second-hand shops was the sort of thing we would do, as was partial nudity). I have liked Prince since I got ‘Purple Rain’ for my twelfth birthday, but not very thoroughly…I loved Love Positions’ version of Kiss (again, the lyrics were so hippie and down-to-earth for someone who has kiss-curls like Michael Jackson) and there was that song about “If I was your girlfriend”. So I was very curious about my second Prince album. And it turned out to be amazing. ‘PAISLEY PARK’ quickly became my song of the moment – it’s so happy that it’s almost creepy! At about the same time I made this purchase, a Mr Whippy van had taken to visiting Arcadia Rd (one day I heard joyful cries as ‘Greensleeves’ approached, and spied two grown-up boy Goths from down the road run out and buy ice-creams), and I thought, “If everyone in the world were like me, in twenty years, all the Mr Whippy vans would shelve ‘Greensleeves’ in favour of ‘Paisley Park’.” Caution, children!