What I'm Listening To
Ear Candy 🍭 | 10
Summer All Over
This week I picked up Blakes Mills’ 2020 album, Mutable Set. I’ve tried to order this record for over a year to no avail. Finally, last night, I got to put it on the turntable. And I was immediately absorbed into its slow, celestial orbit.
There is a quietness to this album that makes you lean in on every song. Mills makes you lean in to surprise you, to make your day or break your heart with a lyric, to expand the world with an extraterrestrial sound, to open up new dimensions with a chord change—dimensions of the heart; of the mind; of reality.
The more I listen to this album the more I love it.
Ebb Tide
I was listening to this song yesterday. I added it to my library after finishing Bob Dylan’s memoir, Chronicles. The harp floated in and I felt like I’d heard this song before. In a movie? Was that how I first heard it? Or does it just sound like a movie—grandiose, cinematic, full of shadows and light, longing, redeeming, full of grace. Dylan said of Sinatra’s version “it never failed to fill me with awe…When Frank sang that song, I could hear everything in his voice – death, God and the universe, everything.”
Siete Lagrimas
I don’t really know anything about Lau Noah. I came to this song through Cécile McLorin Salvant, one of the greatest singers I have ever heard. But now I have Noah’s album lined up in my library for the next listen.
This song pulls me in right from the first notes of the guitar. It feels like a place, and you can hear the weather in it. It’s warm but a chilled evening breeze blows through it, making the firelight in the centre of its courtyard dance on the white stucco walls. You’re wrapped in a blanket but you can’t get it to reach your naked feet on the cold terracotta floor.
The song is about the bittersweet loss of love. Before I read that from its songwriter, and without knowing enough Spanish to parse the message, I want to say that I could already hear it; feel it.
I hope these songs find you well. If you’ve got some songs that are inspiring you at the moment put them in the comments. I’m always grateful for something that expands my ear.
love,
David
I always think of Ebb Tide by the Righteous Brothers, but Frank's version is extraordinary as he always is in my eyes. Really liked Lau Nuah although I will have trouble remembering her name...had to go back to your post three times to get it right. You always open my ears to music I would never encounter, except Frank of course.