Delaney Talks: Small Talks Production Coordinator's Staff Picks
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
As a kid I declared a firm hatred for country music and swore it would never falter. I really could not see how. Eventually, this aversion—kept alive mostly by stubbornness and the songs of Kenny Chesney—gave way to a poor-spirited appreciation, with artists like Hank Williams and George Jones inspiring in me a secret sentimentality for days of old, sourdough biscuits and salt pork, a cowboy life I might have loved. Then recently I found this playlist curated by The Numero Group, an archival record label and arbiter of taste, which broke down at once any remains of my resistance and showed me exactly what I had been missing. A treasure trove of steel guitar and 70s storytelling. Cosmic American Music blends traditional country instrumentation with the sounds and attitudes of various genres, including folk, gospel, and psychedelic rock. The name, coined by Gram Parsons, rejects the more limiting term “country rock” and suggests instead a boundaryless landscape, an image of a wandering Western spirit, feet in the past and head in the future. Or in the clouds. Country music had entered the world of sci-fi films and LSD, and though most of these artists persisted on the fringes of commercial success, their contributions would not go underappreciated forever. At least not by me. Discovering these reissued tracks today and hearing them like new only affirms the movement’s timelessness.
Some of my favorite songs from the playlist:
“Honey Dew” by Jimmy Carter and Dallas County Green
“Lover Now Alone” by Kevin Vicalvi
“Back On The Road” by Andwella
“I Don’t Wanna Love Ya Now” by Mistress Mary
“Big Mouth USA” by Jim Ford
North Woods by Daniel Mason
This book made me constantly aware of time, the passing and misuse, the preciousness and opposing futility, at perpetual odds, as I saw generations live and die over the centuries, haunting a home in the woods of New England, watching the natural world change and decay and return and conquer. Involuntary surrender. In this state of mind, everything became important. A bird landed close enough, and it was a connection. I read before a foreign mountain and shrunk in the face of it. This meant of course I was very heavily impacted, very overly moved by whatever music I listened to in this state of mind. One night I traveled chronologically through Bon Iver’s discography, and I could hear the passing of many years, from some hazy beginning—stripped, raw, wooden foundation, lush forest—to a strange, man-made end, or present—electronics, machine noise, distorted human voices. And then back again. Another time I listened to impressionist classical, Debussy and Ravel, and felt altogether removed from everything, in as dramatic and corny a fashion as you might imagine, closing my eyes and taking deep breaths and thinking comically inarticulate thoughts about my own existence. Anyway, I recommend this novel not with the promise of any transformative or contemplative period but, above the things I have said, for good writing and a unique structure.
North Woods is available now via Penguin Random House Limited.
For Emma (Myspace Transmissions) - Bon Iver
Speaking of Bon Iver. I had not heard this, had not heard of Myspace Transmissions until just a few months ago, when the video was revealed to bloodshot eyes during some YouTube stupor. Here was a song I had loved for so long and, perhaps, the best version of it I had ever heard. There is so much tenderness, a softness melting around the words, the appearance of a bygone digital age blanketing the whole thing with nostalgia and making me homesick. I chose this as my favorite, but all of the Myspace Transmissions versions of songs from For Emma, Forever Ago are beautiful. So are the comment sections beneath these videos. I love reading the words of anonymous internet users and their emotional responses to music, usually grief, sometimes reflections like:
This suspends me in space and
blows my senses gently
or
Listening to this while raindrops fall on my bedroom window.. there are no words to describe the feeling
or
I was just playing the piano and then afterwards doors creeking .... shackles and even wind chimes came in out of nowhere
or
Feeling very sad and emotional with tears on my pillow while, stumbling upon this “moving piece” of music and Justin’s phenomenal melodic voice...
Also—in researching the Transmissions series, I learned of the “Myspace Dragon Hoard,” hundreds of thousands of recovered mp3 files collected by archivists after the website’s botched data migration in 2018, during which 13 years worth of files were destroyed. It is nearly impossible to navigate with any intention, as the file names are all long strings of numbers, but it can be exciting to click at random and see what you find. From there, I was led to the subreddit r/everyoneknowsthat, a thread dedicated to the hunt for an unknown song originally posted as a 17-second clip by a mysterious user. I won’t spoil the conclusion. Choose your rabbit hole.
Young, Gifted and Black - Aretha Franklin
Three of my all-time favorite songs are “Daydreaming,” “First Snow in Kokomo,” and “Oh Me Oh My (I’m A Fool For You Baby).” But for a long while, maybe forever, I have been in the awful habit of listening to songs and not albums, treating individual tracks as singular entities, throwing them into playlists of my design, disregarding in many cases the larger projects from which they came. I have been trying to break this habit. A couple of weeks ago, I stayed at a hostel overlooking Lake Atitlán in Guatemala. Every day, free beer was served between 5p.m. and 6p.m. and I decided to treat this as my listening hour. I poured a cup of Modelo, reclined in a wooden lounge chair, chose an album, and let it play. Putting on an album, it turns out—and many of you probably knew this, I am the clown—is in itself an activity. I learned not to continue using music only as a soundtrack for something else, for running errands or reading or writing or fantasizing about particular scenes. So finally, I heard Young, Gifted and Black as a whole. I really heard the words of the album’s title track, written by Nina Simone, for the first time. I practically strained my neck shaking my head and wondering what in the world, what in the hell I had been doing, how I could have lived in such ignorance of such beauty. I was the diamond miner giving up and turning back just before finding fortune. Never again. From that day forward, I would dig.
This is not to say I have never simply listened to an album front to back, but rather, I did not consider how important it was to do this with every album, if I liked even one song from the project. It was an embarrassing and humbling realization.
Listen: Spotify / Apple Music
Here are some other albums I have been loving recently:
Show Some Emotion by Joan Armatrading
Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks by Brian Eno
Take Time To Know Her by Percy Sledge
Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik by Outkast
Performance One by Doug Firebaugh
Fuyukukan by Tomoko Aran
Nina Simone - Live in Montreux 1976
I am going to address more specifically two of the songs covered this night—“Stars” by Janis Ian and “Feelings” by Morris Albert. Only a few lines into the former, Simone reprimands an audience member for attempting to leave, saying Hey girl, sit down. Sit down. The other spectators laugh, though the performer shows no hint of humor. She then restarts the song with, it seems, a subtle shift in demeanor. A return to the self, drawn away from the crowd and into her own mind, a bit shaken. And from there, she tells the story. Her face displays a real vulnerability, exposing honest thoughts and feelings, and you see the great Simone considering her own life with a burning intensity. To me, it is one of the best live performances of all time. A master class in authenticity. This appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival is criticized by some as being one of her weaker concerts, unsteady as a result of wearisome personal circumstances, an opinion I do not understand at all. Never have I seen such a commanding display of true artistry, the piano an extension of the person, delivering lyrics as though thinking of them in the moment, sometimes really improvising, not singing a song, not playing an instrument, but baring her soul.
The only reason I say “Stars” is one of the best live performances is because that same night, she gave us “Feelings,” an unrecognizable rendition of the ballad by Morris Albert, an exhibition of intimate despair, dreamy melancholy, and again, an opportunity to see beyond the mist of legend. I don’t really know why this concert has been on my mind so much lately. Maybe because so much has been changing in my life—I have been navigating, or enduring, a state of confusion—and in this period of reconstruction, I naturally turn to the voices of powerful women. Maybe it’s confirmation that vulnerability is no error, and there will always be people intimidated by your naked spirit. Or maybe not. In any case, I am moved.
Delaney Staack is the Production Coordinator of Small Talks Magazine. She can be reached at @delaneystaack on Instagram.
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