Discography Year Two - Week 46

It is hard to believe, but this week marks our last Theme Week of the second year of our Discography music discussion. The esteemed Phil Seiler gave us these directions:

"So here is the link to the article that was kicking around last summer:

I wish the list existed as one page rather than 15 pages of 10 each but welcome to the monetized future where even with public resources we cannot have nice things. 

In any case, the challenge of this theme week is to find a song from the album that did not make this list that is a tragedy of epic proportions. As but one example, (And I really should re-verify this list to confirm) but my recollection is not a single album by Suzanne Vega made this list which considering how pivotal she was to the neo-folk movement, is disappointing.

So that's my proposal. Do with it what ye may."

Now, it's the very definition of click bait (and, as I proposed to MK the other night at the Gillian Welch show, we have a click bait president for a click bait age) and, as several of you have pointed out, many of the choices are odd.  That said, I can appreciate it as a teacher; we often choose flawed texts solely to inspire conversation. 

There are some great choices, and consequently it is declared a Week of Excellence.

Dave Wallace

Tift Merritt - Shadow in the Way

Interesting theme for this week, and the list of Best 150 Albums by Female Artists is incredibly comprehensive.  With that said, I did find a notable omission.  I've previously expressed my love for the Tambourine album by Tift Merritt, which is not on the list.  Merritt has made some good albums, but this is easily my favorite by her.  An irresistible mix of country, blue-eyed soul, and pop, every song is great, her singing is superb, and her back-up band is firing on all cylinders.  For today's blog, I've selected album closer, Shadow in the Way.

Kevin Andrews

Imagine my surprise seeing The Roches on the first page of the list. I bought this record when I was 18 and have loved it ever since. Then I noticed it’s placement at #150. This, in the words of the excellent Sanford Zale, is a travesty. Another questionable call is The Spice Girls at #64. I won’t go into it but I’ll just say my daughter was six when this album came out and I heard it more than a few times and even saw their movie. Yes, they made a movie, their tour bus driver was played by Meatloaf. I may be biased against it. 

Lists like this tend to say more about the selectors than the selections. The list isn’t for the most influential or the most popular, it’s the greatest. Of course, this is subjective. You can disagree with the order but most deserve to be somewhere on the list. Several I was pleasantly surprised to see include Patty Griffin, Alison Krauss, k. d. lang, X, Rosanne Cash, Cassandra Wilson (#65, which I’d highly recommend), Rickie Lee Jones, Gillian Welch, and Kate Bush. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, it’s an NPR list after all.

Who is missing? Three artists come to mind, Sarah McLachlan, Shawn Colvin, and Dar Williams. I’ll go with Shawn just because I love this song, Polaroids  from her second album Fat City. She describes the song as a travelogue and it seems autobiographical. She’s joined on the album by a ridiculous cast of musicians: David Lindley, The Subdudes, Richard Thompson, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bela Fleck, Bill Payne, and a lot more. I’d certainly put it ahead of The Spice Girls.

Alice Neiley

This, my friends, was a difficult theme week. The reason for the difficulty is two-fold. One: the linked list Phil included in his theme description was quite impressive and comprehensive, surprisingly so, as articles like that are usually missing more than a few deserving artists. I was particularly impressed with numbers 1 and 2 on the list -- Joni Mitchell's Blue and Lauryn Hill's Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Yes. Yes. And yes. Two: my main issues with what the article was missing are about artists who are already on the list who have more than one ALBUM that should be there. The list did an excellent job with Joni Mitchell and Nina Simone, for example, by including more than one of their albums. 

However, I would say the list did Patty Griffin a great disservice by only including one of her albums, namely at the expense of Impossible Dream which includes the haunting "Rowing Song" (and I'm alone/all of the way/all of the way/alone and alive) and the ever-accurate and beautifully poetic "Useless Desires" (and the sky turns to fire/against the telephone wire). 

But, surprise surprise, my discography song this week is not Patty Griffin. I figured I'd choose an artist not on the list who absolutely should be: Audra McDonald. I've written about her before here and there, but she's one of the most brilliant Broadway singers in existence. She was trained classically at Julliard, but ultimately decided theater was more her game, and thank goodness. She would have been lovely at arias, of course, but she's even more breathtaking in Ragtime and Parade and a host of other musicals (including a show dedicated exclusively to Billie Holiday). However, it's her second solo album, How Glory Goes, that should be included on this list. Either near or perhaps (gasp) before anything by Barbara Streisand. 

There are so, so many tunes on this album worthy of a discography post ("Bill", "How Glory Goes", "When Did I Fall In Love".....), but since the directions ask for just ONE (seriously, Phil? ;)), I suppose I can abide by that. This is the first track on the album, "Anyplace I Hang My Hat is Home", lyrically about a wanderer, a strong woman who can make her bed anywhere she lands, led by a strong, rich voice that will airlift you into another world. 

Phil Seiler

When I was a teen, one of my main weekend activities was riding around with a couple of other guys listening to music, sipping some beverages, and looking for a place to throw a frisbee around. We had all the conversations you do when you are young, stupid, and still figuring things out. Mostly you lamented why you never had dates which, with the benefit of hindsight, is now fairly obvious. Most of those conversations are lost to time and memory. But one still remains to me. I was discussing some musician or band I was recently into who happened to be female. And our driver for the evening stated "I don't like female singers." At the time it seemed like a simple preference like "I don't like horror movies" or "I can't eat peas". However it stuck in my mind like a thin sliver and eventually I came to conclude that it was a really indefensible position born of sexism and nothing else. One would miss out on so many fantastic pieces of art if they held to this position. What a travesty.

So that was the genesis of this week's theme and the NPR list of 150 albums just gave us a convenient launching off point. Lists are ultimately fruitless as tastes are subjective and there will always be omissions. I don't have any major complaints about the included 150 albums (Okay, maybe the T. Swift.). They are good and worthy. But so many amazing artists are missing. No Neko Case? Jill Scott? Wye Oak? Suzanne Vega? Elizabeth and The Catapult? Aimee Mann? L7? KT Tunstall? And on and on and on...

For my choices, I will return to an artist I have already featured once on this blog and who is in my mind a vastly underrated pop genius. Kirtsy MacColl's Tropical Brainstorm album was to be her last before she was tragically killed in a swimming / boating accident. She had already made a name for herself as the other half of the Pogues duet "A Fairy Tale of New York" and having listened to various covers I can safely say nobody can hold a candle to her version nor would anybody else be such a perfect match for Shane's voice. She also recorded a fair number of super catchy pop tunes that really should have been hits. "Free World", "Titantic Days", "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis". But Tropical Brainstorm was something new. Steeped in the sounds and styles of South America, Kirsty finds a new, exciting backing for her voice and talents. I already featured "Us Amazonians" from this album a while back but the whole album just sparkles with joy, rhythm, and sex. This is the album of a mature woman, unapologetic in her appetites. Just writing that makes me realize how few examples of this we have! Is there any album similar in theme and from a mature perspective on that list of 150? 

I will pick just one song, the wonderfully sultry "Autumngirlsoup". I am too clumsy to write about this song and would probably just spoil it so just enjoy it for exactly what it is.

Dammit. I can't do just one. Enjoy "In These Shoes" too. This was almost a hit. What an eff-ed up world we have that it wasn't in the top ten. Those horns.

Appreciate the whole album as an album because it is a complete piece of art.

Dave Kelley

Kathleen Edwards, Independent Thief

"Independent Thief" is my favorite song off of "Back to Me" which is easily my favorite Kathleen Edwards release.  The fact that she has also served G coffee only adds to it!

Gary Scudder

Neko Case, Margaret vs. Pauline

Well, let me start off with the obvious comment: Dave Kelley is a complete and total bastard.  He completely stole Kathleen Edwards out from underneath me (if only).  To me she's the singer who was most jobbed on this list.  Any of her first three albums are better than 90% of the artists/albums championed on the list. Of course, we can take this all with a tremendous grain of salt since, just as I am Vermont's Leading Montreal Alouettes Fan, I am also America's Leading Kathleen Edwards Fan.  I was tempted to go with a different Edwards song and album, but I stuck to the original directive (because, as my friends can attest, no one follows the rules more assiduously than I do).  Actually, I'm quite happy to choose a Neko Case song (I was also considering Nicole Atkins, but I've written on several of her songs recently so I took a different direction).  I really like Fox Confessor Brings the Flood and Blacklisted (as I've opined in the past, both of them are like living in a David Lynch alternative universe).  In the end I went with Margaret vs. Pauline from Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.  It's one of the great quiet songs about privilege and the general unfairness of life.  As Case sings, in her atmospheric way:

Two girls ride the blue line
Two girls walk down the same street
One left her sweater sittin' on the train
The other lost three fingers at the cannery.