comfort food tunes from sensitive souls with meandering minds
massaging the body with gentle songs during this Thanksgiving season
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# of Tracks: about three dozen
Length: 120 minutes
Themes: mostly acoustic, mostly dudes ~ intermittently tragic figures in a self-inflicted harm kind of way ~ pairs of tracks by Ted Lucas, Loudon Wainwright III, Neil Young, Carriers, JJ Cale, Bill Callahan & Michael Hurley1 ~ longing & depressive uplift are a common theme ~ almost exclusively North American artists ~ the warm, squelched sound of 1970s recording technology
Links: Spotify — Apple Music — YouTube
Yeah I’m also upset. This is a playlist I’ve used to regulate my nervous system a bit and settle myself to sleep since November 5th. Because if there’s one thing this election cycle proved, it’s that anyone hoping for a warmer, kinder world needs to dream up new ways of getting there.
These songs are not a roadmap to that better world. They’re a warm hug to get your bearings and restore your inner reserves.
The title of the playlist comes from “Early Blue,” a song by a deeply obscure musician F.J. McMahon which includes the lyric: "From my window / In the morning’s light / I try to hide from people.” That’s no way to live a life but sometimes it is okay to lay low and recover. I considered naming this post “Sad Bangers.” It didn’t quite fit, but I like the image it brings to mind: an epic sort of melancholy.
Spotify version
Apple version
YouTube version
Taylor Ashton’s “Strong Hands”
This playlist mostly took shape in early September, during a frenzy of song collecting inspired by F.J. McMahon’s “Early Blue.”2 Many of the artists on this playlist had personas and careers of a piece with McMahon’s: enigmas so tender you wonder if they were fit for this world.
I’ve also included a few artists for whom the phrase “long-shot success story” applies—Leonard Cohen, Elliott Smith, J.J. Cale. Each of them had unlikely run-ins with pop culture which helped them graduate beyond “cult following” status.3 Their examples fool us into thinking tenderness and idiosyncrasy are viable career strategies, and music is all the better for it.
However, the impetus to share this playlist grew out of my encounter with another song, by an artist who is still little-known. “Strong Hands” is by the Canadian-born, Brooklyn-based songwriter Taylor Ashton. It’s A+ spiritual comfort food in a sophisticated folk sing-a-long kind of way. The video makes that description literal. Ashton is surrounded by his fellow musicians sitting crosslegged on a blanket in a park.
We’re living through an an era of strong man politics and strong arm tactics. I like how this song reframes strength. It’s about a receiving a massage, and the benefits of IRL human touch under which “this dystopia blossoms into eden.”
Maybe that idea is bit cheesy but, at heart, what Ashton is saying is that presence matters. What a nice counterpoint to our digital age where IRL connections are atomized, obliterated, or deformed by all-you-can-eat streaming services, global broligarchs, and virtual social networks.4
Speaking of in real life: I discovered Ashton that way, watching him perform live and in-person, just days after the election, at the debut performance of the Brooklyn Choir Project, a gently inspiring bit of community music making. The choir only performs original compositions by members of the group, most of whom are songwriters in their own right. Started and led by Jaren Feeley, the BCP’s animating vision is to create and present new choral arrangements by musicians still tied to the communities that nurtured them. (Tapping into such word-of-mouth networks might be strategic. It’s why New York’s public radio station WNYC taped this excellent segment introducing the group. And I only learned about the project because two Brassland artists—Arone Dyer of the band Buke and Gase and Blake Fusilier— contributed songs.)
Maybe I’ll have more to say about the American elections in the future. But for now let me reiterate that you’re not the only one bolstering yourself. I appreciated this video of Sturgill Simpson talking about toxic patriarchy “clawing for survival” during a gig in Boston last Saturday night.
After a period of collective convalescence, maybe realizing we’re not alone, and joining something that is both offline and bigger than ourselves is a good place to restart?
Extra credit:
• An evergreen Thanksgiving playlist: With the holiday close at hand, I’ll point you toward this “giving thanks” playlist created in 2017 and shared again in an AHB’s Goodies post in 2022. The songs are my effort to portray the complexity and variety of American identity. Its emotional center is “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree” by Arlo Gutherie, son of Woody, and one of the 1960s most unlikely one-hit wonders. The events described in the song take place on Thanksgiving day at a deconsecrated church in Western Massachusetts where their friend Alice lives. Scroll farther down for a bit of news on the woman whose eatery gave that song its name…
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