Richie Hawtin

They Might Be Giants, “I Love You For Psychological Reasons”

Another tune from the big Dial-a-Song year of 2015, when they revived the old service and kept it going every week. Most of those songs got retooled a bit and re-recorded for a later record, with this one later appearing on Phone Power. It’s a classic bouncy Linnell tune, the sort of song that I’ll never get tired of.

Duke Ellington, “Sophisticated Lady”

As I wrote down the title of this song here, I had a memory of someone with a deep voice singing “soooooo-phisticated” that I couldn’t immediately place. Took me a bit to figure out it was Mike Watt, and then a little bit after that to recall that it’s from fIREHOSE’s cover of Public Enemy’s “Sophisticated Bitch” from their Live Totem Pole EP. So, you know, that’s what Duke Ellington brings to mind for me.

Richie Hawtin, “Aliens Don’t Boogie”

I’m never really sure how to credit this record. It’s Richie Hawtin putting together a mix record, so do I credit him? Or the artist that did the original track? I choose the former on purely utilitarian grounds, which is that if anybody listening to this wants to hear more, they’re going to do better looking up Hawtin than they will the original artist (Thor, in this case. Not the Norse god.)

Today!

Clem Snide, “Donna”

Long time reader/listeners (both of you!) know that I’m a huge Uncle Tupelo stan, but my favorite alt-country album isn’t one of theirs. It’s probably Your Favorite Music, Clem Snide’s second album. Thanks to their willingness to stretch out and leave space for Eef Barzelay’s intimate delivery and elliptical lyrics, the entire album manages to create a mood of melancholy without really giving you a specific reason for it. It’s a little disorienting that way, but then you get to the end, and you want to give it another spin.

Here are today’s tunes.

Richie Hawtin, “Call of the Wild”

Last time this album came up, in one of the cutting bits of analysis that Five Songs is known for, I mostly bitched about the ID3 tags on this album. TRENCHANT! Anyway, I managed to say nothing about the album or the artist last time. I see no reason to change that today.

Wilco, “Ashes of American Flags”

In the first entry on Wilco, I ranked their albums, which remains the INDUSPUTABLE and DEFINITIVE rankings of their records. I am here to point out that despite the definitive nature of those rankings, the first three albums are very, very close. If you argued for a re-ordering of those three, you’d be wrong, but only barely. You’d also agree with various versions of Josh. That three album peak, from Being There to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, is just an incredible stretch of songs. If Being There established that Wilco was going to be far more than an alt-country band, and Summerteeth established that the band was going to be a tremendous pop act, YHF showed that their palette would even expand to include some sonic experimentation around said pop songs.

Something special for today! Our first Reader/Listener Q&A! All of the questions here are actual questions from reader/listeners of Five Songs! Let’s get started!

Q:

OK, that was great! If you’ve got a question for me, eh, that seems unlikely. Here’s some music, though.

Richie Hawtin, “User (02)-A2”

This is one of the most irritating albums (Decks, EFX & 909) in my collection. Not because of the music, mind you - it’s techno, sometimes pretty minimal, mixing together a whole bunch of stuff. No, because of the tags on the songs. Because this is kind of a compilation (and kind of not), the tags on the songs on the album are credited to something like 20 different artists, instead of just Richie Hawtin. In particular, the featured artist on a track is listed as the primary artist. It’s really annoying, and because of how Amazon handles it, means I essentially cannot listen to this album in one go.