Blood Harmony Volume 35: Spring Mix
Welcome to Spring everyone! Or as we call it in North Carolina: The Pollening. Here’s a recent picture I took in Duke Gardens so you can enjoy all the beauty without the accompanying congestion.
Welcome new readers! I can see that many of you came over from
so thanks again to the wonderful for recommending me! He says I should thank for interviewing him about his work with The Barnraisers Project and his newly released book, The Right Kind of White. Thank you ! You can find that interview here. Also I’d like to give a big thanks to one of the first newsletters I ever subscribed to for recommending me as well. Love those dames!And now, it’s mix time. For my YouTube people, here is your link.
Open Doors by Jitwam, Honeycomb, Tartelet Records, 2019.
From an interview with Ammar Kalia for the BBC: Born in India, raised in Australia and currently based between New York and London, producer and singer Jitwam makes music that reflects a life on the move. Jazz-inflected grooves combine with head-nodding hip-hop beats, R&B vocals and snatches of chatting passersby to create a mood music made between spaces….“When I look back at my music, I see a lot of transience in it,” Jitwam told Bandcamp. “There’s a word for it: hypnagogic, it’s a state between dreaming and being awake.”
Too Late by Chinese Man, KT Gorique and Stogie T, Single, Chinese Man Records, 2024.
Super chill fun track by a French trip hop trio. The video is a stop motion masterpiece!
MOOVIES by Tierra Whack, WORLD WIDE WHACK, Interscope Records, 2024.
I love Tierra Whack! This album is great! She is so creative and fascinating. A true artist. Also, I love going to the movies. So I get it. My friend Nick told me to check out her video for TWO NIGHTS. It’s incredible.
Goodbye Horses by Q Lazzarus, Single, Mon Amie, 1991.
I somehow missed this song the first time around. But it’s so good! Q Lazzarus has a really interesting life story. When I hear this song, I picture Farleigh from Saltburn karaoking it.
Takoyaki by Aili, Nandakke?, Eskimo Recordings/N.E.W.S., 2024.
Takoyaki is a Japanese snack of savory ball-shaped cakes containing chopped octopus, made from wheat batter cooked on a specially shaped griddle. Aili is a Belgium-Japanese electro-pop duo. Both are tasty!
SOS by Little Simz, Drop 7, Forever Living Originals, 2024.
Love the U.K.’s Little Simz. FUNKY.
Liberation Conversation by Marlena Shaw, The Spice of Life, The Verve Music Group, 1968.
From her obit in The Guardian: Over the course of a long career, the American singer Marlena Shaw moved from jazz to soul and back again, searching for settings that would best enhance her fine voice. In later decades she commanded the allegiance of the British fans of the rare-groove movement, who rediscovered and particularly cherished her version, released in 1969, of a much recorded song called California Soul.
Shaw, who has died aged 81, made her first stage appearance at the Apollo theater in Harlem, New York, when she was 10 years old. Billie Holiday was still alive and Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington were other inescapable influences on a jazz-inclined teenage singer seemingly destined to work with big bands in dancehalls and smaller groups in nightclubs. In her later years she became familiar with the sound of hip-hop artists basing their hits on samples from her singles and album tracks.
Turning Onto You-HNNY Remix by First Aid Kit, Single, Columbia Records, 2023.
Apparently there’s something called Scandinavian Soul! And this is it.
One Last Dance by Baby Rose and BADBADNOTGOOD, Single, Secretly Canadian, 2024.
Baby Rose is a DC/Carolina born and raised artist and BADBADNOTGOOD is band and production team from Toronto. I’m not crying, you’re crying.
Love is a Hurtin’ Thing by Gloria Ann Taylor, Love is a Hurtin’ Thing, Ubiquity Records, 1973.
Is it a bold move to end with a 7 minute track? Yes. But that intro! From a review on NPR by Janet Yang: When Taylor and Whisenhunt recorded it around 1973, disco had yet to become a household term. But with its steady thump, dramatic strings and Taylor's piercing vocals, "Love Is A Hurtin' Thing" became embraced as a proto-disco classic. That acknowledgment came too late for Gloria Ann Taylor, however. In 1977, she made her last recordings and then packed up to move back to Toledo. She's still there. And while she's traded in the nightclub for a church choir, she's still singing and likely still haunting people with that voice.
Other Things:
Movies:
I saw Dune: Part Two. It was gorgeous and cool and a little slow. I don’t buy Timmy and Zendaya as a passionate couple. But I do love Rebecca Ferguson! Give me a separate movie about the Bene Gesserit! I have so many questions. Love Lies Bleeding is a queer noir set in the world of late 80s/early 90s body building culture. Kristen Stewart is…Kristen Stewart. Look, I have seen Twilight a number of times. So I’m very aware of her verbal tics. Because of those tics, it’s hard for me sometimes to see her as a character. But I think she’s maybe trolling all of us with those tics! In a recent Variety video where she had to remember which of her movies a line was from, she at one point says to herself “say it like Kristen Stewart”! But Katy O'Brian is incredible and the whole thing is a lot of fun. If you like French food, stories of adult love and grief and Juliette Binoche, then run don’t walk to see The Taste of Things. So lovely. Finally, Dumb Money is now on Netlfix and it’s really good!
Food:
There’s a restaurant in our neighborhood with a really delicious chopped salad with miso honey dressing. I found this recipe online and started making the salad at home. Good! My glass measuring cups are old enough now that I can no longer see the actual measurement values. I bought this new one and it is both a beautiful and practical object. You know how Reese’s has come for podcast listeners? It’s working! I recently got the Reese’s Thins dark chocolate. Chef’s kiss. And, of course, my freezer is currently full of Reese’s Easter Eggs (why are they so good?).
Books:
I loved Recovery: The Lost Art of Convalescence by Gavin Francis. Here’s the blurb: Drawing on thirty years of medicine, and on insights from practitioners, psychologists, and writers across history, physician Gavin Francis delivers a profound, practical, and deeply hopeful guide to recovery. Rejecting the idea that healing is passive, Recovery offers tools and wisdom for convalescence, and shows how tending to our bodies, environments, and perspectives can help us move through the landscape of illness—and come out the other side whole. I also loved Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan. It’s a romance set in the world of romance audio book readers (niche!). Very fun.
Pods:
Ezra Klein did a great show about why parenting is so hard in the United States. Glamorous Trash had a very funny and informative show with Sam Sanders about Beyonce and country music in which Sam dared to ask if AI wrote “Texas Hold ‘Em” since he doesn’t believe that Beyonce has ever driven her Lexus to a dive bar.
Thank you so much for reading! I’m rooting for all of us!
If you are looking for more music, please check out The B-Sides. It’s a playlist where I put all the songs I love but can’t fit onto a 10 song mix.
*As far as I am aware, no one in any of these bands is related. So there isn’t any actual blood harmony in this issue! Please listen to the Louvin Brothers episode of Cocaine and Rhinestones for more info.