The Contenders, Vol. 2: The songs we can't stop playing this week
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For NPR Music, it's all songs considered. We are not Robin Hilton. I'm Dawoud Tyler-Rameen, an editor at NPR Music. And I'm Anne Powers, critic and correspondent. We're here because our beloved Robin Hilton is down with a little bit of an illness, and we are swooping in like the superheroes we are. Poor guy. He made it.

one show into the new year and then got struck down. Maybe if we put our heads together, we could like, I don't know, become Robin-ish, Robin-esque. Oh, sure. A Voltron-esque proposition. But it's fun to be on this show because we get to talk about songs that we love.

And you've got a really good one to start us out, I think. I know. I was so, so happy to come back to work after the winter break and be greeted with this banger in my inbox. There is a new record from one of my faves, Deep Sea Diver, Jessica Dobson by Birth. Her new record is called Billboard Heart. It is out February 28th. And this song is called Shovel. I'm carrying a shovel. It's pointed at the tip like Mount Everest.

Like Mount Everest I'm working my way through shards of soil I'm carrying a shovel, I'm carrying a shovel This time I hate myself for losing my grip I put you on the ground, not sure of it Getting care, getting care, taking care Good mother nature, eh?

Pain in a new shade, in a new shade. Thinking forward, in a burial place. I'm only in the west. This time I, what I thought you, I can't. I'm bruised and I'm blistered. And I'll take two months for love. Bruised and I'm blistered. And I'll take two months for love.

What a voice and what a special thing it does at the top of its range. Jessica Dobson's voice reminds me of the way that guitar players will talk about how an amplifier breaks up at

at the top of its range, meaning like when you're pushing it to the, you're pushing the gain to the limits of what the circuits and tubes and stuff can handle. And you get an effect where you start to crackle and crunch a little bit. It's distinct from just the full-on distortion that you'd get from stepping on a pedal. It's just this, you know, it's this kind of very physical signs of wear thing. And I think she can do that with her singing voice.

And I love how she's doing that on that chorus on the word, I think it's the word carry, right? So, you know, it's got a lot of power. You know who it reminds me of is Sinead. It's got a Sinead quality to it. Yeah, good pull. Which is the highest compliment that I can possibly give. Totally. Also, some of the most

satisfying use of echo and delay that you'll find, those time-based effects. They're a given in a lot of her music, but it often really feels very integrated into the composition. I sort of imagine that she is thinking about that stuff from the second she picks the guitar up. It's not just an afterthought. Do you feel like this is like a leap for her, this song?

I mean, it is a leap in a very literal sense in that this is her first record on Sub Pop. And I think she, you know, I at least hope that that will put her into a lot more people's ears. It is also a collaboration with Andy Park, a producer and engineer who has been David Bazan's co-pilot on these last few Page of the Lion records, which makes a lot of sense. Oh, which we love. We are such a huge fan.

of those records. Well, I have a song that fits so perfectly with this because this song is also a leap for a really great young woman singer-songwriter. And it also makes me think of like someone standing on a rooftop with the wind blowing back in her hair. Yeah. Just like that song does. It's Portrait of My Heart by Spelling. Love my

Don't belong here.

♪ Don't belong, don't belong here ♪ ♪ Don't belong here ♪ ♪ Don't belong, don't, don't belong here ♪ ♪ Don't belong, don't belong here ♪ ♪ Don't belong here ♪

And you know I love to talk drums. That's why I brought this song here. There's a whole lot going on. So right off the bat at the top, you know, we could be going anywhere. I actually thought of early Interpol and the way that Sam Fogarino's drums used to sort of, he would do this thing where it would seem like he was interrupting himself mid-thought.

and would come up with something that was a loop, but you couldn't totally tell where the loop point was. It was very sort of like purposely disorienting. Then once things get lush, it's like, okay, now we've got a little bit of a direction, but she subverts that again at the top of the second verse doing one of my favorite things, which is just closing the filter on it and sounds like pulling down the bit

So that, you know, it sounds like it's coming out of, you know, an old Nintendo or a speak and spell or whatever.

Man, what a way to manage tension and release. Well, I love spelling. This is the project, for those who don't know, of Chrystia Cabral. And I put her album, The Turning Wheel, on my Best of 2021 list. I think Hazel, our colleague Hazel Sills, also did. At the time, she was more in this kind of like witchy, lyrical, pastoral. Did you ever listen to spelling back then? No.

Well, I learned about Spelling, we should say, spelled S-P-E-L-L-L-I-N-G in 2022 because she was sort of the central character in a news story that we ran about the effects of COVID on touring musicians. Oh my gosh, that's right. It was sort of about

the, you know, six months or so into the press cycle for the turning wheel, she, you know, was on tour and had a case of COVID in her touring party and had to shut the whole thing down. And it was, you know, there were,

I mean, there were many things of value to be gleaned from that story, but it also introduced me to the artist. Yeah. It's interesting you should bring up that story, Dode, because this record, even coming much later than the period of lifting the lockdown, it just has that feeling of bursting out. This song, it just bursts out. I mean, to me, you were talking about Interpol.

I feel like it's got this like 80s quality. It's not 80s style production. I don't think you wouldn't call those gated drums, right? You wouldn't. No, it's more that kind of like tight, like post-punky sort of drumming. Right, right. But at the same time, there's like those whooshing synths. It's like kind of grandiose. And the song, you know, it's about like creative turmoil. She's still writing those Kate Bushy lyrics.

Like she has this couplet in there where she says, now I sit here with my colors painted so odd because I dare to fiddle with the work of God. That is like so Kate. I just love this rock turn for her. I cannot wait to hear the rest of the record. This is all I've heard. But it just was a burst of energy that I absolutely needed right now.

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Alright, and we started with a bang, so I think it's time to slow things down just a little bit and talk about another artist we're always excited to hear from, Japanese Breakfast.

She has become much more of a household name since the last time we heard from her in 2021 with her record Jubilee. She had a song called Jimmy Fallon Famous, and now she has talked about that song with Jimmy Fallon. And she's like an esteemed author with her memoir Crying in H-Mart, award-winning memoir. So yeah, Michelle Zauner, you own the world. Where is she taking us right now?

Well, the play she's taking of might be telegraphed by the name of her new album, which is called For Melancholy Brunettes and Sad Women. I don't know any of those. And the very first single is called Orlando in Love. Sixty-nine canto For melancholy brunettes and sad women

♪ The breeze carries on ♪ ♪ And still he brought ♪ ♪ He cast his gaze towards the sea out ♪ ♪ As if the sea had brought an ideal ♪ ♪ She came down from, from a shell ♪

Singing his name All the sweet of a mother Even in this land of drow Oh

Whole lot of texture there, no surprise. When we were all first listening to this song when it came out a couple of days ago, and you mentioned that it sounded to you like a Magnetic Fields track, which I think I agree with, but tell me what you meant. I guess it's like the mix of beautiful lyricism, poeticism, and humor.

I feel like there is a droll quality to this song that reminds me so much of Stephen Merritt. You know, it's just got that slight distance, even as it is so...

romantic. Do you feel that? No, I agree. I mean, I'm just realizing now, and I can't believe I didn't clock it earlier, that there is a 69 joke in like the second line, which is... Oh my God, I didn't even recognize that. That's a quintessential Magnetic Fields joke. But not only in the literal sense, but also just in the sense of their humor. Stephen Merritt really does like to sort of joke around with

I would say some of the more absurd aspects of human desire and sexuality. Yes. I also love the video where she's wearing this kind of crazy, what do they call those revolutionary war type hats, you know? Like a tricorner. Yes. Thank you. And then there's a dancer doing this beautiful dance embodying the subject of the song, the elusive woman who she's singing about. Yeah.

And I don't know, she's just a multimedia star. So I hope she does really cool visuals for the whole album.

this song this song makes me hopeful that this album will kind of have that kind of cinematic quality and scope also must mention having released this song she announced a track listing and one of the songs features jeff bridges i saw that the dude i mean yeah speaking of cinematic um

And yeah, he's he's he's sung in a movie before. You know, it's true. So, yeah, I can't can't wait. But it's like I mean, you know, that's the thing. It's like, you know, once you have a bigger platform, what do you do with that? How do you how do you cash that blank check? And yeah, that's you know, that's a hell of a start. I have a song for you, though, now that's similarly quiet and meditative and

But this guy has like very small platform. So I'm taking you to a different place. You ready to go? Yes, let's scale down. So this artist is named Denison Whitmer. And he's one of those your favorite songwriters, favorite songwriter type guys. He's made a bunch of albums. He's been around for a long time, since the early 2000s. And there's a particular favorite songwriter for whom Denison Whitmer is your favorite songwriter. And that's Sufjan Stevens.

They're old friends. Denison has released a bunch of his records on Asmatic Kitty, Sufjan's label. But this new song signals a new phase because it's from an album that's produced by Sufjan Stevens. And I think it's a perfect marriage of Denison Whitmer's writing style and Sufjan Stevens' production style. So let's hear it. It's called A House With. I wanted to have a house full of

So I bought feeders, bags of seed, hooks and chains, and hung them all around the yard, just outside of every window. Spam, junk, flicker, waxware, titty, filling up my heart again, filling up my heart again. Wanted to have a full

Plant life So I went out A planter Starts and see Bags of soil Put them out in every room In the corners of the land Geranium Allocation Jade trees In a dungeon Hydrangea Gentle sketchup

♪ Because of sharing ♪ ♪ Nightmare ♪ ♪ Serial ♪ ♪ Parture ♪ ♪ Familiar ♪ ♪ Sandbox ♪ ♪ Salad ♪ ♪ Dinner ♪ ♪ Filling up my heart again ♪ ♪ Filling up my heart again ♪ ♪ I wanted to have a house ♪

Oof, that's gorgeous.

So this song fits in my head within a tradition of songs about home, about an idealized picture of home. So I'm thinking on the one hand of stuff like, you know, Wouldn't It Be Nice by the Beach Boys or My Girls, the Animal Collective song. Or Our House by Graham Nash. No, totally. And then on the other side...

songs about a creative workspace and a source of sort of inspiration. So stuff like In My Room by the Beach Boys, again, or In the Garage by Weezer, or Little Room by the White Stripes. I love it. You're making a playlist even as we speak. But I don't know if this song fits on that playlist because it seems to occupy a third category. I don't know if this song is

about either of those things exactly. It is about finding life at home, but a different kind of life. Yeah, well, I think one reason this song hit me hard right now is, of course, the

horrific catastrophe of the fires in Los Angeles. You know, I used to live in L.A. and I lived in Mount Washington in northeast L.A., which at the time we're speaking, though, thankfully is safe. But Altadena, a neighborhood I love, I used to walk all the time in Eaton Canyon. And I'm thinking of everyone in L.A., but I'm thinking specifically of that neighborhood of Altadena, which has so many had, I hate to say had,

So many magical, beautiful homes. You know, there's this incredibly diverse and magical neighborhood of these homes where artists had made beauty. And I can't believe it's gone. So I'm taking some comfort in this song. And specifically, though, in the care with which the song is built, you know, the mix of these perfect lyrics that do something that I absolutely love in songs, which is uses lists.

uses lists, you know, where he just lists a bunch of flowers or lists a bunch of birds, you know? Yeah. I love songs that do that. But then in the final verse, he basically is like, I created this beauty, I did it incrementally, and I realized it could go away at any minute. It's just...

Just what I need to hear right now. And how nice that the song is called A House With, and it allows you to fill in that blank with whatever the thing is that makes you feel at home. I know so much. And the perfect combination of Denison's writing...

And Sufjan's production, the way it builds with the children's choir, that signature Sufjan move, you know. I love it. I love it. That's Denison Whitmer's song, A House With, from his beautiful album. I have heard the whole thing and everyone's going to want to hear this one. It's called Anything at All. It's out February 14th.

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So one of the things I did over the break was I started falling down this rabbit hole of Arabic music, music from the Levant. I got interested in what's happening with artists in that region, considering all of the conflict that's happening there now. But from that, I jumped over to Jordan and to Morocco and all over the place and everywhere.

And then this song landed in my inbox just as I was in this rabbit hole. It's called Hoppiko. Hoppiko

foreign

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

That is Derje Yildirim and Grupo Simsek with Hoppiko. And it's an Anatolian folk tune, but Diode, what do you think about how they gussied it up? I mean, I think we're both in agreement that that synth is pretty out of this world.

And it's a little bit of a misdirect at first because you hear it and it's like, oh, okay. Like, Rick Ocasek probably owned that synthesizer. It's a very sort of like classic, you know, like 80s pop kind of sound. And it's doing those sort of classic wee-oo-wee-oo like octave leaps. And then the Eastern influence starts to slip in. And it starts moving at intervals that you're like, oh, okay, this is not where I thought it was going to go.

Right, but it also kind of reminds me of Rai music, you know, back in the day, like Cheb Mami and other party music that's come from the Arabic world. This group, they call themselves an outer national group, and they're a bunch of people from different places come together. The singer, Derya Yildirim, was born in Hamburg of Turkish parentage. So they mix a whole bunch of stuff. The record's called Yaran Yolksa, by the way. It's coming out March 14th.

Well, one more before we close out, and that is a weird introspective new tune from a weird and introspective band that I love called Dark Side. This is the project of Nicholas or Nico Jarr, who's a sort of, you know, electronic man about town, does a lot of his own solo compositions, is a big collaborator. Dave Harrington, who was a, I think, a jazz bandmaster

bass prodigy. And then when he met Nico Jarre, Nico Jarre was like, cool, you're playing guitar in this band. And really asked him to sort of like take that sort of single note approach and think about

establishing groove with a guitar the way that he would have with a bass. On this record, they are joined by a new member, Tlacala Esparza, playing drums. These are all guys that actually, when I was a New York indie rock kid, I would see them at shows. I would see them around. Some of them were friends of friends. And they've taken a very long break since their last outing together, but they have a new record coming in February called Nothing. Wow.

I got to ask you, because you're going to play this song. Is this jazz fusion? Do you call this jazz fusion? I think if you think it is, then it is. You're a better arbiter of that than I am. I will say, I mean, there's a clavinet or a clavinet-like sound is introduced in the middle of this song. You have no sense that anything so Stevie Wonder is headed your way. And then it shows up and it really fits. Well, I definitely think Stevie is jazz fusion. Stevie is everything. So

I'm going to say thank you for bringing some jazz fusion to us today, Daud. Well, Happy New Year to you, Anne. It's great to talk to you and great to usurp the throne for a second with you. Absolutely. But Robin, we're sending you love and chicken soup. All right. So this is the track SNC from Dark Side. I've been Daud Tyler-Amin. And I'm Anne Powers. From NPR Music, it's All Songs Considered. ♪♪♪

i know that you can't forgive me there's nothing

I know that you can't forget.

There's nothing. There's nothing. There's nothing.

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