Dinner Music 103: The weekly lineup
seventies living room, smokey lounge, charmed sounds
This week we’re listening to living room sounds. Smokey ballads, quiet percussion, songs that bring you out of your body and into your mind. The rich instrumentation and vintage flair stir a timeless feeling and isn’t that funny? How a sound so rooted in the feeling of a particular era can feel eternal? This newsletter is coming to you a day late, because, last night, I was at the Clairo show. Her set, the lights, invoked that feeling. The quiet grew, slowly, into this grand sound, a charming scene. I was already planning to center this week on this sound and the show was a reinforcement. Turn down the lights. Let’s begin.
The Feminine Complex takes that soft, pop sixties sound and juxtaposes the bubblegum nature with gritty undertones, pulling from psych and garage rock. There’s a sense of rebellion throughout Livin’ Love, a reflection of mid-century teenage longing and discovery, that ties into the warm, lofi sound of the record. It’s at once nostalgic and authentic. We move into the relaxed, dynamic energy of Roy Ayers Vibrations, an album caught between genres, bouncing between disco, jazz, funk and soul. The texture of the sound captures a particular warmth of feeling. This is a close-your-eyes-and-listen kind of album. We keep that texture and give it an oceanic, space-age quality with Canned Music, an ethereal, cosmically synth-ladden album, like a soundtrack to some otherworldly beach party. Despite the overt campiness, the sound never feels overdone and instead the retro-exotica sonic quality gives the album a sense of intimacy and charm. We trade camp for avant-garde with Olympic Signals (Improbable Music for People Who Aren’t Very Disposed), an instrumental and heavily experimental album that blends jazz, minimalism and quirk into an abstract soundscapes, at once organic and mechanical. A playfulness runs through the tracks, through the dips in and out of chaotic intensity and contemplative, sparse stretches, like a thread in a quilt, weaving intricate detail and sophisticated composition. We end with Damien Jurado, a favorite of mine.
Enjoy.