Dinner Music 104: The weekly lineup
blue-eyed soul, offbeat disco, smooth jazz
This week we’re listening to a little bit of everything, disco, jazz, folk, alt-rock, psych-inspired folk, global jam, swamp rock. I spent my weekend walking through Austin City Limit’s music festival and thinking a lot about what everyone was listening to. It’s interesting to me that during this era of anthemic pop (think Chappell Roan and The Last Dinner Party) we’re also listening to a lot of instrumental, jam-adjacent (or is it adjacent?), global groove, obviously Khruangbin, but also groups like Hermanos Gutiérrez and Glass Beams. Then, somewhere in the middle, is a deep commitment to nostalgia, looking backward, like Clairo or Stephen Sanchez or Laufey. What does this reveal? A general sense of searching? A desire for an era or place that is anything but the one we’re in?
We begin with Robert Palmer’s album Clues, and, yes, this album includes Johnny and Mary, but the rest is a force of inflection points, eighties pop, seventies folk, alt-rock, new wave. “Like the ocean on the cover, Palmer's latest release ebbs and flows in a sea of electronics and synthetics…here his vocals take on an icy monotone while the instrumentation provides the color and spark,” from a Billboard review in October 1980. We move into Placeco’s smooth jazz-funk album, Ball of Eyes, emphasis on the funk. The sound moves between syncopated piano riffs and a smooth, bass-y undercurrent, this is a real listening-room-jazz kind of album, turn-the-lights-off-with-a-martini kind of jazz. We keep the smooth but turn it up, brighten it up, with Retiree, an Australian rhythmic trio. Through the Smoke filters synth-pop through a “pervasive aura of rum-drunk antipodean sunshine” that manages to pull from a “deep melancholy, resolving with a vivd and hopeful lust for the future.” This is a climate album, inspired by a close escape from the Black Summer bushfires, which is interesting, and begs the question: what does the music of our climate future sound like? Next, we have a left-of-center album, with dark and slow-paced sound, no desire to rush through anything, Marti Caine’s Point of View. Like Palmer’s Clues, this album straddles the sonic quality of two eras that creates a creamy, smooth sound with the warmth of the seventies and the cutting rawness of the eighties. We end with Kate Bollinger’s debut album, a folk-pop-bedroom-rock album with vintage-quality sound and a cinematic crescendo toward something like “oh / what's there to say?”
Enjoy.
*A kind subscriber mentioned the Apple Music playlist links hadn’t been working. I did some updating and hopefully this should work from now on!
Monday
Clues - Robert Palmer (1980)
Spotify / Apple Music / Other streaming services
Tuesday
Ball of Eyes - Placebo (1971)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Wednesday
Through the Smoke - Retiree (2023)
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Thursday
Point of View - Marti Caine (1981)
Spotify / Apple Music / Other streaming services
Friday
Songs From a Thousand Frames of Mind - Kate Bollinger (2024)
Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / Other streaming services
Pair with
Basil fried rice. This recipe is a little bit summer-y, so you can add it into your rotation as we slowly exit the sunshine season. It’s also quick and vegetarian (and probably veganize-able). Maybe whip up a carrot sheet cake for dessert?
Liquid Death, cider flavor. Sometimes we just need to add a little water, right? I personally love the fall and holiday-themed water game right now, plus I’ve got an affinity for Liquid Death.
BOOK REC Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad. And this related article from NYRB, Acts of Language.
Thank you, thank you. Have a great week.
Can confirm it’s working now 🙌 Thanks for the mention and all the love you put into this curation! All the best!