Dinner Music 120: The weekly lineup

pioneering disco, spirited new wave punk, baroque pop

ICYMI: I talked with

Anne Helen Petersen

for her newsletter

Culture Study

about Dinner Music. I talk about my playlist philosophy, my thoughts on AI and music and what my “taste” is. Check it out here.

This week we’re listening to albums that cohere somewhere between grit and glamour. There’s a through-line of self-mythology in each — a sense of losing the self and finding it again, changed. This leads to a particular feeling of intensity, in the songwriting and in the arrangement.

We begin with the late, great, historically misunderstood and overlooked Marianne Faithfull. Broken English is a punk record, in spirit not necessarily sound¹, one that is seeking as well as explaining. “The days of mind-opening drugs were over," Faithfull writes in her autobiography. “The world had tilted. A major change in key had taken place.” Right before she recorded the record, she was living as a squatter in a bombed out building in London’s Soho. The album seems to be her attempt to tell the world something about herself, the real self, not the tabloid one. Call it a comeback. We move into Peter Brown’s A Fantasy Love Affair, his debut album. Brown was something of a savant — he wrote all of the songs and played most of the instruments. The album is heavy with vintage synthesizers and used early drum machines, in fact, there’s a lot of instrumentation here that eventually led into house music. “You Should Do It” is on the playlist, but don’t miss the hit single “Do You Want To Get Funky With Me.” We take a step back to listen to an album that was something of a prototype for disco — Eddie Kendricks’ People…Hold On. A soulful album laced with funk, while its lyrics speak to the times. One review described it as having “the sound of the streets.” Take the title track, for example, and you can easily trace the ways Kendricks attempts to return to “his people” through African- and gospel-inspired sounds. The lyrics contain a utopian hope of the future, one we know hasn’t come to pass, though, still, even now, Kendricks inspires something like hope. We hold onto the sound of the soul with Sam Blasucci’s (of Mapache, featured a year ago) Off My Stars, especially with the first track “Sha La La” which has a Steely Dan-esque cool, breezy jazz feeling at the go. The album, though, is notable for its juxtapositions. The fourth track is a folksy, back-of-the-train cover of Dido’s Thank You, “Can You Teach Me” is a feel good, baroque pop track and the album ends with smoky piano ballad “I’m Glad.” The fearlessness of change is what makes the album so good to me. We end with Nick Garrie’s nearly lost album The Nightmare of J.B. Stanislas.

Enjoy.

The playlist: Spotify / Apple Music

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Paid subscribers have access to the full Dinner Music archive (via Spotify and Apple Music), an after hours playlist, a “New York Grooves” playlist and more — hundreds of hours of groove, soul, jazz, folk, samba, hi-life, disco, electro, post-punk, funk and more, lovingly selected.

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Monday

Broken English - Marianne Faithfull (1979)

Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

Tuesday

A Fantasy Love Affair - Peter Brown (1977)

Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

Wednesday

People…Hold On - Eddie Kendricks (1972)

Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

Thursday

Off My Stars - Sam Blasucci (2023)

Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

Friday

The Nightmare of J.B. Stanislas - Nick Garrie (1968)

Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services

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Pair with

• Spicy carbonara. I have a strange obsession with Calabrian chiles? I think 2025 could be a good year for Calabrian chiles.

• LebNat PetNat Gold. I really love this winemaker. Everything is very drinkable and the petnats are very effervescent.

• This tribute to Marianne Faithfull. “She was living proof that the rock aristocracy were remote and decadent and ripe for the culling.”

• Moxie @ Lost Paradise. If you’re looking for some house to keep you moving this week, start with this great mix by Moxie.

• This list of films by

  Catherine Lacey
  . A public service. Truly.

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A great disco track that’s not on streaming (in the US):

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Thank you, thank you. Have a great week.

1. https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17565-broken-english-deluxe-edition/