Dinner Music #185: The weekly lineup
with novelist and critic Lucy Ives
This week we’re listening to music selected by novelist and critic Lucy Ives. Lucy and I have been in conversation about music since late January, when I asked her about contributing to this project after The Paris Review shared some excerpts from her then-upcoming book, three six five: prompts, acts, divinations (an inexhaustible compendium for writing). Distraction Diary is the name of the one of the prompts:
If you work at a computer, keep a running account of what you are thinking at moments when, instead of continuing a task, you have a tendency to turn to “frivolous” or “unnecessary” pursuits, such as digging through social media, stalking esoteric DJs, or trawling eBay. Note your thoughts and impulses at these moments. Consider allowing the note-taking to replace the activity you had thought to turn toward. Remain aimless, if possible. Observe, describe; write things you didn’t mean to write and think things you didn’t mean to think.
“Stalking esoteric DJs” is my primary distraction and I figured if Lucy included this in her prompt that she probably had great taste in music (I was right). The book was published by Siglio last week and you can (and should!) buy a copy.
In mid-April, Lucy was announced a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow in Fiction. Her most recent books are Life Is Everywhere: A Novel and An Image of My Name Enters America: Essays, the winner of the 2024 Vermont Book Award in Creative Nonfiction. My introduction to her work was through her collection of short stories, Cosmogony, which I bought immediately after reading the opening paragraph of the title story: “A few years ago a friend of mine married a demon. There was a liberal in the White House then and everyone was feeling pretty sanguine.” When I read An Image of My Name Enters America, a scene from “The End” haunted me for its familiarity:
On my way, I stop in with some friends who are squatting in dilapidated buildings in Austin, Texas. I stay with them for late spring and part of the summer of 2001. We don’t need much money. We cook communally and go to shows. I am very high one afternoon and we jump off what seems like an enormous quarry cliff into beautiful water. There are people drinking beers in a pontoon boat below and they clap for me as I come up, nose burning, crying, relieved not to have broken my neck, wishing I lived my life in a social world that would allow me to do things like this every day.
The familiarity haunted me, because Austin is still like this, but also it isn’t. I was also reminded of Richard Linklater’s first short film, Woodshock, though I highly doubt it was the same cliff. There are a lot more cliffs to jump off of in Austin, Texas than people not from Austin, Texas would expect. In college, friends and I jumped off the cliff at Pace Bend Park and I also remember feeling glad I didn’t break my neck. I would never do that kind of thing now, as my dare-deviling is long behind me. Maybe I like Lucy’s writing, and now her music taste, so much because we share this small kinship: a wish, however occasional, to be drinking beers on a pontoon boat while you, or someone near you, performs feats that place you so directly and violently inside of the world that you can’t help but come up for air dazed and alive and transformed.
Enjoy.
The playlist
Spotify / Apple Music / Tidal / Qobuz
The interview
What are you listening to right now?
A record store near where I live has a box of free vinyl outside the front door and a couple weeks ago I picked up an album of Gregorian chant that’s been in heavy rotation, despite my five-year-old’s protests.
Any albums or songs that have stuck with you for a long time? That you always come back to?
This isn’t very original but Billie Holliday’s music means more to me than I can say.
What’s the most unexpected place you’ve heard or found a great song or album?
I was driving down a mountain late at night in rural Japan (near the city of Hirosaki) and the most intoxicating, rare American song came over the radio, “Laura,” by John D. Loudermilk. It was like being touched by something divine as I negotiated these very narrow roads in a jeep with a sensitive manual transmission under an unobstructed full moon. I was sure for a few minutes that I was living in a film.
How do you find new music?
I read a lot for professional and more general life reasons, and often I find music I want to listen to or learn more about in novels, historical studies, art history and media studies things—the list goes on. I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head, although I do want to recommend Monica Datta’s beautiful recent novel Thieving Sun, because it has a musical structure. Oh wait, I just remembered that I learned about Julius Eastman from the artist Adam Pendleton’s publications and that I started listening to Henry Purcell because of something I read, I can’t remember what.
I think a lot about the algorithmic curtailing of our “horizon of possibilities” through the automated curation of various streaming services. That’s something that I’d begun to notice around my use of Soundcloud (and don’t get me started on video platforms): everything recommended to me sounded kind of the same. I mean, it wasn’t all identical, but it was like there were certain colors missing in the spectrum and that started to make me feel sad. It was a creeping thing and didn’t occur all at once. But one day I noticed that nothing I listened to challenged me, and I thought about how music had made me feel when I was growing up, and I was like: am I dead inside??? What is going on? But then when I was driving in Connecticut on 91 I’d pick up these incredible college radio shows that would make me laugh and cry and dance in my seat and I started to realize that a part of my inner being really and truly was going to die if I didn’t stay away from AI playlists. So I’m kind of on a mission right now to find the better version of myself who seeks out music that changes me in some way. In Vermont, where I live, my NPR affiliate, Vermont Public, has this new show called All Ears, and it’s this sweet guy whose DJ name is Tad Cautious who plays alternative pop/folk/R&B, and it’s not all to my taste but it’s just so amazing to have a freaking human talking about how he feels in between tracks, really like it’s college radio. So that is my tip to all of us. Support college radio. And use an actual radio when you can, for goodness sake. They’re like 1/200th of the price of a smart phone.
Do you listen to music while you write? Has any song or musician influenced your work directly?
I don’t listen to anything while I write. Just ambient noise, traffic, birds, etc.
You don’t use any streaming services. Has that always been true for you? What formats are you leaning on to listen to music?
It has definitely not always been true for me. I’m officially the oldest living millennial, so I’ve used all of the services since way too early on, but recently I noticed my immortal spirit dying, as noted above. I also started to feel that it was, on the one hand, too easy to access music, and, on the other, too easy to let it go. I used to have a huge collection of CDs that I lost in a move, and while I’ve made my peace with that I would like to have physical things now, so that I can always return to them. I’ve decided to try to recreate the old CD collection slowly, maybe changing some things up a little, such as recreating it on vinyl to the extent possible, with some additions. This is a long-term project. Please ask me about it in ten years.
If aliens were to visit earth from outer space and you could give them one album to convince them not to annihilate humanity, what would you choose?
Anything by Julius Eastman.
Are there any other art forms that you reach for as inspiration? Paintings, architecture, otherwise? Anything that has stuck with you over time?
I love writing on archaeological methods and sites. I’ve loved this since I was a kid. I had a book about the excavation of and theories of daily life in the city of Çatalhöyük in modern-day Turkey when I was about 10, and I used to read it over and over again on Saturday nights before dinner. I’m currently reading The Oxford Handbook of Light in Archaeology. I’m not sure this is an art form exactly, but it is an area of knowledge I find inspiring and, in some small way difficult for me to explain, reassuring.
Lastly, how would you describe your perfect dinner? What’s playing? What are you eating? Where are you? Who’s there?
For now, my perfect dinner is very realistic, because dinner is an important part of my day, when I see my family. So, let’s say it’s a Friday night. My partner decides to make a whole chicken with pearl couscous, dates, and lemon on the stove (!), and I contribute a salad with some nice lettuce (the dressing will have white vinegar in it or be a little creamy, if I have the right ingredients), and if I’m lucky my partner’s found some berries somewhere and we have them with whipped cream for dessert. I nurse a beer with the meal. My son has chicken and carrots. We listen to the first half of Solitude Standing, by Susan Vega, because my son loves this album, and after the record stops playing, my son tells a story about the imaginary movie his imaginary film studio and construction company is currently filming, which until recently had the (working?) title, The Tapdancers Go to the Yonkers. The second “the” is intentional and somehow very important. My father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all lived in Yonkers, NY (my grandfather and great-grandfather emigrated in the early 20th century from northern Iran), although I’m not sure my son is aware of this backstory. He watches a lot of midcentury musicals.
three six five is a “how-to” book of questions—not answers. It is an ars poetica of expanding possibility, a tarot deck of acts instead of images, a book of bending hours, a diary of contemplation and imagination, an antidote to consumption in the shape of care and attention.
The albums
Monday
Janácek: The String Quartets, Guarneri Quartet (1998)
Buy the CD / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Qobuz / Other streaming services
This is definitely more on the “thinky” side of dinner music, but I personally find this to be a stunning rendition of the quartets that allows me to parse how they are composed. I’m moved by it every time I hear it, and I still remember listening to it on headphones at the HMV near Lincoln Center in 1998 when it came out.
Tuesday
Ptah, the El Daoud - Alice Coltrane (1970)
Buy the CD or record / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Qobuz / Other streaming services
I’m not sure I’m up to the task of describing this album. It’s Alice Coltrane with Pharoah Sanders. It is a complete, perfected work of art, architectural in nature yet somehow beyond space and time.
Wednesday
Lifetime - Erika de Casier (2025)
Buy the album from Bandcamp / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Qobuz / Other streaming services
Erika de Casier is my main guide to contemporary life and emotional survival. I saw her live two years ago and bought five extra tickets so that I could give them to other people—that’s how much I like her work. Her surface persona is nineties East Coast minimalist R&B girl, but underneath she’s 100 percent a music history and technology nerd. She must be one of the most intelligent people on the planet. This album is something she casually put out independently last year.
Thursday
Love Me - Poison Girl Friend (1994)
Buy the CD / Buy the record / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
I discovered Poison Girl Friend through Erika de Casier and I think this album is fantastic. It seems somehow bigger than the present, although it was made decades ago.
Friday
Any Other City - Life Without Buildings (2001)
Buy the CD or record / Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Qobuz / Other streaming services
I forgot about this album for a long time, then one day I remembered it and looked it up to see how it had aged (A: well). That same day, I went to this incredible coffee and lunch spot, The Upper Bend, in Turners Falls, MA, and they were playing it, too.
The pairing
Roast tarragon chicken. I’m mirroring Lucy’s perfect dinner with a few personal recommendations, like this tarragon chicken. I think chicken and tarragon are always a good combination.
Via Carota’s Insalata Verde. I went to Via Carota alone at 9:30pm last year and loved it more than I thought for a restaurant that is very hyped. I liked the simplicity of the food and the classic feel of the environment. I sat at the bar and read my book—I was reading Memory by Dorothea Lasky—while occasionally admiring myself in the mirror behind the bar, feeling like no one and everyone.
Live Oak Hefeweizen. I’ve long been primarily a wine drinker, but beer is making a comeback in my life. I can’t explain why. This is a very good one that I used to love in college and still enjoy today.
This interview with Lucy in the Creative Independent from 2021. On how she knows a piece is finished: Usually I’m overcome with sadness and fear, actually. And when I have that feeling where the bottom drops out of things, I know that it’s done.
The archive
Dinner Music #138 | with special guest Catherine Lacey
Dinner Music #151 | with special guest Jess Williamson
Dinner Music #155 | with special guest Cassandra Jenkins
Dinner Music #163 | jazz-funk, chanson synth-pop, R&B with Sam Valenti of Ghostly International
Thank you, thank you. Have a great week.
If you liked this interview, or have found music you’ve loved through this project, consider becoming a paid subscriber.