Alphabet Soup Week 24: The L Tracks

With life on life's terms taking priority, Alphabet Soup is coming to you on a Sunday this week. Better late than never as they say!

Jun 16, 2024

Welcome to week 24 of Alphabet Soup, thanks for stopping by. Before we get started, I’d like to send a shoutout to all the dads out there - Happy Father’s Day!

I’ve done my best since starting this series in January to get each installment out on Wednesdays. While there have been a few weeks in which that’s slipped to Thursday, I’ve managed to maintain a fairly consistent publishing schedule. Until this week.

There’s been an awful lot going on in my life in the last week. Yesterday we moved out of the condo we’ve called home for the last six years into an Airbnb which will serve as our base for a week until we embark on our retirement travels a week from now. Leading up to the move was a long to do list: breaking down and selling my work-from-home desk setup; offloading the remaining unsold items in the house (furniture, TV and surround sound, dishes, etc.); and having the movers come to box up some artwork and a few pieces of luggage for storage and later shipping to the UK once we’re settled. In addition to that we each needed to pack our hiking luggage and one extra piece of luggage to store in London for the items we’ll need access to between now and January when we relocate to the UK to live.

There’s also been a host of people that “want a piece of me” before I leave next weekend, so there have been coffee dates, lunches, and dinners to squeeze in while at the same time continuing to work and trying to wrap up my career with integrity. By the time Wednesday morning rolled around, I had to admit that dealing with life just had to take priority over Substack (both writing and reading). It was a bit of a tough pill to swallow, but the last thing I want to do is turn Substack into a rod for my own back. Looking back now, I’m pleased I accepted the inevitable and gave myself a break. Having the space and time to write a little each night, and to wrap up the column today, has been a blessing and I’m far more sane and serene for having done so.

Let’s jump into the L Tracks!!

ALPHABET SOUP WEEK 24: The L Tracks

This week’s selections:

TRACK: "Landed" from Songs For Silverman (2005)

ARTIST: Ben Folds

I still don’t understand why it is that certain songs can so emotionally overwhelm me, immediately bringing tears to my eyes and an aching in my throat. In the case of Landed from Songs For Silverman, the second solo album from North Carolina singer songwriter (and piano maestro) Ben Folds, the lyrics get me from the opening line: “We'd hit the bottom / I thought it was my fault / And in a way I guess it was / I'm just now finding out / What it was all about”. The lovely piano intro, the clarity of Folds’ voice, and the subject matter all conspire to break my heart just a little.

When the first verse continues, “We moved to the west coast away from everyone / She never told me that you called / Back when I was still, I was still in love”, I find myself immediately captivated. How did this happen? What if you HAD been told that she’d called? Would you have worked your way back into love? Or was it already too late? Was it ever really love anyway?

I love songs that give me just enough pieces to build a story of my own. Invariably, these stories are drawn from my own experiences and emotions and I think that’s why songs can sometimes resonate so deeply. It’s ultimately my past pain or joy that comes through in my own interpretation of the song. The ability of a track to create such an instant connection, and the forging of that meaningful bond, is one of the many pleasures of a life filled with music.

TRACK: "Lonesome Tears" from Sea Change (2002)

ARTIST: Beck

This song is also a tearjerker for me, but in this case it’s the arrangement and instrumentation of the music as much as the subject matter. Beck’s 2002 masterpiece Sea Change is a Desert Island Disc for me, an album that 20+ years after its release remains breathtakingly beautiful and devastatingly heartbreaking.

Reviewing the album for Far Out magazine on the the 20th anniversary of its release, Tyler Golsen had this to say:

“Sea Change is a twelve-song journey into that part of your brain that dies the second the person you love tells you that they don’t love you. If that sounds heavy, that’s because it is. But if that sounds like a slog, then fear not: Sea Change is also remarkably beautiful, lush, and strangely life-affirming in its analysis of heartbreak. With just an acoustic guitar in hand, Beck managed to be intimately personal and completely universal at the same time.”

Sums the album up perfectly for me. If you’ve never listened to this album, do yourself a favor and give it an hour of your time.

TRACK: "Lay It Down" from Lay It Down (1996)

ARTIST: Cowboy Junkies

This is the second appearance for Cowboy Junkies in Alphabet Soup as Speaking Confidentially, from the same album, appeared in the week 5 playlist. While the title track from 1996’s Lay It Down was never released as a single, it remains one of the highlights of the album for me, bettered only by A Common Disaster and Speaking Confidentially. The video linked below is from the band’s performance at the 2001 Quebec City Summer Festival (included on the 2002 DVD/CD release Open Road). The live rendition, which extends the running time of the studio track by six minutes, dominated by Michael Timmins’ intricate and haunting guitar work, is entrancing and it’s a shame that the entire album isn’t available on the streaming platforms.

As you make your way through this week’s playlist, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do any of these tracks really stand out for you? What do you like? What don’t you like?

Please click the button below to leave a comment.

TRACK: "Lady Of The Island" from Crosby, Stills and Nash (1969)

ARTIST: Crosby, Stills and Nash

Lady of the Island from the 1969 self-titled debut by Crosby, Stills and Nash is a beautiful song from a stunning album. There’s not a mediocre track to be found across the album’s 41-minute run time and for my tastes this remains one of the best debut albums of all time. The album, which peaked at number 6 on the US Billboard 200 chart, earned the band the 1970 Grammy Award for Best New Artist and would go on to sell over 4 million units.

TRACK: "Longtime" from One Drop East (2003)

ARTIST: Salmonella Dub

I was introduced to the music of Salmonella Dub, a New Zealand dub and reggae band, by my brother-in-law in the early 2000s. By the time I listened to their fifth studio album, 2003’s One Drop East, the band was already into their second decade. It’s quite a diverse album with a tasty mix of dub, dancehall, drum and bass, and roots reggae. The album opener Longtime, feels like a dub classic and at times, particularly in the chorus, bears a striking resemblance to some of UB40’s early output.

TRACK: "Life In Mono" from Formica Blues (1997)

ARTIST: Mono

Life in Mono, from the British trip hop duo Mono, was originally released as an EP on UK-only label Echo Records in 1996 before leading off the band’s only album Formica Blues the following year. The track’s inclusion on the soundtrack and end credits of the 1998 film adaptation of Great Expectations led to widespread exposure and their only concert tour. Sadly the band would break up after one album, with lead singer Siobhan de Maré moving on to form the short-lived (two albums, and a couple EPs) band Violet Indiana with ex-Cocteau Twins guitarist Robin Guthrie.

TRACK: "Love Is A Losing Game" from Back To Black (2006)

ARTIST: Amy Winehouse

Love Is a Losing Game, the fifth and final single from 2006’s Back To Black, was the last single released by Winehouse during her lifetime. While Winehouse’s untimely death in 2011 at the age of 27 was tragic in itself, it was the revelations in the 2015 documentary Amy that truly broke my heart. While every individual is ultimately responsible for their own decisions, so many people failed Winehouse in so many ways, just when she needed them most. While I recognize that Asif Kapadia’s documentary has its own motivations, and that ultimately no addict can be saved from themselves, the lack of support from loved ones, the exploitation, and the lack of willingness to support an extremely vulnerable person at the lowest points in her life were appalling. To this day I still well up with tears, both of sadness and of anger, just about any time I hear her music.

TRACK: "Lentil" from Some People Have Real Problems (2008)

ARTIST: Sia

I first became aware of Australian singer Sia Furler in 2001 when she appeared on Zero 7’s debut album Simple Things, a fantastic album that numbers among my Desert Island Discs. Her vocals on Destiny, the second single released from the album, are absolutely sublime. Sia would find global success as a solo artist with a couple multi-platinum albums in the early 2010s, but it’s her earlier solo work that really does it for me, especially 2004’s Colour the Small One and 2008’s Some People Have Real Problems, on which this track appears.

Lentil doesn’t appear to have been released as a single which is a shame as it remains the highlight of the album for me. Her live performance on KCRW, linked below, is one of my favorite live vocals. Her tone, her phrasing, and her control are beautiful to behold and the series of vocal runs that starts at 3:30 still take my breath away.

TRACK: "Low Place Like Home" from Becoming X (1996)

ARTIST: Sneaker Pimps

Becoming X, the 1996 debut album by UK electronic band Sneaker Pimps emerged a few years after trip hop broke through into the mainstream following Massive Attack’s first two albums and Portishead’s debut. While album opener Low Place Like Home wasn’t released as a single, it nonetheless remains my favorite track on the album.

I remember being extremely disappointed with the follow up album, 1999’s Splinter, after buying it only to learn that vocalist Kelli Dayton (now Kelli Ali) had been pushed out by the band’s founders when their musical style evolved. Listening to that album now, I realize it never stood a chance given the disparity between my high expectations and the reality. It’s quite possible that I only ever gave the album a single listen, which in hindsight, after listening to the album again in its entirety, feels excessively harsh.

TRACK: "Lonely Soul" from Psyence Fiction (1998)

ARTIST: UNKLE

Just two short years after the Sneaker Pimps debut, the creative pairing of James Lavelle and DJ Shadow, performing together as UNKLE, would release a stunner of a debut album in the form of Psyence Fiction. Despite incredible music that featured guest appearances by well-respected vocalists including The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft (Lonely Soul), Radiohead’s Thom Yorke (Rabbit in Your Headlights), Badly Drawn Boy (Nursery Rhyme/Breather), and Beastie Boys’ Mike D (The Knock), the album received mixed reviews upon release. The album’s stature has risen (deservedly so, in my opinion) over the intervening decades since its release, leading to its inclusion of a couple best trip hop albums lists (Fact had it at number 45 and Slant Magazine ranked it number nine).

If I had to rank my favorite trip hop songs (a fool’s errand for sure, but one I might try one day), I would expect Lonely Soul to make my top twenty. Ashcroft’s crisp and clear vocals combined with the haunting music and the propulsive beat make for an enjoyable first four minutes of music. By the halfway point the song has taken a completely different turn, with the music dominated by disparate drum breaks interspersed with a mix of industrial and otherworldly sounds. An orchestral bridge segues the song into its final third; the drums reappear at the 6:30 mark, carrying the track forward and supporting Ashcroft’s keening vocalizations which ultimately give way to a gentle string-focused conclusion.

Life in the key of L: Laughter

Because I’m still a little tired after the craziness of the past week, and because I’d like to enjoy some of the gorgeous day outside (there’s a pool at our Airbnb), I’m gonna keep this week’s outro short.

Laughter, both engaging in it and inspiring it, is one of the great joys in my life. I’m a firm believer in the adage that just because we grow older doesn’t mean we need to grow up. And laughter is an integral part of that. The quote above, variously ascribed to Maurice Chevalier, George Bernard Shaw, and Michael Pritchard among others, resonates deeply with me. Whether it’s seeing and hearing my wife laugh at my weird behavior and strange jokes, laughing at a particularly good joke or a comedy movie or TV show, or sitting alone by myself and laughing uproariously simply to pull myself out of a funk, I just feel more alive when there’s laughter in my life.

I expect to be back to a more regular schedule next week, so please tune in on Wednesday (okay, maybe Thursday) for the next installment of Alphabet Soup. Until then, I hope you find some time for laughter in your life.

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Here’s the link to the running playlist which is updated on a weekly basis as each new installment is published:

ALPHABET SOUP RUNNING PLAYLIST

Tracks missing from the Spotify playlist:

Allegory by Murray Attaway (Week 02)
Face Me and Smile by The Lover Speaks (Week 12)
From Your Mouth by God Lives Underwater (Week 13)
This Can’t Go On! by The Lover Speaks (Week 23)

Thank you for reading Joy in the Journey, I appreciate you being here! If there’s someone in your life you think may enjoy this post, feel free to share it.