Alphabet Soup Week 27: Artists Filed Under N

Coming to you from the seaside resort of Ilfracombe on the North Devon coast, this week’s installment finds me settling in to life on the trail.

As we wind our way down to the end of the twenty seventh week of 2024, my wife and are I starting to settle in to life on the trail. On Tuesday we set out on the 630-mile South West Coast Path, England’s longest waymarked trail, a journey that will take us ten weeks, including seven rest days along the way. With the madness of the month of June behind me, and with nothing but walking ahead, I’m already beginning to experience a peace of mind and a pace of life that feeds my soul.

When planning this trip I was intentional in trying to craft an itinerary that left us space and time to relax along the way and to really enjoy the journey. Today was a “nero” day or a near zero day for us, with a relatively short 5.5 miles from Combe Martin to Ilfracombe. After two consecutive days of 14 miles and 4,000 feet of ascent (lots of ups and downs on this coastal walk), it’s been lovely to have an easier day. We arrived into town at midday, leaving us plenty of time to have a bite to eat (cream tea anyone?) before heading to our accommodation to shower, stretch, and relax for the afternoon.

Part of the relaxing for me today is to try and get caught up with my Substack reading and to wrap up this post and put it out into the wild. With that, let’s jump into this week’s selections!

Happy listening!!

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ALPHABET SOUP WEEK 27: Artists Filed Under N

This week’s selections:

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ARTIST: Nada Surf

TRACK: “Popular” from High/Low (1996)

High/Low, the 1996 debut album by New York alternative rock band Nada Surf, is the only album I ever owned by the band. For some reason, I’d always assumed them to be a one hit wonder (the debut single Popular reached #11 on the Billboard Modern Rock Chart) but I recently learned from Jackie R and Steve Goldberg on Jackie’s wonderful Music of the Day substack that the band is still around. I’m very much looking forward to digging into their work based on Jackie’s song selections and Steve’s album recommendations.

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ARTIST: The National

TRACK: “Afraid of Everyone” from High Violet (2010)

Although it seemingly never merited release as a single, this track from The National’s fifth studio album, 2010’s High Violet, is one of my favorite songs of all time (a list that currently numbers only 33 tracks). Matt Berninger’s lyrics, particularly on this album, are so evocative for me, often taking me to a place where I’m more than just picturing a scene in my mind. I’m almost inhabiting the scene and feeling everything that my imagined protagonist is experiencing. That feeling of “being there” is so present for me in this song, especially in the line, “With my kid on my shoulders I try / Not to hurt anybody I like / But I don’t have the drugs to sort it out”

The album debuted at #3 on the Billboard 200 Chart, their highest charting album at the time, but would be bested by their 2017 follow-up Sleep Well Beast, which debuted at #2.

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ARTIST: Nik Kershaw

TRACK: “Roses” from The Riddle (1984)

We last saw Nik Kershaw in week 22 with Know How from the same album, 1984’s The Riddle. I mentioned in my blurb back then that the album had “a handful of tracks with quite incisive and meaningful lyrics” and Roses is the finest example. Kershaw’s cutting and depressing lyrics, written over 40 years ago, on the damage we’ve been doing (and continue to do at an increasing rate) to our planet are prescient and powerful and feel like they could have been written yesterday.

“Make it plastic make it pay

Use it up and throw away

Make another just the same, more or less

Burn our time down to size

Send it up into the skies

Hide the evidence with lies, what a mess

But we've just come from a meeting

And we're sure you'd like to know

There'll be deep blue skies and clear blue waters

Everywhere you go

'cause everything's coming up roses

Or so they tell you

In the name of energy

We give our problems to the sea

But they'll be back for you and me

In or haste, we forget

Leaving our mistakes behind

Out of sight is out of mind

Our disposable mankind

What a waste

But we've talked to the experts

And they know a thing or two

They say it's all hunky dory

There's nothing for you to do

'cause everything's coming up roses

But it's an awful price to pay

Believing everything they say

Here tomorrow gone today

So take me home to the red red skies and the

Brown, brown grass and the black, black seas

And the broken glass and the dead, dead trees

But everything's coming up roses

Or that's what they tell you”

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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.

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ARTIST: Nina Gordon

TRACK: “Tonight and the Rest of My Life” from Tonight and the Rest of My Life (2000)

In 2000 Nina Gordon, co-founder and one of the lead vocalists of American alternative rock band Veruca Salt, released Tonight And The Rest Of My Life, the first of her two solo albums. The title track and lead single peaked at number 7 on Billboard’s Adult Top 40 Chart and the album would spend ten weeks on the Billboard 200 Chart, peaking at #123. Gordon would later rejoin Veruca Salt for their fifth album Ghost Notes, released in 2015.

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ARTIST: Neko Case

TRACK: “Hold On, Hold On” from Fox Confessor Brings The Flood (2006)

Neko Case is nothing if not prolific, having been involved in over 20 albums, both solo and as a member of a band, over a 30-year period. Outside of her solo career, which spans seven albums, she is perhaps best known for her work with Canadian indie rock band The New Pornographers who have released nine studio albums. She also teamed up with k.d. lang and Laura Veirs to form case/lang/veirs, whose 2026 self-titled debut is one of my eight Desert Island Discs.

Hold On, Hold On is drawn from Case’s fourth album 2006’s Fox Confessor Brings The Flood. The album was widely acclaimed upon release, making many of the annual “Best Of” lists and would be her most successful solo release at the time, reaching #54 on the Billboard 200.

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ARTIST: Nickel Creek

TRACK: “The Lighthouse's Tale” from Nickel Creek (2000)

In 2000 Nickel Creek’s self-titled third album popped up on my musical radar when I saw the music video for The Lighthouse’s Tale on CMT. While I wasn’t much of a fan of country music at the time (not a huge fan now, but my musical palette has certainly expanded), we’d recently lost VH1 from our cable TV lineup and I found myself really jonesing for sources for new music. For a short period Country Music Televison helped to fill that void and a handful of country artists like Nickel Creek, Sara Evans, Lee Ann Womack and Jessica Andrews made their way into my CD library.

While the track has lost a bit of its lustre for me, it remains a beautiful song musically, lyrically, and vocally. A tragic tale of love and loss, told from the perspective of the lighthouse, it’s worth a listen.

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ARTIST: Nick Drake

TRACK: “Northern Sky” from Bryter Later (1971)

Nick Drake released three albums between 1969 and 1972 before sadly dying by suicide in 1974 at the age of 26 from an overdose of antidepressants. When released, Drake’s three albums received, at best, mixed reviews, and he found very little in the way of mainstream success during his short career. Over the course of the 70s his work grew in prominence and by the mid-80s he was being cited as an influence by numerous artists including Kate Bush, Paul Weller, and Robert Smith.

Northern Sky is drawn from his second album, 1971’s Bryter Later.

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ARTIST: Neil Diamond

TRACK: “Hello Again” from The Essential Neil Diamond (2001)

Growing up in the mid to late 70s I heard an awful lot of Neil Diamond as he was one of a handful of artists, including ABBA, The Bee Gees, and Simon & Garfunkel, that appeared on my father’s hours-long reel to reel “party tape”; I’ve been an unabashed fan ever since.

Hello Again appeared in the 1981 film The Jazz Singer and was also released as a single, reaching number six on the Billboard Hot 100

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ARTIST: Nightmares On Wax

TRACK: “Les Nuits” from Carboot Soul (1999)

I never would’ve expected to create a playlist on which Neil Diamond is followed by Nightmares On Wax. But the orchestration that opens Les Nuits dovetails perfectly with the prior track, brings such a gentle vibe, and serves as a lovely transition to the closing track of this week’s playlist.

Les Nuits was the first single from Carboot Soul, the third studio album by George Herbert Evelyn, who performs as Nightmares on Wax.

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ARTIST: Nicole Willis and The Soul Investigators

TRACK: “If This Ain't Love (Don't Know What Is)” from Keep Reachin' Up (2005)

Brooklyn-born soul singer Nicole Willis partners with the Finnish funk collective The Soul Investigators for her third album, 2005’s Keep Reachin’ Up on which If This Ain't Love (Don't Know What Is) appears. Sprinkled with elements of Northern Soul and funk, but leaning heavily on the retro soul sound that was so du jour at the time of its release, this album has the feel of an instant classic.

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Week One on the SWCP:

A small selection of photos from our first four days on the South West Coast Path:

Thanks for stopping by, looking forward to welcoming you back next week for another serving of Alphabet Soup!

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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)

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