Tag: Margaret Glaspy

Something about Margaret Glaspy’s voice makes me want to hang out and listen to her laugh.

I meant to write the notes for this show sooner than a month after the fact, but travel plans got in the way and here I am struggling for an intro. I can tell you that hearing Sparklehorse take on Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians’ “Listening to the Higsons” for the first time, mere weeks ago, felt like someone became obsessed with the same cassette as I did thirty years ago, but actually got around to letting the hen out.

In the last few years, John Lydon, once known to the world as Johnny Rotten, has been in the news for a variety of reasons, none of them related to his music, most of them leading to unfortunate public judgements. His band’s new album makes their name Public Image Ltd a handy reminder, as it serves up a take on society more in tune with their past work than the expected yelling-at-clouds. Elsewhere! To the listeners voicing strong opinions about the adorably shrill kids’ story that ran at the top of The Final Hour — your comments were passed on to Management and that short chunk of audio root canal is gone. Well done!

Revisiting songs from their debut 2011 EP and various favorites from a ten-year career, this sunny folk-pop ensemble is buoyed by brightly colored harmony balloons dangling deathly sharp unexpected hooks. Listen with care and often.

There are many two-genre combos that will fit on Blitzen Trapper like a tailored suit, but my current favorite is “country psychedelia”.

If you’re wondering if Acid Tongue is about having a particularly caustic wit, or about some sort of psychedelic dosage, the answer is yes.

If a mermaid learned to play surf guitar, she could give Olivia Jean some exciting competition, at least for a little while.

They had been shot at. They had avoided countless booby traps. They had been served tiny delicate cups of the most aromatic and poisonous espresso. All of these events were framed as interrupted cribbage games. Maybe they played too much. The phlebotomist ruminated on this as they locked up their two-wheel drive all-terrain motorbikes across the street from Kirov Park. The Transnistrian passports had been excruciatingly expensive, but the ergonomist insisted it was justified, for complicated political reasons. The pieces rattled against the cribbage board and the very dangerous little notebook in the messenger bag as they strolled through the trail, looking for a man holding two empty water bottles.

The topologist carefully unfolded the graph depicting prime number frequencies. Across the scrub, the baker was returning from the Unimog, having concluded the search, and from the looks of their empty hands, unsuccessfully. They must have left it in the cab back in Calabar. Wonderful. Together, they considered the placement of the carved stone monoliths before them, their geometric arrangement random to the average visitor, but a clear reflection of order to the ancient people of Alok Ikom, and apparently, also related to the graph before them, with cataclysmic mathematical consequences.

Glaspy’s voice is a broad crooked smile, unique in its shape and well-suited for this particular set of laconic jangle.