Deep Voices #14
Take me to the river and I'll be your angel
Deep Voices #14 on Apple Music
This mix is a co-production by Alex Frank and me (Matthew Schnipper). I have many friends I share and talk about music with, and among them Alex and I may not even have the taste that lines up the closest. But there is a distinct overlap in our love of moments of transcendence. Ever listen to a song and feel breathless, like it defined the whole of nature at that very moment? All living beings and their goodness funneled into your ears and huddled warmly inside your brain? And that feeling comes from one ecstatic sweep of the guitar, a throbbing bass line that sneaks up, a melody so beautiful that it must be sung by angels in heaven? That’s what we love. These songs all present their own version of that feeling, music that makes you feel lucky to be able to hear. Enjoy.
Playlist notes:
I first heard this Julianna Barwick song because a boy I liked played it for me one winter night in his apartment. The feeling you have when you’ve just met someone you like—when all the promise and excitement and electricity fills the room—is unlike any other feeling, both pure and wonderful, and also a little bit scary. The boy and I didn’t end up in a longterm relationship, but this song will always sound like possibility anyway. —Alex
When you’re queer, there is so much pressure to modulate how flaming you are, particularly on your voice when it’s being recorded. To be honest, a lot of gay vocalists never go full-on sissy, for fear, I suspect, of alienating everyone in the ether. There’s still always this internal self-loathing and fear around sounding just too damn much. Not so with Divine. She made incredibly sophisticated and exciting Hi-NRG music, and sang (or rapped?) gay as fuck on every single one of them. Honestly, even for a drag queen as outwardly flagrant as her, that’s pretty brave! —Alex
Sometimes there’s a blissful but vague melody hanging out in my head that may be an echo of something wonderful I’ve heard before, or I might have totally invented it, just some ideal sound and vibe that my ears are telling me is the answer. Once the melody is there, I will often try to find music that sounds like it, googling phrases like “weary lap steel.” Loren Connors’s Airs album is the only time I’ve ever found one of my true ideals, the best of the sounds I hear in my head. It’s just him and an electronic guitar stringing along the most melancholy melodies. It sounds like My Own Private Idaho looks, or like being tired and sitting on a porch. Which I am now. —Alex
The Aged brothers, Daniel and Andrew, have a group called inc. When they released their album no world in 2013, Alex and I were their biggest fans, alongside most of our then-co-workers at Fader. They are studio musicians (Daniel notably played with Raphael Saadiq) and their sound reflected that precision. One song, “Angel,” a mystifying R&B track, is one of my most listened to songs, with its echoey rimshot and strange refrain, “take me to the river and I’ll be your angel.” I interviewed the brothers on camera in a park in LA once and Daniel said almost nothing. There’s a lovely moment where he appears transfixed by a squirrel.
Alex urged me to check out Daniel’s solo album recently, to really listen. It’s beautiful and a little eerie, lots of space between notes, like he took the embellishments of an inc. song but deleted the song itself. A few weeks ago Alex also sent me a video of Andrew speaking at length directly into the camera about becoming a Christian. I made it halfway through. I prefer this video of him playing guitar leaning against a tree in Hawaii. —Schnipper