Deep Voices #81 - A New Year’s Playlist

In my room

Deep Voices #81 on Spotify
Deep Voices #81 on Apple Music

Late last November, I joined a gym. I needed, my doctor said, to make some “lifestyle changes.” I’ve worked out here and there over time, but never consistently. The membership guy upsold me on some personal training sessions and, five weeks later, I now know what a dead lift is. My New Year’s resolution is to keep up the gym routine. This is a typical resolution, I know. One of those “cliche for a reason” things. I’d like to eat a little healthier, too, and read a few more books. I asked my wife if she had any resolutions. “Survive,” she said. 

I’m listening to this playlist in my bedroom with the sun streaming in. It’s cold outside but warm in here. My daughter is babbling away on the other side of the door. Colleen’s song, “Another World,” is playing now, a bright song with plenty of forward momentum. Everything is relative; last year was not as bad as the year before. 

Like the playlist I made last year for New Year’s, this one is entirely instrumental. Add your own words if you need them, or take an hour of peaceful music at its face. Nothing wrong with that. Happy New Year :-)

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Each edition of Deep Voices is a one-hour playlist, with a mix of personal writing and music criticism. A paid subscription gets you access to exclusive playlists, including Deep Voices deep cuts on YouTube. It also supports my writing, for which I am extremely grateful. If you read and listen to Deep Voices, please consider a paid subscription. It would mean a lot. Thank you!

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Playlist notes: 

• The Cousin song “Overpass” is the first 2023 song that, had I heard it before I sent out my best of the year playlist, I would have included. A long, lovely track by the Australian producer, it pairs fast drums and slow synths, each motif which, alone, could be a song itself. There are echoing swaths of dub, the noise of steam rising, a horse’s gallop of percussion. It’s all very precise and unpretentious and earns its 10-minute length. It really feels like renewal, and it’s the first song I knew I wanted to put on this playlist. 

• I picked up Egberto Gismonti’s album Solo at a stoop sale last fall and have been enjoying listening to the album at home. Gismonti, a Brazilian musician, plays guitar and piano, and the album moves from one instrument to the other seamlessly, often accompanied by little bells. The album is from 1979, but feels especially modern in its disinterest in borders. I like music like that, stew songs with a little bit of everything thrown in. Cheap copies are easy to find on Discogs and it’s worth picking it up on vinyl and letting it play throughout your house. 

• Two Dollar Guitar is the project of guitarist Tim Foljahn, usually with Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, and sometimes with others. The track I’ve included here, “Cascade,” is from Train Songs, a 1998 album that’s just the two of them, a guitar and drum duet. It’s instrumental, which makes them sound almost like a different band than other Two Dollar Guitar records where Foljahn’s voice is the centerpiece. I prefer this version of the group. Shelley, as ever, keeps a steady backbeat, while Foljahn noodles around. The overall effect is pleasurable and loose. They are not the most telekinetic of duos, more like two drunk friends really honed in on a long, meandering conversation. It’s nice to eavesdrop. 

• Yara Asmar’s 2023 album, synth waltzes and accordion laments, is made in a similar mode, expansive and shimmering. In addition to synth and accordion, it also features prominent whistling. The album is instrumental, but Asmar has a wonderful way with words, with song titles like, “it’s 5.00 pm and nothing bad has happened to us (yet),” “everything is wrapped in cling film,” and “are these your hands? would you like them back?” I included “it’s 5.00pm” here and found it to be about as cautiously uplifting as the title would suggest. If you let it, danger can lurk around every corner. Let it stay there, I say. I have no interest in corners. I’ll be in my room.