Deep Voices #95
The best songs of 2024 (some of them)
Deep Voices #95 on Spotify
Deep Voices #95 on Apple Music
This week’s Deep Voices is all music from 2024. I’m not saying these are my favorite songs of the year so far, but I’m not not saying that. Eagle-eyed (-eared?) Deep Voices loyalists will notice a change this week: the playlist is 70 minutes long, a solid sixth of an hour over its normal running time. I do not take this decision lightly but I could not bring myself to cut it down to an hour. Too much good music. If you need to unsubscribe and curse my name, I understand. If you can handle this maturely, press play above and read about highlights from the playlist below.
Deep Voices is me (Matthew Schnipper) writing about music alongside a one-hour playlist. One influences the other. I’ve been doing some version of this project, collecting notes on how music and art can change and define you, personally and/or professionally, for most of my life. I’m going to guess, if you’re reading this, you have too. If you can support that project with a paid subscription, please consider doing so. Paid subscribers get access to exclusive playlists and my heart. Thank you for reading and listening :)
Playlist notes:
•The Still House Plants album is so good. Have you heard it? My friend Sam thinks it sounds like it was recorded like they were all in different rooms (derogatory). I would counter that argument by urging you to watch this video of the band performing live in the same room. Proof! But, look. I’m not so bullheaded that I don’t understand what Sam’s saying. There is a discordance there. But I’d counter to say it sounds more like the result of a psychically connected group thrashing out a powerful improv set more than isolated noodling.
SHP are a trio, a guitar player, a drummer, and a singer. The singing of Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach is the main attraction; she has a strange and moving voice, herky-jerky soul sung from low in the belly. She sounds like a siren risen from a peat bog. Guitarist Finlay Clark flits around the high notes and drummer David Kennedy pounds away like he only loved hardcore until one day someone played him Elvin Jones and his mind was so blown he broke all of his Gorilla Biscuits records over his knee in protest. The result of them playing together sounds a bit like a post-punk record chopped and screwed.
If I don’t make it, I love u is SHP’s third album and it’s better than the other two, which are good but not remarkable as this one. “M M M,” which I included here, is the album’s opener and maybe its best song. Admittedly, the songs can blend together, but this one stands out for its lyrics—at least the ones I can make out. After Kennedy’s opening snare march, Hickie-Kallenbach mutters a bit before she breaks out into full warble: “I wish I was cool,” and then, “I just want my friends to get me, I just want to be seen right.” A plea for understanding coming in loud and clear. I find the whole thing to be really touching. The guitar, hitting one riff on loop, sounds like it’s erasing any bad vibes. Begone!
•I wrote in Deep Voices #86 about Erin Hopes’ music and she’s got a new album out now under the name Assassin. I am totally in love with the closing track, “Take Me Back to the Astral World,” a nervousy techno track that blends a warp speed kick drum with digitized strings and soft bloops and bleeps befitting of Postal Service. By the time it ends there’s an added noise (no idea how to even describe this little part I’m talking about) that sounds so triumphant. Like the whole thing was a battle and after eight minutes you made it out the other side a winner.
•🚨New Wolfgang Tillmans music alert!🚨God, this guy can no do wrong. You’d think being one of the most important and influential photographers alive would be enough—but no! He also demands dominance over the small niche of music I adore most, which is vulnerable electronic-adjacent songs of devotion. “In the morning light/We can talk about it now, or later,” he sings sweetly with a Germanic lilt. “You had made a plan, coming out of the dark.” It actually sounds less like a love song than a domestic check in. Up to you, but we’ve gotta discuss. In the morning light would be the most beautiful, but either way, we need to clear things up and move forward. See, vulnerable?
Tillmans actually has a photo called “Morning Light,” a window covered with paper, two dish towels hanging to dry. There’s a plant in the foreground, its leaves largely reaching back towards the nourishment of the sun. Is the plant him? Towards the end of the song, the narrative dissolves. “In the morning light,” he sings repeatedly, the rest of the meaning having melted away.
•Guests are new to me and they are a beguiling group. Let me tell you, it’s a wonderful feeling to be beguiled by music. Usually I’m bewitched, maybe bemused, often besotted, occasionally bedeviled. But beguiled? Never. My feeling upon hearing their album “I wish I was special”: ???!!! It feels like poetry; I’m reminded of John Giorno’s Dial-A-Poem work, specifically Anne Waldman’s entrancing tornado of repetition as filtered through a British accent. Plus music. If you want to call it that. Accompaniment more so. In this nice breakdown of each song on “I wish,” vocalist Jessica Higgins starts each little blurb by saying “This one’s…” ie “This one’s a scene setter” or “This one’s a bit cute, a bit sad, too,” like the interview itself is a bit of performance, which, of course, it is.
Of my favorite piece on the album, “Arrangements, As In Making Them,” she says, “This one’s a touchstone.” It’s the meatiest track on the record, with Higgins talking through what she was hoping to discuss. “Uh well I um wanted to say something about gardens, sourness, ugly sentences.” But she doesn’t, I guess. Her partner in the duo, Matthew Walkerdine, produces a lightly pensive undercurrent. Maybe it’s the garden reference, but the song reminds me a bit of Virginia Astley’s From Gardens Where We Feel Secure, but paranoid about technology and connecting with people instead of celebrating nature. Five of the album’s 11 songs have titles in parenthesis, like they don't want to be too presumptuous. There is a music video for “Arrangements” which is filmed from the dashboard of a car, driving around at night. I have no idea where they’re going but I’ll happily follow.