Deep Voices #98

Please touch museum

Deep Voices #98 on Spotify
Deep Voices #98 on Apple Music

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One of the best comebacks I ever heard was when a stranger grabbed my friend Mike’s arm to look at his tattoo and he said, “What is this, the please touch store?” This was 20 years ago and I still remember it because it was such a perfect little diss. I was thinking about this while putting together this week’s Deep Voices which, to me, has a cohesion I could not originally place. Then I realized I wanted to reach out and touch each song. They all have a raised texture, not just paint flat on the canvas. 

A quick note above the fold that this week’s mix’s art is a photo of Deep Voices reader Zosha Warpeha. She sent me her album silver dawn recently and it really floored me. A beautiful, searching album performed by her on the Hardanger d’amore, which is a 10-stringed fiddle. Her song also leads off the mix, but please check out the whole album if you can! To all the Deep Voices readers who make music, please keep sending it my way. 

Playlist notes: 

—I paired Zosha Warpeha with Laura Cannell, a violinist whose work I’ve featured before on Deep Voices. The two are different players on different instruments, but both are very good at summoning romance and pain from their strings. Their music is difficult to describe. It has folk leanings, but freeform structure. It sounds like they are chasing the wind. Warpeha’s album is particularly fragile, like the instrument itself is nervous to be played and she must be gentle with it. She sometimes sings quietly, like she is keeping herself company. 

The prolific Cannell has been releasing a series of EPs this year, all tied to “lore.” “Wake the Sleeping Mountain Trolls” comes from Mountainlore and it does feel alert and urgent like I would imagine a troll alarm needs to be. For as commonly played as the violin and viola are—so many young children start their musical journey with one—I don’t feel like I know of enough unique experimentalists on the instruments. Maybe I’m biased against classical music (I am), but it’s exciting to hear these two artists trying new forms. 

—I’ve been doing my best to learn more about the Argentine and Uruguayan music scene in the late ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s. My lack of Spanish skills, however, has been hindering me. What I’ve been gravitating towards resembles Brazilian tropicalia, but, for whatever reason, the music doesn’t seem to have made much of a dent internationally. I’m loath to share information about music I basically know nothing about, so I won’t. Instead, I’ll ask for help. If you’re well informed in these scenes, and can tell me about Eduardo Mateo, Gabriela, Fernando Cabrera, Travesía, or Gabriela, please get in touch. The Gabriela song on here is particularly beautiful and I’ve also been listening to her album Detras Del Sol which was produced by Bill Frisell. But I want more.

—I just learned about Fools, the solo project of former Grizzly Bear drummer Chris Bear. I interviewed him once or twice many years ago and remember connecting with him pretty well on a music nerd level. He was an inventive player in that band, bringing flexibility to their rather tightly constructed songs. So it’s a treat to listen to an album that lets him stretch out. The album, from 2020, has the feel of a lost ’80s experimental record, full of slow-blooming rhythms and noodling percussion. It feels like he’s asking a lot of questions and he’s not looking for any answers. It feels, honestly, nice to listen to. Easy, relaxing. But not cheap, not simple. It feels sly, self-assured. It feels like he earned its glide through space. Like I did too.