The Eclectic Playlist

Some music that has been on my mind, in the CD tray, or spinning on my iPod lately. (Note the iTunes links below will launch that software application if it's installed on your computer.)

The New Pornographers, "Twin Cinema" - iTunes, Amazon - Music that sticks in your craw like a shred of popcorn kernel. Good luck listening to a track like "Spanish Techno" - it will park itself on your mental soundtrack. These Canadians are sometimes fey and obtuse, but they know songcraft.

Aaron Copland, Our Town - iTunes, Amazon - My mother played this for me a couple of weeks ago. But I do recall the stately melody was used in the film pastiche that Hollywood prepared immediately following 9/11. It probably worked so well because every swelling, maudlin soundtrack, every John Williams score you've ever heard is a shameless knock-off of Copland.

Stevie Wonder - iTunes, Amazon - Because Stevie knocks everybody cold. Because songs like 'Higher Ground' and 'For Once In My Life' are some of the most relentlessly positive expressions of joy in modern music. Because we're talking about Stevie his-godamn-name-says-it-all Wonder.

New Order, Every Little Counts - iTunes, Amazon - New Order functioned as the default background music for my youth - sulking around northwest Washington DC wearing a Joy Division T-shirt, trying to buy beer, trying with little success to impress girls. In college I decided very quickly this music was crap and never listened to it again. But now I don't know ... maybe it's only a matter of nostalgia.

Television, "Marquee Moon" - iTunes, Amazon - Let the rock nerds wax rhapsodic about Richard Hell, Verlaine and the punk New York proto-scene in the 1970s. You only need to acquaint yourself with this blazingly cerebral, technically astonishing rock music. Nothing quite sounded like this before or afterwards. The nasal, disaffected singing style won't appeal to everyone.

Keith Jarrett, "Radiance" - iTunes, Amazon - For me jazz music has always been a pleasure reserved for later in life, like presidential biographies. In my 50s I might amble around in my slippers with a cup of tea, Miles Davis on the stereo, and a dense tome about Truman. But I may have advanced the timeline when I came across this album. It's impressive - but so structurally different from the familiar forms and repetition of rock, blues, or pop. Jarrett chases a wide variety of melodies around the piano in ways that reward close listening. This music almost seems to grow brain cells with it's thoughtful phrases and explorations.