October 23, 2026
SOMETHING OLD
The Five Discs - Never Let You Go
1962
The Five Discs - Never Let You Go
1962
A couple months ago, I watched a lovely video testing Patti Smith Group legend Lenny Kaye's ability to guess songs clearly curated to his taste and past. The second that he heard The Five Discs' doo-wop hit Never Let You Go, a song I didn't yet know, he immediately broke out into dance and flawless imitation of the opening notes. It easily could have been a fluke that his infectious joy made the song sound good, but this is truly just a fantastic and tremendously vivacious piece of music all on its own.
It opens with bass singer Andy Jackson rolling his Rs among other reverberating sounds, and then, in the true nature of doo-wop: the rest of the guys begin their enunciation of "doo bop," which continues layered quietly beneath each verse. Through abstract phrases and combinations of letters in five different smoothly-melded voices, the group has essentially created their own array of instruments to serve as the backing track and foundation of the song alongside the actual instruments. In the video with Kaye, he and Track Star host Jack Coyne discuss how the lyrical style is hardly any different from jazz scatting. Kaye even says it's "like another language." This makes it slightly hard to write about in English, but I promise that simply listening to the song will serve as an effective Rosetta Stone.
Mario DeAndrade sings the lead with stunning falsettos and equal bouncing-off-the-walls energy to his counterparts. Then, as if the vocal orchestration of these men wasn't enough, there's a killer little sax solo around 1:23. If I was at the club in 1962, they'd have to hold me back from knocking people over from the ridiculous dancing I'd have to do. Two minutes and fourteen seconds would do more damage than ever seen before.
But, who were The Five Discs?
On two different street corners of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood were two groups: The Lovenotes, a black duo comprised of of Mario DeAndrade and Andy Jackson, and four Italian-Americans: Joe Brocco, Joe Barsalona, Paul Albano, and Tony Basile. It didn't take very long for all the men to join together and create one supergroup. This group feels so quintessentially New York, especially at a time where such integration would have been unheard of in so much of the country.
The Brooklyn-raised Kaye remarked on doo-wop ruling his entire childhood and the genre's present obsolescence, vanishing out of the cultural sphere not in recent years, but rather the moment that The Beatles took over. The British Invasion is widely cited as an advancement of rock music, but it's interesting to consider its role in eclipsing the American roots of rock 'n roll sub-genres like doo-wop.
SOMETHING NEW
Slayyyter - i think he’s got a girl
October 9, 2026
Slayyyter - i think he’s got a girl
October 9, 2026
The utter explosion of Charli xcx's brat in 2024 was fairly confounding to me. My understanding of the general American public's taste was separated into three spheres: hip-hop, confessional pop, and country. I thought the most unanimity would be found among the likes of Drake, Taylor Swift, and Morgan Wallen, and suddenly, it was instead in the dance pop sound of Charli xcx. I wasn't terribly exposed to the genre yet and I didn't like it at all at first. I found it sort of abrasive and, again, surprising that it wasn't as niche as I'd expected. I thought it was music for the club, but it was no doubt playing at medium volumes in the headphones of passersby at every moment. Everyone everywhere was in love with something that was giving me a dull headache.
I've since changed my stance now that my ears have attuned to that musical flavor, plus my personality has evolved enough that I, too, now long for the dance floor like I suppose everyone else did. But I think I can identify what other shift happened, because I'm still not all the way there with the Charli's smash hit 360 like I am with Von dutch, or her succeeding album's Rock Music. There's a certain heaviness to those. It elevates the auto-tuned, hyper and techno-pop sound to something akin to rock, which has always been good at feeding my soul. Where there may not be overly emotional and complex lyrics or whimpering guitar solos, the levels have been mixed enough and the vocals have taken on enough grit to convey truly powerful emotions.
This is all to say that i think he’s got a girl is the first song I've ever heard from dance pop artist Slayyyter, and it's been scratching the same itch. Though I'll admit it leans a little more explicitly into rock than the songs from brat, I've been pleasantly surprised by how hard it's been to get out of my head. While the lyrics describes a boyfriend's unfaithfulness and lies after uprooting her life for him, it wouldn't matter if she was using the same senseless doo-wop vocalizations described in the above feature: you would know the emotions she was expressing by the way this song sounds in the chorus. It's potent and it ties knots in my stomach. You can hear it. You can feel it. You step into her stilettos and feel her spiraling anxiety and ultimate betrayal. It doesn't feel good, but it also feels so, so good.
Based on this introduction to the Slayyyter and my newfound appreciation for the genre she's been most closely associated with, I really look forward to hearing her album Wor$t Man in America, which comes out on December 4th.
SOMETHING BORROWED
Emma Ogier - Frankie’s Gun! (The Felice Brothers)
2026
Emma Ogier - Frankie’s Gun! (The Felice Brothers)
2026
I am really fond of The Felice Brothers. They evoke my favorite folk traditions with a certain freshness, and they just miss veering into the kitschy late 2000s-early 2010s "stomp clap hey" sound of The Lumineers et al. My favorite song of theirs, Jazz on the Autobahn, has storytelling that reminds me of Springsteen, Dylan, and James McMurtry with a larger-than-life sonic feel reminiscent of The Band.
My second favorite song of theirs, Frankie's Gun!, has been covered wonderfully by the Houston-raised, Nashville-based Emma Ogier in a new collection of covers of their songs titled Felice County Fair.
This is an impossibly joyful-sounding song from 2007 sung from the perspective of a man who is presumably bleeding out. Frankie's gun done shot him down but he's gonna give you all his final fragmented thoughts before he dies! The song always conjures up a few giggles for me, but at its root it's a tragedy for a man who's seen violence all his life and ends up killed on the road by his buddy: whether accidentally or purposefully is somewhat unclear.
Where there were old-timey accordions, Ogier has modernized the song a bit in this cover with electric guitar, including a great bluesy instrumental intermission of piano and guitar beginning around 2:00. I also love how expressive her voice and all the directions she allows it to go in. I was a bit disappointed with this compilations' cover of Jazz on the Autobahn by Dawes, as its never picks up the buoyant energy of the original's choruses until the very end, and then it promptly and weakly deconstructs itself. Before those final forty or so seconds, you go through these cycles of hearing the drums build up and then dissolve just when you think it's finally "coming," but it doesn't, and then when it finally does, it misses the mark. I mean, you can't make me wait that long for the "beat to drop" and then not come in (Frankie's) guns a-blazing. I'm happy that Dawes took their own approach, but the essence of the song's vitality at the core has been stolen away and hidden somewhere unknown. I like to use this blog only to discuss music I like, and forget what I do not like, but I mention this point as a comparison for Ogier's success at making the song her own while retaining its identity.
SOMETHING... VISCERAL
The Waterboys - We Will Not Be Lovers
1988
The Waterboys - We Will Not Be Lovers
1988
Merriam-Webster:
visceral
adjective
1. felt in or as if in the internal organs of the body : deep
2. coming from strong emotions and not from logic or reason : instinctive
3. dealing with crude or elemental emotions : raw
visceral
adjective
1. felt in or as if in the internal organs of the body : deep
2. coming from strong emotions and not from logic or reason : instinctive
3. dealing with crude or elemental emotions : raw
The Waterboys' We Will Not Be Lovers: all of the above. Through that hauntingly repetitive fiddle doubled with mandolin, those loudly mixed drums, that guitar that sounds like its strings are unwinding as its strummed, and those lyrics. Those devastating lyrics. That cutting titular lyric in particular. Ouch. Like a blade to a vein, or even an anvil crushing your skull.
This song does not just describe a failing love affair, and it certainly does not paint the picture of a light-hearted fling. This is something all-consuming and yet utterly doomed. Even while acknowledging the peril the word is in a constant state of, and the dehumanized struggle of just trying to survive on this earth, the pain associated with this relationship feels even worse:
People are scrambling
Like dogs for a share
It's cruel and it's hard
But it's nothing compared to what we do to each other
We will not be lovers
Like dogs for a share
It's cruel and it's hard
But it's nothing compared to what we do to each other
We will not be lovers
Exaggeration or not, this is heartbreak, plain and simple. This is visceral anger, visceral sadness, and a brave admittance that this will never work: we will not be lovers. Enough has gone so terribly wrong between these two not-lovers that any hope has been annihilated.
Is that enough to leave, though? I suspect it isn't.
Is that enough to leave, though? I suspect it isn't.