Day: October 13, 2021

TRACK | Daniel Johnston – Funeral Home (live)

5/5 golden merles

“One more time with feeling… billions and billions of people have already died. You too will die. Sing along with us, won’t you?”

I love everything about this performance: The participating audience, their nervous laughter, Daniel’s death monologue.

Before the plague at a new year’s gathering I tried to toast the recently dead: David Berman, Daniel Johnston, and Denis Johnson… but ended up drunkenly saying Daniel twice instead of Denis, to mild amusement.

Here is a third, small tribute. We love you, Daniel.

TRACK | Sarah Mary Chadwick – Please Daddy

5/5 golden merles

“And Anne, and Elliott, and Sylvia / Do the work and then it kills ya / right, mama?”

Hard to pick one track off this excellent album to celebrate, so more will likely follow later. But damn. Full of grace and dread, end to end. A great work I am deeply envious of. And, whether I am worthy or not, I feel a deep kinship with it.

TRACK | Jesuslesfilles – +1

5/5 golden merles

This is some combination of gut and sucker punch. A brilliant French-Canadian garage rock tune that launches right out of the gate into several varied strong melodies. There are also some superb driving vocals and excellent jangly guitar production.

The strength of the melodies and production mean that the 90 second run-time is brief even by my standards. But this allows for borderline infinite replayability.