dreaming wide awake

Autumn Soul Music

Here are three beautiful, soulful tracks to listen to while the earth around you dies, freezes, goes rigid and petrifies.



Sam Cooke. I go back and forth on this, but sometimes Sam Cooke is my favorite singer ever. (Delroy Wilson and Otis Redding are his competition.) I was listening yesterday to an interview with his biographer. Powerful story. Sad too, him getting shot like that after getting set up and robbed by a hooker. This track is just his voice, cymbal and acoustic bass and that's all that could ever be necessary. I don't think of the living Cooke singing this, but the dead.

Sam Cooke – Lost and Lookin'

Chocolate Genius. I was really into this guy's last record, Godmusic, which came out in 2001. Sometimes the records that take more chances, and make mistakes, stick with me more than the ones that exhibit more taste and dignity. Marc Anthony Thompson is Chocolate Genius. I don't know much about him except that he gets the greatest of the great musicians (like Van Dyke Parks or Marc Ribot) to play on his records, put out two records on major V2, and is the only "famous" person I saw when I was in New York. This song has a similar quiet to most of it as Cooke's Lost and Lookin'. I could do without the baroque rocking section with distorted guitar octaves on Down So Low; that's so mid 90s. But there is so much feeling and texture in this track that it's all OK. And you should really listen to it on headphones.
It's Going Wrong purrs with low end sizzle and is typical of the delicate soul I love from Thompson. Both of these new tracks are from his brand new record, Black Yankee Rock. (This title alone helps me deal with the pain that is the overhyped Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.) Enjoy.

Chocolate Genius – Down So Low
Chocolate Genius – It's Going Wrong

posted by Daniel @ 1:44 PM