Take Me Back

Because things just mean different things decades later.




The sweet confident rush of youth, replaced by an appreciation. Maybe an understanding. Add some silent awe and a recognition that things never go as you planned. But if you try sometimes you get what you need.



Or so I've heard.

Bringing it on Home

Two different takes on Sam Cooke:






Now imagine them fused together.

Dance on the Edge of the Dark

The World Don't Stop Every Time That You Call

It's slightly off-balance. Slightly discordant. Slightly syncopated.

In the way it is. In the way things get when it's late.

And make no mistake -- it's late.

It's only later that you recognize it's late.

Only much, much later.

For now, it's a lot of noise. A lot of motion.

A lot of people doing a lot of things to keep from feeling the things that they're feeling.

And if you concentrate you can see this, but you never concentrate.

You're busy. Hanging out. Meeting people. Imagining a future.

Imagining the future of the other people you're with and drawing Venn diagrams of how those futures intersect.

And you're doing things you hate with people you like hoping you'll find someone to love.

And hoping you can find the right song on the radio that will bring you all together so you won't see how very, very, very far apart you are.

Because it's late. And you should be asleep.

But you want desperately to be awake.

Ragged Jagged Melody

How for the love of God have I never heard this before? Greg Kihn transforms an early Springsteen travelogue of the Jersey shore into a piece of pure pop wonder.




This one, on the other hand, I've heard about a million times.

But as my grandfather used to say "it's Thursday, kid. Time for a million and one."

The Morning Lasted All Day

Like Sinatra in a Younger Day

The fog rolls in.

Always the fog rolls in.

The hill up from the ferry landing is quiet.

Mostly.

Until the church bell rings.

Crackling through the morning.

The ground is wet. Always wet. From dew. And rain. And snow that never quite sticks and never quite freezes.

Soon the coffee shops will open. Serving strong espresso.

Double shots of everything.

But not yet.

Not quite yet.

For now it's quiet.

For now, there's just possibility.

Just a sense that something is about to happen.

Something very important.

Got to Leave The Old World Behind

I Can't Explain

Sometimes you know.

The words are so general that the don't really have much meaning.

The voice is thin and high -- as if to make it clearer that the whole thing just isn't very good.

But then something happens.

A great hook. An amazing chorus.

Even though there's nothing really there.

Except the feeling.

Which soars. Inexplicably.

And then the next verse starts and it dips again. And you want to turn away because there are more important things to do and better songs to listen to.

But you don't. Because you want to soar again.

You want the chorus to take you places you didn't think the song or the singer could go.

And it does. Again.

And you wonder if you're just overlaying your own feelings onto the song.

Or the feelings you had decades ago when you first heart the song.

And in that moment, you go inside the song.

And the lead guitar grabs you. And takes you someehwere unexpected. Somewhere you don't have to worry about whether there should be an apostrophe in the title.

And all at once you're back in the past, far in the future, and somewhere else in the present.

Imagination made real.

Brand. New. Squeeze.

Out already in the UK, early November in the US.