It's back to music for this week's new-to-me thing; I listened to Jean Redpath's 1973 album Frae My Ain Countrie. It's mostly traditional Scottish songs, with a few Burns songs and modern ones (notably "A' the Week Yer Man's Awa'," aka "The Fisherman's Wife," by Ewan MacColl) thrown in.

It's the kind of thing that you'll like if you like this kind of thing? I do, to be clear, and the album covers all the folk song bases (rejected love, lovers gone away to war, forbidden love, exile, oppression of the powerless by the powerful, and women getting stuck with an illegitimate child while the men get away scot free) in Redpath's incomparable voice. There are even a few surprises, like the rich townswoman in "Kilbogie," who, when faced with the reality of her poor suitor's highland life, hightails it back to town in a coach and six, or the rejected woman in "Farewell He," who survives her jilting via careful application of . . . common sense.

Sadly, there's nothing as mind-bogglingly weird as "The Grey Silkie" (from Redpath's eponymous 1975 album), but it's a good collection and I enjoyed it.

Some music this week! I listened to Jens Lekman's 2022 album The Linden Trees Are Still in Blossom, which is a re-release of his now-discontinued 2007 album Night Falls Over Kortedala plus some new songs. I've previously listened to a few songs from NFOK but not the whole album, so it counts as new to me.

It's interesting to hear Lekman's early style along with his later style; I prefer the later one, which is less indebted to twee 1970s pop and syrupy strings. (Having said this, there are some fantastic songs from the original album, including "The Opposite Of Hallelujah," "Your Arms Around Me," "Shirin," "Friday Night at the Drive-In Bingo," and the song that made me start listening to Lekman in the first place, "A Postcard to Nina." And most of these are on the less strings-and-ridiculous-synths side of things.)

What really draws me to Lekman are the lyrics--I'm much more a lyrics appreciator than a music appreciator--and his lyrical style has matured too, without fundamentally changing. There's the slice of life plus punch in the gut stuff, the melancholy (shoutout to "Your Beat Kicks Back Like Death," which does a hell of a lot with its opening line, "We're all gonna die"), the self-conscious and sometimes self-puncturing romanticism, the intense focus on little moments.

To me the greatest delight was the title track, "The Linden Trees Are Still In Blossom." It's a follow-up song to "A Postcard to Nina," which not only adds to the (apparently true) story in the original song, but directly addresses the fact that homophobia's not a thing of the past. It made me cry, and not much does that these days. I hope Nina sent him that postcard.

Some months ago, the Spotify algorithm dropped the Weakerthans' "Our Retired Explorer (Dines with Michel Foucault in Paris)" into a playlist for me. Proving that algorithms aren't always wrong.

I'm giving two links: the first is to a live version (no video) and the second is to the album version, with video. I strongly recommend listening to the live version first. The video is cool, but it puts the song in a very different and much grimmer context.

Nothing else by the Weakerthans has delighted me as much as this song (for a minute, I thought I'd found a new--to me--favorite band). You know how the Decemberists have a lot of really unexpected, strange, glorious songs, and then every once in a while they just decide to do a love song? And it's a good love song, a clever love song, but it's not as amazing as their other stuff? That's what the Weakerthans seem to be like, except the ratio is reversed: a lot of good, clever love songs, and a few weird ones I like a lot, and then this ridiculous masterpiece. (Yes, I do have a tiny favorite subgenre of music I call "Songs about people whose work I read in graduate school." There's this, and the Magnetic Fields' "The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure" and a few others.)

So, here's the video-less live version:





And then the video of the album version:

There is, in fact, more to my life than medical stuff, although you wouldn't know it by reading my posts. Here's a start on correcting that.

Reading: I've spent the last few weeks mostly reading all of Ellis Peters' Cadfael novels. It was an odd experience. I liked them, although they're neither strongly plotted nor, for the most part, deeply characterized, and the early ones especially have a cringey level of sexism. Also one book has, of all things, an anti-abortion plot. And while Peters clearly did an enormous amount of research, there are things I think she got wrong (such as the abortion thing, where the discussion has to me--though I'm not an expert--the feel of a modern conservative view rather than a medieval one). For all their flaws, though, the books have a streak of compassionate humanism which is appealing, and at times (often the times when they're most medieval) they touch the genuinely strange and wondrous.

If Peters were just a generation later I would suspect her of having dabbled in early fan writing, because she loves to write what used to be called smarm (heavily homoerotic but officially non-sexual relationships between men). And in one book, her glee at writing homoerotic scenes just leaps off the page, ( Spoilers for something you will probably figure out almost immediately if you read the book in question ) There are some textual references to same-sex desire, as well as one Genuinely Bisexual Character, although we're told that he is bisexual because he is too heterosexual to be in a monastery.

I know there's a TV show with Derek Jacobi, and I've seen bits but I don't think I've ever seen a full episode. Is it worth watching? Is there any actual gay or is that too much to hope for even with a gay man in the lead?

I'm currently reading Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire, which is interesting so far. I'm getting the sense that it's going to be one of those books where the main character never gets to have a rest, which is something I increasingly find tiring to read.

Listening: My usual podcasts: This Podcast Will Kill You (excellent podcast about diseases, mostly infectious diseases), Radiolab, Pop Culture Happy Hour, sometimes In Our Time when the topic is interesting enough to make me tolerate Melvyn Bragg, sometimes Throughline. I gave up on Medical Mysteries, despite my interest in the subject, because both the presenters have such affected deliveries that I couldn't bear listening to them. I keep trying true crime podcasts and then quitting them, although I do highly recommend CBC Uncover's miniseries "The Village," which is sober, thoughtful, and responsible about the serial killer who preyed on men in Toronto's gay village, and about the whole context of violence against gay men.

In music, Spotify's algorithm got one right in directing me towards Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman. His latest, a collaboration with Annika Norlin called Correspondence, is stunning. Lekman and Norlin alternate songs in the form of letters to each other, responding to each others' ideas about everything from the fear (and the liberation) of failure, to rape culture, to the history of the song "Silent Night." You can buy it here and no doubt in other places. Here is one of the more stand-alone songs, "Forever Young, Forever Beautiful," a good intro to Lekman's work. I recommend giving the much earlier Lekman song A Postcard to Nina a listen too--it's the song that first caught my ear.

Watching: I haven't settled into anything much since the latest season of Shetland. I've tried a lot that hasn't worked for me, mostly crime shows.

I'm not loving S4 of The Good Place, which seems even more directionless than S3. I can't imagine how they can end the show satisfactorily, unless ( pure speculation, spoilery only for aired episodes of S4 )

I'm nervously looking forward to the final season of Bojack Horseman, which is about to drop. Last season's finale would have made a perfectly good series ending, and it's hard to see what else they can put Bojack through. On the other hand, most of the other characters' arcs feel much less finished, and I'm hoping for good endings, in every sense, for them.

I'm watching the Bake Off, of course, though nobody this year has grabbed my affection the way some bakers have in the past. I like them all but don't have a favorite, except in the sense that some of them are better bakers than others. Also, the challenges have gotten so difficult that I find them kind of stressful to watch. This may be good in a sense, because it means I get less of an urge to bake, and alas my diabetes means that delicious baked goods have to be much, MUCH less of a presence in my diet than they used to be. *sigh* (NB I know sugar substitutes are a thing. I have to restrict not just sugar but all carbs. Believe me, if there was a loophole I would have found it by now. Suggestions not needed, thanks. Commiseration always accepted.)

I want to watch the new Watchmen series, and several other things I'm not remembering right now. Suggestions for good things to read, listen, and watch ARE accepted, gladly.

And now I will end this long post.

The new Decemberists album, I'll Be Your Girl, was released today. I listened to it on Spotify and was very pleased. It feels like new life and new focus after the self-indulgent, self-referential stagnation of What A Wonderful World, What A Terrible World. I was very dubious about the dance-y, synthesizer-driven new sound that kept being talked about in interviews and promotions, but they still sound like the Decemberists. If anything, the changes make their sound harder and less poppy than it's been in a while. The album is also a lot more explicitly political than I can ever remember them being before. It's very much a "surviving/resisting Trump's America" sort of thing, with lots of rage and despair, ironic examinations of the urge to just give up and hide, and a few glimmers of hope. Plus there's still a good dose of everyone's my favorite Decemberists thing, which is folk-song-influenced pieces in which everyone dies.

26. A song that makes you want to fall in love A political song

I don't like many of these last prompts, so I'm just going to change them as I see fit.

One great thing about Billy Bragg's early work is that he got his political message across by telling stories. Later, his political songs got more abstract and preachy, and I don't like the later ones as much. (The same thing happened to Paul Weller, sadly.) This isn't one of Bragg's best known songs, but it's always meant a lot to me. The myth that if you work hard at your education you'll get a good job has been proven wrong in my own life over and over again.

Billy Bragg, "To Have and to Have Not"





( All the prompts )

24. A song by a band you wish were still together

I can't really imagine the Smiths still together in 2017--few bands can last that long without becoming a sad parody of themselves, and the Smiths' last album was already showing all the signs of a group past its best. Then again, it's nice to fantasize about them lasting just a little longer, releasing one or two more good albums, putting off the moment when Morrissey, away from Johnny Marr's counterbalancing force, disappeared up his own ego and re-emerged as an Islamophobic Brexiter.

I'm giving two links again on this post, the first because it's a song I really love, and the second not only because of the songs, but because of the video(s), directed by groundbreaking queer film-maker Derek Jarman.

The Smiths, "This Charming Man"




The Smiths, "The Queen Is Dead/There Is a Light That Never Goes Out/Panic," dir. Derek Jarman





( All the prompts )

22. A song that moves you forward

I'm not entirely sure what this prompt means, so I'm interpreting it as "a song that gives you energy."

Frightened Rabbit, "Old Old Fashioned"





( All the prompts )

20. A song that has many meanings for you

This is a song about ghosts, and about love, and about the Second World War, and about a place, and about some kind of liberation that is joyous or terrible or both. I love it so much that I requested it for Yuletide a while back and wonderful people wrote me wonderful fic for it.

Thomas Dolby, "Cloudburst At Shingle Street"





( All the prompts )

18. A song from the year you were born

This was an easy choice.

This version of the song, the best known one, is I think later than 1969 (my birth year), but I like it better so that's what you get. It's worth looking at the original 1969 video on YouTube, though, if only because both video and song version are so hilariously 1960s.

David Bowie, "Space Oddity"





( All the prompts )