April Roundup: iPhone face, rabbit holes, and dreamboats
Another month of listening has come and gone. April brought good, bad, and confusing, but it also brought some of my favorite listens to date! Let’s get right into it.
HIGHEST RATED: Clube Da Esquina, Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges (1972)
I don't even remember how I found Clube Da Esquina, but my hunch is that a song showed up on a discover weekly (I don’t want to give Spotify credit for this one, but alas). One day it was just saved in my library, so I trusted whatever previous version of me saved the album and it got added to the spreadsheet. I was intrigued just because I didn’t know what to expect — it was my first time doing any sort of deep dive into Brazilian music. I had no frame of reference, and no expectations, but can say now that Clube Da Esquina is one of my favorite finds throughout my year and a half of listening to a new album every day.
The album is credited to Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges, who met in 1963 when Nascimento moved into the same building the Borges family in Belo Horizonte. The pair quickly bonded over their love for music, and into the late ’60s, Nascimento gained national attention for his songwriting skills. The duo continued to collaborate with a wide array of Brazillian songwriters, producers, composers, and vocalists, many of whom end up credited on Clube Da Esquina. The album includes arrangements and conduction from Eumir Deodato, Wagner Tiso, and Paulo Moura, bass and vocals from Beto Guedes, and vocals from Alaíde Costa. Overall, the album is a celebration of the collective of late-’60s pioneers of Brazillian music, and a story of resilience that highlights the tropicalia scene that rose (and fell) amid political upheaval at the time.
The album is slightly over an hour across 21 songs, which can get a little dicey for me in terms of retention — I’m mostly better at absorbing 12–14 track albums, especially after only one listen. But Clube Da Esquina kept me hooked until the end. It is the perfect album for the changing of the seasons, particularly winter turning into spring, and spring turning into summer. Nascimento and Borges transport you over and over again. One song alone can take you from feeling like you’re skipping on a tropical beach on a summer day, to being in a reflective solitude at the top of the tallest tree, to a disco club in Ibiza, to Woodstock ’69, to a Brazilian jazz club. And it just. Makes. Sense. Every song has its own little rabbit hole it brings you down, and then you’re done with the album and you realize you’re in a completely different place from when it started. And it’s a great place to be. If anyone is going to take any recommendations I'm making here seriously, please have it be this one. Give it a listen. I truly think there’s something there for everyone.
Top tracks include: “Nuvem Cigana,” “Clube Da Esquina №2,” “Paisagem Da Janela”
April Honorable Mentions: Dreamboat Annie, Heart (1975 CA release, 1976 US release); Freedom’s Goblin, Ty Segall (2018); Lotus Glow, Adi Oasis (2023)
SHOCK OF THE MONTH: AURORA, Daisy Jones & The Six (2023, or fictional 1975 if we’re being technical)
This has to be one of my most divisive listens of the year. From the iPhone face commentary (yes they have it, no I don’t care), to the debates surrounding the credibility of fictional bands, all I can say is I was intrigued. My soft spot for ‘60s-’70s Laurel Canyon artists grew and grew until I couldn’t take it anymore. I’m not here to talk about the show, I’m here to talk about the album that came out of it. But all I’ll say is yes, I was obsessed with the show in the exact way you’d think I’d be.
After finishing the show, I decided to add AURORA, the resulting fictional album, to my spreadsheet. I had my own moment of confusion when filling out the album’s release year. Technically, it is 2023. But TECHNICALLY, it is also 1975. I decided to go with both. A 1970s album made with 2023 capabilities.
As someone who read the book, I will say it was a full circle moment to hear the songs that I’d previously tried (and failed) to imagine in my head while reading. The book’s author, Taylor Jenkins Reid, felt similarly, saying “Daisy Jones and The Six are real. And they’re better than my wildest dreams,” which I’m not sure is technically true. Though Riley Keough (Daisy Jones) and Sam Claflin (Billy Dunne) are credited with vocals, Reid recruited Blake Mills, Chris Weisman, Jackson Browne, Marcus Mumford, and Phoebe Bridgers to handle the writing and producing. Nicki Bluhm, White Denim’s James Petralli, and many other greats also contributed. Even if the cast didn’t roll up their sleeves and write AURORA top to bottom on a three-day coke binge, that doesn't mean they didn’t do a damn convincing job of making it seem so on the show.
Who cares if it’s a bootleg Fleetwood Mac? I’m just happy I have something new to listen to that sounds like it came straight out of early ’70s California. Maybe the similarities between AURORA’s “The River” and Rumours’ “The Chain” are a little too close, but Keough gives us a very convincing Stevie Nicks nonetheless. The culmination of the entire album/show had me wanting to grow my hair down to my waist, move back to California and zen out until further notice. But as a whole, my opinion of AURORA is what I thought it would be: there are some individual songs that are great on their own, but the entire album doesn’t really stand on two feet. The ‘story’ is only half there—I feel like I only know it because I watched the show. That’s the thing with fictional bands: you can only appreciate them if you’re familiar with/a fan of the original content they come from. I know for a fact my roommate does not have the same affinity for these songs that I do because she wanted nothing to do with the show. But I don’t blame any non-fan for not turning to AURORA for their next casual listen. They’re not a real band, so why bother?
But should that matter? Can we separate the songs on this album from the actors pretending to perform them on an Amazon Prime TV show? Should we have to? AURORA has definitely put me in a semi-moral tailspin about the credibility of real music from fictional bands, making it absolutely fitting for this month’s shock. The comforting thought I’ve landed on in all of this is that even if Daisy Jones and The Six don’t actually exist, it’s really cool to think about Blake Mills, Phoebe Bridgers, Jackson Browne and others coming together and channeling their own interpretation of what music was like in the Americana era. So at its core, I can appreciate it for that.
Top tracks include: “Two Against Three,” “Regret Me,” “Please,” “The River”
As always, feel free to send any recommendations my way, and if you so desire, you can keep up with my daily listens here. Until May!
