2024 last licks (video loosies): Yo La Tengo + The Soft Boys, PJ Harvey, Chappel Roan, Tribe, Billie, Beyoncé, Kacey, Gillian, etc.

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings cover the Dead. The Soft Boys & Yo La Tengo do Dylan (& the Velvets). PJ Harvey does Joy Division. Chappell Roan goes cowgirl. A Tribe Called Quest get inducted.

If you follow this newsletter, you know I’m always easter-egging them with video links, which I keep a running compilation of during the year. Here’s a few I love but hadn’t had a chance to post earlier.

Chappell Roan had a helluva breakout year, and that included a memorable SNL performance. The country jam she debuted there hasn’t been released officially yet, and the video was largely scrubbed from the internet. BUT here’s a full-length post of it on Twitter/X (though I’m generally avoiding that platform). Below find an audio-only link on YouTube. Can’t wait to see what she gets up to next year.

A lot of us mourned the death this year of the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh. That includes a lot of musicians, who paid tribute on stages around the world. Here’s one gem from this year’s Gillian Welch & David Rawlings tour.

The Gillian & Dave show I caught in Kingston, NY, included a lovely cover of “China Doll,” a Hunter/Garcia deep cut from the Dead’s 1974 From The Mars Hotel, which turned 50 this year. It’s a song the pair did back when they were touring as Dave Rawlings Machine, and since I didn’t find any recent version onlines, here’s a flashback.

And this isn’t a video per se, though there are some embedded in it — it’s a director’s cut of a remarkable conversation from 2000, well worth reading. Thanks to Alan Paul for convening & posting it.

When Phish met the Grateful Dead. I put Trey and Phil in a room and took notes. RIP Phil Lesh!

Kacey Musgraves’ Deeper Well wasn’t a country LP, exactly, or a pop LP, or even a country-pop LP. It was more like a period piece, I thought, a tribute to the mid-60’s tipping point of folk revivalism into folk-rock. She recorded it at New York’s storied Electric Lady studio, which might help explain the ghosts she was conjuring. “Cardinal,” to cite one example, made me think of The Mamas & the Papas. My favorite track, though, was “The Architect,” a gem-cut country-folk co-write with Nashville laureate Shane McAnally. It’s about hungering for belief in… something. A timely sentiment. And her performance of it at the otherwise (true to form) boring CMA Awards this year was the show’s high point. Bet her hero John Prine would be proud. 

Family is family, Kacey amusingly observed in an earlier song. I heard that refrain in my head while watching this moving induction of my Queensborough neighbors A Tribe Called Quest into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Argue all you want about hip-hop’s place in the Hall, or the value of the perpetually moribund institution. (I’ve got plenty of opinions on both.) I’ve never been a part of the nominating cabal, but I am a longtime voter, and I’ve voted for Tribe every year they’ve been on the ballot. (I’ve also been stumping for years for the New York Dolls to be inducted. But that’s another story.) Anyway, Tribe’s induction was pretty beautiful. RIP Malik Pfife Dawg.

Caroline Polacheck didn’t drop an album this year. But last year’s great Desire, I Want To Turn Into You had legs, and she dropped some lovely loosies this year. There was “Starburned and Unkissed,” from the I Saw The TV Glow soundtrack. Her steamy cameo on the delicious remix of Charli XCX’s “Everything is Romantic.” And this handsome cover, which posted this year but dates to a pandemic livestream.

Speaking of covers, my fellow Joy Division fans were divided on this one, and perhaps it worked better in the context of the show. But it’s an essential listen: Polly Jean Harvey covering the chiseled-in-stone classic “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

Speaking of bad sisters (in ‘70s soul queen sense), this staging of Cowboy Carter — probably the most discussed album of 2024, deservedly, for its complex cultural flexing — was a reminder of how much fun it was. Kinda hokey, in proper marching band college football halftime show fashion, and more subversive for it.

That reminded me of Prince’s legendary 2017 halftime show, and in turn, that great NY Times feature about the 9+ hour Prince documentary that we may never get to see. Read it and, if you need to, weep a little.

My friend and sometimes colleague Bob Boilen recently retired from NPR. He was central to its music coverage for decades, most notably for launching the Tiny Desk Concerts. The feature has thankfully continued strong this year, despite his absence. There was Doechii’s set, which I shouted out in my year-end post. And I continue to be gobsmacked over how Billie Eilish has become an arena-scale pop star by leaning into hushed bossa-nova-ish balladry. And I love how her brother & band all dressed for this like it was photo day at middle school.

I’ll end with videos of maybe my two favorite songs of 2024, both included in my year-end mix, which I posted last week. I recognized Waxahatchee’s “Right Back To It” might be my favorite song of the year the moment I first heard it — nearly a full year ago, on January 9, 2023, the day it was released. I wasn’t alone: my social media feeds lit up with posts like this one from @brandonstosuy (of The Creative Independent)

this new waxahatchee song, which i just heard for the first time, is one of those songs where i was immediately thinking, "ok, i will now play this song 60 times in a row." which is what i'm doing now.

And that’s pretty much what I was doing, on and off, all year. Amazingly, it still sounds totally fresh, still lowers my blood pressure, still gives me goosebumps when Katie Crutchfield & Jake Lenderman’s voices intertwine on the chorus. This video captures it all perfectly.

I was also struck deeply by this track, written and performed by Joshua Idehen, a musician-poet with roots in the UK jazz scene. With a music bed that morphs from minimalist chant into a bumpin’ house jam, it’s a comically didactic parable that flickers with wisdom and rage. Idehen’s Bandcamp notes he’s a “British-born Nigerian based in Sweden,” which probably accounts for the acuity of his trans-national perspective. Think of “Mum” as Africa, if you like. There’s a lot here to unpack. (And if you like this, check his 2023 “Learn To Swim.”)

Final thoughts: If you like what you hear in my posts, support the musicians by buying their music (physical media or downloads), attending live performances, and buying their merch via their websites. Most see very little money from the streaming platforms we all use, with Spotify reportedly paying the lowest per-stream rates of anyone. I generally include playlists on multiple platforms, including Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Spotify, in the interest of making the music available to as many readers as possible, as well a linking to Bandcamp sites, where you can both stream and purchase music.

Thanks to the editors and producers I worked with off-platform this year, for the trust and the keen ears, and to the writers I continually learn from right here: Michael Hong for the Mando-pop intel, jazz wisdom from my friends Nate Chinen (The Gig) and Hank Shteamer (Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches), country & country-adjacent insights from Natalie Weiner and Marissa Moss at Don’t Rock The Inbox, David Cantwell and Charles L. Hughes at No Fences Review. I follow up myriad music-related leads from Carl Wilson. There are many more.

Above all, thanks to you for reading — your attention and trust inspires the writing, and completes the circuit.

All best wishes for 2025. See ya there,

Will

PS: This just in: last night’s reunion of The Soft Boys (RIP Matthew Seligman) w/ Yo La Tengo for night #4 of the Yo La Hannukah shows, at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom. Yes, they cover Dylan. The Velvet Underground, too :)

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