Seven Songs for the Week #114 - 11th June 25

New song from the newly announced album from Ron Sexsmith. His last two albums have been excellent... I was going to say return to forms, but really maybe I just returned to paying him the attention he deserved. Pretty much every two years he delivers. He's back with producer Martin Terefe who was behind Cobblestone Runway and Retriever, two classics. When I saw Ron last year he previewed a new song called "A Cigarette in One Hand and a Cocktail in the Other" and I see it's track two on the new album.

Power City, an Irish chain of electrical stores, was where I heard this song playing this week. To be honest it was the Windsor Davies/Don Estelle version, but I have some standards. ("Sing Lofty!")

The Ink Spots recorded the first widely known version of Whispering Glass, so that led to me listening to this.

I had covid this week, remember covid? After a few hours of feeling godawful I tested myself on the off-chance and there it was. Being cooped up on my own I decided to watch Barry - I had started watching it when it came out originally (2018) but didn't make it past the third episode. I have done 24 episodes this week. Three seasons with one left. It's very good. This is the theme tune - but really just the first few seconds of this track make up the theme tune. As a side point, the life of Charles Bradley and his late in life fame is quite something.

A different song (or soundtrack, or noise) ends Barry each week. This was one of the songs, and is a great example of how excellent Samuel T Herring's (from Future Islands) voice is. I wonder what else he could do outside of Future Islands.

My first Neil Young record was 1988's This Note's For You. When I went to explore the catalogue this was an early purchase... it was cheap! Even in 1990, although it was only four years old, it sounded dated. I must go back and listen to the whole thing, but this song crossed my mind this week because it has a bonkers video, which has a sense of humour that Neil kinda left behind after his early 1990s rebirth.

I saw someone mention this track on the Steve Hoffman forums. The J Geils Band called themselves GEILS for one album. Great idea. You could imagine this as a Gorillaz track, which is cool, they should cover it.