4 October
8.05am When I’m driving my daughter to school, we take turns picking songs from my phone. Today it’s On The Drums by Pickle: stark electronic club music as we drive down the forest road. I don’t know who or what Pickle is, but some of this song is kind of sexually suggestive. I try to avoid the ones with overt swears.
My pick is Eruption by Van Halen, just out of curiosity. I’d heard Eddie Van Halen’s guitar on Beat It recently and thought: “I should see what his band sounds like”. I’m not a Van Halen fan, but I like thinking about music in a way where I find inspiration or understanding from unexpected places.
That’s why I like exploring pop music with my daughter, who’s seven: it broadens my horizons too. She’s really into K-pop right now, which I enjoy. Today she picks Without Me by Halsey, our favourite pop star. I like the strange, nasal quality of her voice. I’m fussy, and crusty, but I haven’t got sick of Halsey as quickly as I do some of my daughter’s music. Sometimes I can’t stand her picks any more, so I step in. I’m the adult.
9.06am Back at home, catching up on emails, I listen to Daa Nyinaa by Ata Kak, from the album Obaa Sima. It’s been sent to me this very moment by my friend Nick Krgovich, who is seeing Ata Kak play in Vancouver soon.
When people send me links to music, I try to listen – that’s maybe the only way I find out about things. I discovered Emily Alone by Florist via some person I didn’t know, maybe on Twitter, and it became one of my favourite albums ever.
12.33pm I have had All Along the Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix blaring in my head since I woke up, so I take the cure and actually listen to it, hoping it will leave me in peace. It sounds GOOD. I blast it and put my face right up next to the speaker, trying to hear how they made that special mashup backing of compressed drums and brass and the signature vibraslap.
12.37pm Bad news: Apple Music autoplays the live cover of All Along the Watchtower by Dave Matthews Band. Ouch. It’s eight minutes. I don’t listen to the whole thing.
7.05pm I put on Bruno Hoffmann’s album of Music for Glass Harmonica, of various classical composers. I don’t remember where I got this record but I’ve had it for years and put it on all the time.
8.10pm Doing dishes, I put on Tinish Geze Sitegn by Kuku Sebsebe, an Ethiopian singer that I found via a friend’s playlist.
5 October
7.20am I start every day with Democracy Now!, this American news show that’s been on for 20-something years. The theme song is jarringly funky slap bass – it doesn’t match the grim morning news report.
8.05am On the drive to school, we take turns picking songs on my phone again: Tangled Up in Blue by Bob Dylan, Better by Emie Nathan, Paris by Northern Picture Library. But today I spend working outside, grinding down and refinishing a cast-iron wood stove, and I am alone with the songs playing on repeat in my head. Today it is Your Party by Ween; I hope the silence will dislodge it.
4.27pm When my daughter gets home from school, we make dinner and hang out in the house, listening to records. It’s a solid evening routine. Tonight there’s a slight October chill; Nico’s Desertshore on vinyl is perfect. We follow it up with Nizimi by Nikaido Kazumi, The Moon Last Night by Loren Connors and then, when dinner’s almost ready, Ma Jeunesse Fout le Camp by Françoise Hardy.
I love this record so much, I listen to the whole thing twice. I used to be married to a French-speaking person – my daughter’s mom – for many years; a lot of French music came into my life via her. A lot of the French records in the house were hers, and for some of them, the association is still pretty strong, but I have my own relationship with Françoise Hardy records – I love them on my own now.
6 October
Somehow no music until 4.51pm when I put on It’ll End in Tears by This Mortal Coil while getting dinner ready. I like how their albums feel like an interesting radio show, with all these guest vocalists and covers, and it’s a nice evening vibe.
Tonight I put on Adrian Orange & Her Band by Adrian Orange/Thanksgiving, one of my favourite records of for ever, which prompts me to revisit the very cruel Pitchfork review that came out at the time, and to entertain the world’s pettiest thoughts about tracking down the reviewer and confronting them.
I have done this in the past, but I’ve learned my lesson – it never ends well. But this review felt vindictive, like it crossed a line into tearing a person down. My friend Adrian Orange wasn’t popular, and was actually sensitive, and this bad review did kind of mess his life up – I’ve had that happen with other friends too. So it’s not victimless for people to indulge cruelty in expressing their opinions.
7 October
8.05am Driving to school we listen to a spooky Halloween playlist via my phone, featuring I Put a Spell on You by Nina Simone, The Addams Family theme song by Vic Mizzy, Haunted by Beyoncé and Werewolves of London by Warren Zevon. Zevon has this line that’s so good: “Little old lady got mutilated late last night”. I like the poetry of that.
After that, we just shuffle: I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got by Sinéad O’Connor, Every Channel by Elevator to Hell, Returner by Lucky Dragons, Balloon by The Raincoats and then Caroline, No by The Beach Boys – the sessions version, with studio chatter. For me, recording music and thinking about production, I love hearing how things are made – like the Björk podcast.
8 October
9.15am Driving to the ferry for a meandering day on another island, I turn the phone over to my daughter and my girlfriend. They choose everything: Love Is Everywhere by Pharoah Sanders, Sunblind (Solstice Version) by Fleet Foxes, Cascade by Sense, Peace in Liberia by Alpha Blondy & The Solar System, Care of Cell 44 by The Zombies, Aguirre I by Popol Vuh, Kagayaki by Masakatsu Takagi (the whole album), Tailwhip by Men I Trust – it’s all over the place. My only pick is Brownsville Girl by Bob Dylan: I make them listen to that long, weird song.
9 October
Noon Some kids come over for a playdate and get into the vinyl collection. They enjoy the power of putting records on, but they are very new to LPs as objects – they call them DVDs. Kids these days! They manhandle the needle, scratching all over the place. It is a little stressful, but I remember being a kid and exploring my dad’s record collection and I think it’s important to let them do that. I don’t have very many records that I am fussy about. They choose a weird assortment: Nocturnal Poisoning by Xasthur, the Sesame Street Fever disco album, Soft Pow’r by Little Wings.
One girl who is over keeps insisting on that Nina Simone album, Little Girl Blue. Everyone keeps trying to change it to the Charlie Brown’s All-Stars read-along record, but she is like: “No! We need to listen to jazz!” There is a good point when she says: “I found the perfect record, you guys! It’s called, and get this – Sonic Youth!” (It was the Kool Thing 12” single.)
10 October
No music at all today, somehow.
11 October
No music all day until early evening, cleaning the house to have some friends over for dinner.
4pm Most of my listening is about feeling the energy of the day, but sometimes I like pushing against it – like putting on 100 Gecs, this crazy-sounding hyperpop music, when we’re prepping dinner. Sometimes that hits the spot: leaning into insanity. I love this music: it’s funny and real and sad and powerful and surprising and irreverent and touching. I don’t really understand what’s happening, and I like that about it.
7pm We have some friends over for dinner, so we’re keeping the fire going in the pit outside, slow-roasting some meat over it on a wire, blasting music via the computer. We play a little bit of piano from Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou then we play Tenniscoats on shuffle for hours. They sing in Japanese, and music in a language you don’t understand very well allows you to continue with the conversation. It took me a few years to get into Tenniscoats, but now they are one of my favourite bands.
Phil Elverum’s four-week songwriting course with School of Song begins on 30 October. Enrol for the class here.
