A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn.
Lil Peep I haven’t made up my mind about this LA rapper, whose vocals make him sound like a third-stringer for the Used’s Bert McCracken. Pitchfork has called him “the future of emo,” but I’m curious to see how music outlets that have historically been allergic to anything remotely emo will approach him.
“The Moonshiner” Earlier in the fall, for a week or so I only listened to various versions of this song. I liked the ones by Charlie Parr, Redbird, and Bob Dylan a lot, but my favorite has always been the first version I ever heard, by my friend Fiona Chamness. The sweet, haunting melody, beautiful chord progression, and poetic yet conversational lyrics (which paint a rich character portrait of an alcoholic) inexplicably touched something way down inside me. The song’s origins are disputed—Irish or American. To me it seems deeply American, but even more deeply human.
Hand me down my running shoes. And he descended into hell. Eternal separation from God. All night long. Nothing but a lonesome chill. Long way from home. Can’t sleep at all. Fear of death. Evil goin’ on. But here, where the soul of man never dies. Taking the highway. Catch him before he goes. Immortal. For the slave is our brother. Oh howling night, the moon is brightly shining. Savior goes first to hell—comforts the tormented? Comforts the damned? How many more years have I got? How many more years will I let you dog me around? Like a rag in the pain of the city uncertain. We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, we have come treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered. You shaking? How many more years? Only the blood make you whole. Tell me what in the world can be wrong? Tell me what in the world did I do wrong?
