Hey '19! Here are 18 from '18!

[captainsblog]

(The first eight, anyway. I'm gonna split this baby more or less in half. I'm also getting rid of the embedded videos, because for some reason they're cutting off not only themselves but the surrounding text. Click the links and you'll see them.)

A longtime friend posted his Spotify list of favorite songs from the past year. I was struck by how much overlap there was in the selections with songs (or at least artists) I've gotten to know through public radio- either our local (well, Rochester) programs or NPR's World Cafe. Two of Andy's tracks came to me by way of Scott or Michael or David or Talia spinning them.  So I'll steal those two for my own list of 18 from the year (embedding  linking to them here, because I don't do Spotify, and neither do at least one or two of these artists):

Elvis Costello's "Under Lime," from his new band's latest, Look Now. (We'll return to this collection later in this countdown.)

Elvis Costello-Under Lime


And the Jayhawks' '"Backwards Women," from Back Roads and Abandoned Motels :

Jayhawks- Backwards Women


Now, mines all mines.

Just arrived in popular compact disk format was Jen Chapin's latest crowdfunded effort Desert or Sea, for which I'm proud to have been in the crowd.  The title track is one I found on a Youtube that goes back to 2012, and "Desert or Sea" I've set the link to kick in where this song starts:

Jen Chapin- Desert or Sea

Back to Declan, Elvis, whoever: When Talia had him on a while back, they talked about his "fourth song" theory: that track four on an album is usually where the artist has gotten the preliminaries out of the way and is ready to get down to the serious business.  Fourth song on Look Now is this one, "Stripping Paper," a moving song from a woman's point of view about discovering infidelity and all the wall-marked memories it undoes:

Elvis Costello- Stripping Paper

Next, one of several here I was blessed to hear perform live by the original artist. Well, one of them. We also supported Lucy Kaplansky's latest self-produced effort, Everyday Street, and the first song on the record recounts her friendship with Shawn Colvin, who also came in to do background vocals on "Old Friends" (but not this live version, captured a few weeks after I heard her perform it):

Lucy Kaplansky- Old Friends

Lucy knows the next song, too- her cover of it goes way back with us. Elvis, likewise, from having written it. But Nick Lowe, who made the biggest hit out of it back in the day, returned to World Cafe a few months ago to perform an updated version of it with his newest backers, Los Straitjackets:

Nick Lowe and Los Straitjackets- What's So Funny....

One of the few here I discovered on commercial radio, Alt Buffalo 107.7: this is the version of "Hunger" that Florence and the Machine did on Fallon earlier in 2018. This is one that has to be watched, not just listened to:

Florence and the Machine- Hunger

Another I got to hear live: Chris Barron, the coolest (heh) song on his solo album from this past year, Angels and One-Armed Jugglers, titled "In a Cold Kind of Way."

Chris Barron- In A Cold Kind of Way

Oops. I think I'm only making it to eight this half. Just made a date for the dog park. Mores laters.