Music I Like in the Spring of 2022

Benjamin Clementine: London

Benjamin Clementine came out of nowhere, and I can’t stop listening to this song of his. If the lyrics were a poem, the New Yorker would probably publish it. His voice sounds like he could sing a lot louder if he wanted to.

Marcel Khalife: Passport & Live in Paris

A friend introduced me to Khalife’s music in college, and I’ve been coming back to him every couple of years ever since. Khalife never got famous in the West (maybe because of his politics), but he’s still recorded albums with the Parisian Orchestra and combined western and middle-eastern musical influences in a way that I’ve not heard anyone else do.

The ballad Passport is sparsely arranged and carried by its complicated melody.

Khalife’s concert with the Paris Philharmonic sounds like the best soundtrack to a Disney movie you’ve ever heard.

Nellie McKay: Ding Dong

Nobody can prove Nellie McKay’s album Get Away From Me has anything to do with Come Away With Me, but I choose to believe. And I think it is, like, really funny. Ding Dong is a song from this album. It sounds like a show tune, it’s funny, what more do you want. The rest of the album is similar, treading perfectly the line between hilarious and pissed off, and it’s hard to believe that, at this point, the things it’s pissed off about are kind of a nostalgia trip.