WEDNESDAY SHUFFLE

My son told me yesterday that when he hears me say I like someone's music, he automatically assumes it's someone English. Hmmm -- am I that transparent? Let's consult the shuffle and see...

1. "When It Sings" / Elvis Costello
From North (2003)
If I'd still been listening to Elvis Costello in 2003 -- which I wasn't -- I too might have been baffled by this tender album of jazz-drenched ballads. But finding it retrospectively, after Elvis' marriage to Diana Krall, it all made perfect sense. And doesn't Elvis live in Vancouver now? Does he still qualify as English?

2. "The Things We Never Said" / Thea Gilmore
From Rules for Jokers (2002)
Ha! Thea isn't English; she's from Scotland. A wonderful singer-songwriter, by the way.

3. "London Look" / Herman's Hermits
From The London Look EP (1968)
Not only a song by an English band, a song about London from an English band -- I am not doing so well here. What's worse, the Hermits did this song exclusively for a promo EP, sponsored by Yardley Cosmetics (remember the cologne Oh! De London? I wore nothing else for a year.) The basic idea is to stuff in as many London place names as possible. Who cares? It's a delightful, delicious little track.

4. "Nervous on the Road (But Could Not Stay Home)"/ Brinsley Schwarz
From Nervous on the Road (1972)
Despite the affected country drawl on this romping picaresque number about a touring musician, Nick Lowe is English, it's true.

5. "Don't Be Ashamed of Your Age" / Jerry Lee Lewis and George Jones
From Last Man Standing (2006)
Aha! Nobody's more American than that old rockbilly devil Jerry Lee and the king of country music George Jones. Normally I hate duet albums; this odds-defying LP is the exception to the rule. Listen to these two sly old dogs twiddling through this Bob Wills chestnut.

6. "Saint Beneath the Paint" / Nick Lowe
From Radio Daze (1984)
Not just one but two Englishmen -- the aforementioned Nick Lowe and his sometime colleague Paul Carrack, on particularly juicy bootleg live album. This obscure track from Nick's obscure LP The Abominable Showman (for that title alone he ought to be hung) is greatly improved with harmonies by Paul and a little boogie-woogie piano.

7. "Fool for a Lonesome Train" / Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals
From Life Line (2007)
Another American -- whew! -- singing a trumpery bit of country blues. I still haven't quite figured out the riddle that is Ben Harper, but I keep on trying -- that voice can make any song sound better than it should.

8. "Rivers of Babylon" / The Melodians
From The Harder They Come (1972)
Do Jamaicans count as English (being former colonials) or American (being in the same hemisphere)? Like most American kids my age, Jimmy Cliff's Jamaican gangster movie was my introduction to reggae, and I played it so often, it's still hard-wired in my memory. "And let the words of my mouth / and the meditations of my mind / be acceptable in your sight" -- I still sing this song under my breath whenever I hear that blessing in church.

9. "Queen of Sheba" / Nick Lowe
From Nick the Knife (1982)
Not this one again! (Like I mind.)

10. "Knapsack" / Amy Rigby
From Diary of a Mod Housewife (1994)
Well, at least we're ending with an American -- not only an American, but a country punk female (talk about defying cliches). Fantasizing about the guy who checks her bags at the bookstore -- I picture the old Shakespeare and Company on the Upper West Side -- that's enough to fuel this Mod housewife's daydreams for week.

"The Things We Never Said" / Thea Gilmore

Thanks to my friend Tom for turning me onto Thea Gilmore. All I’ve got so far is her second album, 2002’s Rules for Jokers, but I’m impressed by this British singer-songwriter's assurance, remarkable for a woman still in her 20s. Sure, it has a throwback acoustic folk sound – she clearly has listened to a lot of Joni Mitchell (haven’t we all?) – but the tough, cynical spirit reminds me more of Aimee Mann. Gilmore’s voice is supple, rich, and exquisitely musical; it sounds great here against the simple guitar, with just a touch of harpsichord-like electric piano, a mournful cello, and a ghostly warped tone that might be a theremin.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and there’s a load of fury in this break-up song. Stunned, Gilmore faces her now-ex-lover, sputtering sarcasm as she takes in the bad news – “Could you say that again, babe / I've not heard that one before,” then quickly narrows her eyes, already seeing him in a new light – “You're looking four years older / You're looking for the door.” Like a movie, we jump-cut to her scrawling a farewell obscenity on the mirror in lipstick (love how she bites off that vicious expletive) before storming into the night. It’s bleak outside – “the old launderette is hissing out a song again / Like it doesn't give a damn / And the cars are all french kissing / In some lonely traffic jam,” and yeah, maybe she’s projecting her misery on the scene, but I see it at once, a jumbled cinematic montage of urban images. And one last detail of her loneliness, “I’ve been talking to the radio / ‘Cos it don’t answer back.” I can see that scene too. You talkin’ to me?

I love how this melody matches the theme, hopelessly wavering and fluttering in melancholy chromatic steps. Even on the chorus, where Gilmore's voice rises higher and sweeter, the notes never quite reach that happier key they’re straining for. With a poet’s gift for transforming clichés, she plays with the image of a castle built on sand: “There's the sand / There's the spade / That dug the trenches that we made / Babe, our foundations were built on / All the things we never said.”

That fatal lack of communication – no matter how she guarded herself (wearing “tin plate armour” and “practicing my swan song”), in the end it was bound to trip them up. She sees that now – not that it makes her feel any better. Her words get tangled and confused: “You keep trying to tell me that / You'd been trying to tell me all along....” We never learn what they would’ve said to each other if they had had the courage – that’s irrelevant. It’s the cowardice that did them in.

The last verse is a bitter valediction: “Here's hoping you and her are happy / A little fairy tale to be / Hope you stay together and don't pollute / Any more fish in the sea.” (Note the sly malice in that upended cliché – we know this jerk will eventually move on again, and again.) Then comes the traditional break-up song finale, a forecast of their next meeting: “And next time I bump into you / Put your hands where I can see them / So that I can strip search your eyes / To check for any hidden feeling.” I can feel him squirming already.

We're far from the simple “You left me, now I’m blue, come back to me” sort of break-up song. Feeling blue is for saps. Thea Gilmore takes us right to the knife’s edge, to that moment of blind rage and pain, and probes the wound . . . just so we’ll be prepared the next time it happens to us.

The Things We Never Said sample