Josh Ritter not only performs wonderful covers, but is my financial rep's doppleganger

This week, I’m returning for round two and featuring artists whose first name starts with the letter J.  Arbitrary? Slightly.  But when staring at a wealth of material, it’s tough to pick out songs to highlight.  The letter J just so happened to become my escape hatch while compiling this post.  Once I decided on J, I had to whittle the selections down even further.  I ended up with three songs that go from good to great like a staircase.  Check them out.

I have to admit, I had no idea who this first gal was when I heard this track.  And admittedly, there isn’t anything particularly appealing about it beyond the ironic dissonance of a folk-rock gal from Jersey covering the posturing of Nelly’s Hot in Herre.

What’s the funniest word to hear a Sweedish dude say in English?  Father. Unfortunately, you don’t get to hear Jens Lekman say it on this song, but I love his English accent when he sings.  A slightly humorous accent might be the only thing more endearing than a Paul Simon song.

Modest Mouse is band that I never really “absorbed.”  With the obligatory High Fidelity reference out of the way, I want to point out that this has nothing to do with the quality of the music they put out.  I was never really exposed to them beyond the “Float On” fad and a mix-tape here or there. I  always liked what I heard, but was too lazy to do much exploration.

Inescapable gap in my musical education aside, I heard Josh Ritter play Blame It on the Tetons and was blown away.  It’s so intricate, so softly beautiful.  His handling of the song is as much a testament to the original songwriting as it his own talents.

Look at me, Ohio...

I spent a good fifteen minutes trying to figure out a way to link them together beyond the obvious.  Two of them are track ones, one is not.  It’s not that I have anything against Ohio, I just was loathe to create a Wonderful Wednesday that was so blatantly obvious.  Titling the post “Ohio” seemed too easy, too Sufjan’esque.   During my introspection, I realized that each song, in its own way, pertains to a woman.  Since there is a famous flower from long ago in Ohio, it seemed apt to draw the laces together into a nice bow of remembrance and celebration in her honor.

Since I spoke of a famous flower, it is perhaps most apt to start with Gillian Welch’s “Look at Miss Ohio” from her wonderful album, Soul Journey.

From the opening intonations, Gillian has you under her spell.  The song is an ambler, rolling along at its own pace.  Listening to it you can almost feel yourself in that car with the rag top down.  It’s a concise tune, but the the greatness is in its universality.  Everyone of us has had these same feelings of wanting to do right, “but not right now.”

While Gillian’s song loosely revolves around escape, this next track is about return.  Simply titled “Ohio,” this forthcoming track is the opening number from Damien Jurado’s amazing album Rehearsals for Departure.

Much of Jurado’s work is elegantly understated.  They are works of supreme lyrical craftsmanship, hinting at the well of depression lurking beneath the surface.  Here, the narrator spots a girl outside his window waving at the passing traffic longing to return to her family, to Ohio.  Ripped away from home at an early age, she has never returned.  The longing she feels for that mythical place (and that which the narrator feels in turn for her) is unmistakable.  It’s like an unshakable lump caught in a throat, it struggles to find a true expression.

If the last song put you in a introspective mood, this next track, “Carry Me Ohio” by Sun Kil Moon will only further it I’m afraid.  Sun Kil Moon is one of the various manifestations of Mark Kozelek’s musical visions.  His music is somewhat akin to Damien Jurado or Jason Molina’s, fiercely romantic, honest, and contemplative.

Born and raised in Ohio, Mark set out first to Athens, GA then onto San Francisco.  This particular cut is from the 2003 album, Ghosts of the Great Highway.  This track is one of intricately pensive regret and honest hopes.  It is a difficult paean to decipher, yet there are lines that stand out…

Heal her soul
and carry her my angel
Ohio

Delicately, these lines allude to the crux of the song: no matter how much time or space falls between, the hopes we feel for those that once touched our life are always earnestly hopeful…There is nothing more beautifully humane than that.

Hawaii: land of eternal summer.

Though the temperature doesn’t exactly reflect this change always, I’m pretty sure it’s a scientific fact that it is over.  Something about moon phases and igneous rocks, I think.  To commemorate this change of season, we’ve got a little taste of summer nostalgia for you here at HBH.  Strap on your thongs and lather up the palm oil, let’s cruise down memory lane.

Nothing says a hip summer day quite like The Kinks, right Wes Anderson?  Though quite a stylistic departure for the Kinks, Sunny Afternoon went on to become a hit both in the UK and the States.

Is it embarrassing to admit that the first time I heard this song was on a Jimmy Buffett album?  One way or another, it’s a great track…a man with nothing, lazing on a sunny afternoon, pining for what is gone.  It’s hard to find human emotions more basic than those.

I have a severe connection to the words and music of Belle and Sebastian.  There is something everlasting and ethereal about the music that just speaks to me.  No one captures sweet innocence quite like Stuart Murdoch.

“The sky was blue beyond compare
A photograph of myself
Is all I have to show for”

When summer ends, we are left with nothing beyond our memories…

Did you have fun all summer long?  Brian Wilson certainly did.  Or at least he tries to convince of that in “All Summer Long.”

This particular track is from a live album Brian did years and years ago (a highlight of which was him beginning the concert with a cover of “Lying in Bed (like Brian Wilson Did)” by the Barenaked Ladies).  The line “Miniature golf and Hondas in the hills” sends me back to a particular point of my life…cruising in my own little Honda with the windows down and a dear friend riding shotgun…The image is so perfect in my head: a half-melted sno-cone held loosely in her lap, her hair whipping around her face slightly concealing her innocent grin and the happiness in her eyes as she sat turned towards me.  We sped along the neighborhoods and hills of a suburban life that knew no pain or hurt beyond infantile wounds we immaturely inflicted on one another.  With age and time came new experiences, new and deeper pains.  They tell us that this harshness is the nature of life, but it wasn’t always so and we all have the summer memories to prove it.