‘Heartache is an Uphill Climb’ is the second track and first single on Tift Merritt’s Stitch of the World.
I’ve heard Merritt compared to a host of artists. Bonnie Raitt, Lucinda Williams, Sheryl Crow. One recent reviewer wrote that she lives at the midpoint between Emmylou Harris and Joni Mitchell, a description I like. Many write-ups of today’s SOTD compare her vocals to Dolly Parton.
Last year around this time I posted a song-by-song consideration of Lucinda Williams’ latest album, The Ghosts of Highway 20. It wasn’t exactly applauded by my regular readers, though I did get at least one staunch Williams fan defending me.
That defense came in a comment on a song by another favorite artist of mine, Tift Merritt, and earlier in the thread the same person broke the news that Merritt would release a new album in early 2017.
I apologize for this. Random weekends are random, what can you do?
While we wait patiently for Beck’s 13th studio album, his first since 2014’s Grammy-winning Morning Phase, let’s enjoy a blast from the past in the form of ‘Peaches & Cream,’ a cut from his 1999 album Midnite Vultures.
Midnite Vultures, released in the midst of Y2K paranoia, before we lost our national innocence on 9/11, is a blissed-out vision of white boy funk on which Beck very effectively channels Prince.
When I saw that my final blog entry on the Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll was to be a rap song by YG (feat. Nipsey Hussle), I was bummed. I’ve seen enough of these generic party anthems held up as great art.
But then I read that the song’s title ‘FDT,’ stands for “Fuck Donald Trump” and I realized, regardless of the song’s quality, we couldn’t have a finer closing song for this series.
Meet Me In Montauk 