I started a music WhatsApp group in 2023. I send one song a week on a Friday, with links to both Apple and Spotify, and an accompanying narrative/capsule piece. You’ll read it here on a Sunday.
I listen very widely and choose something that I have listened to in that week. I don’t research the song; the information comes out of my crazy, music-filled head and I need to get it out! The genre spread runs from 50s to current jazz, through country, rock, pop, 60s, 70s, 80s, blues and to singer/songwriters and bands releasing material today. The range is broad and hope there’s a lot you will enjoy.
If you want to engage about a song, get a playlist or just get in touch, mail me on [email protected]. I have already featured about 135 artists, so if you want to find out about any previous post, just get in touch.
First up: Natalie Merchant’s second solo album, Ophelia, closed with an arrangement of an old bluegrass/gospel song called When They Ring Them Golden Bells. The collaborative vocalist on that song sounded like a fragile angel of heartbreak. Her name is Karen Peris. I tried to find other material by her, but couldn’t. And then, about four or five years ago, while trawling for good cover versions, I discovered a band called The Innocence Mission, which had contributed a good track to a mediocre John Denver tribute album.
They are led by a husband-and-wife duo: guitarist Don Peris and principal songwriter and singer Karen Peris, who has also guested on albums by Joni Mitchell and John Hiatt – and was the voice I loved from Golden Bells.
On Thursday, I listened to The Innocence Mission’s album Befriended, which was when I first heard and loved When Mac Was Swimming, a song about Peris’s young son.
The song is just an accentuated off-beat short of a nascent, laid-back, American bossa nova. The band’s sound is soft, dreamy and delicate, and many of their songs are pop enough to become welcome earworms.
When Mac Was Swimming is just such a one; piano, languid electric guitar, marimba, percussion and tambourine play the sparse accompaniment behind Peris’s vocal and the catchiest refrain, which shifts lyrically from “Nobody knows my darling” to “Don’t worry my darling”. I hope it reels you in too and that you have a good weekend!
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