Strong Verbs Are Just Better

Music:

I bought Vika and Linda's latest album, Sunday (The Gospel According to Iso), which is a full-on gospel album. A good one, I think, and I'm enjoying it, but due to my maximum tolerance for Xn religious music I doubt any of the tracks will make my most-played list (which now has a threshold of about 70 plays, so, even things I really adore are taking Quite Some Time to make it in).

Here's one track I've been enjoying- not the album version but apparently they've been doing a series of Sunday Sing Songs, and this was one they'd pre-recorded in expectation of lockdown:



We had one Vika and Linda album when I was growing up - the first, self-titled one, Dad tells me - and I have 'Between Two Shores', a best-of they did a while back.

Here's a track from the album, video also from the pre-recorded Sunday Sing Songs, where you can hear their two voices more distinctly. Vika, in the I <3 Jesus hat, has had more formal singing training, but they've been singing together since they were kids. Bonus points to anyone who can explain what purpose the potato serves.



I thought I remembered a few occasions of asking to listen to Vika & Linda and getting redirected to The Black Sorrows (with whom they recorded for several albums - here's of my favourites), and that's backed up by Dad's comments when I asked about what album we had. Apparently we didn't listen to it much because my parents find Vika's voice 'hard to take' compared to Linda's 'mellow' one. I'd suspect something weird and racialised, except Linda's got the lower range, so... w/ever. It's a twang, certainly, but I quite like it? The track I linked to just now is one mainly featuring Vika, I think. (Here's We've started a fire, off the self-titled album, which I had forgotten about because it's not on the best-of but suddenly I am overwhelmed. I LOVED that song as a kid!)

Here's a professionally mixed video version of Aint No Grave, which shows off both of their voices really distinctly. I like this one particularly because it's one that's best known in versions with male bass/baritone, and some female-fronted versions (like this Bethel Music / Molly Skaggs version) do sound like they're missing something, even with an alto or mezzo vocalist (maybe that's because white people can't be trusted to sing gospel, but Johnny Cash managed it).



Thank you for coming with me in this nostalgia trip re Australian blues/soul music.

Podcasts etc:

I've got through a few more episodes of Magnus - I lost several hours too late one night researching the Oregon Trail thanks to Trail Rations.

I finished Lovers of the Fallen Tower (Penumbra), and am ever more enamoured of Olala and her Tail.

I think some Paradise Lost might have happened in there? Satan has been 'stupidly good' for a hot minute, so I guess everything's downhill from here.

And finally, I'm most of the way through the Slightly Foxed episode on Charles and Mary Lamb and am agog with all i didn't know about them! The fact that Charles took on care of Mary after her violent breakdown (she killed their mother!), both supported and collaborated with her, and their friends not only accommodated his alcholism (plenty of men do that for other well educated men), but extended the same to Mary's ongoing mental ill health and her scandalous past? Sometimes humans are good, actually.

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Some links:

Zenobia Frost (Meanjin blog), What I'm reading. About queer (lesbian-centred) lit. I almost didn't read this because the twitter pull-quote was about happy endings, but the full paragraph (about The Price of Salt) is more nuanced. "it's not an ending at all - it's a promise of a future."

JK Murphy (Greatist), Letting go of finding one love. This is a nice gentle intro to relationship anarchism, and light on the self-righteousness that many RA afficionados exude.

Substack User Known Only As David, David Davis XIII Part 3: On Validity. About kink, but can apply to a LOT of queer axes: Maybe it’s because I don’t see what’s wrong with a kink or fetish being weird. In fact, isn’t that sort of the point? I wonder who it serves to pretend that people won’t think you are weird, or gross, or worse,

Leah Hampton (Guernica), Lost in a (mis)gendered Appalachia. Although it talks in some detail about Nina Simone, it could do with a little more digging into race and gender's intersection. Nevertheless, A Good.

Leah F (own blog), Trans History Will Hurt You. When I tell trans people trans history will hurt them, I do not mean, as trans theorygirl Andrea Long Chu says too often, that being transgender is bad for you. What I mean is that hurting is good for you.

Jen Pelly (Pitchfork), Meet Shameika Stepney. Apparently she remembers Fiona Apple, they're back in touch, and Shameika raps as Dollface/Chyna Doll, and there's a new collab track.

Zavi Engles (Folks: A Pillpack Magazine), The skin disease that gave the world socialism. Headline an over-drawn bow, but hey, Karl Marx was chronically ill. The more you know.

Rachel Combe (Elle), An awaking nightmare. On Upper Airway Respiratory Syndrome, a kind of sleep apnoea that lacks some of the markers of 'typical' sleep apnoea, and is more common in women.

Captain Awkward (own site), Chronically single abuse survivor tired of dating disasters. Another 'just a particularly good example of the advice column genre'. Long, but a bit tighter in structure than some CA of late.

S Johnathan O'Donnel (History Today), Illuminating Conspiracy. On the Illuminati panic as a trend-setter in American conspiracy fears.