2020GQ mix: Tom Waits- The Earth Died Screaming

Nobody sounds like Tom Waits, obviously. But he’s also a fantastic songwriter. His earliest works are perfect, often heartbreaking vignettes in what was then, in his youth,  a kind of weathered, pinched-throat singing style. But it was definitely singing. Some of my most intense emotional memories are inextricably tied to Waits songs. That voice  would transform over time into the wounded-animal/construction-equipment yowl it became here. It is the sound of the current version of apocalypse to me. Honorable mention is the dirge Dirt in the Ground- no explanation needed, I think.

2020GQ mix: Nova Mob- The Last Days of Pompeii/Benediction

Grant Hart from Husker Du went on to a number of solo projects- Nova Mob was a short-lived band he formed in the early 90s. They did a concept album about the destruction of Pompeii that ends with this track and Vesuvius erupting. (Side note: In junior high Latin,  we had to translate from the original the eye-witness account of Pompeii’s demise as recounted by Pliny the Younger, who serves as the narrator of this song). It’s one of my all-time favorite albums- I listen to it all the time to this day. It may well be the album I have heard the most times in its entirety, in fact. Hart’s voice has a quality I am always drawn to- a kind of plaintive howl that is characteristic of many of the voices I love. Here it is in service to one manifestation of end times from another.

2020GQ mix: Husker Du- Standing by the Sea

The loudest show I have EVER been to, to this day and probably- hopefully- ever, was a solo show by one this band’s dual frontmen- Bob Mould. This track is by the other fellow, Grant Hart. They had a sort of Midwestern punk Lennon/McCartney thing going on- each one’s aesthetic pulling and shaping the other’s like tidal forces, with all the accompanying internal drama and eventual breakup. But they were great together. This song is another take on isolation and impermanence.