Tuesday, Feb 8, 2022 • 29min

New Mix: Lucy Dacus, illuminati hotties, Madi Diaz with Waxahatchee, more

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All Songs Considered's Bob Boilen shares his favorite new tracks of the week, including a collaboration between Madi Diaz and Waxahatchee, "Kissing Lessons" from Lucy Dacus and more. Featured Artist and Songs: 1. Lucy Dacus: "Kissing Lessons" (Single) 2. Madi Diaz w/ Waxahatchee: "Resentment (New Feelings Version)" (Single) 3. illuminati hotties: "Sandwich Sharer" (Single) 4. Luna Li (ft. beabadoobee): "Silver Into Rain," from Duality 5. River Whyless: "Heaven and Light," from Monoflora 6. Norma Waterson: "Bright Shiny Morning," from Bright Shiny Morning

Talking about

Speakers

(7)

Bob Boilen

Luna Li

Daniel Shearin

Transcript

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Bob Boilen

00:22

For

NPR

music you're connected to

All Songs Considered

. I'm

Bob Boilen

, I'll begin today's show with

Lucy Dacus

, one of my very favorite musicians making music these days.

Lucy

is a fabulous storyteller and singer. Last year's album

00:36

Home Video

told intimate tales from her childhood and teenage years. Now an unreleased song from that album is out. It's called Kissing Lessons and here's

Lucy

with the song's origins story Kissing Lessons is about basically what the lyrics say.

Lucy Dacus

00:51

It's about practicing kissing with my friend Rachel when I was seven and she was eight. I was so stressed out about my first kiss for some reason when I was younger and I thought since she was older than me, even if by one year she must know more about it. And she definitely let me believe that. And she gave me lessons and we always pretended to be the other person's crush.

01:13

So there wasn't really any the idea of being gay at the time. I don't even know if anyone taught me about being gay by that point in my life. So it was always for the future men in our lives but it did happen to be my favorite activity. So in retrospect. Yeah, I think of it as a very sweet and innocent formative queer experience. Rachel was a year older when I was in the second grade. I thought she might know everything. I took her word like a golden ring. I asked her how to win my man and she said, "I know just the thing. " Gave me lipgloss and a hair toss and, after school a lesson in kissing - con't singing

Bob Boilen

03:32

The sounds of

Lucy Dacus

and the song Kissing Lessons. There's a sweet video for the song and I'll post that on the

All Songs Considered

page when

Illuminati Hotties

finished their 2020 album,

Let Me Do One More

. Sarah Tudzin also had a tune that just didn't make the album. The song has the fabulous title,

Sandwich Sharer

and here's Sarah to take us to this fun tune. Sandwich Sharer is such a funny little tune.

Sarah Tudzin

03:59

I recorded it when I was in the studio tracking my latest LP.

Let Me Do One More

and for some reason Sandwich Share never quite fit into the final track sequence.

04:10

I was trying to capture a tumultuous brand of nostalgia - feeling done, but not quite over it. If you know what I mean, a dedication to the irreverence and temporal reality that can be found in something as truly as corny as falling in and out of love while your life marches relentlessly forward. While we were recording this tune.

04:33

We really zeroed in on trying to make those tempo changes feel natural. I've always been fascinated with bands who play so tightly. It's almost as if they're telepathically connected. I guess in some ways they are. Big Thief comes to mind.

James Jamerson

and Benny

04:48

Benjamin on old

Motown

records, The band. Anyone who can effortlessly float around the song and make it feel alive. I'm not quite sure that I'm there yet, but musically I wanted to write a song as a vehicle to kind of explore that type of movement with my band.

Bob Boilen

07:43

Sandwich Shares from

Illuminati Hotties

is a standalone song. It's out just in time for their world tour, which kicks off today in

California

Madi Diaz

has an EP of collaborations and reworking of songs from her 2021 album History of a Feeling.

09:17

The collaborations include

Angel Olsen

Courtney Marie

Andrews

Natalie Hemby

and

Waxahatchee

. I want to play that collaboration with

Waxahatchee's Katie Crutchfield

and I have Madi Diaz to tell us what this partnership on the song, Resentment meant to her.

Madi Diaz

09:34

I have been such a huge fan of

Waxahatchee

for some years now. And her most recent record Saint Cloud was really the soundtrack to 2020 and 2021 for me. I've spent a lot of time with Katie in my ears. So to have her singing Resentment with me is very other worldly in the most wonderful way.

10:01

It's even more surreal to be recording this from her tour bus while we're touring the country together. And yeah, Anyway, I'm just really glad that I get to have this recording of this moment in time for forever.

Bob Boilen

10:16

Madi Diaz along with

Waxahatchee

and the song Resentment. The New Feelings version. It's from the EP Same History - New Feelings. And that comes out on March 4th. We'll take a break. You're listening to

All Songs Considered

from

NPR.

Break

Bob Boilen

13:50

It's

All Songs Considered

. I'm

Bob Boilen

, the Korean-Canadian musician, Luna Li grew up with a multitude of musical instruments. Her mom ran a music school and Luna Li was classically trained on piano and then violin and harp. She took up the electric guitar and began making beats and took her poems and turned them into songs.

14:11

Her debut album is called Duality and it includes collaborations with

Jay Som

and in the song, I'm about to play called Silver into Rain it features

Beabadoobee

Luna Li

14:22

Here's Luna Li to talk about the song and their collaboration. Silver into Rain is about longing to become a better self. In the song, I'm lamenting all of the things about myself that I feel are holding me back in life and how sometimes it can feel like everything you touch turns bad and turns to rain.

14:39

I'm really proud of the song and it's become one of my favorites to play live. It feels like a really personal yet relatable sentiment to feel like you're falling short of your own expectations.

14:48

And writing the song helped me to take a step back from the spiral, I was in when I wrote the lyrics to get it all out in the music and feel better In the end. This was an older song of mine and we had pretty much finished it. My producer Brandon and I having recorded it in his studio. Him on the drums and bass and me on the guitars, synths, harp and vocals.

15:08

But then the idea came up of adding a feature and there happened to be kind of a perfect instrumental section in the middle of it for an extra verse. I especially wanted another Asian woman to collaborate with and so I reached out to

Beabadoobee

which felt like a bit of a long shot but she was down to do it which was really exciting.

15:25

I sent the song over and she really vibe with it and recorded her parts for it over in the

. I was so excited when she sent it over and I really think she came in with the most angelic voice and perfect sentiment for the song and elevated it to a really exciting place. It finally felt complete.

Bob Boilen

19:03

The music of Luna Lee who is joined by Beabadoobee on the song Silver into Rain. There's a gorgeous video for this song. I'll put it on the

All Songs Considered

site. I'm often fascinated by the origin tales of songs, you hear stories of dreams turning into tunes or some sort of divine intervention on the new album Monoflora from River Whyless.

19:25

There's a song called Heaven and Light that opens the album. It's a song about kindness and love and more. I asked the band to tell me the songs tale and what Daniel Shearin told me turned out to be kind of mind blowing.

19:38

So just recently I stumbled across an old photo that I had taken about 10 years ago. I took it when I noticed a single page that was lost from a book and floating in a pond and the page in the water had only a single line. And it read peace is every step.

Daniel Shearin

19:55

I didn't recognize these words when I took the photo, but when I ran back across them 10 years later. I learned that this is a book as you might know by the buddhist monk and peace activist

Thich Nhat Hahn

, I also learned that he had just died that Saturday, 95 years and dies that very week as I rediscover the words he leaves behind.