Take Five: Comforted and afflicted

Music and books were soothing and sorrowful this week, with Bono and the Edge, Agustina Bazterrica, Eli Winter, Kim Weston, and a chat between Marc Maron and Will Oldham

“Take Five” is posted each Friday, and offers five things I spent some time with over the course of the previous week. No criticism, no in-depth analysis, just a few things I think you might be interested in checking out. When the spirit moves me, I’ll post other things at other times.

1. Bono & the Edge — ‘A Sort of Homecoming with David Letterman’

I was on the treadmill one morning this week, finally getting around to watching a U2 documentary on Disney+, when my knees buckled and tears began to flow. In the show, Bono and The Edge are talking with David Letterman about their origins and then performing stripped down versions of their hits. As “Vertigo” began, I immediately thought about our son, Will, who died while in the hospital NICU before ever having the chance to come home. (I wrote extensively about this in a review of the 20th anniversary reissue of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb) That song was a sort of aural lifeline for me at the time. When they started playing it this time, I didn't expect to be so moved. It's the line, “It’s everything I wish I didn’t know, except you give me something I can feel.” It still ushers in a flood of emotion now. I had to grab the side rails for a moment to steady myself before pushing through. The entire show is one of legacy building, and there is an acknowledgment of U2 embracing and then playing with the notions of stardom. It can make one apologetic for their fandom, but U2 has meant so much to me at certain points of my life that seeing this valedictory —enabled by a surprisingly sincere Letterman — was a powerful moment.

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2. Agustina María Bazterrica — The Unworthy

I had no idea what to expect from The Unworthy save for a positive capsule review that caught me at a time when I was looking for a short book between longer reads, and because I like to read as much work in translation as I can, I picked up Argentine writer Bazterrica’s new novel. At fewer than 200 pages, it was a brisk read, but there is nothing lightweight about the story or the prose. A dystopian tale from a future where the climate crisis has upended life, the protagonist tells of her time living in a mysterious convent where women come to escape the barren landscape but find more complicated dangers within its walls. I haven’t gotten to the second season of “Last of Us” yet, but this offers a similar blend of dark despair and determined resilience colored by faint glimmers of hope. Such tales once seemed far-fetched, as if drawn from a parallel universe where things went off course. They feel all too prescient these days, and The Unworthy is as much cautionary tale as escapist fare. It was outside my usual comfort zone, but it makes me want to see out Bazterrica’s last book, the incredibly well-reviewed Tender is the Flesh.

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3. Eli Winter — ‘Arabian Nightingale’

Ambition can sometimes be seen as a bad trait in our world, the kids call it being a “try hard,” oldsters might say someone's trying to get above their raising. Eli Winter scoffs at the notion if his work is any indication. After a handful of solo acoustic guitar albums, Winter took a giant leap forward on his 2022 self-titled album where he often took a backseat to the many other instrumentalists fleshing out his songs. He follows that same path on the new A Trick of the Light, a masterful collection of originals and two audacious covers. The album starts with a near-17-minute run through Don Cherry’s “Arabian Nightingale,” and also features Carla Bley’s ‘“Ida Lupino.” These are challenging pieces, and Winter, joined by drums, bass, pedal steel, saxophone, bass clarinet, strings and more, jumps into each with abandon. The lead-off track builds slowly before bursting into a cacophony of sound. Lest you think it's over at that point — which would be a reasonable thing to expect — he builds it up all over again. You would be forgiven for thinking sax player Gerritt Hatcher is the star given the long solo that dominates the middle of the track, but it is Winter's presence, keeping everything on track and moving in the right direction, that dominates throughout, and his vision that makes this one of the best albums of the year to date.

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4. Kim Weston — ‘Take Me In Your Arms’

I’m in Detroit for a meeting this week, and so of course I listened to some Motown to prepare. I was looking for something off the beaten path, and while I found something I wasn’t familiar with, it certainly isn’t obscure. “Take Me In Your Arms (Rock Me For a Little While)” is probably best known as a Doobie Brothers hit. I’ve never been a Doobies fan, so even though the song was inescapable on good old KGGO in Des Moines when I was growing up, when I cued up Kim Weston’s version from 1965, I didn’t recognize it. This Holland-Dozier-Holland tune wasn’t a big hit for Weston, but it certainly could have been, driven by the same propulsive beat that fueled so many Motown chart toppers. Weston, meanwhile, belts it out. Her name was familiar, and I realized she was Marvin Gaye’s pre-Tami Terrell duet partner, most notably on “It Takes Two.” Any trip through the Motown discography becomes a history lesson with a beat, and I’m always happy to add a great song to the playlist.

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5. Marc Maron interview with Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy

I will admit that a little Marc Maron goes a long way, but over the course of more than 1600 episodes of his WTF podcast, he has become an incisive interviewer able to tease out details of his subjects’ lives in a way more conventional hosts do not. With word this week that he will hang it up this fall after 16 years behind the microphone, I began thinking of some of my favorite episodes. His March chat with Will Oldham (Bonnie “Prince” Billy) was revelatory. Oldham doesn’t sit for many interviews (though he did speak at length with fellow musician Alan Licht for the 2012 book Will Oldham on Bonnie “Prince” Billy), so this was a rare peek inside this enigmatic artist. Maron has faults as an interviewer, but his doggedness at getting into the formative experiences of his guests means the connection with a candid artist like Oldham leads to a fascinating listen. I revisited a bit this week and was inspired all over again by this discussion of the creative impulse and how Oldham harnesses it to make his singular music.