Take Five: Unlikely connections
70s psych rock! Twee pop! Classic bop! And of course, Swedish poetry. Another typical week of this leading to that and rewarding discoveries abound
“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. Joe Pernice — 'Solitary Swedish Houses'
I have singer-songwriter Joe Pernice's Substack to thank for a new poetry discovery. Writing recently about his song, "Solitary Swedish Houses," Pernice said he wrote it at a time when he was reading a lot of Tomas Tranströmer's poetry, then doubts the timing. "Transtromer’s poems are like one of those drugs that has a really long half life. They take a while to build up in your system and remain a good long while after your prescription ends." The same could be said of Pernice's songs. In this case, it's a short, two-verse song with a chorus that doesn't really act like one but you know the role it's playing because the music grows more dramatic at that point. Pernice studied as a poet, and his songs feel like verse nestled into melodically melancholy settings. That means
Past the frozen mud
and the fields of snow
and the iron-white sky
pushing down like the life you gave me
becomes a fragile structure in a quiet nest of acoustic guitar. The Tranströmer becomes obvious once you see it, the innocuous details cascading toward deeper meaning.
2. Tomas Tranströmer — The Deleted World
Before I could draw the comparison above, I needed to read Tranströmer's work. I’m surprised I hadn’t encountered him before given the accolades that came with his 2011 Nobel Prize and other recognition. I went to the stacks at the Iowa City Public Library and found The Deleted World, a collection of the Swedish poet's work that are included in English "versions" by Robin Robertson. They aren't labeled "translations," because the process was different. Robinson had a Swedish friend write out a prose transcription of each poem, and then read the poem in the original Swedish. Robinson would hear the cadences, and then arrange the text in verse, rewriting to capture lexical and tonal qualities of the original. Transtromer's poems are lean and stark, very much exemplifying their landscape. "Ostinato," for example, begins
Under the buzzard's circling point of stillness
The ocean rolls thundering into the light; blindly chewing
Its straps of seaweed, it snorts up foam across the beach
In the video above, Tranströmer himself reads his own work, in this case the wonderfully evocative poem, "The Silent Rage."
3. Dizzy Reece — Comin’ On!
A heartwarming story about an effort to support older artists led me back to an album I hadn’t listened to in several years. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Jazz Foundation of America have created the Jazz Legacies Fellowship that will give 50 artists age 62 and up a sort of lifetime achievement award that includes a $100,000 grant and other support. The oldest of the 2025 artists is trumpeter Dizzy Reece, who is 94. I bought Reece’s album Comin’ On back in 1999. It was a session for Blue Note Records cut in 1960 but unreleased until the dawn of the millennium. I wouldn’t rank Reece above contemporaries like Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Kenny Dorham, or Freddie Hubbard, but because I was intrigued by this unearthed album, I bought it before I had all of the classics from the aforementioned trumpeters. As I acquired those albums, this one got lost in the shuffle, so I was glad to rediscover it on my shelves and cue it up. Reece, a Jamaican musician by way of London, doesn’t necessarily have a distinctive sound, but he’s a good songwriter and interpreter, and the band here — including Stanley Turrentine, Jymie Merritt, Bobby Timmons and Art Blakey — is top notch.
4. Athanor — ‘Graveyard’
After year's of searching, I finally found a cassette player that worked, and so have had the chance to listen to some cassette-only releases that have piled up. One came with the Galactic Zoo Dossier magazine I wrote about a few weeks back (see “Take Five: Excavating and layering” below), a sampler that included a ripping track by the band Athanor. I had never heard of the band, but loved the song, “Graveyard.” This was recorded live in 2015, but the psychedelic folk rock didn’t sound like a modern pastiche; this was authentic. Sure enough, a little searching led me to the original version of the song from a 1973 7” single recorded by the Chicago-based duo. Someone rediscovered the band, early singles were reissued as an album, and the band was back in action. The live version is great, but the original single is better to these ears. It’s a catchy tune that explodes into a lengthy guitar freakout. There are dozens (hundreds?) of bands like this still waiting to be discovered, and I’m here for it.
5. Jetstream Pony — ‘Bubblegum Nothingness’
One of my most consistent reads over the past few years is the blog Raven Sings the Blues, which is a great place to learn about new indie, psych, garage and experimental music. Catching up this week, I read about Jetstream Pony, a band with members who had played in bands like Trembling Blue Stars, The Wedding Present. The Popguns, and The Dentists. I’ve listened to plenty of their music since, falling hard for this single from their forthcoming album, Bowerbirds and Blue Things. It’s an ultra-catchy song that blends the drive of modern alt-rock with the twee melodies of ‘80s Sarah Records bands. Beth Arzy’s vocals are deceptively sweet, adding edge to the lyrics when needed — “you’re a parasitic disco snail” just ambles up and punches you when you hear it — floating atop the sharp beat and churning guitars. The band has built a deep discography over the past five years, and I look forward to exploring it fully.