A Head Full of Wishes is a site for Galaxie 500, Luna, Damon & Naomi, Dean & Britta and Dean Wareham. With news, articles and lists of releases and past and future shows.
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A Head Full of Wishes newsletter #27
Damon & Naomi - Within These Walls (LP)
Within These Walls was Damon & Naomi’s sixth/seventh studio album released in 2007, but only on CD. It finally got an LP release ten years later.
This is the album that was inspired by Frank Sinatra and was an effort “to record the slowest, saddest songs of an already notably slow and sad catalogue” - and it is slow, and it is sad, and it is because of that very very beautiful.
I’ve been on a huge Sinatra binge for the last two years, particularly his sad albums on Capitol. We got really into the idea of a sad concept album, which is something that we’ve always tried to shy away from. It’s a very small group that we’re working with, but we were thinking in terms of large orchestration.
A chat with Damon Krukowski and Michio Kurihara - Off The Record (Austin Chronicle, 19th October 2007)
The “small group” was comprised mostly of Damon & Naomi’s stock company - Michio Kurihara on guitar, Bhob Rainey on soprano sax, Greg Kelley on trumpet with Kyle Bruckman on oboe and cor anglais plus the addition of a small string contingent - Helene Espvall and Margaret Wienk on cello and Katt Hernandez on violin - this was the “large orchestration”.
When I posted about False Beats and True Hearts back in May I pointed out the difficulty I had picking a favourite Damon & Naomi album:
I have absolutely no qualms about ranking Luna albums and would even occasionally try and rank Galaxie 500’s but it’s not something I can do with Damon & Naomi’s output [...] more than any of the other AHFoW related artists the best Damon & Naomi album is invariably the last one I listened to.
[252] Damon & Naomi - False Beats and True Hearts (CD)
… and this just proves the point - I’m not sure that 40 minutes ago I’d have picked Within These Walls as one of my top D&N albums, but right now it is my absolute favourite. It starts and ends with two absolute gems, Lilac Land, so slow and so very sad “I don’t want you to call, ‘cause my heart is now broken”. I just headed to YouTube to pick a clip to play and discovered that I invariably video Lilac Land when I see Damon & Naomi - I did in 2009, 2014, and 2016 - here they are at Cafe Oto in 2014:
The album closes with Cruel Queen, which I feel owes more to British folk balladry than Sinatra, and has always been a song I adore. Here they are playing it live in a bookshop:
Damon & Naomi acknowledge the song’s roots on the sleeve “Cruel Queen is based on the traditional song The Trees They Do Grow High” - I knew the song thanks to Pentangle’s version on their beautiful half-live double album Sweet Child, but it is a folk standard so Damon & Naomi’s knowledge may stem from elsewhere.
Sadly Pentnagle’s original bass player the great Danny Thompson left us a few weeks ago, if you’re unfamiliar go and check out the many great tributes that have been posted since his death and discover all the great music you probably already know and love that he was involved in.
Here’s Pentangle’s version of The Trees They Do Grow High:
BUT… there is one issue I have with the album and this is entirely my problem with it - the sleeve has a picture of some flowers in a glass, but that’s not what I see, I always see something anatomical and I can’t not see that. I suspect that since I first had this album on CD that the small artwork didn’t help things but I can’t help but cringe at it - which is so wrong since, clearly, it is a flower, and it is a beautiful picture… but, this is what I see!
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 12/013
- Artist: Damon & Naomi
- Title: Within These Walls
- Format: LP
- Bought direct from Damon & Naomi for $12 (plus postage)
- Buy ‘Within These Walls’ on Bandcamp
Various artists - Sing Me to Sleep / Cinnamon Girl
American Laundromat is a label that pretty much specialises in tribute albums and this is was the second one that Dean & Britta contributed to, the first being the tribute to The Cure Just Like Heaven that I wrote about quite early in the series.
This album was announced in September 2009, with early pre-orders getting a 7” single, badges, and a poster as well as the CD. The tracklist only got announced in January 2010, and the CD didn’t get released until May.
Sing Me to Sleep is a compilation of “Indie Lullabies”, most rather sweet, some forgettable, and a couple just annoying. The accompanying 7” had a remix of Tanya Donelly’s contribution, an album track, and a rather dull Sigur Ros soundscape - I could probably have lived without it.
Dean & Britta’s track was written by Jack Early and is a short and sweet song called Making Me Smile… but I don’t think it’s a cover. I knew nothing of Jack Early then, and very little more now but there is a Wikipedia page and there is a playlist on Soundcloud called Jack Early’s Greatest Hits which contains Making Me Smile with the description “Britta Phillips and Dean Wareham recorded this one for me” which suggests that this was the original version.
The playlist also has a version of It Don’t Rain in Beverly Hills that I think Dean and Britta played on, and of course later covered for use in 13 Most Beautiful. There’s also a song called Sparrow Song which is all Britta - “Britta Phillips was able to take this song I hummed to her and turn it into something really pretty. Well, that’s Britta for you”.
I found one of the (apparently) two badges, I vaguely remember the poster being stuck up in my study back in London but no idea where it is now, possibly recycled, or it may be in one of my many poster tubes.
Britta did contribute a song to another American Laundromat tribute album - she did a lovely cover of I Am a Child for Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young and since it doesn’t fit the criteria to get a post in this series I guess I’ll bolt it on here! Cinnamon Girl was a 2xCD collection of covers and is a vastly superior album, perhaps because it was a Neil Young tribute so the source material was consistently better than that picked for Sing Me to Sleep.
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/070
- Artist: Various artists
- Title: Sing Me to Sleep: Indie Lullabies
- Notes: Charity tribute CD with 7” single
- Packaging: tri-fold card sleeve
- Format: CD/7”
- Bought direct from American Laudromat for $25 + postage
- Buy ‘Sing Me to Sleep’ on Bandcamp
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 10/035
- Artist: Various artists
- Title: Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young
- Packaging: Jewel case
- Format: 2xCD
- Buy ‘Cinnamon Girl’ on Bandcamp
This coming week in history
- 25th October 1998 - Damon & Naomi played what I remember as being a quite difficult show at Dingwalls
- 29th October 2002 - Four years later Luna were at the same venue
This week’s discoveries and rediscoveries
- The Quietus had a lovely interview piece covering some Galaxie 500 deep cuts - The Strange World Of… Galaxie 500 Rarities.
- Damon appears on the Critical Listening podcast discussing his new book Why Sound Matters which is out now wherever you get your books!