The Pagan Agenda

Occassionaly a lyricist is able to pen in a sparse collection of words something so profoundly moving that it rivals the narrative punch of drawn-out novels and scripts. Something immediately compelling is parcelled into a few choice words and a sudden clarity of understanding overwhelms. The universe for that moment is resting on each verse, the music accentuating every pause and intonation. Part wonder at the craftmanship of each phrase, part immersion in the storytelling, the following songs are testaments to the range of great lyrics I consider worth commemorating in this playlist. A song like Nick Cave’s Darker with the Day is a baroque feast of words that teeter into sublimely evocative storytelling vignettes, whereas a song like Cat Steven’s Father and Son rests at the other end of the spectrum, succinct and composed in its competing voices. And, of course, there is my favorite song lyrical or otherwise, Leonard Cohen’s ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’, which includes these sorrowful verses:

I hear that your building your little house deep in the desert, your living for nothing now, hope you are keeping some kind of record… and you treated my woman to a flake of your life, and when she came back she was nobody’s wife.

1) Nick Cave – Darker with the Day (the last song of the phenomenal achievement ‘No More Shall We Part’... ‘a gilled jesus shivering on a fisherman’s hook’)

2) Leonard Cohen – Famous Blue Raincoat (crystalline perfection, to shatter and reassemble and shatter again, the eternal ache)

3) Cat Stevens – Father and Son (ah youth, ain’t it the truth)

4) Junip – Ghost of Tom Joad (ok, this should be by Bruce Springsteen, but as I do not own that version in mp3 format, this stunning cover will suffice. ‘welcome to the new world order’)

5) Bob Dylan – Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall (the song that made Allen Ginsberg tear up reminiscing about in Scorsese’s ‘No Direction Home’ documentary. I normally do not approve of ‘list’ songs, but this is truly the distillation of something bigger than us all, a damn near way of life)

6) Will Oldham – I See a Darkness (Johnny Cash does a haunting cover of this that you can listen to on my Don Quixote playlist, but Oldham gives the right chill factor to these perfectly chosen words)

7) Tim Buckley – Song to the Siren (‘long floatin’ on shipless oceans/ I did all my best to smile/ til your singin eyes and fingers/ drew me loving to your isle’ ‘nuf said)

8) Tom Waits – Time (very hard to choose one example of Tom Waits talents, but this is a favorite of mine from Rain Dogs, even though the more obvious choice would be Ol’ 55)

9) Vic Chesnutt – See You Around (best end song to a playlist ever, in addition to the great lyrics. Vic kicks your ass around with his verbiage, such a brilliant little song and it captures so much of my personality in the process I had to include it)