#721: G is for Grant, John

I stumbled upon a live studio recording of Elbowperforming a song called“Kindling” from the Little Fictions album with a guestvocal performance by a guynamed John Grant. Who’s this person, I wondered. And I concluded, if he’s a friendof Elbow’s, he’s a friend ofmine, and then I watched thatvideo. Whoever this JohnGrant person was, he wasContinue reading “#721: G is for Grant, John”

#717: G is for Glaspy and Glavor, Margaret and Hannah

It sounds good to say their namestogether, for one, and for another, they’re both extraordinarily talented singer-songwriters and equally mean guitarists, and look at them there, right next to each other in the alphabet,as if it was just meant to be. The first song on Margaret Glaspy’s Echo the Diamond is a rocker called“Act Natural.”Continue reading “#717: G is for Glaspy and Glavor, Margaret and Hannah”

#684: E is for Elbow

I have written about this Manchesterband here somewhere in the blog at least on six different occasions, and a little better than ten yearsago, in a similar listening challenge,but with the CD collection, where I vowed not to listen to everything, butto one full album by each artist, I couldn’t help myself. I listenedat thatContinue reading “#684: E is for Elbow”

#590: The Seldom Seen Kid, Redux (a song by Elbow)

I wrote a poem in April of 2024, about one of my favorite Elbow songs,a kind of music ekphrastic, an ode, or, a lyric explication disguised in verse, an exploration of a piece of music that moves me, mysteriously and profoundly, to the point where,even though I was not surewhat the song was about, attemptingContinue reading “#590: The Seldom Seen Kid, Redux (a song by Elbow)”

#564: Starlings

When I read the prompt today on the NaPoWriMo website, to write a poem about listening to or singing a song while driving, incorporating a lyric quote somewhere in the piece, and I read the example poem by Ellen Bass, I knew immediately what song I would write about. And shortly thereafter I also knewContinue reading “#564: Starlings”