I’m in the car, shuffling through stop-and-go traffic on a drizzly day. In recent months, the CarPlay app has traded simplicity for hoops to jump through. To reach the “recently added” section requires a click here, a click there, and plenty of scrolling, only for it to snap back to the top before I get to what it is I want to play. It’s the main reason why, of late, I spend more time with SiriusXM than Apple Music when behind the wheel. (I’ll never understand the constant push to improve what already works well, but I suppose someone, somewhere, needs to justify a planned price increase.) After several ill-fated attempts to get to the “recently added” section, I considered flipping to SiriusXM when I spotted Apple Music’s New Music Mix on the Home Screen.
For the longest time, that Friday-updated playlist was the only playlist I listened to—it even informed several posts. Last fall’s deluge of new releases, however, left little time for such algorithm-driven adventures. Given that I wasn’t in the mood for the ’60s, ‘70s, Springsteen or soul music this rainy afternoon, I decided to give it a listen—even if it meant clicking “next” more often than not. And, sure enough, I did indeed push through the 25-song, 98-minute set in about 25 minutes, hanging with not-new-to-me singles from Juliana Hatfield (“Harmonizing With Myself”) and Tessa Rose Jackson (“Built to Collide”) while skipping past a slew of subpar selections until Storey Littleton’s “Nothing to No One” pushed from the speakers like a sonic tsunami. It’s lush yet taut, with the giant wave (aka the instrumentation) growing stronger the closer it comes to shore.
I pressed play on its album home, At a Diner. A part of me thinks I should wait until the vinyl arrives on my doorstep in March, as then I’ll know who plays what behind her, but that’s a month away. What I can say for sure: She’s the offspring of musicians Elizabeth Mitchell and Daniel Littleton and, alongside them, earned a Grammy nomination for her mother’s 2012 children’s album, Blue Clouds. She still plays with her parents in their long-running band Ida, plus fronts the group Monogamy and provides support for an array of artists, including Amy Helm. To compare her to recent artists, she reminds me a bit like Shallow Alcove, Natalie Prass and, sans the incense vibe, Mikaela Davis. She would have been at home in the singer-songwriter crowd of the early ‘70s, I think; she’s a woman lost in time, in a sense, trading in gauzy songs and fuzzy guitar solos, the kind that stop the heart for a beat or two.
“January,” which features Davis on harp, opens with a dramatic nod to the Shangri-Las before flipping the “Leader of the Pack”-like tone into a Jefferson Airplane-like ode about a love triangle. (About the only think missing: David Crosby on acoustic guitar.) “Worst of Everything,” meanwhile, is a glorious, guitar-first frenzy about a dissipating relationship, while the gentle title track drifts in like balm for a wounded heart.
In short, the 10-track At a Diner is a wonderful album worthy of many plays. Highly recommended.
The Old Grey Cat 