You Feel Like Someone I Know
You’ve heard it roll off the lips of some bedroom indie pop sensation a thousand times: "Pet Sounds TOTALLY changed my life." But rarely does the music that’s a byproduct of such obsession strike you dumb. Not so with Margo Guryan, who says that the song "God Only Knows" encouraged her to expand her musical vocabulary and become a more assertive composer. The end result is the stunning Take a Picture, her 1968 debut. But Margo, a NYC kid schooled at Boston U, never struck it big in terms of record sales. Still, Take a Picture did make a significant impact on her peers, as well as a few critics. Her brilliant song "Think of Rain" ("If you should think of leaving me, think of rain …") has been covered by Astrud Gilberto and Harry Nilsson (among others), while other songs off her debut were given to artists as diverse as Julie London and Mama Cass.
But I don’t want to share her more familiar tunes with you today. I’d rather you dig on "Love Songs", which reminds me of Vashti Bunyan if she were interested in the delicate pop songs of Francoise Hardy. Vashti is actually a fairly good leaping off point for Margo, since the two both released stellar debuts and then faded from the public eye for some time until their work was discovered by a new generation in the ’90s. Unlike Vashti, however, Margo remained interested in music throughout her life and served as a classical piano teacher as she aged.
For a second selection, I wanted to go with the strange, psychedelic nugget "Love", which closed her debut album and truly stood apart from the rest of her songs. But, I think I’ll leave that one for your own personal discovery once you listen to these two songs, fall madly in love with her, and purchase the record for yourself. (And keep in mind that these aren’t even her "hits".)
Margo Guryan - "Someone I Know" (Yes, that is Johann Sebastian Bach!)
The Noiseboy
1 Comment
1 Reference
References (1)
-
Response: FollowCastles in the air - they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build, too
Reader Comments (1)