The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Every Tuesday, the Sounding Board is a space for a short-ish review of a recent-ish release and conversations about new-to-you music. We’ll get things started with a write-up about a newer, likely under-heard album, and invite you to share your music musings in the comments.1
You can’t make a no-skips, head-spinning, genre-hopping contender for album of the year if you don’t have a solid first song. Valerie June has delivered just such an album with Owls, Omens, and Oracles, and it comes complete with an incandescent beam that radiates pure bliss in omnidirectional honey-colored waves for its side one, track one.
June, an inimitably voiced multi-instrumentalist based in Memphis, has authored some exceptional album-openers during her recording career,2 but “Joy Joy!” the first song off and lead single from her latest album, is her finest yet. It’s one of the best songs she’s ever recorded, and one of my favorite things that I’ve heard this year.
The song starts with a simple groove. A bouncy bassline and steady, simple drumbeat establish an affable, head-nodding beat that sets the stage for the hickory-smoked nasal twang of June’s voice. When it enters the picture, it’s a multi-tracked, a little off-kilter, and using playground sing-song cadence to describe a righteous inner guiding light. June’s vocals, with a seesaw harmony and slight drone from self-harmonization, contrast wonderfully with the smoothness of the rhythm section in the first 30 or so seconds of the song, but “Joy Joy!” has bigger things in mind. When June hits the chorus for the first time, a guitar, keys and saxophone are on board to round out the song’s sound. They stick around and do some pretty incredible stuff. The guitar is breaded, deep-fried and dripping blooze-rock tone when it rips off a fiery solo around the song’s mid-point. And the sax? Well, the swirling strings that eventually hit would be awfully lonely without it. Production from M. Ward, whos worked with both Mavis Staples and She & Him, and engineering from Pierre de Reeder, whose past credits include Rilo Kiley and Jenny Lewis’ solo stuff, make a lot of sense in the context of “Joy Joy!”
June makes an absolute meal of the rich backing provided by bassist Kaveh Rastegar, drummer Steven Hodges on drums, and the keys and horn arrangements of Nate Walcott.3 She employs variety and virtuosity while waxing enthusiastically about intrinsic reservoirs of happiness that can be called on when you feel you’re not enough or the world’s been hard and rough. She starts with her default high, lonesome pine, but doesn’t stay there She coos in a breathy falsetto, she sputters out the word “joy” in a lower register and for one shining moment, she absolutely belts out the word “soul.” While the song’s lyrics, which position a resilient spirit and inner happiness as a panacea for society’s myriad shortcomings can feel a smidge mawkish, June delivers them with gusto and manifests an unassailable happy place in song form that transcends space, time and schmaltz.
“Joy Joy!” winds up sounding like a whirlwind tour through Hitsville U.S.A., Sun Studio and Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, mixed up all their best bits and dropped them like a house on the Wicked Witch that is 2025. If you feel any degree of affection for those old sounds, the song is a guaranteed stunner. Listeners unfortunate enough to not have that context will likely still be charmed by a blissed-out stomper of a song loaded with vocal quirks.
As alluded to some 470 words ago, “Joy Joy” is not the only song on Owls, Omens, and Oracles. There’s 14 other tracks on the album, and all of them are at least worth hearing with most being either good or great. Like the album’s lead single, they employ sounds from the past, blend styles and genres, and get a major shot in the arm from June’s voice.
“All I Really Want to Do” and “Love Me Any Ole Way” take major cues from Spector Wall of Sound-era girl groups. The former plays it straight to thoroughly enjoyable results, while the latter adds in a dash of brassy Dixieland swing. “Changed” and “Calling My Spirit” both work in gospel influences in appreciably different ways. The Blind Boys of Alabama feature on “Changed,” adding depth and a choral touch to its hymn-like melody. “Calling My Spirit” is a preposterously gorgeous, immaculately layered a cappella track.4 “Superpower” does something completely different, layering spoken word over skittering 808s and occasional stabs of spacy guitar. “My Life is a Country Song” is ironically more of a folk-inflected indie song — the kind that was especially popular circa 2009 — but it is a love letter of sorts to the genre. “Sweet Things Just for You” is a simple, lightly countrified love song that sounds like it could’ve been plucked straight from Paul McCartney’s mind circa 1968.5 “Endless Tree” gets a boost from propulsive strings to climb deliriously toward musical and conceptual heights, using a tree as a metaphor for the fractally split but still connected nature of humanity.6 “Love and Let Go,” closes the album on a regal note by adding stately strings and gleaming horn to a simple guitar-and-brushed-drum arrangement. This adds some extra pathos to June’s already emotive vocals and allows her to wordlessly duet with a trumpet.
It’s an embarrassment of riches that’s bound to mean different things to different listeners. Some will focus on June’s vocals and find hundreds of standout moments, whether they be odd, endearing tics or displays of prowess. Others will get sucked into the sublime soundstage set by June and her musical backers. Plenty of people will do one, then the other. Some will be delighted by the elements of worship music that provide a base for some of the songs, plenty of cool kids will instead be repelled and gravitate toward the indie rock-influenced numbers. Further permutations are added by whether listeners go into this thing wanting to hear Sun Records-style country, with a poptimistic perspective, or harbor a soft spot for one of the rootsy genres June explores. All of that doesn’t even count the many, many people who will catch “Joy Joy!” or “Endless Tree” on a playlist, find fleeting happiness, and fail to seek out more of the album.
What makes Owls, Omens, and Oracles a special album is that these are all likely to be enjoyable ways to engage with the LP. June’s made a work that there’s really no wrong way to listen to. Any amount of it in any order offers the possibility of a pleasurable, enriching experience — albeit one that’s easily bested by queuing Owls, Omens, and Oracles up, pressing play and giving it a front-to-back listen.
About the writer
Ben Hohenstatt
Ben Hohenstatt is an Alaska-based dog owner who moonlights as a music writer and photographer.
For more information, consult your local library or with parental permission visit his website.
Tags for this article
More articles by Ben Hohenstatt
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
The Sounding Board
A weekly column where New Music Tuesdays live on. Conversation is encouraged in the comments.
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Kids In The Hall, Season Two, Episode Twenty
– “Hey! Jerry’s dead!”
– “Who do you think would win in a fight between a dog and a monkey?” / “Monkey.”
– The cut from the kid to his mother getting a makeover is a very Simpsons joke
– “If you lose a finger on your handshaking hand, you can never meet anyone new.”
– “So clouds look like shapes huh? Like ducks, or spoons, or Abe Lincoln’s head.” / “Yeah.” / “Phew. Thought it was just me.”
– “Then the priest says, if that’s your canary, then who’s your wife?”
– “Wow. What a complicated plot.”
Hacks, “Big, Brave Girl” and “Cover Girls”
I love how this season has amped up the idea of Deb and–increasingly–Ava being public figures: of course a video of their fight outside the Comedy Store is going to immediately get uploaded, and of course Winnie’s going to see it and have questions. Comedy can do a lot with self-consciousness (witness Jimmy’s incredible “get it together” speech to his wayward clients, delivered through a manic ear-to-ear smile and punctuated with fake laughter), and drama can do a lot with the difference between the truth and the public image (“Smile. We’re on camera”), so this is all setting up some glorious material. I’m also always a sucker for “we have to pull off something terrific in a business where there’s not even a clear standard for what constitutes terrific, and also it just might not work anyway.”
Jimmy containing Ava and Deborah’s feud, at least for a moment, was my favorite moment of the two episodes, but Marcus sticking to his guns–he made an amazing deal for Deb, and he knows it, and he needs to get out now, and he knows it, and he’s not backing down on either point–is my second favorite.
Best physical comedy: Ava, dressed like a twelve-year-old boy, seeing Deborah waiting at the bottom of the mall escalator and trying to frantically scramble back up while it’s still going down. Maybe my top bit of Einbinder goofy physicality since her shifting into the Charlie Brown walk when Deborah told her she couldn’t pick out shoes from the men’s section.
Frasier, “Police Story”/”Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fired” – In the former, Frasier is pulled over by traffic cop Jane Kaczmarek and is smitten enough that he asks his dad to find out who she is and go with him to a cop bar to find her. But it’s not Frasier she’s into but Martin! Interesting less for the comedy than for how Martin reacts to being attracted by, and to, a younger woman, and for how Frasier ultimately accepts the facts. Though as I suspect they ran out of story, there was a rather tacked on scene where Frasier laments the state of his love life and says it’s been nine months since he had sex, which forgets entirely about Kate Costas. In the latter, Frasier’s agent Bebe is coincidentally engaged to the station’s new owner, a man she is clearly marrying for his money. But she needs to quit smoking for the wedding to happen. Some funny bits, mainly with Bebe getting Martin and Daphne to smoke, too. Weird but droll ending with the groom dropping dead at the wedding offscreen, and Frasier narrating the events to Martin. I wonder if making the new owner of the station a Texas cowboy type was a nod to the one episode where Slim Pickens was the owner of WJM on Mary Tyler Moore.
The Return – what a terrible, bland title. Not sure if that’s the reason I didn’t expect too much from this take on the Odyssey, with Surprisingly Jacked Ralph Fiennes finally making it home post-Troy to survey the desolation of his life – I mainly just fancied a cinema trip with friends. But while I wouldn’t describe this as “good”, I’m glad I saw it – it’s extremely serious but can’t help be accidentally funny at times, and when it eventually builds into action / revenge it’s nicely bloody and visceral. An odd one, can’t really recommend it wholeheartedly but I had quite a good time.
Also I looked up the Italian director of this film, Uberto Pasolini, when I got home because I was curious whether he was related to the other Pasolini. It turns out he’s actually Luchino Visconti’s nephew, confusingly, but I was more surprised to find that he was the producer and “conceived the idea for” The Full Monty, perhaps the least Italian film ever made.
What did we listen to?
Magic And Loss, Lou Reed
My favourite Reed album since Transformer. AT his best, Reed is simply Cool, effortlessly – the Cool to Bob Dylan’s Nerd. He makes the very act of writing a song something attractive and wonderful. The details are simple and spare, but the emotions are so intense. He’s not even that sophisticated in literally anything he does; he’s practically talking over simple chords, but they’re so tastefully chosen and heartbreakingly sincere, and he sounds so fucking cool doing it.
Good news! Zach Lowe is back. Bad news: his pods are running close to two hours. That is way too long for sports talk.
That’s how I felt about some of the season preview episodes of “Effectively Wild.” There’s really no such thing as too much Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley talkin’ baseball, but I had to listen to those in installments!
1001 Albums, etc. – took a break for my holiday but now I’m back on the case.
Joni Mitchell – Court & Spark: I knew that Joni got jazzier after Blue so I braced myself, this still fell on my good side though. Mostly because she has such a lovely voice.
Queen – Queen II: I spent much of my childhood listening to Queen but never really the first couple of albums. You can feel them getting so close to their killer sound here and then the final track is ‘Seven Seas of Rhye’ and everything falls into place, great stuff.
Roxy Music – Country Life: Surprised to find that I kinda dug this more than the Eno-era albums, even though I love Eno. Just felt like a really consistently strong set of songs and they’re a step ahead of Queen in locking into their distinct sound.
Tangerine Dream – Phaedra: Hell yeah Tangerine Dream. This isn’t my favourite of their albums but it might be the most important in terms of adopting sequencer technology etc, amazing stuff and hearing it in 1974 context just makes it sound even more like the future.
Blank Check – caught up with a bunch of the Spielberg episodes while driving to / from holiday, they’ve all been enjoyable but I’m on Hook now and this might be the best of the bunch, Griffin’s exasperation about the rules of Neverland is making me laugh.
Queen II side II may be the best side II ever.
Year of the Month update!
May’s year will be 1962, so you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, et al!
May 2nd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Moon Pilot
May 9th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Bon Voyage!
May 15th: John Bruni: L’Eclisse/Il Sorpasso
May 16th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Big Red
May 23rd: Gillian Rose Nelson: Almost Angels
May 30th: Gillian Rose Nelson: In Search of the Castaways
And there’s still time to sign up for any of these movies, albums, books, et al from 1999!
TBD: James Williams: 10 Things I Hate About You
TBD: Ruck Cohlchez – Summerteeth/The Soft Bulletin/Utopia Parkway
TBD: Lauren James – Storm of the Century
Apr. 16th: James Rodriguez: The Scooby Doo Project
Apr. 17th: Cameron Ward/Cori Domschot: The Mummy
Apr. 18th: Gillian Rose Nelson: The Hand Behind the Mouse
Apr. 21st: Bridgett Taylor: Fight Club
Apr. 24th: Cori Domschot: The Matrix
Apr. 25th: Gillian Rose Nelson: Disney on DVD
Apr. 29th: Dave Shutton: American Pie/Class of 1999
“Production by M. Ward” — hmm interesting
‘”My Life is a Country Song” is ironically more of a folk-inflected indie song — the kind that was especially popular circa 2009’ — LEO POINTING AT THE TV DOT GIF
Hell of a review! Will be checking this out, although the soul is more enticing than the folk.