Doin' the Friday Shuffle

1. "Next to You" - Stephen Sondheim - Bounce (World Premiere Recording)
I've had this score- Sondheim's last (although hopefully not last-ever) for several years now and I still can't quite get a handle on it. Very old-fashioned in some ways, with some fine melodies, but it doesn't quite hang together.

2. "The Gloaming (Softly Open Our Mouths in the Cold)" - Radiohead - Hail to the Thief
I love Radiohead, but, much like Bounce, I haven't been able to really get a sense for this one. May just be a bit too esoteric in the end for me.

3. "Darling Pretty" - Mark Knopfler - Golden Heart
I love the sweetly old-fashioned, Irish-sounding fiddle and guitar opening, leading directly into some good-ole, laid-back Knopfler rock.

4. "Making Love Alone" - Bernadette Peters - Sondheim, Etc.
A joyful, bold-and-brassy ode to masturbation.

5. "Love Is Blindness (Live)" - U2 - Stay (Faraway So Close ) (Single)
Simply a great live performance of this most moody of U2 songs.

6. "The Wedding" - Elvis Costello - My Flame Burns Blue (Live with the Metropole Orkest)
This great live album of Costello and big jazz orchestra features as a bonus disc a suite from Costello's ballet score Il Sogno. This is one of those cuts, and it's a fine, romantic, pulsating bit of music.

7. "Quartet: Acknowledgement (Part I)" - John Coltrane - A Love Supreme
Raptorous. One of the great recordings of the 20th century.

8. "Poor Thing" - Stephen Sondheim (sung by Patti LuPone) - Sweeney Todd (Original 2005 Broadway Revival Cast)
The famous (or infamous) reduced orchestrations (played on stage by the cast) for last year's revival really do a fine job of allowing someone like me 0 ho knows this core backwards and forward - to hear the music differently.

9. "Broadway Baby" - Stephen Sondheim (sung by Mandy Patinkin) - Sings Sondheim
In this live concert recording, Patinkin does a long, drawn-out slow burn before letting t rip at the very end with some traditional Mandy crazy belting. Love it.

10. "Stavisky Suite Two" - Stephen Sondheim - Stavisky (Score)
A vaguely decadent-sounding cut from one of Sondheim's few film scores.

Until Whenever