Having spent a couple of days in 1958, let’s jump fifty-nine years forward to 2017, and enjoy 13, a moody, soulful number by Torontonian Allan Rayman. It’s here because I heard it on the radio and liked it. I still haven’t managed to get a 2018 song into the 2018 Songs of the Day, but I’m getting closer.
Rayman is not a very public person and his self-presentation is eccentric. His website is about as stripped-down as you can get. He doesn’t seem to play any instruments but apparently writes all the music and produces too. Live, he often appears with just a guitarist and a DJ, which I guess we can forgive him for.
13 is idiosyncratic, interleaving a scratchy-voiced complaint about someone talkin’, talkin’, talkin’ with smooth vocals and a guitar riff that sounds like the one in Muse’s Uprising. Anyhow, it doesn’t sound like anything else I’ve heard recently, but it sounds good.
This is part of the Song of the Day series (background).
Links · Spotify playlist. This tune on Amazon, iTunes, Spotify. I checked out a couple of live videos but they left me cool because they didn’t have that idiosyncratic studio magic. But this unplugged take at the CBC shines a completely different light on the song and works well.
