365 Days of Song Recommendations: May 28

The Front Door — Valerie June

If Van Morrison and Lisa Bonet’s character in High Fidelity (2000) had a love child and raised her in Memphis with Big Star as their au pair.

Nobody sings like Valerie June. Nobody should sing like Valerie June. In fact, I’m willing to unilaterally pass an edict that attempting to sing like Valerie June should result in immediate removal from this and all other karaoke bars. Her singular voice recalls other gravelly singer-songwriters, but at the same time I struggle to make an honest comparison that doesn’t feel reductive.

From small-town, church-going Tennessee, June learned her nasally drawl from the local gospel singers who pushed their powerful a cappella hymns up from their stomachs through their nose.

When I first heard Valerie June back in 2017, I felt about her the way I did when I discovered Kate Bush. That she’s challenging some kind of genre aesthetic. Daring to sound atonal while also courting spiritual transcendence. Just now I Googled reviews of Valerie June’s spectacular The Order Of Time and jotted down all the mentioned genre labels.

Ready for this?

Bluegrass. Gospel. Blues. Soul. Neo-Soul. Appalachian. Country. Folk. R&B. Roots.

I won’t get into the insane contemporary micro variations on “folk.”

But my undisputed favorite is still a phrase she used at her own concert. I’ve seen her repeat the phrase in interviews, so it’s a practiced line. She calls it “Organic moonshine roots music.” I just think it’s a timeless merging of the past and the now to make something that resists labels and specific musical movements. Hence the wonderful vagary of moonshine as a descriptive. It’s a feeling. It doesn’t need words. Unless you’re forced (or choose) to write about Valerie June, in which case words are useful, but ultimately empty containers for something which cannot be contained.

From that aforementioned sophomore album, The Order of Time, I considered three different songs. Each showcases a different side to Valerie’s many-layered and idiosyncratic influences. I hear that Van Morrison pop-sensibility on “Astral Plane” (lyrics originally written for Massive Attack), the soul of Rosetta Tharpe on “Long Lonely Road,” but the one that has always destroyed me is “The Front Door,” a melancholy ditty about intimacy, which feels, deep down in my bones, like the most perfect, beautiful, sensual distillation of Valerie June.

How does it feel
To know that you can’t go on anymore?

Bound, farewell, I’m bound
To leave you waiting by the front door
Bound, farewell, I’m bound
To leave you waiting by the front door
Tell me what you will
But I know just what I feel

Bound, farewell, I’m bound
To leave you waiting by the front door
Bound, farewell, I’m bound
To leave you waiting by the front door

Take what’s mine
Love can be so unkind

Bound, farewell, I’m bound
To leave you waiting by the front door
Bound, farewell, I’m bound
To leave you waiting by the front door

Bound, farewell, I’m…

“The Front Door” is the 148th song on the exclusive #365Songs playlist!