Milo Marks digs down deep.
“Let the Music Get Down in Your Soul”
Miko Marks
Written by Frederick Knight
Jonathan Keefe: It’s interesting that this single isn’t credited to Miko Marks & The Resurrectors, the backing band that has helped her create such a winning balance of twang-forward country soul. The arrangement here is certainly a more straightforward Southern Soul– Stax Records is always the lodestone for this type of comparison– than we’ve heard from Marks on her remarkable run.
Even so, “Let the Music Get Down in Your Soul” feels like a mission statement for Marks and what makes her great. Beyond the exemplary taste in material to cover and the vocal talent that makes her such a singular artist, what always shines through in Marks’ work is the joy of music. Here, she’s picked a perfect song to capture that exact spirit, and the warmth and generosity of spirit in her performance capture exactly what it is that makes music so vital.
While it’s easy to wish this track were perhaps a bit more centered under the big tent of the country universe, there’s are few artists who stand as a more captivating ambassador for an inclusive vision of the genre than Miko Marks. A
Kevin John Coyne: Maybe it’s because I’m so embedded in seventies country right now, but this feels smack dab in the middle of the country universe for me. At least the one from back in the day.
Marks’ gorgeous vocal performance recalls the Countrypolitan singers of the day, with a grin and bear it chorus that feels like a throwback to “You Can’t Be a Beacon”-era Donna Fargo, and a stunning vocal outro worthy of Mellow-era Olivia Newton-John.
There’s a bit of southern soul in there too, a bit like what you’d find on many Twitty records of that same era. But Marks’ perspective is thoroughly modern, and her appeal to use music as sustenance for the soul doesn’t bother to pretend it will be enough to help us endure the world we’re living in. Like medicine, music can still comfort, even when it cannot heal. A
“The Fall”
Cody Johnson
Written by Ray Fulcher, Bobby Pinson, and Jeremy Stover
KJC: Jonathan does a better rundown of this writing trope than I ever could, so skip ahead if this song left you feeling like you’d heard its central conceit somewhere before.
As for me, I’m still trying to figure out what the song means. The sequencing in the chorus is supposed to create a domino effect, but it ends up sounding like a poetry exercise where the writers prioritize the rhyme scheme over the meaning, much like post-Carey female singers deliver vocal runs that are completely disconnected from the lyrics that they’re singing.
Johnson hits all of the right emotional beats here, but it doesn’t work because the song itself doesn’t make a lick of sense. He sounds good, at least. C
JK: This kind of If You Give a Mouse a Cookie lyric is a fairly common trope, and it’s one that I often find distracting from whatever larger point the songwriters might be trying to make. It simply draws too much attention to itself. The best version of this form, at least in somewhat recent memory, is Trisha Yearwood’s “Who Invented the Wheel,” and “The Fall” simply does not have the same level of sophistication in its imagery or overall concept to hold up as a solid example of this song structure.
None of the bonus tracks on the “deluxe edition” of CoJo’s Leather were superior to the original issue of that album, and it’s a bummer to see something this mid get a shot at radio when there are far better options (“Work Boots,” “Double Down”) being left as album tracks. He sings it fine but even a skilled vocalist like Johnson can only do so much to elevate a song like this. C+
Leave a Reply