MÉLUSINE – Cecile McLorin Salvant

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As with everything McLorin Salvant releases, MÉLUSINE is an interrogation of music’s capacity to tell all of our truths – the ones we know and the ones we don’t, a journey told through her singular voice across centuries and languages:

A Black woman's head and tongue in profile against a sunset orange; her earring transforming into a serpent
The new album’s songs tell the story of the European folkloric legend of Mélusine, a woman who turns into a half-snake each Saturday as a result of a childhood curse by her mother. Mélusine later agrees to marry Raymondin on the condition that he never see her on Saturdays. He agrees but is ultimately convinced by his brother to break his promise, piercing his wife’s door with his sword and finding her naked in the bath, half snake, half woman. When she catches him spying on her, she turns into a dragon and flies out the window, only to reappear every time one of her descendants is on their deathbed.

Vinyl duly ordered. So very, very good.

THAT THING YOU DO! (Hanks, 1996)

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(Written and directed by Tom Hanks; starring Tom Everett Scott, Johnathon Schaech, Steve Zahn, Liv Tyler, Ethan Embry, Charlize Theron, and Tom Hanks. Released 04 October 1996; (re)watched 2023w13 via Hulu)

A diversionary revisit (first time since VHS, I think) from my usual Criterion brain/soul-sustenance and/or action-packed / true crime death show braincarbs, Hanks's first writing/directing foray remains one of the textbook examples of "delightful": it was this film and its earworm soundtrack that taught me how to drum; that cemented my now decades-long crush on Liv Tyler; that made me always enjoy a Steve Zahn appearance (even in the first season of WHITE LOTUS, which I loathed – with the exception of Renoir's RULES OF THE GAME, little turns me off more than stories about bored rich white people on vacation, no matter how incisive its social commentary might be – and never finished); that made me scratch my head but nod when Schaech showed up as Jonah Hex in LEGENDS OF TOMORROW – and wait for his Hex to burst into a refrain of "I quit"; and it was this film that made me pick up the drumsticks again after I picked them up again the last time I picked them up (or something). A boldly earnest film – that first time the Oneders (I wonder what happened to the o-need-ers) hear "That Thing You Do!" on the radio is one of the best expressions of unbridled excitement and happiness ever put to film – in an era of endless cynicism. Always, always recommended.