Audiophile Songs of the Week
Resolve and listener take a break from headphone talk to swap music picks—an indie soundscape from Cloth and a bold jazz reinterpretation of The Beatles by Esperanza Spalding and Milton Nascimento.
In a recent discussion, Resolve and listener took a break from gear talk to focus on what they’ve actually been listening to. Here are their picks for their favorite songs of the past week:
listener’s Pick: Cloth - "Ambulance"
listener introduced Resolve to Ambulance by Cloth, a track from the band’s earlier album Secret Measure. What drew him in were the song’s intimate details—breathy vocals, subtle guitar harmonics, and a powerful snare drum hit that adds weight to the otherwise mellow, melancholic atmosphere. Resolve described the track as “one for the audiophiles,” praising its ASMR-like qualities and sonic textures, though he admitted the airy vocals weren’t his favorite.
Resolve’s Pick: Esperanza Spalding & Milton Nascimento - “A Day in the Life”
Resolve’s recommendation came from Esperanza Spalding’s 2024 collaboration with legendary Brazilian vocalist Milton Nascimento, which also features Paul Simon. He highlighted their reinterpretation of The Beatles’ A Day in the Life, noting the unusual vocal pairing—Spalding’s youthful timbre contrasted with Nascimento’s weathered voice.
listener, already familiar with Spalding’s catalog, was intrigued by the looser, more restrained arrangement compared to the Beatles’ original. He appreciated how the duo maintained the song’s famous “hell moments” of chaos but in a more controlled, jazz-like manner. Both agreed that the version leaned into simplicity while still embracing experimental tension.
Full Video Transcript Below:
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Hey, Griffin.
What's up, Andrew?
What music have you been listening to lately?
That's a good question. Yeah, let's talk about that. Because I think I actually have something you're going to enjoy. And I hope you have something for me as well.
Yeah, but you won't enjoy it. I have things for you that you will hate.
Great. I'm so glad we decided to do this.
That's what today's video is going to be all about. So let's get going.
All right. So, yeah, we don't talk nearly enough about music on this channel. So that's what we're going to do. So, Griffin, what is what's your song of the week that you've been listening to lately?
Yeah, my song of the week is the song Ambulance by Cloth. I had a friend reach out to me recently who sent me this song, thought I would like it. I love it. Been obsessed with it. I don't really know anything about the band themselves. This is from two albums ago for them, but I really think you'll enjoy this song, and it's in a genre that I don't think you usually listen to, so I'm excited to hear your take on it.
Problem.
That song does not exist on Tidal.
Oh, this flippin' Tidal guy.
I got Spotify, too.
Oh, then, yeah. Why are you complaining about it? Just use Spotify. What's wrong with you?
All the audio files died inside a little bit. Oh, no, I found it. We're good. We're good.
It's the song Ambulance.
Tell me about the song. What's interesting about this song?
I kind of don't want to spoil it, but I feel like you'll like a lot of the ASMR-y qualities about it. That's all I'll say.
Okay, so this is something for the audiophiles.
Yeah, it's got the little cues and the little breaths and all that stuff.
I'm just going to switch over to other headphones here and listen to it. Because it's an audiophile thing, right? All right, one sec. All right, I have swapped over. I'm listening.
I finished listening to it.
Yeah, what'd you think?
Yes, it's exactly as you described. I mean, the joy that I get out of this is very much in the ASMR-like qualities of specifically when that guitar comes in where it's sort of like the at least i assume it's a guitar
yeah it's a guitar playing playing harmonics so like hitting that that that modal point on the on the length of the string
yeah yeah exactly so it's a very chill mellow melancholy kind of track with some breathy vocals and then it has that uh yeah that really cool kind of buzz sound like fuzzy kind of buzzy background drone sound going on and then those guitar tones come in which is really really cool and yeah this is this is exactly as you described it this is um one for the audiophiles for sure i think this actually belongs on like audiophile test tracks
my favorite part of that song is actually the snare drum it's just a fat snare drum hit well which uh speaks to me specifically but i chose that one for this because i i figured you would kind of enjoy those breathy qualities so i'm glad you enjoyed it
interestingly my least favorite that's probably interesting my least favorite thing about this is actually the vocals i'm really not a fan of like uh you know breathy style vocals but uh for this type of song that totally works right like that sort of it's creating that sort of soundscape structure um and and the way the vocals are done kind of blend in with that really nicely so um yeah that was nice
yeah hey well i'm glad you enjoyed it all right now what do you have for me
yeah uh so you actually have a choice here
oh god okay
i've given you two equally bad options great actually one of them is a good option but i'm not sure if you're going to choose it so you can either choose jazz where we talk about the composition the musicality all that stuff Or you can choose prog rock, hippie kind of stuff, retro-y kind of stuff.
Oh God, no, the jazz. Jazz, please, please jazz.
So how familiar are you with Esperanza Spalding's music?
Quite. I've listened to, I think, three of her albums semi-regularly.
Yeah, so the one I've been listening to the most recently, because I'm actually, like this week, I'm going to go see Esperanza Spalding live. I'm super fired up for that. She came out with an album in 2024 that was a collaboration with Milton Nascimento, the Brazilian vocalist.
Yeah, I haven't heard this.
The thing is, Milton Nascimento is like 80 years old. He's very old at this point. He's sort of a more senior vocalist at this point, let's just say. All of these songs, there's something interesting there. But the one that kind of grabbed me was actually a Beatles cover. It was A Day in the Life.
Fantastic song.
So give that one a listen.
Yeah, sure. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to listen to that right now and I will let you know when I'm done.
Okay. So yeah, I finished it.
Okay. Thoughts?
I have a lot of them. uh so any for those who are familiar with this song any rearrangement or cover of this song is bound to be kind of like a multi-faceted arrangement because the song itself has these very distinct different parts with very um noticeable interludes between the parts talking about that kind of first section like the main uh i think beginning of the song I guess. I did like that in this part there was a little bit of like a behind the beat drum groove that just like it's a little just a little off kilter in what is otherwise a very like simple arrangement and then it goes into like you know the first hell moment uh for lack of a better term like the part where—
that's exactly how you describe it
where all the stuff just starts to get crazy and uh you know the chords are just climbing in pitch and you know you just descend into madness um their approach to doing so was a little bit more like controlled and relaxed than i expected but i think the peak it got to was still very weird sounding, and then there was this sound, it was some sort of i think a modulated voice or something that was like panning from left to right or like in a in a circle kind of um that was kind of punctuating this this hell moment that was really interesting and then it comes out of the hell moment into the Paul McCartney section, like the whole the cane and top hat sounding jaunty part and the timing was a little, uh, a little looser and a little bit, um, less regimented than I feel like the original is in this part. And then after a little bit more of that first motif section, we get another hell moment. Which yeah, equally cacophonous to the first.
In general, I feel like what was most appealing to me about this arrangement of this song was that the whole thing kind of felt simpler than even the Beatles version. It felt like you could hear the fact that Esperanza and Milton were trying to keep it in bounds of what they could do and play as individuals, whereas the Beatles at this point in their career were very much so out of that space. Like, we're gonna do whatever sounds the craziest, even if we can't play it live. It was all about making the recording wild. But yeah, what do you like about this song?
i like this song because to me this is also the Beatles like truly getting into their weird and wacky progressive era right and hell moment is a good description there i mean this is a sort of extreme contrast of that is is what i love about it that hell moment could almost be described as like like suddenly the keys were given over to pink floyd and they went all weird like in the original beatles stuff right like yeah that's what it feels like but here it doesn't really feel quite like that here this feels more just like a jazz group um deciding to get cacophonous intentionally the other thing that i wanted to just raise is the combination of esperanza's vocal and milton's vocal where the the blending there is more to do with it's more to do with the timbre of the voices being so different from one another than any particular duet based elements um it creates this interesting sort of like male female young old um vocal timbre dynamic which i find really interesting And yeah, I really recommend this.
Paul Simon's on this album too, by the way, randomly.
Yeah, he has good music taste. So I feel like that doesn't really surprise me.
Really cool album. Really been enjoying it. And I'm fired up to go see Esperanza.
Yeah, no, I'm excited to listen to the rest of this record because, yeah, Esperanza is someone I usually follow. So this is just one that hadn't been on my radar, but I will absolutely be listening to it later.
And likewise for Cloth. What is this album?
The album is called Secret Measure, I think. Yeah, Secret Measure.
All right. Well, that's going to do it for this video. I appreciate the song suggestion. And maybe we can do some more of these if you guys found it interesting, if you like this kind of stuff. We will be leaving. links to this in the description but also you can find our individual audio file test tracks and recommended music up on headphones.com and speaking of headphones.com they're the ones who make all these videos possible so check them out and with that that is going to do it for this video and we will see you guys in the next one bye for now
bye guys!
