« older | Main Largehearted Boy Page | newer »
August 24, 2021
Jo Lloyd's Playlist for Her Story Collection "Something Wonderful"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Jo Lloyd's Something Wonderful is a brilliant debut collection from one of the finest short story writers writing today.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
"The author shows a knack for stretching each germ of a story into a miniature epic. Lloyd’s singular talent is on full display."
In her own words, here is Jo Lloyd's Book Notes music playlist for her story collection Something Wonderful:
If I Had a Ribbon Bow – Ane Brun
Agnes, James, Isabella, and the other characters in “My Bonny” are long-lost family on my mother’s side. They lived ordinary, hard lives and left only the census records of their dates and occupations. I kept those details and filled in the rest. This lovely song speaks to what a ribbon and dreams of romance meant to people whose children went unshod and sometimes unfed. There are other more famous covers but I first heard and fell in love with Ane Brun’s delicate, haunting version.
The Rounding of Cape Horn – The Johnstons
The wind broke on his broad face, cleaved north and south of him, combing his hair smooth. His mouth was white with salt, his eyebrows frosted.
“My Bonny” is set on the east coast of Scotland and features sailors and sailmakers and fishermen and lots of sea, but when I wrote it, I was living right at the centre of the UK. I immersed myself in soundtracks of waves and gulls and sea songs old and new. This is one of the old ones. The Johnstons’ version is all jangling spriteliness and whalebone-dry wit. The line about the Plymouth girls always makes me smile.
Wasting My Young Years – London Grammar
Megan and her flatmates in “The Ground the Deck” are just at that moment between contemplating the boundless, glittering future spread out before them and noticing that they’re frittering away their days in dry dock.
Storms – Tom Odell
All over the city, tidelines appeared, as if the sea had come through in the night.
“The Ground the Deck” is about false starts and bad judgements. But it’s also about optimism and idealism, restarts and clean starts, setting out into the rain in your waterproof shoes.
Marwnad yr Ehedydd – Cowbois Rhos Botwnnog
People sometimes ask if I’m influenced by Welsh writing. I don’t know. But “The Invisible” is definitely influenced by Welsh music, especially the Cowbois, Gwibdaith, Gwyneth Glyn, and Twm Morys. Here, the Tylwyth Teg take a break from putting robins’ eggs in shoes to search for a crystal coffin and an applewood shroud. Of the many variants of this old song, the Cowbois’ is my favourite: Iwan’s voice, the bass – everything about it is a joy.
Aderyn – Casi & The Blind Harpist, Côr Seiriol
She will stop for minutes on end to watch rooks or lapwings tumble about the sky, as if they bore porridge and dates and the answers to life’s mysteries in their beaks.
Birds feature large in Welsh folklore. Some are very old and very wise. Some are chatty. All are cryptic. If I should die, I’d like Casi and the choir to drop by my funeral and sing this.
Love Has All Been Done Before – Jade Bird
Have you ever been with a nice man? Everyone will say how nice he is, and at first it will make you smile, Yes he is nice, aren’t I lucky? But then it begins to get annoying. Yes I know he’s nice, thank you. It’s relentless, like there’s something in their meaning that you’re missing.
Some voices are fun to write. In “Ade/Cindy/Kurt/Me”, I wanted Trish to be selfish and outspoken and careless with people’s feelings – and to admit it. She sees her faults and owns them. Jade Bird’s unapologetic “I need something more” is exactly in that spirit.
Good Thing Gone – Elle King
The man told me this as if he meant me to understand that I had had a lucky escape. That was not what I thought but it would have been too complicated to explain, would have required a long, grubby tale in which people who know nothing behave as if they have lifetimes to learn more.
Final Day – Young Marble Giants
Most of all, we worried about a single, impetuous moment that would trigger catastrophe: radiation, mutation, our species surviving, if at all, as a deformed, damaged version of what we had been.
In “Deep Shelter”, John is a rationalist who believes in science, but he is also aware of its apocalyptic potential, like everyone growing up after the war and right into the 1980s, when Young Marble Giants turned the real and ever-present fear of a nuclear final day into this nonchalant, tripping little gem.
Hide and Seek – Imogen Heap
Father used to say that human beings are a mystery and you never truly know even those closest to you. It has since occurred to me that perhaps he meant this not as observation but as warning.
Vor í Vaglaskógi – KALEO
The campsite was behind a beach in Cornwall, with pines so thick around and above that even by day it was dim and shadowy.
The technical progress acclaimed by the Festival was also to be responsible for a bleak proliferation of tarmac and concrete and plastic, threatening so much that KALEO celebrate in this glorious song of trees and berries and all our greener yesterdays.
Workin’ Woman Blues – Valerie June
It’s been a while since I had a job like the one described in “Work”, but I remember it in my bones. You get the feeling Valerie June does too. She describes this song as an anthem for women “working hard and doing great things and changing the world one day-to-day job at a time”. It helps that she is blessed with a voice that seems to have lived the whole history of the world twice over.
I Can’t Make You Love Me – SOAK
You can form an idea like that, that there is only one person and one time and one place where you could live, and then for the whole of the rest of your life you’ll feel homeless.
SOAK’s stripped back version of this song is, for me, the only one that sounds like the singer knows what it’s like to have their heart broken, all their internal organs removed, bit by bit, until nothing’s left but pyjamas and dormouse soup.
Mon Ami la Rose – Natacha Atlas
“Butterflies of the Balkans” was inspired by all those Victorian ladies travelling the world in search of bugs and flowers. They were not young and wore odd clothes, so despite their contributions to science and to attitudes towards women, they are often treated as comic figures. I admire their tenacity, their unconventionality, and their insistence on keeping going until they dropped – or after if possible. This is one of the all-time great Torschlusspanik songs and I adore Natacha Atlas’s version.
Katip Arzuhalim Yaz Yare Böyle – Selda Bağcan
Mirko, who had always been the most cheerful of the escort, took to bursting into the songs of his country at all hours of day and night and had to be hushed sometimes after the ladies had retired.
This piece of gorgeousness from the great Selda Bağcan is an old Turkish folksong, so Dottie and Prue could well have heard it on their travels. The songs in Mirko’s repertoire, springing from the same musical traditions, would have sounded strange to Dottie – but I think she’d have enjoyed being kept awake by them.
The Water Rises – Kronos Quartet, Laurie Anderson
What people forget is, it’s a fucking life sentence, what he does. It’s like being a priest or a lighthouse keeper or something. You can’t just go home at the weekend.
Duncan in “Your Magic Summer” is intensely aware of the water rising but he’s also just a guy who wants to hang out and enjoy life. It would be so much easier if there were superheroes out there saving the world, so the rest of us could go home at the weekend.
This is the Life – Amy Macdonald
Seize every day of your magic summer, gather your rosebuds, stay the fugit of tempus, whatever way you can. Dance or protest or love or change the world or lie in the grass looking up at the sky. Remember that what you don’t do, you won’t have done.
I am a Man of Constant Sorrow – Élage Diouf
“The Earth, Thy Great Exchequer, Ready Lies” is based, somewhat loosely, on the early industrialist Humphrey Mackworth. He was an extraordinary figure, vainglorious, avaricious, ruthless, and always self-pitying. He likened himself to Jesus at Gethsemane, a detail I thought too unbelievable to use. Like most self-pitiers, he was a vicious blamer, quick to shout “fake news”. Another song of which there are many versions – I especially love this one.
All Things Must Change – Beverley Knight
Outside, years pass, then centuries. Wars are fought, empires spread and contract, fortunes are lost and recovered. The world is changed utterly.
I’ve always enjoyed stories that open out long perspectives as they end. If fiction is about anything, it is about time, as someone wiser than me said. Writers have to balance their desire to stop in the moment – look! look! look! – with their urge to keep moving on – what’s next? what’s next? If they’ve done their job properly, readers should feel the same conflict.
Jo Lloyd won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2019 and an O. Henry Prize in 2018. Her stories have appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Something Wonderful is her debut collection. She grew up in South Wales, where she now lives.
If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider making a donation.
