Hi There,

Hoping you're staying cool -- I've just returned from trip that inspired this latest Decant, which I hope you enjoy, and working away on behalf of the forthcoming album and Beyond the Frame moves.

Hope you enjoy my musings here or on Substack, as you prefer!

Thank you for reading,

Kristen

Likeability and Lilac Wine

Nina Simone & Normandy Cider

I have my most vivid memories of hearing Nina Simone’s music on the job, during shifts I worked in restaurants over the years.
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The first was a glass encased, upper floor skyscraper fine dining establishment adjacent to a luxury health club — one of the gigs that got me through college in Boston. For some reason, bleary, bright Sunday brunches were always accompanied by a Nina Simone playlist. It was a surreal pairing, bustling around with trays of mimosas and coffee cups in the too-soon daylight while this powerful and unsettling music wafted through the dining room.

The second was a Park Avenue place, many years later. A thoughtfully curated playlist would repeat three or four times in a night, evoking heavy mid-century nostalgia, as did the atmosphere and food. I’d hear “Mississippi Goddam” many times in between serving bottles of Dom Pérignon and Château d’Yquem. By this time, I was writing my own songs and listening with keener ears, and found something not just anachronistic, but deeply wrong that this cry of fury at injustice was background music in a temple to excess.

This is all to say, I don’t like Nina Simone. And I mean that as a compliment. There are musicians who are likable, ones you want to have on all the time, foreground and back, but for me she’s not one of them. Simone demands to be truly listened to. It’s not only about the pleasure of her prowess, which is formidable — her art is an immersive confrontation with her sonic presence both in voice and as a pianist; her unnerving beauty and intense messages.

Like doesn’t really cut it. In fact, “liking” something can be the equivalent of describing someone as “nice” — faint praise of general palatability that becomes a kind of erasure.

When I sit an listen to her rendition of James Shelton’s “Lilac Wine” for instance, I have to reckon with the thrum of the regular, magisterial rhythm while the lyrics and delivery become unhinged and even delusional — the contrast and drama of which making me as disoriented and as she is. It leaves me at loose ends.

Lilac Wine Nina Simone PREVIEW   ​

I don’t like Normandy cider, either, in a similar way. It’s so distinctive that I never forget I’m drinking it, unlike with wines that are more frequent welcome company — easy to enjoy and just happy to be at the table (hi there, Provençal rosé!)

Just as with some of the cheeses from the region, there is a pungency, intensity and character in the flavors of these drams. From my smattering of experience there and stateside, the ciders of Normandy have about as much in common with the cider from my native New England as Laufey to Nina Simone — similar ingredients, completely different experiences.

As varied as they can be, I feel by and large they aren’t background beverages. I never forget I’m tasting them.

Some great examples that illustrate the point:

Cyril Zangs NV “Ciderman” — I might call this a cider for IPA lovers, it’s intense, arrestingly dry and full of personality. Made from over 65 different kinds of apples aged in his barn after harvest, then made with ambient yeasts and unfiltered, the cider is a multidimensional study of place and fruit.

Julien Fremont Cidre Brut Nature ’23 - Made from ten different kinds of apples, a dry cider that offer a nose like a freshly plowed field, its core of fruit (ha) matched by a Bandol-like aroma that I’ve not found a better way to describe than Band-Aid — that works, I swear — somehow both intense and refreshing.

In NYC, Wine Therapy has these and more.

Was this all just and excuse to share a few pictures from the trip I just took to Normandy and beyond? Perhaps…

Cheers,

Kristen