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Great late-night songs and albums

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It’s 11 pm, and it’s raining. You’re in a darkened bar…watching the rain dance down the window, as the city lights smile kindly in the distance.

What sort of songs or albums sum up this particular mood? Richard Hawley’s Coles Corner album is a late-night standard for me, and A Rainy Night in Georgia by Brook Benton gets me in a melancholy, but very welcome, mood.

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  3. Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis. Or most of Is a Woman? by Lambchop. Or this version of Body and Soul by Billie Holiday. No other voice could sing that opening line (“My days have grown so lonely…”) with such world weary suffering. Gorgeous sax break too, by Ben Webster. And great trumpet.

  5. Now you see, being a rural sort of fellah, the idea of a late night album is a curtainsdrawnopenfiresolitude thing. David Sylvian usually fits the bill – Gone to Ground or Secrets of the Beehive – or Sandy Denny.

  10. For me Bryan Ferry’s slower solo material conjures exactly this sort of atmosphere. “Boys and Girls” might be his peak rainy-night-in-the-city song. He sounds like a man who has lost all his money in a casino (while looking suave, naturally) and now his supermodel girlfriend has just left him. But there are still a few hours before dawn, and there’s a chance some exotic European beauty in that mysterious bar over there might catch his eye… Or perhaps she’ll lead him into danger – ooh!

    That’s what it sounds like to me, anyway… *Wanders off, lost in reverie*

      • Plenty of gruesome Irish folk songs too. I seem to recall one about an old lady murdering a baby with a pen knife and chucking the body in a well. Sung rather jauntily as well, which sort of adds to the all round creepiness.

        • That’ll be this song. I’m sure I learned it pre-school.

          “Weela Weela Walya”,[1][2] also called “Weila Waile”, “Wella Wallia” or “The River Saile”, is an Irish schoolyard song that tells the story of an infanticide in a light-hearted way. It was popularised in the 1960s by Irish folk bands The Dubliners and The Clancy Brothers.

  18. Here’s a fave from BITD. Still got a late night tape with this as opener. Fab guitar solo from Eric Gale

    Then this. Some of the turnarounds are just perfect.

  19. Got to be jaaaaz…don’t really want anybody singing at me when I’m in this mood. This, for instance.

    If there has to be singing, then nobody shoutier than Nat King Cole.

  21. Back when Keith Richards’ first solo album was released, a friend of mine observed that it “…improves with the lateness of the hour and how much whisky you’ve had to drink.”

    He made no mistake.

  23. The new Daniel Lanois album “Player Piano” is a decent late-night listen – piano and effects noodling in an ambient-ish style.

    Others recent albums for the twilight hours:

    Sachal Vasandani/Romain Collin – Still Life: off kilter vocal/piano stylings across a range of modern standards

    Tim Tsistinas – Fever Dream: moody slow-moving jazz in a 50s “film noir” soundtrack style

    Gesualdo 6 – Lux Aeterna: saw them perform this live earlier in the year – contemplative choral work based on loss and grievance delivered with slow-moving beauty

  24. Basically any record by Bohren & der Club of Gore is just perfect last night listening.
    But if I had to pick just one album, I’d go for “Sunset Mission”. It’s … enveloping…

  29. This whole album, but this is a standout.

    “I got Willie on the radio
    A dozen things on my mind
    And number one is fleshing out
    These dreams of mine”

    • A classic slice of vintage Ry. I checked. It’s from 1977

      The Chicken Skin Band! What a combo!

      Guitar, Vocals – Ry Cooder, Alto Saxophone – Pat Rizzo, Drums – Isaac Garcia, Bass – Henry ‘Big Red’ Ojeda, Bajo Sexto – Jesse Poncé, Accordion – Flaco Jimenez, Vocals – Eldridge King, Terry Evans, Bobby King

  32. Well done,@Hamlet! You’ve really inspired a playlist to die for here. Tomorrow, I’ll actually put it together for us.

    Some labels are perfect for this kind of stuff. Blue Note and ECM spring to mind.

    A few personal favourites from me.

    Orquestra Baobab – Utrus Horas

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCeCAuXCmHU

    Ernest Ranglin – Below the Bassline

    Bell’Ambriana – Pino Daniele

    Anour Brahem – Le Pas du Chat Noir

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYvUyAlqpS0

    Fresu/Galliano /Lundgren- Que reste-t-il de nos amours?

    Joe the barman looks like he wants to get home…

    Here’s the definitive late-night song for broken-hearted romantics. Jimmy Webb wrote it and Radka Toneff and Steve Dobrogosz tuned it into a timeless classic. Less is so much more.

  33. Bop, Bebop, Post-Bop. All of that stuff is very much night music. Neon-lit streets, dingy smoky clubs full of dodgy characters and enigmatic women.

    (One of a series of excellent double CD compilations on the Rhythm & Blues record label. Seemingly only available as streams or downloads, currently)

  34. Two artists that definitely are best heard after midnight.

    Dream-like, tenetative, suggestive Stina Nordenstam.

    Another heavy duty night-owl. Get your oven gloves out before you touch this sizzling track from Tim Buckley. It’s seriously scorchio.

  35. Red Head Stranger – Wille Nelson, sparse, superb clean playing, gentle pace and one of the greatest voices in musical history.

    “I was the time of the preacher
    In the year of O-1”

  36. I’m not finished yet, but here is my Work in Progress. It’s a cracker!

    Meanwhile, it’s time for some midnight Canadians……

    All these songs provide perfect melancholic listening for the small hours.

    Canada shares long, dark winter nights with Scandinavia, so perhaps it is easier for me to find kindred spirits?

    Mary Margaret O’Hara

    Men I trust

    k.d. Laing

    Basia Bulat

    Feist

    And last, but not least, the magnificent The Cowboy Junkies

  37. Can “folk music” be late night music?

    Surely folk songs are about getting up early at dawn and meeting mysterious maidens in the mist?

    We’ve had John Martyn. Now I’m adding Lal Waterson and Oliver Knight from Once in a Blue Moon.

    Flight of the Pelican

    And some vintage James Yorkston and the Athletes – Tender to the Blues.

    • @Kaisfatdad – I’m not sure that the John Martyn choices above really cut the mustard as folk (notwithstanding that I still can’t see Hamlet’s choice).

      Small Hours is a kind of ambient dub, from an album which is a weird hybrid of jazz/ambient/folk/dub/rock, never repeated by JM and arguably, never bettered.

      So Much in Love with You is jazzzzzz through and through, from an album which is the jazzzzziest he ever produced.

      By chance, my two favourite LPs from his whole output…

      • I was playing Small Hours at work in my work area in the 2010s a colleague came in asked what I was playing “it sounds very modern”. When I replied it was from the 70s she was somewhat taken aback.

      • I can’t argue with you there @fitterstoke about them being folk music.

        They are superb. And fit in very well on this thread.

        As does JM’s contemporary, Nick Drake.

        Off piste. I just spotted this Canadian Nick Drake project. Ron Sexsmith is involved.

  41. There are some Was (Not Was) songs with a dreamy quality that fit this thread perfectly…

    Many songs by that talented Swede, Jose Gonzalez, are also perfect for the small hours.

    I have a big soft spot for the exquisite, sensual voice of Simone White.

    Not to mention her magnificent Brazilian namesake. Another lass who hits my sweet spot every time.

  42. “The Venus of the Soup Kitchen is waiting there for me
    And all us poor cripples who’ve been in the wars
    End up sleeping on her floor”

    Another Prefab Sprout tune with a very nocturnal feeling

  43. Belgian producer, the late, great Hector Zazou, suddenly came to mind.

    Many of his albums would fit in here. I’m going for his magnificent rebooting of traditional Corsican polyphony: Les Nouvelles Polyphonies Corses.

    From Amazon’s site. Customer Lawrence S. Urbon gives his opinion.

    “This is Traditional Corsican polyphonic singing, sampled, and then dubbed with extra instruments. What Hector Zazou did to come up with the mix is brilliant. Ryuchi Sakamoto plays some beautiful piano parts, Jon Hassell some gorgeous trumpet bits, but the stars are clearly the singers, the best in Corsica, including Petru Guelfucci and Patrizia Poli. A true musical work of art by one of the most inventive of producers.”

  44. Is there no one here who likes a little, mellow late-night reggae?

    I’m adding “a patient by the name of Gregory”

    (Isaacs) and Fisherman by the Congoes to the playlist.

    Bim Sherman, who recorded his album, Miracle, with produced Adrian Sherwood, is perhaps less well-known, but perfect in the moonlight.

    “An unplugged reggae album complete with acoustic guitars, strings, Indian percussion (courtesy of tabla virtuoso Talvin Singh) and only the most subtle smatterings of synth and electric bass.” (All Music)

      • Nice work, Mike! That got me thinking about The Big Easy (the film and the city) and the bayou,

        Here’s..

        …. a sweet song from the movie soundtrack sung by Dennis Quaid

        Aaron Neville – Tell it like it is

        Feufollet (a fine cajun band from Canada that Mr Costello was rightly rather keen about)

        The remarkable singer in that clip is Anna Laura Edmiston, who later left the band to become …a birth doula!

        “Right now, I’m at the very beginning of my career as a birth doula, which is a nonmedical person who assists a woman before, during or after childbirth, as well as her partner and/or family by providing information, physical assistance and emotional support.”

        https://theind.com/articles/11876/

  50. Brook Benton nabbed Rainy Night in Georgia at the beginning of this thread and did a very fine version.

    But if we are doing night music, Randy Crawford must get a mention. This version of Streetlife with a piano trio will do the job very nicely: her magnificent voice is in the spotlight.

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