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Jonathan Richman, ‘I Was Just a Piece of Frozen Sky Anyway’
At 74, Jonathan Richman still taps into the child’s-eye innocence that has guided his songs ever since he led the proto-punk Modern Lovers in the 1970s. Now, half a century later, he’s contemplating mortality. On the title track of an album due in July, “Only Frozen Sky Anyway,” he sings, “When I make my transition, I want everyone to know I just changed position.” He strums his acoustic guitar backed by Tommy Larkins on hand drums and — from the Modern Lovers and Talking Heads — Jerry Harrison, who orchestrates the transition with wriggling, fluttering synthesizer lines that ascend heavenward.