This week’s song: “This Is The Sea” by The Waterboys.
We wear victory on our lapel but carry failure in our pocket. First we conceive of sin, and then we commit it. And then we try to move on, but we can’t. And so preordination takes hold, one thing soon leading to the next.
But eventually, all rivers run full to the sea.
“This Is The Sea” is a call to cast off those ancient weights and strike out anew. An absolution. A denouement. A fresh start. It’s a reminder that wherever you stand today is the other side of someplace, and it cries on your behalf, “I made it!”
Waterboy lead Mike Scott called This Is The Sea “the final, fully realised expression of the early Waterboys sound,” and Winter’s Tale devotees will recognize Mark Helprin’s canonical 1983 novel as a key source of inspiration.
Jackson Mead. Peter Lake. Beverly Penn. They’re all there:
i pictured a rainbow, you held it in your hands“The Whole of the Moon” — The Waterboys’ biggest hit — was “begun with a scribble on the back of an envelope on a wintery New York street.” Anthansor was still a few blocks away. As for “This Is The Sea,” you can practically see its thrumming fiddle floating across the Hudson from the Bayonne Marsh:
i had flashes but you saw the plan
i wandered out in the world for years while you just stayed in your room
i saw the crescent, you saw the whole of the moon
Nothing is random, nor will anything ever be, whether a long string of perfectly blue days that begin and end in golden dimness, the most seemingly chaotic political acts, the rise of a great city, the crystalline structure of a gem that has never seen the light, the distributions of fortune, what time the milkman gets up, the position of the electron, or the occurrence of one astonishing frigid winter after another. Even electrons, supposedly the paragons of unpredictability, are tame and obsequious little creatures that rush around at the speed of light, going precisely where they are supposed to go. They make faint whistling sounds that when apprehended in varying combinations are as pleasant as the wind flying through a forest, and they do exactly as they are told. Of this, one is certain.And yet, there is a wonderful anarchy, in that the milkman chooses when to arise, the rat picks the tunnel into which he will dive when the subway comes rushing down the track from Borough Hall, and the snowflake will fall as it will. How can this be? If nothing is random, and everything is predetermined, how can there be free will? The answer to that is simple. Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was is; everything that ever will be is - and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.
This week’s song: “Equal in My Tea” by Bhi Bhiman.
Credit to Pete Gray, who a couple of weeks ago sent out this music video for “Guttersnipe” (off of Bhiman’s upcoming second album, set for release on the 24th.) I checked out the first album, The Cookbook, on Saturday,this song jumped out, and I’ve since listened to it maybe a dozen times. You’re not alone if you hear a little Richie Havens or Nina Simone in his voice, and the Butch Cassidy fans among you will also be delighted by this ode to good teacher Etta Place.
Have a great week!
This week’s songs: “Christmas Time” by Jimmy McCracklin and “Christmas is the Time to Say I Love You” by Billy Squier:
Have a great week!
This week’s song: “Synthesizers” by Butch Walker and the Black Widows. Starts out slow (snapping) but builds into a raucous, bar room sing-along maybe a third of the way through. It’s from their lone album, The Spade; it has an Old 97s sort of thing going on. Might get stuck in your head for awhile after. Be forewarned.
This week’s song: “DUI” by Har Mar Superstar. Here’s the video.
This week’s song: “Shout” by the Dartmouth Aires, who have made it to the finale of NBC’s The Sing Off. Also worth a look: “Ignition (Remix)” and this Queen medley.
The Dartmouth Aires are IN THE TOP THREE! We’ve made it to The Sing-Off finale, and now the competition is out of our hands. It’s up to YOU to determine who wins the $200,000 prize and Sony recording contract! Now it’s your turn to take action:
Voting occurs from NOW until 9:00AM EST on Sunday, 11/27.
1: Go to http://www.nbc.com/sing-off/vote/ and select The Dartmouth Aires! You can vote up to 10 times from from any email address. Remember that other AOL or Yahoo account? How about your old college email address? If you’re super eager, how about creating a new one ;-)
2: Text the number “3” to 97979 to your heart’s content! You’ll receive a “Success” reply for the 1st text, but not the additional 9 you send…because you can vote up to 10 times per cell phone! If you text 11 times, you’ll also get a reply.
3: You can also call 1-877-6-SING-03 to vote for us. You guessed it - you can call up to 10 times from each cell phone or land line you’ve got!
Thank you ALL for the tremendous amount of support you’ve shown us over these past two months! The emails, Facebook posts, and texts have been incredible, and we’re so glad you’ve enjoyed our performances. So - go to town, rock the vote, and spread the word!
We’re in the process of casting our 480 votes…how will you cast yours?
Many, many thanks,
Dan
This week’s song: “Flamingo” by Fruit Bats. I put on Fruit Bats’ The Ruminant Band (2009) often when I don’t know what I really want to listen to, and it never disappoints. They just released their fifth album, Tripper, which you can listen to along three of their four other albums here. The first link also has their set from a Bowery Ballroom visit in late September.
Have a great week(end)!
PS: And “Dolly” from that the new album. Shades of “Walk of Life” for your Friday. Whoooboy.
This week’s song: “Pebble Beach” by The Gentleman Losers. A recent showing of the 2010 documentary Beyond This Place (trailer) featured live musical accompaniment supplied by Sufjan Stevens and Raymond Raposa, co-scorers of the film (and a childhood friend of director Kaleo La Belle, in Sufjan’s case.) Kaleo’s father, Cloud Rock La Belle, was an early adherent to the psychedelic hippie ideal, choosing a life of cycling and hallucinogenic enlightenment over parenthood, and the film is both a reconciliation and a post-mortem of that abandonment. The soundtrack follows those cues, and it brought to mind a couple of things: “Albatross” (Fleetwood Mac, pre-Stevie and pre-Lindsey!) and its pairing with the Sydney Harbour Bridge scene in Man on Wire, and The Gentleman Losers. Pensive, dreamy, and mnemonic, they’re all good fits if you find yourself a bit prone to introspection.
Beyond This Place already toured thru Brooklyn, Portland, and San Francisco last week, but any of you living in the LA area might still catch it tonight (with the live accompaniment) at the Vista Theater.
Have a great week!
This week’s song: “Hit or Miss” by Bo Diddley. There’s a guy, an Australian DJ and “digger”, on Soundcloud who goes by Decades / dL / davidL has a great little collection of soul, funk, reggae, hip hop and classic R&B tracks cleaned up and made available for download. Other favorites after a couple times thru: “In the Mood” by Tyrone Davis, “Music is My Sanctuary” by Gary Bartz (and Fonce Mizell), and “You’re the Boss” by Lavern Baker and Jimmy Ricks — this one’s a good lead-up to Halloween weekend. You might think you are ready for Jimmy Ricks’s voice. You are not ready for Jimmy Ricks’s voice.
And deserving of its own line: a rare, uptempo remix of Gang Starr’s “Love Sick”.
If the Bo Diddley track sounds familiar, you probably recognize it from “Buddy” on De La’s Three Feet High and Rising. Once you are done purusing the Decades backlog, go ahead and lose the rest of your night pouring through the whosampled database.
Have a great week!
El Michels Affair - This song’s for you
Sunday night listening.
This album was my soundtrack for summers in New York, I would recommend anyone living there (or anywhere else) pick it up.
This week’s song: good enough for a Ghostface sample, good enough for me.
Have a great week!
This week’s songs: “The Source” and “The Sun” by The Naked and Famous. I was complaining yesterday about the new M83 album and the number of times it downshifts from a driving, upbeat track to a super-slow, ambient, downer sans vocals. Nearly two dozen of these hot/cold alternations later, I’ve either lost track of time and place in the tracklist or I’ve developed some sort of heart arrythmia. By contrast, I think these successive tracks are a more successful, less schizophrenic example of an album slowing to catch its own breath.
That album is Passive Me, Aggressive You, TNF’s first studio release, and it pitted itself against Foster the People’s Torches as this year’s emblematic summer album. I thought about making one of its five+ anthems a song of the week, but I could never pick one over another. Now summer’s past, the days grow short, and the stark winter sun has crept back onto the horizon… just the chance for these two easily overlooked tracks to get their moment in the sun.
(If you like “The Source” more as a standalone instrumental piece than a leadup, you’ll also like some of Aphex Twin’s less terrifying tracks: here and here, but definitely NOT here. ALSO relevant: “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”.)
Have a great weekend!
This week’s song: “Capitol City” by Wilco. There’s one on every album: the Wilco track whose happily resigned melody belies the mopey misery professed by its lyrics. The first instance was A.M.’s “That’s Not the Issue” (i’m leaving, i’m leaving now / i’d say goodbye but i don’t know how / you’ve been sleeping with somebody new / but that’s not the issue), and they’ve only grown more peppy, more sadsack, and more idiosyncratic over time.
Being There has “Forget the Flowers” (with another nod to “Why Would You Wanna Live”)
don’t forget the flowers sunday, i know you will
displayers of affection and all good intentions, why don’t you just send me the bill //
i left you behind i know its been a long time, but i’m not over you
don’t forget the flowers someday, i hope i do
Summerteeth has “Summer Teeth”
one summer, a suicide
another autumn, a traveler’s guide he hits snooze twice before he dies
and every evening when he gets home
to make his supper and eat it alone
his black shirt cries
while his shoes get cold
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has “I’m the Man Who Loves You”
…that lay between the words i think on a page
i was meaning to send to
you, i couldn’t tell if it’d bring my heart
the way i wanted when I started
writing this letter to you
but if i could, you know i would
just hold your hand and you’d understand
i’m the man who loves you
A Ghost is Born’s would have to be “Hummingbird”
his goal in life was to be an echo
riding alone, town after town, toll after toll
a fixed bayonet through the great southwest to forget her
and Sky Blue Sky has “Hate It Here”
what am i gonna do when i run out of shirts to fold?
what am i gonna do when i run out of lawn to mow?
what am i gonna do if you never come home?
tell me, oh what am i gonna do?
We’re lifelong captives of unrequited love. We’re forever separated from the one we want. We’re blithely blind to how much life sucks. Yet we are buttressed by rambling banjos, consoling clarinets, and the encouraging march of a piano at every turn. These songs aren’t headlining tracks, but they are quintessential Wilco: plucky and morose and scarred and downtrodden and resilient. “Capitol City” is The Whole Love’s contribution. The new album is out on September 27th.
Have a great weekend!
This week’s song: “Fair Warning” (Oliver Remix) by Penguin Prison (which you can listen to and download here.) If you like some Patrick Wolf, you’ll like this Penguin Prison remix. It’s been on my running mix for the past few weeks and isn’t stale yet. Here is the original for comparison + his latest.
Honorable mention: “Can’t Hold Us” by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, ft. Ray Dalton. Runner-up because all I could think to note was its similarity to two Kanye tracks: “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”, which Macklemore namechecks a third of the way through, and “Homecoming.” Peerless insight, that. But the track grabs hold right away and includes both handclaps and na-na-na-nas.
Have a great week!
This week’s song: “Mind Your Manners” by Chiddy Bang. Crazy Town lawyered up the second they heard “I was caterpillared into a butterfly,” and the Charles Barkley line remains a turrible idea. Still, its been stuck in my head most of the summer thanks to the amazing hook furnished by Icona Pop. They are Swedish, which virtually guarantees that their first EP will be wonderful. See also: Icona Pop - Still Don’t Know.
And since I’ve been delinquent this past month, a few more:
- Blackalicious - Make You Feel That Way
- Townes Van Zandt - Man Gave Names to All the Animals
- Luke Bryan - Rain is a Good Thing (warning: terrible/wonderful country music… it’s about time someone stuck it to those city weatherman dicks!)
Have a good one!
