Beyond the inevitable or faux nostalgia, the first half of this video is several fold more complicated than many bottom of the barrel full length films these days. I realize that statement makes it seem like I listen to Elvis Costello and the Unattractives, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

How these guys could ever be huge under any circumstances has always been odd to me. well, the english and their dance rock. Their NME created arch-nemeses Jesus Jones to me had the more interesting production and an album packed with alt radio ready dance tracks, while EMF had ????? and Profit!. For both EMF and Jesus Jones, I liked the second singles better than the first smashes. This was EMFs second single (only hit 18) after “Unbelievable” went to number 1. An early 90’s fave for the grandparents in the audience.

Sugary-spun shuffling psychedelia. I always post songs from this album (The Stone Roses) with the admonishment that this is one of the nastiest albums that you don’t ever think is that nasty because the sound is so lazy hazy summery drug Sunday. This is one of the most obviously nasty of the bunch. King Monkey spreads the hate with a matter-of-fact-smirk on his face. Think this is the Bad Acid at Woodstock:The Next Generation with Ian Brown, lead singer, as the Jean Luc Picard of Manchester hippie pub club drug thug.

What can be said, that has been said better somewhere else. Sometimes no matter how great the critical adulation or reevaluation or geekster pop love for the Pet Sounds era Beach Boys, some will always consider them ultradorks and deeply insufferable. They are the ultimate in wonder bread, and some will refuse to appreciate. To them, I say check it before you wreck it. Not all people that don’t like the Beach Boys are crusty bumsicles, but some are, and they are in such a way that you know their taste in things is sad. What can I say? They isolate their heads and stay in their safety zones! What can you say that won’t make them defensive??? They come on like their peaceful but inside they’re so uptight. They trip through the day and waste all their thoughts at night.

To bad Brian Wilson super genius wrote a song to burst their bubbles. This isn’t the usual version of this alternate-lyric-ed original take on “I Know There’s An Answer”, it’s an alternate alternate version.

I’m not sure if I was hearing the John Prine original or some more modern country take on this laid back lemonadey summertime country rambler. I do enjoy the Alabama 3 (Sopranos theme song purveyors’) version (here at hype machine). I heard someone doing a version while tooling around the AM dial on a sports talk station that after they sign off with the sports seems to go some kind of country. I thought the song would make a great theme song for a long lost 70s or 80s PI show, you know about the ex-cop or con, or vietnam vet, or both or two of the three, who has a small PI business, or maybe is a drifter doing odd jobs, solving crimes all over the country, making the ladies happy (natch) but always doing his own thing. It is the kind of show that I would keep checking Hulu to see if they had added yet, and I’d be a little nervous if it were as good as I remembered, but deep down I would still love it no matter what.

Spoon are inconceivably good in a package that is so seemingly demure and lacking in superfluous flourishes that I am astounded. In reality, this means they are usually quite entertaining and listenable, but they rarely floor me. This, from Kill the Moonlight, is a one of those rarer, wonderful times.

I find Radiohead’s In Rainbows to be an exquisite collection of songs but one that gives me pause. I find them to be wonderful, yet with the semblance of odds and ends, and essentially this is what the album is. Many of the songs seem perfect yet half finished, opaque, secretive. Out of all of Radiohead’s work, In Rainbows most reminded of the My Iron Lung EP, a collection of non-album tracks circa The Bends. If I compare In Rainbows to the last Radiohead album, Hail To The Thief, I feel HTTT is both much more cohesive but also not as good. I wonder if the band is somehow losing steam or energy, the dissipation of which still leaves a residue of genius and wonder. I guess I am thinking these things because I wonder if a time will come when all Radiohead will have all but evaporated into warm and elusive half tones and murmuring (tasteful and great, though). I find that “All I Need” reaches a clarity that is sublime.

I really don’t like this song. I especially hate the elision of the syllable for the word “to” in the “too late to apologize” line. There is something to be said for it’s particular pop sensibilities. One, it is a total smash. Two, it makes hay with a relatively depressing yet deeply true-ringing sentiment. The fact that there exists some time x whereby an apology y equals 0. The reasons for such mathematical truth are numerous. I believe in some cases that y=0 holds, while it is the perception of x that can be defined by some f(y). Either way, I’m slightly shocked that it took Madonna and JT to somehow wash off the Timbaland magic dust. I can’t tell if I want him to recede even further from the radio or keep dropping hits.

I know we just did a Ladytron, but this song has been on my mind lately. I’ve just gotten their new one, Velocifero, but haven’t had a chance to listen. This is from their top-to-bottom super solid Witching Hour. The album strikes one as “pretty good” on first listen, but it is just so listenable it has to get a knock up a level.

Baxter Dury is the seemingly reclusive son of pub punk fave Ian Dury (Blockheads). Considering the quality here on this poppier, more direct version of his psychedelic and hazy musings, I am sad that he’s only available on import and possibly out of print. He’s got a MySpace page (well a couple, here’s the new one and the old one). The new one has some lovely and wonderful demos. The thing that made me most sad is that this is the kind of artist that Pop Renaissance would either love or tell us about, but he just doesn’t seem to be around. I think Seitz would dig this too.

This song is part of the continuing series of songs that I have no right listening to, liking, or blogging. Ladytron write electro music that is not IDM at all. Usually it’s kind of creepy, like The Knives, and sometimes it is a little Goldfrappy, but it is not Uncanny-y. Usually.

I heard Ghosts on WOXY about two weeks ago, while completely immersed in some other activity, and barely registered the song. I remember thinking, how interesting and how unlike Ladytron. Then it was out of my mind. That was until waking up this morning with about half of the chorus in my head inexplicably. It took me about an hour of wracking my brain to come up with the rest of the chorus, and then Google took over.

After a couple of listens, I figured out why this song won’t leave my head. First there are the lyrics of the chorus: “There’s a ghost in me … who wants to say I’m sorry …. doesn’t mean I’m sorry”. How odd and intriguing. Lyrically, the chorus is hypnotic and just strange enough to get wrapped on auto-loop in my poor little brain. The music at the beginning is really good as well - others have pointed out that it sounds right out of Dr. Who. It works. Finally, this song is being released as a single along with three mixes, and you can find those using the internetz the usual way, and at least two are quite quite interesting.

Update: This song is permanently stuck in my head. I just sang it for fifteen minutes straight in the shower … and I don’t sing in the shower. Need help!!!!

A song that seems familiar, but seems like it missed the Classic Rock stations when I was growing up (too new, 1981, I guess) so now it is sneaking into the cheese rock formats that don’t play too much Crüe and still play stuff like Steve Miller, etc. This song is Song of the Day mostly because I knew that Girl Talk was sampling something in the song “Friday Night” where he overlays Juelz Santana riffing on The Waitress “I Know What Boys Like” from the remix of Chris Brown’s “Run It” on top of something. We in turned sampled that bit from our Jonah Goldberg battle rap. So I heard “Ah, Leah” on the radio this weekend, and now I know where the cool part comes from (1:37 to 1:53 in the vid below). The song is relatively slick AOR for 1981. The woman in the video does, as someone mentioned on YouTube, look like she’s trying to poop.

The best part is that I allowed serendipity to identify the sample for me, although Wikipedia ruins all the fun/saves the day and has the entire Night Ripper sample list (it is extensive).

Haunting spaced out drug rock elegy. The recording isn’t too bad on this version. Takes about 2.5 minutes to get started, but what I find totally unastounding is that there are some choads that just kind of chat the whole time. You know, the people that have an infinite amount of bar time and an infinite amount of shows that they see, and they go to bars on show night to just drink at the bar and blabber during some totally awesome song. From their latest, In the Future.

Love these two from Beggar’s Banquet. The Rock and Roll Circus (live) version of “Parachute Woman” is decent and on YouTube, but it loses an edge, as opposed to gaining one as many songs do. Just some skeezy blues (the former) and some Dylan apery (the latter), but quite good.

Since this song and another wonderful track from the same album, Holiday, are not on the Tuber but were both used by (genius) Errol Morris in commercials for Southern Comfort, I will link those ads, and you can get a small taste of absolute pop genius. Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt specializes in a hard to describe feeling that touches melancholy and nostalgia. I can only describe this feeling as suburban high school nights driving around in your care with nothing better to do but think about that someone. Obviously, if this isn’t your formative experience, the feeling will likely be attached to somthing else. From the way Morris uses the songs in the ads, you can tell he senses the same feeling in Merritt’s work. These earlier tunes have a Casiotone taste, although these two are the lushest on the album and not as chintzy.

The ad “Young at Heart” uses
Desert Island

The ad “Bridesmaids” uses Strange Powers

Billy Pilgrim hooks up Song of the Day with a taste of Cloud Cult:

Cloud Cult is one of my favorites, on disc and live. They have a
complex, polyrythmic semi-avant sound that mixes prog and pop, with
just a hint of Sonic Youth, overlaid with Craig Minowa’s plaintive
vocals. It’s a surprising sound that grows on you, and they
translate amazingly well live, if being a fair bit more aggressive.
The song structures are…well, non-traditional, to say the least.

But for my money, there’s not enough rock bands sporting teh string
instruments. Not to mention the stereo painters that perform with them.

“Transistor Radio” is a bittersweet reminiscence about the
inspiration of how our relatives can give us hope, inspiration and
determination. It’s a quietish song, but they had me hooked from the
first time Craig punctuates the lyric with a little ‘yep!’ And he
keeps on doing it.

“what comes at the end” is from the album Advice From The Happy
Hippopotamus and starts off with a grinding little guitar, but
settles back before the lyrics start, and after the first verse, the
chorus starts to bleed a little pop happiness on the song.

Cloud Cult self-releases all their music, preferring to operate
outside of the record industry, despite being one of the most played
bands on college radio. They record their music on Minowa’s farm,
which is self-sustaining, and when they tour they purchase renewable
energy offsets for the power they use in the stage show. I’ve seen
‘em three times now, and their shows are joyous and life-affirming,
and they sell paintings that are done by the artists while the band
plays.

Go see ‘em when they hit the road. No excuses Brando.

http://www.cloudcult.com/about.htm

If this song doesn’t suggest an exceptionally awesome, hypothetical episode of Miami Vice, I don’t know what does. 6:25 of totally cheesasm. Was in the mix on the lunch hour Old School jam. I think some of you know what I’m talking about.

Sort of the ultra-earnest British Isles jangle pop that they can pull of across the pond but comes out all emo on this side of the water. This song builds from OK to pretty good, I think. This new single is definitely slicker than their debut Sing the Greys, which is worth a listen. The new album comes out in April.

The Raveonnettes with their wall of sound-shoegaze-Jesus and Mary Chain-girl group aesthetic seem right up my alley, but I’ve never had room in my life for them. This being said, I like their latest Lust Lust Lust, and find that this song goes from OK to really good when the twinkly bits come up a couple of minutes in.

Kind of like the polite flipside of the Stones “Satisfaction”. Kinks songs are popping up the last few years all over commershes and stuff, but I don’t sweat it, I hope they are making bank. Totally classic.