Start Your iPods

After missing a week of iPoddery, thanks to sunny Miami, Start Your iPods returns!

Shuffle-up five songs, describe them to us so that we may learn of their pros and of their cons.

  1. Wye Oak - The Alter. From their latest record. This is one of the songs that doesn't sound much like the Wye Oak I love. The up-front keyboards are the biggest change, the absence of her howling guitar is another, and the general mellow vibe sets it apart ever further. But it's still a nice tune, and it's growing on me.
  2. Portishead - Silence. A long loud kindof monotonous two minutes followed by a tiny bit of singing, then back to the monotonous stuff again. Doesn't do a lot for me.
  3. Pavement - Perfume V. Hard for me to believe that this album is almost twenty years old - and I still don't know the names of all the songs on it. This has always been the "She's got the radio active and it makes me feel OK" song, to me. Love it, though it feels a little lost, out of context.
  4. The Antlers - Atrophy. Someone's whispering over a very quiet piano. At two minutes, the piano gets a tiny bit louder. Some faint singing is just barely audible... four minutes to go.... At the four minute mark, it dissolves into something that sounds like a chorus of rattlesnakes. 5:20, now repeating electronic chiming sounds. 1:00 to go.... more singing, just barely audible, completely unintelligible. I give up.
  5. Vetiver - Through The Front Door. Kinda retro-folk-rock. This is a fairly typical Vetiver song: mellow, spare, good for nodding along to. I play a lot of Vetiver in my car, but I don't think I could name a song or an album - it all just washes over me, pleasantly.

OK, you go.

8 thoughts on “Start Your iPods”

  1. Cris

    1. Orbital – Quality Seconds
    Kind of like a less intense version of a Ministry riff. Listenable because they keep it short (85 seconds.)

    2. Danzig – Mother
    I pretty well wouldn’t touch heavy metal with a 666 foot pole until I was in college, so I missed out on a lot of classics the first time around. That’s fine, because getting away from the adolescent posturing and all the emphasis on image that kids focus on has allowed me to listen to this stuff as music. What continues to surprise me, as I delve into Black Sabbath and Judas Priest and Dio and Danzig and what-have-you, is how safe it sounds in retrospect. Metal has always cultivated a reputation of menace, but a couple of decades later it just sounds like rock music, nothing to fear here. This could have been a BOC song from the 70s. Competently executed, deservedly a hit.

    3. Neil Hannon – So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
    From the Hitchhiker’s Guide film soundtrack. Sounds like the kind of mock-extravaganza Eric Idle used to produce. Mostly harmless.

    4. Carl Orff – Veris leta facies
    The brooding opening to the “Primo Vere” portion of Carmina Burana. Orff makes a lot of surprising musical choices in this masterwork. Here he takes a paean to spring with lyrics speaking of laughter and gaiety, and wraps it in a somber dirge. I often ignore this one just because it’s so quiet, but the sparse texture is really kind of compelling if you sit down with it.

    5. Juno Reactor – Conga Fury
    Techno is an inherently repetitive genre, so any interest it can generate usually comes from a variety of timbres. I’ll give this one lots of credit for employing actual drums (as the title implies), reportedly played by a South African percussion ensemble.

  2. platosearwax

    Welcome back!

    1. John Lennon – Imagine
    Do I really have to talk about this song? Is there anything to say about it that hasn’t been said a million times? Always liked this song though, and still do.

    2. Gang of Four – Not Great Man
    Oh, I do so love me some Gang of Four. I am sad that I never got into them until just 10 years ago or so. I missed so many years of enjoying them. For my money, one of the most exciting white funk bassists around is Dave Allen here, who also founded Shriekback another favorite of mine.

    3. The Airborne Toxic Event – Happiness is Overrated
    I don’t even know what category to put these guys into. All I know is I really like them. They seem to be part of the angular movement in Britain but not really. His vocals give it a theatrical edge. I think I might spin the whole CD now.

    4. Eric Cartman – Come Sail Away
    This is so awesome. The perfect song for that character. Have I told you all that my step-mother’s sister, who sings for Brian Wilson by the by, is married to the current drummer of Styx? Proud fact.

    5. Foetus – Calamity Crush
    Ah, Foetus. I was really into him in the 80’s and still buy all his stuff, though he has gotten less…something over the years. This is not the best song to start with if you haven’t heard anything. This would be a good one start with: Descent into the Inferno

    Have a good one everybody!

  3. Rob Caldecott

    iTunes, how I hate thee. Redeem yourself with 5 of your most spiky treats.

    1. Magazine – Shot By Both Sides
    Brilliant start! Punky classic ahoy! The vocals are a little rough but the music is fabulous with a great riff throughout. Haven’t heard this for a long time.

    2. Sandi Thom – I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)
    A modern MySpace sensation for a good 5 minutes, now forgotten and probably working in a call centre. Nostalgic lyrics harking back to a simpler time when apparently everyone was a lot happier, even though Sandi Thom wasn’t even an itch in her daddy’s pants.

    3. Florence + The Machine – You’ve Got The Love
    Great cover song ruined by wall-to-wall back-to-back airplay on UK radio. Great pipes on her even though she is fast looking like a crystal meth addict. Slow down Florence … you don’t have to play *every single UK festival* you know.

    4. Godspeed You Black Emperor! – F A (Infinity)
    A whopping 18 minutes of mind-bending, slow-burning progtastic beauty. I heard it in the 2002 film ’28 Days Later’ and had to have it. You don’t have to be stoned to really enjoy it but it helps. Video above is shortened by 10 mins.

    5. Kim Carnes – Bette Davis Eyes
    Almost-forgotten-about 80s pop song from the husky voiced Ms Carnes. Still sounds like a hit apart from the fucking awful electronic drums that ruin the song about 1:30m in.

    You win this time iTunes, but you’re on borrowed time.

  5. The Modesto Kid

    Aw man, “Not Great Men” is such a fantastic track.

    I recently added a bunch of new music. Let’s see if any of it shows up in the shuffle.

    1. Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra takes us back to the good old days with “Moten Stomp” (named for the Moten brothers who wrote the piece iiuc). Happy-making.

    2. A different set of old days is represented by Billy Murray singing Charlie Poole’s “Come Take a Trip in my Airship (and we’ll visit the man in the moon)”. Kind of corny but cute. Relatively new to my collection but not part of the most recent batch of additions.

    3. Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians want you to know she’s “Just Another Bubble”… and scanning down it appears my shuffler has gotten stuck in the Robyn Hitchcock groove, a fun groove but not what I’m looking for right now, so I’m going to step out of character, break the roolz (sorry) and start over.

    1. The Band is singing “It Makes No Difference”, at their historic Last Waltz. This mournful song is one of the real highlights of this concert — it captures more than anything else they played that night, the end of The Band. The guitar solo at 5 minutes in is mind-blowing. The sax solo that follows it is a bit unnecessary; but then the guitar comes back in and you’re back on cloud 9 for the finish.

    2. My favorite Leonard Cohen is probably his first record. Here he is singing “So Long Marianne”. Really shows off everything good about him without being overbearing the way his later stuff can be. Really nice backup vocals too.

    3. Stevie Wonder wants you to know that “You Met Your Match” when you played with his affection. He’s gonna show you how to love somebody, like you never been shown. He’s twice as cool; his love light’s burning for you. Woo!

    4. Strawberry Mind is totally, almost narcotically mellow, singing about “Suspiria the Fall.” Is that a hurdy-gurdy?

    5. Homegas knows how to make a nice, not-quite-authentic old-timey sound. “Busted Brown” is a fun take on “I got shoes”. Sweet harmonica and banjo.

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