Random five, describe!
- Miles Davis - Blues By Five. A long one, but a classic. A snappy start to things on this dark and dreary Monday.
- Department Of Eagles - Waves Of Rye. This is such a good album. It's the kind of album that makes me wish the band had more albums I could buy. Roughly based in folk, but heavily tweaked-out with electronics - reminds me of Grandaddy, or St Vincent.
- Black Star - Brown Skin Lady. Hip-hop, laid-back and funky. This record has been growing on me, slowly, over many years.
- Sea And Cake - Neighbors and Township. It's from their brand-new record, so I'm not really familiar with this one yet. But, this sounds like it could have been on any of S&C's recent albums. It's too new to have a YouTube link, so here's a link to their cover of Bowie's "Sound And Vision".
- Elliott Smith - The Last Hour. A slow solo-acoustic tune - bittersweet, of course. And as with most Smith songs, the lyrics seem prophetic in retrospect.
What you got?
Spent the morning in the ER with the daughter who got a finger in her eye at school. An hour wait, antibiotics and an eyepatch, out in hour and a half and it cost 7 bucks (for kids all you pay for is material costs). Damn socialized medicine!
Random five today from my phone, which has 937 songs (still loading up my 32GB card), a mixture of only new stuff and about 150 80’s and 90’s songs.
1. The Sounds – Won’t Let Them Tear Us Apart
Swedish band who do some wonderful powerpop. Their latest adds some synth and dance elements but this track is more old style catchy guitar pop, with some killer bass. At least I love the way the bass and bass drum bounce.
2. The Waterboys – The Whole of the Moon
One of my all time favorite songs, one that gives me chills pretty much every time I hear it. Just a wonderful bit of pop and very impressive if the legend that it was written on the back of a napkin after Mike Scott’s girlfriend asked him if it was difficult to write a song, is true. No matter, just a lovely song.
3. Van Halen – Stay Frosty
A new one. Like all American boys I grew up liking metal. And like a lot I grew out of it, not that that is something that one needs to do or that it is necessary to grow out of metal because there is nothing wrong with good metal. Anyhoo, from that old junior high era I have two major guilty pleasures as I guess you could call them: Rush and Van Halen. Still like both of them. This song was actually one of the better ones off the new album. It would have fit right in on Diver Down. Always a pleasure to hear Eddie shred.
4. Swans – The Seer Returns
Brilliant new stuff from Swans, pretty much taking everything they ever tried to do, from punishing noise to drone, all of it with a sinister, punishing beat and tone. This is what Gira has been trying to do his whole career and if you have any taste at all for this kind of post rock/old school no-wave this will hit the sweet spot. This song is only 6 minutes, the main song called The Seer is 32 and it is a very weird and scary thing to have playing in your ears on a bus full of people on the way to work.
5. Wilco – The Whole Love
Harder to get a more jarring transition from the last bleak, creepy, dirge than this wonderfully Beatles-ish Wilco song. Lovely song, and I have to say their new one is my favorite of theirs in a while. Some of theirs after the brilliant Yankee Hotel Foxtrot just didn’t click with me for some reason. But this album does and I have it on heavy rotation lately.
That was nice.