If you read Troy's 4-caws review of Florence & The Machine over at Kindness of Ravens, then you're probably already as struck by it as I was, but when a song gets repeated as much as "Dog Days Are Over" has in the last 24 hours, there's no point pretending that anything else is my song of the week. And Troy's great writing means I get to phone this one in.
It's pretty often that I retch over a white British woman wishing she was a black American soul singer, and it's almost as often that I completely forgive the charade when the songs transcend any of the singer's wishes to be someone else.
So, yeah...file under Amy Winehouse. But it's the sheer intensity of this song's chorus that makes it just an irresistible repeater. While the mandolin and harp textures are a great touch, this song would have had a better life as a disco burner a la "Don't Leave Me This Way" instead of with the hard drums. Maybe someone will remix it.
I don't know why I'm complaining, though. This song is a stunner. The insistence of its sound is an insistence to replay, something I've been more than happy to comply with.
The romance of the summer song is too great to ever let go, even though I'm not often in the kind of places where ordinary songs turn into definitions of one season of one year. But it's still in me to look for those shared experiences and cultural touchstones, even if I'm not sharing or touching them.
With that, here's the twelve songs that, if I were writing the world, would be the songs that remind everyone of the summer of '09 as much as they will me.
You song(s) of this summer? That's what God invented comments for.
Animal Collective, "Summertime Clothes" Do you live in an alternate universe? Lucky, because there, "Summertime Clothes" is THE song of the summer, with it getting played so much in so many places that everyone's sick of it, but it has enough hold to be a classic for years. In this world, it's just stuck in a purgatory of indie love/hate, assumed to be known by everyone and not known by enough. Anyway...it's perfect.
Phoenix, "Lisztomania" As summer a song as they come.
Beck, "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" Beck soundtracked your street swagger years ago with "E-Pro" and even "Devil's Haircut", but now he reworks a Dylan song into the soundtrack for the start of a roadtrip, those precious moments when you're still glad to be in the car and aren't sick of everyone else you're roadtripping with.
Mos Def, "Quiet Dog" In that alternate summer universe that Animal Collective rule, this is the song that rules the sweaty dance clubs, where the floor goes from throbbing to exploding.
Dirty Projectors, "Stillness Is The Move" A song that's as intense as it is dreamy sounds impossible, and yet...here it is. The chorus melody is like putting butter on sugar cake.
Of Montreal, "First Time High (reconstructionist remix of "An Eluardian Instance")" A wistful summer vibe is easy for a song that mentions "our last summer of independence", but when a sound matches up with the words, it's some kind of magic.
Camera Obscura, "French Navy" Forget for a moment that "French Navy" hits on all sorts of tweepop stereotypes, but with convergences of line and melody as blissful as "we met by the moon and the silvery lake, you came my way", they can suck their teddy bears' thumbs for all I care.
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, "Inspiration Information" Trust me: the hot, tight brass of this Shuggie Otis cover makes any sweltering heat feel like the refreshing cool of all the best beer commercials. Speaking of, can you grab me a beer while you're up?
Vetiver, "More Of This" I never ride a bike, so why does this song remind me of riding a bike in the welcome hot of a summer weekend day? I blame the magic of chill pop hooks.
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, "I Am Goodbye" Country, alt-country, Americana...whatever you want to call it, the constant is this: you can sing it when you're blitzed drunk.
Iron & Wine, "The Trapeze Swinger" It's a long song, but you're sitting on that dock with the fireflies and a cooler of beer and your supposed best friend--and ride home--heading off to the woods with the girl you just spent two hours chatting up. You're not going anywhere for a while. Enjoy.
The Decemberists, "Isn't It A Lovely Night" Instant pop song success: title a song with a phrase that fits an often occasion. Why yes...it is a lovely night. Thanks a lot, assholes.
Dirty Projector's aimless quirk generally misses me, but "Stillness Is The Move" hits the target...and then makes it explode in a slow-motion action movie kind of way. The stride of the chorus is as luxurious a melody line as you could hope to hear as their Talking Heads worship gives way to Tom Tom Club worship. The complex catchiness of this treads that exciting line of being just pop enough to be a hit, but just odd enough so that everyone would think it was completely unexpected if it was.
Add to all of that the lush keyboards coming in at the end, and you start to understand why the singers got excited enough by the song when we saw them a few weeks ago to get their microphones off the stands and dance around stage, breaking the cool they'd kept up to that point.
I should also mention that I first heard this song when Limo mailed it to me. I got in trouble the last time I didn't give him credit.
Dance music is like action movies: the elements of greatness seem so simple, and yet, even though there's plenty of people doing it enjoyably, there's precious few who can really nail them perfectly.
The Juan Maclean are (is?) kind of a frustration. For every near-perfect indie disco single like "Give Me Every Little Thing" or "Happy House", there's two or three plodding piano pieces or electronic fuck-arounds.
"No Time" doesn't approach the genius of the other singles, but it still scratches the dancefloor and pop itches real good like. John Maclean and Nancy Whang (LCD Soundsystems keyboardist) give this song their best "Don't You Want Me" polish and never let up the beat, but it is--like every other good dance pop songs--the quick stabs of hooks that keep it going: "Shut your mouth" and the sublime cheesiness of "Everybody need loving". The now-standard tambourine and woozy synth climax don't hurt either.
An unhealthy obsession with my own personal history, my little song-of-the-week project and lala.com all collide with the Fine Tune Friday Lala playlist. You may not be able to hear all of them in their entirety, but you can spend hours of time with my immaculate taste in music.
What better way to end a week of shitty weather that puts everyone in a bad mood than another day of shitty weather that keeps everyone in a bad mood? The perfect antidote is a knee-buckling slice of gorgeousness, a true moment song custom made for headphones, where you don't even regret the subsequent tinnitus.
The grey moods of the early song give way to pure beauty at 2:54, where the lush peak turns your feelings of the song's theme from Twilight to Let The Right One In. I've listened to this song 7 times in a row, and when it starts up again, I can't stop it. This song will drive legions to the vampire recruiting offices in strip malls the world over.
I love it when bands deliver on hype or promise. It was fun in the eighties to see bands like U2, REM, The Cure and Depeche Mode get to a point in their career where they were huge, but they just needed to come up with that one album with a handful of songs that climbed up the charts and took them from popular to superstars, to come up with those right songs at exactly the right time.
It still happens now, but on a much smaller level. Animal Collective and TV On The Radio didn't become superstars, but they were still able to take their signature sounds and find the people who wanted the style with a little less quirk. It's that thrill of watching a band honing their sound to something that you know they love and makes more people see the brilliance of their work. Grizzly Bear, "While You Wait For the Others" (2009)
I always liked Grizzly Bear okay, but none of the songs connected with me for longer than the song. But this song's hit was immediate and lasting. The trade off between the swooning leads and the lush harmonies of the backing vocals in the chorus are about as knee-buckling a musical moment as I've had in a long while, and it's only heightened by the middle bit that echoes the chorus's harmonizing with even more decadence, as though the band couldn't resist going back for more, diving all the way in. The stabs of guitar add a perfect sour to the melody's sweet and you end up with one of the most divine songs of the year.
I'll be at the show at the 930 tomorrow (thanks, Christian). Anyone else?
Note: posted late thanks to Friday train riding and Saturday heavy drinking.
Brilliant George Michaels sample. Saturday morning coffee spin'age.These mash ups never get old. I feel like Jay Z is the most remixable artist alive. Lil Wayne Feat. Kanye West, T.I. & Jay-Z, 'U Ain’t Neva Gottz Ask' (2009) download mp3
I try to reserve this weekly spot for something new, but I have to be true to the tune that moved me the most that week. And there is no question that this was it.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, "Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!" (2008)
A friend of mine has a favorite question: what strikes you most when you first hear a song, the music or the lyrics? I'm a music man, but only because lyrics take longer to unearth. But when the words are gems, they can end up creating hooks that are more haunting than any melody.
And this is where I've found myself in the last two weeks with "Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!": haunted. I've been an insane man for it the last couple of weeks, with lines just on the tip of my tongue, and only a tenuous hold on social normality keeping them repeated in my head instead of muttered out loud.
I'm in awe and envy of Nick Cave's blunt language. I'm usually attracted to puns and bittersweetness, not the crude force of words like Cave's, where the world is being grabbed at instead of requested.
Lazarus, 0:35: He came from New York City, man, but he couldn't take the pace. He thought it was like a dog-eat-dog world. But he went to San Francisco, spent a year in outer space with sweet little San Franciscan girl.
...where "sweet" sounds so sleazy. There's no grasping for description here. The girl is San Franciscan, and the old-fashioned cliche of "dog-eat-dog" is fine for describing New York.
Larry may be Christ, or maybe not. Maybe this is the second coming or a fact-finding mission or maybe it's just some guy. The whole song is both hinted and blatant, treading the waters of complete blasphemy and then diving deep without anyone really knowing what the hell's going on.
Lazarus, 2:38: I mean, he...he never asked to be raised up from the tomb. I mean, nobody really ever actually asked him to forsake his dreams.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, fame finally found him.
I'm addicted to those words. Completely addicted. A maybe-Christ totally losing hold in a blame game, followed shortly by fame, followed immediately by complete ruin.
And through all of it, in the one moment that strays from the main riff, the one part that dares to introduce a chord change, there's the line that takes the non-commitment of agnosticism and delivers it with the fire of complete conviction:
Well, I don't know what it is, but there's definitely something going on upstairs.
