335_songs raze a song a day, for the rest of the year (and maybe music_you_should_hear, if you haven't heard it already). 1. talk talk // i believe in you from "spirit of eden" (1988) this is an edit of the album version; the song loses a little something without being so long and winding, but the video is so effective in its beautiful simplicity, i think it adds a little something back to compensate for what's missing. from an album ahead of its time, and completely divorced from time. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHUDNZD5N88 130131 ... PeeT oh wow! it is hard to believe this was recorded in 1988. it sounds as though it was made today. solitude stumbles into necessary social grace. have played it several times and will continue. 130131 ... raze glad you like it! 130131 ... raze 2. bowerbirds // silver clouds from the album "upper air" (2009) i'm indebted to my friend travis for introducing me to this band and album a while back. this song stands out by a hundred proverbial miles for me. for whatever reason, i don't hear a lot of songs that make me think to myself, "i wish i wrote this." i kind of wish i'd somehow written this one. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLEK7_1f-ck 130201 ... PeeT floating 130201 ... raze 3. field music // in context from the album "tones of town" (2007) field music are a band from sunderland, england, made up of a small cast of revolving players, the core of which has always been brothers, singers, songwriters, producers, and multi-instrumentalists david and peter brewis. all four of their full-length albums are well worth investigating if you're into music that is at once catchy and twitchy, full of pretty-but-jagged melodies, unexpected dynamic shifts, and tricky time signatures. dan lowe's music video for this song features possibly the coolest use you'll ever see of a black sharpie in an unbroken tracking shot, with a great payoff image at the end. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBqx9Tpmj-U 130202 ... PeeT i love the free flow of the sharpie in a speeded-up film. it's like there is a secret to creativity being revealed, which the soundtrack so generously provides. good choice, west. i have taken a black sharpie to vulnerable areas, tagging them with words of affirmation, like today's: fall in love not in line 130202 ... amy adaptability that was nuts. marvelous and talented precious nuts. 130202 ... raze 4. laura nyro // tomcat goodby from the album "new york tendaberry" (1969) hugely influential but largely unappreciated in her lifetime, laura nyro's songs were bigger hits in the hands of other artists than they were in her own. too idiosyncratic to become a household name, she blazed her own creative trail, tossing elements of jazz, blues, gospel, brill-building style new york pop, show tunes, and soul into a blender, and then spitting it all out as something uniquely her own. in some of her songs i hear traces of tori amos and kate_bush, before either one of them existed as commercial artists. "new york tendaberry" has to be her masterpiece. a loose love letter to her native city, and in many ways her most personal and adventurous work, the album was recorded over a year-long series of intense evening sessions, with laura making the trip to the recording studio most nights by horse-drawn carriage through central park. "laura was very theatrical," producer/engineer roy halee said in a 2002 interview to coincide with the album's reissue. "she would come to the studio dressed for the evening in a beautiful gown. and each night, she would have dinner brought in, and we would sit next to the console, eating by candlelight." the songs are built around laura's piano and voice, with halee and arranger jimmie haskell adding embellishments based on her instructions. she couldn't read or write music notation, so laura communicated the arrangements she wanted through colours. "she would say, 'here i would like some light blue, then go more pink over here,'" said haskell, who wrote and conducted the string arrangements in may 1969. "i interpreted light blue as middle-to-high instruments, playing softly. pink would be those instruments playing louder. if she went up to white, it was the loudest, brassiest sound i could think of." laura often spoke of the album being her "heart and soul", and when it was finally delivered to columbia records in the fall of 1969, friends sent her cards congratulating her as if she'd given birth to a child. this particular song goes on the list of things that never fail to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up. the way she howls "my man" at the very end, holding the last note with such force that her voice breaks...gets me every time. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty1mKQ7rvDM 130203 ... PeeT classic 130203 ... raze 5. radiohead // bloom from the album "the king of limbs: live from the basement" (2011) i don't know if it's my favourite radiohead album, but i like "the king of limbs". some have described it as cold and distant. i think that's part of what appeals to me about it. the music feels more austere than it should, given all that's going on between the grooves, and i've always been drawn to things you have to work a little to get into. art that doesn't give up its secrets too easily. the opening track "bloom" typifies the album. a lot of organic and electronic sounds swim around a skittering beat, and thom yorke's voice floats on top, but it's a sound that keeps you at arm's length while inviting you to walk around inside of it. this live performance, on the other hand, takes that chilly monochromatic atmosphere i like so much, and smashes it into life until it bleeds warm colour from its icy veins. or, said a simpler way: goddamn, this is good shit. it gets really tasty when things kick into high gear at the three minute mark. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2084nQbmvk 130204 ... PeeT brilliance at work; radiohead represents the intelligent convolution of musical imitlessness. 130204 ... PeeT limitlessness 130204 ... raze hey, i like imitlessness. it's like a lack of an absence of information management information technology. and what a brainful that was to type... 130204 ... the evil angel on my shoulder should have picked one there. lack or absence. you can't have both now. blow something up! 130204 ... raze 6. first aid kit // emmylou from the album "the lion's roar" (2012) i am not a fan of modern country music. at all. there's just no fire there for me. i don't think you can even honestly call much of it country music anymore; it's just a different permutation of pop music, with pedal steel guitar and a slightly different set of narrow production touches and subject matter. this song, though...this one is gorgeous. it does something to me emotionally that i can't really put into words. first aid kit is, at root, swedish sisters johanna and klara söderberg, who write their own songs (generally without any outside interference), play their own instruments (guitar and keyboards, respectively), and were 21 and 19 years old when this album was released. some people were born to sing together — john lennon and paul mccartney. don and phil everly. ira and charlie loudermilk. paul simon and art garfunkel. gillian welch and david rawlings. i think these two can safely be added to the list. and the scary thing is, their best songs have probably yet to be written. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PC57z-oDPLs 130205 ... PeeT i love this song for several reasons. 1. the girls are beautiful. 2. they are doing it. 3. they are who they are. i first heard about them from their fleet foxes cover. music_you_should_hear thanks west. this blathe be de bomb mon. 130205 ... raze the evil angel on my shoulder was right! his explosive energy was just misplaced. i'm glad you're diggin' it. i'm going to try and make every song one that i would want to take to a deserted island with me, and not repeat any of the artists throughout the year, while hitting as many different sounds and emotions as i can. should be interesting to see if i can pull that off and keep it consistently diverse... and i agree that they're beautiful, both of them. there's something really pure and unaffected about them. i really hope they keep doing their thing. 130205 ... raze 7. delarose & asora // wooden toe from the album "agony part 1" (2000) scott herren is a man of many projects (some past, some present, some pseudonyms, others more collaborative in nature). as much as i like a lot of his prefuse 73 work — "one word extinguisher" in particular — if i could only take one of his albums with me on a long train ride, it would be this one. alas, there is no "agony part 2". listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6of11ElOQI 130206 ... the evil angel on my shoulder that should be "delarosa", not "delarose". you misplaced the vowel you wanted. i'm baking it in the oven now. that'll teach you. 130206 ... PeeT makes me think of a soundless nyc. 130206 ... raze aye, the soundless city... 130206 ... raze 8. stina nordenstam // under your command from the album "dynamite" (1996) i have my good friend lucas (also known as the amazing flying raspberry) to thank for introducing me to this swedish songstress nearly a decade ago. the best point of entry into stina's world is probably the album that comes before this one, "and she closed her eyes". that's the first i heard of her, and it's a great album. but this is the one that really hooked me for good. it's strange, dark, and deep as a well. on some songs she sounds a little like rickie lee jones in hell, the childlike quality of her voice adding an extra dimension to some disquieting material. i like the fact that it's her making all or most of that noise on electric guitar herself, too (the album credits are a little confusing and confused, depending on where you read them). one to play on dismal, rainy days, maybe. not that it's raining here today. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL1n_pyfv9Q 130207 ... log burning fire as i listened to this song, i was transported back to myself at 16, sitting around a bonfire a few friends had built. we were in a clearing out of the woods at the base of a large coal ash pile. drinking beers, smoking. i was with a girl, brown-haired, brown eyed. i could see the firelight in her eyes when she spoke and her teeth gleamed. i remember we went off into the shadows and made out. this song could have been the soundtrack of that moment. 130207 ... raze bill evans // gloria's step (take 1, interrupted) from the album "the complete village vanguard recordings, 1961" to rehash some of what i said over on music_you_should_hear: for my money, this three-cd box set constitutes possibly the best piano trio jazz ever played or recorded by anyone. there isn't a single wasted note, and there's a kind of telepathic musical communication going on here that leaves the two studio albums this group recorded (as great as they both were) in the dust. scott lafaro, the bassist in the trio, died less than two weeks later in a car accident at the age of 25, lending an extra kick of poignancy and immediacy to what turned out to be the final music this particular group of musicians would ever play together. it was all beautifully recorded by dave jones, and with the occasional clinking of glasses and chatter in the background, you can almost imagine you're right there in the club, watching these three guys cook. this take of lafaro's "gloria's step" is technically flawed; the sound cuts out during bill's first piano chorus, thanks to a sudden loss of power that caused a backup generator to kick in after a brief hiccup. i actually prefer this to the second, complete take on the album, glitch and all. maybe the glaring imperfection makes the beauty on either side of it stand out that much more. bill would occasionally play this song live after scott's death, taken at a faster tempo. a lot of the feeling and delicacy got lost in the process. he attacked the piano instead of caressing it. his later trios were all great in different ways, but none of them quite had the magic of this one, and i think this song demonstrates what was so special about the energy they created together. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj7fRHA4EF8 130208 ... the evil angel on my shoulder you forgot the number 9! what the fuck are we going to do with you? 130208 ... raze send me out to sea with that number written on my head. 130208 ... PeeT while this was playing, kathy and i were discussing a children's book idea. it was a perfect soundtrack for our stimulating conversation. high five, west! 130208 ... raze yeah! up top like a soda pop! wait...that makes on sense... 130208 ... the evil angel on my shoulder on sense? ON sense? i'm not even touching that one. 130208 ... raze 10. skip james // hard time killin' floor blues from the album "complete early recordings" (recorded in 1931; compiled in 1994) there's something spooky, elemental, and undeniably powerful about crackly old blues recordings. it's like listening to a ghost sing a piece of their life to you across a gulf you can't quite traverse, or staring at an ancient photograph of a stranger who died before you were born, straining to make out the finer details, imagining who they must have been. skip james was, as this album's liner notes paint him, "a solitary, secretive person" who was "seemingly wary of the entire human race, several members of which he had coolly eliminated in shoot-outs." he had "no concept of blues as entertainment, or crowd-pleasing music. it was his goal to startle with his musicianship, and to manipulate the emotions, or, as he put it, to 'deaden the mind' of his listeners." he was resentful of other musicians, and "mistrusting of merriment". if ever a man was born to sing the blues... "devil got my woman" is probably the best-known of skip's songs, used to great effect in the film "ghost world". this track is at least the equal of that one, and no less striking. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv-_mzVBSF8 130209 ... PeeT kathy loves the blues. 130209 ... raze 11. the cramps // the way i walk from the "gravest hits" EP (1979) here's something a little demented for a sunday morning. "gravest hits" is, along with the band's full-length follow-up "songs the lord taught us", one of the earliest examples of the "psychobilly" genre — a twisted kind of rock music heavily influenced by 1950s rockabilly. both the EP and the album were produced by cult icon alex chilton (i'll get to him on another day), and for me they're the definitive cramps statements, all lurching depravity, twisted b-movie imagery, and demented surf rock guitar. there's an insane (and probably apocryphal) story about the recording of this music that has alex, displeased with lux interior's vocal performance on one track, pointing a gun at him between takes and blankly saying, "sing it *right*." i prefer "songs the lord taught us" on the whole, but this song is a standout moment on that first EP. and in an example of life having an absurd sense of how to create an appropriate soundtrack for itself, when i was a complete mess after the break-in four years ago (during the time of "an_absence_of_sway"), i was drinking at a bar with a friend i had unrequited romantic feelings for, trying to drown my spasmodic brain in a sea of straight scotch. frank, the bartender, threw on "gravest hits" without warning and blasted it over the pa system. when this song started playing and that scream kicked in, i couldn't help smiling. it was the perfect music for the way i was feeling. this music video is fan-made, featuring performance footage and chopped up bits of "the rocky_horror_picture_show", "night of the living dead", "factory girl", "blade runner", hitchcock's "psycho", and fellini's "spirits of the dead", but it works so ridiculously well it might as well be an official video. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaIW7KJXKfQ 130210 ... PeeT i think if i was drinking scotch when that song came on there might have been some dupa shaking going on. the video was really fun. by the way, factory girl is one intense film to see. 130210 ... raze if memory serves, i did feel the need to get up and dance a little...not that my friend there joined me. she would never allow herself to be so uninhibited in a public place. and i'll have to check that movie out. my own personal list of films to watch and books_to_read is so long by now, i'm not sure i'll ever put much of a dent in either one...but i need to start sometime. 130210 ... raze 12. sharon van etten // kevin's from the album "tramp" (2012) my initial response to sharon's music, and the way it wrapped its fingers around me a few winters past, is a story best told elsewhere (see "love_more" if you're interested in reading about that). i share the same feelings for her most recent album "tramp" and "the greatest" by cat power; i've grown to like them both after not caring much for either album the first time i sat down to listen, but i'm not sure i'll ever love them all the way through like i do the albums that came before. there are a handful of songs that i think are fantastic, and then the rest blend into a pleasant but unspectacular sonic soup. good driving music, but not something i reach for when i want to sit back and really dig in. sharon's official debut album, "because i was i love", is solid folk-tinged homespun singer-songwriter fare (whatever connotations "singer-songwriter" even carries anymore), with a lot of acoustic fingerpicking and pretty vocal harmonies. i still think her second album "epic" is the best and most affecting work she's done by some distance, but this song off of "tramp" floors me. it's in that vocal melody, and the way she twists the word "you" into four syllables that rise and fall, before singing "dig your own grave" like the words are an afterthought. there's something in her voice (not just here, but in a lot of her other songs) that moves me beyond all reason. a keening quality. like beautiful weeping. it doesn't make me feel depressed; it makes me feel. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDI1olTiB8U 130211 ... the evil angel on my shoulder you missed an "n" in there. get your shit together, man. it's "because i was IN love". not "i love". 130211 ... raze but what if the actual album title was "because i was, i love", and it's the record company that screwed it up? then i would have just missed a comma instead of a letter, and that would be a lesser offense. right? 130211 ... the evil angel on my shoulder no. you still lose. you can, however, redeem yourself by getting drunk and making an idiot of yourself in front of a group of strangers. do it! do it now! 130211 ... PeeT needless to say i love this song simply because my real name is kevin. but, i've been a fan of hers from the beginning and must say i am totally enjoying her evolution. your description of her style is right on. her range is killer. i could live inside the sounds she makes. besides, she's so beautiful. True. Tell everyone you know. It's all we ask. If it were all up to me, I would say Come up to these truths instead. You dig your own grave. You dig your own grave. Buried in masculine pain all the time. Envy all less, we know. Crazy, basic, In your own breath, you cough. Ooh, in your own breath. Ooh, in your own breath. Take on yourself. It's the only way I will breathe. Temples, temples, In your own breath. Ooh, in your own breath. Ooh, in your own breath for me. 130211 ... raze 13. jaco pastorius // portrait of tracy from the album "jaco pastorius" (1976) jaco arguably did for the electric fretless bass what jimi hendrix did for the electric six-string guitar. he was a staggeringly gifted musician and composer. he also suffered from bipolar disorder at a time when it was still called "manic depression", and he died far too young, under depressing circumstances. maybe there's some truth to the age-old idea that mental illness fuels creativity. and maybe some people are just wired to create, and they find a way to facilitate that regardless of their mental or emotional health, because there's something inside of them that needs to find expression. whatever the truth was in jaco's case, this is still the most beautiful thing i've ever heard anyone do with an electric bass guitar. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsZ_1mPOuyk 130212 ... PeeT that's sick, west! 130212 ... raze 14. talking heads this must be the place (naive melody) from the album / film "stop making sense" (1984) by the time of 1983's "speaking in tongues", the talking heads had shed some of the nervy energy that made their early work so exciting and unpredictable. they were still more than capable of producing great songs, though, like this one, famously heard over the end_credits of oliver stone's "wall street". i think it was even more effective in an episode of "northern exposure" (one of the great television shows of the 1990s), but that's just me. this performance is drawn from jonathan demme's seminal concert film "stop making sense", which captures the band at hollywood's pantages theatre while promoting "speaking in tongues". this is what david byrne had to say about the song in the goofy "self-interview" included on the dvd: "that's a love song made up almost completely of non sequiturs...phrases that may have a strong emotional resonance but don't have any narrative qualities. it's a real honest kind of love song. i don't think i've ever done a real love song before. mine always had a sort of reservation, or a twist. i tried to write one that wasn't corny, that didn't sound stupid or lame the way many do. i think i succeeded. i was pretty happy with that." as good as the performance is, what really puts it over the top is david's dance at the end with...well, i'd say more, but i'd rather not spoil the moment. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIs5wYJFktU 130213 ... PeeT ...the lamp! 130213 ... raze the luckiest lamp! 130213 ... raze 15. robyn hitchcock // i feel beautiful from the album "jewels for sophia" (1999) i was going to find something bitter for today, to thumb my nose at my old friend valentines_day, but i can't bring myself to do it. at this point i'm pretty indifferent about v-day. it's really just the day before half-price chocolate day, when you get right down to it. i'm not too big on love songs, but this is one of my favourite love songs of all time. only robyn hitchcock could sing "i water the tomatoes and i think of you / no one's ever watered me the way you do", and make it sound more meaningful than silly. featuring grant lee phillips singing harmony, along with jon brion on marimba, "low sonic wobble", and a cool fretless zither called the marxophone (which sounds an awful lot like a hammered dulcimer). listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB2nKTN0XSs 130214 ... PeeT i feel beautiful because you love me. 130214 ... PeeT i loved the star from the album artwork so much that i drew it as an illustration for ersatz, chapter 2. 130214 ... raze i never even bothered to notice until now that the star was drawn by michèle noach, who has a really cool website over here: http://www.michelenoach.com/index.php i think she'd be fun to have a coffee with, just based on her drawings and her bio. 130214 ... raze 16. sly and the family stone // luv n' haight from the album "there's a riot goin' on" (1971) "there's a riot goin' on" (a pointed response to marvin gaye's "what's going on?") is sly stone's last brilliant gasp from the pit of madness, and probably my favourite soul album if push comes to shove, though simply calling it "soul" does the music a disservice. the stories about the album's recording sessions defy belief. psychotic dogs, death threats, PCP, a violin case full of cocaine, nervous breakdowns, angry concert riots, drugged out tv show performances, underworld connections, bobby womack...the whole thing is a horror film waiting to be made. relationships within the band were breaking down as a side effect of drug use and mounting record company pressure. the black panther party wanted influence over the material sly was writing and the people he had in his band. and sly...well, sly was losing his mind while somehow keeping it together just enough to make some startling music. he played a lot of the instruments on the album himself and recorded most of the vocal tracks while wrecked and lying in bed, using a wireless microphone system. his singing is wildly unpredictable, and sometimes frightening, sliding from creaky baritone mumbles to jarring falsetto screams without warning. the words are often difficult to make out, but as with "exile on main st." by the rolling stones, it feels like it needs to be that way. the murky production quality that suits the material so well wasn't entirely intentional; sly would find women he wanted to sleep with, woo them with the promise of letting them sing on his album, record some quick vocal tracks, have sex with his new backup singers, and then erase their parts after they'd left. he did this so many times, the tape got blurred from overuse. when all the classic family stone albums got the remastering treatment in 2007, the mastering engineer wisely didn't do a thing to strip away the layer of sonic grime that's such an important part of this record's atmosphere. as for the songs, they're a long way from "everyday people". a few sample lyrics: "out and down ain't got a friend you don't know who turned you in" "watch out 'cause summer gets cold when today gets too old" "you can't leave 'cause your heart is there you can't stay 'cause you been somewhere else you can't cry 'cause you'll look broke down but you're cryin' anyway 'cause you're all broke down" "flamin' eyes of people fear burnin' into you many men are missin' much hatin' what they do youth and truth are makin' love dig it for a starter dyin' young is hard to take sellin' out is harder" "runnin' away to get away ha ha, ha ha you're wearing out your shoes look at you foolin' you" i'm not sure anyone has ever captured both the feeling of the cultural climate they were living in (in this case, the death of all the sunny ideals of the 1960s, the decline of the civil rights movement, and the ugly side of fame) filtered through the fracturing of their own psyche quite as vividly as sly did on this album. "family affair" remains one of the strangest, most cheerless singles ever to top the charts, and even the uptempo songs sound like they're trying not to nod off or cave in on themselves. 1973's "fresh" is probably the last truly great sly and the family stone album, retaining some of the darkness of "riot" but sounding for all the world like the last good times sly and his gang had together. the forty years since then have mostly been one long drug nightmare, broken up with occasional flickers of hope and creative energy. it's surprising the guy is still alive after everything he's been through. listening to the music he was capable of creating at the peak of his powers and then looking at what's happened to him since is more than a little depressing. i keep hoping someday he'll get some real help and be able to keep it together, but i don't think it's likely his story has a happy ending. this is the opening track on "riot", equal parts funky and unsettling. when sly sings "feel so good inside myself, don't wanna move", you know he wasn't kidding. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJZHm5_i1vI 130215 ... the evil angel on my shoulder i think you botched a sentence in there somewhere, and all you had to do was remove the word "both" to make it flow properly. 130215 ... raze yeah. the more i write, the more stupid mistakes i make because my stupid brain keeps correcting them when i try to proofread. i'd say at least most of them end up over here, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. i give up. 130215 ... the evil angel on my shoulder giving up is for victoria azarenka. no, wait...that's cheating. same thing. my point is, you could always just start 335_songs_part_two and hope i have less cause to needle you over there, since this one is starting to get a little long anyway. besides, i really want to see if you'll get so worked up about failing in the proofreading department that you'll resort to chewing off your own hair one strand at a time. you know you want to. 130215 ... raze looks like you got your wish. we'll see how i do over at 335_songs_part_two. 130216 ... raze a few of these links have since gone dead, and i can't find the exact same songs/performances elsewhere on the old tube of you. so here are replacement tracks for what's missing. [7] delarose & asora // agony a different song from the same album. link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YLzHWXnxh4 [9] bill evans // gloria's step same album, same song, but now it's take 2 instead of the flawed (but arguably superior by just a hair) first take. link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aib_RL_x7PA [12] sharon van etten // DsharpG this is one of the songs i would have chosen if "kevin's" hadn't been the one grabbing me at the time. it probably would have been a toss-up between this and "love_more". since the studio version of "kevin's" is nowhere to be found now and it kills every live version i've heard, let's go with this song instead, from sharon's 2010 album "epic". link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHMyYtmx3E8 130619 ... raze that's too good. i misspelled "delarosa" exactly the same way i did back in february, and missed it again. fuck a duck. 130619 ... raze the link for laura nyro went dead too. now she's over here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te-n7KY3vl4 140401 what's it to you? who go blather from