335_songs_part_two raze (continued from the typo-ridden 335_songs, hopefully with less sloppiness in this installment) 130215 ... raze 17. idaho // jump up from the album "alas" (1998) one weekend in the summer of 2002, i had some friends stay over at my place after an alcohol-soaked saturday night wound down. i was ripped out of sleep early sunday morning by the sound of someone blasting music downstairs. when my ears adjusted, it dawned on me that it was my own music playing. that was a strange thing to wake up to. after maybe half an hour, josh (the guy who was serving as my improvised alarm clock) tired of listening to my noise and popped in a mix tape he'd made. it jumped stylistically from typical indie rock stuff to what sounded like dub reggae on hallucinogens, and then a song with some interesting electric guitar work caught my attention. i asked him what this was later on, when we were both more or less awake. he told me it was a song called "catapult", by a band called idaho. a week or so later, after breaking my side door window in a fit of drunken confusion, he let me borrow "three sheets to the wind", the album that song hailed from. i think i only listened to the first three tracks, and they didn't really do much for me. i'm not sure why. my taste in music was all over the map. this stuff just didn't speak to me, for whatever reason. fast forward a little over a year. my friendships with all of those people who crashed at my house that one saturday night were withering on the vine. the night before my twentieth birthday, i found myself over at josh's place with some of the old gang. it felt awkward. while burning me copies of a few albums he thought i might like, as sort of a last-minute birthday gift, josh invited me to look through his cds and tell him if there was anything i was interested in. i noticed the idaho album and asked him to make me a copy of that, thinking i'd give it another listen for nostalgia's sake. i turned twenty listening to this music on headphones in my bedroom while leonardo dicaprio's histrionics in "the basketball diaries" played out silently on television. i couldn't believe what i was hearing, or that i had somehow failed to appreciate it the first time around. every song on the album was stellar. this felt like it was exactly what i needed to be listening to while i left my teenage days behind me and fell into something new i wasn't sure i was entirely comfortable with, whatever it was going to be. i couldn't even say my own age, it felt so strange suddenly not existing as a teenager anymore. when someone asked me how old i was, for that whole year i could only say, "it rhymes with plenty." at least the next year i got to tell people my age rhymed with "plenty fun". over the past near-decade, i've gone on to become much more of an idaho fan than josh ever was. that's a little bit funny to me. these days, i'm not sure there's an idaho song that doesn't do at least something for me, and there's been a lot of progression from one album and EP to the next — from the sometimes dreamy, sometimes visceral "slowcore" of early idaho recordings, to the slightly more rock-oriented mid-period work, to the melodic, cinematic music frontman jeff martin (no, not the tea party guy) has been making over the past decade as a virtual one-man band. the last few idaho albums sound like soundtracks to perfect independent films that don't yet exist. i wouldn't know where to start if i wanted to introduce someone to idaho. i don't think any single album gets across the full breadth of what jeff does and has done, both with and without collaborators. just about the only theme running through all the music he's made is a reliance on uniquely tuned four-string electric guitars, and maybe the most effective use of controlled guitar feedback i've heard anywhere. having said that, if i had to choose one idaho album to take with me to a quirky coffee shop in the afterlife, it might be "alas". it's great winter_music, and the backup vocals by melissa auf der maur add something special that doesn't exist on any other idaho album. there's an ethereal quality to her voice on these songs i haven't heard in anything else she's ever done. this is the opening track on "alas", and a lot of the sonic ingredients that will recur throughout the rest of the album are here almost immediately: melissa's voice blending with jeff's so well, they might as well share the same throat; otherworldly guitar sounds; production that makes it sound like the music is emanating from a point somewhere inside your head; and a great skittering drum groove from joey waronker. the video is fan-made, but i think it compliments the song well. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5J5t-8u-4s 130216 ... log burning fire i'm walking down stairs each one is painted in a unique pattern as if it took months to complete there was no hurry to finish there was all the time in the world do you have all the time in the world? i do i keep it in my pocket until i go to look and find it is gone time is soft i can carve it with a sharp object oh wow! you have managed to kill me again west. this song entered my bloodstream, like you said, somewhere inside my head. this song has always been playing, but only now have i heard it. thank you so much for exposing me to it. 130216 ... raze i'm glad you dig it. maybe i'll have to send you some idaho in the mail for a slightly late birthday present or some such thing; there's a lot of great music from jeff and company well worth hearing. jeff actually responded in quite a bit of detail to an email i sent about a month ago, asking him some questions about his experiences scoring for film. the dude's music has been an important part of the soundtrack of my life these past nine years and change, and that just made me respect him even more. i really enjoy the kind of stream_of_consciousness, nonlinear way he has of writing lyrics, too. sometimes they make more emotional than literal sense, but every once in a while something like this will jump out and stop you in your tracks: "maybe we're so aligned in our twisted trajectories that intersect when they're supposed to, that i don't need to stay in focus to avoid those traps that seem to disappear deep under the sand, like footsteps seem to remember just where to land." 130216 ... raze 18. francis and the lights darling, it's alright from the album "it'll be better" (2010) francis and the lights is the brainchild of american singer and songwriter francis farewell starlight. i'm not entirely sure how to describe the music he makes. think peter gabriel meets prince meets sam cooke. it scares me a little that he's toured with a plastic pop tart like ke$ha, but maybe hearing his music caused some of the automatons in the audience to switch their brains back on for half an hour or so, after years of inactivity and atrophy. you never know. this is a live performance recorded without an audience, filmed in one unbroken shot, with the use of light and camera movement creating the illusion of editing. i like it when francis leaves the band to play out the groove at the end, counts them back in, and then just cuts loose dancing. the man has some moves. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INcUV8ygIjo 130217 ... PeeT very cool in every way, especially the dance. francis can groove. 130217 ... raze 19. scout niblett lullaby for scout in 10 years from the album "kidnapped by neptune" (2005) emma louise niblett took her stage name from the protagonist in harper lee's "to kill a mockingbird". she has a wonderfully idiosyncratic way of playing guitar, incorporating a lot of open fifths where most musicians would play major or minor chords. she speaks in a british accent, and sings with a scratchy southern lilt. so she's either an american pretending to be british, or a brit whose accent ceases to exist when she sings, or else she's neither, pretending to be both. it doesn't really matter what the deal is there. she makes cool music, and steve albini records it in his usual upfront, dynamic way. emma has a deep interest in astrology, which she relies on to determine when and where she should record new music. and sometimes, as she does at the end of this song, she taps into a grungy energy that makes me think of kurt cobain just a little bit. i'm still kicking myself for missing her when she played a show right here in my city about six years ago. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg1Txa8zqnE 130218 ... PeeT she can show her incisors and throw thunderbolts with the best of them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVNet8Xp09g 130218 ... raze that's a good one too...i like how it's kind of unprofessionally professional in the way it's filmed, with the ambient things going on around her while she sings becoming a part of the song by default. 130219 ... raze 20. marvin gaye // when did you stop loving me, when did i stop loving you? from the album "here, my dear" (1978) when writers who get paid to string together lazy musical comparisons compile lists of the great breakup albums, one that seems to get shafted most of the time is marvin gaye's "here, my dear". and that's a shame, because as breakup albums go, there aren't many that cut deeper or are less steeped in clichés than this one. as marvin's marriage to anna gordy collapsed in the mid-70s, he found himself so financially drained by his lavish lifestyle, he couldn't even make child support payments. his attorney had a brainstorm — why not give anna half the royalties from the next album? marvin agreed, and he saw a great opportunity to make the worst album he possibly could as a gigantic fuck-you to everyone involved. of course, this is marvin gaye we're talking about. so it didn't quite work out that way. in spite of his best efforts to make an embarrassingly bad album, he found his conflicted feelings for his ex-wife and his own pride wouldn't let him off the hook that easy, and soon he was writing the most ambitious and nakedly autobiographical music of his life. according to david ritz's liner notes, marvin would often end a grueling day in court by going into the studio, smoking a joint, and channeling his frustration into the music. listening to the sprawling double-album, you probably get a better idea of why the marriage failed than the two people who were actually in it had at the time. marvin doesn't spare himself, admitting in songs like "anger" and the austere funk of "time to get it together" that his drug abuse and paranoia have taken their toll, and he's caused his share of pain. musically, the album is all over the map — equal parts funky, jazzy, angry, pensive, arrogant, and mournful, with marvin playing all the keyboard / synthesizer parts and providing every vocal track himself. it might be his most diverse album as a singer, moving seamlessly from smooth, soulful harmonies to guttural growls. "when did you stop loving me, when did i stop loving you?" is the high point for me. a lot of songs on the album don't adhere to typical or predictable structures, but this one is especially complex, with no chorus in sight, vocal harmonies that weave in and out like horns, and brilliant chord changes the likes of which we'll probably never hear again outside the realm of jazz. when marvin sings, "do you remember all of the bullshit, baby?" and twists his sweet voice into a vicious scream on those last two words, it's the sound of a man speaking directly to a woman he loves and hates, blaming himself as much as he blames her for the way things turned out. though the album ends on a hopeful note with a song called "falling in love again", a brief reprise of "when did you stop loving me..." undercuts the hard-won happiness with fear and uncertainty. marvin almost didn't release the album, feeling it was a little too close to the bone, but he was legally and contractually obligated to set it free. it didn't sell well, with critics and consumers alike unsure of what to make of the songs. this wasn't the "hey baby, i want to sex you up" marvin gaye seductively vamping in your ear. this was an attempt at unraveling the failure of his marriage, and what he saw as his own failure as a human being. after marvin's death the album was re-evaluated, and now it's recognized as one of his boldest and most uncompromising artistic statements. but it still seems to be one of the albums most people — even serious fans — haven't heard. you won't catch any of its songs on the radio. maybe that's as it should be; even if it initially grew out of a need to make money, this is music that doesn't have a single commercial bone in its body. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk75nc3yNBA 130219 ... PeeT kathy says it sounds like slow disco. 130220 ... raze i like that! 130220 ... raze 21. yoko kanno // goodnight julia music from "cowboy_bebop" (1998) for years, i thought anime was a bit of a joke. shows like "sailor moon" and "pokemon" were all i knew of the art form. my sisters would watch the english dubbed versions on tv before we went off to grade school in the morning. i found it all pretty lame and cheesy. i assumed that was about as far as it went — hyperactive kids shows with voices that didn't seem to mesh with the material. one night, six or seven years ago, i came across a commercial on the independent film channel advertising some sort of "anime week". this didn't look like kids stuff at all. i'd never seen anything like it. over the next few days i watched a few small pieces of the "cowboy_bebop" movie (i couldn't really get into it without the context of the series under my belt) and "ghost in the shell". though the english dubbing still seemed a little garish to me, i was interested in learning more. i did some research on the internet and discovered there was this whole other world of "adult anime", a universe and-a-half removed from the likes of "sailor moon". i promptly ordered a few dozen dvds. when i'm interested in something, i tend to jump right in without bothering to test the water first. it's a good way to drown; you see some interesting aquatic life along the way. i started digging into these dvds. the first thing i watched was "ghost in the shell". it nearly exploded my brain. at the very least, my brain did back-flips. i liked the way the animation opened things up and allowed for imagery that would never be possible with live action footage, while tapping into a kind of heightened emotional realism. i liked the fact that the main character was a woman, and she was tougher and more complex than any of the male characters around her. i liked that the story was complicated and it forced me to use my brain to figure out what was going on. watching with subtitles and the original japanese voice acting made a world of difference. this was serious stuff. this was a real movie with real ideas. it just happened to be animated. immediately i found myself gravitating toward the dark, weird stuff. "perfect_blue" was a lot of fun, kind of like a cross between david lynch and alfred hitchcock, filtered through the brilliant mind of satoshi kon — who sadly passed away a few years ago, but not before writing one last incredible blog post in an effort to say goodbye and tie up loose ends. it's translated over here, and well worth reading: http://makikoitoh.com/journal/satoshi-kons-last-words it seemed fitting somehow that after watching "perfect_blue" for the first time, i went on to have a dream in which psychotic croutons (yes...the kind you put on a salad) were devouring any plant life they came across. there was some concern that they might behave the same way around people, so i ran around a large park closing many medieval-looking gates in an effort to prevent them from spreading. i thought i'd eat a few of the croutons while i was at it. you can work up a bit of an appetite trying to save the world's vegetation. they were surprisingly tasty for crunchy pieces of deadly seasoned bread, and i didn't suffer any adverse effects. later, i was playing basketball while wearing a santa claus suit. one of the guys shooting hoops with me got belligerent over the fact that i wasn't the real santa claus, so i started beating the shit out of him. that wasn't even the strangest dream i had that night. i digress. some things i liked more than others. i enjoyed the original OVA version of "vampire princess miyu", and the original version of "vampire hunter D" had a certain creepy/campy charm to it, but neither one of them hit me nearly as hard as "jin-roh: the wolf brigade". what can i say? i like my anime dark and depressing, with a cynical/fatalistic edge. i found myself getting similarly sucked into "serial experiments: lain", to the point that it too influenced my dreams for a while. i also delved more deeply into japanese film in general, discovering the work of directors like takeshi kitano (who's made at least three films i would list on one of the a_film_you_should_see blathes without hesitation), shinya tsukamoto, and takashi miike. the big pivotal game-changing moment for me was when i sat down and decided to start watching "cowboy_bebop". i'd read that "bebop" was widely considered one of the best things ever to come out of the field of anime, and something of a gateway drug, in much the same way the miles davis album "kind of blue" is considered the best point of entry for people who are new to the world of jazz. in my case the cliché proved to be true with miles, sort of...but i'll get to that on another day. not so with "cowboy_bebop". i waited until i'd absorbed several other anime titles before getting around to this one, in part because i ran into a massive spoiler on a message board that no one bothered to tag with any kind of warning, and i felt it might drain some of the enjoyment out of the show. what i read wasn't the sort of thing you're lucky enough to forget, no matter how much time passes. they don't call 'em "spoilers" for nothing... eventually i decided i might as well watch the show anyway, even though i already knew how it would end. you know, just to see if it really was that good. and it was. i ended up burning my way through all 26 sessions (or "episodes", if you like) and the movie in less than a week. i wanted to space it out more, but i couldn't help myself. this was like some sort of animated nirvana for me. yoko kanno's music was a large part of that. her soundtrack, with her band the seatbelts helping to bring her pieces to life, has to be some of the best music any series or film has ever been lucky enough to call its own, ranging from jazz pieces to folk, blues, rock, strangely alluring power ballads, and many weird crevices in-between, somehow always feeling like it belongs, practically becoming another character. but that was just one piece of the puzzle. every element came together to create a world that felt real. i found myself caring about these animated characters as if they were real people. when it was all over, i felt a little empty, and the end still hit me like a gut-punch even though i knew what was coming. i watched the two-part ending of "bebop" six times in a row. i didn't want it to be over. i also watched the whole thing in japanese with subtitles, and i now know i couldn't have done it any other way. arguments have been raging online for years on the "sub vs. dub" topic. my position here is simple: i will always choose to watch a film or series in its original language. every single time. i understand the argument that reading subtitles makes it a little more difficult to fully appreciate the animation (or, in a live action film, the cinematography), but once you've watched enough foreign films, it gets to the point where you don't even feel like you're reading anything anymore, so fully has your brain adapted to compensate for the extra work you need to do. at least that's what's happened in my case. "cowboy_bebop" does have one of the better english dubs out there. it's genuinely well done, and the voice acting isn't wince-inducing like it is in, say, the english dubbed version of "akira". still, it doesn't have anywhere near the same emotional resonance for me. maybe it's because i stuck with the japanese soundtrack my first time through, and maybe i'm biased because i'm fascinated by japanese culture in general and love the sound of the language. but i'm not so sure. i think the creator of any cinematic work has an innate understanding of what they're trying to say that will always surpass any subsequent attempt at reinterpreting the material, no matter how well-executed it may be. this is one of the reasons i feel remakes of foreign films are almost always little more than chunks of warmed-over celluloid fecal matter that fail to justify their existence. compare wim wenders' "wings of desire", which is a poem on film, to the dire hollywood bastardization that is "city of angels" (nicolas cage screams! meg ryan has sex! dennis franz gets naked!), and you'll see what i mean. in "cowboy_bebop", there's a quiet scene in the very last session/episode where two main characters are sitting down to talk for what they know will be the last time. one of them tells a story that sounds like a japanese parable, and in a sly way it's a comment on what he's been through, and the action he's decided to take. the japanese voice actor imbues the words with a gentle sadness that feels just right. as an experiment, right after watching this scene for the first time, i paused the dvd and switched over to the english soundtrack. i watched it again. the english voice actor, good as he was at nailing the devil-may-care attitude that sometimes was just right for the character, didn't seem to have any other notes to sound. now it came off like he was amused by the story without feeling any deeper connection to it. and that changed the meaning of the entire scene for me. the spell was broken. but arguments for and against dubbing are kind of beside the point. the main thing is, watching "bebop" was a "eureka" moment for me, and one of those great experiences where a piece of art takes you places and makes you feel things nothing else has before. i've only ever known one anime fan who feels the same way about "bebop" that i do. that would be maya / two, who i miss seeing around here. some people feel it's been overrated. but i'm not one who's ever been taken in by hype. it just gets to me on a level not a lot of things do. i think i'm due for another visit with the "bebop" crew. the last time i sat down and dug in was almost three years ago, and that was only my second time through. i try to spend a lot of time away from the music and films that touch me in the deepest places; i want to let them hold onto as much of their initial mystery and power as i can. makes it that much more of a happy reunion when we do meet again after a long period of estrangement. this is one of my favourite songs from the entire series, edited together with scenes from the two-part session it appears in. it's just yoko kanno on piano and one of her fellow seatbelts playing tenor sax. those shots of faye sitting at the bar and smoking, looking lost, while gren makes his saxophone weep...that's one of the most evocative bar scenes i've ever seen, and it's from what some people would call a "cartoon". i almost chose the song "green bird" instead of "goodnight julia". they're both beautiful in different ways (and the scene from the "ballad of fallen angels" session with spike literally and figuratively falling through his memories is brilliant). but "green bird" doesn't quite feel right today. this is the one. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u92kvmB_6SY 130220 ... PeeT fascinating to say the least. i agree with you about evocation. i think we've all been in that place. the saxophone and piano were a perfect match. complimentary, yet individually beautiful, twisting my dishrag soul. well selected, west. 130221 ... raze your_dishrag_soul ... i like that. 130221 ... raze 22. wax_mannequin // the price from the album "the price" (2004) wax_mannequin is the stage name of canadian singer and songwriter chris adeney. he has been called "a hybrid of bruce cockburn and frank zappa", and one writer has described his music as sounding like "tom_waits and type o negative jamming on the early beatles catalogue". his live performances are divisive and often insane. i once saw him play in a bar right here in downtown windsor, around the time of this album's release, before i had any idea who he was. there were maybe a dozen people there. it was just him, an electric guitar, and a drum machine. he played and sang like he was possessed. i almost lucked into playing a show on the same bill with him (twice), but the timing never quite worked out. what a wild experience that would have been... chris has mellowed a little in recent years, but he still writes great songs with strange lyrics that get the mind humming in unusual ways. the occasional blog posts on his website always make for entertaining reading. this is what he said on december 22, 2012: "Good news everybody! You know how the world was supposed to end but then it didn't? Things were about to go south...hard. We all knew it. It was all over the news and the internet. Everything. You could feel it when you stepped onto the crumbling street. You could see it in the sallow, hungry eyes of every child and hear it in the needy growl of angry dogs. You're probably wondering what happened with all of that. Well, I'm pretty sure that I can say with 100% certainty that I TOOK IT INTO MYSELF — that I, Wax_Mannequin, absorbed the Apocalypse! I know! At first I could hardly believe it either, but I've had a day to think it over and it's true. You see, I have been reading some ancient Mayan texts recently and they all told of a special, arcane way the Apocalypse could be averted. The process was really elaborate and pretty secret, so I won't tell everything, but it involved spinning and spinning and eating hot embers under the waxing Aries moon. Now, I'm a pretty skeptical person, so when I read that there was a way to stop the end of the world I didn't really believe it at first. I mean, that's the whole thing about the Apocalypse, right? It's supposed to be unavoidable. There were just no more days on that stupid stone calendar. We couldn't just...add more days. That's crazy talk! And if such a thing were even possible, why, of all people, would I be the one chosen for such a task? But I went through with the ritual anyway. I spun and spun, ate hot coals and did all that other very specific stuff for several days before the Apocalypse — more as a joke than anything — and then...see! Isn't it great? It turns out that this is what I've been here for all along. All of the upsetting anthems and confrontational performances; all of the winter nights in Wawa hotel rooms and the roadside naps in rusty 1988 Chevy Cavaliers; all this time I was just preparing myself to absorb the Apocalypse and save the shitty world! Awesome! There's one catch though...because I absorbed such a massive, destructive force, I have been left in a highly volatile state. My chakras are all switched around and currently vibrating fiercely on each of the seven planes of existence, popping in and out of being about one billion times per second. It feels pretty nice actually, like a metakarmatological massage, but I'm not sure what's going to happen to me, my music or to the people that I meet. I'll keep you posted. And yes...you're welcome." then he went on to promote an upcoming live gig. "the price" is probably my favourite wax_mannequin album. it's also the one with the most meowing on it. those two things can't be coincidental. on some songs he meows in a sweet, soft voice. on others, he does something that can only be described as "scream meowing". i'm a little sad he doesn't meow at all in his songs anymore, but at least when he did it, he was fully committed. i'm not even kidding. this is one of the reasons i like the guy so much. he's a nut. here's the title track from "the price", along with the surreal music video animated by jesse ewles and ilya schwarz. as the youtube description says, "viewer discretion is advised: some scenes contain crotch thrust rainbows, dragons, superheroes and cannibalism." the cameo appearance by a certain famous canadian singer kills me every time. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmw_RN9xYOQ 130221 ... the evil angel on my shoulder i have to say, i'm impressed. you haven't made a single typo yet on this one. i'm beginning to feel a little unimportant, if you want to know the truth. 130221 ... raze i thank you. even though you probably just jinxed me by saying that. 130221 ... PeeT holy christ! that was one of my favorite birthday gifts today! 130221 ... raze huzzah! 130221 ... raze 23. emmylou harris / pancho and lefty from the album "luxury liner" (1977) "emmylou" by first aid kit came on the radio last night while i was hanging out with lady_t at one of the cooler coffee shop / restaurants in town. i thought that was pretty neat. so here's the woman who went some way toward inspiring that song. my favourite emmylou harris quote: "years ago i had the experience of sitting around in a living room with a bunch of people and singing and playing, and it was like a spiritual experience. it was wonderful. and i decided then, that was what i was going to do with my life...was play music, do music. in the making of records, i think over the years we've all gotten a little too technical, a little too hung up on getting things perfect. we've lost the living room." as much as i'm a fan of the way she's weirded up her music in later years with the help of daniel lanois and others, there's a purity to the country music she was making in the 1970s and 80s that's hard to resist. and there's that voice. in some live performances, like this take on townes van zandt's "pancho and lefty", she doesn't even look like she's trying. she just opens her mouth, and that beautiful sound escapes. who wouldn't want emmylou to sing in their living room? watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMPydiR4NaQ 130222 ... PeeT there she is again, that beautiful, brown-haired girl. 130223 ... raze 24. mingus // track A - solo dancer (stop! look! and listen, sinner jim whitney!) from the album "the black saint and the sinner lady" (1963) so, about that miles davis album... i used to go to jazz concerts with my dad at the university when i was going through puberty. i understand now how lucky i was to see such skilled veteran musicians doing their thing, ten feet away from me, when i was years away from being able to cultivate even the most cursory facial hair. these guys were all past retirement age, and they had some almighty chops. you could see in the way they played and interacted with each other, they just loved to make music. the music was in them. always had been. always would be. the first jazz recording i ever owned was "kind of blue". and it really is a great place to start. it's a beautiful, accessible album. it isn't a stretch to say it was the gateway drug for me. but it wasn't the one that hooked me. that distinction rests with the mingus album "the black saint and the sinner lady". that was the proverbial cocaine that shot straight to my brain. i wrote a bit about this album when it was new to me, on a blathe called "recalcitrant". i was excited. this was wild, unpredictable music, full of life and feeling. ellingtonian in scope (before i'd heard a lick of duke ellington), but with its own unique energy. mingus called it "ethnic folk-dance music". as great as the music is, the liner notes are almost worth the price of admission all on their own. there are two essays — one from mingus himself...and one from his psychologist. mingus writes: "time, perfect or syncopated time, is when a faucet dribbles from a leaky washer. i'm more than sure an adolescent memory can remember how long the intervals were between each collision of our short-lived drip and its crash into an untidy sink's overfilled coffee cup with murky grime of old cream still clinging to the edges or a tidy rust stained enamel sink that the owner of such has given up on the idea that that maintenance man is ever going to change the rhythm beat of his dripping faucet by just doing his job and changing that rotten old rubber washer before time runs out of time." and later: "i wrote the music for dancing and listening. it is true music with much and many of my meanings. it is my living epitaph from birth til the day i first heard of bird and diz. now it is me again. this music is only one little wave of styles and waves of little ideas my mind has encompassed through living in a society that calls itself sane, as long as you're not behind iron bars where there at least one can't be half as crazy as in most of the ventures our leaders take upon themselves to do and think for us, even to the day we should be blown up to preserve their idea of how life should be. crazy? they'd never get out of the observation ward at bellevue. i did. so, listen how. play this record." dr. edmund pollock, Ph.D. writes: "to me this particular composition contains mr. mingus' personal and also a social message. he feels intensively. he tries to tell people he is in great pain and anguish because he loves. he cannot accept that he is alone, all by himself; he wants to love and be loved. his music is a call for acceptance, respect, love, understanding, fellowship, freedom — a plea to change the evil in man and to end hatred. the titles of this composition suggest the plight of the black man and a plea to the white man to be aware. he seems to state that the black man is not alone but all mankind must unite in revolution against any society that restricts freedom and human rights." i lent my copy of "black saint" to the friend who was with me the night i was out drinking and "the way i walk" by the cramps came lurching out of the p.a. system. after our relationship fell apart, she didn't want to give it back. she said it was the only piece of me she had left. meanwhile, i would have given her every piece i had if she'd bothered to acknowledge me. people are fucking weird. i told her to keep it, and bought a new copy. it wasn't the vinyl i'd let her borrow anyway. no one's touching that. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgs0_TDS7Fs 130223 ... PeeT this reminds me of a film my dad showed me when i was a kid. i never realized music could grow in intensity and then climax, let alone what innuendo it possessed. 130223 ... raze it does have a cinematic quality to it, doesn't it? i like it when music takes you somewhere you haven't been before, or when it paints pictures in your mind with sound. 130223 ... raze 25. the beatles // no reply from the album "beatles for sale" (1964) i don't think there's a bad beatles album. they all just live in different ranges of "good" and "great". i've been a beatles fan since my dad got me the "white album" when i was twelve years old, and yet i somehow managed to go the following fifteen years without once hearing this song, because there were a few of the early albums i never bothered picking up until the band's entire catalogue was remastered in 2009, and then it took me a little while longer before i got around to listening. the first time i ever heard "no reply" ramp up into the chorus, i almost fell over. john and paul were made to sing together. no two ways about it. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQDMrFuFXGc 130224 ... PeeT oh wow! you can hear it, can't you now! this is about as perfect as pop music could be. 130224 ... raze 26. hiss golden messenger // jesus shot me in the head from the album "poor moon" (2011) i can't tell you much about hiss golden messenger, because i don't know much. what i do know is, i need to buy this album soon. i really like this song. the core of the band, such as it is, consists of durham, north carolina-based songwriter M.C. taylor, and multi-instrumentalist / recording engineer scott hirsch. "poor moon" is the fourth proper hiss golden messenger album, and by most accounts it serves as the best distillation so far of taylor's dark alt-folk ruminations. would you call it "noir country", maybe? whatever it is, i dig it. from facebook: "taylor and hirsch are clear that they draw inspiration from a variety of sources, including the blue-collar mysticism of ronnie lane and richard & linda thompson; the high haunted atmospheres of john martyn and talk talk; and american vernacular music writ large (from archie brownlee to the staple singers; charlie poole to merle haggard). yet for all that, 'poor moon' is a singular vision, one that only two companions could have made after twenty years of music-making, revelry, and repent." i love the way the song emerges slowly from the belly of a thunderstorm, with the fiddle playing a melody at once old as time and unfamiliar. i've also always been a sucker for the dry, pillowy drum sounds of the 1970s, and this is one of the first modern recordings i've heard in a while that really hits that sonic sweet spot. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUtwM-cUHAI 130225 ... PeeT In the silence of the night, music becomes expressive, delicious. 130225 ... raze 27. björk // jóga from the album "homogenic" (1997) i'm convinced björk is made of magic. she does this thing sometimes where she sings like she's trying to wrap her arms around something much larger and slipperier than she is, and it makes me want to hug her. she does it here, in a live performance of one of the best songs off of one of her best albums. also, apparently "slipperier" is an actual word. who knew?! watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6a4GVt_T8g 130226 ... raze 28. U2 // daddy's gonna pay for your crashed car from the album "zooropa" (1993) remember when instead of talking about how weird their next album was going to be and then scraping together some pretty conventional and uninspiring pop/rock tunes, U2 just made genuinely weird music? me neither. luckily the recorded evidence is there to remind us. i'm not going to sit here and pretend i didn't skip class in the twelfth grade to catch the music video for "beautiful day" as many times as i could when it was first released as the lead-off single for "all that you can't leave behind" in 2001. but the album as a whole, hailed by some as a "return to the classic U2 sound", was kind of underwhelming to my ears, and i've felt the same way about everything they've done since. 1997's "pop" was the last album where i was at least consistently interested in what was going on. everything since then seems to be a concerted effort to not ruffle any feathers, and that old adventurous spirit has been extinguished in the process. "zooropa" might be the strangest, most fascinating, least U2-sounding album of them all, falling farther down the rabbit hole first explored on "achtung baby". it was written and recorded during a six-month break between legs of the band's ambitious "zoo TV" tour. the edge explained: "some of the ideas we started out with on 'achtung baby' started to come into focus on the tour as we played around with the new stage set, the TV screens, the whole concept of a TV station on the road. we found out what it could do and then we started playing around with the imagery and the ideas that were in the airstream, gleaned from the world of advertising, CNN, MTV and so on. it struck a chord in us and the music that came out on 'zooropa' was very influenced by the tour. normally it's the other way around; you put an album together and then you go off on the road and you're drawing from the album for your inspiration." seems appropriate that a lot of people's least favourite U2 song should be one of the ones i like best. there's something sinister in this one that's unique in their body of recorded work. i've never heard the days of the week sung in such a menacingly offhanded way. a-ha. sha-la. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U0HPa_WFck 130227 ... PeeT i think everyone just wants to be remembered. 130227 ... raze 29. chick corea // steps — what was from the album "now he sings, now he sobs" (1968) more piano trio goodness, with chick on piano, miroslav vitous on bass, and roy haynes on drums. there are a lot of pretty idiotic and offensive comments on youtube, but every once in a while you come across a gem, like this one someone posted on a video of the trio performing live: "[roy is] like a gentle breeze that can blow over palm trees; so smooth and soft, but [he] projects more energy than a nuclear power plant." i think the same can be said about the whole band, and this entire album. it's intense without being aggressive. and as far-out as the playing gets technically (i don't know how musicians can even think this fast), it's never too cerebral for its own good. i love the melancholy motif that comes in right around the 8:00 mark, after the band segues out of roy's insane drum solo. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga-M6LDmZzA 130228 ... raze 30. stardust // music sounds better with you (single on 12" vinyl and CD; 1998) stardust were thomas bangalter (one half of daft punk), DJ/producer alan braxe, and singer benjamin diamond. they only existed as a group long enough to produce one song, but it's widely considered one of the best french house tracks ever recorded. bangalter and braxe composed the music, and diamond instinctively sang the vocal hook on top without having prepared anything beforehand. the three would never work together again in any capacity. i've never seen another music video that captures the magic realism of childhood as perfectly as this one, directed by michel gondry. watch / listen: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x15q06_stardust-music-sounds-better-with-y_music 130301 ... PeeT very cool. i wish more children would have the passion to do such a thing. 130301 ... raze 31. wire // lowdown from the album "pink flag" (1977) the impact wire have had on rock and punk music is nearly incalculable. some of the bands and artists that have cited them as an influence: the urinals, manic street preachers, the minutemen, sonic_youth, R.E.M., robert smith of the cure, guided by voices, fischerspooner, elastica (who essentially plagiarized one of their songs and had a hit with it), menswe@r, bloc party, futureheads, blacklist, franz ferdinand, blur, johnny marr, minor threat, black flag, low, fugazi, big black, and ministry. though they continue to tour and record today, a large part of wire's legacy rests on their first three albums, recorded over a two-year period during which they evolved at such an accelerated rate, the albums sound like the work of three completely different bands. and when your drummer (at least up until 1990) has the last name "gotobed", how can you lose? it was a toss-up between this song, the hypnotic "heartbeat", and the peerless pop of "outdoor miner", which should have been a hit single. today, aggression wins. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6Ytde6tmkQ 130302 ... nyni and so i am lighting up, with you at my side, stoic, believing in us. i want to make the next, right move. you kiss me. i kiss back. we are. 130302 ... raze 32. daniel lanois // JJ leaves LA from the album "shine" (2003) daniel lanois is best known for his work as a producer, but every so often he releases an album of his own songs, and they're always worth the wait. as adept as he is at creating soundscapes and playing conventional acoustic and electric guitars, there's something special that happens when he sits down at the pedal steel. watching him play, you sense the instrument is acting as an extension of his body, and the music happens instinctively, without any thought involved. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCbJoFwX_Lw 130303 ... raze 33. bob marley and the wailers // kinky reggae from the album "catch a fire" (1973) any bob marley fan owes it to themselves to track down the original "jamaican version" of "catch a fire" (jamaican slang for "catching hell"). stranded in the UK after being left in the lurch by CBS records, the wailers appealed to promoter brent clarke for help, who in turn appealed to producer chris blackwell. blackwell forwarded the band enough money to return to jamaica and record an album. but when he was presented the tapes in london, he got cold feet and decided the music needed something to make it more palatable, overdubbing additional guitar and keyboard parts with the help of session musicians, none of whom lived and breathed reggae music like bob, peter tosh, and the rest of the gang did. it's not that it isn't a great album as it was released in 1973 (critics have called it one of the best reggae albums of all time, and as we all know, critics know everything), but the release of the non-overdubbed, original versions of the songs nearly three decades later was a revelation. the songs feel so much more alive and elemental without those studio cats noodling on top. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMA83N8xg0Y 130304 ... raze 34. brahms // Op. 39 No. 3 (waltz in G-sharp minor) composed 1865; published 1867 this is one of my favourite classical pieces, and it's only a minute long. it's one of a set of sixteen piano waltzes composed by johannes brahms, dedicated to music critic and close friend eduard hanslick. the music is used to stunning emotional effect in julia kwan's short film "three sisters on moon lake", but here's the trick...almost every performance i've found is taken at a much faster tempo than the version that appears in the film, and the piece loses some of its melancholy magic in that form. i'm not sure how it's written on the page in terms of the speed brahms meant for it to be taken at, but the only version i can find that gets it just right to my ears is a home recording made by a UK pianist. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcVDQUFK5K4 also, "three sisters on moon" lake is available to watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_pkqBXKCn4 it's a beautiful, powerful little film...definitely something i'd call a_film_you_should_see. but it comes with a caveat; i strongly caution against watching it if you're really depressed, or if you don't want to be left feeling depressed. that's all i'm gonna say about it. it's worth the pain, i think, but god, does it hurt. 130305 ... the evil angel on my shoulder you finally did something wrong! you closed your quotation marks too soon! you lose! you fail! have sex in a garbage pail! 130305 ... raze well, it was inevitable, wasn't it? at least this time i'm not left with such a strong urge to rip my brain out through my nose and throw it at the wall. that's progress. 130305 ... raze 35. dolorean // you can't win from the album "you can't win" (2007) i don't know much about dolorean. they're based in portland, oregon, and they've occasionally served as damien jurado's band. i do know this is another one of those albums i need to get around to picking up. i've been meaning to grab it for four years now. some days i think this is the theme song for my life, even if it's more mantra than song. i like how the whole thing is gradually built up piece by piece, in a way you don't often get to hear outside the realm of electronic music. good intentions often turn to shit. a good song can sum it all up in three simple words, sweetly sung. like so. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymWHWVHRUSQ 130306 ... raze 36. bruce cockburn // night train from the album "the charity of night" (1996) i put bruce up there with neil young in the pantheon of great canadian guitarist/singer/songwriters, though he's not nearly as much of a household name as he deserves to be. while i'm not sure he's ever made a bad album, this one might be his best, featuring some of the most compelling examples of the unique spoken-word/singing hybrid songs he's sometimes taken to writing, some great vibraphone playing from gary burton, lyrical bass from rob wasserman, and some adventurous guitar work from bruce himself (always a ridiculously underrated guitarist, the guy can really cut loose when he feels like it). it makes for great listening on a good pair of headphones, too. the production is at once organic and experimental, with some really creative panning decisions, especially where the drums are concerned. given the way the music was recorded, and the absence of any significant synthesized or treated sounds, it's an album that isn't ever going to sound dated. and the lyrics could stand on their own as pure poetry. just one small sample, from the opening track: "and everyone's an island edged with sand a temporary refuge where somebody else can stand 'til the sea that binds us like the forced tide of a blood oath will wear it down dissolve it recombine it" when asked about this album's many references to night and darkness in a 1999 interview with susan adams kauffman for "the other side" magazine, bruce had this to say: "we think of light as opposed to darkness, and when we're thinking of spiritual things we're encouraged to think of light as where god is and dark as where the devil is. over time i've come to feel that it isn't like that. god is the dark, exists in the dark, just as god is in the light. i find the night stunningly beautiful. the subtlety of the way things are lit at night has always struck me as attractive. i also appreciate the way darkness provides refuge — whether it's the refuge of concealment or the implication of rest and peace that goes with night. darkness just is what it is — another place you can be, or another thing you can use, or another quality you can appreciate. sometimes the road does lead through dark places, and it's inescapable. but then, sometimes the darkness is comforting and protective in those dark places. it need not be seen as a source of fear." listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zsEWjowRQc 130307 ... raze 37. bat_for_lashes // prescilla from the album "fur and gold" (2006) bat_for_lashes is the stage name of english singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist natasha khan. i'm a fan of everything she's done so far, and couldn't really pick a favourite song or album. depends on the day and mood, i s'pose. the album version of this particular track is something close to an austere dance song, but here, as a live solo performance on autoharp, it's transformed into something more haunting and ethereal. i've been a little bit in love with natasha for six and-a-half years now. this is one reason why. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXPuUaMNFWU 130308 ... raze 38. felt // cathedral from the album "crumbling the antiseptic beauty" (1981) singer and songwriter lawrence (whose last name has never been verified) had a plan with felt: release ten albums and ten singles in exactly ten years, and then break up the band. and that's exactly what he did. he just didn't bother to tell anyone else what the deal was until he'd accomplished what he set out to do. interesting guy, that lawrence. almost every felt album inhabits a different sonic space. i have a special fondness for the raw, sparse sound of the early recordings, equal parts murk and jangle. like this song. it makes me think of early television, if you sliced open tom verlaine's stomach and the guts falling out decided to make some music after dreaming about the velvet underground, without ever having heard a single velvet underground song in the waking world. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCuHHHNi-l8 130309 ... raze 39. pyongyang gold stars // take on me (recorded 2011) fucking daylight saving time. this morning i wake up to realize i've lost an hour. it means spring is doing its early springy business, and that's a good thing. but it also means i have to recalibrate my brain slightly, when i have serious sleep problems to contend with at the best of times. this isn't going to help one bit. in protest, here is a-ha's 80s hit "take on me", as performed by five north korean teenagers...all playing accordion. take that, daylight saving time. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBgMeunuviE 130310 ... raze 40. simply red // holding back the years from the album "picture book" (1985) 80s guilty pleasure moment #1 (and there will be more of these, i promise you). it took me until i was well into my twenties before i was able to appreciate just what a good song this is. i always enjoyed it when i would catch a bit of it on the radio (back when i still listened to the radio), but it was little more than a pop song to me. it wasn't until i sat down and listened after not having heard it for years that it hit me in the gut. maybe i had to live a little more before i really "got" it (i doubt it's ever registered for many of the people who've heard the song that it was inspired by singer mick hucknall's mother leaving when he was three years old). i guess i'm always going to have an easier time with 1980s production touches than most, because i grew up listening to that stuff. but i think this is one of those songs that transcends the time and manner in which it was recorded. it's also a great example of how effective simplicity and economy can be in songwriting; there are basically two chords to the entire song, and they never change. it never feels like they need to. there's even something about the music video that i find strangely resonant. it's one of those things where you can't explain why something speaks to you. you only know it does. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG07WSu7Q9w 130311 ... raze 41. wye oak // holy holy from the album "civilian" (2011) wye oak are a duo from baltimore, maryland. jenn wasner sings and plays guitar, while andy stack plays drums and keyboard at the same time, which is a cool thing to see live. speaking of that...i played a show on the same bill as jenn and andy once, right here in town. this was back in 2008, before they'd become "popular", and before i'd heard a lick of their music. i left before their set got started, because the guy i was backing up that night was a giant douche and i had sleep issues to deal with. now i kind of wish i'd stuck around. i like bands that feature women ripping it up on guitar, and jenn creates guitarscapes with the best of them. she's also capable of writing lyrics like, "i wanted to give you everything, but i still stand in awe of superficial things." there's a shoegazey energy to the music, but strip it down and most of the songs are pretty folk tunes at heart. i like how the melodies never get lost no matter how noisy things get. there's nothing very flashy about jeremy johnstone's music video for "holy holy", but it feels like it fits the song, and i like how it looks back to the simpler approach we saw during the grunge era, when there wasn't always a need for a half-baked subplot — when a band or the director would just pick a location and shoot a random video in an afternoon. it also looks like jenn bumped her head at some point throughout the shoot. she's still beautiful anyway. she gives a good interview, too (for a laugh, look up the interview she did with the av club where she talks about why she hates a papa roach song). watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmjMFPSLXI4 130312 ... raze 42. miles davis // shhh — peaceful from the album "in a silent way" (1969) what can i say about the genius shapeshifter that was miles davis? maybe it's best to borrow a profane phrase from the man's own autobiography (essential reading even if it was partially ghostwritten) and simply say he was a bad motherfucker. when i started writing again over on blue after years of being skittish, the new name i chose was "in a silent way". one of the reasons was that i just liked the way those words looked and sounded as pure syntax. the album this song is drawn from is another reason. listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT1e2_uTwmI 130313 ... raze 43. atmosphere // cats van bags from the album "seven's travels" (2003) i have unhinged to thank for introducing me to atmosphere. most modern hip-hop i just can't get into...too much misogyny and empty-headed posturing. but marry a filthy beat to lyrics like "how many miles can you put on one soul / before the smile starts to blend into one big bullet hole?" and it's a whole new ball game. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8p_CdZYsVk 130314 ... raze 44. aphex twin // cliffs from the album "selected ambient works volume II" (1994) the person who introduced me to aphex twin, and inadvertently got me into electronic music in general, is dead. he's been dead for almost exactly ten years. he was stabbed to death by his girlfriend in a cheap hotel room while they were evading the cops after assaulting a politician's son. the thing is, she'd stabbed him before, and he survived. i've always thought if your significant other sticks a knife in your chest and you live to talk about it, maybe you should consider seeing other people for a while. i guess not everyone sees it the same way. before he was six feet underground, we worked together at my first job out of high school, doing satan's work as telemarketers, schlepping appointments at which people better paid than us would try to sell adjustable beds to retirees who didn't need or want a new bed. i'm not sure you could call us friends. he wasn't a good person, though for a time i tried to seduce myself into seeing some redeeming qualities that weren't really there. we were short-lived drug buddies, and the illusion of something crawling toward friendship grew up around that. i still have strange feelings of nostalgia when i think of that time in my life, as awful as it was. the stories i could tell...the stupid things i did. all those memories are packed away in a place where they remain vivid and fully-formed. i can still see him shadowboxing to the "come to daddy" EP in a friend's basement while we were all out of our heads on e, a strobe light lending an unsettling gravity to his movements. i think of that moment, and it's like i'm right there sitting across from him, and i never left that basement. but he's dead, and i'm still here. i quit that job after lasting almost six months and got my shit together, more or less. he fell apart. it could have just as easily worked out the other way around. you_never_know, until you know. "i care because you do" was the first aphex twin album i went out and bought. that's still a favourite. but "SAW II" is unique in the aphex catalogue, and this song never loses its alien beauty. a decade later, i can still get lost in the sound. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i524g6JMkwI 130315 ... raze 45. pete townsend // pure and easy from the album "who came first" (1972) sometimes, in some ways, i think i prefer some of pete townsend's solo work to what he's done with the who. maybe that's a blasphemous statement. but there's a vulnerability to his voice that i don't think roger daltrey has ever come near (great as roger is as a pure rock vocalist), and i've always been a sucker for writer/musicians who can do it all themselves in homespun fashion, as pete did on his first proper solo album "who came first", which he recorded, engineered, and almost entirely performed by himself in his own home studio. in an interview to coincide with the release of a 1996 best-of compilation with a mouthful of a subtitle ("coolwalkingsmoothtalkingstraightsmokingfirestoking"), pete had this to say about "pure and easy", the opening track on "who came first": "this was inspired by a piece of writing by the sufi teacher inayat khan, who was also a musician, so a lot of his writing was about vibration and music — about the spiritual search being wrapped up in the idea that we're looking for a note which suits us all. and at some point this got misinterpreted by people that what i was writing about was the lost chord. i don't know what the lost chord is [laughing]. a minor 7th with the 5th augmented, i expect — and it's probably a good thing that it's lost. this was a track that i recorded entirely at home. the who did a good version of this, but i like this version." me too, pete. some days i think it's the best song you ever wrote, though "let my love open the door" would give it some stiff competition. and there's always "street in the city", and "the sea refuses no river", and "sheraton gibson", and "let's see action"... listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXfUk-jF6UE 130316 ... raze 46. nina simone // plain gold ring from the album "little girl blue" (1958) [sometimes subtitled "jazz as played in an exclusive side street club"] nina simone was a singer, songwriter, arranger, civil rights activist — and one hell of a piano player. this last bit seems to get lost in the shuffle far too frequently. and there might not be any better place to hear ample evidence of her skill than the very first album she ever made, recorded live off the floor in the studio with no overdubs, and no fussy arrangements. just a woman, her piano, her voice, the fire in her belly, and a rhythm section keeping her company. i like how dynamic this track is, building from an a capella beginning to a moody, muted groove nina lacerates with piano chords that rise up without warning like lightning perforating a clear sky. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQ2NwPi0LXU 130317 ... raze 47. califone // 1928 from the album "all my friends are funeral singers" (2009) to recycle what i said on new year's eve, over on "califone": "all my friends are funeral singers" has been sitting in my bedroom in one place or another for more than three years now, and somehow i only got around to listening to it for the first time this morning. i think it may have edged out the others as my favourite califone album. there's a cracked beauty there that just elevates it a little. and no one writes lyrics quite like tim rutili. they're like impressions leftover from mostly forgotten dreams. sample lyric from 1928: "whale bone frame come new eyes froze planets hung from a whalebone frame lemon stung kiss gone voice gone we bend like trees toward the last light" listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d2ii5E6l58 130318 ... raze 48. lady lamb the beekeeper // the nothing (part II) from the album "ripley pine" (2013) lady lamb the beekeeper is 23-year-old maine-born (but now living in brooklyn) singer / songwriter / musician aly spaltro. i'd never even heard of her until yesterday. she's definitely on my radar now. here's a song off her just-released debut studio album. the music video is completely bonkers, featuring abduction that leads to the joyous collaborative creation of human pie. seriously. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdqsUML8wv0 130319 ... raze 49. jason_molina // pyramid electric co. from the album "pyramid electric co." (2004) as "songs: ohia", "magnolia electric co.", and under his own name, jason molina released nearly twenty full-length albums, along with several EPs and singles, over a period of a little less than twenty years. he died on saturday from organ failure as the end result of alcoholism. the official statement on his website claims he passed away due to "natural causes". he was 39 years old. you don't die that young of natural causes. i don't know what demons he had on his trail, but sadly it seems he couldn't outrun them in the end. my friend steven played me one of jason's songs a week or two ago, and i thought, "this is really cool. i need to check this guy out." and now he's gone, and i find myself in the same position i was with elliott smith ten years ago, where i don't realize how much i like someone's music until just after they've shuffled off this mortal coil, because i never got around to really listening to any of what they did while they were alive. there's some amount of guilt wrapped up in that. i read lyrics like this: "still no guides it's not a generous world it is a separate world the bad luck taste of the dark the broad luck of blood on the water" and i think, "this is right up my alley. why didn't i look into this man's work sooner?" what makes it even worse is learning about how jason made a point of interacting with all of his fans, writing hundreds of letters by hand, sending emails and private messages, and fostering a real connection in a way most artists don't bother even trying to do. i wish i could have had that kind of interaction with him, and got to know him a bit. now i'll never have the chance. here are two well-written pieces about jason. the first is more of a meditation on the feelings the author had in the wake of his passing, while the second touches more on the music: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/03/postscript-jason-molina.html http://pitchfork.com/features/afterword/9087-jason-molina/ and here's the song steven played for me. it seems fitting now that my introduction to jason's work would be something so dark and spare. a man alone with his music, pouring his soul into an empty room. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKb60rGLI3E 130320 ... raze 50. skids // the saints are coming from the album "scared to dance" (1979) remember that lame song U2 and green day teamed up for seven years ago? turns out the song itself isn't lame at all; bono, billy joe and company just made it sound that way through the force of their gradual slide into mutual mediocrity. the original is a much rawer, more interesting melodic punk song by short-lived scottish band the skids. that's stuart adamson ripping it up on guitar. he would later go on to front the band big country and have even more success as a frontman and lead singer than he had with the skids as the second-in-command, before getting ground down by record company pressure to produce commercial product at the expense of more meaningful creative expression, finding himself forced to recycle past glories in an effort to milk as much as possible out of a steadily dwindling american audience. he ultimately hung himself. but all of that wasn't even a dream in someone's head when this song was recorded. and i think if the music that now calls itself "pop-punk" was more like this, i might actually be able to dig it. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4-C-qHpb34 130321 ... raze 51. kate_bush // suspended in gaffa from the album "the dreaming" (1982) i don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that without kate bush there would probably be no tori amos, no bat_for_lashes, no annie lennox, no björk, no PJ harvey, and no (god help us) lady gaga. there can't be too many female artists in the slippery world of "popular music" who've wielded the kind of influence and commanded the kind of respect she has. kate was writing songs from the perspectives of an irish mother mourning a son lost to war, the widow of harry houdini, a possessed house, an unborn child experiencing a nuclear holocaust from inside her mother's womb, and penning an entire song cycle that took place within the mind of a drowning woman, at the same age katy perry and kesha now churn out soulless drivel with the emotional and intellectual complexity of a toddler's runny morning shit. how far we've come. i first read about kate when i was fourteen years old. i found her fascinating in theory, but had no idea where to dive into her discography. "the dreaming", her first entirely self-produced album, was described as her most difficult, polarizing work. so i decided to start there. it's still probably my favourite album of hers, though most days it's difficult to break the three-way tie it holds with "never for ever" and "hounds of love". in a 1985 interview for french magazine "guitare & claviers", kate had this to say about the album: "if a single theme linked 'the dreaming', which is quite varied, it would be human relationships and emotional problems. every being responds principally to emotions. some people are very cool, but they are silenced by their emotions, whatever they might be. to write a song, it's necessary that i be completely steeped in my environment, in my subject. sometimes the original idea is maintained, but as it takes form, it possesses me. one of the best examples would be this song that i wrote on houdini; i knew every one of the things that i wanted to say, and it was necessary that i find new ways that would allow me to say them. the hardest thing is when you have so many things to fit into so short a space of time. you have to be concise, and at the same time not remain vague, or obscure. 'the dreaming' was a decisive album for me. i hadn't recorded in a very long time until i undertook it, and that was the first time that i'd had such liberty. it was intoxicating and frightening at the same time. i could fail at everything and ruin my career [in] one fell swoop. all this energy, my frustrations, my fears, my wish to succeed — all that went into the record. that's the principle of music: to liberate all the tensions that exist inside you. i tried to give free rein to all my fantasies. although all of the songs do not talk about me, they represent all the facets of my personality, [and] all my different attitudes in relation to the world. in growing older, i see more and more clearly that i am crippled in facing the things that really count, and that i can do nothing about it, just as most people can do nothing. making an album is insignificant in comparison with that, but it's my only defense." "suspended in gaffa" was the moment that hooked me, four tracks in. i think it was kate shrieking "NOT UNTIL I'M READY FOR YOU-HOO-HOO!" that sealed the deal. i've loved her ever since. as for the music video, it's...very kate. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3XAeg3B0To 130322 ... raze 52. peter_gabriel // zaar from the album "passion" (1989) it seems appropriate to follow a kate_bush song with one by peter_gabriel, since kate has made it clear that her work with peter as a backup vocalist on his third solo album provided her with some important inspiration that fed directly into her decision to produce "the dreaming" on her own. a lot of different songs could go here. pretty much anything off of the first four solo albums, all of them self-titled. or "mercy street", written for the poet anne sexton. pr a live performance of "come talk to me" featuring a phone booth as a brilliant emotional prop. or "blood of eden". and i might cheat a little at some point and throw in "supper's ready" from the genesis days, because there's a live performance of it from 1973 that blows my mind. but "passion" (the soundtrack for martin scorsese's "the last temptation of christ") stands apart from all of that. and i think it's pretty funny that one of my favourite albums by anyone should be the soundtrack for a film i've yet to see more than five minutes of. i'd put it on the greatest_soundtrack_ever list, based on the music alone, without any of the film's images to accompany it. i've got my own movie that plays in my mind while listening to the songs anyway, and it's different every time. my understanding is that the music in the film is slightly different from what's on the album, and not everything on the latter even appears in the former. in the album's liner notes, peter writes: "after we finished mixing the film, there were some unfinished ideas that needed developing, and i took some extra time to complete the record. there are several pieces that were not able to be included in the film and i felt the record should be able to stand as a separate body of work. i chose the working title for the film — 'passion'. we recorded some of the finest singers and soloists in the field of world music and set the score on a backdrop of traditional north african rhythms and sounds. it was a wonderful experience working with such different and idiosyncratic musicians. they came from pakistan, turkey, india, ivory coast, bahrain, egypt, new guinea, morocco, senegal and ghana. for many of them working with this material was something quite new and they were very enthusiastic. the soundtrack is full of the spirit of their performances." the results won the grammy award for "best new age album" in 1990, back when those things still sort of meant something. this album also marked the first time most people in the western world had ever heard of artists like nusrat fateh ali khan (later described by jeff_buckley as "my elvis"), youssou n'dour, and baaba maal. the music is difficult to describe, outside of calling it a unique world/ambient hybrid. peter weaves his own voice and synthesizers into the sonic landscape without it ever feeling wrong or clumsy in any way, and though there's a fair bit of singing from peter and nusrat and company, there isn't a single intelligible word uttered in any of the songs. "zaar", written around a traditional egyptian rhythm used to ward off evil spirits, has always been one of the most evocative tracks to my ears. some of the sounds heard in this song: dufs (large persian frame drums), tabla, zillz (small finger cymbals), kamancheh (a persian bowed string instrument), and a ten-string stereophonic violin invented and played by l. shankar, covering the entire orchestral range in one instrument. one youtube comment describes it as "two minutes of foreplay followed by a three minute orgasm". that sonic "orgasm", as it were, which starts just past the 2:10 mark, is one of my favourite pieces of music on the planet. there's a cool animated music video that was made to accompany the song, but it's some sort of single edit version that chops out almost two minutes of music. nuts to that. you need to hear the whole thing. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk1jHVkLEZs 130323 ... the evil angel on my shoulder finally, a bona fide typo. my eyes are filled with tears of joy. i now understand that the letter o was placed right next to the letter p on a computer keyboard so we could share this moment together. 130323 ... raze bite me. 130323 ... raze 53. david wise // castle harman from the nintendo game "time lord" (1990) let's throw some old school video game music into the mix. why not? i've never owned an xbox, or a playstation, or any of the more modern video game systems. the sega CD is as far as i ever got. and that's fine by me; i'm a sucker for the more archaic systems. i still have my NES, gameboy, SNES, sega (genesis/master system/CD), and turbografx-16, all in good working order. every year or two, when i pull out the nintendo system for some nostalgic fun, this game gets played once or twice, for the music more than anything. then it gets tossed aside, because it isn't a whole lot of fun. it's not the worst game in the nintendo catalogue by any means, but there's not much to it. it's little more than a side-scrolling action platformer with enough weirdness to keep it interesting for about ten minutes, or until you grow tired of dying repeatedly on one of the higher levels. the premise: "in the year 2999, earth is under siege by aliens from the planet drakkon. using time travel technology, they have sent armies to four periods in human history, with the intention of altering history to make humankind easier to conquer in the present. the player assumes control of the 'time lord', who has until january 1, 3000 AD to vanquish the enemy in the past, or else he will self-destruct along with the time machine." this is a fancy way of saying, "you will punch and kick and shoot and stab bad guys and collect orange orbs. you will kill everything you see, or you will die. you're probably going to die anyway. and in one level, funny-looking obese green dragons will fly around and try to drop balls on your head. oh, and you get to eat a bunch of magic mushrooms." when i was playing nintendo games as a kid, all i really knew about the music was i either liked it, or it didn't do much for me. now that i have an understanding of how profoundly the composers were limited by the four-note polyphony provided by the sound chip in the NES, it's kind of amazing what some of them were able to come up with. video_games like "mega man 2" and "ninja gaiden" marry inventive, varied music to great level design and gameplay that's challenging, but rewarding. "time lord" doesn't belong in that category. david wise's soundtrack is better than the game deserves, really (though his music has shown up in some video_games that really *are* worthy of it — most notably "donkey kong country" for the SNES). this piece of music plays through the first proper level after a brief introductory stage, and it almost makes me never want to make it to the next level, just so i can keep listening to it over and over again. the amount of complexity he was able to wring out of so little is insane. someone should try arranging this piece for string quartet someday. i'd pay to hear it. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bde7mNPjhlE 130324 ... raze 54. the caravelles // you don't have to be a baby to cry from the album "you don't have to be a baby to cry" (1963) lois wilkinson and andrea simpson were co-workers and friends in london, england. they were encouraged by others around the office who'd heard them sing to pursue a musical career as a duo, and they chose to call themselves the caravelles after the french jet powered airliner. they almost topped the charts with their first single, "you don't have to be a baby to cry" (discovered as the flip-side of tennessee ernie ford's "sixteen tons" single), but were hard-pressed to follow up that success. a few attempts at changing their sound to appeal to a different demographic met with middling results, and eventually lois left for a solo career. andrea continued as the caravelles with various replacement singers, and though she never had another hit, she apparently still plays the occasional live gig. i first heard this song a few years ago on the wolfman jack show, via satellite radio. there's something subtly creepy about it that i like. maybe it's those breathy, perfect vocal harmonies, and the way they're bathed in reverb, and the way the happy-sounding music is set against lyrics that are all about heartbreak. it sounds to me like something that belongs in a david lynch film. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjVaXz4HONs 130325 ... raze 55. the the // the whisperers from the album "nakedself" (2000) matt johnson's work never matched up with what i heard in my head when i read about his music, until this album came along. the music always felt a little too slick and "pop" for me, like it didn't quite mesh with the bleak worldview expressed in the lyrics. this was where it felt like it all finally clicked, with a dry, grimy, all-analog sound and not a single dated synth sound in sight. i first heard this song on WDET, back when they still played music and hadn't yet decided to spit in the faces of their loyal listeners by drastically retooling the programming without any warning at all, removing almost every trace of anything that wasn't news-related. i went out and bought the album the same day i heard "the whisperers", and it became a significant part of the soundtrack_to_my_teenage_years. this is still my favourite track on the album, though there are a few others that give it a bit of competition. i've always liked the paranoid atmosphere, and the darkness in the lyrics. the chorus, which isn't finally heard in full until the very end, goes: "don't get sad when people that you trust stab you in the back so, you thought they were your friends? now you know now you know there's one thing in life that holds you're on your own you gotta grow" watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xzh-NzdcLXQ 130326 ... raze 56. helium // baby's going underground from the album "the dirt of luck" (1995) mary timony's made a lot of good music, both on her own and in different bands, but i don't think she's ever found a better outlet than helium for her husky, vibrato-less voice and her wonderfully jagged way of playing electric guitar. i used to listen to this stuff a lot back when i went out drinking. one friday night at the bar i was a regular at, i somehow convinced a DJ to play "medusa" off of this album. that was fun. some fans prefer the glossier, more layered sound of "magic city". me, i'm kind of partial to the "pirate prude" EP and "the dirt of luck", where mary's guitar-playing takes center stage. it makes for a good soundtrack for a train ride, too. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0DztRhIeM0 130327 ... raze 57. the pixies // river euphrates from the album "surfer rosa" (1988) while i don't think there's a bad pixies album out there, "surfer rosa" has always been my favourite. part of what gives it the edge is probably steve albini's engineering work, lending a violent atmosphere that something like "doolittle" just doesn't have (not that it isn't a great album in its own right). in some songs, the drums almost sound like they're exploding. and i'm not sure anyone has ever done a better job of capturing the paper-ripping scream of black francis in a recording studio. the album was recorded in ten days, with a budget of $10,000. albini's cut was $1,500. it seems he didn't have much respect for the pixies or their material at the time; in a 1991 interview for "forced exposure" magazine, he described them as "a band who at their top dollar best are blandly entertaining college rock" and added, "never have i seen four cows more anxious to be led around by their nose rings." years later he apologized for the vitriol and admitted he'd underestimated them. i used to lift weights to this music. i'm not sure what that says about me. but if this is "college rock", maybe i should have gone to college after all. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdzoK5jwESM 130328 ... raze 58. philip glass // closing from the album "glassworks" (1982) felt like putting something from "music in twelve parts" here today, until i heard this and changed my mind. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnihJdn786w 130329 ... raze 59. roy orbison // in dreams from the album "in dreams: the greatest hits" (1987) "it wasn't like elvis; it wasn't like your loins were on fire or anything like that. it's more like roy was a private place to go — a solace, or a refuge." — k.d. lang "roy's voice sounded like the cry of an angel falling backward through an open window." — dwight yoakam "he was a bit of a magician. he was as gentle and wise and mysterious as his voice. i felt completely out of my depth in writing a song for him. when he went to sing the song in the studio, i stood beside him and sang with him. he didn't seem to be singing. so i thought, 'he'll sing it the next take. he's just reading the words.' and then we went in to listen to the take, and there was this voice, which was the loudest whisper i've ever heard. he had been singing it. but he hardly moved his lips. and the voice was louder than the band in its own way. i don't know how he did that. it was like sleight of hand." — bono "he had the ability, like all great rock and rollers, to sound like he dropped in from another planet and yet get the stuff that was right to the heart of what you were livin' in today, and it was how he opened up your vision. i carry his records with me when i go on tour today, and i'll always remember what he means to me and what he meant to me when i was young and afraid to love." — bruce springsteen in the 1980s, roy orbison re-recorded most of his hits from the 60s after monument records, who held the original master recordings, went bankrupt. there was some concern that the masters might be destroyed if legal disputes weren't resolved, so the album was intended both as a "greatest hits" collection with a bit of a twist, and a precautionary measure. though the original recordings are generally superior, that voice was still all there, and i think there are a few songs roy sang even better as an older man — like this one. one thing that tends to get overlooked about roy orbison is how adventurous a lot of his writing was. most pop/rock songs follow pretty conventional, repetitive forms — it's unusual to hear anything on the radio, past or present, that isn't stuck in some variation of the ABABCAB structure, with A representing the verses, B the chorus, and C the bridge section. some of roy's songs deviate from those rules pretty severely ("songs within songs", bob dylan called them), and "in dreams" may be one of the best examples. there is no proper "hook", chorus, or bridge section. instead, the song passes through at least seven movements, all of them unique, none of them repeated once they're left behind. but nothing about that avoidance of conventional song structure feels jarring while you're immersed in the music. tom_waits once said, "roy orbison's songs were not so much about dreams as *like* dreams." i think that does a nice job of summing it up. "in dreams" was used to chilling effect in david lynch's "blue velvet", without permission, and it wasn't until after the fact that roy came around to agreeing with and understanding david's vision. "i was mortified [when i first saw the film]," he said, "because they were talking about the 'candy-coloured clown' in relation to a dope deal. i thought, 'what in the world?' but later, when i was touring, we got the video out and i really got to appreciate what david gave to the song, and what the song gave to the movie — how it achieved this otherworldly quality that added a whole new dimension to 'in dreams'." watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbxsmcT7GOk 130330 ... raze 60. the staple singers // i'll take you there from the album "be altitude: respect yourself" (1972) something uptempo for easter sunday. this song is essentially all call-and-response chorus, all the way. it's all about that groove, that bass line, and the fiery voice of mavis staples. the full-length album version has a lengthier outro, but the best-sounding version i can find is the slightly shorter single edit. fun little factoid: when mavis staples calls out for her siblings to play solos, the instrumental parts that follow are actually provided by the muscle schoals rhythm section in their stead. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K9xgx6fA5E 130331 ... raze (muscle SHOALS, even) 130331 ... raze 61. raffi // bananaphone from the album "bananaphone" (1994) already a deeply moving song in its original form, this slowed-down version of raffi's "bananaphone" really wrings every drop of nuance out of the lyric. i'm not ashamed to admit its beauty moves me to tears. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH1M-IZHE90 (p.s. happy april_fools day) 130401 ... raze 62. split enz // i got you from the album "true colours" (1980) 80s guilty pleasure moment #2. i have a hard time feeling any guilt over this one, though, because it's a great song. i like how schizophrenic it is, shifting on a dime from the claustrophobic-sounding verses to the explosions of melody in the chorus. while neil finn would go on to have even more success fronting crowded house a little later on, evidence of his underrated skill as a songwriter is already clearly heard right here. the music video is dead simple, but it works. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmQlBfxh4Us 130402 ... raze 63. the band // tears of rage from the album "music from big pink" (1968) today is richard manuel's birthday. he would be 70 years old. i bought "stage fright" when i was about 14, in the middle of a serious self-imposed musical re-education. it didn't do a whole lot for me at first. it would take years before i returned to the album and realized how good it was. eventually i thought i might as well pick up the first two albums, to get a better idea of what the band were all about, and in the process my appreciation for and understanding of "stage fright" deepened considerably. "music from big pink" became a desert island album (with the self-titled "brown album" not far behind). listening to it for the very first time was one of those divine musical moments when everything clicks and time seems to stand still. and a lot of that had to do with richard. "tears of rage" has to be one of the best opening tracks on any album inhabiting the nebulous pop/rock genre. it's not a hard-driving, uptempo song; it's slow and mournful, painfully beautiful, like a punch to the gut with flowers protruding from between each finger. i've used that metaphor before a time or two, but when it feels right, it feels right. there's a lot of soul and intensity in that voice. it's vulnerable and strong at the same time. a contradiction in sound. and on the choruses, it fuses with bassist rick danko's voice to become something even more powerful. i'm pretty sure when that first song was over, i had to double back and listen again. i needed time to process what i'd just heard, before i moved on to the rest of the album. and i'm pretty sure that's the only time such a thing has ever happened to me, in all my years of listening to music. for my money, richard's was (and still is) one of the most gorgeous male voices popular music ever produced. sadly, it came attached to a person who was as self-destructive as he was talented. i don't think the band ever scaled the creative heights of those first three albums again after they were shrinking in the rear_view_mirror, and part of that comes down to the fact that richard never wrote another song after "stage fright", though he would continue to record and perform with and without the band for another 16 years. i don't mean to imply that robbie robertson didn't write a whole lot of great songs for the group. it's just that it's more than a little frustrating to listen to something like "lonesome suzie" or "in a station", and to think about what else richard might have done if he'd been a little more motivated or better able to keep it together. there's a brilliant review/analysis of "stage fright" (at amazon.com, of all places) by john stodder that i think comes as close as anyone ever has to getting at the heart of what made richard such an indispensable part of the fabric of the group, and how it all went wrong. "in some ways, being in the band destroyed him," stodder wrote. "at the same time, it created a place for him to hide." robbie robertson, who tried to keep richard writing and coaxed him into collaborating on a handful of songs, touched on the seeming evaporation of his band mate's creative energy in an interview that coincided with the reissue/remastering of "stage fright" in 2000. "i just assumed it would continue," he said. "when we were going to do our second album, there was nothing coming. so when i'd be working on something, i'd pull him into it and make him work on the song with me just to get him in the mood or give him a taste for this, thinking then [he'd] go on to follow it up. but he didn't. my theory is, some people have one song in them, some people have five, some people have a hundred." maybe richard would have had more songs in him if the drugs and alcohol hadn't taken over. drummer levon helm wrote in his autobiography that richard would drink eight bottles of grand marnier a day. heroin and cocaine were also part of the mix. rick danko once said the unexpected financial success the group experienced was the worst thing that ever could have happened to them, largely because of the path to excess it opened up. richard went on to turn in more great performances on the band's albums in spite of his lack of creative input, but the abuse he put his body through caught up with him, and it's difficult to listen to some of his live performances from later in the 1970s. on the songs richard sings, his voice is little more than a hoarse croak. it can be a pretty effective croak — especially on a song like "the shape i'm in", which he kept on singing until the night he died — but it's coming from a guy who once had a voice that sounded like it was capable of just about anything. incredibly, at the end of his life he somehow regained most of his vocal range, having managed to get sober. by most accounts, he was doing well until the band's former manager albert grossman (a close friend and staunch supporter to richard) passed away in early 1986, sending him into a depressive tailspin that led back to cocaine and the bottle. it didn't help that richard felt the band had turned into a parody of its former self and a veritable nostalgia act, touring without robbie and playing the same old songs night after night in small venues. after one such show, he had a long conversation with levon that went late into the night. then he hung himself in his florida hotel room. maybe he felt like he was at the bottom of a creative and personal black hole, and the only solution he could see was to end it all. maybe it was a decision that grew out of weariness. maybe it was a drunken impulse he would have thought better of in the morning. the only person who might know why he did what he did is richard, and he's not around to explain. i don't know his life story. i probably wouldn't be the best person to tell it even if i did. but i can tell you this much: he had a wonderfully distinctive way of playing the piano and the drums, an astonishing voice, and he wrote some beautiful songs. it's impossible not to think of what else he might have done, if not for whatever it was that drove him to self-destruct. i suppose we'll never know what the driving force was. and it's entirely possible that even he didn't know. sometimes the people we confuse the most with the things we choose to do are ourselves. at least he left behind some unvarnished pieces of himself in song. that's more than most people can say. if you don’t have them already, do yourself a favour and pick up "music from big pink", "the band", and "stage fright". if you like good music, regardless of genre, those three albums belong in your collection. they make a nice little trilogy. and it feels appropriate that the first voice you hear on "big pink", and the last voice you hear on "stage fright", is richard's, introducing the band to the world and then bringing their hat trick to a close with one last breathless falsetto. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zptgMRMPz6g 130403 ... raze 64. oumou sangare // kun fe ko from the album "worotan" (1996) there's an artsy bar/cafe in this city called "milk". back in my weekend drinking days, i would have a drink or three there every friday night, before heading to the larger, louder bar i would haunt for the rest of the night. for a long time i tried to get a show at milk, back when no one here knew or cared who i was as a musical entity. i was told angelo, the guy who owned (and still owns) the place, was the "music coordinator", and he was the one to talk to about getting a show. the thing is, he didn't seem to exist. to this day, i've never once spoken to him or seen him in the flesh. i know he's real, because he has a facebook page, but it's difficult not to think of him as a sort of ghost. i don't know how many CDs i went through back then, giving them to whoever was working behind the bar at any given time and asking them to pass the music on to angelo. as far as i know, not one person did that, though they all said they would. no matter how many times i followed up, i never got an answer from anyone. and the turnover rate in that place was such that a person i gave an album to one friday might not be there the next friday, and they might never be seen again. after a while i gave up on ever getting anything to angelo, and i started giving music to whoever was behind the bar (it was always an attractive girl around my age; there's never been a single guy working the floor in all the time milk's been open, as far as i know) and telling them, "don't give this to angelo. this is for you." i just wanted to share music with people, whether i knew them or not. i figured there were worse ways to go about it. i got one girl to listen to a CD. she had short dark hair and black rimmed glasses. her name might have been nancy. i'm not sure. i didn't know a thing about her, but she was disarmingly pretty, and friendly, and we struck up a nice little friday night rapport. i gave her an album, she listened to it, and she told me she liked it. then i never saw her again. another short-lived employee moving on to better things. one thing i enjoyed about spending time at milk was never knowing what music i might hear. whoever was working there just threw whatever they would normally listen to on the sound system. on any given friday, i might hear al green, or blonde_redhead, or simon & garfunkel, or interpol, or scratchy old blues recordings from the 1930s. i heard pieces of one particular album bubble up from the ether two or three times. some kind of ethnic music with a powerful female voice. i had no idea who or what it was, or what the woman was singing about, but i loved it. i could feel it seep into my bones. the blonde-haired girl who played this music lasted longer than most bartenders seemed to, so i had that going for me. one night i heard that familiar (and unfamiliar) music again, and i approached the bar and asked the girl what it was. she told me it was an album called "worotan", by someone named oumou sangare. i wrote the words down on a small notepad i always carried with me, to make sure i got the spelling right. then i ordered the album on the internet because i couldn't find it anywhere in the city. i've since learned that oumou was born in mali, west africa. as a child, she sang to help her mother feed the family after being abandoned by her father. many of her songs feature pointed social criticism, particularly the treatment of women in african society. she owns and helped build a hotel in bamako that doubles as her performing space and a refuge for musicians. she can also sing her pants off. here's the opening track on "worotan", and the first song of hers i heard one friday night, eight or nine years ago. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu-mc1ozRa0 130404 ... raze 65. hauschka // improvisation (recorded live for NPR in october 2010) hauschka is the stage name of german pianist/composer volker bertelmann. volker was classically trained, but found his interest in classical music dissipating as he approached adulthood. at 18, he temporarily left music behind to pursue an education in medicine and economics. that too lost its appeal before long, and he began to explore the world of pop music. later, a fascination with electronica led to experiments with prepared piano (involving the placement of objects or "preparations" between and/or on the strings, hammers, and dampers of a piano, to alter the tone of the instrument and achieve various unnatural percussive and melodic sounds). here is an improvised piece he recorded for NPR. the piano's preparations include wooden clothespins, ping pong balls, strategically-placed EBows, a box of tic tacs, and a vibrator. watch / listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Z4yljYY_c 130405 ... raze 66. autechre // rotar from the album "tri repetae" (1995) some of autechre's more cerebral work kind of leaves me cold, or i have to be in a specific kind of mood to enjoy it. but there are certain albums and EPs that strike a nice balance between "cold and stark" and "strangely expressive". i listen to an album like "tri repetae", and i don't have any trouble connecting with it. it's just a different kind of experience than listening to something like aphex twin. melodies can be a little more fragmented and more difficult to find, which makes unearthing them that much more satisfying. i think the album is best taken in full, in one sitting. having said that, i like the ominous atmosphere of this track. it sounds to me like low-level paranoia kept at a distance and observed, as you would an ant trapped between two panes of glass. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFuIB9hsI1s 130406 ... raze 67. cat_power // say from the album "moon pix" (1998) the last few cat_power albums haven't really connected with me on any deep emotional level, but chan marshall has one of those voices i could listen to all day, even if the songs she's singing don't feel like they're up to snuff. i'd listen to her sing a pamphlet on pest control. her earlier work occupies a special place for me...in particular the albums "what would the community think?", "moon pix", and "you are free". there's a rawness there that feels like it's missing from her more "mature" songs. there's also a sense of heaviness. everything seems more urgent when you're young and angry and you feel attacked from all angels. not so much when you're a little older and calmer. "moon pix" was the first cat power album i bought. i heard it at a friend's house one night eleven years ago. it didn't do much for me as background music, but something in that voice made me want to investigate a little more. when i really sat down and gave the album my undivided attention, it was like it mutated into something completely different. "the greatest" works very well as background music. something like "moon pix"...doesn't. you need to give yourself to it, and then it gives itself back to you. half the songs on the album were written in a single night, in the aftermath of a vivid hallucinatory nightmare chan had while alone in her then-boyfriend's farmhouse in south carolina. maybe it makes sense then that i've reached for it some nights when i haven't been able to sleep. it's not music to listen to when you want to cheer yourself up, but every once in a while it's just right. the way chan sings "hope all is well with you / i wish the best for you / when no one is around, love will always love you" knocks the wind out of me every time. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sES7VOxYsW4 130407 ... the evil angel on my shoulder "attacked from all angels"? you know what...i actually like that typo, to the point that i can't even motivate myself to insult you over it. what's happening to me? 130407 ... raze 68. rusted root // send me on my way from the album "when i woke" (1994) i first heard this one not in "mathilda" or "ice age", but in a smaller, quirkier film called "pie in the sky", about a young man obsessed with traffic gridlock trying to win over his distant, flaky high school sweetheart while being taught about dance and sex by his lusty landlady. i don't think it's possible to listen to this song and be (or stay) in a bad mood. it might be the only hit rusted root have ever had, but its infectious energy endures no matter how many lazy films recycle it as go-to feel-good music. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGMabBGydC0 130408 ... raze 69. man man // gold teeth from the album "the man in a blue turban with a face" (2004) i have my city's university radio station to thank for introducing me to philadelphia band man man almost a decade ago. there was a manic energy to the music that hooked me right away. there was also a surprisingly melancholy edge to some of the songs — like this one, which will probably forever be my favourite man man song, on my favourite man man album. with lyrics like, "she fences heartbreak across the border / and builds a better bird house out of bone / she laughs when the main protagonist's family dies / and i wouldn't trust her when she cries at night," and those beautifully mournful clarinet/flute harmonies, it's always been pretty clear to me that this is a breakup/unrequited love song with some serious pain swimming around inside of it. music critics have written all about how more recent man man albums have stripped away the weirdness to reveal the ragged heart beating beneath it. i'd contend that the heart was always there, for anyone who cared enough to find it. this is also a band whose album liner_notes credit backup singing in terms like "conspiratory throat" and "plush throat", who welcomed a new member to the group with a press release describing him simply as someone who "has a face", and who have been known to use things like apples and the heads of audience members as percussion instruments during their manic live performances. so it was kind of a given that i was going to be a fan. but i heard the music before i knew about any of that silliness, and it was the music i connected with first. though the tom_waits / captain beefheart influence has been somewhat overstated by lazy writers who think anyone with a gruff voice is automatically channeling grandmaster waits, this is one place i think the comparison works. if tom were a lovelorn janitor sweeping up the debris left behind by a travelling carnival, his idle thoughts might sound something like this. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udF5D8YjjVQ 130409 ... raze 70. andy mckee // gates of gnomeria from the album "gates of gnomeria" (2007) andy mckee describes himself as "just this guy from topeka, kansas who kind of blew up on the internet about a week before christmas [in 2006]". if youtube is partially responsible for making people like justin bieber famous, well...it also sometimes provides a platform for artists with talents that are a little more unique. today is a grey, rainy day, and this feels like appropriate music for what the weather's doing. but dig what happens once the tapping starts and things really kick in rhythmically around the halfway mark. watch / listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlDdzNuJto4 130410 ... raze 71. pj harvey // the slow drug from the album "uh huh her" (2004) "uh huh her" isn't my favourite pj harvey album. i really don't know what my favourite pj harvey album is, to be honest. but i like the fact that polly jean produced this one herself and made every sound on her own, with the lone exception of the drum tracks. there's a gritty, slightly lo-fi sonic quality to the music that appeals to me too. in an interview with "tracks" magazine, she explained, "i was looking for distressed, debased sounds. so all of the guitars are either tuned so low that it's hard to detect what notes they're playing or they're baritone guitars or they're played through the shittiest amps i could find." this song, meanwhile, features no guitar at all. there's just a synthesized loop whirring in the background, the cheesiest, least realistic pizzicato string sound on any keyboard ever made playing a few simple chords, and her voice. there's no chorus or "hook". the chords don't change. the vocals sound like they were recorded in a nicer-than-usual shoe box, bathed in a thin blanket of hiss. it's the definition of a "deep album cut", sitting around the halfway point of the record, easy to overlook, simply there until it isn't anymore and the next song comes in to take its place. i think i like it better than any of the other songs around it, even if it sounds like it walked in from a completely different album. maybe it's because, in some strange way, it always made me think of a friend. i thought she would have liked it. she disappeared and then ended up in prison before i could play it for her, so the jury's still out on that one. the character of grace in "box_of_fire" is based on her. different name, different ending to the story, but the same feelings and same general idea. so, of course, now when i hear the song there's an extra dimension to it that wasn't there before. maybe it's that vocal harmony line pj weaves in. maybe that's what does it. she has another one of those voices i could listen to all day. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUpgk1t0cIw 130411 ... raze 72. cannonball adderley // love for sale from the album "somethin' else" (1958) there's something unique about the tone julian "cannonball" adderley got out of his saxophone. everything he played sounded big-hearted, for lack of a better description, like he always found a way to wring joy from the music, even if it wasn't a happy song he was playing. the rest of the band on this album isn't too shabby either — hank jones on piano, art blakey on drums, sam jones on bass (no relation to hank), and some guy named miles_davis playing trumpet. dexter gordon (another sax man with his own unique sound) recorded his own fine version of this cole porter song, but no recording i've heard tops what cannonball and the gang did with it one night in march 1958, captured by recording engineer rudy van gelder in his parents' house, in hackensack, new jersey. listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tSYXpq2kW0 130412 ... raze (two songs today, since i missed yesterday thanks to sleep issues and blather's 3:00 a.m. turnover time butting up against one another) 73. josh_ritter // the temptation of adam from the album "the historical conquests of josh_ritter "(2007) a love song written from the perspective of a man holed up in a bomb shelter with the object of his affection during the apocalypse, the power to end what's left of the world literally at his fingertips. here the temptation of adam isn't eve herself, but the impulse to incinerate the rest of the world so he can preserve their love just as it is, perfect, isolated, untouched by anyone or anything else. the second half of one verse goes: "then one night you found me in my army issue cot and you told me of your flash of inspiration you said fusion was the broken heart that's lonely's only thought and all night long you drove me wild with your equations" who the hell writes lyrics like that? listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH9MhovIY9g 74. blonde_redhead // swing pool from the album "blonde_redhead" (1995) for twenty years, the core of new york band blonde_redhead has remained the same: singer/guitarist kazu makino, and twin brothers amedeo and simone pace. they've "cleaned up" their sound over the years, allowing once-buried melodies to swim to the surface, as the noise-rock influences of old have given way to sensibilities more in line with dream pop and shoegaze. makino's voice has been the main connective tissue through it all. half the time i have no idea what she's singing with that perfectly imperfect voice of hers. but i think i get the message. this is the first blonde_redhead song i ever heard, off of their eponymous debut album, neatly summed up by allmusic reviewer brandon gentry as "a glorious piece of dense, art-damaged noise, with songs that move from drifting melodicism to raging aural assaults in the course of a few measures". listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-dbsmdkAZA 130414 ... raze 75. unknown zulu singers // avulekile amasango (recorded in phezulu safari park, south africa, 2006) "avulekile amasango" is a south african song traditionally sung at funerals to celebrate the life of the deceased and their passage into the next life. i've found a number of versions on youtube, but not one of them comes close to this incomplete, low quality, amateur location recording of an a capella performance. it has the same elemental power crackly old blues recordings possess. i wish it were longer. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCUGZpcL9Yw 130415 ... raze 76. eric dolphy // tenderly from the album "far cry" (1961) eric dolphy is one of those jazz cats i have to be in a certain kind of mood in order to enjoy. a caustic miles_davis, in a 1964 "blindfold test" interview with "downbeat" magazine, flung insults at dolphy's playing and said, "the next time i see him, i'm going to step on his foot." dolphy would be dead as a result of complications brought on by undiagnosed diabetes before miles could make good on his threat. dolphy was a virtuosic musician, but there are places in his music where, for me, the skill stabs out the soul of the song. then there are places that are beautiful no matter what frame of mind you're in when you visit them — like this unaccompanied cadenza for alto saxophone. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH2tYTPJ2BU 130416 ... raze 77. peter ivers // in_heaven (lady in the radiator song) music from the film "eraserhead" (1977) "eraserhead" was david lynch's first full-length film. it remains arguably the strangest work he's done, and that's saying something, given some of the other films he's made. ostensibly it's a very abstract rendering of a man's conflicted feelings about sex and fatherhood, but it's one of those movies that's so open to interpretation and so full of surreal imagery, it probably means something different to every person who's seen it. i get the sense it may be the most personal film lynch has ever made, which makes it stranger still. the sound design is an integral part of the film, and what few melodic moments there are (chief among them samples fats waller's organ-playing) stand out in the midst of the unnerving ambient industrial noise that comprises most of the soundtrack. this song — the only one in the film with lyrics — was written and performed by peter ivers, american musician and host of the short-lived, absurdly ahead-of-its-time televised music program "new wave theatre". in "eraserhead" it's mimed by the lady in the radiator, who seems to double as an object of the main character's affection and a figment of his imagination. the first time i sat down and tried to absorb the movie, this scene creeped me the hell out. not that it stopped me from rewinding and watching about six more times, so i could hear the song again. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrGCutoHa7A i was going to try and write a bit about the making of the film, which i think is a fascinating story, but who better to tell that tale than the man who wrote and directed it? so here's an hour and a half of david lynch talking about "eraserhead": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-0c-y5aN_g 130417 ... the evil angel on my shoulder you missed an "of" in there. sloppy, sloppy... 130417 ... raze 78. morphine // claire from the album "good" (1991) there's never been another band like morphine. a "power trio" making music they described as "low rock" and "implied grunge", they built their sound not around the guitar, but with baritone saxophone and two-string electric slide bass in its place. there was a palpable jazz influence to the sound they created, but the music wasn't jazz. it defied easy categorization. i think of it as the quintessential soundtrack for an evening drive, but i wouldn't know what genre to stuff it into. with each album morphine made, their palette of sound was subtly expanded to include flashes of organ, guitar, piano, strings, and female backup vocals. their final studio album, "the night", was released posthumously, after singer/songwriter/bassist mark sandman suffered a fatal heart attack on-stage (in another life he'd driven a cab, a knife wound inflicted by a thief one night weakening his heart). it manages the rare trick of touching on everything that had come before while breaking new ground, and is arguably the finest work the band ever did. this, however, is not a song off of that album. instead, it's the precise moment i became a morphine fan, three songs into their very first album. i remember listening to it on my discman in my grade ten business class, wondering what some of the other students might think if they peeled off my headphones and discovered i was listening to something very far removed from slipknot or our lady peace, or whatever was popular at the time. mark sandman once explained his "less is more" musical ethos by telling a story about cooking. "for years," he told friend matt ashare, "i made myself a red sauce for pasta with oregano, some thyme, some basil, black pepper, salt, some of this, some of that. i thought that's how you were supposed to make it. then one day i didn't put anything in. i just forgot. and it was the best sauce i ever made. that moment right there taught me a lot." listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-ahRamzTgw 130418 ... raze 79. fiona apple // every_single_night from the album "the_idler_wheel" (2012) i'm not sure what female pop stars most newly-teenage guys were lusting after in 1997 while navigating the strangeness of puberty. if i'd had pin-ups on my wall at the time, there probably would have been images of emma bunton and victoria beckham (or "baby spice" and "posh spice" as they were known then), jewel, and maybe mariah carey. i wasn't a fan of the music any of these women made; it was simply a matter of thinking, "you're beautiful, and though i'll clearly never have you, that doesn't mean i can't enjoy looking at you." i think every living person with a libido goes through a similar stage of having celebrity crushes when they're young and full of hormones. hell, plenty of adults have celebrity crushes too. i'm not going to pretend i don't. it's harmless fun, and a useful reminder that certain parts (both external and internal) are still in good working order. the first female artist i ever felt a more serious stirring for was fiona apple. when she came along, i'd never seen anything quite like her. this was before my self-imposed musical re-education, when i was still very much into mainstream music and i still listened to commercial radio pretty regularly. so the only exposure i had to a lot of music was what i heard on the radio, or what i saw on television in the form of phone sex commercials (or, as some like to call them, "music videos"). my introduction to fiona came via the latter medium. she was beautiful, but in a different, earthier, unaffected way. her songs came from a much darker, more personal place than anything i'd heard from a girl who played piano and wrote her own material (paula cole she wasn't). she never sounded young or "cute", even then, when she was still a teenager. her voice was deep, weary, sultry, muscular, and it contained dimensions i hadn't heard before in the realm of "popular music made by pretty young people". there was just something unusual about her. a vulnerability, and at the same time a sense of danger. she was silk-wrapped razor blades. i didn't want to stare at her in music videos with goo-goo eyes; she was the strange, alluring, fascinating outcast i wanted to find and befriend in high school, but never had the guts to approach. it wasn't an obsession, but a different kind of interest i'd never felt for someone i saw on television. i actually found her interesting as a person. this is someone who, when she was eighteen years old, gave an acceptance speech at the mtv video music awards in which she told everyone watching, "this world is bullshit, and you shouldn't model your life on what we think is cool, and what we're wearing, and what we're saying. go with yourself." the general consensus at the time seemed to be that what she did was ridiculous and immature. i saw it on television myself when it happened. i thought it was incredibly brave, and kind of amazing. i wasn't sure what to make of it. i wasn't sure what to make of *her*, and that was what made her exciting. she didn't fit. she wasn't a corporate puppet. when she had something to say, she said it. i almost fell over when i caught her on a late night show singing a song with a chorus of, "it won't be long 'til you'll be lying limp in your own hand," spitting the words with such force that she blew her voice out mid-performance. her interviews were sometimes uncomfortable to read or listen to, because of how completely unguarded she was. i always found it a little sad that some people pegged her as being crazy, when she really just had the courage to be herself in a business where that's not something you're ever supposed to do. i'd like to say i went out and bought her first album as soon as i knew it existed. i didn't, though i should have. back then i had this mental block when it came to music made by women. it had nothing to do with thinking they were inferior artists to men. it was about the feelings i had for women in general. they were a foreign country i didn't think i would ever get to visit. i admired them from afar and found them fascinating creatures, but didn't feel i was allowed on their wavelength. when it came to their music, the thought of investigating it kind of unsettled me, if i'm being completely honest. i couldn't articulate it at the time, but i think i felt like i wasn't supposed to be privy to their thoughts and feelings in art form, since i wasn't privy to them in any other form and didn't have any real female friends. it took kate_bush to break down that wall, when i read about her, bought "the dreaming" on a whim, and listened to it about three hundred times in the space of a few months. but i still didn't investigate any of fiona apple's music for a long time, beyond the bits i caught on television. i'm not entirely sure why. when i did finally get around to it, "tidal" was the only album that really resonated with me. there was a rawness to it that was electric. every album i heard after that felt somehow just a little too polished. too "produced". the talent was there, but i wanted the music to go stranger places, to match the intensity of what she was singing about. i found myself in the odd position of liking her more than i liked most of her music. then she fell off of my radar for a good long while. last year she released a new album for the first time since 2005. commonly abbreviated as "the_idler_wheel", the full title is: "the idler wheel is wiser than the driver of the screw, and whipping cords will serve you more than rope will ever do." i thought i'd listen to some of the thirty-second song preview clips on amazon just for something to do. after hearing a piece of the first song, i ran out and bought the thing immediately without listening to any more. this is the album i hoped she might make one day, without thinking it would really ever happen. it's weird, skeletal, aggressively uncommercial, and fiercely out of step with anything else going on right now. she does things with her voice i'd never heard her do before, shifting on a dime from a playful moan to an angry roar. i'm not sure anyone else could turn the word "brain" into a nine-syllable battle cry that ends up being one of the catchiest hooks on their entire album, but that's exactly what she does in this song. fiona has always had a facility for slinging anger in such a way that it sounds like she's physically ripping the words out of her guts. that's here too, but it only happens in a few quick flashes, making the explosive moments that much more powerful and surprising because of their relative absence. even "valentine", the one song that felt slight to me on first listen, has more emotional complexity to it than the lyrics would suggest; when she sings "i love you" during the chorus, she repeats the word "you" over and over again, her voice growing more crazed with each reiteration, until it sounds like a desperate attempt to convince herself of something she doesn't really feel, or an effort to force the object of her affection to love her back with the sheer weight of her own need. it's intensely personal stuff, in a way that isn't at all contrived, and in places it can almost be uncomfortable to listen to. just like those interviews. the production is something else, too. it's an unusual-sounding album, and the most austere thing she's ever done. almost every song is built around her piano and voice, with barely a conventional drum beat or predictable groove in sight. instead, rhythm is provided by the sound of fabric tearing, a bottle-making machine whirring, thighs being slapped, murky loops of indeterminate origin, and scissors hitting tin and plastic. nothing sounds manipulated, and nothing is pitch-corrected. every strange sound seems to be completely organic and man/woman-made. and i'm not sure where fiona gets these chord progressions from, but they're absurdly inventive and unpredictable. how she manages to weave vocal melodies on top of what she's doing on the piano is beyond me. i counted exactly one somewhat normal/standard chord progression over the course of the whole album, acting as a hook in one song. maybe two. that's it. it's as if she took pieces of all the jazz standards and nina simone songs she'd always loved, fragmented and refracted them inside of her brain, and then ground them down into a paste that's uniquely her own. you could almost categorize some parts of the album as "industrial blues without blues structures". but i don't think you can really categorize it at all, and that's part of its beauty. it's even one of the most dynamic albums i've heard in a very long time, to the point that it's necessary to turn the volume up or down at certain points in the middle of songs if you're listening on headphones. that's shocking to hear, given how much new music is still being crushed to death at the mastering stage. almost everything about the album flies in the face of convention, and it's as startling to listen to now as it was when i first heard it. here's that opening track, then. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzoQolIDlTw 130419 ... raze 80. the steve miller band // winter time from the album "book of dreams" (1977) seeing as how it's 420 today, i thought there should be something here tied in with my pot-smoking days, long ago and far away as they were. while i was listening to a lot of things back then, this particular song has kind of a funny little story to accompany it. when i was eighteen years old and just out of high school, i had a band with two of my best friends. gord, my bassist, was the closer friend of the two, and at the time he was one of my best friends. sometimes, when we'd be walking somewhere late at night, he would start singing this song, apropos of nothing: "in the winter time when all the leaves are brown and the wind blows and the birds have all flown for the summer hear me calling hear me calling hear me ca-a-a-a-a-a-a-alling" it sounded like a lazy show tune performed by a tone-deaf lounge singer. that's not a knock against gord; he wasn't tone-deaf. he was, and remains, a talented musician. he just sang this song in a tuneless way that sounded funny to me. i assumed it was something he'd made up. one night while a group of friends were hanging out at his house, everyone went off to get free day-old donuts from tim horton's. for some reason i can't remember anymore, i chose to stay behind. one of gord's brother's many mixtapes was playing, and while i sat there by myself, stoned out of my head, a song came on with the same words gord would sometimes sing. "this is steve miller!" i said to an empty room. "holy shit! it's a real song!" so it is. and it sounds nothing like what his a capella rendition would have led me to expect, had i known it was someone else's song. but i've always kind of liked it, as uncool as it is these days to admit you like steve miller. i still get a laugh out of the disparity between the way gord sang it and the way it actually sounds. listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M3ZtxlrZOg 130420 ... raze let's just pretend that hilariously redundant "and at the time he was one of my best friends" bit isn't there. yes. let's do that. 130420 ... raze 81. the stooges // down on the street from the album "fun house" (1970) as a group, stooges fans seem pretty undecided on what the band's best album is. usually it's a toss-up between the first three. for me "fun house" has the edge, maybe because it feels like it captures the raw energy of the band as a collective unit better than any of their other albums. that's probably thanks to producer don galluci recognizing that this was not a band well-suited to recording in a conventional studio environment. after throwing away what they'd attempted to record the "right" way because it felt lifeless and stilted, he got rid of all the baffles and sound treatment in the recording studio, and had the group play as close to each other as they normally would be in a live setting, with no isolation between instruments and with iggy pop singing through a handheld microphone. the results are raw, with bleed all over the place, and yet to my ears the sound quality is more pleasing and more "alive" than it is on any other stooges album. i think the title "raw power" might have been a better fit here than on the following album. the opening track on "fun house" has always felt like a great "getting ready to get drunk and dangerous on a saturday night" song. wait...it's sunday night, isn't it? i missed the boat again. oh well. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qannFs974gg 130421 ... raze 82. the perishers // weekends from the album "let there be morning" (2003) the perishers are an indie rock band from sweden. i don't know much about them, and haven't heard enough of their music to know if i'm a fan. but i like this song. it's pretty. a good one to play on mondays, given the subject matter. i like how the piano is clearly an upright that's a little bit out-of-tune. gives the song character. i first heard this track two summers ago, in a bar, on satellite radio. i was almost positive it was something i hadn't heard before by yellow wood, a now-defunct local band. the timbre of the lead singers voices were eerily similar. and i thought to myself, "what are yellow wood doing on commercial satellite radio?" rationally, i realized there was no way it could really be them. so i scrambled to write down as many lyrics as i could make out, hoping an internet search later on would reveal the source of the music. and it did. thanks, google. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJj1EA6tbEc 130422 ... the evil angel on my shoulder i think you might have wanted to pluralize "timbre" there. shameful. 130422 ... raze would you believe that i made an intentional grammatical error in an effort to coax you into insulting me, because i miss our banter? 130423 ... the evil angel on my shoulder no. 130423 ... raze 83. hirokazu tanaka // fever from the nintendo game "dr. mario" (1990) is "dr. mario" anything more than a weird, maddening variation on "tetris"? maybe not. but it does have feature catchy tunes on the soundtrack. especially this song, which makes the perfect backdrop for an expertly edited video of many deaths occurring in many different nintendo games. as someone who's suffered the indignity of quite a few cheap deaths over the years, it touched me in a place few things do — the funny bone. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLl79_9ffWk 130423 ... raze "does have feature". how the hell did i miss that? where have my proofreading skills gone? where's the dog? 130423 ... raze 84. shannon wright // with closed eyes from the album "over the sun" (2004) i'm going to keep this short, in an effort to avoid marring three entries in a row with stupid typos. shannon wright is intense. i like this album, and the fact that aside from steve albini's engineering work, it's a two-woman show, with christina files seated behind the drums and shannon doing everything else. i like this song, though i was tempted to choose "avalanche" because i really like that one too. the end. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfCYG0Jkq1Y 130424 ... raze 85. tom jones // tower of song from the album "spirit in the room" (2012) i'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that at some point tom jones became really cool. don't get me wrong; i always thought he had a hell of a voice. and he deserves to be commended for fighting his producers to get artists like little richard, jerry lee lewis, chet atkins, and richard pryor on his variety show that aired in the late 1960s and early 1970s. but his music, along with the whole "ladies' man with approximately as much chest hair as sean connery" image, always screamed cheese to me. i can dig "it's not unusual", "the young new mexican puppeteer", and a few other songs if they come on the radio in a restaurant. but there was never anything there i really wanted to listen to more than once or twice. unlike scott walker, who could have just as easily turned into a cheesy balladeer but instead ran screaming from the middle of the road and sent his golden voice floating off to another planet to make insane, uncompromising music like nothing else, tom just seemed to stay in the same comfortable place, firmly in the middle of that road. in the summer of 2010, i read something about a new tom jones album with a gospel/blues flavour, called "praise & blame". i thought that sounded like it could be interesting. i checked out a few songs on the internet, just for something to do, and my jaw hit my genitals. i went out and bought the album, and listened to it some more, and couldn't quite believe what i was hearing. with that album and 2012's "spirit in the room", tom has thrown himself into a late-career reinvention not too far removed from what johnny cash accomplished with rick rubin in the autumn of his life. the man is in his seventies, and he's still singing better than most people a third of his age. the difference is, now the music is completely stripped of all the schmaltz, and with age comes wisdom, and all that jazz. he even finally threw out all that black hair dye, which i find a great relief. maybe letting go of a bit of vanity and getting comfortable with the idea of growing older has something to do with the seismic shift in musical direction. tom also seems to have johnny's ability to sing someone else's song and make it sound like it belongs to him. on "praise & blame", one of the standout moments was the opening track, a cover of bob dylan's "what good am i?" that was stripped of the caustic energy bob's original vocal delivery gave the song and made into something beautifully weary. tom pulls off the same trick with the opening song on "spirit in the room", a stripped-to-the-bone take on leonard cohen's "tower of song". when leonard sings "i was born with the gift of a golden voice" in his inimitable, laconic way, you can't help smiling at the irony. when tom sings that line, you just think, "yeah...you were. and it's still there." "i've only got so long left," he said in a 2012 interview with "mojo" magazine. "i know that. how long that is, i don't know. if i live another twenty years, i'm gonna be lucky. so i want to do as much as i can now that's real, that is me, that is my personality coming through. the records that i make now, i want to be meaningful. i want them to touch people. i've got to be as soulful as i possibly can and as honest as i possibly can." at an age when most singers have settled into a comfortably mediocre nostalgia act, tom jones is making the most vital music of his life. suck on that, engelbert humperdinck. watch / listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JWiPFT0v2c (two songs again today, because of the turnover time and sleep issues and yadda yadda. i'll figure out the second one later on.) 130426 ... raze 86. duke ellington // fleurette africaine from the album "money jungle" (1962) when duke ellington's enormous contributions to jazz music as a composer and bandleader are evaluated and re-evaluated, something that seems to often get lost is just what a great musician he was himself. there aren't many albums with the spotlight on duke the pianist in a stripped-down setting, but the few that exist are well worth hearing. i'd put "piano reflections" and "piano in the foreground" up there with some of my favourite piano-led jazz. "money jungle" may be the most interesting of the bunch, with the trio rounded out by charles mingus on bass and max roach on drums. if, as some would have you believe, there was tension between the three titans in the studio, maybe that's what gives the music its peculiar energy. some of duke's playing on this album is as "free" as he ever got, and on the title track, it sounds like the engineer hit the record button immediately following an argument; the song itself sounds like a fight, with every man almost working against the other musically. but somehow, it works. this song, meanwhile, has a very subdued, late night feel to it. there's something haunting in it that sets it apart from a lot of the other songs on "money jungle", with mingus' fluttering bass, max's subtle drum work, and duke's minor key melodies coalescing into something that sounds at once ancient and divorced from time. this music was used to chilling effect in a first season episode of HBO's "the wire". the moment i realized there was a duke ellington tune on the soundtrack, and that a character was meant to be listening to it in his office, i knew it was my kind of show. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkn6pJ7R8-I 130427 ... raze still one song behind. i missed the turnover time by twelve minutes. i'll catch up soon enough. 130427 ... raze 87. mountainear // eliza (a day for every hour) from the album "when the air is bright they shine" (2006) mountainear is the brainchild of german singer/songwriter henning wandhoff. he began as a one-man act, but eventually recruited a mostly-female band and set off in search of a richer, more layered sound. with "when the air is bright they shine", his goal was to create a short, self-contained album with no filler tracks. the results have always struck me as being great springtime music. this song in particular is gorgeous. listen: https://soundcloud.com/_type/eliza-a-day-for-every-hour?in=_type/sets/mountaineer-when-the-air-is-bright-they-shine 130428 ... raze 88. st. vincent // laughing with a mouth of blood from the album "actor" (2009) annie clark started out as part of the polyphonic spree and a member of sufjan stevens' touring band before branching out on her own. her music just keeps getting weirder and widening in scope with each album she makes, and she's a beast on the guitar. this track hails from her sophomore album, "actor". that chorus is killer: "all of my old friends aren't so friendly / and all of my old haunts are now all haunting me." watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGADJ_F1Wgg 130428 ... raze 89. the be good tanyas // horses from the album "chinatown" (2003) the be good tanyas are three pretty canadian ladies who make pretty music that roughly falls under the alt-country/alt-folk umbrella. some would argue their debut album "blue horse" is still the best work they've done. "chinatown", the album that followed it, has a slight edge for me, and one of the reasons is this song. a great take on townes van zandt's "waiting around to die" doesn't hurt either. i first heard this album in its near-entirety at milk, that quirky coffee shop, a decade ago. this song was the one that convinced me i needed to go out and buy the album. i had no idea what the hell frazey ford was singing about (turns out she spends the entire song just tossing out the names of horses — "cold southern morning", "my lazy girl", and the like), but i thought her voice and olu dara's cornet made some of the most beautiful music i'd heard in a long while. still do. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kc-OeRl-KM 130430 ... raze 90. slint // good morning captain from the album "spiderland" (1991) "spiderland" might be the quintessential "post-rock" album. its monochromatic, austere sound, tricky time signatures, and unpredictable dynamic shifts led to a swell of bands who attempted to pick up where slint left off. to my ears, none of the soft/loud/soft practitioners who have tried to tap into that specific sound have even come close, and this is one of the few albums in the post-rock genre (along with the final two talk talk albums, and "hex" and some other work by bark psychosis) that's genuinely unpredictable and unique. writer david peschek described "spiderland" as "a fractured, almost geometric re-imagining of rock music stripped of its dionysiac impulse". there are two electric guitars (sometimes clean, sometimes distorted), a bass, and a drum kit. there are very few detectable overdubs of any kind. brian macmahan speaks as often as he sings the lyrics, and his voice is mixed so low it's sometimes difficult to make out what he's saying or singing. it took me a long time to realize how interesting and thought-provoking some of the lyrics are. for years i just didn't know what most of them were. the songs tell stories about things like social anxiety, loss, living in the present, and vampirism. a few choice snippets: "fill your pockets with the dust and the memories that rises from the shoes on my feet" "like swimming underwater in the darkness like walking through an empty house speaking to an imaginary audience and being watched from outside by someone without a key" "the carnival sign threw coloured shadows on her face, but i could tell she was blushing." the climax of the album is the final song, "good morning captain". inspired by the samuel taylor coleridge poem "the rime of the ancient mariner", the lyrics fill in details that were left vague or unexplored in the original poem. the music builds to an almost unbearable level of intensity, until brian macmahan is screaming his guts out — literally. he screamed the words "i miss you" with such force, he threw up in the studio. two random bits of trivia: this is one of the most dynamic CDs ever released, with an insane amount of headroom, and happily it hasn't yet been compressed to death in any kind of misguided remastering campaign; and though the request in the liner_notes for female vocalists to write to the band didn't amount to much because slint had broken up by the time the album was released, legend has it that pj harvey was one of the people who responded. now that would have been an interesting musical union... listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocZK5DHzkh4 130501 ... raze 91. ravenna woods // live at the doe bay fest (2010) more awesome music i have unhinged to thank for turning me on to. ravenna woods are self-described "gloomy darkhorse indie folk-punkers" from seattle. i'd never heard of them until just now, so i don't know much about them, but i know i like what i be hearin'. and the drummer kind of looks like me, a little, superficially! our beards are doing similar things. or, you know, my current beard is doing things similar to what his then-beard was doing. i wouldn't know about his current beard. bonding at a distance through facial hair. is there anything finer? here are two songs bundled together in one video — live performances of "careful where you are" and "dead inside". (and now i'm caught up, i think...) watch / listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoRgUht2GXg 130501 ... raze 92. the shirelles // baby it's you from the album "baby it's you" (1962) not much to say about this one. it's a classic. as many times as it's been covered over the years, i've yet to hear another version i like as much as the original. it was also used to bizarre effect jane campion's 1999 film "holy smoke". listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8clnxViHdp8 130502 ... the evil angel on my shoulder you missed the word "in". what are we going to do with you, man? 130502 ... raze slap me in the face and call me sally. 130502 ... raze 93. james brown // the payback from the album "the payback" (1973) today james brown would be eighty years old. so, on the birthday of the man widely considered to be the "godfather of funk", here is what might be my favourite james brown song. i once managed to get one of the DJs at the bar i used to frequent on friday nights to play all seven-and-a-half minutes of it. the little mini-breakdown that happens at the 2:30 mark when james barks "let me hit it!"...that's what i'm talking about. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=istJXUJJP0g 130503 ... raze 94. the dave brubeck quartet // take five (live in belgium, 1964) this is the clichéd brubeck tune to reach for, but it's a great song. i love the dancing saxophone line that serves as the theme. much as i enjoy the slower tempo of the original studio recording, i think this song really comes to life in a live setting when it gets a little faster, swings a little harder, and nearly doubles in length. where the album version is a showcase for joe morello's drumming, in the extended live versions paul desmond (who wrote the tune) really gets to stretch out on the alto sax. this is my favourite of all the live versions floating around on youtube, and i think i like brubeck's solo here more than any of those he takes in the other live performances of "take five" i've heard. dig how he stares at desmond during the sax solo, enjoying his band mate's playing while comping beneath him. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOEVfhceVYI 130504 ... raze 95. three little birds // we are an ocean from the album "three little birds" (2012) i was lucky enough to open for these three ladies tonight. not that i played my own music to open...that's crazy talk. i was backing up a friend. i don't bother going to (m)any local shows anymore, because everything is way too loud regardless of the music or setting, i have sensitive ears, and if i'm brutally honest, a lot of the music just...doesn't move me. but i didn't want to be rude, so i thought i'd stick around for as much of the three little birds set as i could on a sunday night. if you open for someone and then take off as soon as your set's over, it kind of makes you look like a douche. their first song was a capella, with perfect three-part harmonies. and they weren't simple harmonies following an easy, predictable path. it was so good, every last loudmouth asshole sonofabitch in the place promptly shut the fuck up and listened. by the time i really did have to leave, i was kind of sad i couldn't stick around for the last few songs. now i've got half a mind to see if i can coax them into singing with me at that show i've got booked for october, regardless of whether or not i open the performance up to the public. those three voices together make some kind of magic for your ears. even ears as overly sensitive as mine. listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8aNjILGcUw 130505 ... raze 96. singer // dumb smoke from the album "unhistories" (2008) i've been interested in picking up some music by this band for a few years now, but i keep forgetting about them. there are about six thousand different things on eight hundred different running lists of "music to check out" i have going at any given time, so some things tend to get lost in the shuffle. this is the first singer song i heard, and the one i come back to every so often when i remember i'd like to buy "unhistories" at some point. i like the fractured sort of deconstructed-rock thing going on here. pitchfork has given both singer albums pretty middling reviews, but these days i trust pitchfork writers about as much as i would trust a drunk, blind, schizophrenic weatherman; every once in a while they hit the nail on the head, but more often i'm left wondering what planet they're on. hey, at least i've discovered the odd album i really like care of pitchfork, even if it's something they give a bad review. listen: http://www.myspace.com/music/player?sid=13284395&ac=now 130506 ... raze 97. valery gore // knife dream from the album "avalanche to wandering bear" (2008) valery gore kind of makes me think of what might have happened if feist had decided to make piano her main instrument instead of guitar, and if she let her mind drift to some slightly more morbid places. there's a somewhat similar tonal thing going on with their voices, though not to the point that you'd confuse one for the other. they both make music that is tangentially "pop" in nature but tends to slip into more interesting and esoteric crevices when your back is turned. and hey, they're both canadian. valery describes her music as "jazz- and classically-influenced piano pop". i think that does a decent enough job of encapsulating her sound, at least superficially, but she has a way of sneaking some pretty dark and interesting lyrics in between the pretty melodies. and every once in a while there's a song like this, that doesn't sound like any kind of piano pop at all. here there's no piano, her voice supported only by a horn arrangement. the lyrics seem to be a description of a somewhat abstract, unsettling dream. there's something quietly menacing about the image of the dream's main character "[folding] like a dress", and the way that phrase serves as the hook/chorus. as you might have guessed, when it comes to music, i'm a pretty big fan of "quietly menacing". it's right up there with "unexpected detours" and "random backward trombone solos". listen: http://valerygore.bandcamp.com/track/knife-dream 130507 ... raze 98. king crimson // 21st century schizoid man from the album "in the court of the crimson king" (1969) i had this album on cassette tape when i was a kid. the cover art scared the shit out of me, to the point that i was afraid to pop the tape in the stereo. when i did work up the nerve to listen, the music kind of creeped me out. and at the same time, it fascinated me. it was probably the first thing i'd ever heard that was genuinely weird and foreign to me. definitely a far cry from huey lewis and all the other things i grew up hearing on the radio in the 80s. i still think it's one of the best progressive rock albums anyone's made, and now i'm able to appreciate the musicianship, which went right over my head when i was eight. though the music doesn't unsettle me the way it used to, that cover is still pretty striking. especially on vinyl. listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujIbpt-CCTY 130508 ... raze 99. harold budd and brian eno // a stream with bright fish from the album "the pearl" (1984) i like a lot of brian eno's ambient music (especially "music for airports", "on land", and "apollo"), but there's something special about the two albums he recorded with pianist harold budd in the 1980s. eno would create sonic "treatments" using various effects processors, and budd would improvise within the sound worlds created for his piano. "i used to set up quite complicated treatments and then he would go out and play the piano," eno explained. "and you would hear him discovering, as he played, how to manipulate this treatment. how to make it ring and resonate. which notes work particularly well on it. which register of the piano. [and] what speed to play at, of course, because some treatments just cloud out if they have too much information in them." some have called this sort of thing "new age" music. if that's so, then this is just about the only new age music i've ever heard that really does something for me. i think it works just as well when given your full attention as it does as background music. listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj_rkkFdW7M 130509 ... raze 100. pete drake // forever from the album "forever" (1964) my friend milan sent me this video in an email a few years back. whenever he sends me a link to a youtube video, i always know it's going to be something good before i even click on it. pete drake was a session musician who played pedal steel guitar on a number of popular songs in the 1960s. bob dylan's "lay lady lay" was one of those songs. the bizarre genius of the music he recorded under his own name is that in anyone else's hands it would be relatively conventional AM radio country fodder, but his use of the "talk box" (later made famous by peter frampton), with which he effectively sang through his pedal steel guitar, warped the songs into something stranger and more interesting. this is a (mimed?) live performance of his most successful single, "forever", from the 1966 film "second fiddle to a steel guitar". something that struck me the first time i saw the clip is how eerily lynchian it is, more than ten years before david lynch would release his first full-length film. if he didn't see this footage, i'm convinced lynch somehow absorbed its atmosphere through accidental osmosis. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dTFajHVyHo 130510 ... raze 101. blind faith // can't find my way home from the album "blind faith" (1969) this song has been covered countless times over the years, but i don't think anyone has ever sung it as beautifully as steve winwood did the first time around, in this short-lived band with some guy named eric clapton. "come down off your throne, and leave your body 'lone. somebody must change. you are the reason i've been waiting so long. somebody holds the key. well, i'm near the end, and i just ain't got the time. and i'm wasted, and i can't find my way home." those words are so simple, and yet they could mean just about anything. some people hear references to drug use, or the vietnam war, or spirituality. beautiful weariness is what i hear. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDAttqJ3qcg 130511 ... raze 102. group home // supa star (instrumental) from the "supa star" vinyl single (1994) christopher edward martin (aka DJ premier) has done production work for a gigantic list of rappers and hip-hop acts over the years, but the music he created for gang starr and its various offshoots (including group home and the first two albums by jeru the demaja) may still be his best. i first heard this song in the mickey rourke movie "bullett" and found myself wishing i could hear it in instrumental form, without the rapping. turns out there is an instrumental version, squirreled away on the b-side of the 12" "supa star" single. this music makes me feel like dancing through the empty streets of an unfamiliar city late at night, just because. i'm hoping there are more DJ premier instrumental mixes out there; i'd gladly listen to an entire album of stuff like this. listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BontRCl7Z7w 130513 ... the evil angel on my shoulder superfluous t! superfluous t! but i'll let that one go. you clearly got the title of that mickey rourke movie confused with the steve mcqueen vehicle "bullitt". 130513 ... raze that i did. it's hard to keep track of all the creative misspellings out there. 130513 ... raze 103. jeru the damaja // mental stamina from the album "the sun rises in the east" (1994) speaking of jeru, here's a song from him. now this is some rap i can get into. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBZRpOQyICM 130513 ... raze (i also spelled "damaja" wrong the first time around. figures.) 130513 ... raze 104. ella fitzgerald // mack the knife from the album "mack the knife: ella in berlin" (1960) this may be the definitive ella fitzgerald performance. she forgets the words before the song is even halfway through, so she makes up her own the rest of the way, and the song is better because of it. that louis armstrong impression she slips into near the end is hilarious, and brilliant, and completely unexpected. i think the grammy awards are a bit of a joke now, but they got it right when they gave her one. listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx2YSOcbFCs 130514 ... raze 105. minutemen // history lesson — part II from the album "double nickels on the dime" (1984) ostensibly a punk/hardcore band, the minutemen made music that didn't fit easily into any genre. take this song, for example. there's nothing very punk-sounding about it. i guess you could call it a "spoken-word ballad". the lyrics touch on the friendship of guitarist d. boon and bassist mike watt, and there's something in there that i find really moving, in an odd way i can't quite put my finger on. maybe it's the way d. boon says "our band could be your life", and how he neatly sums up the deep connection some people feel to punk music when he says, "this is bob dylan to me." listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4_dqZA4v00 (also, there's a full-length documentary about the band up on youtube over here, at least until it gets pulled: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmKGusadv08) 130515 ... raze 106. imogen heap // wireless from the "shine" single (1998) not that there's anything wrong with her poppier material, but i wish like hell ms. heap would delve into more experimental territory like this on a more frequent basis. of course, it's buried on the b-side of a long-out-of-print single. but that's where youtube comes in handy. listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHFlQlfnRTQ 130516 ... raze 107. jesse winchester // sham-a-ling-dong-ding from the album "love filling station" (2009) jesse winchester is better known as a songwriter, with the list of artists who've covered his songs reading like a veritable who's-who of country and folk music. but something special happens when he sings the tunes himself, and there might not be any better demonstration than this live performance of "sham-a-ling-dong-ding" from the elvis costello-hosted tv show "spectacle". this song fucking wrecks me. there's really nothing else to say. and if there is, neko case's face just past the three minute mark says it all. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uKGWpqnS8E 130517 ... raze 108. the jimi hendrix experience // 1983... (a merman i should turn to be) from the album "electric ladyland" (1968) probably my favourite hendrix song, from my favourite hendrix album. there have been a lot of imitators over the years, but there's never been another jimi, and there ain't ever gonna be. i think the lyrics here are some of the best he ever wrote. i've always liked the way the beginning of the american national anthem gets twisted into something else entirely: "oh say, can you see it's really such a mess / every inch of earth is a fighting nest". listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o591slQgirA 130518 ... raze 109. martin leon // la chrysalide music from the film "monsieur_lazhar" (2011) most "inspiring teacher" movies are cliché-infested piles of steaming celluloid cow shit, if you ask me. you pretty much know what you're getting before you walk through the door. through some convoluted meet_cute, a teacher will come to inherit a class of students who are unruly and/or considered to be a lost cause. the teacher will have trouble connecting with the students at first, but he or she will get through to them after engaging in some unorthodox tactics, undergoing some amount of personal growth in the process. a character (possibly another faculty member) will be introduced as a love interest, but they'll soon be forgotten in favour of some contest or competition the class and teacher need to prepare for, or else the relationship will end under violently stupid and avoidable circumstances, only to be revived just before the film's end for no compelling reason at all. and in spite of all the odds being stacked against them, the teacher and students will rise to whatever challenge they face, while everyone who wrote them off along the way will stand proudly by with hat in hand and tear in eye, and a syrupy power ballad sung by a half-dead 80s pop star with less than half of their original teeth will inspire the bowels of anyone watching to clench with furious approval. "monsieur_lazhar" exists somewhere apart from all of that. it's a quietly moving film about how we deal with loss, how children and adults can be capable of both great cruelty and great sensitivity, how inadequate and flawed the education system can be when it comes to providing meaningful answers to difficult questions, and how a little compassion can go a long way. martin leon's music adds another layer to the film, accenting what's on the screen without resorting to any cheap manipulative tricks. i really like the use of the celesta (one of the coolest, if prohibitively expensive, keyed instruments in the universe) in several of the instrumental cues. this is the music that plays over the end credits. i think it manages to encapsulate the emotional experience of watching the film, in just a little more than four minutes, without a word being spoken or sung — and in 3/4 time, no less. listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52fLez7FiKI 130519 ... raze 110. the doors // black train song from "the doors: box set" (1997) ray manzarek just passed away today (he was 74). so it feels fitting to throw a doors song in here. ray was a founding member of the band, and his musical multitasking (playing organ with one hand and keyboard bass lines with the other) formed a pivotal part of the sonic identity they carved out for themselves. one of the best ways to appreciate just what ray had to do to compensate for the general absence of a dedicated bassist is to hear the doors live. so here's an extended improv/jam built around "mystery train" (immortalized by elvis presley) called "black train song", recorded live at the spectrum in philadelphia during the "morrison hotel" tour of 1970. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxNj-ETEC2k 130520 ... raze 111. grouper // invisible from the album "dragging a dead deer up a hill" (2008) liz harris makes some sort of strange and beautiful ambient/drone/noise/lo-fi music that's difficult to describe. gradually she's stripped away some of the effects and sonic grime, revealing more of the melodies beneath the haze, and while i can rarely make out a word she's singing, i think the feeling comes through. liz grew up in a commune in northern california known as "the group", which inspired her stage name. "the kids called each other and the parents 'groupers'," she explained, "sort of as a defiance. it was us making our own identities inside a pretty controlled environment, and sort of lashing back maybe. when i had to think of a name, i felt annoyed at nothing sounding right. i wanted something that referenced me without referencing 'me'. i felt like the music was at its barest just a grouping of sounds, and i was just the grouper." listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CC8BHK6pti8 130521 ... raze 112. tricky // overcome from the album "maxinquaye" (1995) "they label me insane but i think i'm more normal than most" (from "strugglin'") tricky was born adrian nicholas matthews thaws, in somerset. his father abandoned the family before he was born. his mother, a poet, committed suicide when he was four years old. he was raised by his grandmother, who let him blow off school to stay home watching old horror films. when he was seventeen, he spent a short amount of time in prison after buying forged cheques from a friend who ratted him out to the cops. knowing all of this adds a whole new layer to the dark, narcotic music he's made. it all makes a little more sense once you understand where he came from. he fell in with massive_attack and rapped on their first album, "blue lines", but when he presented them with a song of his own called "aftermath", they had no interest in it. he took it as a sign to light out on his own, roping in producer mark saunders (who found himself saddled with DJ/producer duties, pitch-shifting the samples tricky wanted to use in order to get them to match up with one another rhythmically) and singer martina topley-bird (then nineteen years old, and his girlfriend) as collaborators. the album they made together was named for tricky's mother (maxine quaye) and still stands as a high watermark not only in tricky's discography, but in the trip-hop genre as a whole. martina steals the show almost every time she opens her mouth, with tricky sometimes sounding like a supporting character on his own album; he doesn't have a single verse to himself until the fourth track. but once he does start exerting himself, his unique, near-whispered, laconic delivery suits the music perfectly. besides, any man who can find a way to quote both the young rascals and japan in the middle of a pitch-black dub-blues song without it feeling awkward is pretty cool in my book. tricky's discomfort with the level of unexpected fame and success he experienced in the aftermath of "maxinquaye" led to erratic behaviour and a harsher musical direction, but it seems he's been able to find a measure of peace in more recent years. his new album "false idols" is due out a week from now, and he's compared it to "maxinquaye" without making it sound like it's a simple case of rehashing old ideas. "i don't care whether people like it," he said in a recent interview. "i'm doing what i want to do, which is what i did with my first record. that's what made me who i was in the beginning. if people don't like it, it don't matter to me because i'm back where i was." here's the first track off of "maxinquaye", featuring one of martina's more atmospheric vocal performances. all of her parts were unrehearsed first takes. listening to the album, you'd never know it. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I73aqjm-XXA 130523 ... raze 113. prince // how come u don't call me anymore? from the "1999" vinyl single (1982) prince is an asshole. a giant, gaping, designer-waxed asshole. the guy is gifted. i won't deny that. but he's one of those artists who not only bought his own hype — he's apparently spent the last few decades huffing it like butane. i've never been a fan. i could always hear the talent. the music, for the most part, just didn't move me. there are really only two prince songs i'd want to listen to more than once or twice. the first is "erotic city", which i heard on a semi-regular basis at the bar i used to hang out at on friday nights many moons ago. the second is this song right here. musically, they're as different from one another as could be. but they do have something in common. they're both b-sides that are only easily accessible on a multiple-CD compilation (where "erotic city" appears in vastly inferior, truncated "single edit" form). okay, so i always did like "the beautiful ones". and "little red corvette" is a catchy tune. and "when doves cry", as overplayed as it is, endures as one of the more interesting hit singles of the 1980s. but that's about as far as it goes for me. i've never bought a prince album, and i'm not sure i ever will. i'd rather listen to some sly & the family stone when i'm in that kind of mood. "how come u don't call me anymore?" is the song that changed my mind about prince, just a little. he's still a giant asshole. the bulk of his work still doesn't move me. but this song is something else. i think part of the appeal, for me, is how austere it is. there's just prince playing piano, alone, stomping his foot, multi-tracking his voice into a virtual gospel choir. no band. no backup singers. no one else. to be frank, i think this kicks the shit out of most of the rest of his body of work, and i wish he'd recorded an entire album along these lines. i'd buy it in a second. vocally, it's an awesome achievement. prince hits notes even alicia keys couldn't touch in her 2001 cover version, and she's a lady. and i think the longing in the lyrics comes through loud and clear. it's one of the few prince songs that really makes me feel something when i listen to it. it's even a song i can put on repeat when i'm feeling it. and i don't put anything on repeat. ever. my brain just doesn't work that way. so it was a happy day when i found the vinyl single for sale in a local record store. alas, it's difficult to find a good quality version of the song anywhere online. prince is notorious for blocking just about any studio recording of his anyone has ever uploaded to youtube or anywhere else. i think that's stupid. i pay for all the music i want to listen to. i know not everyone else does, and there's still some amount of illegal downloading and file-sharing that goes on. but i never got into that. i'm not judging the people who did or do. i'm just saying it's not my thing. i do use the internet as a way to preview music before i buy it — to form a better idea of whether or not it's something i really want to sit down and listen to. if i hear a song i like, i go out and buy the album from whence it hails. i imagine there might be a few other people who operate the same way. and most artists seem to get that. i see a lot of people releasing a free digital single or two to preview an album for existing fans and potential new ones. i think the case that's been made for artists losing money because of something like youtube has been overstated. if you want less people to settle for listening to your music on a website that isn't your own, at a relatively poor level of sound quality, maybe you should try making better music or packaging your album in an interesting way, so more people will be willing to shell out the money for it. the listeners who care about the music are still going to pay for the real deal regardless, to have the artwork and to experience the sound at full fidelity. but you go ahead and keep on being an anal douche, prince. you've got enough money to use hundred dollar bills as toilet paper, so who cares what the little people think about what you do anyway? the last laugh is mine, because i was able to find a way to download a pretty decent-sounding mp3 of the song i wanted without having to shell out the money for a compilation full of music i'm not all that interested in. i wanted to be able to listen to "how come u don't call me anymore?" on both CD and vinyl, and i got my wish. i don't normally do this kind of thing, but here i feel justified. it's one song. no one got hurt when i downloaded it. and given prince's astounding arrogance, well...i don't feel so bad about doing something a little bit "wrong" that involves his music. you can listen here: http://mp3skull.com/mp3/don_t_call_me_anymore.html the second iteration from the top is the one. you don't even have to download it; you can click the little play button and stream the song directly from the site, and for each time it plays, a small salty tear will roll down prince's left cheek. 130523 ... raze 114. los lobos // the valley from the album "the town and the city" (2006) los lobos are probably still best known for their contributions to the "la bamba" soundtrack, but their music is much more diverse than a cursory glance would suggest. case in point: this song, which doesn't sound like anything lou diamond phillips could ever credibly mime to and was used to great effect in a sixth season episode of HBO's "the sopranos". also well worth checking out is the los lobos offshoot/side-project latin playboys. their first, self-titled album is especially good, described by critic robert christgau as "spare, bent music: echoes and silences, filtered voices and ancient klaxons, indian film sounds and scratchy samples of street bebop, jagged beefheart rhythms and idle guitar thoughts, friendly melodies from a victrola perched on a barrio windowsill." listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYn3rIe1-s8 130524 ... raze 115. eva cassidy // tall trees in georgia from the album "live at blues alley" (1996) i first heard about eva cassidy not long after she passed away. i would have been about fourteen at the time. i read a review of a posthumous album, and as soon as i realized she just sang cover songs, i lost any interest i might have had in checking her out. at the time, the concept of a song interpreter was lost on me. if someone didn't write their own material, i couldn't fathom what artistic merit there might be in what they were doing. jesus christ, was i wrong. when i finally heard eva sing more than ten years later, i almost fell over. she may not have been a songwriter, but she had that rare ability to take any song and make it sound like it belonged to her. her range was astonishing — so much so that it kept from getting signed to a recording contract. rejecting an artist because they refuse to flatten out the diversity of their talent is pretty pathetic if you ask me. but there's the music industry for you. eva self-released "live at blues alley" in 1996. she almost didn't release the album at all; she had a cold when the songs were recorded and wasn't happy with the way her voice sounded. friends had to talk her into letting it see the light of day. it was the only album she would release under her own name in her lifetime. she died later that year of melanoma, a virtual unknown outside of her hometown. the fame came later, as is so often the case when talented people die far too young. listen to this woman with a cold singing a buffy sainte-marie song, and tell me if it isn't one of the most beautiful things you've ever heard. watch / listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A187CscJuGA 130525 ... the evil angel on my shoulder you missed a "her" in there. for shame. 130525 ... raze 116. the psychedelic furs // all of this and nothing from the album "talk talk talk" (1981) the first two psychedelic furs albums are the ones to get. i like "love my way", and "heaven", and a few other songs from later on, but it feels like everything kind of went downhill after the group chose to head in a more mainstream radio-friendly direction, as the rough edges were buffered away and the saxophone was pushed into the background. you need to hear the furs at their leanest and meanest to really get a handle on how good they could be. "talk talk talk" has to be their sleaziest, catchiest, best album, and this song might be its crowning achievement. i once read richard butler's voice described as a cross between david bowie and johnny rotten. it's not a conventionally pretty voice, but there's something about the way it rasps that's always seemed just right for these songs. butler would go on to recapture a bit of the old fire when he formed love_spit_love in the early 1990s while the furs were on an extended hiatus. also, the original album version of "pretty in pink" absolutely slays the re-recorded take that appears in the john hughes film of the same name. i blame molly ringwald for that. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMl3QhOyNZM 130526 ... raze 117. clark // matthew unburdened from the album "body riddle" (2006) you know how i said i didn't always agree with pitchfork reviews, but there was some good music i might never have known about if not for popping in over there from time to time? here's an example of something i have pitchfork to thank for bringing to my attention. "body riddle" was english electronic musician chris clark's breakout album, and it remains arguably his best work. i hear an undeniable aphex twin influence (never a bad thing when you're as big an aphex fan as i am), though not to the point of clear derivation. an integral part of clark's unique sound is the way he takes recordings of live drum kits, and chops up those sounds to create a lot of his beats, instead of beginning with an electronic source. "body riddle" is essentially a song suite, in the sense that it's one large thing with many interlocking parts. this track, a mini-suite in itself, is the clear standout for me, and one of the most emotional pieces of electronic music i've ever heard. it almost sounds like a deconstruction of melancholy itself. and on a purely aesthetic note, i love those strings. listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjMD77va3Iw 130527 ... raze 118. led zeppelin // bron-yr-aur from the album "physical graffiti" (1975) it figures that one of my all-time favourite zeppelin tunes would be an instrumental that's the shortest thing the band ever recorded. and there's no band to speak of here; it's just jimmy page, an acoustic guitar, and some chorusing and backwards tape effects. this song was recorded five years before it found its way onto an album. it was named for a cottage in wales, where zeppelin spent some time recharging their batteries and writing material for their third album after an exhausting tour in support of "led zeppelin ii". "bron-yr-aur" is welsh for "golden hill", "breast of the gold", or "hill of the gold" (take your pick). listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi76yMCXxtQ 130528 ... raze 119. linda perhacs // chimacum rain from the album "parallelograms" (1970) to date, linda perhacs has only released one album. but it's quite the album. think folk-period joni mitchell, if she dropped acid before heading into the studio, and you'll get a bit of an idea. it's the sort of thing that doesn't really sound dated at all, fitting right in with the psych-folk and "new weird america" music it predated by decades. at the time of its release, the album sold virtually nothing. a poor-sounding vinyl pressing and the record label's lack of interest in promoting the music didn't help matters. linda put music aside and worked as a dental technician, while her music slowly gained fans over the years, until her lone album was finally reissued in 2003, remastered from linda's own personal quarter-track reel-to-reels dubbed from the original master tapes. i was tempted to go with the title track, which is a wickedly cool, trippy song. but this one here must be the only song in the history of recorded music to feature someone credited with playing "amplified shower hose". so it wins. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb59WCJTs_Q 130529 ... raze 120. the verve // already there from the album "a storm in heaven" (1993) the verve are best known for their hit single "bittersweet symphony", and the music video (and lawsuit) it spawned. i think that's a shame, because as catchy as the song is, there's some much more interesting and adventurous music in their back catalogue. "a storm in heaven", their debut full-length album, is about as far away from "bittersweet symphony" as you can get while still sounding something like a rock band. i came at the verve's discography in reverse, working my way backward from "urban hymns", so when i got to "storm" my brain melted a little. this is shoegazey space rock / dream pop done about as well as anyone outside of my bloody valentine and slowdive could ever hope to do it. the second verve album, "a northern soul", does a nice job of balancing more traditional songcraft with some remnants of that spacier sound. i'd argue some of the best songs richard ashcroft ever wrote are on this album, chief among them "on your own" and "history". the guy used to write some great lyrics, once upon a time. like this: "imagine the future woke up with a scream i was buying some feelings from a vending machine" there are still some good songs on "urban hymns", but aside from the odd moment like "the drugs don't work", they don't carry the same charge as anything on those first two albums. and "forth", the album they recorded a few years ago after reforming, is just limp in my opinion. there's no "there" there. "a storm in heaven"...that's the verve i'm most fond of. the band jammed and let themselves wander in the studio, with producer john leckie editing the improvisations down into shorter pieces that more closely resembled recognizable songs. i think he did a fine job, but i'd kind of like to hear what those unedited epics sound like... here's one of my favourite songs off of that first album. if you like this, i also suggest checking out the ferocious live version of "life's an ocean" from a mid-90s appearance on jools holland's show. listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1s_QzcLBKmU 130530 ... raze 121. PiL // rise from the album "album" [aka "compact disc"; aka "cassette"] (1986) it ain't john lydon's most "punk" work by any means, but there's something in the slightly more polished later-era PiL material that grabs me. with the likes of jazz giant tony williams, rock giant ginger baker, and virtuosic axe-slinger steve vai all playing on this particular album, how can you lose? "i read this manual on south african interrogation techniques," lydon explained in an interview that coincided with the album's release, "and 'rise' is quotes from some of the victims. i put them together because i thought it fitted in aptly with my own feelings about daily existence." there's a four-word mantra in the bridge section that could serve as the man's career credo: "anger is an energy". watch / listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN-GGeNPQEg 130531 ... raze 122. lord huron // ends of the earth from the album "lonesome dreams" (2012) i heard this song today in a moosehead commercial. i think beer commercials are, by and large, stunningly misogynistic, creatively bankrupt, fundamentally loathsome and unjustifiable trash, and i think the people who produce them should be ashamed to call themselves human beings. but this one wasn't so offensive for a change, and the song was catchy enough (in a not-unpleasant way) that i felt like investigating further. lord huron, as it turns out, is a los angeles-based "indie folk rock" band. on the basis of this track, i'd much rather listen to them than mumford & sons on any given day. it's feel-good music that feels pretty good right now. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rgByhRXjjc 130601 ... raze 123. john_coltrane // acknowledgement from the album "a love supreme" (1965) this was my very first coltrane album. more than a decade later, i still don't feel like i've fully absorbed it. i'm going to quote from the seventh edition of "the penguin guide to jazz on CD" here, because i think richard cook and brian morton sum it all up better than i ever could. "the first records in coltrane's career as a leader were the work of a man who had submerged himself in heroin and alcohol and who had mortgaged his physical health as a result. if, as superstition and a measure of biological science suggest, people are transformed every seven years, then coltrane is something like proof positive. few spiritual breakthroughs have been so hard won, but he had also reinvented himself technically in that time, creating a body of music in which simplicity of materials generates an almost absurd complexity of harmonic and expressive detail. this is quintessentially true of 'a love supreme'. its foundations seem almost childishly slight, and yet what one hears is a majestic outpouring of sound, couched in a language that is often brutally violent, replete with split notes, multiphonics and toneless breath noises. it is not a piece that can be separated from the creator's intentions and programme. coltrane explicitly stated that the final movement, 'psalm', should be understood as an instrumental expression of the text that was printed on the sleeve. the rest has the pace of a liturgical act of the kind that might have been encountered in a field mission. 'acknowledgement' begins with a sweeping fanfare that will return at the close. a sonorous eight-bar theme creates the background to the four simple notes — 'a love su-preme' — which have become some of the most familiar in modern jazz. stated by [bassist jimmy] garrison, they are reworked and varied through the scale by coltrane, whose solo defies categorization. the chant is husky, strangely moving, and seems to occupy a different space and imprint from the hectic movement of the rhythm section. if this was to be garrison's finest hour with the group, it is probably [drummer elvin] jones's as well. he plays figures of great complexity that seem to change shape and direction almost every time one listens to the record. they are slightly simpler on 'resolution', but only in the interest of piling up the emotional pressure still more. coltrane's entry has an almost violent impact, and in LP days it was difficult to find the resolve to flip the disc over and essay the other side, even thought it is clear that the music is left hanging, still bereft of the other sort of resolution. 'pursuance' takes us into the dark wood, a troubled, mid-life moment. from now until the end, the rhythms are anxious, fractured, unsure. horn and piano stagger like pilgrims from one brief point of rest to another. the closing 'psalm' has an almost symphonic richness, culminating in a final 'amen', a two-note figure in which a second saxophone (said to be archie shepp's) joins coltrane. a partial restatement of the opening fanfare provides a reminder of the road travelled and also of the circularity of all such journeys. if all great art is the product of grace under pressure, then here the music seems to emerge out of several atmospheres, heavy, almost choking, but immensely concentrated and rich." here's the opening track. listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qagOblqhBhk 130602 ... raze 124. DJ shadow // changeling — transmission 1 from the album "endtroducing....." (1996) my introduction to DJ shadow's music was through the soundtrack for marc singer's brilliant documentary "dark days" (a_film_you_should_see, if you haven't yet). my reintroduction (or endtroduction, if you like), after forgetting all about him for a good long while, came when i found "endtroducing....." on vinyl a week or so ago, without looking for it. it was just there, and i thought, "why not?" i haven't listened to this album in years. i threw it on today while doing some filing, and man...it's good stuff. the music sounds just as contemporary today as it did when it was released, and it's still one of the best, most nuanced examples of "instrumental hip-hop" i've heard. the fact that it's almost entirely sample-based, with all but a few sounds drawn from vinyl LPs bought at a record store in sacramento, pieced together with little more than an akai sampler, a turntable, and an ADAT tape machine, is a little mind-boggling. i'm digging this track today. it's good "chill out" music. or, if you're me, it's good "chilling out while accidentally dropping a file on your foot" music. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy6jLvRgOhc 130603 ... raze 125. esperanza spalding // tell him (recorded live in 2009) i first heard esperanza spalding on the radio, in a toronto taxi piloted by a jovial east african man named samba. his car had tan leather seats and that pervasive new car smell i've always found strangely wonderful. i was taken enough with esperanza's song to scrawl down her name as well as i could make it out. lucky for me, i got it right. esperanza isn't yet thirty years old, and already she's a beast of a jazz bassist and bandleader. she also won the grammy for best new artist in 2011, prompting a group of angry justin bieber fans to vandalize her wikipedia page, where they complained that the biebs should have won — not based on any artistic merit, but because he was more popular than her. i think that pretty much speaks for itself. here's a live cover of lauryn hill's "tell him", performed solo at the white house in 2009. watch / listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2wlZV6iap4 130604 ... raze 126. ariel pink's haunted graffiti // round and round from the album "before today" (2010) not all of the ariel pink songs i've heard do it for me, but this one definitely does. it sounds like some great warped lost disco song with multiple personality disorder. the fan-made music video is hilarious and cheesy on one level (i've never seen john travolta's groin get such a thorough workout), and then on another level, it makes a bizarre kind of sense. where are my sweatpants? watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST04DzjLmpA 130605 ... raze 127. neil young // on the beach from the album "on the beach" (1974) in the self-written liner notes that accompany his "decade" compilation, neil young has this to say about "heart of gold", still the biggest hit he's ever had: "this song put me in the middle of the road. travelling there soon became a bore so i headed for the ditch. a rougher ride but i saw more interesting people there." a desire to delve into more ragged musical territory coincided with the heroin-related deaths of two close friends (guitarist danny whitten and roadie bruce berry), and all of this fed into neil's "ditch trilogy" — three albums of dark subject matter and loose, warts-and-all (some would say "sloppy") performances. "tonight's the night" stands as some of neil's most harrowing and vital work. "time fades away", a live album made up entirely of unreleased material, has never seen release on CD because of sound problems and neil's own dissatisfaction with the overall experience. and "on the beach", which may be the best of the lot, wasn't released on CD for the first time until almost thirty years after it was recorded. this last one was one of those holy grail albums for me. i read about it, was fascinated by the *idea* of it, and for years didn't hear a lick of it. i couldn't even find a secondhand vinyl copy anywhere. when it finally came out on CD a decade ago, it somehow managed to live up to the lofty standards i'd erected for it in my mind. there are a lot of neil young albums i really like. i tend to gravitate toward the grittier stuff, like "everybody knows this is nowhere", "zuma", and "sleeps with angels". but "on the beach" is the one i return to more than any of the others. every song is essential. and there's an emotional kick to the material that even "tonight's the night" doesn't match. the songs are less despairing, with a little bit of hard-won hope shining through here and there, rendering them even more vulnerable and human. choosing one song to represent the album is no easy task. "for the turnstiles" is a fantastic, skeletal country-folk-blues howl. "revolution blues" is one of the best straight-up rock songs in neil's massive catalogue, with some stinging guitar work. "see the sky about to rain" is a gorgeous ballad (and a great song title). "ambulance blues" is one of my favourite songs ever recorded by anyone, with a great winding chord progression, one brilliant line after another, and a raw-but-right fiddle part from rusty kershaw gluing it all together. any of those songs could be here. but i'm going for the title track, because i think it epitomizes everything the ditch trilogy was about. a simple blues structure is slowed to a crawl and twisted into something almost impossibly weary, neil's fingers seem to weep all over his guitar strings, and anyone who's ever been depressed or disillusioned can feel those lyrics in the pit of their stomach. "though my problems are meaningless that don't make them go away i need a crowd of people but i can't face them day to day" listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKgj1FNToWY 130606 ... raze 128. johann sebastian bach // cello suite no. 6 in d major, BWV 1012 (second movement — allemande) from "six suites for unaccompanied cello" (composed early 1700s) part of the final suite in the sequence, as performed by wen-sing yang. i have a different recording, but i like this one too. see also: "cello_suites" on blue. watch / listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dofsBtLPbBA 130607 ... wen-sinn yang i play cello for you so beautifully, and you can't even spell my name correctly? 130607 ... raze hey, it could have been worse. at least it was a musical mistake, right? that should count for something. 130607 ... raze 129. queen & david bowie // under pressure from the queen album "hot space" (1982) 80s guilty pleasure moment #3. but again, it's impossible to feel guilty here. you've got david bowie emoting, freddie mercury scat-singing, and a music video completely devoid of any mimed faux-performance footage. how can any of that ever be bad? watch / listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a01QQZyl-_I as an interesting little accent, here's the isolated lead vocal tracks, making it clear that freddie really did hit those insanely high notes during the bridge section without the help of any studio trickery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMQb9LCNGxs 130608 ... raze 130. muddy waters // my home is in the delta from the album "folk singer" (1964) muddy waters sure could sing and play those blues. this is a great (and great-sounding) album — "unplugged", intimate, and paradoxical; it sounds both as old as time itself, and like it could have been recorded yesterday. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anM136qi4eI 130609 ... raze 131. serena ryder & the beauties // the funeral (recorded live at CMT, 2011) i'm not a fan of serena ryder. at all. but i'm a fan of this. matter of fact, i think it blows away the original version by band of horses, which sounds to my ears like a pretty unspectacular modern "power ballad". it seems to have deeply moved plenty of other people, but it doesn't do a thing for me. this more restrained take on the song is another story. it feels more mournful, more cathartic, and just...more. watch / listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjP6ppyBG0Q 130610 ... raze 132. deftones // change (in the house of flies) from the album "white pony" (2000) this one takes me back. the same guy who got me into aphex twin turned me on to "white pony", which i still think is the best deftones album. he kept telling me about this song "change" and how i needed to hear it. i assumed the deftones were just another middling nü-metal band. but when he threw the CD on one night and played this track for me, i was confronted with something a lot stranger, more atmospheric, and more interesting than anything i expected to hear. i like the made-up genre someone coined in the youtube comments section for this song: "vampire sex music". the night i heard this track for the first time turned out to be one of the stranger nights of my life. but that's a very long story, and one best told some other time. listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL4MGwlZuAc 130611 ... raze this one's starting to get a little long in the tooth, and slower to load. time to continue it over on 335_songs_part_three, i think. maybe the trend of each part having less overall typos than the last will carry over there. one can hope. 130612 ... raze replacements for dead links: [94] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhqNOGy2ax0 [108] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9DrtUbFXt4 130619 ... raze more replacements for dead links: [42] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83E5BeI4dRw [54] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l87JGkBBglc [71] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PuukQy7JE4 [86] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGowJd-eJOM [94] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tT9Eh8wNMkw [100] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm77Xck34GE [102] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtL4krKyV78 [105] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZvsAh5VFRw [108] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed1amomjtE8 [110] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dO-MYWMru3Y [118] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YZ_lIpG1XQ [124] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd_UYocswwI [125] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPaxUZKkpsw [126] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiLqAu4s-_s (the beautifully cheesy video is gone! NOOOOOOOOOOO!) [130] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SoREsuVIO8 131212 ... raze a few more replacement links: #28 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTnLsmNiugY #98 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU_JC0NCGkc #126 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4Tyj-Wsnmw (the cheesy video is back! YES!) 140122 ... raze and another: #112 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3jTsm1p4kU 140401 ... Soma #336 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhNd_lVhF2g 240315 ... raze holy blast from the past. i wouldn't be surprised if half the links i posted here no longer exist. at least the songs live on. 240315 what's it to you? who go blather from