Flashback Friday: Rogue Wave, Rilo Kiley, Nada Surf!

Guess what! It's...

FLASHBACK FRIDAY!!!!!

Song of the Day: "Endless Shovel"

I was, per usual, listening to JOSIAH on my drive home from work this afternoon and he played a little Rogue Wave to end my workday. I downloaded this song 6 years ago (!) when it first came out--thanks to some link from a Warren Miller filmsite. (I was tracking down music to ski to, obvs).

It's one of those tracks that I'm always pleased to hear and it's one of those songs that I always associate with a specific time and place in my life: racing (alpine), training, racing, and some more training. My musical tastes at that time veered from Incubus to Modest Mouse to some lingering affection for BBMak; Rogue Wave provided a soundtrack to my freshman year of high school as well as a pretty chill introduction to indie rock.

That same link (was I on a K2 equipment site??? Jesus...) also took me to Nada Surf and Rilo Kiley--two bands I therefore associate closely with "Endless Shovel" and face shots.

Happy Flashback Friday!

*This post has nothing to say about Lebron James except that I hope people end up here via my false-advertising tag: "lebronjames"

Song of the Day: "We Used To Wait" ~ Arcade Fire

Can't Wait for Arcade Fire? Try this on for size:

And in case you already forgot how great the other tracks on the upcoming “Suburbs” are, here’s a reminder:

Song of the Day: "Pull My Heart Away" ~Jack Penate

(He sort of reminds me of the hot English teacher on Pretty Little Liars. NOT that I Tivo that show or anything... Ha. Ha.)

This is another one of those tracks that's been around for awhile but HEY I didn't have time to blog about it before. I heard this other YACHT track today on XMU (natch) and it reminded me that I love this track waaaay more.

I know this band is weird, like, really weird. But this song is honestly a love song to me. A love song to everyone and everything that makes you feel loved and complete and whole and...well, loved.

I mean, let's go over this:

I used to live

in a heartbeat city

I swear I'd fall in love every minute on the street

You might be walking around the corner

and our eyes might meet

"Where you been darlin, darlin?

We've been holding this moment for you;

I told you your dreams would come true."

Furthermore, the song gives me this lovely, giddy, nostalgic feeling similar to the one brought about by the first Toy Story film. I like to imagine that the things I love, all around me, lead their own secret lives and somehow manage to fit me into them so neatly and subtly that I don't even notice.

I might be washing up the dishes

and the kitchen might SAY

Hang around baby, baby

Hang around baby, baby

We'll be baking a cake for you.

So here's to you and all of the voodoo cities surrounding you.

Song of the Day: "Fireworks" ~Drake

Song of the Day: "Fireworks" (feat. Alicia Keys)

This is about as patriotic as I get. Mostly, the holiday provides a great excuse to brag on Drake's new album, Thank Me Later.

(Which is fucking great. For real.)

Song of the Day: "This Orient" ~Foals

So there's this band, Foals, and they're awesome. I first fell in love with a track of theirs, "Spanish Sahara" off their latest album, Total Life Forever. Then I heard this song which, aside from the repetition, isn't anything like "Spanish Sahara." I didn't even realize it was the same band at first.

I love how the song begins; I love the voices at different pitches. They don't sound human exactly, almost like the blips of an incredibly musical radar. It actually took me a couple of listens to fully appreciate the track; I was so emotionally invested in the sweeping despondence of "Spanish Sahara" that I wasn't fully prepared for something so light and optimistic. I wanted to feel heavier.

Instead, I've had this refrain stuck in my head all day (when I'm not humming "The Suburbs" that is):

It's your heart; it's your heart

that gives me this western feeling

oh and do you know

you give me; you give me this western feeling

Truth be told, I have no idea what "this western feeling" is but considering the track is entitled "This Orient," I have to think it's a song about change, positive change. And probably coming into yourself through someone else: moving from east to west and settling with the sun.

Here, of course, is "Spanish Sahara."

I can't believe it's been 3 years since the cathedral recordings of Neon Bible. But it has and since we've been good fans and have waited ever-so-patiently for Arcade Fire's next great opus, we've been treated to three leaked tracks from the band's upcoming August release: The Suburbs.

The fact that the title track of this album greeted me on my drive to work two days ago has stuck with me as a symbol of hope and goodness, regardless of the almost oppressive melancholy of the song itself.

This is easily my favorite track so far, although we've apparently got 16 to choose from so I suppose I shouldn't get too far ahead of myself with a month left to go. At any rate, Butler's wail is in fine form here and the band is doing something a little bluesy--a looser rhythm or structure that I'm definitely feeling.

The lyrics are the introspective, downbeat Arcade Fire we've come to know and love. If I were to draw any pretentious comparisons here, I'd say the track reminds me a bit of "Cold Wind"--full of regret and nostalgia and a sweet sense of wanting to share something, anything, before it's too late:

So can you understand?
Why I want a daughter while I'm still young
I wanna hold her hand
And show her some beauty
Before this damage is done

And I love that he sings, in a desperate, pleading voice, that if it's too much to ask, he'll settle for a son.

In an increasingly frightening period of time where it seems as though things, the beautiful things, are moving past us too quickly--or that we're leaving them behind without proper goodbyes--"The Suburbs" is a body ache, an earnest longing:

Kids wanna be so hard
But in my dreams we're still screamin' and runnin' through the yard
And all of the walls that they built in the seventies finally fall
And all of the houses they build in the seventies finally fall
Meant nothin' at all
Meant nothin' at all

It's a brilliant song and a song that lodges itself in your sinews long after it's over, pressing you to tap your foot in an unconscious but familiar rhythm. If "The Suburbs" other 15 tracks are anywhere as deeply felt as this, we're one month away from one of the best albums of the year.

This is a live recording of another track from the new album, "Ready to Start." Although I have less loyalty to this song, the band already sounds tight playing these tracks live. Plus, it's really cool to think that they're playing in someone's fucking living room.

Song of the Day: "Wolfboy" ~Blair

I literally heard this song just yesterday on my way home from work. (Holla JOSIAHon Sirius/XMU).

Apparently, this girl, sans any moniker beyond her first name, sent a demo to Aquarium Drunkard and is now seeing rotation on digital radio at least. Within her self-description, she likened herself to a shit ton of really great artists that I personally don't think she really sounds like; blogs seem to support the premise that she sounds like early/awesome Liz Phair.

I can get behind that.

And that picture.

And this one:

Anyway, there's not a lot to this song but it's just...good. It's different. Her voice is distinctive; the chorus is that kind of repetitive yearning that I'm such a sucker for, consistently.

Plus, I'm all for anyone redeeming the werewolf population in a post-Twilight world.

So...you go Blair.

Songs of the Day: Passion Pit, Grizzly Bear

I'VE BEEN MOVING INTO MY NEW APARTMENT AND TAKING TOO MANY CREDITS.

I know there's no excuse for my complete absence of blogging over the past three weeks but, srsly, my life has been all about building Swedish furniture, cleaning, understanding snow emergency policies, and digging my own grave in a plot filled with literary theory.

Other than that, it's been great.

And, speaking of great, there's so much great music out right now that I'm actually more behind in collecting my thoughts on new songs than I am in my Honors Global Search for Justice seminar. Which is saying something.

I did short write-ups for two tracks while I was on a much-delayed flight from Indianapolis to the Twin Cities so I'll reproduce those here to sort of get the ball rolling again.

Grizzly Bear (a personal favie!) recently released a cover of the Hot Chip track "Boy from School" and it's soooo good. I hugely appreciate the electro-beat of the original but I'm always a sucker for taking a song, slowing it down, and changing my organic understanding of the lyrics.

Check out this Gregory and the Hawk video for proof of that winning formula.

Listen Here: Grizzly Bear--Boy from School

Basically, Grizzly Bear said let's get the longing in this song and amplify it by TEN just because we can and because that's what we DO. It's unbelievable to me what Grizzly Bear can do to a song lyric just because of their voices.

We try but we didn't have long

We try but we don't belong

We try but we didn't have long

We try but we don't belong

It's totally acoustic--almost a capella--when compared to Hot Chip's drum machine-orific original. Is it kind of like a dirge? yes. Is that ok? Look, I'm one of maybe 5 Radioheads who loves Hail to the Thief precisely because of its death-dirge qualities.

I love covers that reinvent the songs being covered--rendering them unfamiliar but for this nagging feeling of Haven't I heard this somewhere before???

See: Just Like Heaven by the Watson Twins.

Passion Pit--Moth's Wings

You're just like your father
Buried deep under the water

This song is really important to me and I know it's important because it gives me that in my bones feeling of bottomless, direction-less energy. And I don't mean that in a negative "bottomless well" sort of way. It's like an anxiety bliss-out.

I feel like I'm stretching my skin and my sinews trying to get at this song, in it--

Whipping me into a storm

Shaking me down at the core

It's like, if I was another person, my constant state of anxiety would really be a constant state of ecstasy and I love glimpsing that alternate self/timeline/lifeline/ETC. And when you're living with anxiety and everything that comes with it, any window into what life is like without it is precious.

Is it the constant rising of the melody, of the piano? Is it the stunning lyrics (burning incandescently)? Is it the way he pronounces si-ide when he asks whose si-ide are you on...

What side is it anyway?

Maybe, maybe, yes, I don't know, but it's got me. If a song makes me want to shout out in emotional confusion, it's probably done its job.

You come beating like moth's wings
Spastic and violently
Whipping me into a storm
Shaking me down to the core

But you ran away from me

And you left me shimmering

Like diamond wedding rings

Spinning dizzily down on the floor

Song of the Day: Bat for Lashes--"Daniel"

So...how creepy is that video? And how gorgeous is Natasha Khan???

I know this is technically pretty old (from Bat for Lashes' Jan. '09 release) but, again, I'm catching up to all the admirable music I missed while I was listening to "Big Booty Girl" and "Simple." Not that those tracks weren't completely admirable, in and of themselves.


Full disclosure: I get most of my music from Sirius/XMU because I gave up on radio years and years ago, once Kalispell's only rock/pop channel was converted to a country music station. I first heard "Daniel" on Jenny Eliscu's show and I was intrigued enough to enter the relevant artist information into my favorites list on my trusty LG Envy (the original--I'm still not caught up on the smartphone thing).


I think my first impression of this song was something like, "What a bomb take on the best elements of the '80s!" Which is funny because rumor has it that Khan based her Daniel character on the kid from The Karate Kid. No, really.


But then I got past the sort of kitchsy' appeal of the track. ie) Daniel, when I first met you, I knew that you had a flame in your heart.

Instead, I got somewhat fixated on the dreamy quality of they lyrics, the abstract images and expressions:

But in a goodbye bed

With my arms around your neck

Into our mouths the tears crept

Just kids in the eye of the storm

And as my head spun round

My dreams pulled me from the ground

Forever to search for the flame

There's a lot of nostalgia here and I'm not just referring to the '80s. We're talking a first love, greatest love, very-much lost love. Which is interesting because the video makes me think more of Natasha using Daniel as a reference point to escape creeping darkness etc, etc. And I guess that could still be true. Who hasn't idealized first loves and then used them as emotional signposts/recovery points?

When I run in the dark
Daniel
To a place that's vast
Under a sheet of rain in my heart
Daniel
I dream of home

Song of the Day: Memoryhouse--"Lately (Deuxieme)"

"Lately (deuxieme)"

I was originally going to write this post about Bat for Lashes but I decided to put that post on hold and talk about this band called Memoryhouse and this really lovely track of theirs, "Lately (Deuxieme)."

This is the first I've ever heard of the band and I'm really in love with the song, mostly because it features the reverb loop used prominently by Jon Brion throughout the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soundtrack:

I'm not entirely sure music bloggers have picked up on the sampling but I'm also not entirely sure everyone else in the world is as sonically obsessed with Jon Brion as I am.

Exhibit A) Upon seeing the film Punchdrunk Love for the first time, I recognized Jon Brion as the composer based on the score's clever usage of a miniature piano. My film professor was boggled.

Exhibit B) The name of this blog.

Anyway, Memoryhouse. To me, "Lately" is like 3 minutes of wonder, blissed-out wonder. I think it has something to do with the bass drum undercurrent rippling beneath the Eternal Sunshine loop. It's like a summer stormcloud that occasionally becomes a muted dance synth. Muted wonder, maybe. Possibly because Eternal Sunshine is so indelibly associated with this track, it makes me think of two kids on a beach, holding hands and looking up while the tide comes in.

The track is introduced by a turntable needle clicking into position on a record and we listen to the looped reverb. Which, of course, takes me to the end credits of Eternal Sunshine when the two characters are forever captured in a film reel of a snowball fight. The clip snags and repeats itself, over and over, possibly into eternity, begging the question of whether or not the lovers are meant to repeat their same mistakes again and again, eternally to the point of timelessness.

The lyrics, from what I can tell, are as follows:

Lately, I'm not sleeping

I'm not breathing

without machine

Lately, my heart's been breaking

my heart's been breaking

through the seam.

Shut me off

Shut me off

Shut me off

Shut me off

I'm not sure a refrain has been so piercing since Wait, they don't love you like I love you. The song itself is so dreamy and lo-fi and unobtrusive that it's...jarring to listen to the sorrow in the verses, the poignant sensation of being so vulnerable--unable to breath without aid--in the wake of heartbreak.

Download Memoryhouse's new EP, "The Years" here.

This is a Memoryhouse cover of my favorite Grizzly Bear track, "Foreground." How great is this group??

Song of the Day: any track by the xx

The trouble with choosing a song of the day is narrowing down the choices to just one. And, sometimes, that's just impossible. For instance, with London-based duo the xx, how do I pick one song as better than the rest when I'm equally obsessed with the three tracks I have on my iPod? So I guess today is more of a "Band of the Day" and I hope everyone can get behind that. Not that it matters because I make the rules and can therefore thrash them.

So. the xx. Let's not get started on how their April show at the Varsity is sold out and tickets on stubhub are being offered at ridiculous, Decemberists-level prices. I'm over it. I'm not but I"m trying to be.

I'm making the trek to SXSW to see them (probs). If I think that way, I really can be over it.

The xx sort of exploded onto the scene last year and, while I recognize my tardiness to their indie-world domination party, I'd like to offer up the excuse that I WAS IN AFRICA. So, now that every other music-obsessive has had their turn to gush about the xx, it's my turn to slobber all over their slow-simmering, sexy beats.

"Heart Skipped a Beat" is a person favorite of mine because I'm a sucker for the lyrics and the juxtaposition between R&B drum machine and indie guitars. Seriously:

Please don't say we're done

when I'm not finished

I could give so much more

I like to point out to people that relationships are inherently unequal; someone always loves the slightest bit more, the tiniest bit better. And what happens to that person when it's all over? Where does that unfinished love go? Apparently into this verse, repeated 7 times:

Sometimes, I still need you.

And it's the way they sing it to each other, her voice so emotive and gorgeous--his, so flat and complementary: the perfect parry between lovers.

Heart skipped a beat

and when I caught it you were out of reach

but I'm sure, I'm sure

you've heard it before

The xx never spoke truer words than those. And, to better serve that point, the duo repeats those verses 4 times. What a sentiment, right? Falling for someone, experiencing the slightest of delays as your body adjusts to the sensation, missing said person by inches, days, what have you. Damn it's good. This song is actually too good.

Then you've got "Crystallized", which starts out with such an ace riff. It's like, I alternately want to play air guitar and seduce someone.

What is that???? I"ll tell you what it is: Sex. Let's be honest, her voice is like an orgasm in this song, seriously. The only thing sexier is Karen O. And the lyrics? Don't get me started.

You applyin' pressure

to help me crystalise

and you've got the faith

that I could bring paradise

I'll forgive and forget

before I'm paralysed

Do I have to keep up the pace

to keep you satisfied?

Um. I don't think it takes a huge stretch of the imagination to guess who's applying pressure and where and what's happening between these two. But, you know, if you're not convinced:

I've been down on my knees

and you just keep on getting closer

Then you've got the pas de deux at the end, with the vocals overlapping while the duo sings complementary lyrics. This is good stuff; in fact, this is great stuff. When I tell you I'm in love with the xx, I really really mean it.

Just for kicks, I'm throwing in their bomb remix of Florence + the Machine's "You've Got the Love"--I think it's great when remixes are even better than the originals. There's pretty much nothing this band can't do. Google them and amuse yourself with the various ways in which music bloggers fall over themselves to praise their fucking brilliant sound.

Song of the Day: Temper Trap--"Sweet Disposition"

8

This song has just been all over the place. First, it was put to sweet use in the surprising (500) Days of Summer (which obvs should have beaten The Hangover for a Golden Globe). Now, it's being used pretty effectively to promote the new ABC legal drama The Deep End. The track succeeded on both counts, for me anyway. I was def psyched to see Summer and I'm now hooked on the promos for The Deep End, even feeling that law school might not be such a bad idea...

Maybe that's taking Temper Trap's infectious, grand single a little bit too far.

But, seriously, try not to be moved by that soaring falsetto which so effectively opens the track.

Sweet disposition

Never too soon

Oh reckless abandon

like no one's watching you

It just gives you license to throw yourself into all kinds of wild endeavors. It's a song that spends 4 minutes swelling and swelling without reaching a finite conclusion; the track effortlessly carries you along with the Joshua-Tree-influenced guitars.

(No but seriously, the opening bars are so damn close to Where the Streets Have No Name, it's eery).

Meanwhile, the lyrics press you toward an inconclusive abandon, a celebration of youth and youthful love and the things we'll do for that noble end.

So stay there

cause I'll be comin' over

and while our blood's still young

it's so young

it runs

and we won't stop til it's over

won't stop to surrender

It's so so good. Maybe the majority of American teens will spend this prom season making out to Use Somebody but I think Sweet Disposition is a real dark horse candidate for stealing hearts this year.

Get your lighters (or lighter apps) ready.

Song of the Day: Fanfarlo--The Walls Are Coming Down

I don't know a lot about this band. Admittedly, I don't know anything beyond this song. Fortunately, we have wikipedia to fill in those rather large blanks. Fanfarlo is a London-based group of 4 guys and one lady who put out their debut album in early 2009. Perhaps most importantly, lady Cathy plays the saw. Have you ever seen someone play the saw? It's effing brilliant.

But, for me, the chorus of their single, The Walls are Coming Down, tells me everything I really need to know.

The walls the walls are coming down,
the here and now is coming round
It will some day let you down
The ships the ships are coming in,
the great ideas are wearing thin
There is nothing left to do

Let's start at the end. Who doesn't love a slow-build, or really, a build of any kind? For me, that's a sucker punch--throw some appropriately placed strings and I've caved entirely.

The first time I heard this song, I loved it. It leaves you with a utopian feeling, a sense of building by tearing down. The staccato strings at the 1-minute mark could be well placed jabs in a Jenga game, just before the twoering structure comes crashing down.

At first, judging by the optimism in the strings and vocals, I considered this a positive destruction, a worthy act of deconstruction--some sort of giddy demolition of the barriers that divide us. Or the musical equivalent of two people finally meeting on a level without their protective pretense and defensive posturing. Walls coming down on so many separate levels at once and all of them leading to something freer.

Then I started really paying attention to the melancholy in the lyrics, masked by the triumphant brass, etc.

For atoms have gone as far as atoms will go

Your books write themselves,
they line up in row after row

And then I started thinking. With everything melting together and uniting and, well, globalizing, we're homogenizing too. It's this uncomfortable trade-off for less conflict/greater unity. Like we're hitting a utopian wall--the "end of history" so to speak. So then I started loving the dichotomy between the way the song is orchestrated and what the song is actually saying. There is nothing left to do.

Furthermore, on an individual, less grand-scheme basis, it's true that the walls people put up between themselves can oftentimes be more satisfying than what's behind them. You know the feeling? Of finally getting a hint of someone's vulnerability and then realizing, in a rush, that you weren't prepared to actually see beyond the walls, that you lack the ability to sustain that level of connection or kinship or whatever it is that's binding. Or, maybe you've experienced the dawning recognition that there's nothing left to do now that the walls are coming down and whatever is beyond has been laid bare. Where to go?

It's a triumph and a letdown at the same time.

So, that's it really. Where do we go from here? Is there anything left to do? Aside from watch this awesome video.

Why I Think Empire State of Mind Is An Important Song and Not Just A Fucking Great Song

Let's hear it for New York.

(Listen Here: http://www.ilike.com/artist/Jay-Z/track/Empire+State+of+Mind+%28feat.+Alicia+Keys%29)

Hip-hop love songs are typically startling by their very existence. (And I'm not including odes to Cristal, Cartier, or Candy Shops). I'm talking about honest, searching, love songs like the Beastie Boys' Open Letter to NYC. That's partly why Empire State of Mind strikes me in a different, deeper way than the awesome bassline groove of A Milli.

And I'm not even a huge fan of New York. I kind of prefer Philadelphia.

The thing is that we're now privy to Jay-Z's intimate vows of eternal commitement to the Big Apple--in sickness and in health. And his vows are stunning enough in their sincerity to put Beyonce on the defensive.

Jay-Z starts the track with the first verse bravado so typical of rap today. I mean, he might be Hova but he still has to show all the ways he wipes his marble floor with fools like Drake.

I'm the new Sinatra
And since I made it here
I can make it anywhere
(Yeah they love me everywhere)

But then, after the first mesmerizing, Alicia Keys-featured chorus (more on that later), Jay-Z starts on a litany of his city's best--his own list of My Favorite Things--and worst.

Welcome to the melting pot
corners where we selling rocks
Afrika bambaataa shit
home of the hip hop
yellow cab, gypsy cab, dollar cab, holla back
for foreigners it ain't fitted, act like they forgot how to act
8 million stories out there and they're naked
city it's a pity half of y’all won’t make it

But the incredible thing about his rhymes is the way he spits them, imbuing you with his pride (uh huh, uh huh) until you're dancing around your bedroom with a fedora and your bulky stereo headphones, blissfully unaware that you're actually snowed-in somewhere in the Northwest.

Maybe that's just me.

The point is, Times Square could be my main street. Or, even better, those streets making me "brand new" could be the same streets I've alternately relished and resented for the last ten years. Jay-Z takes hometown pride to a different level from even Weezy and NOLA or the myriad MCs who call the ATL home. He doesn't just rap at you about his hometown glory, he surrounds you in it. Jigga lets you share in the pride, takes you along on a pretty intimate, heart-swelling tour of a day in his life and the life of his city.

The key there is the heart-swelling part.

You know how Alicia Keys' voice (God bless it) soars over this "concrete jungle where dreams are made of"? That's exactly the kind of acrobatics my stomach does. Or, to be grossly sentimental but slightly more accurate, my heart.

It's a heart-in-throat chorus, one that pushes you along in its ecstatic overtures on the fulfillment of dreams and endless possibilities.

In New York
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of,
There's nothing you can’t do
Now you're in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new
the lights will inspire you
Let's hear it for New York, New York, New York

I'll be damned if this song makes me feel downright optimistic. Possibly even to the point of foolishness.

I haven't felt this powerfully connected to the Big City since 9/11. And isn't it great, 9 years later, to find a new reason for celebrating the boundless potential of the Big Apple? I've certainly never felt this in love with the crowds and the steel and constant, frantic, forward-motion. But this song is propelling me and you and New York and, hell, this country into the next decade.

It's 2010 baby and Hova says we've got the world in front of us, wherever it is you call home.

Which is why I'm saying, in this scared-shitless climate, Empire State of Mind is not just great or timely or relevant--it's frankly a revelation.

Listen here:http://www.ilike.com/artist/Jay-Z/track/Empire+State+of+Mind+%28feat.+Alicia+Keys%29