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