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Monday, January 21, 2008
Random Mondays
I'm battling an Internet connection that is determined to get slower and slower by the minute. But it will take more than that to defeat my own special rip-off of The Onion's A.V. Club. The mp3 links don't work on the RSS feed for whatever reason but come on over to the actual site and you'll download everything just fine.
Sleater-Kinney, "The Swimmer" from All Hands on the Bad One Listen here! Buy here!
Sleater-Kinney might be the last rock 'n' roll band that got me really excited. I certainly want that situation to change but I haven't seen anyone else do so much with just guitars, drums and voice (if anything bands today are looking to add instrumentation as opposed to doing the best they can within a certain structure). You've got a guitar with tremolo effect in the background, a clean guitar upfront and tasteful drums by one of the best drummers in recent memory Jane Weissman. The songcraft delivers turns all of that into this powerful heartbreaking song. Carrie Brownstein's voice is always effecting. It demands you pay attention without ever sounding desperate or needy.
Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks" from Astral Weeks Listen here! Buy here!
If I ventured in the slipstream
Between the viaducts of your dream
Where immobile steel rims crack
And the ditch in the back roads stop
Could you find me?
Would you kiss-a my eyes?
Well, that's certainly one way to open your album! Van Morrison was one of the artists my Mom played a lot when I was younger. Songs like "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Moondance" are settled pretty deep in my memory. It was only until later did I listen to Morrison's albums such as this and Moondance. It's there that I discovered the complex emotional element to so much of his music. This song actually has some fairly life-affirming albeit metaphysical lyrics. But Morrison and his band make it sound so sad. Listen to how he declares he "ain't nothing but a stranger in this land."
Radiohead, "Fake Plastic Trees" from The Bends Listen here! Buy here!
The most important band of my high school days. I think my friends and I were all responding to a band that put so much thought and effort into not just their songs but their entire craft (in addition to the music the booklet of OK Computer made the CD something to treasure). That's the age where you care the most about music and they were the band that seemed to care the most about everything. Living in the suburbs and listening to this song gave you the sense that there's more out there than the illusion you were living in. That's something that an adolescent really values. For a lot us Thom Yorke's voice was like this guardian angel of sorts, as silly as that might sound.
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