Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Shuffle 2

1. Thin Lizzy-Get Out of Here: Thin Lizzy is a great band. Phil Lynott is a great songwriter. Great melodies, and driving rock, what more could you ask for. I really dig the call and response style in the verses. And as always, the guitar solos are great.

2. Sleater-Kinney-Sympathy: Sleater-Kinney is one of the great female rock bands, though I'm not a huge fan of this song, or the album it's from (One Beat, which is a bit of a transition toward what would be their greatest, the awesome rock force that is The Woods). Though I must say, on this listening I'm enjoying it more. How much you like Sleater Kinney depends on how you feel about Corin Tucker's voice, which I enjoy greatly. Janet Weiss' spectacular drumming must also be mentioned.

3.Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band-Midnight Rider: Pretty cool song from one of his earlier albums (before Night Moves made him a big star). I like the use of female backup singers. Cool, relaxed r&b vibe to it.

4. Crimpshrine-Rearranged: Sloppy punk from the early 90's late 80's. Short and catchy. Positive lyrics. I'm not a huge fan of Crimpshrine, but this is one of their best songs. One of the singers has the kind of affected nasal voice that makes on think of Blink 182, which I'm not too keen on. I much prefer the singer who sounds worse that him.

5. Bruce Springsteen-Hungry Heart: Classic song from the Boss, who I must add, is fucking great. I guess this was originally written for the Ramones, but Bruce decided to keep it. He doesn't really sound like himself on it, but it's a nice catchy song, sees him moving away from the longer songs of his first several records towards more concise, traditional songwriting, but not suffering for it.

6. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists-Heart Problems:iPod has a heart theme going. I like Ted Leo, and this is from my favorite album of his, though it's one of the weaker tracks. Punk?Indie?rock indebted to people like Elvis Costello and the Jam.

7. The Nash Ensemble (Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time)-VII. Fouillis Darcs-En Ciel: One of my goals this year is to learn/appreciate/listen to more classical music. I recently finish Alex Ross' excellent book "The Rest is Noise", which gives a detailed history of 20th century classical music, including this piece, which was written in a Nazi prison camp. I wish I had the vocabulary to fully discuss this piece, but it is quite lovely.

8. Be Easy-Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings: Modern funk/soul/r&b that adheres to the same songwriting tropes as many of the classic Motown et al. bands. Instead of sounding like a modern novelty act, it works successfully, in no part to Sharon Jones' strong vocal performance.

9.Noise Noise Noise-The Damned: The Damned are a classic first wave punk band, one of my favorites. This is from their second album, after they'd broken up and reformed with a slightly different line-up. Dave Vanian is a great punk vocalist. This song shows an evolution from their (and punk in general) earlier simplicity, and has some interesting back up sound effects as well as a pretty killer guitar solo.

10. Untitled-The Cure: The Cure (along with The Smiths and Minor Threat) are bands I can appreciate, even like, but not having gotten into them at the right time, I can't fully love them. Not having older siblings, I never was subjected to The Cures particular band of moping. That said, I think Disintegration is a great album, just not one I reach for very often. As for this song, it's alright. It kind of meanders on a pleasant synth melody for a while, while Robert Smith sings his lament, then it fades out.

P.S: This is my 100th blog post.

4 Comments:

Blogger Ammon Allred said...

Subjected to the Cure's brand of moping by older siblings? I take indirect umbrage...

And I absolutely love the Quartet for the End of Time --- I've been thinking of writing a book called Quartet on Time, which would take up the philosophy of time as it plays out in music through 4 quartets: Mozart's Dissonance Quartet, Beethoven's 15th Quartet (including the excised Grosse Fuge) and Messaien's Quartet for the End of Time...

6:52 AM  
Blogger Ammon Allred said...

Oh and clearly I listed only 3: The 3rd (Messaien should be the 4th) is Schubert's 14th Quartet (the so called "Death and the Maiden" quartet).

What other music from Ross's book have you been listening to?

6:55 AM  
Blogger Eli McCormick said...

Schoenberg, Mahler, Gershwin and Stravinsky. My iPod's about full so I have some serious space constraints.

8:02 AM  
Blogger Ammon Allred said...

I just got in the mail today a 21 disk set of Stravinsky's own recordings of himself for $31 --- you have to order it from England, but you can do it through good ole' Amazon. Or just tell my dad he has to buy me an external harddrive and I'll bring you more music than you can ever listen to next time we're in Utah...

6:11 PM  

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