Sunday, April 29, 2012

Make You Stay Out All Night Long

The first 35 seconds of this clip make me googly-eyed.



I also love how the keyboardist is storing her purse on top of her instrument.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

But they never should have taken the very best.

“If it doesn’t come from your heart, music just doesn’t work.” 
Levon Helm




I tell you one thing right now: this song, his voice, have been a balm to my heart when I needed it.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Well I Ain't Seen Nothing Like It Since the Shah Got the Rope

I'm too reliant on Spotify. That there is no Utopia from the years of its substantial output shows this. And I don't like digging into something new through live albums, so it's back to clips...

Friday, April 13, 2012

On Repeat: We're close enough to stop.

This has turned my day around.



What would make my day even brighter as the sun lowers? That these guys would tour the U.S. (again--since I discovered them a good six months after they were here already.)

Thursday, April 05, 2012

But He Don't Know What It Means

This video's quality is complete shite but I wasn't going to post a Vevo video with a freekin Jack White ad framing it. Not today, anyway.

I like Kurt most of all because he was a keen observer of human behavior, and I think that skill is simply visceral in this song.




Wednesday, April 04, 2012

On Repeat: When People Run In Circles

After seeing live music last night that was very, very good but also very earnest, I am compelled to return to my safe harbor of cynicism and irony, dredged from years of absorbing and loving things that clash instead of meld.



The beauty of TFF's "Mad World" is that, to explain it like we're in kindergarten, the lyrics don't go with the sounds. Or at least I want to think that is what Roland was going for and is not necessarily the product of the contemporary trend of making music by generating bright sounds out of machines. Apparently there are a lot of covers of this song; most appear to be by dark European outfits ascribing to varying degrees of rock (punk, goth, etc). The most famous are warbled by teevee singing sensations and sonically superimposed over scenes of tense cadaver inspection and melancholy family introspection, and these are the ones that don't capture the space between light and dark where the song lives. You know, where it's kind of funny, and kind of sad.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Just Pretend I Never Tried

Since I'm going out to see/hear what will likely be plangent, orchestral, wistful, bearded music tonight, I'm going to cleanse my palette a bit first with some beardtithesis: