I had some lyrics that I thought were by the B-52s about a good week ahead. Anybody have any idea what song I’m talking about? I completely lost it. Oh well, time for today’s post. Warning, it could be a messy one.
I see it being a good week for Sweden again. Why? Two reasons. First, the new album from Peter Bjorn & John comes out on Tuesday. Second, I just discovered another Swedish band called Sin Fang Bous. They’re described as being the Swedish Sufjan Stevens. If you forced me to create a list of countries based on how I perceive their music, I think it would currently go like this:
U.S.A.
U.S.A. Jr. (Canada)
Sweden
United Kingdom, specifically Scotland
Honestly, Canada might have a small leg up on the good ol’ U.S.A. at the moment thanks to the Arts & Crafts label. I’ll just consider them 1 and 1a. but Sweden’s not that far behind. I mean, Peter Bjorn and John… Jose Gonzalez… Marching Band… The Hives… ABBA… that’s some good stuff and I only had to go to the seventies once. I also have to throw in Scotland for giving us my favorite band from last year, Frightened Rabbit as well as The Twilight Sad and Emma Pollock.
Sorry, I’m all over the place. There are two things making me excited this week – the Peter Bjorn and John album and Los Campesinos! are coming to Minneapolis on Saturday. Erin and I are going up with Kevin and Katie to check that out. It’s going to be twee-tastic!
One other note – the new album by Gomez is coming out tomorrow as well. Didn’t mean to downplay that – I haven’t necessarily gotten into Gomez in the past, but so far this year, I’ll take what I can get.
Today’s song comes from Sin Fang Bous. Check out The Jubilee Choruses. Much like this post, it’s kind of all over the place musically, but when it comes together, it’s pretty good.
The hazards of love,
You’ll learn soon enough,
The prettiest whistles won’t wrestle the thistles undone.
- The Decemberists
Sorry about Monday’s mix-up. For those of you with a lala account, I’m sure it’s nice, but ultimately not what I was going for. I may have to just up and delete that post. We’ll see. This is going to be a long post. Perhaps you should start playing the song and the come back to read.
Loyal readers of my humble blog know that I’m a big fan of The Decemberists. So when the new album by The Decemberists, Hazards of Love came out on Wednesday, I’m sure you were all on the edge of your seats waiting for me to review it, right? Well, that day has come.
In reading about this album, I learned that Hazards was originally meant to be a rock opera, only it was decided that it didn’t quite work out, so instead it’s fallen into that scary realm known as the concept album.
Concept albums are always interesting. You have to hope that your loyal listeners actually want to hear the story that you want to tell. Seeing as how The Decemberists are already a very wordy band, one would hope that if a band could pull off a concept album, it would be them.
I disliked this album on first listen. Whereas The Crane Wife opens with a radio-friendly track, The Crane Wife III, Hazards opens with three minutes of droning. It’s at this point that I started questioning what they had gotten themselves into. Opening The Crane Wife with a track nice enough that Erin enjoyed it was a great move. It gets the listener in a nice mood and puts a better spin on whatever’s coming next.
Here’s the thing about how I preview an album and how it’s going to hurt me when trying to get into a concept album. Since I’m constantly trying to find great new music, I tend to ignore the lyrics on the first listen. Unless they really jump out at me, I tend to like the music before the lyrics. Once I enjoy the music, I can take a step back and decide whether the lyrics add to detract from the album.
The music in this album is actually really good – just non-traditional. It’s taken me numerous listens to just get past the music to the lyrics. Nobody ever said that The Decemberists don’t make you work for it, so I guess it was to be expected.
Because it was originally intended to be a rock opera, there’s two main themes that I pick up, both musically and lyrically. The main theme is the title of the album, “The Hazards of Love” and the secondary theme is “The wanting comes in waves.”
I haven’t taken the time to read through all of the lyrics, but from what I gather, the basic story is about a woman shielded from men by her overprotective parent (not sure if it’s her mother or her father) runs off and gets herself preggers. She then has to battle her way through a forest and survive an attack from a vicious rake. I gotta assume that the aforementioned “rake” is not the typical gardening variety… I
t’s a concept album / rock opera, people! What’d you expect? I’m just going to stop describing it because I’ve probably already scared you away. It does have a happy ending, so that’s nice.
There aren’t many songs that work well on their own, which is pretty typical for a concept album. I enjoy The Wanting Comes in Waves and The Rake’s Song, and I’m playing the latter of the two today, even though the lyrics are a bit violent. Enjoy!
Hey people! Check out what I did! I decided to play around with the playlist feature in lala and embed it into my humble website. Unfortunately – or fortunately depending on how you look at it – it only contains one song currently on the website (I think).
Perhaps someday I can upgrade my wordpress theme to throw this little guy into my sidebar, but who has the time for that sort of thing? Enjoy 19 of my favorite songs from the past as well as one from today!
What’s nice about this playlist is that you can play it here, but if you’re a lala.com member (free to join) you can purchase this exact playlist in either MP3 format or web format. I find that to be a lot of fun.
EDIT: Well, that’s no fun. I was unknowingly logged into my lala account while creating this post, so it let me listen to the songs in their entirety. I gotta assume that it’s only going to let you listen to 30 second clips unless you’re a lala member. Then, you’ll be able to listen to each full song once before they make you purchase a web-only copy (10 cents each or use of 1 of your 50 free credits for joining).
Basketball Jones,
I got a Basketball Jones.
- Cheech and Chong
I love the first days of the NCAA basketball tournament. Unfortunately, that means I also think that it’s the weekend, and it’s not the weekend, unless you missed this post today and are reading it on the weekend. Then, it’s the weekend for you, but not for me.
Some might say this would be a good day to play Basketball Get Your Groove Back by Deerhoof. Amazingly enough, it’s an allmusic pick for their latest album. Unfortunately, that’s more of a weird song Wednesday kind of thing.
The next three weeks are looking promising for new music.
The Decemberists have a new one called Hazards of Love coming out next Tuesday. As mentioned in my previous post, it’s already available on iTunes, but I’m not much of an iTunes supporter.
Peter Bjorn and John’s new album Living Things comes out on the 31st, but don’t expect it to be as poppy as their first one. Lead singer Peter Morén has grown himself a nice looking mustache.
Metric returns to their Old World Underground sound on Fantasies – coming out April 7th. I’ve been enjoying this album on spinner all week.
Today’s song comes from a guy I just learned about last week. Technically, this album was released last year, but just showed up in the U.S. this week. Check out Sam Roberts‘ Them Kids. I really like this song.
No, I’m not a night owl. I can stay up late if there’s people to keep me awake, but if there aren’t, I’m going to bed. Maybe this is due to me not being a nap person.
Did you like how I ran around in a circle there? The email from The Decemberists told me midnight central, but the website said 11 pm eastern. Somebody needs to relearn their time zones.
The show will be their new album in its entirety, which is also currently available as a pre-release on iTunes.
To repeat. 10 pm. NPR. Decemberists. New Stuff. Check. It. Out.
Down around the corner,
A half a mile from here,
You can see them long trains run,
And you watch them disappear.
- The Doobie Brothers
So there I was, trying to decide what to play on the ol’ iPod yet again. When you have as many artists on your iPod as I do, it gets a bit interesting cycling through all of them. It makes me wonder if it makes financial sense for a band to have a longer name nowadays.
Think about it. You have a jumble of bands with names between five and fifteen letters in length. They all blur together. If your band has a longer name, there’s a better chance of being spotted on the ol’ scroll-by.
Sidebar: ol’ count = 2.
Honestly, I think it’s a hit or miss proposal. Let’s say you put out a mediocre album. Now your long name is annoying to me and I’m even less likely to listen to your stuff. You’ve branded yourself as the home run hitter as compared to the small ball specialist, or the big driver vs. the old guy who “putts for dough”, or [insert first half of sports analogy] vs. [insert second half of sports analogy].
The band that brought all of this up is called Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yelstin. That’s 32 letters – 38 if you count spaces and punctuation. The name (and well, some of the music) kept me from checking out this band, but now that I have – well… ok, so no home runs were hit today, but the potential is there. With stronger harmonies and a little tightening of the music, this could be a band to take a major step.
But with a name like that, it’s going to be difficult…
Today’s song is by SSLYBY and is called Glue Girls.
So long, to the city lights,
So long to the neon signs,
I’m gone – I’ll trade the trouble and the strife,
For the country life.
- The Silver Seas
Sorry for the lack of post so far this week. Daylight savings has kind of knocked me into a funk that I might be starting to finally get out of. I miss waking up at the same time as the sun. Getting up in the dark is for suckers. Suckers and farmers.
Speaking of farmers, Kevin and Katie took me out to a place outside of a small town called Lake City, Minnesota, home of water skiing. That’s right, the first water skiing happened right there in 1922, which happens to be 9 years after the Oak Center General Store opened. Here’s some quick information about Oak Center:
The Oak Center General Store, built in 1913, was resurrected from the dead in 1976 and dedicated to rebuilding a better world from the earth up. The store carries organic meat, produce, eggs, herbs, coffee, herbal and organic personal care items, gifts and bulk items…Unparalleled musical talent is offered through folk forum, a community outreach program of concerts and forum meetings, October through April.
Downstairs, you can get yourself some nice organic veggies and head upstairs to listen to some great, local folk music. This is assuming that you can get yourself up some steeper than steep steps. Once you’re upstairs, you’re surrounded by wood. Choose to sit in some wooden theatre sits or stand and enjoy food cooked on fire stoves.
Enough about the venue. I need to talk about music before it gets too late. I was there to see Conrad Plymouth, a Rochester native and friend of Kevin and Katie whose real name isn’t actually Conrad Plymouth. Conrad could easily be thrown into the dreaded “alt-country” genre, but I find him to be much more of a lyricist than you usually find in that genre.
While the general feeling of the songs in the show was somber, I was thoroughly entertained. The venue was intimate, but the sound was great, meaning I could actually understand the lyrics, which is typically a problem in most settings, large or small. It was excellent musicianship all around. Kevin actually recorded the show and one of the songs has made it to Conrad’s website. Check it out if you want to hear what I heard on Saturday night.
Today’s song comes from M Ward, who I’m still trying to wrap my head around. Check out Rave On.
I’m a man-man-man,
man-man-man eater.
So why are you suprised-prised-prised,
When I eat you?
We’re going to have to hold off the amiestreet discussion for another day since I don’t really have a lot of time to write today’s post. Instead, I’m going to tell you a little bit about Neko Case.
For those of you in the know, Neko Case is the female lead singer in The New Pornographers with a presence the size of Massachusetts, or some other state that’s easier to spell, but similar in size. I’ve never bothered to look up whether the members of The New Pornographers started out with solo careers and formed a super group, or the other way around. That’d be interesting to look up if I had the time.
Anyway, Neko’s newest effort, Middle Cyclone was released on Tuesday this week and has spent all of its time in my car’s CD player. I finally got around to ripping the MP3s this morning so that I could play a song for everyone.
But which song? Well, there are two songs that have jumped out to me as candidates – the opening track, This Tornado Loves You, which is a song about the illicit tornado/man, tornado/woman, or even tornado/backyard shed love. It’s not really specific the gender of either side, and I’m not one to have figured out what gender a tornado is in the first place. Try and think of it as an Elton John song before you realized that the song might have been written for a man.
The other option is the third track, People Got a Lotta Nerve, where today’s lyrics came from. It’s about a man-eating woman (figurative, I would hope) confused as to why men get surprised when she eats them, especially since she’s got the reputation for being a bit of a man eater.
I chose song number one for a stupid reason. The line, “I want you…” at the beginning of the song. Simple line, great execution, can hit you like a ton of bricks. Goosebump city, people. Check out This Tornado Loves You.
Stick shifts and safety belts,
Bucket seats have all got to go.
When we’re driving in the car,
It makes my baby seem so far.
I need you here with me,
Not way over in a bucket seat.
-Cake
I’m not sure why I’ve got those lyrics in my head. Maybe as an excuse to put a picture of cake on my web page? How about as an excuse to put an image of a hostess cupcake on my web page only to find this guy who is a pillow version of the aforementioned cupcake? Now you’re getting warmer.
I was surprised when checking out the list of new releases at allmusic for this post – it’s only three pages long. A typical week it’s 6 to 8 pages long, so apparently today is officially a dead zone in the world of music. Either that or nobody wanted to compete with Neko Case and Say Hi for attention this week.
Quick sidebar while I’m thinking about it. Happy belated birthday, Dr. Seuss. I dressed up like Fox in Socks for Halloween in college. It was my first attempt at creating a system of Halloween costumes that included a sweatsuit and random colors of felt. Remember that formula, people, it works.
So yeah, Neko Case and Say Hi (formerly Say Hi To Your Mom) have new albums out today. Neko’s album is big enough to make the weekly ads so me and my $5 Best Buy gift card will probably be making a trek to Best Buy over lunch today.
I found a neat web site today, but I think I’m going to hold off and wait to officially talk about it another day. It’s called amiestreet if you want to check it out. Variable rates for mp3’s based on how many copies have been sold. It’s not much for the music industry, but if it gets more music out there and artists are actually making money off of it, then it’s a win-win.
Today’s song comes from the War Child Presents Heroes album that I’ve been talking about for a week. Right now, I much prefer Dark Was The Night, but I’m not going to be streaming many songs from there – you need to go out and buy it for yourself, even if it’s just to stream online at lala. Check out TV on the Radio’s version of David Bowie’s song, Heroes.
I love the first days of the NCAA basketball tournament. Unfortunately, that means I also think that it’s the weekend, and it’s not the weekend, unless you missed this post today and are reading it on the weekend. Then, it’s the weekend for you, but not for me.
Think about it. You have a jumble of bands with names between five and fifteen letters in length. They all blur together. If your band has a longer name, there’s a better chance of being spotted on the ol’ scroll-by.
For those of you in the know, Neko Case is the female lead singer in The New Pornographers with a presence the size of Massachusetts, or some other state that’s easier to spell, but similar in size. I’ve never bothered to look up whether the members of The New Pornographers started out with solo careers and formed a super group, or the other way around. That’d be interesting to look up if I had the time.
