Song of the Day 1/26/2012

Just for a change of pace here's some nerdy rock music.







There's still almost two full days of this week left. This is simultaneously not enough time to get that thing done by the end of the week and an appallingly long wait until the weekend.



Bloody hell.

Song of the Day 1/19/12

This is odd. I don’t like The Go! Team, mainly because of their fucking stupid punctuation (although the same crimes don’t bother me when committed by Godspeed You! Black Emperor or Motörhead), and I don’t really like Best Coast (gorgeous vocals over not very good songs) and yet they combined to make this:

Which is obviously great.
Disclaimer: I’m still trying (and failing) to keep up with new music, I first heard this a couple of weeks ago (and then today in Trader Joe’s – one stop indie rock grocery shopping) so I’ve decided it counts.

Song of the Day 1/12/12

The best new Seattle-based music. This blog just continues to deliver on its promises. Sorry, I’ve been typing and trying to eat healthy foods, this hasn’t left me much time for listening to new stuff. The upside of this is technology is getting more awesome and there are more Top Pot donuts available in the Pacific North West.

Which brings us to this great song from the AV Club’s Undercover project, The Mountain Goats explode through Boxcar by Jawbreaker, a lot of good work done in about two minutes with a handful of chords. You’d have to try really hard not to like this. And you would fail. Fail!



Music starts at 1:17 – but you should watch the whole thing.
Free extree bonus fact: That guitar is just like mine!

Song of the Day 1/5/2012

Hey! Look! Song of the day is back!

I try to pick stuff that is current and based in Seattle and I almost always fail to do this. This is off the new Guided By Voices record (so 0.5 out of 2 isn’t bad).

This is them on Letterman from earlier this week, they’re kind of a sloppy mess (if you study the video really closely you might notice that the bass-player makes a tiny error), but Robert Pollard’s voice is dead on.



I don’t feel entirely comfortable saying “I like Guided By Voices” because they have so many songs and I’ve only scratched the surface (their best of “Human Amusements At Hourly Rates” seems to be the best way to start on this surface scratching: http://open.spotify.com/album/53KpX4dhIypkmTZkfgQdS6 ). Their reputation suggests that even though they’re prolific not much of their content is must-have-indie-gold, but I’m envious of this ability to just crank out record after record. Especially because at the moment I have song-writer’s block, I can’t get my guitar to make a decent original noise – a cursory inspection of every good chord pattern I come up reveals that Pixies, Sugar et al. have already written, recorded and released the exact sequence of same notes 20 years ago.

Must be more like GBV.

Song of the Day, 12/30/2011

Okay, I sort of sucked at keeping the momentum going for this for the whole year. But it's been AWESOME to look back over this and see all of this stuff - and it's been super helpful as I've been trying to organize a Top Songs of 2011 list. So much goodness I forgot about!

So many photos from SxSW! So many posts about the Fleet Foxes!

I'm trying to put together my list on Spotify, and so far one of my greatest frustrations is what *isn't* available. I think my favorite song of the past year, one that I've listened to again and again, is The Round by Pickwick. This band, is worth seeing a million times over. They started as an alt-country band and got bored, and decided to get some soul.



Originally, they released The Round at a few other songs on 7" only - I have them. They're like candy. They're recording a full length early next year, and I CANNOT wait to hear it.

Another someone I think you're going to hear more about this next year is Bryan John Appleby (maybe just from me):

The 2011 Doe Bay Sessions - Bryan John Appleby from Sound on the Sound on Vimeo.

.... Maybe I should just do a top 10 as a blog post....

Song of the Day 11/5/11 - Macklemore's And We Danced

I just kind of love Macklemore. The new video is kind of ridiculous but it's a great song.

Song of the day 7/8/2011

Great song, sleazy video redeemed by that ENORMOUS chorus.



Typing for money is killing me at the moment. Is 33 too young to retire?

SotD 7/5/11 Stars' Your Ex-lover is Dead

Stars | A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Exhausted this week so thought I'd just post an old favorite :)

Song of the day 6/23/2011

Another missed week of blogging. I am ok. I hope you all didn't faint from worry. There’s a lot going on for me at the moment, I’m mainly fixing bugs (or at least staring blankly at misbehaving code and shrugging which is almost the same thing), there’s been a huge injection of very good standup comedy that I absolutely must consume (Live, TV, podcasts and Netflix and oh my fucking god Andy Kindler is coming back to Seattle) and I’m trying to buy a new amplifier to expunge the spectre of Peavey from my band. Things are all happening.

Sugar – If I Can’t Change Your Mind

(I still haven’t justified the “let’s drown some lady” theme in A Good Idea – so I’ll go with this one).

More early nineties indie rock. I don’t accept the notion that there is other music. Ever late to the party I got this record eleven years after it came out following a horrible breakup (really, the kind with multiple, bloody exit wounds, the painful learning experience kind) – this, on repeat and gin and tonics on repeat got me through that. I like all the melodies and harmonies. I like the guitar and drum sounds. I like how this is what Husker Du would sound like if they were more commercial. And the scales at the end – YES!

Good God Bob Mould looks young in this video. Wikipedia tells me that the band Train covered this song. Train can fuck off.

All your problems are over when you listen to this record, it’s 44 minutes 58 seconds of respite.

Thanks Sugar. Thanks alcohol.

SoTD 6/14/11: Lady Gaga's Judas

I avoided listening to Lady Gaga (except the unavoidable Poker Face and Bad Romance, which is everywhere) but when Amazon had the $.99 special for the new album I figured why the hell not. Considering my love for certain kinds of 80s music (Erasure and more!) I should have realized I'd get hooked. Well played Amazon, you got another $14 out of me :P

Song of the Day 6/9/2011

Check list for a good pop song:

• Stop-Start
• Harmonizing
• Sub 3 minutes

Check! Check! Check!

I love Visqueen. They write great songs and always seem to be working very hard. I saw them twice last year and both times there were lots of tiny children around. Hopefully they’ll play in a bar soon so there can be adult beverages and language.

SotD 6/7/11: Cataldo

I don't actually remember what song this is. I tried to post the call and response song he did at the living room show but apparently other audiences don't sound as good as we did!

Song of the Day, 6/5/2011

Please stop by my bedroom and dance to this song with me. Or stop by the next Lawndree show, maybe we'll cover it.

Song of the Day, 6/4/2011

It's not really a secret is it, this one is my favorite radiohead song.



I remember wondering when I was like, 14, how I would pose if I was in this video. Oh, you so know you did too. Don't fake it.

Song of the day 2/06/2011

Seattle attracts so much music and is awesome.
Seattle also has too many stupid festivals and camping-based torture near by.

God I hope the reformed Archers of Loaf do a show actually in Seattle.

Song of the Day, 6/1/2011

Ugh, the flu. The new Death Cab for Cutie album is out this week, and I feel like I should have listened to it and have some sort of brilliant commentary on it by now. Instead I've been puking my guts up and having fever dreams for the last 48 hours.

Death Cab For Cutie Storytellers |Death Cab For Cutie |Storytellers |Music Videos

So instead, check out the latest sign that we're all old now - Death Cab for Cutie on VH1's Storytellers. Movie Script Ending is one of my favorite songs, it's about driving into Bellingham and it came out at a time when I was doing a lot of driving in to Bellingham - the album came out the week before I moved down to Seattle for college.

I could place most of the lines of the song, but I couldn't ever really figure out where the Bottoms on Barstools line was - but it turns out, it's about one of my favorite bars in Bellingham - the legendary Beaver Inn.

They also play and share the story behind Photobooth, another one of my favorites. When I hear it, I can smell the smells that mark the end of a Pacific NW Summer:

Death Cab For Cutie Storytellers |Death Cab For Cutie |Storytellers |Music Videos

There also is a house - or was house - in the lettered streets that I used to pretend this song was about. I didn't know the people that lived there real well, I was in high school, they were in college, I went to a party there, like, once I think - but I'd often drive past and see a couch on the lawn and pretend this song was happening. (And that I wasn't invited. But maybe, someday I would be.)

SotD 5/31/11 - Dan Mangan's Robots

I recently had the privilege of attending the fourth show by local house show producers Notes From Home. The evening's entertainment was Cataldo, Hey Marseilles, and Dan Mangan. Of the three of them I had only heard Hey Marseilles before.

I have little experience attending house shows but wow, what a way to experience music. The setting was intimate, the sound was good, the people open and friendly, and I just felt like I was experiencing something special. The highlight for me was that every band that night performed a sing-along song and they all successfully got the entire room singing. This song was Dan Mangan's sing-along contribution.

Happening Now: The Thermals

#sasquatch

Song of the Day, 5/28

I'm heading out to Sasquatch right now. Woo! We're playing Radiohead covers at noon.

Anyways, so, I missed yesterday too preparing for this adventure.

Sorry.

And I'm having a hard time pulling embed code from YouTube on my phone, so you're going to have to click through to this video of Pulp's first show after reuniting this year.

Song of the day 5/26/2011

The original brief for contributing to this blog was to write about Seattle-centric stuff, as you can see I live to disappoint.

Kerbdog – Sally

I still have the ticket stub for this show somewhere, October 1993 Manchester Academy : The Almighty, The Wildhearts, Kerbdog. Jesus tap-dancing Christ, this was a hell of a thing to unleash on a young man. I’d been to a couple of shows before this one, but this was the first gig where I got to stand at the front next to the speaker stacks (this and the endless repetitions of doing similar things almost exactly like this are why if you speak to me today you have to yell directly into my ear). Kerbdog were the opening act and were barely older than me. It was amazing.

Years later when I was in college I saw them again and after the show, because of poor transport links between “where I studied” and “where rock was at”, my friends and I had to wait for a train for a couple of hours, we waited in the bar, we met the band and they bought us drinks. Thoroughly charming chaps.

This song is off their second record where they became less metal and learned to write pop songs with crunching fuzzy guitars.

They did two records and split up. Their bass player went to university to study civil engineering and the other two formed Wilt who were quite good, but less good. People like me remained obsessed with Kerbdog to the point where for the last few years they they’ve relented and done an annual reunion show in Ireland around Christmas. I want to go to that. I owe them a drink.