gfxgfx
 
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
logo
 
gfx gfx
gfx
680601 Posts in 27601 Topics by 4068 Members - Latest Member: Dae Lims March 29, 2024, 11:42:31 AM
*
gfx*HomeHelpSearchCalendarLoginRegistergfx
gfxgfx
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.       « previous next »
Pages: [1] Go Down Print
Author Topic: Luther's 2014 Favorites  (Read 1724 times)
the captain
Smiley Smile Associate
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 7255


View Profile
« on: December 21, 2014, 10:17:08 AM »

Song by song, as posted at The Record Room (http://s3.excoboard.com/therecordroom) but shared here, too, because, well, I don't know. Whatever. But yeah. A list of songs I like, and some blabbing about them.

Stanley Brinks & the Wave Pictures, "Orange Juice"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOIHV8iyzfU

My love affair with Stanley Brinks goes back awhile, to the last album he did with his brother David-Ivar. His name was still Andre Herman Dune, the band was Herman Dune, and that album was Giant, wherein Andre played the cynical foil to a doe-eyed David.

As Jeffrey Lewis said in his song of the same name, "I Miss Herman Dune When Both Brothers Were In The Band." It's as true with the brothers Herman Dune as it was with the Beatles: some creative tension is good. But life goes on and as Andre/Stanley sang in his 2008 hero myth "Stanley Brinks," "In the fall of two-thousand-six, I changed my name to Stanley Brinks." Fair enough.

[Editorial note: I decided to drink a couple of morning beers to finish this up. It seemed appropriate.]

A half-assed ear open for new material from both the amputee Herman Dune and the loose limb Stanley Brinks, I liked the idea of a new album titled Gin from the latter (along with the Wave Pictures). But first, a single, "Orange Juice."

Oh Lord in Whom I do not believe, You have made me see Your Light! I heard it at the same time I saw the video, a perfectly matched image of the song, and I knew immediately this was one of my favorite songs of the year. It would not be beaten by many, if any.

Three chords. Classic Andre--er, Stanley--lyrical style, each verse laid out in A-A-A-B form, and with verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure. Actually verse-chorus-guitar solo structure: David Tattersall of the Wave Pictures has ample opportunity to pluck percussive.

These middle-aged men--and the one female amongst them--sharing not (just) their joint disillusionment with the younger world around them, but the joy in their cramped enclave, hidden from that world, is ecstatic. This is not growing old gracefully, but detachedly. The bitching about everything in the greater world seems perfunctory, grump-as-character, more than a reflection of any true disappointment. Bullet point after bullet point of what's wrong is just a prelude to the ultimate statement of contentedness. Or happiness. Ultimate pleasure, in fact.

It's raining and the wind is ruthless, I'm old and cold and tired and useless and toothless.
The radio sucks balls, I don't relate to any of the music they're playing at all.
There's sh*t all over the street, you can't even walk, there is nowhere left to set one's feet.

Everything wrong in the world, I'll get by "with a little bit of you, alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, ephedrine and orange juice." And how does it all work?

Life doesn't have a meaning. Anything goes.

Like the divine inspiration seems to have meant as the point of Ecclesiastes said before being divinely appended "Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life." Or if you prefer, as Maurice tells Buck in Boogie Nights, "Wear what you dig." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EwaNAyvA3g

Logged

Demon-Fighting Genius; Patronizing Twaddler; Argumentative, Sanctimonious Prick; Sensationalist Dullard; and Douche who (occasionally to rarely) puts songs here.

No interest in your assorted grudges and nonsense.
halblaineisgood
Guest
« Reply #1 on: December 21, 2014, 04:37:10 PM »



Logged
the captain
Smiley Smile Associate
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 7255


View Profile
« Reply #2 on: December 21, 2014, 05:56:40 PM »

I see.
Logged

Demon-Fighting Genius; Patronizing Twaddler; Argumentative, Sanctimonious Prick; Sensationalist Dullard; and Douche who (occasionally to rarely) puts songs here.

No interest in your assorted grudges and nonsense.
the captain
Smiley Smile Associate
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 7255


View Profile
« Reply #3 on: December 22, 2014, 03:16:43 PM »

Sharon Van Etten, "I Know"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xeMUPJ5diIs

The conversation began long before the song ever did. It's an exhausted singer's confession that I hear opening a song of contrition … or accusation. Detachment, obsession. Sympathetic tenderness. Disappointment. Maybe, barely, hope.

So the simple this-that the piano plays, much of the melody similarly just these or those two notes, is enough. More than enough, even. Trance trickles from a syllable, doesn't it? Just om? "I Know" is an exercise in simple, focused depth, intensely delivered from someone throwing down the gauntlet. The conversation that began long ago, that has been rehashed like loops around a dead end, includes a turning point. A rehearsed turning point that will end, or continue, this.

I'm not such a Sharon Van Etten fan, truth be told. But "I Know" is a song I swear I've argued or passive-aggressively been silent for a thousand times. It is every position in those arguments and non-arguments. I the miracle of performance, of inhabiting an essence, rather than singing a song. I don't listen to the lyrics so much as hear a few words. Those few words, those few notes, and those few chords are this song.

The weight lies in the left hand, in the left side of the piano. So heavy, it is a burden that requires concentration. Focus. This must be a turning point. She will say her peace. Then the conversation will continue. Someone will build up the nerve. "Now I turn into a lover on the side…"
Logged

Demon-Fighting Genius; Patronizing Twaddler; Argumentative, Sanctimonious Prick; Sensationalist Dullard; and Douche who (occasionally to rarely) puts songs here.

No interest in your assorted grudges and nonsense.
the captain
Smiley Smile Associate
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 7255


View Profile
« Reply #4 on: December 24, 2014, 10:50:40 AM »

Dolly Parton, "Don't Think Twice"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpBfGpr1YNM

For about as long as there has been a Bob Dylan, there has been a Bob Dylan cover song ready to present the material in a more conventionally palatable way. A steady beat you can dance to. Harmonies. Hell, melodies. (I kid, I kid.)

Bob Dylan doesn't need it. Bob Dylan's songs don't need it. But their glory is that they can take it. This is raw material that can be reconstructed into any number of masterpieces, and Dolly Parton's "Don't Think Twice" is exactly that: a masterpiece.

This, the ultimate passive-aggressive, self-absorbed kiss-off song, is arranged and performed beautifully. This classic construction that opens sparse and builds to a full-fledged barrage does add a dramatic arc missing from the original. The "refrain" of a harmonized "don't think twice" brings the song into a more conventional pop territory where the original was more a traditional folk series of verses. A-A-A.

I've thought about whether the female voice changes the song, and I don't think it does. There is a somewhat tired trope of finding empowerment or some such thing every time gender is swapped in pop, but in this case it seems to me that lovers of all genders and orientations have been disappointing and leaving one another forever. There's nothing new one way or the other.

What is new is the life Dolly Parton and her band have breathed into their version of this song. The original wasn't tired, it didn't need new life, and it didn't get any: it still exists, as-is, strong as ever. But this imperfect clone, this homage, this inspired original, breathes new life into music overall. This is a really, really good recording of a really, really good song.
Logged

Demon-Fighting Genius; Patronizing Twaddler; Argumentative, Sanctimonious Prick; Sensationalist Dullard; and Douche who (occasionally to rarely) puts songs here.

No interest in your assorted grudges and nonsense.
the captain
Smiley Smile Associate
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 7255


View Profile
« Reply #5 on: December 26, 2014, 04:46:09 PM »

Kishi Bashi, "The Ballad of Mr. Steak"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRV-1THlL6A

Somewhere circa 2010 there was an Asian guy in Of Montreal. People come and go. He was playing violin, some keyboards, and singing the high harmonies better than anyone I could recall having done for them before. Some bands, the ideas outpace the performance, and Of Montreal has (pretty often) been one. But that band--that guy!--was really good.

Turns out he makes music under the name Kishi Bashi, and frankly I don't usually like it all that much. There is a lot of violin looping for backgrounds, which reminds me of my down-time fuckoffery with pedals at the music store where I worked through college summers. It's cool, sure … for a while.

But goshdarn, Mr. Steak, you're Grade A! Mindless dance party? Barely veiled gay sex tale? Most puns ever packed into 3:19? All of the above?

2014 has been fun, music-wise, with plenty of party to be had. And "The Ballad of Mr. Steak" sits at or near the top of the party peak for me, somehow still almost indescribably fun for me. It tickles me. It sticks in my head. It's funny. It's stupid and clever, innocent and dirty. It has the best pop violin solo this side of Jean Luc-Ponty. It has a great-sounding saw of a bass synth.

"The Ballad of Mr. Steak" wants your vote. "The Ballad of Mr. Steak" is not a democracy. "The Ballad of Mr. Steak" wins whether you like it or not.
Logged

Demon-Fighting Genius; Patronizing Twaddler; Argumentative, Sanctimonious Prick; Sensationalist Dullard; and Douche who (occasionally to rarely) puts songs here.

No interest in your assorted grudges and nonsense.
gfx
Pages: [1] Go Up Print 
gfx
Jump to:  
gfx
Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines Page created in 0.449 seconds with 22 queries.
Helios Multi design by Bloc
gfx
Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!