Songs of the Morning

This is right where I'm at today. Listen to get there too.

"Lost Coastlines" by Okkervil River

They're playing Hardly Strictly tomorrow. I am SOOOOO there. Amazing.

Zeigeist

I am OBSESSED with this group right now. I think we all know that Swedish-electro artsy weirdness is seriously my weakness when it comes to music but they are SO good. ENJOY.

call me on your way back home-sophia

the best ryan adams cover i've ever heard.

Tom Waits - Never Let Go

God I fucking love this song. I just heard it in an AdCouncil commercial about how 1 in 8 people are starving or some shit. What the two have to do with each other I have no idea but it made me smile all huge and happy all the same. Thanks AdCouncil! Thanks starving Americans!

Propagandhi - Rock For Sustainable Capitalism live

So I've been having a Propagandhi listening party in my room tonight. I was just talking the other day about how much I love Potemkin City Limits. And this is such a great song from that album.

And I just now read that Katy Perry is performing at Warped Tour. There's no way I could not post this.

Miles Fisher - This Must Be The Place (Cover)

Best Christian Bale doing Patrick Bateman impression I've ever seen. Completely nails the facial expressions. Hilarious.

4 for Friday! Except not really!

It's actually even better. I know I've been neglecting things the past few weeks, but in lieu of doing the random thing I'm going to post a bunch of songs that I've been going nuts for during my time of neglect.


Dead Man's Bones - My Body's a Zombie for You
Dead Man's Bones - Name in Stone
Dead Man's Bones - In the Room Where You Sleep
Fever Ray - When I Grow Up
Fever Ray - I'm Not Done
Fever Ray - If I Had a Heart
Ryan Adams - Harder Now That It's Over
Bonnie "Prince" Billy - You Are Lost
Of Montreal - The Past is a Grotesque Animal
The Knife - Pass This On (Dahlback & Dahlback Remix)
Magnetic Fields - Underwear

I think that's enough for now. There may be some more later, but right now I'm going to run around in the sun, hit up the Botanical Gardens and the sculpture garden at the De Young and generally enjoy my second day off.

Vale et bona fortuna.

It's been a week of opposites and extremes for sure. I've said goodbye to two very important people. In two very different ways. Which will now be conveyed through youtube videos of songs that sum them both up because I <3 the internet and this is how the kids roll now:

4 for Friday

1. Coil - Are You Shivering - From the album "Musick to Play in the Dark Vol. 1" it is absolutely that. This might be my favorite Coil track. To me their weirdness and darkness and theatricality and intricacies of sound are totally present and at their best here.
2. PJ Harvey - Happy and Bleeding - Old school PJ, before she got all polished and theatrical. I used to have quite the angsty time singing to this album.
3. Ryan Adams - Wonderwall - I never thought an Oasis song could sound good.
4. Iron & Wine - Sea and the Rhythm - My favorite Iron & Wine song. I could die to this.

6 for Saturday

So I was terribly busy running around adventuring yesterday and wasn't able to post my 4 for Friday, so to make up for that I'll post 6 for Saturday. That's two more for the price of nothing, my friends.
1. The Knife - Got 2 Let U
2. Coil - The Tenderness of Wolves
3. Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues
4. Combichrist - Sent to Destroy
5. H.I.M. - One Last Time
6. Death from Above 1979 - You're a Woman, I'm a Machine

4 for Friday!!!!

No text this week, just links to the songs. Find your own opinions of them.
1. Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Lie Down in the Light
2. Front 242 - Operating Tracks
3. Placebo - Nancy Boy
4. Magnetic Fields - The Death of Ferdinand de Saussere

4 for Friday

1. Neko Case - That Teenage Feeling - This song is sooo indicative of my life 8 or 9 months ago. It's my favorite song off of Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.
2. Tracey Thorn and Jens Lekman - Yeah! Oh Yeah! - This is a great cover of a great Magnetic Fields song. I love the idea of Jens singing Stephin Merritt. And Tracey (Everything But the Girl)sounds lovely as well.
3. Propagandhi - Gifts - This is one of their more "emo" songs, solely because John Samson is singing it. Well, the lyrics are pretty emo too. John Samson is just emo. Go listen to the Weakerthans if you don't believe me.
4. Whiskeytown - Turn Around (Alternate Version) - Oh Ryan Adams. You were such a little southern-accented rough voiced boy. (I think he was like 23 when this came out). I love it.

4 for Friday

This one is gonna be quick cause I have shit to do:
1. Coil - The Dark Age of Love
2. Combichrist - god bless
3. Mika - Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)
4. The Knife - Listen Now

4 for Friday

So this is a little thing I'm going to start doing cause I've always wanted to have some sort of music feature for this blog but I didn't really know what. So on Fridays I'm just gonna hit shuffle on iTunes and post the first four songs that come up. Woohoo.

1. Jens Lekman - Run Away With Me This is one of my favorite Jens songs. I'm going to see him in a couple of weeks. I'll make sure to try to propose to him. Again.
2. Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Sink Ships This is one of those Ryan Adams songs (much like Cherry Lane or Meadowlake Street on Cold Roses) that starts out fairly standard and mediocre and then switches it up at the end and becomes just sort of amazing and transcendent. I can't really describe it any better than that, but he's really fucking good at doing it.
3. Bonnie "Prince" Billy - You Remind Me of Something (The Glory Goes) A good Bonnie song. Very nice to sing along with.
4. Einstürzende Neubauten - Good Morning Everybody And now for something completely different...German experimental noise music. I like Blixa. He's tied with Warren for title of my favorite Bad Seed.

So hopefully I'll keep my motivation and continue doing this. I will confess that I did skip posting the real third song that played because it was a 17 minute long spoken word type thing by Coil. Should I have gone ahead and posted that? I have a lot of weird shit like that that will probably pop up from time to time in doing this so I guess I should figure out if everything is fair game or if I'm going to keep it strictly "Music music".

I saw Iron & Wine for free!

In fact it was the second time I've seen him for free (last year's Hardly Strictly being the other) but this was so much better because it was a very small secret show at a tiny record store and my friends and I were in the very front sitting at his feet. So amazing. Plus it happened the day after my birthday.
Here is a little video I took of Naked as We Came with my shitty digital camera:


There are pictures here.

Heartbeats & Covers

So this is possibly my favorite song by The Knife:

If you don't know, The Knife are this crazy electronic, Bjork-esque brother-sister music group from Sweden and I ♥ them a lot.

I was watching crappy TV in the morning as I often do on my days off, and I heard this cover of Heartbeats by Jose Gonzalez on that "Bones" show:

It definitely fits into that whole mellow/folksy/acoustic thing I love.

In searching on YouTube for that video, I also found this one. It's a cover by a Belgian girls choir called Scala & Kolacny Brothers:

Since I grew up singing in choirs I think I might have a special love for them, but also it's pretty awesome anyway.

GQ interviews Tom Waits

I really wasn’t part of a scene. I didn’t want to be part of a scene. I wanted to take it all in—and then kind of, y’know, set it all on fire and see what remained.

R.I.P. Lux

I saw The Cramps play when in 1997, when I was 16. (It sounds like a long time ago and kind of impressive, except I know there are people out there who are like "Whatever, I saw them in 1978 when I was 12" or some shit, as the punks and goths are prone to doing.) Anyway, they played for 3 hours and Lux stalked around the stage in his heels and PVC catsuit and talked so much awesome shit to the audience (most of whom were not there to see them, but were teenagers who hung out at this all-ages club nightly) about how he was "punk rock before it was all about studded bracelets and shit" and it was amazing and hilarious and so much fun. It was absolutely the best show I've ever seen in my life. I am so seriously sad that can't ever happen again.

Lux Interior, you were too fucking awesome.

And he kept playing shows, still all balls out I'm sure, until he was 60. Good. Lord.

I also used to have a double sided poster of The Cramps hanging on my wall that had a band picture on one side and the cover for "Flamejob" on the other side. It was a promo-poster they sent out for the album when it came out and the dude who worked at the record store across from my high school gave it to me cause I was a gothy punk rock 13 year old and he figured I was a fan. And he said "This will probably be the ugliest poster in your room" I guess referring to Lux and the boys, cause Poison Ivy looks pretty damn sexy on that Flamejob side. And I would totally rock out to "Let's Get Fucked Up" and try to decide what side I wanted to put up on my wall each month.

I really wish I still had that poster.

Neko Case is awesome.

So she has a new album coming out and the first single, "People Got a Lotta Nerve" can be downloaded here for free, which is awesome in and of itself. But the reason I'm posting it here is that for every blog that posts it, she and her label are donating 5 dollars to Best Friends Animal Society. You can find out more about that here.

Oh also, the song is awesome.