Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.
Just a note—I’ll probably be radio silent for the next week (save for liking all your wonderful posts 🫡) because I’ll be on vacation! I’m heading up to Olympic National Park, so I’m pretty excited. But for now, have a nice, blue-gray color scheme and some silly goofy music while I’m gone. And of course, we’ve got Phoebe Bridgers, The Magnetic Fields, and Ernie and Bert for pride month.
Enjoy this week’s songs!
SUNDAY SONGS: 6/11/23
So…here I am. Finally got around to listening to Peter Gabriel 1: Car the other day. Fantastic album, but if I had to describe it in one word, that one word would be whiplash. I already knew I was in for a ride knowing that the album started out with the absolute proto-Danny Elfman insanity of “Moribund the Burgermeister” and the album’s classic radio hit “Solsbury Hill” one after the other (as much as I love the latter, it’s a crime that it’s all this album is typically remembered for…doesn’t surprise me, though), but even that couldn’t have prepared me for the full experience.
But if there’s any song off of this album that characterizes said whiplash, it’s this one. I went in expecting it to be weird, but the pure shock of this one just sent me into the nth dimension of musical weirdness. I’m not even exaggerating. This one starts out with a barbershop quartet. It’s just nuts. And I love it. It’s like Peter Gabriel was just unleashing every ounce of the pent-up goofiness within. It’s kooky. It’s whimsical. It’s silly. I’d unironically call this one of the best tracks on the album, just because he just goes all in on the silliness. However, I go back and forth on whether or not the incoherence of this album is a pro or a con—I’ve tentatively decided that it’s more pro than con, but some of it didn’t work for me. Coherence is not a quality that an album needs to have to be enjoyable, but you can do an album where every song has a different feel, genre, etc. from the next and still have it feel cohesive and joyfully carefree at the same time (see Super Furry Animals’ Rings Around the World). But on the other hand, the antici……pation of having no clue of what comes next was such fun to experience. There were some songs on Car that were genuine misses for me (sorry, “Down the Dolce Vita”), but albums that are pure chaos, like this one, are a special experience. Go crazy, Peter.
“Waiting Room” – Phoebe Bridgers
This one’s now on Bandcamp—all proceeds go to Music Will!
(are we all still okay, bisexuals? nope? I thought so)
Now, here we are with something of a legend amongst Phoebe Bridgers’ catalogue. Famously written when she was only 16, it’s hidden in the shadows despite being a fan favorite, existing only in older video performances and a brief stint on Spotify as part of the Lost Ark Studio collection, before being mysteriously taken down. And now that it’s on Bandcamp, more of us can lose ourselves in it!
The fact that Bridgers wrote this at 16 is still incredibly impressive, but with all due respect, it…makes sense. It’s 6 and a half minutes of pure angst—she hadn’t quite nailed the lyrical flow and subtleties that came with experience yet. There’s nothing subtle about “If you were a waiting room/I would never see a doctor/I’d just sit there with my first aid kit and bleed.” But the point of this song was never to be subtle—it’s a time capsule, capturing young, unrequited love at the epicenter of its emotion. If Bridgers hadn’t nailed her lyrical style just yet, she had already nailed her innate ability to conjure engrossing emotion. There’s something about the lines “Wanna make you fall in love as hard as my poor parents’ teenage daughter/She’ll be the best you’ve ever had, if you let her” that always get me. Aww, little Phoebe…
And it all comes to a head in the iconic refrain of “Know it’s for the better,” repeated for the last half of the song. The instrumentals rise in intensity along with Bridgers’ voice until it all crashes down in a tidal wave of guitars. It really is a song to lose yourself in—the last part of the song really does make it feel like everything else has ceased to exist around you. And even though this song has gone through several iterations over the years, it’s still a feat to achieve so young. If anything, I’m just glad to exist in a world with Phoebe Bridgers in it. I know it’s for the better.
“La La La La Lemon” (Sesame Street cover) – The Barenaked Ladies
Alright, here’s a childhood nostalgia pick-me-up after Phoebe Bridgers’ sea of teen angst. I wouldn’t blame you if you needed a palate cleanser.
This one was a last minute addition, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t include it in this. I haven’t thought about this song in a solid 15 years, but the other night, I had a dream—I can’t even remember what the dream was even about, but whatever the case, it dredged this song up from the dark recesses of my mind. And I’m not complaining! There’s nothing like the joy of uncovering a forgotten childhood song, like digging through dusty old boxes of mementoes in the attic. Or, at least, that’s how I imagine it. I don’t have an attic. I digress. It’s moments like this where I really appreciate the incomprehensible eccentricities of the human brain—which neuron fired and made me remember this all of the sudden?
Even though they have the worst possible band name to have included on a kid’s album (which they did—not just this, but the classic Snacktime!), The Barenaked Ladies really do have a talent for making nostalgic, clever kid’s songs. This one is technically a cover, but for once, I’ll defer to them instead of Sesame Street; in any other circumstance, I’d immediately call blasphemy, but in this case, their take on “La La La La Lemon” surpasses the original for me. No disrespect to Ernie and Bert, the original gay TV couple. This is the only exception. They reign supreme in all else. Nothing tops the Rubber Ducky song.
The slower, more subdued Sesame Street version fits when you consider that our crotchety friend Bert is singing half of it. But The Barenaked Ladies gave this song an infectious energy—just by picking up the speed, the song gains a far more carefree, loose, and altogether more joyous feel. Maybe my preference is the nostalgia talking, but I swear that this version manages to turn the kookiness up to the perfect level—the level that made me giggle as a kid and still makes me smile now, when I’m somehow an adult with a job. Man, how’d that happen…
Either way, the main takeaway is that comedy peaked at at “La la la la, linoleum!”
“I Don’t Want to Get Over You” – The Magnetic Fields
I’m entirely serious when I say that the only thing keeping me from listening to 69 Love Songs right this second is because of…said 69 songs. I will, eventually, but it’s gonna require a nice, long, uninterrupted stretch of…[checks notes] almost three hours, Jesus. But you’re not gonna catch me complaining about nearly three hours of Stephin Merritt and company.
In the meantime, it seems like almost every song I hear on its own from this album rearranges my brain chemistry for a solid three days before I can snap out of it. Case in point: this one. The minute the buzzy background synths and deeply distorted…well, everything kicks in, I lost myself. Again. With his signature, dry witticism, Merritt pens another two-and-a-half minute bite of love gone sour, cloaking the thought of “[taking] a sleeping pill and sleep at will/and not have to go through what I go through” in a web of tinny distortion. I always come back to the tongue-in-cheek lines of “Or I could career of being blue/I cold dress in black and read Camus,” because…I mean, he did kind of make a career out of that? Almost? Aside from a few songs, most of The Magnetic Fields that I can think of is about love left to get moldy after a few weeks in the fridge. But here’s the thing—it never feels like Merritt is spinning a broken record—each time, has has something new to bring to the table, whether it’s the drowning melancholy of “I Don’t Believe in the Sun” or the confessional nature of “Born on a Train.” He always finds something inspired to spin out of love lost or gone the way of spoiled milk, and every time, it’s a rush of inventiveness to the head.
“World of Ammonites” (from Prehistoric Planet 2) – Anže Rozman & Kara Talve
Here’s my PSA for today: if you haven’t watched both seasons of Prehistoric Planet on Apple TV+ …respectfully, what are you even doing? If David Attenborough’s part in it isn’t convincing enough by itself, will a masterfully-animated, nature-show style documentary about Cretaceous dinosaurs and other prehistoric life entice you? The animation puts almost everything else of its kind to shame—so much so that it looks too real to be animated, which adds to the nature show feel. Plus, it acts like a good nature show should, not focusing all on “DINOSAUR FIGHT!!!!!1!!! RAAAAAAH THEY ARE ANNIHILATING EACH OTHER RAAAAAH!!1” and giving a speculative insight into many aspects of these extinct creatures’ lifestyles. It’s a beautiful show, whether or now you’re interested in prehistoric life. You will be, after watching this.
Even though the animation obviously steals the show (as it should), I couldn’t help but notice parts of the artfully crafted soundtrack as well. The ammonite section of season 2’s ocean episode wasn’t just my favorite moment of the season because of the tiny prehistoric cephalopods—the paired track, “World of Ammonites,” made it all the more gorgeous. Nothing fits the image of thousands of funky little guys with weird shells bobbing about in a prehistoric sea than a mixture of low woodwind, violins, and synths tinny enough to fit into a sci-fi B-movie from the fifties. The synths especially capture the audio representation of the likeness of these bizarre animals; fitting these very spacey sounds with such alien-looking creatures feels like an obvious choice, but it’s a genius one. Prehistoric Planet has consistently been a joy to watch, but nothing quite gave me the rush of joy that the ammonites—and this track—did. Love me a good cephalopod.
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.
That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
The Bookish Mutant 