Tag: The Ballad of Darren

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 8/13/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

Since I’ve been making these Sunday Songs graphics for just over a year and writing about them for about half that time, I’ve noticed that there’s inevitably at least one light blue week per month. Different shades of blue, but there’s always at least one, and it’s always pale. Like this one. Or this one? Either way, here’s the court-ordered blue period for August. Bon appetit.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 8/13/23

“1 Billion Dogs” – Jay Som

I listened to Everybody Works entirely on a whim, just to have something shorter to have as a soundtrack while I rearranged the bulletin board in my room. But I should’ve predicted that any given Jay Som record—much less this one—would be so much more than that. Perfect summer album, I have to say. Go listen to Everybody Works, guys.

Everybody Works is an album of many faces, from the chugging indie rock of “Take It” (which works way too perfectly with boygenius’ “Satanist“—can somebody with the ability to make mashups make this a reality?? please?? makes sense, seeing that she’s the bassist for boygenius’ touring band), the pop hooks of “The Bus Song” (BUT I LIKE THE BUS!), and the fever dream atmosphere of “(Bedhead).” But never once does it feel inconsistent or lacking cohesion—if I had to pick them from a crowd, all of these varied songs would still feel distinctly Jay Som. But amidst all of that, aside from the two tracks I already remembered from the album (“The Bus Song” and “Baybee”), “1 Billion Dogs” was an immediate standout. The title alone would have caught my eye on any other record, but strangely, even though it has nothing to do with dogs, much less billions of them, it has that feel to it. It fits. “1 Billion Dogs” is a song with an immediate urgency; even with Melina Duterte’s reserved voice almost melting into the instruments, it’s a song that grabs you by the shirt collar, then invites you to jump around and dance. But even the crashing rhythm guitars, steady bass, and just-so off-kilter riffs can’t take away from the electronic haze that never lifts from Duterte’s music. It’s a uniquely Jay Som flavor to me: dreamlike and fuzzy, like it’s cloaked in multicolored static.

“Evicted” – Wilco

September is shaping up to be a heavy hitter as far as albums go. I’ve already talked about tracks from Shakey Graves’ Movie of the Week and Mitski’s The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We, but I haven’t yet talked about the new Wilco, with their new album Cousin coming out on September 29! And only about a year and a half removed from their last double album, Cruel Country…Jeff Tweedy is just cranking ’em out, huh?

Tweedy and co. have advertised the upcoming Cousin as their art-pop/rock album. Wilco has always had a penchant for the experimental, but I feel like when they’ve previously advertised their albums as a certain genre, it doesn’t always fit the label. Take Cruel Country—”country” was literally in the name, but it felt like more of a folkier side of Wilco than anything, which, given their roots, wasn’t much of a stretch. Rather, as Tweedy said in his Starship Casual newsletter, “Cruel Country was our idea of country music and a lot of people went, ‘Huh?! this doesn’t sound like Colt Steed!’ (or some other plausible sounding country mega-star name).” So I’ll have to go into this album knowing that it’s Wilco’s idea of art-pop—and that’s certainly promising. And maybe I was screwing myself over when I saw “art rock” and immediately went into this song thinking it was gonna be “Art of Almost” 2. It isn’t. Even as much as I love Wilco, I feel like even that would be hard to reproduce. That’s not to say that “Evicted” is a bad song in any way—if there’s anything that Wilco has been in the last 10 years or so, it’s consistent. Regardless of our personal definitions of where this song fits into, “Evicted” is proof that Wilco’s ability to feel relevant and rock-solid will likely never fade. With its timeless guitars and the gently ethereal backing vocals and Nels Cline’s quietly glittering riffs rising like plumes of dust in the background, it’s a deceptively simple song—much like the Trojan Horse that Tweedy compared his definition of bubblegum pop to. And if I’ve learned anything from Cruel Country, it’s that I can’t judge an album by its first single. I’d be lying if I said that “Evicted” wasn’t an earworm. Jeff tweedy is true to his word.

Also, can I take Colt Steed as my new stage name?

“Crash” – Lisa Germano

EMERGENCY WEATHER REPORT: we regret to inform you that sad girl fall is scheduled to arrive two months earlier than expected. Hunker down, everybody.

A song that begins with the line “You could say I feel this way/’Cause it’s the way I feel” doesn’t seem terribly memorable at first glance. But that’s the thing. You have to wait. Not even that long of a wait, really. Because it’s followed up with “Or you could say I’m making it up/I want it to be real.” See? Have a little faith in Lisa Germano, in all of her raw, dilapidated-house-with-rusty-nails-lying-everywhere craft.

My introduction to Lisa Germano goes to show, once again, how deeply and wonderfully my dad knows me. Here I was, almost a year ago, when my dad made his annual birthday playlist for me (yep, that’s how cool of a dad he is), and played me “Victoria’s Secret” in the car; Immediately, I was lost in the eerie, spare-and-found-parts, and 90’s (in the best way…I really do love the 90’s) universe of Lisa Germano. (Guys. C’mon. “Victoria’s Secret” has her cat purring in the outro. It’s so good.) I listened to Slide in its entirety a few months later, during what we can actually call sadgirl fall (read: November), and bits and pieces of that record have constantly drifted around me ever since: specters, all of them, but welcome ones. Somehow, though, as much as I played tracks like “Way Below the Radio” and “Reptile,” I forgot about “Crash” until it came on shuffle not long ago. And now that I’ve listened to it more and more (you know it went STRAIGHT to the library playlist), I’m almost ashamed that I let it slip through my fingers, if only temporarily. On further listens, it’s so clear to me that it’s one of the best tracks off the whole album. “Crash” is a song that purposefully droops and lumbers, only faintly held together with fraying twine and half-intended promises. As Germano creates her oft-expressed lyrical landscape of languishing in depression and a lack of motivation (“Wonder why it’s so easy/to be the way I hate”), the instruments sit on the verge of falling apart; they all play in time, but they teeter enough to get the sense that it would only take one sneeze for them to collapse. Germano’s silk-thin voice is a gentle hand that barely caresses you, cool and ghostly, but undeniably present. And it wouldn’t be a Lisa Germano without an uneasy, 40-second piano outro. If there’s anything that she can do, it’s create an atmosphere. Slide was the perfect album to listen to in November, in retrospect; there’s something about this song (and most of her other songs that I’ve heard) that capture the melancholy limbo of that snowless but undeniably wintry chill.

“The Rabbi” – Blur

I’ve been conned. Again. And Damon Albarn is to blame. Twice this year, we’ve gotten albums from projects of his where the album as a whole has been disappointing, but then he comes back with the deluxe edition, and at least one song that would’ve made the original album SO MUCH better. Damon, you sly dog, you pulled a “Captain Chicken” on us AGAIN. (For reference: the other disappointing album happens to be Gorillaz’s Cracker Island.)

I wouldn’t call “The Rabbi” as good as “Captain Chicken,” but then again, it’s hard to replicate the chokehold that the latter had on me for at least 2 months after it came out. But amidst the decent but disappointingly flat expanse that was The Ballad of Darren, this new addition was a breath of fresh air and energy. Equipped with the jangly brightness that Blur has been the master of for 30+ years now, “The Rabbi” is an upbeat spark, and a welcome injection into the album. Graham Coxon’s guitar finally gets its time to shine outside of “St. Charles Square,” but where that recalled the grungy, disillusioned punch of their self-titled record, these joyful riffs feel more youthful, calling back to Parklife and even further back. Like “Barbaric,” the instrumentation of “The Rabbi” is nothing short of upbeat, but cleverly cloaks the underlying disillusionment and melancholy that permeates through the rest of The Ballad of Darren; as Coxon goes off with said jangly guitars, Damon Albarn drawls about how “‘Cause where’s the joy in this self-delusion?/We’re all practitioners of vague illusions/Hieroglyphics and pictures.” Even if I’ve come away from The Ballad slightly sore, at least I have one more song that I can actually nod my head along to and believe that it’s Blur. I refuse to shut up about “St. Charles Square,” though.

“Monkey” (Low cover) – Robert Plant

A reenactment:

The family car. Some time in the early evening. MADELINE and her family are driving on the highway. Robert Plant’s cover of “Monkey” plays over the speakers.

MADELINE: Huh, this song sounds like it could be in Legion.

EITHER MY DAD OR MY BROTHER (I FORGET): That’s because it was in Legion.

The realization hits MADELINE. Cue vine boom.

~

There have been many such moments in my life. But for all the ones that my brain decides to loop in the odd hours of the morning, at least I got a song out of this one.

Unlike my brother, the world’s biggest Legion fan in the world, I haven’t gone back and rewatched any of it since it came out. I’d rank it as my second favorite TV show, right behind Fargo, but I haven’t gone back to any of it in years, save for the fantastic Superorganism musical number in season 3. I don’t think it would ever be ruined by further rewatches (simply impossible for any Noah Hawley project, the man can do no wrong…okay, Anthem was a lot, but other than that), but it’s been like a beautiful, terrifying insect trapped in amber in my mind—it’s hard to replicate that feeling of sheer confusion, horror, and wonder when I had no idea what was going on with that show. But even with the mounting pile of shows and seasons that I need to catch up on, this song reminds me of Noah Hawley’s unmatched craft—and his unmatched music taste, along with the keen eye of Maggie Phillips, the show’s music supervisor. I can’t find the clip anywhere on the internet for the life of me, but this song is slipped into a chilling scene in season 1, episode 3, where a young David Haller chases after his wayward dog on Halloween night. It’s a scene that stressed me out, even if only for a few minutes’ rewatch—Cary did tell present David to “think of something stressful,” after all. And I can’t think of a better song to illustrate that pit-stomached sense of creeping dread than this. Low’s original version has that feeling of dread, but with an unmistakable urgency; Robert Plant’s version (and yes, it is that Robert Plant) swaps that urgency for a grinding, chugging sound that watches you from the darkest corner of the room. “It’s a suicide/Shut up and drive” would have been a blatantly chilling lyric in any other circumstance, but Plant’s strained, hollow whisper makes the chill up my spine all the more chilly. Patty Griffin’s backing vocals, somehow more audible than Plant’s, seem strangely sinister, even with the lightness of her voice. I can’t help but get a little anxious every time I listen to it—all the more reason that Hawley and Phillips were really onto something when they picked this one.

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!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 7/23/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

What a momentous few days it’s been. Barbenheimer weekend (I HAVEN’T SEEN EITHER YET NO SPOILERS), two highly anticipated albums coming out within a week of each other, and entirely too much heat. So how do we celebrate? With resurrected memes and cryptids, of course!

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/23/23

“Barbaric” – Blur

And here we are…Blur’s reunion album is finally here! My mom and I listened to it all the way through twice on the day it came out, continuing our recent tradition of supercharging my car with the music of Damon Albarn and co. But after both of those listens (and some change), I’m divided on how to feel about it. Albarn called it Blur’s “first legit album since 13,” which…if that isn’t a surefire way to get hype, then I don’t know what is. But it makes sense—only 3/4 of Blur recorded and performed 2003’s Think Tank after their pseudo-split in 2000, and the recording of 2015’s The Magic Whip was completely by chance after the cancellation of a festival that left them in Hong Kong. And with the dubious connections between 13 and Ballad (the former is definitively about a breakup, while the latter is more of a rumor), it’s not impossible to try and connect the dots, even if the dots may or may not be even there.

But as with “The Narcissist,” The Ballad of Darren is largely a solid album, but it rarely feels like Blur. Save for the obvious best track (that would be “St. Charles Square”), it doesn’t feel like anything more than Damon Albarn’s solo work. For all of the buzz around their reunion, it lacks the equilibrium that they had down pat until around 2000—that’s when it felt like Blur was a four-man band, not just Damon Albarn with the occasional hint of Graham Coxon’s backing vocals. And given how Coxon’s guitar work, James’ iconic bass lines, and Rowntree’s precise drumming all contribute, it doesn’t feel like a “legit” Blur album at all. Even The Magic Whip, as fan service-y as it was, felt like Blur. I’m sure it’ll grow on me, but I can’t help but be a little disappointed.

However, that’s not to say that it isn’t a good album. It is good, but it rarely strays beyond just good and into great or fantastic. And it does have some moments—this song included. “Barbaric,” despite the fact that it could pass just as well for a more recent Gorillaz or solo Albarn effort, is still a catchy, deceptively bubbly song. With the marriage of its synths and guitars, the music brims with new summer radiance, Coxon’s few moments of guitar making the edges glitter. But it wouldn’t be Damon Albarn’s midlife crisis/breakup album without an upbeat, joyful sounding song that betrays lyrics positively dripping in melancholy. Nothing like bopping your head to this song in the car and then realizing that the chorus starts out with “I have lost the feeling that I thought I’d never lose/Now where am I going?” YIKES. You wouldn’t expect a song as musically upbeat as this to describe an “empty grove, winter darkness,” would you? I certainly didn’t. “And I’d like, if you’ve got the time/To talk to you about what this breakup has done to me” is no “No Distance Left to Run” in terms of Blur breakup songs, but in the midst of several solid songs whose slowness matches their lyrics, “Barbaric” is one of the few pleasant surprises on this album.

Probably for the best that we didn’t get “No Distance Left to Run” 2, though. Yeesh. Rough ride, that one. Wouldn’t wish that on Damon.

“Head Like Soup” – Palehound

I’ve already talked about this song and Eye on the Bat in general on my review of the album (gave it 5 points more than Pitchfork did bwahaha) but I still find myself coming back to this song again and again.

Eye on the Bat saw a return to El Kempner’s earlier form, weaving intricate, punchy riffs into meticulously-crafted indie rock songs. The meticulous approach to every lyric never stopped, but I did find myself missing some of Kempner’s more riotous guitar work, as in “Molly.” (I feel like I always go back to that song when I talk about Palehound. I swear it’s the blueprint.) But Eye on the Bat was a welcome return to shreddy form, and if “The Clutch” wasn’t convincing enough, then “Head Like Soup” should do the trick. The whole song brims with bits of creative experimentation; as Kempner sings of sacrificing herself for her partner’s sake (“I live to fill you up/And I burn unwatched”) and doing all of the work to support them as they seem to do nothing for her (“Holding your body like a paperweight/heavy glass resting in my hand/changing something in me”), the instrumentation is as vibrant as ever. From the pounding guitars that smash into the chorus to the synths that leave their marks like insect feet over the second verse. It’s a song that constantly keeps you guessing, and keeps you nodding your head all the way. And there’s nothing like letting your distorted guitar ring out for the final seconds of the song—nothing gets the serotonin a-flowin’ quite like that.

“Hindsight” – Built to Spill

Before I get into the actual song—can we take a moment to appreciate the looming cryptid on the album cover of There Is No Enemy? Faceless, barely has any form, the height of at least two and a half to three of the houses on the cover…does it get any better than that? There Is No Enemy was clearly the right name to assign to the album—of course that thing isn’t an enemy. He’s just a guy. Just stopping by to see if you he could use the phone or borrow a bag of chips for the block party next week. He’s just your friendly neighborhood eldritch horror.

Built to Spill is one of those bands that’s been ever-present in my life, but I’ve only started to appreciate them in the past few years. Even though I did like some weird stuff as a kid (I remember asking my parents to play “Circuit” by The Apples in Stereo on repeat when I was 5), I guess my ears hadn’t been fine-tuned to the hipster frequency just yet. But once I did, I found that there was so much to unravel: “When I was a kid, I saw a light/Floating high above the trees one night/Thought it was an alien/Turned out to be just God.” In such an already meticulously-crafted song (“Goin’ Against Your Mind”), atmospheric, multilayered lines like that are an experience in and of themselves. But “Hindsight” isn’t exactly like that; it’s a gentler, janglier tune, slow and meandering. And yet, it feels just as meticulous, even with its simplicity. I’ve come to realize that I’m a sucker for songs about dwelling on the past and the future (see also: “Darkness”)—maybe that was what drew me to “Hindsight,” with its old folks reunion music video and the smack in the face of the first verse: “Hindsight’s given me/Too much memory/There’s too much never seen/It’s always there.” And Doug Martsch comes to the same, grounding conclusion that I always have to tell myself when I get in that headspace: “Now I’ve come to find/That tricks are played/With human brains.” Sometimes, when you can’t smack yourself upside the head yourself, you’ve got to find a song. So thanks, Martsch and co.

…hold on, you’re telling me that Bob Odenkirk directed this music video? That Bob Odenkirk?

“The Recipe” – Shakey Graves

I’m glad to live in a world where, occasionally, quoting “We’re Not Gonna Take It” in a song actually feels clever. As is with everything: leave it to Shakey Graves to pull it off.

With the exception of July 9th, I’ve had a Shakey Graves song per week this month (nothing next week, though, whoops). It can definitely be owed to seeing him live this summer; I’ve been picking bits and pieces more from his catalog ever since, whether or not he actually played them live when I saw him. (And now we’ve got a new album due in mid-September! The harvest is bountiful this year!) “The Recipe,” taken from his 2020 EP Look Alive, was one that I’d been meaning to check out, but had never gotten around to downloading. The only percussion for half of the song is Rose-Garcia’s muted guitar strums, dragging out a scratchy, hazy beat as grainy as the filter and fog machine smoke on the album cover. It’s a really scratchy song, a song that creaks and groans like stepping on old wooden floorboards. Rose-Garcia’s voice never rises above a haunted whisper, humming above the percussive guitar in discordant harmony with himself. And “haunted” is the perfect word to describe this song, detailing an aimless journey through substance abuse, ruin, and unease as time passes. But as with any Shakey Graves song, it’s a cleverly-penned journey. There’s some kind of self-contained perfection to the fourth verse: “Finally a beggar down on King Street/Tryin’ hard to tune my E string/Singin’, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” for a dollar in a jar/I only know the chorus, but it’s gotten me this far.” Rarely does a simple set of rhymes get me that excited, but the eerie delivery of it makes the genius of it shine even more than it already did. And then the faint singing of said chorus of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” at the 4:25 mark?Pure spooky genius.

“Pegasus” (feat. Phoebe Bridgers) – Arlo Parks

This one was due to appear in a Sunday Songs post for at least a few weeks; my dad has sent me several songs with Phoebe Bridgers featuring in them over the years since I got into her (one of the infinite reasons why I love him & sharing music with him), and this was one of them, right before we went on vacation in Washington. Since then, it’s become a staple of my library playlist, the perfect combination of soft and sweet that fits right into the atmosphere.

I’m slowly starting to dig into more of Arlo Parks’ music, but this was my first real exposure, save for seeing her play piano with Phoebe Bridgers on their cover of Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees.” Park’s distinctive voice is only a whisper on the chorus there, and three years later, it seems as though the two have come full circle. Now, on Parks’ new album My Soft Machine (which is an excellent album title, if I’ve ever seen one), their roles have reversed: Parks takes center stage, where Bridgers’ haunting whisper provides drifting backing vocals that seem to peer behind the curtain of the music. It’s not often that I feel like a musician’s voice is truly unique, no matter how powerful it may be, but Arlo Parks has struck me as having a strange combination of sounding simultaneously high-pitched and thick, almost nasally, but delightfully unique enough to sound like some sort of woodland fairy. And those vocals, paired with Parks’ arrangement of humming, synth-heavy instrumentation, make for a dreamy slice of indie pop. As Parks adds spliced moments with her partner into her collage (“holding your puppy in your Prussian blue sheets” or “blue jewels round your neck”), it all swirls in a song that feels like it holds the soft glow of sunlight—not enough to blind you, but just the right amount to make you feel all warm and sappy on the inside.

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!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 7/16/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

Sparklehorse also posthumously released “The Scull of Lucia” this week, and it would’ve fit the color scheme, but I just know that it’s gonna make me too sad to write about. Love you, Mark, but I’m trying to preserve my sanity.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 7/16/23

“Divorce Song” – Liz Phair

I guess this week’s batch is starting out on a sour note, but I just have not stopped listening to bits and pieces of this album for weeks, so get Liz Phair’d. My advice, though: as we are in the peak of road trip season, this is the absolute worst song to put on a road trip playlist, as good as it is. Regardless of whether or not you’re in a romantic relationship on said road trip, I feel like it’s just a horrible omen either way.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Liz Phair said that she wasn’t surprised that this song became a fan favorite from Exile in Guyville: “…[‘Divorce Song’] has that deadpan delivery. It’s an ordinary person doing ordinary things…the song is really just about relating to another person. It feels like an action-packed song. You’ve done a lot…but really it’s just two personalities trying to be intimate and bumping up against each other on a road trip and that’s all that happens.” The concept of lyrical storytelling is, for some reason, always equated to having some grand, lofty narrative, as if stories about ordinary things somehow don’t make the cut. But that’s exactly what makes “Divorce Song” such a powerful song—it’s a linear narrative about a road trip gone south, and yet it packs the same punch of a narrative spanning multiple songs. You can tangibly feel the trapped heat of the inside of a car, the humid desolation of a cramped hotel room, and the sinking realization that “it’s harder to be friends than lovers/and you shouldn’t try to mix the two/’cause if you do it and you’re still unhappy/then you know that the problem is you.” Against the backdrop of Phair’s turmoil, small details create a painfully fleshed-out picture (“and it’s true that I stole your lighter/and it’s also true that I lost the map”), the images of this song feel as real as if I were watching them unfold on a movie screen; that really should be the bare minimum, but honestly, in the age of mass-produced, filtered music dominating the airwaves, this song feels like a breath of fresh air, even 30 years later. (Not too sound like a boomer there. I’ve just been inundated for the past few days because Taylor Swift was in town this weekend.) Contrary to Pitchfork contributor Scott Plagenhoef’s assertion that Exile would come off as dated to this generation because we’re so used to explicit sexual content in mainstream music…it’s not dated in that sense? At all?? Sure, we are exposed to more of it, but that doesn’t diminish the value of one of the first female artists to bring these kind of raw, unapologetic, and honest lyrics to the indie rock scene and owning it. It’s not like it’s impossible to see that empowerment shining through, whether it’s in the context of 1993 or 2023.

Seriously, Pitchfork…whose grand idea was it to have a man write a review of the 15th Anniversary Edition of Exile in Guyville? Not that men can’t write reviews of music by women and vice versa, but this one? The album that specifically came about to critique the boy’s club of indie rock? That’s just a war crime, if I’ve ever seen it. The review is from 2008, but…no, they had definitely had women on board at Pitchfork by then. There’s no excuse. Jesus Christ…

“Naked Cousin” (demo) – P.J. Harvey

uhhhhhhh tommy shelby sigma male octillionaire grindset cillian murphy moment

No, I haven’t watched Peaky Blinders yet, but my parents recently going through the whole show (and getting close to finishing it) has me almost convinced to watch it?? If anything will convince me, though, it’s the absolutely loaded soundtrack: Radiohead? The White Stripes? The Kills? I mean, come on. Perfection. And this too!

And, it’s reminded me that I need to get into P.J. Harvey. Somehow, I always forget about her, but every time I hear a song of hers, it’s instantly gripping, whether it’s the grinding jumpscare of “Rid Of Me” or what is hands down the best cover of The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” ever performed, along with our queen BjĂśrk:

If that doesn’t make you want to worship the ground that they both walk on, just for a moment, I’m not sure what possibly will. The sheer power they both wield.

Again, there’s no excuse for me not to get into more P.J. Harvey right this minute, except for my pileup of albums waiting to be listened to. But for now, I at least have this song—and it’s a demo? How is this a demo?? Lucy Dacus, on her episode of Amoeba Records’ YouTube series What’s In My Bag? picked an album of Harvey’s 4-track demos, and remarked about how she wished that her demos were “remotely shareable” in comparison. Either way, I’m so glad that this demo is out in the world. Even with my limited P.J. Harvey knowledge, raw power is what characterizes what I’ve heard of her music—raw-throat screaming, instrumentals that bear down on you like an onslaught. “Naked Cousin” is just that; the slightly grungier (not necessarily grungy in the Nirvana way, but in both the musical and non-musical sense of the word), grimier sound quality coming from the demo enhances its atmosphere. It’s an eerily sinister song, the dirtiness of the instrumentation matching the lyrical image of discomfort that Harvey weaves: “I hate his smell and/I hate his company, but/But most of all, I hate that he/He looks just, just like me.” It’s a deeply uncomfortable song—Harvey really enhances the tangible feel of someone lingering over you, the feeling of their hot, sour breath pressing against your skin. She can certainly create an atmosphere, even if it’s the last one you’d want to be surrounded by.

“Femme Fatale” – The Velvet Underground & Nico

Since I’ve started working at the library, I’ve made a playlist for myself to listen to while I’m shelving books. It’s all soft, slow songs, both so I don’t get distracted and so it matches the atmosphere of the library. So there’s a lot of Phoebe Bridgers, Radiohead, Wilco, some older St. Vincent, et cetera. “Femme Fatale” went on there almost immediately, but not just because it fit those criteria: nothing makes you feel more like a character in an indie movie than listening to The Velvet Underground in a library.

Nico’s vocals take the lead on “Femme Fatale,” leaving Lou Reed to the backing vocals on the chorus. I already talked a little about the power of her voice back when I first listened to The Velvet Underground & Nico back in April with “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” but those two songs together are emblematic of her vocal range. Next to the looming, encroaching presence on the former (although it comes later in the album), “Femme Fatale” sees Nico dipping into a gentle whisper, her voice fading to an almost imperceptible hiss at the very end of each chorus as she says “hear the way she talks.” As massive of a presence as her famously low, resonant voice is, she slips into the quiet so easily (see also: “I’ll Be Your Mirror”), and yet retains the same cavernous quality—even as her voice drifts through the enchantingly gentle intro of guitar and tambourine, you can instantly feel it in your chest, making your bones vibrate. Or maybe the latter is just the mixing of this song—famously headphone-vibrating, if the YouTube comments are any indication. It’s the perfect fit for a film—the only movie I can seem to find with it is Bandslam, which I’ve never heard of, but Wes Anderson really needs to get on it. Past time that he used it for something, although maybe he filled his personal Nico quotient in The Royal Tenenbaums?

One Nico song seems like a small quotient, but who am I to judge Wes Anderson? He’s Wes Anderson, after all.

“St. Charles Square” – Blur

Gather ’round, my fellow Americans, let us all cry and watch videos of Blur performing in Wembley Stadium, and hope for the best that they’ll just get over themselves and announce a North American tour. Grab your tissues. Cry with me.

But this. THIS. This is the Blur that I’d been missing! “The Narcissist” was a solid song, but “St. Charles Square” is a much better showcase of their talents—and brimming with so much more creativity. Unlike the former single, which sounded as though it could be a solo Damon Albarn track, “St. Charles Square” finally feels like Albarn, Coxon, James, and Rowntree have reformed as a truly cohesive unit, their unique talents blending as seamlessly as they did in the 90’s. Whether or not Damon Albarn’s “OI!” at the beginning is a callback to “Parklife” (aaaaaaaaaall the people) or just him being British is up for debate, but even if it is nostalgia bait, you bet I’m biting it. You guys have no idea how many times my mom and I have car-danced to that song. I’ll gladly be a nostalgic shill for a bunch of white, middle-aged British guys. And finally, finally, Graham Coxon’s signature guitar playing has returned to the spotlight! His riffs are as power-laden and punchy as ever, and he’s adopted an echoing tone that calls back to David Bowie at the very beginning of the 80’s, right as he released Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). And this song is full of scary monsters and super creeps of its own—the delightfully eerie lyrics are rife with “ghosts come back to haunt me” and “something down here/And it’s living under the floorboards/Its grabbed me round the neck with its long and slender claws.” With all that to work with, it’s no wonder that Albarn’s flair for showmanship shines in this track: I’d be lying if I told you that his piercing, werewolf howl at 1:40 didn’t make me giddy on every single listen. It’s a spooky delight all the way through.

“Unknown Legend” (Neil Young cover) – Shakey Graves, Shovels & Rope

I didn’t know until I started looking into this song that it was a cover—Shakey Graves was the main draw, I only knew of Shovels & Rope because they always come up as similar artists when I search for Shakey Graves on Apple Music, and I can only remember one (1) Neil Young song off the top of my head. And normally, I wouldn’t be one for folk-country songs describing a blonde woman riding through the desert on a Harley-Davidson that rhymes “diner” with “finer” (in reference to said woman), but, again: Shakey Graves.

iTunes has this song labeled as Shakey Graves & Shovels & Rope (and my English major brain wants to separate them with a comma or “and,” not a second ampersand, for the love of god 😭), but I was surprised to see that YouTube lists it as Shovels & Rope feat. Shakey Graves; if anything, there’s far more Shakey than Shovels—Alejandro Rose-Garcia is clearly taking the lead on vocals here. (I guess that this song was also included on Shovels & Rope’s covers album, Busted Jukebox, vol. 1, so that’s probably why.) Either way, the harmonies on this rendition of Neil Young are my main draw. Rose-Garcia’s voice has this distinct, irreplaceable rasp to it, rough and raw-throated at the edges, but never losing its power. Combined with the husband and wife duo of Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst (is it bad to ask who’s the shovel and who’s the rope in this relationship?), their voices form a resonant group of harmonies, with Hearst’s high notes elevating the thrill of the music and Trent providing a steady wall for it to anchor itself against. Whether they’re hitting the highest of high notes or gently drifting away from the chorus with their whispered repetition of “the air she breathes.” Again: I’m not usually one for the folky covers with the obligatory harmonica solo at the end, but Shakey Graves will convince me.

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!

Posted in Monthly Wrap-Ups

May 2023 Wrap-Up đŸŒ‚

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Wednesday, bibliophiles! Hope this month has treated you well.

How is it already the end of May? It feels like I was trying to get dust bunnies out of the corners of my dorm room just a few days ago…(so many dust bunnies 😭)

Let’s begin, shall we?

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

Whew! May has been pretty busy, but everything’s…temporarily winding down. I finished up my finals and managed to make straight A’s this semester—I just found out I got on the dean’s list, too! Still can’t believe I’m already finished with my first semester of college; it was such a scary and jarring experience at first, but I’m already finding myself missing parts of it. What a weird and wonderful year it’s been. Now that I’m back home for the summer, I’ve just been trying to soak it all up—I’ve had a few quiet weeks, but I’ll be going back to the library soon, which I’m so excited about!

My reading and blogging have both still been slower, with all of the bustle of finishing…everything, but I’m starting to get back on track now that summer’s started. I’m slowly trying to get back on a writing schedule as well—I ended up deciding to write the sequel to my main sci-fi WIP, and once I finish outlining it (which I’m in the middle of right now), I’ll get back on my writing schedule. That’ll probably be what I end up working on for Camp NaNoWriMo in July…

Other than that, I’ve just been drawing more, playing guitar, watching Kindred (Octavia Butler deserves a better adaptation), committing to binge-watching my way through Taskmaster (there’s strength in arches, y’know), and enjoying being home. We’re still in the “summer, but not disastrously hot yet” stage here in Colorado, so I’m enjoying that while it lasts…

And more importantly, I’m going to a virtual Q & A with the one and only AMIE KAUFMAN tonight!! I CAN’T WAIT!!

READING AND BLOGGING:

I read 18 books this month! My reading’s still a bit slowed down after finals and moving out (!!!), but I still feel like I read a good amount. It was a really mixed bag, though—two 1 star books (one was a DNF, the other would’ve been had I not been trying to wait out a lightning storm before going to sleep 🥴), but THREE 5-star (one rounded up from 4.75) books! Can’t remember the last time the former happened. Either way, I found a ton of great reads for AAPI heritage month, and finally got my hands on some of my most anticipated reads of the year!

If this month’s 1 star reads are any indication, maybe the word “monster” is the problem…?

1 – 1.75 stars:

Only a Monster

2 – 2.75 stars:

This Is Not a Personal Statement

3 – 3.75 stars:

The Art of Prophecy

4 – 4.75 stars:

The Isles of the Gods

5 stars:

A Thousand Steps into Night

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: The Stonewall Reader – 5 stars

POSTS I’M PROUD OF:

POSTS BY OTHER WONDERFUL PEOPLE THAT I ENJOYED:

SONGS/ALBUMS I’VE BEEN ENJOYING:

[castanet insanity ensures]
NEW PALEHOUND LET’S GO
Kindred was a disappointment but this cover is great
✨𝙗𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙠𝙖𝙙𝙖𝙬𝙣✨
EXCELLENT album
NEW BLUR OUT IN JULY I AM NOT OKAY I AM NOT OKAY
I don’t know if I’m completely committed to listening to this album all the way through yet but I WILL EVENTUALLY IT’S JUST LONG

Today’s song:

I have not felt peace since this was uploaded to bandcamp on Sunday night

That’s it for this month in blogging! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 5/28/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well. 🫶🏻

This is gonna be a fun one. By coincidence, the fault lines of Palehound Panic™️ and my recently reawakened Blur Breakdown™️ have collided in the span of a week. Let’s hope the results won’t be cataclysmic.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 5/28/23

“Black Friday” – Palehound

I’ve finally finished my quest to catch up on Palehound (the albums, at least) before Eye on the Bat. Over the past week or so, Black Friday has been in heavy rotation—it feels like El Kempner’s most cohesive and lyrically strong album, and it might just be my favorite of theirs so far. It was a feat to pick just one song from this album—“Worthy,” “Aaron,” and “Killer” were all strong contenders (GO LISTEN THEY’RE ALL SO GOOD)—but the title track, “Black Friday,” stuck out to me in so many ways.

Palehound often leaves the introspection for a handful of songs at the end of each album, but the personal threads run deep throughout the entirety of Black Friday. This song in particular hits a particularly emotional note—it’s a continued story of catching up with old friends, all the while having a nagging feeling that they don’t care about you now, and that they never cared much about you before, either. Yet somehow, you still feel tied to them by some kind of desperate obligation, a lingering thought that maybe things can change, but knowing they won’t; Kempner sings that “I’ll take being the last one that you call/You’re Black Friday and I’m going to the mall.” The chorus of “Before you said we’d keep in touch/I don’t hear from you too much/If you need to call me, I’m too weak to hold a grudge,” with Kempner’s layered harmonies, glitter like the edges of stars and ring out like a faint sound of a jet flying overhead. It was a song that felt like a punch in the stomach, all while I was just trying to give myself a nice manicure. Afterwards, I had to sit back for a minute…there will always be those songs that hit a little too close to home for comfort, and they always come when you least expect them to. But songs like “Black Friday” give a voice to the feelings that we think, in our darkest moments, are isolated only to only us. So thank you for that, El Kempner. Here’s to making friends with people who really do care, and not chasing after people who don’t.

“The Narcissist” – Blur

All is right in the universe. Nature is healing. We’ve got a new Blur album out in July…everything’s okay again…

…and this song is testing my ability to spell the word “narcissist.” I could’ve sworn that there was another ‘c’ in there somewhere…

I’ve got to hand it to Damon Albarn at this point—he’s having not one, but two of his projects (this and Gorillaz) releasing albums this year, and even if Cracker Island was a bit of a disappointment, the sheer creativity and talent is all there regardless. Knowing that the forthcoming The Ballad of Darren was a spur-of-the-moment kind of reunion makes it all the more impressive—they didn’t plan on making another album in the first place, and then they come out with this?

That being said…I’m not sure if it’s Blur’s best, but it’s still a great song. I didn’t listen to it on repeat while cleaning out my closet last week for no reason. It’s such a catchy tune—the instrumentals are a little understated, but it’s clean, it’s smooth, and it’s proof that Blur have mastered the art of a polished Britpop tune. My only problem, as much as I’ll sing praises for Damon Albarn, is that there’s too much Damon Albarn. It’s not something that I’d ever picture myself saying, but we live in strange times. “The Narcissist,” delightful earworm that it is, feels more like a solo Damon Albarn effort than a Blur song. Even though we do get Graham Coxon’s backing vocals, I find myself missing his captivating, intricate riffs. You can hardly hear the presence of Alex James’ iconic basslines. And Dave Rowntree’s precise drumming is still there, but again: understated. I just want more Blur, less Damon Albarn.

All that is to say that, for once, the fact that we’re getting a whole new Blur album overshadows most of the nitpicks I have about “The Narcissist.” I have a feeling that I’m gonna enjoy Hot Blur Summer.

“I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer” – The Cardigans

If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought this was a Giant Drag song—it’s got a very similar kind of bite. I’ve only listened to First Band on the Moon, but this song has me wondering what happened between that and their final record, Super Extra Gravity. I wouldn’t call it a sea change—it’s still got the pop sensibility that Nina Persson perfected to a science, but there’s an undeniable roughness to the song that pushes it more towards the edges. Persson’s voice, although it retains her signature, dainty tone, curls into a rasp as the song begins with half-spoken dog commands—”Sit/good dog/stay/bad dog/down/roll over.” The rest of that song is as bitter as the intro suggests, singing of a relationship gone sour, dulled by alcohol and fleeting visions of lost love. The Cardigans have toyed with these kinds of songs, but this one really makes the feel come through—it’s still a pop song through and through, but the sharpening of the guitars on this one make the image really come to life. “I Need Some Fine Wine” is, in short, Nina Persson’s hairdo in most of the video—it coexists as the neatly braided crown and the spiky hairs coming out all at once.

“Sinnerman” – Nina Simone

Full disclosure: I hoard reaction images. Too many. But even a refined reaction image connoisseur such as myself knows that some images are only suited for very specific, sacred times. You can’t go about wasting them willy-nilly, even if they are just…well, sitting on your phone. It’s not every day that something can evoke the feeling contained in this image, for instance:

But that’s how “Sinnerman” feels. All the way through.

Every TV show and film that this song has been featured in has cut it tragically short; and no, I don’t mean to call Gerard Way and Taika Waititi cowards, because they clearly aren’t, but also…if you’re going to include this song in anything, you have to go the whole mile—the 10:19 mile, to be exact. And if there’s any song that commands the listener to sprint through its entire length, it’s this one.

I can take longer songs, but there’s a specific art to crafting them: for me, if a song goes past the 6 or 7 minute mark, there has to be something that keeps me listening—that applies to any song, technically, but if you have that long of a song that mostly consists of repetition, you’ve started to lose me (lookin’ at you, LCD Soundsystem…you can pull it off sometimes…). Oingo Boingo’s sprawling, nearly 16 minute long swan song “Change,” for instance, has plenty of recurring musical motifs, but it keeps you on your toes, whether that be with artfully-placed oddball instrumentation or bizarre samples. But there’s a way that long song repetition can be done—my favorite song of all time, in fact, does just that; Blur’s “Tender” has a somewhat tidier format, but they bypass the LCD Soundsystem syndrome not just with breaks for Graham Coxon’s bluesy riffs and choir, but by fueling it with nothing but Emotion with a capital E—”love’s the greatest thing,” after all.

“Sinnerman,” however, does both of those things—it’s essentially the mother of every epic, extensively long song that you can think of. Even knowing the years that Nina Simone was active, it still amazes me that this was released in 1965. I could almost understand it if it had been the late sixties, when everybody started to realized how freeing musical experimentation was. Simone’s musical career was defined by pushing against so many barriers, from her protest music to her incredible piano skills, but this song pushed the envelope in such a wildly different way. Through all 10+ minutes, there’s an energy that seems to live and breathe and never stop—even when the music begins to die down in favor of Simone’s piano and a chorus of clapping. It’s a song on a desperate mission, one that takes no prisoners and never stops to catch its breath. Even though the song is an amalgamation of scattered 50’s songs, gospel, African spirituals, and remnants from her own religious upbringing, it can be easily reduced to a single word, one that Simone famously belts out near the song’s climactic ending—”power.” I can’t think of many other songs that grab you by the shirt collar and keep you hanging there quite like this—nothing comes close to how propulsive Simone is, with how purely propulsive both her voice and her piano playing are. Again—take my word with a grain of salt, but this really is a masterpiece. And knowing that she used to end her live shows with this song…WHEW. What a song.

“Sea of Blood” – Palehound

Whether or not it was intentional, it’s fitting that this song shares space with a song called “YMCA Pool.” Two dubious bodies of liquid on one single.

With some songs that end up as singles after the released of an album, you’re left wanting—what could’ve changed if that track was on the album, as originally intended? (see: “Bicycle”) But some songs were made to be tiny, standalone packages, never leftovers for works past or teasers for what’s to come. “Sea of Blood” works exactly this way—it’s got the sprightly beats and guitar work of something circa Dry Food or even Bent Nail – EP, but there’s something about the short, snappy atmosphere of it that doesn’t confine it to any of Kempner’s previous works. It might fight the catchier, brighter side of Dry Food, but it doesn’t quite match the introspection. It’s got the experience that Bent Nail hadn’t fully achieved yet. And yet it still sounds like a home demo, but so fully realized—a neat drum machine accompanies Kempner’s signature rasp, sharp lyrics, and climbing guitar fingerings all come together in what has the sound quality just above an iPhone voice memo, but the polish that comes from nurturing a tune like this for a long time. And leave it to Palehound to name a song something like “Sea of Blood,” a title you’d expect to come with throat-burning, heavy metal screaming, but start off the song with a line as innocuous as “I’m every bit as fragile as a baby bird.” You sly dog, you…hound?

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!