65 posts tagged “music”
In addition to Nicole Atkins...
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The Magnetic Fields' Distortion is, as advertised, full of lovely, noisy distortion. Aside from that, it's a nice set of pop songs, as usual; my favorites are "California Girls" and "The Nun's Litany."
- Now that I've had more time to digest 8 Diagrams, I've settled on "Stick Me For My Riches" as my favorite track on the album. A great intro, and another amazing verse from Method Man.
- I've loved Maxi Geil! & Playcolt for a couple of years, and I bought their Strange Sensation album sometime last November--but I hadn't really listened to it until this week, when I ran across this post on Fluxblog. And indeed, "Your Best Won't Be Enough" is a killer song.
My album of the week: Nicole Atkins's Neptune City, which has accompanied me all of this week on my various commutes to work. I love it all--it's like listening to ABBA and the Pretenders at the same time, or something.
I have a lot of favorites, though the one I keep coming back to today is "Neptune City" itself.
It's the maudlin in me, I guess; the ones that clings to nostalgia: "Maybe if I paid attention / I could learn to love the landscape I was born to." Anyway, it's a gorgeous song, as is the album.
And, as a final something for 2007: Wu-Tang Clan's "Campfire" (listen), track one from 8 Diagrams.
A very sobering and (dare-I-say) mature kung-fu sample; an incredibly spooky sample of the Persuasions' cover of Curtis Mayfield's "Gypsy Woman"; and an absolutely killer verse from Method Man to get it started.
Not a bad start to an album that's growing on me very quickly.
Favorite books:
Some of these were published in 2006, but when reading I'm always behind by at least a year, I figure--so I think it's safe to say that these were my favorite books that I read in 2007 (hey, they all start with "M"!):
- Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman's Union
- Mark Helprin, Freddy and Fredericka
- Marisha Pessl, Special Topics in Calamity Physics
- Michael Ruhlman, Reach of a Chef
The following twelve songs are my personal favorites for 2007: they're the songs I most enjoyed and that, out of sheer narcissism, I suppose I'd classify as "best", whatever that means. More than anything else, they're the songs I'd like to listen to most, right now.
Some notes:
- R. Kelly makes an appearance on three out of twelve tracks: it was the year of R. Kelly, after all!
- There's no Ghostface or Wu-Tang, because I just bought Big Doe Rehab and 8 Diagrams last week and haven't had nearly enough time to digest them. This makes me sort of sad, but I guess gives me license to include them next year.
In alphabetical (essentially unordered) order:
- Celebration, "Evergreen" (listen)
- Ciara, "Promise (Remix) feat. R. Kelly" (listen)
- The Fiery Furnaces, "Restorative Beer" (listen)
- M.I.A., "Paper Planes" (listen)
- Of Montreal, "Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider" (listen)
- R. Kelly, "I'm a Flirt feat. T.I. & T. Pain" (listen)
- Richard Hawley, "Lady Solitude" (listen)
- Rihanna, "Umbrella feat. Jay-Z" (listen)
- Robin Thicke, "Got 2 Be Down feat. Faith Evans" (listen)
- Siobhan Donaghy, "Goldfish" (listen)
- Spoon, "Black Like Me" (listen)
- Swizz Beatz, "It's Me Bitches (Remix) feat. Lil Wayne, R. Kelly, and Jadakiss" (listen)
Audio: What's your favorite carol or holiday song?
Without a doubt: Price's "Another Lonely Christmas".
I must admit that I'm still a little thrown by the pokeno & banana daiquiris, but that said, this is my #1 when it comes to Christmas songs.
"Lost Without U" + "Careless Whisper"!
So good!
IFC is showing a new chapter from Trapped in the Closet every day until August 21, with R. Kelly providing bits of commentary. Today: chapter 13.
From 2003, a fantastic Believer interview with ?uestlove of the Roots. This makes me smile: "I have this ritual of buying Straight Out the Jungle a billion times, acting like it’s the first time again." (via Idolator)
The new Fiery Furnaces album, Widow City, reminds me again why I love them so much. What gets me most about my favorite FF songs are those moments, always unexpected, where they just hit me with something that sounds like the greatest thing in the world. It's the third or fourth act in "Chris Michaels," around five minutes in; it's the rambling political screed of the "Tropical Ice-Land" single version of "We Got Back the Plague", the first FF song I ever heard; it's the third act in "Chief Inspector Blancheflower" ("well, I rode up to Springfield..."), or maybe it's the fourth act ("so I went down to her dad's bakery..."), or fuck me, maybe it's the guitar solo (!) at the end. It's the sort of stuff that makes me amazed & happy at how great music can be.
And on Widow City, for example, there's that heavy guitar in "The Philadelphia Grand Jury" around 4 minutes in that just appears out of nowhere; there's the gorgeous (& "Evergreen"-esque) "My Egyptian Grammar"; there's the Led Zeppelin-esque guitar riff in "Navy Nurse".
And then there's my favorite, so far--"Restorative Beer" (listen), which, in addition to its wonderfully refreshing title, has both a lovely Harrison-esque guitar and lyrics:
She tells me about last night at her 103rd birthday, she counted... she counted her pairs of pants again, "I've only got 53, minus the ones I've got on"--I want a restorative beer, to take my mind off these tears; I want a restorative beer. [1]
I am absolutely in love with this album: the FF still sound like no one else, and they still sound better than everyone else.
[1] Or something like that.
Like Anil, I am so, so excited about the upcoming release of the new chapters of Trapped in the Closet. Back in November 2005, I posted about chapters 1-12 and called the collection the best album of 2005, which--despite the fact that it's not really an album proper, I guess--I still stand by.
It's incredible, and listening to a couple of chapters on the way to work this morning brought me back to hearing it for the first time in 2005.
And so yes, I was thrilled--thrilled!--to see this teaser trailer for the new chapters.
The breathiness of the harmonies; the way it just sort of explodes into the chorus, & all the time with that insistent guitar refrain; the "I said to John, d'you think the girls here ever wonder how they got so pretty? Well, I do".
It's so clever & fun & beautiful.
