January | 2015 | The Best Song You'll Hear All Day

Monthly Archives: January 2015

Metal, Rock

“Rano Pano”

Mogwai
Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will, 2011

Will Mogwai ever call it a day? I ask not out of exasperation, merely curiosity. We’re a long way from prime-era post-rock and not coincidentally, from the band’s best work (think of those first four records, from Young Team to Happy Songs). What’s left is always good and sometimes excellent — if you know a more consistent living rock band on the planet, please name them — though it’s not hard to wish they were more eager to step out of their comfort zone now and then. “Rano Pano” marks a refreshing change of pace from most of the band’s recent work: rather than the usual serving of sleepy electronic rock, it’s just one riff, a climbing figure that takes exactly 20 seconds to complete on first pass, gradually picking up speed as it builds to a crushing conclusion. Not exactly Sleep-caliber stoner metal, but not exactly not that either. If they want to take things in a different direction next time, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/03%20Rano%20Pano.m4a]

Tagged Happy Songs for Happy People, Hardcore Will Never Die, Mogwai, Post-Rock, Rock Action, Sleep

Rock

“Spiders (Original Version)”

Wilco
Live, 2002

The first time I saw Wilco live was in 2002 at London’s Astoria, on the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot tour. They opened with this then-unreleased song, performed more or less as you hear it here, and I couldn’t get it out of my head for weeks. Two years later, of course, they turned it inside out for A Ghost is Born, a recording that stands to this day as one of the most beloved and alienating tracks in the band’s catalogue. With time I’ve grown to love both versions equally, but there’s no denying the original’s mellow, hooky charm. One advantage here: the relative stillness of this live presentation leaves plenty of room for the lyrics, among my favorite in Wilcodom.

[audio http://www.jasongonulsen.com/wlco_2002-09-02_d1t01.mp3]

Tagged A Ghost is Born, Jeff Tweedy, Spiders, Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Hip-Hop

“Int’l”

M.E.D.
Classic, 2011

Pitchfork opened their review by calling M.E.D. “the rap equivalent of a middle-relief pitcher asked to go eight innings,” and while I get the sentiment I think it underestimates both the artist and the hunger fans feel for music like his. It’s true: there’s nothing surprising or cutting-edge about this record, but in an era where Iggy Azalea and Meghan Trainor are afforded commercial and sometimes even critical cred for high-flash cultural appropriation, the M.E.D.s of the world matter all the more. Somehow along the way it became cool for white journalists to dismiss hip-hop traditionalists, but in 10 years I’m still gonna be listening to this shit and blog monsters will forget they ever pretended to find “Fancy” amusing. Suum clique pulchrum est maybe, but I question the allegiance of any hip-hop fan who can’t find something of value here. Medaphoar will never be major and your mom will never know his name, but the Stones Throw MC puts in the work and he does it with real skill. Classic was aided and abetted by none other than the legendary Madlib, and for my money (and hopefully yours), the material edges close enough to its title to earn more than grudging respect.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/01%20Int’l.m4a]

Tagged Iggy Azalea, M.E.D., Madlib, Meghan Trainor, Pitchfork, Stones Throw

Indie

“London in February”

Coastal
Halfway to You, 2004

A nice, unassuming post-rock ditty that floats along of its own accord until there’s nothing left to do. Subtle, slow and just a little too short. Most of Coastal’s other work featured vocals of the dramatic, sub-Low boy/girl variety — I’m not saying they weren’t good songs, they just weren’t for me. This little piece of wordless driftwood is a nice change of pace. There was a time, you’ll recall, where half the bands your friends were in made music like this.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/08%20London%20In%20February.m4a]

Tagged Coastal, Post-Rock

Hip-Hop

“Massive Attack”

Nicki Minaj (feat. Sean Garrett)
Single, 2010

Fuck it.

Listen, it’s not like everything you do is perfect either.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/01%20Massive%20Attack%20(feat.%20Sean%20Garrett).m4a]

Tagged Massive Attack, Nicki Minaj, Sean Garrett

Electronic

“Stonemilker”

Bjork
Vulnicura, 2015

And just like that, Bjork is back. She’s a monolith, isn’t she? An artist we’re accustomed to hearing little about for long stretches of time, giving her the energy and space she needs to do whatever she does next, while we (some of us, anyway) wait patiently for her next big move. That’s been the arrangement for more than 20 years, and it was supposed to be the arrangement for Vulnicura too. Then in true 2015 fashion, a disruption: the album leaked almost as soon as it was announced, release plans for March were scrapped, and the project was rushed to iTunes. In a way, the element of surprise is strangely fitting — Vulnicura is a song cycle exploring the dissolution of the singer’s relationship with artist Matthew Barney, each track an emotional milestone around the breakup. It’s clearly not a loss she was expecting, though opener “Stonemilker” (written 9 months before the split, according to liner notes) smells trouble ahead. “Show me emotional respect/I have emotional needs,” she pleads in the frankly broken, open-hearted chorus. “Find our mutual coordinate.” Her immeasurable loss has been transformed, somehow, into a listener’s gain.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/01%20Stonemilker.m4a]

Tagged Bjork, Matthew Barney, Stonemilker, Vespertine, Vulnicura

Rock

“Uncast Shadow of a Southern Myth”

Parkay Quarts
Content Nausea, 2014

I feel comfortable proclaiming “Uncast Shadow of a Southern Myth” the best Parquet Courts song to-date. (Er, Parkay Quarts, whatever — I guess the distinction on Content Nausea is really just the 4-track recorder, right?) Anyway, they saved it all for this song. It’s like hearing the last 50 years of guitar rock on one track: the skewed-heartland lyricism of Bob Dylan; the sometimes-sincere slack of Pavement; the blocky, amateurish guitar of The Velvets. Throw in some kind of abstract southern-Odyssey storytelling and baby, you got a stew goin’. I wouldn’t say there’s anything particularly new about this, but it’s rare to hear it done this good. I like this look on Parquet — more of this next time please, less “Stoned and Starving.”

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/12%20Uncast%20Shadow%20of%20a%20Southern%20Myth.mp3]

Tagged Bob Dylan, Content Nausea, Parkay Quarts, Parquet Courts, Pavement, The Velvet Underground

Folk, Rock

“Don’t Carry It All”

The Decemberists
The King is Dead, 2011

“We are all our hands and holders.” Would that it were true, right? Now I’m no Decemberists apologist — I generally object on lyrical grounds, finding Colin Meloy too precious for my blood about 80 percent of the time. But on a longer-than-expected drive from L.A. to Bakersfield to see an old friend in 2011, I needed something to take my mind off an impending breakup and “Don’t Carry It All” proved much-needed medicine. “A neighbor’s blessed burden within reason/Becomes a burden borne of all and one.” That’s a line I needed to hear then and an idea I still want to believe in, even when I’m not holding up my end of the bargain. The split happened a week later and I felt generally miserable for a few months, but then I got better. And like always, music was a big part of the recovery. This morning I was stuck at a light and needed something to take my mind off worrying about work. I grabbed a CD from the center console — a mix I’d made a few years back with a random name, “Saturday Songs” or something like that — and this was the first thing on it. I started skipping through the tracks and it soon became clear that these were the songs, the ones that helped pull me through a darker time in the not-too-distant past. That mix is the story of me moving on, and it started here.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/01%20Don’t%20Carry%20It%20All.m4a]

Tagged Colin Meloy, Don't Carry It All, The Decemberists, The King is Dead

Rock

“It’s All Too Much”

The Church
A Box of Birds, 1999

I don’t know if there’s a right way to cover The Beatles, but I feel pretty strongly that The Church’s take on Yellow Submarine’s “It’s All Too Much” is one good way to do it. For starters, in the vast reinforced canon that is The Fab Four’s, “Too Much” is more curio than crowned, arguably the least-known song in the film. Second, it’s not like The Church’s version is even all that different from the original — it’s the same psychedelic attack only more, aided by a 30-year advance in studio technology. The guitars are bigger and more distorted, and there’s a bounce to the rhythm section that was missing in George Martin’s watery original mix, but other than that? No new tricks. Steve Kilbey’s multi-tracked vocals don’t even deviate all too much from George Harrison’s. So go figure: a great song by a great band can still be great even when someone else plays it. The trick, as ever, is knowing your lane.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/Church%20Its%20All%20Too%20Much%20Beatles%20cover.mp3]

Tagged George Harrison, George Martin, It's All Too Much, The Beatles, The Church, Yellow Submarine

Rock

“Small”

Portishead
Third, 2008

Portishead crushed it with Third. Sure, I was a fan during their 90s run, which was really just three albums long (two studio, one live), but I could never have guessed at the staying power those songs would have. There was something in the music that felt intrinsically tied to its era, and sure enough, most of their peers have now been forgotten. But disappearing for 11 years proved to be a good career move. Third was something of a magic trick: a record so good it not only justified the wait, it made you forget about genre entirely. You can’t ask for more than that.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/09%20Small.mp3]

Tagged Portishead, Third, Trip-hop

Folk, Rock

“Green Grow the Rushes”

R.E.M.
Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985

I suppose song-for-song, Fables represents the slowest of early R.E.M. Certainly the darkest, the most mysterious. Perhaps even the most Southern, by which I mean it feels the most foreign to an American born elsewhere. It might also be the most inconsistent, but the highs are formidable (“Driver 8,” “Maps and Legends,” “Feeling Gravitys Pull”). Early R.E.M. holds a special place for me; the first five records make me nostalgic for a time and place I’m too young to remember, and there’s a sweetness to “Green Grow the Rushes” that feels eternal. It’s not hard to hear this music and imagine the world it came from, or to wish you knew it too.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/07%20Green%20Grow%20The%20Rushes.mp3]

Tagged Fables of the Reconstruction, R.E.M.

R&B

“Be Careful”

Sparkle & R. Kelly
Sparkle, 1998

So … I saw R. Kelly in concert three weeks ago. That was a real thing that happened, to me, in the Year of Our Lord, 2014. It was … it was okay. He did that weird outdated hip-hop thing where it’s just him and a DJ, and no song gets more than one verse or chorus. And while that was annoying, it served as a nice reminder that Kelly’s back catalogue is deep not only with hits, but simply good songs — hundreds in fact, many of them strong enough to stand alongside his massive hits in concert. Setting aside the controversy that has trailed him everywhere since the start of his career, there’s no denying the man’s singing or songwriting ability. “Be Careful,” a duet with former protégé Sparkle, is one such example from 1998, all but forgotten now. The opening half of a domestic dialogue continued on Kelly album track “When a Woman’s Fed Up,” “Be Careful” is packed with enough narrative detail to feel like more than just a song; there are enough grace notes here to make the story believable. In today’s bone-dry radio-R&B landscape, this is a nice reminder of the genre at its finest. Sad, relevant post-script: Sparkle testified against Kelly during his 2009 criminal trial alleging he appeared in a videotape with her-then 14-year-old niece engaging in sexual acts. As you probably know, Kelly was acquitted.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/04%20Be%20Careful.mp3]

Tagged Be Careful, R. Kelly, Sparkle

Ambient, Classical

“Overtones”

Jonny Greenwood
The Master OST, 2012

Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master wouldn’t be half the film it is — whatever film it is — without Jonny Greenwood’s original score. Churning, poetic and confused, Greenwood’s work does nearly all the emotional heavy lifting, adding depth and texture to a film that wouldn’t be much more than an extended acting class without it. Any conclusions I’ve drawn about the The Master’s thematic weight or insight over the years stem directly from how it feels to hear this music over those images. I have no idea how Greenwood arrived at this specific set of sounds given what he had to work with, but that mystery keeps me coming back to the film.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/01%20Overtones.m4a]

Tagged Jonny Greenwood, Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master

Punk, Rock

“Maidenhead”

Protomartyr
Under Color of Official Right, 2014

You’re gonna swear you’ve heard Protomartyr before, and you won’t exactly be wrong. Punk like Detroit, post-punk like Wire, Ian Curtis like Ian Curtis (that’s Joe Casey on vocals), Under Color of Official Right successfully amalgamates a hand-picked assortment of rock flavors you’ve come to know and love. They’re not the first band to try this kind of thing and they won’t be the last, but the success-to-failure ratio is admirably high. You’re getting the sweet without the sour on “Maidenhead,” even with lines like “Shit goes up, shit goes down/What am I, a dead moose?” Bitter comes after and never quits: dedicated punk on “Want Remover,” modern resignation on “I Stare at Floors,” culture-baiting fight song “Tarpeian Rock.” The band’s willingness to bend angry to just the right shape is admirable, even when it’s a shape we’ve seen before. In some fields, dedication is prized above invention.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/01%20Maidenhead.m4a]

Tagged Ian Curtis, Joy Division, Post-Punk, Protomartyr, Under Color of Official Right, Wire

R&B

“Till It’s Done (Tutu)”

D’Angelo and The Vanguard
Black Messiah, 2014

What a special record this is. Set aside for a moment the idea that any album could possibly be worth a 14-year wait — an extreme posture from which to evaluate success or failure. Consider Black Messiah instead for what it rightly is: a worthy successor to a previous masterpiece, D’Angelo’s second album, Voodoo (itself a departure from his Brown Sugar debut). The man’s body of work to-date is bulletproof, and Messiah continues in the tradition of previous recordings by paying homage to his influences while expanding on them in equal measure. Early reviews pegging the album as a mere continuation of the Voodoo aesthetic must have been written by critics who need to listen to Voodoo again; where that album was precise, calculated, in thrall to minimalist flourish, Messiah feels warm and expansive, live-band “tossed off” despite the long delay. Note this shift on “Till It’s Done,” a living study in the art of playing around the pocket. However this recording came to life — either through a band playing live off-time, recorded in a single take; or one man alone, multi-tracking himself to glory — the end product is anything but contained. This is music as energy, light, meditation, mediation, active culture: something that existed before us and will outlive us too. The shadows of Sly, Marvin and Prince may continue to haunt his work, but it’s the ghost of D’Angelo himself that looms largest. Turns out he was here the whole time.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/07%20Till%20It’s%20Done%20(Tutu).m4a]

Tagged Black Messiah, Brown Sugar, D'Angelo, Marvin Gaye, Prince, Sly Stone, Voodoo

Rock

“Hallogallo”

Neu!
Self-Titled, 1972

Two days in a row — let’s keep the ball rolling. Perhaps the greatest compliment you can pay any artist is to call their work “timeless.” Since we’re on the topic of Krautrock, help yourself to some classic Neu! today: same bat-time, same bat-country as Can. Here we have what may be the finest example of Motorik drumming in the history of music or drumming: a taut 4/4 timekeeper so cool it actually becomes the song — everything else is just well-executed window dressing. The last 40 years of popular music have conditioned us to the effect, but prior to the era it was rare to hear a rock sound so driven, so bloody-minded, so precise. These 10 minutes pass quickly; this record just turned 42. And in related news: time flies.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/01%20Hallogallo.mp3]

Tagged Can, Kraftwerk, Krautrock, Neu!

Dance, Funk, Prog Rock

“Halleluhwah”

Can
Tago Mago, 1971

So this is the New Year! Let’s make a deal: if I resolve to be a little more consistent about posting to TBSYHAD (5 songs a week, like I told myself in the beginning), will you resolve to check the site more often? Really? You will? As a sign of your loyalty, will you also promise to listen to “Halleluhwah” in its entirety today? I’m not gonna ask that you stay seated the entire time — it’s cool if you need to get up to do the dishes or something. I mean, 19 minutes … that’s about how long it takes to do dishes anyway. I promise it’ll be worth it. I was reminded recently how much I love this band — specifically for this album and Ege Bamyasi — when I heard the spooky “Vitamin C” over the opening moments of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. “Halleluhwah” captures a similar anxious groove, then stretches it beyond all reasonable measure.

[audio https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14312140/04%20Halleluhwah.mp3]

Tagged Can, Inherent Vice, Krautrock, Paul Thomas Anderson, Tago Mago, Vitamin C

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