Archive for October, 2008
Friday Mix 61
Don’t have time for a proper post so I’ll just leave you with this one song:
The theme to Mad Men. This is our costume for tonight as 10 of us (including one gentleman dressed in drag as Peggy)go as the staff from Sterling Cooper. Enjoy your night.
Friday Mix 60
I know I missed another week. I even had the songs picked out and everything. However, if I can’t post the mix by the time I leave the office on Friday afternoon I just never get around to posting it. For that reason I going to be picking the bones of 10.17.08 for the next couple weeks as there were some great songs I picked and just didn’t get them posted. Enjoy the weekend before Halloween, I’ve got a great party planned which should include a great deal of prep work and some truly horrible movies such as Blood Freak, Cannibal Holocaust, Dead Alive and a movie my girlfriend’s father was in where he is killed by a lesbian mermaid. (Yes, you read that right.)
of
Anyone who has read an indie blog this week has likely come across this cover and/or a write up from this show. (Roseland Ballroom, NYC) This cover was recorded 2 weeks ago when of
This comes from the soundtrack to Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. Please save yourself the $10 and at the very least put it as one of those “movies I keep in my Netflix queue even though I don’t really want to ever watch them and if I ever do let my queue run so low that I get this I will end up keeping it on my desk for a month without watching it until I realize it has been there for a month and just mail it back to Netflix” movies. It’s not good. Yes, I like George Michael. (Really, he will always be George Michael. RIP Arrested Development, the best show in TV history) yes, the premises of the movie appealed to me. Yes, I think Norah is played by that girl from Malcolm in the Middle who Malcolm was obsessed with because she had huge boobs in 9th grade. Everything you would like in a movie, but no. It is completely impossible; the characters personalities change from moment to moment and not in that usual “cute” way movies do it or even in the way a normal person would do it. Just odd. I would have given the movie a pass if it weren’t for the next to last scene in the recording studio. COME ON! REALLY?! (And no, it isn’t worth seeing just to find out what I’m talking about.) The song you ask? It’s good and it’s the first Vampire Weekend song I’ve posted here since I was late to the love fest (aka January rather than November 07) and didn’t want to be like everyone else posting Oxford Comma, even though it kicks ass.
The Features – The Idea of Growing Old
I think this was from a Valentines day mix several years ago that I downloaded from a random blog. I found it while looking for something “old” to play this week on MediaMonkey. Straight forward, hooky, corny lyrics that take lines from “Twas the Night Before Christmas”, everything I love in a song.
Marnie Stern – Roads? Where We’re Going We Don’t Need Roads
My first reaction to this record was “oh cool. She has the same first name as my office manager and I’ve never heard that name before.” Then I listened to the album and thought, “wow, this is going to have to take a second/third/fourth listen to really digest. Upon the third helping I was ready for more. It really is grating at first listen until you find your way through the complexities of the music, noise, vocals and lyrics all going on here. Words, as usual, don’t do this justice so you simply must download this track to get an idea as to what I’m feebly trying to convey with words.
I haven’t included a Hank Williams III track on here for some time now. He was my favorite discovery of 2007 and made for a lot of late night karaoke-esque tributes by friends and myself. This is off of his new album, Damn Right, Rebel Proud, that was finally released on Tuesday after several delays. The CD was completed late last year and was scheduled for release in February. Curb Records of course had other ideas and the record remained tied up in court for the next 6+ months. The album is much darker than I remember previous albums being. The theme of suicide runs through a great deal of the material, including this song, on the album. While several songs, such as this, are fist pumping and could be played at a party they make you think about the subject more than a little. The song specifically speaks to unemployment and tough times which a number of people now can relate to oh too well. Not to go to deep with a review of the record here but it left me a little disappointed but still will be something I listen to a great deal in the coming months.
Friday Mix 59
Yes, the economy is in a horrible, beyond recognizable, state. You always have music to cheer you up. You might not have electricity to play said music on but you can just go to a coffee shop and listen I’m sure. Those closed down too? How about the soup line? In completely unrelated news, Costa Messy kickball is in the Huntington Beach Surf City Kickball Division playoffs starting Monday. Wish us the best of luck as we go up against “New Kicks on the Block”.
You don’t have that many “Halloween songs”. This is Bradford Cox attempt at one and I think he pulls it off fairly well. I’ve never been a big Deerhunter or Atlas Sound fan but hearing he had made a Halloween inspired song got my curiosity. While it definitely sounds Halloween-ish, it sounds very relevant this week with the lyrics echoing, “wait until your gold gains value.”
Margot & the Nuclear So and Sos – Cold, Kind and Lemon Eyes
I never realized these guys were as popular as they have become over the last year or so. They just released two major label releases this week with Animal! and Not Animal! The CDs contain five of the same songs but the rest of the albums are comprised of new and old releases. This started over a fight with Sony Epic earlier this year as the label wanted the band to produce one CD and the band wanted to go in another direction. This was the compromise and I for one am excited for it. This song appears on both albums and discusses the ever so fun subject of being hung over talking to your parents. Ok, you’ll have to listen to get more out of it than this purely frosting filled review.
The Rosebuds – Bow to the Middle
Another band I’ve never given much attention to. This comes off of their newly released album, Life Like. Very catchy and something that will stay with you for a day or two. I find this to be a much more upbeat album musically than what I have heard in the past. It seems to have more unique sounds rather than the typical southern indie rock band sound that only I can describe in my head. (I don’t mean it that they sounded southern rock, just that there are a lot of bands coming out of the south that seemingly sound very much alike in my completely and utterly unprofessional opinion.) This is one album though that I definitely recommend picking up.
The Western States Motel – Oh World
Speaking of albums I recommend everyone go pick up, this song is off of one such EP. The Western States Motel is another local band from LA who is getting a bit of a buzz with their new EP, Painted Birds Flying in the Orange Mirror Sun. They will be the November Monday night residency band at Spaceland in November which says a lot about their recent success. Seeing as this is the last song for the mix I’m thinking I’ve gone in a new direction and started to put a local LA band in the last place on the mix rather than a country music track. Mostly this has to do with me being lazy and not wanting to track down country tracks to fill the space. I’ll rectify that with a trip to home this weekend where country radio hasn’t chanced in 20+ years.
Friday Mix 58
A long Friday. They are predicting rain for tomorrow which here in Southern
The New Year – The Company I Can Get
The indie rock fans indie rock band, for the month at least. They put out a solid record that I’m still getting into. Piano driven in this single with discernable lyrics to back it up. They have played recently in LA but as stated above, I’m slowly growing out of the ‘gotta attend this show’ scene.
TV on the Radio – Dancing Choose
The current “it” album. I was never sold on TV on the Radio until this release. Talk about a solid album through and through. I believe my last.fm account will show how much I’ve been listening to this release since last month. Hook filled, intelligent, witty, makes you look more “with it” because you can say, “I love track 3. I listen to it so much that I don’t really know what the song names are. I have a real CD player, none of this mp3 business.”
This is off of their collection of singles from earlier this year entitled “03/07 – 09/07”. I found this to be a more approachable (?) release than their new, self titled, full length. Similar in some regards to Times New Viking in that I know I would like the song that much better if I could actually discern what they were saying even half the time. This song I don’t have that problem with. The music itself is eclectic and I can only imagine what the show much is like that they put on. From seeing local promotions they are coming to town in the next week or so to play at the now “it” (“it” is the “it” phrase of today’s mix) establishment in downtown LA, the Smell. I suppose they fit nicely in that venue.
Hayes Carll is a
