Mar 27 2006
Hooray for Monday!
We’re all about the lame gimmick post heres at Another Form of Relief. Or, if I’m entirely honest, we’re all about the lazy posts that write themselves. This kind of random post breaks up the constant pimping of new artists a little though, so they work well enough for me.
As you can see, we have a bunch of songs that aren’t connected in any way other than them all having monday in the title. I’m half kicking around the idea of doing one of these for each day of this week, but it could prove a little tricky as there aren’t a lot of songs that relate to the midweek days. Note to new artists: Take that song you’re writing about saturday nights and convert it to thursdays! Someone needs to balance these things out a little.
MP3 Pulp - Monday Morning (expired) (from Different Class, 1995)
Ok, hands up, who can name a single Pulp song that isn’t called Common People or Disco 2000? Nope, didn’t think so. It’s kind of a shame really. I’ve never been a big fan of Pulp, and I myself was guilty for a long time of completely ignoring anything they did other than those two songs. That was until last year when I picked up ‘Different Class’ on the cheap and discovered it was actually a very good, consistant album. ‘Monday Morning’ is one of my favourites from the album, a tale of an aimless life spent solely living for the short term excitement of the weekend.
MP3 Wilco - Monday (expired) (from Being There, 1996)
One of the most flat out rock ‘n’ roll songs to come from Wilco, so it’s fitting that it’s all about rock ‘n’ roll and the lifestyle of a band. There’s a certain timeless feel to this song, in that you could tell me that it came from the 60s, 70s or whatever and I probably wouldn’t really question it. In another act of indie blasphemy, I really don’t like the kind of music that Wilco puts out these days, but I really like this. I couldn’t really tell you why though, other than a nice and vague “it rocks” type answer.
MP3 Tegan And Sara - Monday Monday Monday (expired) (from If It Was You, 2002)
Ah, the joy of a fucked up relationship song. This song has absolutely no relation to monday other than the fact the chorus is simply the word “monday” sung twelve times over. No matter though, it’s a great song, going through the shitty part toward the end of a relationship (”Your house or mine / I don’t really care about it anymore / I close my eyes /I make myself unhappy so you’ll go”) in an alarmingly catchy way.
MP3 Ryan Adams - Monday Night (expired) (from Down To The Promised Land: 5 Years of Bloodshot Records compilation, 2000)
As Ryan Adams songs go, this is one of the more simplistic, but it’s still pretty good. The lyrics aren’t anything to write home about, but I like the blending of both acoustic and electric guitars.
MP3 Malcolm Middleton - Monday Night Nothing (expired) (from Into The Woods, 2005)
Malcolm Middleton (of Arab Strap) is someone I plan to write about in more detail in the future, but for now, we have this wonderful song for his latest album. Middleton writes incredibly depressing songs. Which leaves him with quite a dilemma on this album as apparently he’s quite happy at the moment. As he sings on this song, “Well it’s only a matter of time before I feel like shit again / I’m a happy army marching to defeat”. Cheerful stuff, no? He delivers all of this in a flat Scottish accent, although given the nature of the songs, this detachment works very much in his favour. It’s not too gloomy though, Middleton is another who writes depressing songs with music that sounds far too catchy for it’s lyrics.
I’ve really enjoyed putting this post together actually, so I might see how running this over the course of the week goes. It’s probably going to crash and burn around, oh, I don’t know, tuesday, but we’ll see how it goes. I have a few ideas for songs I can use, so it shouldn’t be a complete disaster.
Like mp3 blogs? Like music videos? It seems Derek from Good Weather For Air Strikes has come up with something in the “how the hell did no one think of this sooner?” line of thinking.. a music video blog. Each video featured is available to download rather than just streaming, and certainly looks like an interesting project. Head on over to Videoteque and check it out.
Related Posts
[...] These three songs are my favourites from ‘Into The Woods’, with ‘Break My Heart’ capturing the tone of the album perfectly. Middleton likes to write depressing songs, but seeing as he doesn’t have a great deal to be miserable about, he’s left with quite a dilemma. “You’re gonna break my heart I know it / but if you don’t / you’re going to ruin my run of unhappiness and destroy my career” he sings in a way that should come across half mockingly, but instead makes you feel quite sorry for the guy. ‘Loneliness Shines’ finds him singing about how he feels that even though he’s ‘got it all’ he ‘appreciates nothing’. I spoke about ‘Monday Night Nothing’ in my last entry, so I’ll spare you it again here. Suffice to say, it’s all cheerful stuff. [...]
[...] And so our little week of days of the week theme posts comes to an end. Sunday isn’t the strongest day it seems, but there’s still a nice enough selection to work with. I think that monday was my favourite one of these for the nice variety that it had, but most of them have turned out pretty well. What has everyone else liked? [...]