Aug 31 2006
August: The Leftovers
Our monthly look at the interesting songs that I was too lazy to write about! I’ve just been watching more episodes from the second season of Everwood, so I’m writing this with the feeling of general malaise that always strikes after that. Fun!
MP3 Matthew Friedberger - The Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company Resignation Letter
I don’t really get the Fiery Furnaces. I explored them after the high Pitchfork scores (yeah, I’m one of those people) but they never really clicked for me. A few songs did, like ‘Chris Michaels’, but on the most part, I don’t really care for them. Thus getting a Matthew Friedberger mp3 in my inbox wasn’t the most exciting of arrivals. I have to admit that I kind of like it though. It’s a little random and makes pretty much no sense, but it sounds jolly enough and Friedberger seems to have a vocal delivery thing going on that’s just this side of Blake Sennett. I don’t know if it’s enough to make me check out his album in itself, but if I heard another couple of songs like this, I might give it a shot.
MP3 Birdmonster - Cause You Can
I have absoluetly no idea who Birdmonster are, other than parts of the “blogosphere” (eugh) are trumping them as the next big thing. Whether that’s accurate or not isn’t for me to say, but I really like this song. It’s not groundbreakingly original, but it’s a solid, driven guitar song that has some fantastically urgent vocals.
MP3 The Idyllists - Chloe (expired)
Another song that isn’t original in the least, but it still manages to sound good. The Idyllists are a new band from LA that have been listening to way too much British rock. To be fair to them, their lead singer is actually British and their handful of live shows have included opening for The Subways. I don’t know how much we’ll be hearing from them in the future, but this one song is kind of fun, so I’m willing to go with it.
MP3 Weird Al Yankovic - Don’t Download This Song
Wow, I never imagined that I’d be putting a Weird Al song up on here. To be clear, this isn’t because I think the song is good at all. In fact, it’s pretty damn awful, but it’s somewhat interesting at least. I can only think of less than a handful of songs that have tackled the issue of downloading the RIAA directly, so it’s kind of welcome in that regard. It always makes a broadly accurate point that the whole music industry is ridiculous to chase customers for downloading. It even manages a nice bit of social commentary in mocking the way society seems to think one crime leads to another (”‘Cause you start out stealing songs and then you’re robbing liquor stores”). The downside to all of this is that it just sounds so badly outdated. Even if you look beyond the fact the song sounds like it’s from twenty years ago, the references (Lars Ulrich?) sound like someone who doesn’t really know what they are talking about. I mean, does anyone still use Morpheus or Grokster?
Random Posts
If you like the Thermals, check out this duo from down south, Bones. http://www.bonestheband.com or http://www.myspace.com/bones. Very raw stuff. They release the new album next month.
Weird Al is not the only singer to tackle the issue of file sharing. Peeved that fans were ripping off his songs for free, Loudon Wainwright III wrote and recorded “Something for Nothing”. But until Arista finally get around to putting his T-Shirt and Final Exam albums on CD (long overdue), illegal downloading is the only way you’re going to get hold of some of his output.