Another Form of Relief

Only three songs for the “leftovers” section this month. As we head toward the end of the year, the number of indie releases seems to wind down making finding new material a little harder than usual. Still, this brings the advantage of letting me go back over some of the great records I may have missed over the course of the year. Any recommendations for small albums that I may have missed over the past year?

MP3 Pocketbooks - Cross The Line (expired)
I first wrote about Pocketbooks more than four months ago and I still haven’t been able to find a picture of them in the time since. I’m starting to think they may not actually exist, or that they are cartoons like Gorillaz or something. Anyway, who cares what they look like when they throwing out top notch low-fi twee indie pop? ‘Cross the Line’ is the first song released from their new batch of recordings, and it’s easily cemented itself in place as one of my favourites of the year so far. Full of lovely imagery (it opens with “I’m asleep on a train on the Zone 2 boundary”) and basically continues as a back and forth conversation between the male and female vocalists. This takes on a nicely self-aware twist when she starts calling him on the honesty of his lyrics (”As a kid I would run through the fields and orchards” / “What about your hayfever though?” / “I’d climb the branches to the top” / “What, with your vertigo?” / “Look, I’m making all this up”). Extra points also have to be awarded for being the first song I’m aware of that actually slots in the term “Oyster card” without being entirely tacky.

MP3 Ben Folds - Such Great Heights (expired)
For the 57th cover of The Postal Service’s ‘Such Great Heights’, Ben Folds decides to take a stab at it. This was actually an in-studio radio performance so the production values aren’t really the highest, but it’s an interesting cover none the less. As it’s Ben Folds, obviously a piano plays a very heavy part in the preceedings, with him almost pounding the poor piano to death over the course of the four minutes. Which unfortunately leaves it feeling a little more overbearing than it should. Other than that, it’s a pretty straight up cover, aside from one odd changing of one of the lyrics to include the word “shit”. Which is just a tad jarring on first listening.

MP3 Via Audio - We Can Be Good
Via Audio are a New York indie pop band who have been making music for about three years but everything seems to be coming together for them now. Chris Walla of Death Cab For Cutie calls them his “new favourite band” and Jim Eno of Spoon liked them so much that he offered to produce their record. That record (’Say Something’) is still in the mixing stage, but the band have made a couple of songs from it available on the internet. ‘We Can Be Good’ is my favourite of these. It’s a simple pop song about a girl trying to tell a guy that they would be great together. It’s full of lovely harmonies and some instrumentation that borders on precious. These guys will certainly be ones to watch over the next year or so to see what else they come up with.

I Control Music?

Well I probably don’t, but it’s certainly starting to feel that way. Over the past week or so, four of the unsigned artists I’ve written about on Another Form of Relief have signed pretty important record deals. I already mentioned Kate Nash signing to Universal. On top of that, we have Play Radio Play signing to Island, Jenny Owen Youngs signing to Nettwerk and Los Campesinos! signing to.. someone. Of course, my original comment was meant in jest and I have no delusions of grandeur about this place. I think it is somewhat indicitive that blogs in general are (as Frank Debarge would put it) the ‘tastemakers’ now. That or I just have an uncanny ability to write about those who will hit the big time anyway. Either way.

I’m not usually a fan of mega-post style content, but seeing as this is our first official posting with proper hosting, I’m going to go a little nuts. I’m also going to kill two birds with one stone. My blog isn’t really big enough to have people chasing me down to send them songs where the links have expired or to ask me to repost things. There are however two posts where I keep getting emails of that nature: the two ‘Great lost Weezer songs’ features I did back in April. It seems that despite their current quality or credibility or whatever, people still love to get hold of some Weezer. Particularly if it’s rare. And actually quite good.

As such, below you will find all of the songs that were posted in those two features. I’m not going to comment on the songs individually once again. If you want my comments from the time, click through to the original posts. I’ve also included a bunch of songs at the bottom that I left off of the original posts. I won’t try and lie to you and tell you that they are of the same quality, but they are still very worthy songs, particularly given the band’s current output.

Originally posted in part 1:

MP3 Weezer - Preacher’s Son (expired)
MP3 Weezer - Private Message (expired)
MP3 Weezer - Prodigy Lover (expired)
MP3 Weezer - Queen Of Earth (expired)
MP3 Weezer - Superstar (expired)
MP3 Weezer - The Organ Player (expired)
MP3 Weezer - What Everybody Wants (expired)
MP3 Weezer - You Won’t Get With Me Tonight (expired)
MP3 Rivers Cuomo - Longtime Sunshine (expired)

“New” rare Weezer songs:

MP3 Weezer - Acapulco (expired)
A more mellow song that one comes to expect from Weezer. It was originally recorded with the intention of being a part of ‘Maladroit’, but like a ton of these songs, was eventually scrapped for no obvious reason. It covers pretty standard Rivers territory lyrically (guy finds perfect girl, perfect girl leaves), but it’s simplicity and brevity makes the song come across as far lighter fare.

MP3 Weezer - Burndt Jamb (instrumental) (expired)
MP3 Weezer - Death and Destruction (instrumental) (expired)
Both of these songs obviously ended up on ‘Maladroit’ in entirely different forms. Both songs went through pretty much the same pattern to get there too. Each started off as an impressive little instrumental song. They then had rather good lyrics added to them. These lyrics were then replaced with non-sensical drivel. Guess which versions ended up making the album. Yeah. Anyway, these instrumentals are actually rather good in that they are far more elaborate in their construction than the finished album versions. Combined with good lyrics, they would have been fantastic.

MP3 Weezer - Fontana (expired)
Wow, Rivers with an inferiority complex. Now that’s certainly a novel theme for a song. Joking aside though, it’s probably what Rivers does best when it comes to his songwriting, so unsurprisingly this is a pretty solid song. It’s another of the aborted album five recordings, meaning it never really got developed all that far, but what is here is pretty damn good.

MP3 Weezer - Hey Domingo (expired)
Rivers loves football. Apparently Domingo is a footballer. That’s about all I have on this one.

MP3 Weezer - Little Songs (expired)
Lyrically it’s pretty non-sensical, but the most interesting part about ‘Little Songs’ is how Rivers seems able to rebuild a song from the ground up. I may have my timeline confused a little here, but the instrumentation on this song was originally used in another Weezer song entitled ‘We Go Together’ that the band played live a lot back in 2001. This version of the song is completely different from the original, yet the core of it still remains intact, which is something of an impressive feat.

MP3 Weezer - Mansion of Cardboard (expired)
A rare case of Rivers singing in the third person here. Seemingly a story about a homeless man who is actually quite happy with his lot in life (”He’s on his own / He likes it that way”). A world full of homeless people huddling under bridges is hardly massively original imagery, but it’s different enough to warrant a little attention. If only to prove Rivers can come up with something that isn’t misery or drugs.

MP3 Weezer - Oh No, This Is Not For Me (expired)
This has to be one of the shortest Weezer songs ever. That isn’t really fair to it though as it was never intended to be a full song. It’s another one of the fabled ‘Songs From The Black Hole’ (see ‘Blast Off’ and ‘You Won’t Get With Me Tonight’ above) that would have been an interlude that slotted in just before ‘Tired Of Sex’. I’d love to be able to hear the entire ‘SFTBH’, but it seems odd songs and fragments is all we’ll ever get to hear.

MP3 Weezer - On The Edge (expired)
I think this one dates back to somewhere around 2000 as a demo for The Green Album, but it never progressed further than this version. It’s on the same kind of level as Green when it comes to lyrical quality (”Go out to the movies / Tell my girl she’s groovy”). The only real appeal from this song comes the fun timeshifting and harmonising that’s thrown into it.

MP3 Weezer - Running Man (expired)
Another song sung in the third person, this time all about a perfectionist who tries to control every little aspect of his life. Obviously, this isn’t really an achievable thing to do. Anyone want to start taking bets on whether or not Rivers is actually singing about himself despite the repeated “he’s not me” line?

MP3 Weezer - Sacrifice (expired)
Listen kids, there’s a piano in this one! I’m a sucker for a piano, and it’s something that Weezer didn’t utilise anywhere near as often as they should. It’s also quite an upbeat sounding song, which is something of a refreshing change. Oh no, wait, it’s all about getting dumped.

MP3 Weezer - Serendipity (expired)
As romantic comedies go, you could really do worse than this one. I mean come on, it’s got John Cusack playing a likeable everyman! Eugene Levy being the cranky funny guy! Kate Beckinsale looking good! And Jeremy Piven! Everyone loves Jeremy Piven!

MP3 Weezer - She Who Is Militant (expired)
This is another one of the songs that went through several different versions. I can’t recall exactly where this one slots in timeline wise, but it doesn’t really better as none of the versions were really any better than any of the others. This one included solely because it contains the fantastic lyric of “I need a tissue for my nose”. I kid you not.

MP3 Weezer - The Story Is Wrong (expired)
Weezer song not being sung by Rivers shocker! This one is a Pat Wilson original, and to be perfectly honest, I’d kind of prefer that he stayed behind the drum kit. If you’ve heard any of the records he’s done with his other project The Special Goodness you’ll know exactly what to expect here. A decent enough song that could use more developing sung with a vocalist that sits just this side of bland. It’s just a novelty to hear someone else on vocals more than anything else.

MP3 Weezer - The Victor (expired)
There’s nothing quite like a Weezer song of bitterness that seems to turn up everytime someone breaks Rivers’ heart. This would be the 2002 contender for the title, which although starting mundanely enough (”You like me / I like you”) quickly descends into rather more angry territory. While even managing to throw in the traditional “wha-oh” lines.

MP3 Weezer - Yellow Camaro (expired)
We close our selection of rare Weezer material with another song sung by somebody not named Rivers. This one is all the work of guitarist Brian Bell. From what I understand, a Camaro is some kind of automobile type thing, so I guess there isn’t much in the way of explaination to this particular song. It’s not a great song, but it has a certain kind of frantic energy not usually heard on Weezer songs that gives it some unique appeal though.

Weezer: Website || Myspace

Well that’s your lot for rare Weezer songs. Grab them while you can (14 days at most, probably less) as odds are I’m not going to be putting them up again. I’ll be resuming regular kind of posting tomorrow, which means the October leftovers post and back to writing about bands that weren’t massive in 1994.