Music to drink tea by
Archive for year 2006
Way Back Whensday: Lisa Loeb – Stay
55 years ago
in MP3s
Way Back Whensday is a new weekly feature looking back at great songs from the 90s that I was too musically ignorant of to appreciate at the time.
Why do I have the feeling I’ll get some shit for this one?
So I was 11 years old when this song first came out, and I actually remember it being around at the time. This was a time when I paid zero interest to music, and I absolutely hated it. I couldn’t really tell you why. I guess the music views of an 11 year old kid are hardly the most objective in the world, but that hate remained for years afterwards nonetheless.
I don’t really know when my opinion of Lisa Loeb started to shift. It must have been a few years ago, as most of her first album, ‘Tails’ ended up on my computer. I don’t remember deciding to give her a proper chance, but I must have done at some point. Anyway, I found that I really liked that album, and I still do even now. Despite the whole “one hit wonder” feeling about it thanks to this song, it actually has a bunch of really good songs on it. Which makes it different to everything she has released since then. Rather than playing to her inventine strengths that made ‘Tails’ interesting, she’s since drifted further and further into the horrid genre known as ‘adult contemporary’ (translation: “boring as shit”) to the point where I don’t even bother anymore.
All of that aside, ‘Stay’ is still a fantastic pop song. Hell, if it were released today, I’d be all over it quicker than that. A hot dorky girl with a guitar, complex storytelling and a wonderful voice delivering it all. The complexity of the song is probably what has me coming back the most, largely because the whole thing still doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me. The whole thing is so delightfully vague that an entirely different interpretation can be pulled out depending on my mood at the time. Which is quite an impressive feat, deliberate or not.
MP3 Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories – Stay (I Missed You) (expired)
..and now.. a public service message regarding hotlinking
Since I’ve been hosting the blog’s mp3s on my own server, I’ve noticed that a lot of other people tend to hotlink to them. This is done by other blogs, users of message boards and sites that really should no better. Anyway, a few days ago I implemented a block on other pages hotlinking the files. Anyone trying to will just be led straight to my main page. Thus showing up in my referrer logs, meaning I can see the page that hotlinked. Which could be embarrassing for some. Like this girl here who decided to show off her boobs on a “private” page.
AFoR Advent, day 20: Ben Folds (again)
25 years ago
in MP3s
Unlike the Ben Folds Christmas song I featured on day 8, this one actually sounds like it was recorded when Ben hadn’t been smoking the funny cigarettes. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is up to you to decide.
This song was actually recorded for The Grinch soundtrack, so if you listen with that in mind, the whole thing becomes pretty self-explanatory. It’s all about being driven insane on Christmas Eve by the people outside singing Christmas songs over and over. Which thankfully, people don’t really tend to do. God, that would be irritating if they did. Anyway, you can also substitute the narrator of the song for any miserable git that dislikes Christmas (like myself), and it works just as well.
MP3 Ben Folds – Lonely Christmas Eve (expired)
AFoR Advent, day 19: The Eels (again)
25 years ago
in MP3s
Following up from the downright bizarre Eels Christmas song that I posted back on day 9 on this little adventure, we have a far more accessible and fun festive song from them.
Certainly one of the more upbeat songs I’ve posted in this collection, and probably one of the more optimistic too, ‘Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas’ is exactly what the title says it is: a reassuring tale of how things are only going better and how important friendship is. It’s all pretty direct, even musically where it just tends to rock out (and add a little sleigh bell), with very little of the usual Eels weirdness (“baby Jesus, born to rock” line aside), which may deter some fans, but it certainly works for me.
As the days go by, the more that we need friends
and the harder they are to find
If I could have a friend like you in my life
then I guess I’d be doing just fine
MP3 The Eels – Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas (expired)
AFoR Advent, day 18: Aberdeen City
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It was all the way back on day 3 that I first posted ‘Just Like Christmas’, the classic Low Christmas song. Today we have a cover of that very song. I wasn’t intending on including, largely because I only discovered it a few days ago, but I think it’s pretty interesting, so I’m going with it.
Unfortunately, I don’t know a great deal about Aberdeen City. I’ve downloaded a few of their songs in the past and they’ve never really clicked with me, so I’ve never listened to them properly. The only thing I can really tell you about the band is that they aren’t actually from Aberdeen, but rather the US. Which makes the name of the band rather odd, but there you go. As for this cover, it’s pretty by the numbers, although the production is a little rough around the edges. It keeps the feel of the original though, even getting away with a relocating of the song from Sandinavia to the US.
MP3 Aberdeen City – Just Like Christmas (expired)
AFoR Advent, day 17: Fountains of Wayne (again)
05 years ago
in MP3s
This is the A-side to the Fountains of Wayne song that I posted on day 7 of this little project, and it’s a far happier song than it’s counterpart. Christmas songs don’t come much simpler than this. The narrator wants an alien for Christmas, and that’s about the entirity of the song. There’s something wonderfully simple about the whole thing, yet somehow it never crosses into the absurd. Which, if we’re honest, a song about wanting an alien for Christmas sung by four grown men is a line it should really cross.
MP3 Fountains of Wayne – I Want An Alien For Christmas (expired)
AFoR Advent, day 16: Weezer (again)
15 years ago
in MP3s
First of all, I’m fully aware that I’ve slipped a day behind again. Yesterday was rather busy, between seeing a shitty film about dragons and then going for a festive pizza, so I just didn’t get the time to write anything. Lucky for you though, that means you get two festive songs today. Secondly, this is the first time I’ve repeated an artist, and I’ll warn you now that it won’t be the last. I simply don’t have enough Christmas songs that I actually like to fill it out with entirely different artists and songs.
I don’t suppose I need to tell you that this is another miserable Christmas song. I really have to been trying to post some more cheerful ones up here, but I simply don’t seem to have any. Which either says indie artists don’t tend to make happy Christmas music, or that my tastes lean toward the depressing. Or a combination of the two. Maybe I’ll post some cheerful non-Christmas songs as a way of balancing with this lot or something. Anyway, with regards to this song, it’s Rivers complaining about being all alone at Christmas. I don’t think there’s a great deal more I can say about a Christmas song that centres on the line of “here I sit waiting beside the tree all by myself”. Oh Rivers, always so glum.
MP3 Weezer – The Christmas Song (expired)
I’m actually reaching the point where I’ll be glad when this advent thing is over. I’ve got a whole list of artists I want to write about, a bunch of other posts I should be writing and I haven’t even written about our first promoted gig, which I really should get around to given it was coming up on two weeks ago. It is all coming, I’m just not really sure when.
AFoR Advent, day 15: The Kinks
05 years ago
in MP3s
This is one of the oldest things I’ve ever posted here on Another Form of Relief. Nearly everything I post comes from the 90s or this decade, largely because old music just doesn’t interest me very much. Much as I try to get into the ‘classics’, it never seems to happen. I can appreciate important works, and there are certain artists that I really like (mostly just Dylan though), but I never usually get very far with most of it. ‘Father Christmas’ by The Kinks, dating from 1977, is just such a good song that it just can’t be left off of a list like this.
It actually works well as a companion piece to Fountains of Wayne’s ‘The Man In The Santa Suit’ which I posted on day 7. Like that song, it focuses on a hard done by department store Santa. While that song complained about the mundanity of dealing with the kids, this one actually Santa set upon by a bunch of kids (“A gang of kids came over and mugged me / And knocked my reindeer to the floor”). There’s something a little unsettling about Santa being attacked by a bunch of kids, but hey, I guess it must happen sometimes.
MP3 The Kinks – Father Christmas (expired)
AFoR Advent, day 14: Giant Sand
35 years ago
in MP3s
I’ve never really got the whole Giant Sand thing, nor do I know absolutely anything about them. Or him. I don’t even know if it’s a them or a he, that’s how clueless to the whole thing I am. I’m thinking it’s a band though, but I’m not certain. In contrast to this, my friend Simon really likes Giant Sand. He even got an abstract review of one of their albums published in the Guardian. So as I write this, I’m thinking I should have got him to write this or something. But in an hour it’ll no longer be the 14th, so I fear it’s a little late.
Now that I’ve rambled for a while, I don’t have to write as much about the song itself. I can’t really tell you much about it other than I like it. There’s some top notch blog criticism for you right there. Like the Rilo Kiley song yesterday, it just has a very cold feeling to it, being all sparse with a little piano. Lyrically, it’s all rather baffling to me, fleeting references to snow, Christmas and icy roads aside. Certainly not your average Christmas ditty anyway.
MP3 Giant Sand – Thank You Dreaded Black Ice, Thank You (expired)
AFoR Advent, day 13: Rilo Kiley
05 years ago
in MP3s
Well I think I might have topped myself in the Christmas misery stakes with this one. Despite the small respite of The Young Republic song yesterday, we’re back to the more depressing Christmas songs today. This really isn’t a deliberate thing on my part, it just seems that most of my Christmas music falls into that category.
If there’s one word to describe this song, it’s cold. It seems odd that a song can sound cold, but boy, this song sure manages it. Largely just a basic backing and Jenny gently lamenting on how crappy life is. When you reach a chorus that pretty much just repeats “Cry into your Christmas cake / Don’t know what else to do”, you know this isn’t cheerful listening. It all builds to a rather nice ending, with a full choir and instrumentation joining for the last section of the song. But it’s still incredibly miserable.
MP3 Rilo Kiley – Xmas Cake (expired)
Way Back Whensday: Ash – Girl From Mars
75 years ago
in MP3s
Way Back Whensday is a new weekly feature looking back at great songs from the 90s that I was too musically ignorant of to appreciate at the time.
I’ve been watching a lot of Gilmore Girls episodes lately. This may seem like an odd way to open, but go with me on this. I’m a sucker for small town Americana drama, and after getting past the whole “it’s for girls” mentality, I discovered that it’s actually an incredibly well written show. One of my favourite parts about it is how culturally aware it is. Hell, an entire plot point of one episode centres on Belle & Sebastian, and this was years before they were turning up in every show known to man. Anyway, an episode I was watching a couple of weeks ago had ‘Girl From Mars’ by Ash on the soundtrack. Now I vaguely remember when the song first came out back in 1995, but something struck me when hearing it this time around: it’s a fantastic song. Now, it was probably a fantastic song back in 1995 too, but I was pretty ignorant when it came to music back then, only really starting to appreciate it four or five years later. Over the next couple of weeks I realised that there’s a lot of songs from that era that I couldn’t stand or ignored then, but find to be great now. Which is how we arrive at this new feature.
It seems dumb to me that I didn’t like a song like this at the time, but I guess that’s just the evolution of taste for you. The song itself tells a wonderful, melancholy tale about a lost summer romance with a girl he loved but never got close enough too. It’s full of lovely imagery of lazy days, playing cards and staring up at the stars. It’s back and forth delivery also works well too, starting with a deceptive intro that leads you to believe it’s a fairly laid back acoustic number, before powering into the main part of the song. It calms down again toward the end, leading you to think it’s over before kicking in again for one more blast of rock. That it’s taken me the best part of twelve years to appreciate the song is one thing, but the fact it still sounds just as fresh today is quite another.
MP3 Ash – Girl From Mars (expired)
Note I thought I’d come up with a rather clever title for this feature last night, but then I Googled it and discovered that MTV have a show or something with the same title. I’m going to keep the title though as I like it, and seeing as this thing has a limited life span (about four months by my calculations), it stays.
