Another Form of Relief

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?

MP3 The Velvet Underground - Sunday Morning (expired) (from The Velvet Underground & Nico, 1967)
Excellent dreamy pop that captures the whole “I’m wasting my life” feeling oh so perfectly. I don’t know if that’s what the song is supposed to be about, but it works well in that way for me anyway. I’ve never been a big Velvet Underground fan, mostly just giving ‘Loaded’ the occasional listen, but this is still rather good.

MP3 The Mountain Goats - Tell Me On A Sunday (expired) (from Hot Garden Stomp, 1994)
Apparently this is actually a cover of an Andrew Lloyd Webber song, but you’d never be able to tell just from listening to it. In the hands of John Darnielle it becomes an incredibly lo-fi, stripped down song. Which helps it a lot given it allows us to focus on the words, usually a staple of the Mountain Goats as it is. God knows how this compares to any other versions, but I can’t imagine anything else suiting this kind of song so well. It’s the kind of thing I think Bright Eyes would be at home with actually. Guy knows girl is going to break up with him, does nothing to argue with this, just asks her to make it as painless as possible for him. In fact, with words like “I don’t want to fight night and day / it’s bad enough that you’re going / don’t leave in silence - no words at all / don’t get mad and slam the door / it’s no way to end this”, it just may be the least bitter break up song ever.

MP3 Morrissey - Every Day Is Like Sunday (expired) (from Viva Hate, 1988)
Morrissey has apparently commented that no one really knows what this song is about. I’m not particularly inclined to try and argue with it. I do however know that it sounds far better than the average Morrissey song, who I really can’t stand on the most part. It comes across as a wonderful nostalgia trip, backed with some excellent strings, something that will usually improve just about any song. It doesn’t really matter that a meaning isn’t easily pulled from it when it sounds so good in the first place.

MP3 Sonic Youth - Sunday (expired) (from A Thousand Leaves, 1998)
Another song where I don’t have a clue what it means, but boy does it sound good. An incredible use of bass, distortion that doesn’t go too far and beautiful lyrics over the top of all it. It doesn’t sound particularly like a sunday song, and I don’t think it has any direct relation to the day, but it’s an excellent piece of work nonetheless.

MP3 Beulah - Sunday Under Glass (expired) (from When Your Heartstrings Break, 1999)
Well we may as well end the week on a happy song, and this certainly fits the bit. One of my favourite Beulah songs from my favourite Beulah album (that I can’t seem to buy anywhere at price that isn’t grossly inflated.. suggestions?), it’s yet another song that has no clear meaning (what is it with sunday?). It may have something to do with the fakeness of modern life, or maybe something more literal about film, but I don’t really care that much. It just sounds too jangly and cheerful for me to be that bothered in analysing it too much. Oh how I miss Beulah.

That’s about it for our ‘Hooray for..’ series then. I hope you’ve enjoyed the songs as much as I enjoyed putting them together, and hopefully discovered something new along the way. I’m not sure how often I’ll do extended theme posts like this, as it has dominated the entire week when I’ve had a ton of other stuff that I’ve been waiting to write about, but I guess we’ll see what I feel like doing at the time. Your regular service of rambles about bands you’ve probably never heard of before will be resuming shortly.

We finally make it to the weekend, with quite a large bunch of songs for what is apparently the cool day to write about. I’m not a massive saturday fan myself, too many people about who should be locked in schools or workplaces all seven days of the week. But rather than just turn this into a rant about people, I’ll get straight to the music. Let’s be honest, no one comes here for anything but the music.

MP3 Built To Spill - Saturday (expired) (from You In Reverse, 2006)
I’m not very familiar with Built To Spill (I know, I know..), but after getting this song and doing some reading about them, I’m definately going to explore them some more. I really like this song a lot, and for some reason I get the same kind of feeling I get from Pavement from it, even though I can’t really hear any musical similarities in it. It doesn’t make a great deal of sense as a whole, but the words are still very nice. It’s taken from their upcoming album, ‘You In Reverse’, that’ll be released on April 11.

MP3 The Essex Green - Saturday (expired) (from Everything Is Green, 1999)
The Essex Green are another great little band that are bringing music that wouldn’t sound out of place in the 60s to modern eardrums. The album that song is taken from, ‘Everything Is Green’ is a masterful indie pop record, and seemingly a bitch to buy without paying a ridiculously high price for. This song, while not the best from the album as is drags a little, is still a fine piece of work.

MP3 Koufax - Saturdays Alone (expired) (from Social Life, 2002)
Koufax is a band I’ll be writing about properly in the near future, but for now, here’s a song about a reclusive person from the appropriately titled ‘Social Life’. The song is being sung to the aforementioned recluse in an attempt to get them out of the house to have fun on a saturday. The person knows that there’s “nothing worse” than being alone, but still doesn’t seem to want to be social. I know for sure that I’ve been this person before, and I imagine a bunch of others have been too. Ah the joys of contradiction. Anyways, if you don’t know Koufax, they are one of the few rock bands that actually make full use of a piano, and that in itself scores them massive points with me.

MP3 Bright Eyes - Saturday As Usual (expired) (from A Collection Of Songs: Recorded 1995-1997, 2000)
Ah, the second Bright Eyes song from this album is two days. ‘Saturday As Usual’ is certainly one of his most pessimistic works, which given his other material, is quite a feat. Taking an utterly downbeat look at those around him (”My brother went to college to become a doctor / and if he studies hard enough / he’ll end up like his father / who hates his life”) and accepting that “there’s something very wrong with me”. The production quality is godawful, which helps as it really does feel like he’s sitting in his bedroom wailing about this. Hell, he probably was given how old this song is. And who can’t love a song that eventually concludes that “the world has become a little too mean / and I can’t see the point of patient love / when everyone just wants to get fucked”?

MP3 The Thrills - Saturday Night (expired) (from Let’s Bottle Bohemia, 2004)
No, The Thrills are not cool. No, The Thrills aren’t very good, a couple of exceptional singles aside. This however is actually quite a good song. It’s simplistic, often repeating the same lines over and over, but it gets to the point. It all comes down to “is this what they call love?”, which seems to be taking on a similar attitude, albeit in a far more subtle way, to the Bright Eyes song above. It’s also supported by that great, slightly dated guitar work, which seems to be about the one thing they can do consistantly well.

MP3 Weezer - Saturday Night (expired) (unreleased)
I can’t quite remember when Weezer recorded ‘Saturday Night’. It was either recorded in the run up to the Green Album, between Green and Maladroit, or after Maladroit. Which granted, isn’t particularly helpful. It’s one of at least a hundred songs that they recorded and put up online through those periods, and it’s kind of depressing that most of those songs are far better than anything that made the actual albums. From the music on this one, I’d hazard a guess that it was recorded in the run up to ‘Maladroit’ (it has that ‘Burndt Jamb’ kind of vibe). Obviously as it’s 21st century Weezer the words are shit and don’t mean a thing, but it still manages to sound pretty good. Kind of like ‘Burndt Jamb’ actually. Just slightly better.

MP3 Kaiser Chiefs - Saturday Night (expired) (from Employment, 2005)
It seems that I’m going to end up liking The Kaiser Chiefs one song at a time. First I hated everything. Then I started liking ‘Everyday I Love You Less And Less’. Then it was ‘I Predict A Riot’. Now it’s this one. An awesome 80s guitar rock song of wanting to be one of the cool people and never quite managing it and yet still manages to be quite a sweet love story at the same time. Actually, as I’m writing this I’m suddenly struck that it reminds me of ‘Disco 2000′ by Pulp. I’m not entirely sure why, but I like that.

Wow, so only one day left on our Hooray for.. series of posts. It’s a pretty good one too, with a few great songs lined up for sunday. It’s been fun doing these all week, although it has taken away my time from being able to write about new bands I’ve found and the such. So there will probably be a lot of those over the next week or so. Maybe a new mixtape too. You know I spoil you people, yes?

Following the disaster that was the middle of the week, our little themed posts get right back on track with a, if I may say so myself, rather good selection for friday. It seems the weekend is the time of the week that really brings out the more interesting material from the songwriter, as will be proved by the awesomeness to follow on saturday and sunday.

MP3 Morrissey - Friday Mourning (expired) (from Let Me Kiss You single, 2005)
It’s Morrissey. He’s not very happy so he’s leaving. And that’s about it.

MP3 Bright Eyes - A Few Minutes On A Friday (expired) (from A Collection Of Songs: Recorded 1995-1997, 2000)
One of the things I particularly like about Bright Eyes is the way every song tells a whole little story. Now I know nearly all songs do this to a point, but the level of detail that goes into a Bright Eyes song is something more. That Mr. Oberst is so good at doing that now is one thing, but the fact he was doing it ten years ago (he would have been around 15 when this was recorded) is just downright scary. And makes me think I’ve wasted my life. But no matter. In this tale, young Conor is obviously in love with a friend but can’t say anything to her because either she won’t feel the same, or there are always other people in the way, or whatever reason he’s stopping himself this week. Didn’t think this could get any more miserable after Morrissey? That told you.

MP3 The Cure - Friday I’m In Love (expired) (from Wish, 1992)
Fine, you want a bloody happy song? Here you go then. I shouldn’t really need to explain anything about this song to anyway, as honestly, who doesn’t know it? It’s simple, it’s happy, and most of all, it’s damn catchy.

MP3 Silver Jews - Friday Night Fever (expired) (from Bright Flight, 2001)
I’m not a big enough Silver Jews fan to know whether this song is a flat out and out country song, or whether there is some hidden wry joke involved in it all that I’m too dense to miss. I suppose it doesn’t really matter either way as the song is a great little country ditty (how often can I get that word in without seeming weird?) that kind of subverts the usual country stereotypes. It seems ol’ Dave is slightly bored in his marriage so hits the bar on a friday night, but while stressing “She knows I love her and I need her / And I’m no cheater / I’ve just got that friday night fever” and that he’ll be straight back home to her at closing time. It’s actually all rather nice in a twisted kind of way.

Which brings us to a close for friday. Be sure to join me tomorrow for no less than seven songs that don’t really go together but all happen to have saturday somewhere in the title. Excited? I know I am.

Well I did warn you that thursday would be the awkward one, although it’s turned out even worse than I could have anticipated. I managed to come up with one whole song that relates to the day. This is really the bottom of the curve though, and there’s a bunch of awesome songs for the upcoming three days.

The Features - Thursday (expired)
I’m not a big fan of The Features. I have their album, but it doesn’t really grab me at all. It’s too kind of heavy and samey to me, a la We Are Scientists. Fun songs by themselves but an entire album at once is just grating. ‘Thursday’ though sounds nothing like anything on there, being considerably more laid back and intricate, the varying styles of music really adding to the whole thing. The song itself is a simple tale of building up the courage to speak to a girl and then the inevitable rejection that follows. Not that they let it get to them or anything, which also makes the song better than your average depressionfest on such matters.

So I guess that’s all I have to say about thursday I’m afraid. Not a great deal to it. I promise you it improves greatly from here though, and I’ve got four most excellent songs for tomorrow.

Betty By Alone.. again

You may or may not have read my post last week about the great Brazillian band called Betty By Alone. At the time I complained that I couldn’t find out much about them because their site is in Portugese. That’s no longer a problem though! The drummer from the band, Rafael Goraieb left a nice message pointing out their English language website. It’s not the most perfectly written thing in the world, but it’s certainly more helpful than nothing at all.

And so the bottom of the barrel scraping begins. Apologies for this one, but it’s kind of necessary to get a set of the complete week. It struck me earlier on that I should have just combined tuesday, wednesday and thursday into the one post, but it’s a little late for that one really. This one will be brief as I’m pretty much exhausted (four hours sleep + going out + working = inability to stand up) and have to be up early to head into the office for once.

MP3 Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories - Waiting For Wednesday (expired) (from Tails, 1995)
This is the point where I admit that I actually quite like Lisa Loeb, and have done for a long time. Since whenever ‘Stay’ was first released actually. I remember liking it at the time, but then never really gave it any more thought until I heard it again a few years ago. The ‘Tails’ album that it’s taken from is actually really rather good, even if some of her later albums became a little too bland for my taste. ‘Waiting For Wednesday’ is something of a twisted breakup song, in that it switches from the narrator not wanting her boyfriend to break up with her to her being the one doing the breaking by the end of the song. Which is a terrible description, but when did I ever say I was good at writing this kind of thing?

MP3 Saves The Day - Wednesday The Third (expired) (from In Reverie, 2003)
When you have a singer that sounds like a 13 year old boy waiting for his voice to break in the first place, having him sing a song in an even higher pitch than usual probably isn’t the best of ideas. That said, the rest of the song is still pretty good, and one of the more solid from Saves The Day’s most mature album so far, ‘In Reverie’. I have no idea what it’s about (the US elections makes sense given the date, but that doesn’t really connect with the lyrics), but it does somehow end up sounding pretty good in the end. Yet I’m completely at a loss to describe why.

MP3 Emiliana Torrini - Wednesday’s Child (expired) (from Love In The Time Of Science, 2000)
If I labelled this as Bjork, would anyone really be able to tell the difference? There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that, but I usually can’t stand Bjork’s music, but thankfully I can handle this. Another song where I can’t really tell you what it means, just that the ambient electronica and vocal combination works well enough for me not to care that much. Which is quite a feat given that I hate pretty much the entirity of the album that it comes from. Her follow-up, ‘Fisherman’s Woman’ is a far superior album, moving much more into mellow acoustic territory and greatly turning down the electronic.

In my defence, I did warn you about this post, and I’ll remind you again that the thursday post probably won’t be great either (current song count: one), but I swear to a deity of your choosing that the rest will be awesome. And I’ll try and come up with other good stuff in between too. Now though I’m off to bed given I can hardly keep my eyes open and need to be up by 8.

So it appears as if I may have written myself into something as a corner by doing a whole week of these. Following an in-depth investigation carried out today, wednesday and thursday are looking pretty shit. On the upside though, I guarantee you that the weekend set of posts will be full of awesomeness.

And so we reach tuesday, probably the day of the week with the least things to distinguish it from any other. Depressingly, the only unique tuesday thing I can think of is that it’s the day of a pub quiz that I sometimes take part in. Other than that, nothing. It’s just a nice holding day for the more eventful ones later on in the week. Or not for the likes of slackers like me, but that’s not really the point.

MP3 The Pogues - Tuesday Morning (expired) (from Waiting for Herb, 1993)
One of the few Pogues songs I actually like (I only really care for ‘Fairytale of New York’ if I’m honest), it’s a nice catchy song. It’s not the kind of song that needs any deep analysis, or more accurately I haven’t bothered trying to work out if it’s meant to happy or miserable. It seems to somehow swing both ways for me. It’s a great catchy song though, and that’s the most important part.

MP3 The Minders - Hooray For Tuesday (expired) (from Hooray for Tuesday, 1998)
Hey, you’ll never guess exactly where I got the title for this run of posts from. Well, you might have an idea now anyway. The Minders seem to be sadly overlooked to a certain part, their 60s psychedlic sound seemingly getting lost between the great material put out from others like Of Montreal, Beulah and The Apples In Stereo. ‘Hooray for Tuesday’ is their best album, this title song representing it perfectly. Much like the Wilco track from yesterday, it has a timeless feel, sounding exactly like something a bunch of bands would have been putting out in the 60s, yet so few are today.

MP3 Neutral Milk Hotel - Love Me On A Tuesday (expired) (from Yoyo A Go Go ‘94 compilation, 1994)
MP3 Neutral Milk Hotel - Tuesday Moon (expired) (Unreleased.. I think. Correct me if I’m wrong)
Finally, kudos to Neutral Milk Hotel for seemingly being the only band to really get behind tuesday, by making not one, but two songs, involving the day. Granted the songs are basically the same, using the same lyrics but reworking the music entirely. Which means they would have fitted perfectly on my post of bands covering themselves, but I didn’t have both of these back then. ‘Love Me On A Tuesday’ is a great little (literally given it’s 1:55 long) rock song, soaked in distortion. The fact the lyrics are pretty much indecipherable on the most part doesn’t really matter given how good it sounds. Get past the weird introduction of two kids talking on ‘Tuesday Moon’ and you’ll find another little gem, where you’ll actually be able to hear the words! Which means we can actually hear just how nice these songs happen to be.

..and finally

An amusing clip of a man who calls into QVC with a rather honest report of how he uses his new Dell PC.

I guess that’s it for tonight. I’ll be back tomorrow with an even weaker selection of songs (and if you think they are bad, wait until you see thursday!) for your enjoyment. Apparently I’m going outside to see V For Vendetta tomorrow. Which I’m actually kind of looking forward too. How very exciting.

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.