Another Form of Relief

If there’s one thing that’ll quickly turn me off of something, it’s the influence of religion upon it. So reading about The Mountain Goats’ new album The Life of the World to Come was a little worrying given every song is named after a Bible verse. Other than the awesome sounding Deuteronomy 2:10, it didn’t exact get me excited about the album. Which is a shame, as I’ve adored virtually every previous release. Thankfully John Darnielle reassured somewhat with this posting on his website:

I guess the obvious question is going to be: “John, have you had some sort of religious awakening?” and while I guess lots of people might want to be coy about answering that, that’s never really been my style, so: no. It’s not like that. It’s not some heavy-narrative-distance deal either, though, and it’s not a screed. It’s twelve new songs: twelve hard lessons the Bible taught me, kind of. More than that I’d want to wait to say until some people have heard it, which won’t be long.

So I suppose I’m now wary but not put off. Although if I’m honest, I don’t love Genesis 3:23, the first song made available from it. It has the usual beautiful imagery (which has always been Darnielle’s primary talent), but it all feels rather lighter than it should. This is probably down to the addition of the organ, but it gives the song a jaunty step that it doesn’t really need.

It’s certainly not bad. Indeed, I’m not sure The Mountain Goats are actually capable of putting up poor material. Odds are, even if the album is of this calibre, it’ll still end up being one of my albums of the year. Perhaps I’m just setting the bar too high. But when your back catalogue includes No Children, This Year and The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton, I suppose that’s to be expected.

The Life of the World to Come will be released on October 6 via 4AD. The Mountain Goats will play a stripped down show (just John and his guitar) on October 10 at the Southbank Centre in London. Of course, this is the same evening I’ll be at An Evening With Kevin Smith at the O2. Bloody typical.

Over the years, I’ve posted some pretty geeky things on this blog. This one might just take the biscuit though. The mighty Mountain Goats, amongst their eighteen album releases every year, have made a song told from the point of view of Toad. That’s Toad from the Mario Bros. games.

The song was released as part of a six song EP a few months ago. It features the work of Kaki King, a singer-songwriter whom I had never heard of previously but should probably now explore on the basis of this alone. The song is a gentle, full of piano driven melancholy about Toad feeling scared of what is happening around him. It never quite lives up to it’s title or premise, but it remains the finest song ever written from the point of view of a Nintendo character.

I’d love to tell you that you can purchase the Black Pear Tree EP somewhere, but seemingly it was only released on vinyl and now it’s all gone. So go and torrent it or something.

I admit that I’m still struggling somewhat with Heretic Pride, the newest release from The Mountain Goats. There’s nothing wrong with it all, but I’m drawn more toward them when they are focusing on the personal (as the last albums did) rather than the abstract. While they may not have grabbed me in the way that they have previously, some of the songs on it are still pretty damn good. One of them is Sax Rohmer #1. Essentially a pulp novel in song form, we flash through tales of street urchins, sailors and Chinese spies. The second guitar is performed by St. Vincent too, a fact I learnt all of thirty seconds ago.

You can read John Darnielle and Jeffery Lewis’ three page comic book that explains the background of each song on Heretic Pride here.

The Mountain Goats intimidate me. Not in the literal sense of course, but rather that I find their back cataog to be far too large. I only discovered them a couple of years ago when ‘The Sunset Tree’ was doing the rounds. Since then, I’ve explored them a little, but their output is simply too prolific for me to be able to get through all of it without rushing through it, which would probably result in me failing to form any connection with most of it. It’s a vicious cycle. So far I’ve explored most of the newer, less lo-fi content, but the thought of heading back further is daunting.

Occasionally I use the Live Music Archive as a way of looking through recent shows, listening to both the songs I know and the ones I don’t as a way of becoming more familiar with old “favourites”. There’s never a shortage of cotent to explore with nearly 50 complete Mountain Goats shows in the archive. Looking around recently though I noticed that the band are perfoming their cover version of ‘The Boys Are Back In Town Again’. I know they played this on a French radio session once and have a rip of it, but thought I’d listen to how they play it now.

The first thing I noticed is that the song was listed as “with Pony Up!”, which was a surprise to me as I didn’t even know they were touring together though. It’s certainly an interesting combination, and enjoying both bands, I couldn’t resist giving it a listen. The most surprising aspect was that it’s the polar opposite to the previous version I’d heard, with this one being upbeat and quite rocking. This is something of a contrast to the slowed down, mildly creepy version that I’d heard previously.

Now Pony Up! add little to this beyond backing vocals on the chorus, but it gives the song a little extra depth, and everyone sounds like they are having a fun time with it. Of course, John can’t resist bursting into a quick rendition of R Kelly’s ‘Ignition Remix’ before the song is over, which seems to now be standard.

MP3 The Mountain Goats & Pony Up! – The Boys Are Back In Town (live) (expired)

Boring details: The quality isn’t particularly great, but most live recordings tend to be like that. It’s certainly more than listenable though. If you’re interested in the little details, this was recorded at the Independent in San Francisco on 8 March 2007. You can listen to the entire show that it was recorded from here.

The Mountain Goats: Website
Pony Up!: Website || Myspace

Okay, so I realise that 49 songs is a pretty random number. I don’t entirely know why I chose it. It’s just that 50 seemed rather generic to me. I also know that the ordering on a lot of these songs is slightly absurd. Isn’t #36 really better than #37? I honestly couldn’t tell you as my opinion probably changes from day to day. So take the numbering with a pinch of salt. It’s a rough guide, nothing more. I should also point out that I limited any band to having no more than two songs each in the 49. So much as I would have loved to filled this with Voxtrot, Young Republic or Light Footwork songs, I had to use a little self restraint. So now you know some of my methodology, enjoy the next ten songs.

#39
The Mountain Goats
‘Woke Up New’

Website
Myspace

“This isn’t the John Darnielle that we heard on the last two records. The song tells the story of getting used to being alone after the big breakup and uses wonderfully real examples of getting used to being alone (”the first time I made coffee for just myself, I made too much of it”). It all essentially comes down to a refrain of “oh, what will I do without you?”. It isn’t an angry question though, just accepting that this is how things are now.” – originally posted June 17.

#38
Cansei De Ser Sexy
‘This Month, Day 10′

Website
Myspace

Probably the most cheerful sounding break-up song of the past year. CSS seem to be about an image just as much as the music, and when it sounds/looks this good, who really cares? There’s nothing overly complex in the arrangements here, just a lot of synth and some rather bored sounding vocals. All of which makes it a hell of a lot of funny, even when the lead singer is belting out lines like “if someday we get to meet again / In a car crash, plane wreck or terrorist attack / Or maybe next thursday night / Don’t bother saying hi”.

#37
National Heroes
‘Riot Vans / CS Cans’

Website
Myspace

A glorious assault on the “chav” culture that seems to have almost consumed the UK. I only discovered National Heroes toward the end of the year and don’t know a great deal about them, but they have obviously been listening to a lot of the great British bands. A storming snapshot of modern Britain, covering such lovely topics as teen pregnancy (“Teenage drugs and pregnant mums / Birth control is non-existant”) to the wonderful street racers you encounter on the roads each day (“Boy racers cruising in their financed 205s / Keep touching 90 down the A1205″) all leading to the simple refrain that it’s just “a sign of the times”. Assuming they get noticed, they could be the next big thing for British music in 2007.

#36
Belle & Sebastian
‘Sukie In The Graveyard’

Website
Myspace

Even though most seem to love it, ‘The Life Pursuit’ really doesn’t do very much for me. It’s a reasonable enough album with some solid singles, but on the whole it leaves me pretty cold. I guess I fall into the simplistic early Belle and Sebastian camp rather than the things they come up with now. Oh well, it still has those solid singles, and ‘Sukie In The Graveyard’ is one of them. One of the things I really don’t like about new Belle & Sebastian is how Murdoch constantly plays around with different styles of delivery. Ironically, ‘Sukie’ is one of the songs where he does this, pitching the song with a heavily accented, rapid delivery, and yet it works for it perfectly. The song sounds cheerful enough until you actually listen the words, where it becomes a rather dark tale of a girl kicked out of her house who ends up posing nude to make ends meet. Not that she seems to care of course. Oh Belle and Sebastian, and your wonderful shades of grey.

#35
Royal Treatment Plant
‘You Don’t Need Me’

Website
Myspace

Royal Treatment Plant are a band that I went from hating to really liking within the course of a month. I really disliked them when I saw them live in September, but I got their CD in the mail a few days later and I really liked it. I’m not sure what didn’t click the first time around, but it was this song that largely won me over. It’s full of driving guitars and some fantastic passive-agressive vocals sung with an urgency that doesn’t often seem to crop up from female fronted British bands.

#34
Play Radio Play
‘Juice Box, Paper Hat and a Line of Pixie Stix’

Website
Myspace

If there’s one thing this kid needs, it’s an editor. Which may sound like a harsh way to open, but it’s rather true. Play Radio Play is a 17 year old from Texas who makes simple electronic songs on his computer. A lot of them are pretty awful. But some of the good ones are really good. ‘Juice Box’ is one of them. It’s all pretty whimsical, about escaping from life to a fantasy world where you’re in control, but the delivery and arrangement prove that there is talent here to make Postal Service like electro-pop perfection. He’s just been signed to Island, so hopefully with a little guidance he’ll be able to reign in some of the eccentric elements of his music and come up with something stunning.

#33
Sparrow House
‘When I Am Gone’

Website
Myspace

Sparrow House is the solo project of Jared Van Fleet, who is a member of the fantastic Voxtrot. The sound of Sparrow House is nothing like that of Voxtrot though. ‘When I Am Gone’ is from his debut EP, ‘Falls’, and is a stunning folk effort that comes across as a latter day Iron & Wine. A gentle, twanging guitar eases up through the song, while Van Fleet sings his heartbreaking lament over the top. It’s almost enough to wonder exactly what we’d be hearing from this guy if he wasn’t a member of Voxtrot. Almost.

#32
Absentee
‘Something To Bang’

Website
Myspace

“This is a band that describes their sound as “Leonard Cohen singing from the trouser backed up with a mix of incompetence and occasional surprise”. So I started to listen to ‘Something To Bang’. It all started normally enough, all garage band guitars and bassline, and then, forty five seconds in, the vocal kicks in. That’s the point where I discovered they really weren’t kidding with the Leonard Cohen thing. Lead singer Dan does have a voice that evokes Cohen, and more importantly, a voice that isn’t usually found in indie rock. Indie rock is often made up of those who can’t really sing but really want to rock out, and the music will disguise that well. The people with the stronger voices seem to go on and do other things. This isn’t exactly a perfect rule, but it fits quite a lot of the time. I guess my point here is that there’s a voice here that you don’t commonly hear. The closest contemporary comparison I can think of is David Berman, and that’s certainly not a bad thing. As the song progresses, more musical flourishes enter. There are keyboards in here, sneaky little riffs and a bunch of other fun stuff. All of this results in an indie-country-rock type sound that you don’t often hear coming from bands on this side of the Atlantic.” – originally posted June 24.

#31
The Bright Lights
‘Closed on Monday’

Website
Myspace

I discovered The Bright Lights entirely by accident when they headlined a Beeches gig that I’d been invited too. Unfortunately I had to leave before their set was over, but a quick rummage around the internet later showed they had a hell of a lot of talent. The songs aren’t all that bold, but by god they are catchy, with the kind of urgent vocal delivery that makes them come to an end seemingly far too quickly. ‘Closed on Monday’ is by far their best effort, a fantastic piece of guitar pop. They are due to release a single (their first I think) in March, so hopefully 2007 will be the year that things start happen for them.

#30
Oh No! Oh My!
‘I Have No Sister’

Website
Myspace

Handclaps! Electronica! Non-sensical lyrics! What’s not to love about Oh No! Oh My!? Their whole album is full of delightful little gems but it’s ‘I Have No Sister’ that stands out the most to me. A gleeful song about feeling better by being with someone, even if it means suggesting that they both “ride bikes into the sea”. The whole thing is darker lyrically than it sounds musically, and things like “if I die then at least you’ll die too” really should be rather morbid, but somehow it manages to seem forever gleeful.

You should know how it works by now. Ten more tomorrow, ten more Friday and the final nine on Saturday.

I always thought when I started this thing that I wouldn’t bother with “lame” things like lists of the top ten of the year and stuff like that, but now that we’ve reached the halfway point of the year, I feel the need to look back over just some of the fantastic music I’ve discovered since I started the blog. With that in mind, I now present my top ten songs of the year so far. Obviously this list isn’t perfect, and probably contains some 2005 songs too, but they are all ones that I’ve discovered this year. Seeing as all of these songs are so good, I’m not even going to try and rank them, so they are here in a nice and simple alphabetical order.

MP3 The Foundry Field Recordings – Buried Beneath The Winter Frames (expired) (Prompts/Miscues)
Grandaddy-esque lo-fi rock from Billy Schuh’s Missouri band. This entire album is quickly becoming one of my favourites, and is perfectly represented by ‘Buried Beneath The Winter Frames’, an upbeat, distortion coated guitar song, topped off by Schuh’s abstract words and restrained voice.
The Foundry Field Recordings: Website || Myspace

MP3 I’m From Barcelona – We’re From Barcelona (expired) (Let Me Introduce My Friends)
Wonderfully cheerful music from the 29 band members that make up Sweden’s I’m From Barcelona. It’s all pretty non-sensical and silly, but boy can it brighten up a day. ‘Let Me Introduce My Friends’, their debut album, is full of numbers like this, and performed in such a way that it never becomes grating.
I’m From Barcelona: Website || Myspace

MP3 Jenny Owen Youngs – Fuck Was I (Batten The Hatches)
An insanely good songwriting talent from New York, with a voice that’s far more developed than her years would have you believe. Backed up with an impressive array of strings, ‘Fuck Was I’ is pretty much the ultimate regret song. If this girl hasn’t made it big in the next couple of years, something is very wrong in the world.
Jenny Owen Youngs: Website || Myspace

MP3 Kate Nash – The Nicest Thing (expired)
I’m not sure what I can say about Kate Nash here that I haven’t said over the past couple of weeks. Simply one of the finest songwriters I have heard recently, backed up with a fantastic voice. Dodgy production aside, ‘The Nicest Thing’ is just a beautiful song.
Kate Nash: Myspace

MP3 The Light Footwork – Coastlines Are Landmines (expired) (One State Two State)
‘One State Two State’ is about my favourite album that I’ve bought this year, and it still sounds entirely fresh several months on. The Light Footwork are a two-piece making simply great music. With lyrical skills similar to that of Malkmus and Beulah like melodies, these guys should be something big in the near future.
The Light Footwork: Website || Myspace

MP3 The Mountain Goats – Woke Up New (expired) (Get Lonely)
The prolific Mountain Goats are back once more with yet another album, and ‘Woke Up New’ is an excellent preview of what is hopefully to come. More restrained and introspective than ‘The Sunset Tree’, the song covers the period immediately after a break-up. As such, it isn’t the happiest songs, but the little observations give the song a realism not often found.
The Mountain Goats: Website

MP3 Nathan Asher & The Infantry – Turn Up The Faders (expired) (Sex Without Love)
New band Nathan Asher & The Infantry somehow managed to bridge the gap between Bright Eyes and Bruce Springsteen, combining shaky, uncertain vocals with flashes of hard rock and the odd piano breakdown. If these guys haven’t signed to a major label yet, it’ll be happening very soon.
Nathan Asher & The Infantry: Website || Myspace

MP3 Sky Larkin – Keepsakes (expired)
A fantastic little band from Leeds who keep putting out demos that are getting better and better. ‘Keepsakes’ comes from the latest batch of these, and allows them to reach new heights, both musically and lyrically. One of the few British bands that I’m genuinely excited to hear more songs from.
Sky Larkin: Website || Myspace

MP3 Voxtrot – Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives (Mothers, Daughters, Sisters & Wives EP)
The songs on the ‘Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives’ EP never quite reach the brilliance that was ‘The Start Of Something’ from last years ‘Raised By Wolves’ EP, but they are still great songs. This title track is the best of them, a pounding number that brings together 80’s British rock with the sounds of the 60’s. Throw in Ramesh Srivastava’s voice and you have the perfect combination for success. I’ll put money on them being somewhere on The OC soundtrack in the next twelve months.
Voxtrot: Website || Myspace

MP3 The Young Republic – Modern Plays (Modern Plays)
The Young Republic are a nine-piece from Boston making some fantastic orchestral pop music. ‘Modern Plays’ is the title song from their latest release, a more abstract affair than their previous works, allowing them to pull away from the inevitable Belle & Sebastian comparisons a little. Oh, and did I mention that this why they are all still in college? They will go a very long way if they stick with this into the future.
The Young Republic: Website || Myspace

Other mid-year goodness..

Mike at Nothing But Green Lights has a 19 song mix of the best music from the first six months of year, including more Sky Larkin and Voxtrot, as well as some fantastic music that may be brand new to you.

Ryan at Good Hodgkins has posted up his seven essential albums of the year so far, including Belle & Sebastian, Figurines and Band of Horses.

Calum at Mocking Music has numbers 5-10 of his top ten albums of the year so far. Presumably the top five will be following soon, and there’s sure to be some good stuff in there.

As a preview for the upcoming Pitchfork music festival, the good folks over at emusic have put up a free sampler containing songs from a bunch of the artists that will be playing there. There’s a lot of good stuff included in it, with songs from Art Brut, Ted Leo, The National, Yo La Tengo and a bunch of others. Most interestingly of all though is the inclusion of a brand new Mountain Goats song, entitled ‘Woke Up New’.

‘Woke Up New’ is taken from their upcoming album, ‘Get Lonely’, which if press releases are to be believed, will be the “quiet, haunted aftermath” to ‘The Sunset Tree’, with a mood of “bittersweet resignation”. We all know that press releases tend to punch these things up a bit, but if ‘Woke Up New’ is fitting of the whole album, it’s spot on. This isn’t the John Darnielle that we heard on the last two records. The song tells the story of getting used to being alone after the big breakup and uses wonderfully real examples of getting used to being alone (“the first time I made coffee for just myself, I made too much of it”). It all essentially comes down to a refrain of “oh, what will I do without you?”. It isn’t an angry question though, just accepting that this is how things are now.

MP3 The Mountain Goats – Woke Up New (expired)

‘Get Lonely’ will be released on August 22 on 4AD.

The Mountain Goats: Website

I’m incredibly tired and ill and thus have a strong desire to lay down, so I’m afraid it’ll have to be a brief one this evening. It’s also probably something all of you cool people already know about, but it was new to me so I thought I’d share it.

While idly browsing through the Mountain Goats’ website, trying to find out more about a band I criminally don’t know anywhere near enough about, I stumbled details of an unreleased 7″ called ‘Jack and Faye’. Best of all, as it was never released, it’s been made available free of charge to us good folks on the internet.

Now granted I don’t know a great deal about The Mountain Goats. I only discovered them last year when ‘The Sunset Tree’ was doing the rounds. I then got hold of ‘Tallahasse’, and I like both albums a hell of a lot. I’ve got a few other bits and pieces since then, all of which have impressed me greatly, so it was rather nice to stumble across this little bonus.

The songs themselves were recorded all the way back in late ‘95 / early ‘96, and yet they still sound incredibly fresh even today. Most of these, particularly ‘Raid on Entebbe’ could have come from their recent works, so it’s scary to think that I was only 12 when these were being recorded. Still, you don’t come here to read about me feeling the ravages of time, you’re mostly just here for the music.

MP3 The Mountain Goats – Raid On Entebbe
MP3 The Mountain Goats – Adair
MP3 The Mountain Goats – An Inscription At Salonae
MP3 The Mountain Goats – There Will Always Be An Ireland

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.

I’m pretty tired tonight (it’s amazing just how exhausted I get from bowling and then working, but no matter) so this’ll be a brief one. We’re also going for a non-standard type post, and I’m just going to post a bunch of covers that I’ve been enjoying a lot lately. I’ll admit now that I’m a massive fan of covers. As such, this’ll probably become a regular feature. By regular I mean when I can be botherd, not having a set day for them or whatever. I’ll leave that to Chad at Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands (saturdays in case you are wondering). I know there are a bunch of people that hate them as if they take something away from the original song or something, but I always like hearing what artists can do with other people’s material. Covers that I’m currently liking a lot:

MP3 The Mountain Goats – The Boys Are Back In Town / Ignition Remix (expired) (Thin Lizzy / R Kelly)
Sorry for the slightly crappy quality on this one, but it seems to have been recorded from a French radio stream. It’s worth it though as not only do The Mountain Goats turn Thin Lizzy’s rocking song into something considerably more laid back, but they also suddenly burst into a cover of R Kelly’s Ignition Remix toward the end, which has to be one of the strangest medleys in quite some time.

MP3 Arctic Monkeys – Love Machine (expired) (Girls Aloud)
When I said I was a fan of covers, I forgot to mention that I’m particularly a fan of ones that really shouldn’t work, but somehow end up being rather awesome. This is a prime example of that. Take a generic pop song by a rather crappy girl band (I know they have their fans, but come on), give it to this weeks “saviours of rock and roll” (copyright NME 1995-2006) and you get an alarmingly catchy outcome. I still think the song is still rather dire, but the way the Monkeys give it their all, play it straight (mostly) and actually manage to pull it off is quite an incredible feat.

MP3 Ben Folds – Bitches Ain’t Shit (expired) (Dr. Dre)
Yet another “shouldn’t work, but somehow does” cover. Quite how one would go about turning a gangsta rap song into a pretty mellow piano song. It’s one of the most foul mouthed things you’ll ever hear (unless you listen to gangsta rap regularly I guess), yet somehow it’s entirely great. I can’t stand rap on the most part yet I really like this, despite the song itself being pretty dire. I suppose it’s more respecting the achievement of it than anything else, but I like it a lot.

MP3 Stars – This Charming Man (expired) (The Smiths)
I’m not a massive Smiths fan, no matter how much I try to appreciate them. However, This Charming Man is one of the few songs that I really enjoy. Which made me slightly worried about this cover of it given Death Cab’s complete and utter slaughtering of it on their You Can Play These Songs.. album a few years ago. I shouldn’t have worried though, as Stars don’t make the mistake of trying to be Morrissey. Instead, the make the song their own, turning up the electronica and slowing down the pace. It’s not as good as the original, but it’s dares to be different, and that’s what a cover should do.

Seeing as this blog is becoming my primary place to write, I’m going to use it to occasionally vent about other things given I’m not updating my regular blog anymore. As such, I’d like to register my disappoint with HBO’s Big Love. I guess it’s mostly my fault for expecting it just be a pologamy themed Six Feet Under. I was really getting my hopes up after another awesome HBO credit sequence (honestly, have they ever made a bad one?) but it collapsed quickly after. It was just kind of a nothingness. With the addition of a little comedy it could be something great, but played entirely straight it just doesn’t really work without coming off as dull. It might improve, and I’ll give it a few episodes, but I’m really not convinced so far.

Ok, so that ended up being far more than just a brief one. Now I’m going to go to bed before I collapse and wake up tomorrow morning in a heap on my floor.