The songs I can't stop listening to (9/29/12)

Stuff I'm listening to this week, and yes, the first one is actually me. The other night, I was in the presence of Ms. Carla Thomas, you know, the one who did "Tramp" with Otis Redding, daughter of Rufus Thomas, and I sat down at the piano and played and sang Nat King Cole's "Nature Boy." She loved it, so I took the extremely frightening step of doing that Nina Simone song for her. At that point she started making requests. Apparently I really should just get over my fears and make music my entire life. So that's a demo version of the Nina song that I recorded some months back. It's better now, because I'm better now than I was 6 months ago, but anyway. The Ben Folds/Rufus Wainwright cover is just ridiculous in how good it is. Amy LaVere is another great Memphis artist, and "A Great Divide" is about the need to escape from a relationship, a person, a break-up. I've been there. The Lykke Li song is about a person's willingness to follow another person to their greatest depths and, well, let's just say I've been there too. I have no fucking idea what the Suuns song is about, since I can't really understand the lyrics and can't find them online. That said, it's catchy as hell.

1. Evan Hurst - "I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl" (Nina Simone cover)
2. Lindstrøm & Christabelle - "Baby Can't Stop (Aeroplane Remix)
3. Metronomy - "She Wants"
4. Ben Folds & Rufus Wainwright - "Careless Whisper" (George Michael cover)
5. Amy LaVere - "A Great Divide"
6. Suuns - "Up Past The Nursery"
7. Lykke Li - "I Follow Rivers"

I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl by Evan Hurst

Jay Brannan

The Goddamned record. Some of it is really self-indulgent, but when it's good, it's really good. The realization that some experiences aren't necessarily universal, noticing how other writer's songs can seem autobiographical, and also noticing as a songwriter myself how songs I wrote a year ago are now imprinting the stories of other people I know onto themselves. Music is weird.

i don't know where we're going
but i know we've gone too far and
i hope it isn't showing
but i think i love you and
i can't believe you're leaving
when you had me believing
i could feel again
...
i've shown up for you
in ways that boy never would, but
i know you'll go back to him and
maybe you should, but
hope you don't go backwards
cuz i'm going on ahead and
one day you'll wish that you had
stuck with me instead



crazy about each other
we both have fucked up pasts
but when we are together
we have a fucking blast



to the boy who should've loved me
from the boy you could've had
i promise not to send this letter
i wouldn't want you to feel bad
for not opening your heart to me
for your unavailability
i guess you're not required to like me
but did you fake it just to spite me?
...
thanks for leading me on, but this time i'm gonna be strong
although your disinterest kinda came as a surprise cuz
you could the sin and the sadness and taste the gin and the madness
on my lips and in my eyes, well, i can't help that i want to see you again
but it takes two to start a string-along-song and only one to make it end

The songs I can't stop listening to (9/22/12)

Interesting little group of songs. We start introspective, shucking someone or something away that's been holding us down. We escape. We jump into some Rage Against The Machine, which is highly appropriate considering where we are with this election. A jaunty little tune about how Mormonism is a cult, but then another one about having a "mystic mind." And then finally introspective again, I'm "dreaming of you, but I don't want you anymore."

1. Tori Amos - "Talula" (live 10/3/01 Nashville)
2. The Raveonettes - "Suicide"
3. Rage Against The Machine - "Mic Check"
4. Shannon and the Clams - "The Cult Song"
5. Those Darlins - "Mystic Mind"
6. The Coral - "Dreaming Of You"

Yes. That specific live version of "Talula" is what I'm listening to. It's one of my favorite versions.

talula
talula
i don't want to lose him
he must be worth losing
if it is worth something
talula
talula
he's brand new now to you
wrapped in your papoose
your little fig newton

Tori Amos - "Talula" (live 10/3/01 Nashville, TN) 

Run run run away little girl
Get your fun in this trashy world
Empty-hearted boys by your side
Lick your lips and fuck suicide



This mic device I spit nonfiction 
Who got tha power 
This be my question 
Tha mass of tha few in this torn nation? 
Tha priest tha book or tha congregation? 
Tha politricks who rob and hold down your zone? 
Or those who give tha thieves tha key to their homes? 
Tha pig who's free to murder one Shucklak 
Or survivors who make a move and murder one back? 



Sick of the dancing sick of the chanting 
I don't wanna be in your cult no more 
Sick of the nikes sick of the kool-aid 
I don't wanna be in your cult no more 
Sick of moroni sick of nephi 
I don't wanna be in your cult no more



Open up my third eye
...
I got a mystic mind



Up in my lonely room
When I'm dreaming of you
Oh what can I do
I still need you, but
I don't want you now

Bon Iver

The thing I really can't stop listening to, and haven't been able to stop, for the past several weeks, is Bon Iver's self-titled record. Every time I think I'm done, I'm not. I love every song, and I can't pick favorites, and it works so well as a whole, so I'm going to post the whole thing. If you haven't heard it all, listen, and then go buy it.

1. Perth

I'm tearing up across your face
move dust through the light
to fide your name
...
still alive who you love
...
you're breaking your ground



2. Minnesota, WI

armour let it through, borne the arboretic truth you've been posing
sat down in the suit, fixed on up it wasn't you by finished closing
...
so carry on my dear, what is clear up in the daylight is we're hung here
fall is coming soon, a new year for the moon and the Hmong here



3. Holocene

"Someway, baby, it's part of me, apart from me."
you're laying waste to Halloween
you fucked it friend, it's on its head, it struck the street
you're in Milwaukee, off your feet
...
Christmas night, it clutched the light, the hallow bright
above my brother, I and tangled spines
we smoked the screen to make it what it was to be
now to know it in my memory:

...and at once I knew I was not magnificent



4. Towers

for the love, I'd fallen on
in the swampy August dawn
what a mischief you would bring young darling!
when the onus is not all your own
when you're up for it before you've grown



5. Michicant

aiming and it sunk and we were drunk and we had fleshed it out
...
love can hardly leave the room with your heart



6. Hinnom, TX

all this time
with your heart in mind
didn't you edit
...
armor, down
on the wettest ground
not to vet it



7. Wash.

I... I'm growing like the quickening hues
I... I'm telling darkness from lines on you



8. Calgary

Joy, it's all founded
pincher with the skin inside
You pinned me with your black sphere eyes
You know that all the rope's untied
I was only for to die beside



9. Lisbon, OH



10. Beth/Rest

all the news at the door
such a revelry
well, it's hocked inside of everything you said to me

it was found what we orphaned
didn't mention it would serve us picked
said your love is known
I'm standing up on it.
...
our love is a star
sure some hazardry
for the light before and after most indefinitely

danger has been stole away

The songs I can't stop listening to (9/16/12)

Here's what's on repeat right now. It's all kinda indie, and it's all sort of contemplative.

1. Delta Spirit - "Children"
2. Band Of Horses - "Compliments"
3. Fleet Foxes - "Mykonos"
4. Veronica Falls - "Beachy Head"
5. Arcade Fire - "Black Mirror"
6. Chad VanGaalen - "Sara"
7. Frightened Rabbit ft. Tracyanne Campbell - "Fuck This Place"

Children shut your eyes, we'll tell you what to see...

A good song for the current political climate.



I'm fixing a drink in the morning 
With the way things are 
You may have stayed too long
 ... 
 And do you got something to say 
Is there something coming over you? 
Do you got important things still left to do?


And you will go to Mykonos 
With a vision of a gentle coast 
And a sun to maybe dissipate 
Shadows of the mess you made 

 ... 

When a-walking brother don't you forget 
It ain't often that you'll ever find a friend



I'm gonna miss you 
When you're gone 

Beachy head



Their names are never spoken 
The curse is never broken



You consume my mind into silence


At the end, at the close 
Would you be good enough to take me home?

The songs I can't stop listening to (9/8/12)

I'm the mood for boys who write beautiful songs. And Kristin Hersh. Exploration, romantic vengeance, vengeful romance, hopeful romance, resignation, the hard road to making peace with what's happened, a quick visit back to the one who "cut you to the quick," meditation, the need for escape, and the realization that when the right one really does come along, you'd better be ready, lest you let life completely pass you by. Things on my mind this week, things running through these songs. Here's what I've been listening to on repeat this week:

1. Josh Ritter - "Another New World"
2. Pete Yorn - "Simonize"
3. Pete Yorn - "A Girl Like You"
4. The Beatles - "Don't Let Me Down"
5. Josh Rouse - "Start Again"
6. Kristin Hersh - "Quick"
7. Harold Budd & Brian Eno - "The Plateaux Of Mirror"
8. American Analog Set - "Hard To Find"
9. The Head and The Heart - "Coeur d'Alene"

The leading lights of the age all wondered among themselves what I would do next,
After all that I'd found, in my circles around the world, was there anything left?
"Gentlemen," I said, "I've studied the maps, and if what I am thinking is right,
There's another new world, at the top of the world, for whoever can break through the ice...

...

I won't call it rescue,
What brought me back here to this old world to drink and decline,
Pretend that the search for another new world was well worth the burning of mine.
But sometimes at night, in my dreams,
Comes the singing of some unheard tropical bird,
And I smile in my sleep,
Thinking Annabel Lee's finally made it to the top of the world.

An incredible song about the search.



A beautiful, romantic song about, ahem, a serial killer. I want to cover this song and the one after it together, but in the reverse order from which they appear on the record:

Hey
Don't take your life away
I think you'd rather stay
Follow me into the alleyway...



Someday
I'll look into her green eyes
And know that she'll come with me
A girl like you

Too many
Things I do not care for
But one things that I adore
Is a girl like you



I'm in love for the first time
Don't you know it's gonna last?
It's a love that lasts forever
It's a love that has no past

Don't let me down.



And now the pain subsides
And I have realized
That you have changed your mind
And I will start again

...

And all the pain subsides
And I have realized
With you I feel alive
And I can start again



who did you cut down to the quick?
you know it's true

hold back, you've been saved
hold your breath, you've been saved
hold your tongue, you've been saved

maintain your ground

...

can't make your mind up anymore
you're naked on the floor



Unwind.


We stay hard to find
'Cause it's too hard to take it
...
No, we can't fake it


You're in my soul now
You've gotta waste away with me...

The songs I can't stop listening to (9/2/12)

Here's the list of songs I've been listening to a lot this week. There seems to be a running theme going on about seizing life, love and empowerment.

1. Miles Davis, Bill Laswell - "He Loved Him Madly"
2. Nicki Minaj ft. Drake - "Moment 4 Life"
3. Willie Nelson - "This Face"
4. The New Pornographers - "The Spirit Of Giving"
5. The Beatles - "If I Fell"
6. Cass McCombs - "Harmonia"
7. Tori Amos & Natashya Hawley - "Job's Coffin"



Everybody dies but not everybody lives...



This face is all I have, worn and lived in
And lines below my eyes are like old friends
And this old heart's been beaten up
And my ragged soul has had things rough
And this face is all I have, worn and lived in



And remember that the wolves that you run with are wolves
Don't forget

They exist to give you something to regret, I'll beat them to it
With something sadder than that brass portrait
That shines through your morning din



If I fell in love with you
Would you promise to be true
And help me understand
'Cause I've been in love before
And I found that love was more
Than just holding hands

If I give my heart to you
I must be sure
From the very start
That you would love me more than her

If I trust in you oh please
Don't run and hide
If I love you too oh please
Don't hurt my pride like her...



Friend of mine
united by dream
make me a part of you
and I will you of me



Since time why do we women
give ourselves away?

We give ourselves away
Thinking somehow
That will make him want to stay

Make him stay

Job's coffin looks down
At the day you
Shut your power down

You must outcreate
That destructive tendency
Let your fire start to heal the fury...