Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 15

My Top 1000 Songs #986: Telephone Line

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Electric Light Orchestra were one of the bands commencing a massive commercial run just as I started getting into pop music as a 9-year-old kid. "Evil Woman" was in constant rotation when I first grew obsessed with Top 40 radio in 1975, and their string of mid-70s hits were as omnipresent in my early AM years as Sweet and Queen and Kiss. So, naturally, I mo...

My Top 1000 Songs #985: From A Balance Beam

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

As noted before, I'm kinda mixed on Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes. A little hit and miss. But this one hits, and hits hard. "From A Balance Beam," off 2002's Lifted, is fully-realized musically, and Oberst's enthusiastic angst is surprisingly compelling, a powerfully engaging, almost cinematic narrative that picks me up and takes me along for a ride. "It was...

My Top 1000 Songs #984: Tomorrow Night

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Yep--it's yet another power pop track from Shoes. The 1978 debut single from the woefully under-loved Illinois indie pop band (following some lo-fi LP releases) cleans things up nicely, some slightly new wave touches atop a pleasantly Beatlesque pop song. Hits all the right notes--some jangly guitars paired with Who-like power chord buzz, pretty harmonies, ...

My Top 1000 Songs #983: 2 Cool 2 Care

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

The opening track to indie singer-songwriter Anna Burch's 2018 debut, Quit The Curse, "2 Cool 2 Care" immediately established Burch as an artist to watch. Between Burch's slightly post-Phair disaffected Midwestern delivery and the lyrical expressions of modern unrequited love, the track feels like an HBO series about young women straddling Millennials and Z...

My Top 1000 Songs #982: Painted Soldiers

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

While Pavement were undeniably largely Stephen Malkmus' vehicle, I'm a sucker for guitarist Scott Kannberg's (a.k.a. Spiral Stairs) contributions. Generally relegated to a track or two per album, or a stray b-side, Kannberg's songs were often more straightforwardly catchy, and what he may have lacked in vocal range he made up for in wiggy pop enthusiasm. On...

The Best Of 2025 (So Far)

Wait, have I not uploaded the running list yet? Weird. Ok, well past 1/3 of the way through 2025, so we're long overdue.

Spotify playlist below; meanwhile, a few faves:

Momma, "I Want You (Fever)":

Exploding Flowers, "Crowded Streets":

Craig Finn, "Luke & Leanna":

Jetstream Pony, "Sit And Wonder":Ex-Vöid, "Strange Insinuation":

My Raining Stars, "Better Life"

Adult Mom, "You In June":

Nick Frater, " My Heart's In Stereo":

Blondshell, "What's Fair":My Morning Jacket, "Out In The Open":Girlpuppy, "I Just D...

New Releases: The High Water Marks

Elephant 6 OG Hilarie Sidney is one of the musicians keeping the 90s indie-alt-pop E6 movement alive. As the drummer for The Apples in Stereo, she generally contributed a couple tracks to each of their albums, frequently the catchiest numbers, unadulterated bubblegum delivered with her eternally girlish charm. Her second enterprise, The High Water Marks--Sidney joined by her partner Per Ole Bratset--have now been around over 20 years, and their discography is about as deep as the Apples'.

As on p...

My Top 1000 Songs #981: Movie Star

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

My love of obscure/overlooked early 70s rock tends to focus on rare no-hit wonders, which makes Help Yourself--who released 4 LPs between 1971-1973 (actually 5 if you count the one that sat in the vaults until 2004)--a little overqualified. A British band often grouped with the Pub Rock acts of the era, Help Yourself, like early Brinsley Schwarz, are more c...

My Top 1000 Songs #980: Mexican Radio

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

Wall Of Voodoo's "Mexican Radio," off their second LP (1982's Call Of The West), was among the jumble of New Wave-era songs I heard back in high school that helped me realize that there were a lot of things happening in rock & roll music that were much more interesting than the stale classic rock & Top 40 I'd spent my first half-decade as an avid music list...

My Top 1000 Songs #979: Don't Worry About The Government

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

I keep going back & forth between which song belongs here from Talking Heads:77. Sure, "Psycho Killer" is the best known (and perhaps most band-defining) track off the band's debut, but it suffers from a bit too much overplay. But for me, it comes down to "Don't Worry About The Government" and "Pulled Up." The latter, which closes out the original LP, was p...