Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 41

The Shop Window: Daysdream

I think most Twitter users can agree that Twitter is a truly awful place. The current owner (I refuse to use his stupid re-branded name for the site) eviscerated what scant moderation they had and made the platform safe for the very worst of humanity. Plus, said owner is doing his part to ruin his adopted nation, amplifying the voices of Nazis and Trumpies and anti-vaxxers and the other dregs of society. It's pretty gross.

Yet despite frequent pledges to myself that I should just get the hell out...

My Top 1000 Songs #756: Brill Bruisers

[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 New Pornographers' Carl Newman isn't afraid to go big, packing even the band's most straightforward songs with dense arrangements and unpredictable melodies, steering clear of more comfortable power pop. But the title track off 2014's Brill Bruisers goes particularly big--over-the-top bombast that calls to mind the unabashed prog theatricality of the F...

My Top 1000 Songs #755: Here It Is Tomorrow

[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.] 

Another one of those tracks that helps define my mid-80s college radio DJ'ing days, a song way off the radar for most of the known universe but has always held lingering joy for me.
My prior Game Theory selections on the list captured the band's Paisley Underground gentle jangle-pop vibe, pretty and poppy; but "Here It Is Tomorrow," the opening cut on 1986'...

My Top 1000 Songs #754: Skag & Bone Man

[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.] 

A bare trifle of a song that doesn't really belong here... The Libertines didn't even include it on a proper LP, relegating it to a b-side. But it's a shy-of-two-minute gleeful punk nugget, the incomprehensible but utterly joyful sound of drunken British hooligans ranting on about something, with a hook that I simply can't get out of my head. I'm sure the ...

My Top 1000 Songs #753: The Flowers Of Guatemala

[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.] 

There were plenty of truly pretty moments on R.E.M.'s first few albums (see, e.g., "So. Central Rain," my favorite R.E.M. song, off 1984's Reckoning ). But "The Flowers Of Guatemala" offers transplendent beauty beyond anything found on their first 3.5 LPs (opening the door to the similarly stunning ballads found on later works). On 1986's Life's Rich Pagean...

My Top 1000 Songs #752: Alone Again Or

[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.] 

Frankly, there are a ton of classic oldies from the 60s that are undeniably great but left off this list because I sort of take them for granted... songs that have always been out there, from long before my musical awakening, deeply embedded in my consciousness after years of radio airplay and other cultural saturation, that I don't really think about them...

My Top 1000 Songs #751: The Mercy Seat

[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.] 

Took a few days off from this reverse-countdown, but dammit we've got 250 more songs to cover before we can rest... 
Nick Cave (& The Bad Seeds, to be complete) is one of those artists I absolutely respect, and all the right people totally revere his work, but I've never been a serious listener. (See also, e.g., post-60s Dylan, Tom Waits, Captain Beefheart,...

Another New Release: Lunar Vacation

Yes, I just wrote up a whole fistful of new releases a few days ago (go check it out and get listening!). But I've since stumbled across one more, and it's a doozy.

My purchases these days tend to fall into several buckets: jangly indie bands that remind me of the Feelies and Flying Nun acts like the Bats/Clean (see, e.g., Ducks Ltd., Chime School, Quivers, Umbrellas);and jangly but more power-pop-oriented acts reminiscent of Teenage Fanclub (see, e.g., Laughing, Boys With The Perpetual Nervousne...

The Clash (?): Cut The Crap, Rebooted

There are days when you're reminded what a gift the internet can still sometimes be. I was on a random online music trawl when I came across a home-brewed remake of the final Clash [sic] album, 1985's regrettable, and ironically titled, Cut The Crap. 

The tale of Crap is well-trod ground: Having booted Mick Jones from the band in 1983 (a year after drummer Topper Headon departed), Joe Strummer cobbled together a new, imitation Clash and took a stab at a new record. It's a disastrous mess, relentl...

Sufjan Stevens: Come On Feel The Illinoise

Wow, has it really been (nearly) 20 years? Sufjan Stevens' 2005 epic Come On Feel The Illinoise felt like an event at the time, and while it's not the sort of record I play more than every once in a long while, I pulled it out this weekend and it's still... well, rather remarkable. Somewhere between the gentle balladry of Elliott Smith and a way-over-the-top cocaine-frazzled 80s Broadway production (where it's apparently ended up!), it's an unabashedly proggy concept album, tales of the state's ...