Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 52

My Top 1000 Songs #663: We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together

[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.] 

Look, it's my birthday today, and if I want to indulge myself in an unabashed guilty pleasure, I'm gonna do it, ok?

But, to be frank, I don't feel a lot of guilt over this one. Because a great pop song is a great pop song, and this is the epitome of the great pop song. It was fun, lightweight AM radio pop that first got me into music as a kid, bands like Sw...

My Top 1000 Songs #662: Wow And Flutter

[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.] 

It's funny--I've got at least a dozen Stereolab albums, but I probably couldn't name more than 3 or 4 of their songs. As with a lot of electronica-based music, I tend to put their music on in the background and enjoy the vibes, but don't necessarily actively listen and zero in on particular tracks. One of the few exceptions to that rule is "Wow And Flutter...

My Top 1000 Songs #661: Summer '68

[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 are better Pink Floyd songs, more deserving of inclusion on this list, but "Summer '68" has long been a sentimental favorite. It's an atypical song in their varied repertoire, even for the peripatetic years between Syd Barrett's departure and Dark Side--one of a handful of songs written and sung by keyboardist Rick Wright, whimsical and romantic (or ...

My Top 1000 Songs #660: Brave Captain

[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 realize it's blasphemy, but I listen to Firehose a lot more than I do the Minutemen. Obviously the latter were one of the most unique, groundbreaking post-punk bands of the 80s, a striking blend of jazz and punk and political theater... but after frontman D. Boon sadly passed, the new band--with singer/guitarist Ed Crawford out front--infused the mix wit...

My Top 1000 Songs #659: Burst

[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.] 

UK indie power pop band The Darling Buds' 1988 debut, Pop Said, is an embarrassment of riches, as packed with fizzy, grin-inducing, hook laden pop songs as the best work of the Undertones or Buzzcocks--or, perhaps most analogously, the Go-Go's. "Burst" is the tune I most closely associate with the album, though if I wanted to pick one or two tracks to repr...

New Releases: Polite Company

Meet my new favorite album of 2024! Please Go Wild is the debut from Polite Company, a project of Alan Gregg, a long-running New Zealand indie pop figure (he used to play in a band called the Mutton Birds, and in 2002 had a terrific well-below-the-radar project called Marshamallow, whose one-off self-titled LP is also worth checking out). 

The album is full of charming jangle pop that conjures the Pernice Brothers, and maybe latter-day Teenage Fanclub, but Gregg livens things up with some more ex...

My Top 1000 Songs #658: Sigh's Smell Of Farewell

[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.] 

"Sigh's Smell Of Farewell," off the Cocteau Twins' 1986 EP Love's Easy Tears, is almost astonishing in its beauty, the ethereal lullaby music and Elizabeth Fraser's non-lyric trills enveloping you like a warm cloud of silk. The darker goth edge of the band's early work is largely behind them, but they're not yet in the place of slicker dream pop of their l...

My Top 1000 Songs #657: Anything Could Happen

[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.] 

Pretty much every song on The Clean's 1986 collection of early singles--helpfully titled Compilation--is damn near perfect, raggedly half-assed post-punk shambles that somehow make DIY garage rock sound like high art. So why "Anything Could Happen"? Hard to say. I've already posted another track off the same 1981 Boodle Boodle Boodle EP where this one orig...

My Top 1000 Songs #656: Mayor Of Simpleton

[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 a few XTC songs I truly loved back in high school & college--I've already talked about "Generals & Majors" and "Senses Working Overtime" and "Earn Enough For Us"--but I was much more enamored of the jubilant, somewhat tongue-in-cheek retro-psychedelia they issued under their Dukes of Stratosphear side project. So I was really excited by 1989's O...

My Top 1000 Songs #655: The Bird

[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've often proclaimed my love for obscure late 60s psychedelia--and, hoo-boy, it doesn't get much more obscure than this. "The Bird" was a one-off 1969 single, released exclusively in France, by a band called Nimrod--which was an alter-ego of an only slightly-less obscure UK psychedelic band known as The State Of Micky & Tommy. (Why change their name to Ni...