Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 74

My Top 1000 Songs #454: Girl Of My Dreams

[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.]

Bram Tchaikovsky's (ex-Motors) 1979 single "Girl Of My Dreams" is the perfect realization of UK new wave/power pop (right up there with the Records' "Starry Eyes" and a couple others we may meet soon enough). Jangly Rickenbacker guitars, soaring harmonies, an earworm chorus you'll never forget, and a deceptively endearing love story about a man and his blow...

My Top 1000 Songs #453: Half Dead

[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.]

This is my second pick off the Mountain Goats' 2006 "break-up" album, Get Lonely. And like "Woke Up New," it's a harrowingly detailed account of the morning after. "Half Dead" is only marginally less devastating, but again the beauty of the song--gently strummed guitars, the longing in John Darnielle's vocals, those bells in the bridge--and the signs of lig...

My Top 1000 Songs #452: Lawyers Guns & Money

[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.]

What's not to love about "Lawyers Guns & Money," from Warren Zevon's 1978 LP Excitable Boy? Sure, "Werewolves of London" got most of the attention, and the title track is pretty great (albeit yet another ugly song about a murderer, and we just had one of those). But "Lawyers" is the highlight for me. Killer guitar riff. Wickedly amusing lyrics ("I'm hiding ...

My Top 1000 Songs #451: Eating Noddemix

[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.]

With today's recording technology, musicians can record "bedroom records" which sound as fully-formed as a big-bucks studio recording. But when I first heard Young Marble Giants' 1980 lone LP Colossal Youth back in college, it felt like nothing I'd ever heard before. A couple kids with some rudimentary instruments (and musicianship) sitting next to you in y...

My Top 1000 Songs #450: What I Like About You

[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.]

Gonna violate one of my primary rules for this list, i.e., stick to songs I actually listen to. Because, frankly, I can't see myself walking over to the stereo and cueing up the Romantics' "What I Like About You" (from 1980's eponymous debut). Like, ever. It was so overplayed in my youth that, nope, not gonna do it. It's like the 80s version of "Stairway to...

My Top 1000 Songs #449: Evil

[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'll concede that, to the extent I listen to Interpol these days, it's largely limited to their debut, 2002's Turn On The Bright Lights, which did a tremendous job updating and Americanizing its unabashed Joy Division influence. Still, the 2004 follow-up, Antics, is pretty solid, and did offer a killer single in "Evil." The song somehow manages to maintain ...

My Top 1000 Songs #448: Circuital

[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 title track off My Morning Jacket's 2011 LP Circuital does a majestic job capturing the dynamics of what makes them one of the greatest live acts of recent decades, a studio track that take time to build and makes great use of open spaces. Jim James' arena-ready vocals, backed by a perky bassline and some spooky electronics, make a slow, gradual entranc...

My Top 1000 Songs #447: Queen Jane Approximately

[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 with many (most?) of the Bob Dylan tracks on the list, I'm more partial to the covers than the original, being more of a fan of Dylan as songwriter than singer. In this case, it was the Grateful Dead that triggered my devotion to this particular track, a surprisingly heartfelt, moving love song off 1965's Highway 61 Revisited with an endlessly infectious...

My Top 1000 Songs #446: Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing

[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 second contribution from the Minutemen's 1984 opus Double Nickels On The Dime, "Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing" is as deliriously ludicrous as the title suggests. It's a band-defining track, a 90-second romp that rips with pure punk rock energy & anger, but delivered amiably and almost academically, nonsensical yet still somehow politically lo...

My Top 1000 Songs #445: Eggtooth

[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.]

Oranger were a San Francisco-based 90s/00s indie band that never got the attention they deserved. Earlier work was edgy noise-pop, kinda like the Who mashed up with Flaming Lips, while later they embraced more Brian Wilson-infused retro baroque pop. "Eggtooth" is the former, a track off their 1998 debut Doorway to Norway that stands as one of those amazing ...