Well we have a lot of ground to cover today, so let’s not tarry.. or whatever…
Music begins after the JUMP
Pre-Shuffle
1. We begin with one of the best examples of pure British Pop (with a capital ‘P’) that I’ve heard in a long time. We’ve featured the band Human Face – who came to our attention via a Twitter Follow – several times, but it’s been a little while. “After Lunch” is just a flat out great song. As I mentioned before, I really do put this band in the long line of great British Pop bands that includes Squeeze among others. Check out the video (in the playlist)
2. As a poor lowly music blogger, I spend a lot of time trolling the internet for legal free music to present to you. Noisetrade has become a favorite site of mine. They recently teamed up with the folks at Paste to offer up a Radiohead show from June 1995. We’ve been periodically featuring tracks from that album. Today, we have “Anyone Can Play Guitar” which was released as a single just before the release of the album Pablo Honey which includes the song.
3. The Great Mistake are Buffalo New York band that we’ve featured a couple of times. They are just in the process of releasing some new music which sounds great. “Haphazard” goes back to their 2010 album, Wave to the Astronaut. Below is a widget with a newer song called Your Philosophy which may be on their next album.
4. I have this strange obsession with cover songs. I mean, yeah there are the occasional tragic mistakes, but for the most part, I think, cover songs are pretty interesting. They can be defining like Hendrix’s version of “All Along the Watch Tower”, redeeming like Aztec Camera’s deconstruction of Van Halen’s “Jump”, or they can just be spot on but still cool versions like today’s first cover – Matthew Sweet doing a cover of the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers classic, “American Girl”. This comes from a cover album featuring covers of songs from the 80s which were featured in iconic films of that era. The album is a few years old, but it just came into my consciousness and there are some interesting songs on here.
5. We’ve been hyping Kalpa, the new album from Toronto-based lovable misfits, Valued Customer. We got our first taste a couple of weeks ago with the song “Second Moon”. Now, we go deeper with the longest track on the album. “New Jerusalem” clocks in at 14 minutes and has several movements running through it. Historically, I’m not a big fan over long songs. “Sister Ray” and “Telegraph Road” are two notable exceptions. And, I have to add “New Jerusalem” to that list. In some ways, this surprisingly reminds me of the The Gabriel Construct album I’ve been featuring of late. Like that work, this is experimental, challenging, complex, and extremely, extremely good. Patrick and Ugggy of Valued Customer are hilarious to follow on the Twitter and the Facebook. They are sometimes silly, obscure, and irreverent. This album is revelatory. They obviously put tons of work into this album, and it has paid off.
Some lyrics from “New Jerusalem”
“civilizations like chocolate donuts
if one isn’t good enough a hundred won’t be good enough”
“running to new jerusalem
the towers are in the exosphere
goodbye you whores of babylon
trumpets are playing burning spear”
“(hide your daughter hide your wife
lock up all your beets and chives
they’ll kill you for your salt and spice
the end of twitter and being nice)”
http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=50545387/size=medium/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/transparent=true/
6. In the weeks since we first introduced you to James the Giant, he has gone on to have his first single introduced by USA Today and the video for that song featured on Huffington Post. As much as I want to say that being featured on Ear to the Ground lead to these impressive credentials, the fact is this accolades are well-deserved. The single “Two Weeks on the Ocean” is one of the emotionally powerful songs I’ve heard in a while. Today, we feature “Leave it Buried”. The eponymously titled EP had it’s official released yesterday.
Shuffle
1. Night, which is the newish album from Beijing (the band not the city). The band comes from Connecticut. Today’s track is “Into the Rain”. The album is a great achievement. On it, the band walks a precarious balance which could have easily sent them plummeting into one of several miasmas. The band and this album successfully navigates these treacherous paths.
2. In 1986, I started hearing this awesome song on the college radio station. It was rollicking and dark and hinted at something just outside of my vision. I eventually bought the album which quickly came and has remained a favorite of mine. The artist and album are called Peter Case. The song is “Walk in the Woods“.
3. Another cover. A year after Bob Dylan released his fourth album (1964). Johnny Cash (who admired and was admired by Dylan) recorded a cover version of “It Ain’t Me Babe” with June Carter for his 1965 album Orange Blossom Special which was Cash’s 21st album.
PLAYLIST
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– Neko Case
– Radiohead
– Steve Earle
- Peter Case
– Dexy’s Midnight Runners
E2TG: MUSIC/WORDS 