Songs of the Week XVII
Songs of the Week. Young and sweet. Only 17. Feel the beat on the tambourine, oh oh. You can dancem you can dance... You get the point. Here's your songs. Submit in the comments or on Facebook or by email.
Sean Cox:
Three of my favorite punk songs of all time, in no particular order.
Descendents - Clean Sheets
The Clash - Lost In The Supermarket
Titus Andronicus - No Future Part Three: Escape From No Future
Evan Murphy:
U2 - Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of I like this song because it is a nice calm song with a great chorus to listen to when you're tired.
Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal I really like the intro to this song and the vocals.
Smash Mouth - All Star Great tune that is great to sing along to.
Joe Fialkowski:
Green Day - American Idiot
Donald John Trump
Pat Pang:
Hadouken! - M.A.D.
It's a song that just gets you going. I usually blast this song before a track meet or when I'm at a party or something.
Richard Moore:
Vitamin String Quartet - Boulevard Of Broken Dreams It sounds pretty.
Edgar Castro:
Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Comely
This song holds a special place in my heart because it was one of the first songs I really loved after really starting to get into music, get into being active exploration and seeking of music that appeals to me and an exploration of and experimentation with taste instead of waiting for that music and taste to come to me in forms like radio and the popular dogma of what is "good/acceptable music". The first time I heard this song, I was blown away - by its very colourful and whimsical lyrics, by its brevity, by Jeff Mangum's powerful vocal delivery, and by a wonder of how beautiful of a song could be written by just repeating the same few notes over and over again for a really long time (fast foward a few years, and you can see how that last one turned out).
Oh Comely deals with the death of a loved one, congruent with the accepted theory that the album as a whole was inspired by the tragedy of the Holocaust, focusing specifically on Anne Frank. The song starts out by reminiscing on past experiences with the speaker's loved one, still addressing them as if it was a one-to-one conversation, but later on, it is revealed that their loved one is no longer alive - "I know they buried her body with others, / Her sister and mother and five-hundred families." Later on, the song shifts and the speaker begins to address a person named Goldaline and the speaker finds themselves in a life threatening situation just like their loved one once was, singing, "We will fold and freeze together." The song is very grim but somehow hopeful at the same time - "Far away from here / There is sun and spring and green forever," reflected by Mangum's solemn yet powerful vocal delivery.
The lyricism of Oh Comely is, in my opinion, exceptional. The way that the words just flow into each other while painting vivid scenes or communicating intense emotions is truly something to admire. The words are silky smooth and blend into each other while not compromising Mangum's poetic ability. For example, take the following passage:
"Your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies
While you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park.
Thunderous sparks from the dark of the stadiums,
The music and medicine you needed for comforting.
So make all your fat fleshy fingers to moving,
And pluck all your silly strings, bend all your notes for me."
That's about half of that segment, which continues that very vivid and whimsical writing style for another six lines before moving into that movement's closing and transitioning into the second movement (the one with Goldaline in it). I picked this segment because it was, in my opinion, where the song's lyrics were at their strongest, but the rest of the song's lyrics are still almost as good.
Sonically, there's admittedly not much to talk about, but for good reason: the focus of the song is on the lyrics, and rightfully so. However, that's not to say that the song is necessarily lacking in its instrumentation and vocal delivery - both the lone guitar and Mangum's lone and powerful voice contribute to the song in a very good way, acting as appropriate vessels and accompaniments to the lyrics.
Despite all of the hate the album gets for the meme-like status it's achieved, when it comes down to it, some of its tracks, like Oh Comely, definitely make it deserve that attention.
Connor Murphy:
Elbow - any day now
This is a song about wanderlust. Plain and simple, but at the same time, there's a bit more depth to it than that. The line it starts with "what's got into me" is an indicator of the unexpectedness of this desire to leave home. It is a confrontation of "normal" or "common" motivators for people, facing them directly with the idea of going out and seeing the world while you're young. But it's the simplicity of the music and of the lyrics that makes this song one of my favorites.
The Acid - Tumbling Lights
This song, the first time I heard it, caused me to vividly picture an extremely surreal music video. A man walks onto a baseball diamond and sits on the bleachers nearby. He stays for a long time, winter giving way to spring, and games are played around him. He eventually gets up and walks into the forest.
He picks up and examines fouled balls, occasionally looking back into the game that is going on. He eventually climbs a tree with one of the balls and throws it into the game. The batter hits it and it flys into a window. The window is that of a bank, which is being robbed. But strangely, the robbers are all wielding water guns. One of them picks up the ball and crushes it in his hand. Yeah, pretty strange things come out of my head sometimes.
The Shins - We Will Become Silhouettes
Originally by The Postal Service, I much prefer The Shins' cover. This is a bit unusual for me, but there's something about The Shins that makes their covers another animal than most covers. Another example is their over of T. Rex's Baby Boomerang. We Will become Silhouettes is a song about not living in fear or allowing it to control you. It was written in response to the "paralyzing" fear in place after the 9/11 attacks. It tells the story simultaneously of the aftermath of a breakup and a nuclear attack, almost likening the two. There's a sort of warning tone, like "It's safe to stay inside and avoid radiation, but then you're not living." One of my favorite concepts for a song.
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