Song of the Day

Song of the Day: Mogwai – Party in the Dark

Posted on August 11, 2017 by Gary in Song of the Day | Leave a comment

I’ve had some affinity to Mogwai for a little while now. I had thought them lacking in the vocal department, but that’s kind of an odd statement as they are usually an instrumental outfit. That’s like expecting Einstein to provide you with home-baked patisserie when you visit him in Princeton and take offense at the disappointment, but then profess that it’s his deep physical understanding of the universe that you admire so much.

So here it is, a new single from the upcoming album Every Country’s Sun. Even if the voices were muddled by production of the electronic kind, the Glaswegian devils can indeed sing.

Song of the Day: The Rebel Light – Where Did All the Love Go

Posted on August 10, 2017 by Gary in Song of the Day | Leave a comment

 
The Rebel Light isn’t a companion to Budweiser. The band has even beaten us to the punch, having directly printed a beer bottle on their album cover.

Opening with an instrumental chorus that likens to the victory lap theme from a disco movie, “Where Did All The Love Go” is at once bright, warm, and yet very consciously tacky. Just like all summers in the arctics will be from now on, with a side of mosquitoes. Actually, more like a main course of a tera-ton more mosquitoes. And just like a mosquito, it is a resilient ear-worm that has proven difficult to suppress since it first hatched from the sticky, sweaty waters of Summer 2016. Why it’s so enduring will always be a mystery to me, just like why we don’t just gene-drive all mosquitoes into oblivion.

Yes, I am making an indirect, incomplete, and invective comparison between disco, this song and mosquitoes. We don’t know why any of this is necessary: it’s infectious and we all loathe it in some major way but damned we will be if we eradicate it. It’s perhaps just nice to know that you have something familiar to fall back to – even if it does transmit parasites that kill millions of people each year (obviously not this song). Now that is the proper time to ask the question: “Where Did All the Love Go?” Enjoy!

Song of the Day: Joseph Shabason – Long Swim

Posted on August 9, 2017 by Gary in Everything, Song of the Day | Leave a comment

 
I sometimes listen to random things. Take this one for example. Start with something that is immediately soothing but quickly runs repetitious to the point of being cold and suffocatingly mechanical. “Long Swim” directly reflects its name when it begins. However, as it evolves it becomes more of a city-scape.

Wake up in any major city at 3:00 in the morning and you will hear some monotonous, droning noise. And you just crave some human interaction. Please, anything but that garbage lift’s 3 notes of torture! When that sax chimes at full blast, you are almost grateful. Finally! Some organic voice! Even if it’s just to talk about the weather. But very soon your mind adjusts to the new equilibrium, and you find that shameful thought peeking through your mind – the annoyance at this voice, even if it’s another human being, one that you wished for just minutes ago. Stop talking about the weather all the time!

And then it does, it does. And you’re sound asleep again, perfectly comfortable in the knowledge that it was a waking dream and your demented mind had no part in its making, you were certain. This is ambient music, I suppose. It’s conducive to auto-dialogue. And it’s ambiance with a twist.

Song of the Day: Flotation Toy Warning – A Season Underground

Posted on August 8, 2017 by Gary in Everything, Song of the Day | Leave a comment

 

Back in 2004, when we were all much less depressed and resigned about that certain planetary and socioeconomical hellhole towards which the world is inexorably slumping, there was a London band called Flotation Toy Warning – even the name alone conjures a completely different world view.

Highly experimental and melodically gloomy yet filled with just enough irreverent glee, fantasy, and theremin, Bluffer’s Guide to the Flight Deck was a brilliant first album. Unfortunately, like the rest of us, they were hit by some tumultuous shitstorms during the next decade (of a personal nature it seems), and never again put forth the kind of crazed near-death clarity they once did. Until now.

“A Season Underground,” which in fact came out in 2011, is now collected together with other new works in a second album called The Machine that Made Us. Now perfectly aged, it is completely at home even with this strange new season of depravity. Honestly, ladies and gentlemen, please, I will thank you for quality over quantity. There’s little stink to be raised with waiting another 13 years for the next album.

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