Category: musicMonday

Your recommendation this week: the 2004 self-titled EP from 50 Foot Wave (listen on Rdio or Spotify). This hard-rocking band includes a couple former members of Throwing Muses: Kristin Hersh and Bernard Georges.

Pitchfork says: “Truck-collision guitars and flayed screams scrape over a pounding rhythm section, and the lyrics that make it to the surface either sound pissed off or grotesque (sample truism: “Bones were made to be broken.”)”

It’s great power-trio stuff, and you can preview it on Rdio or Spotify, as usual. Or, you can just download all their music for free from their website, http://50footwave.cashmusic.org/ (get the self-titled EP I’m recommending, plus several others, in one big zipfile from this page.) It’s not only all free, it’s actually Creative Commons licensed (by-nc-sa): “Share This Music. Please repost, podcast, burn it for friends, burn it for your enemies, USE it. Thank you in advance for your time, energy and enthusiasm.”

Standout track on 50 Foot Wave: “Clara Bow”. Rock on.

This week’s recommendation: the 1987 debut album from Sinéad O’Connor, The Lion and The Cobra (listen on Rdio or Spotify).

Before the dramatic stare-and-cry-into-the-camera video, before ripping up papal pictures on SNL, before becoming an ordained priest of the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, before all that nonsense, this amazing young singer shaved her head and made an album of powerful, beautiful music that’s hard to file into a particular genre. There’s not a bad song on here, and as much as I love “Troy”, the standout track for me is the very first, the haunting “Jackie”.

This week’s recommendation: the first full-length album from the Welsh indie-pop band Los Campesinos!, 2008’s Hold On Now, Youngster… (listen on Rdio or Spotify). Lots of good songs (and great titles), but the standout track I’ll point to is “We Are All Accelerated Readers”.

This band’s clever, literate lyrics are delivered by his & hers counterpoint vocals, on top of snappy – almost manic – musical arrangements. And okay, I can see where they might be a little overly twee (“adjective, Brit., chiefly derogatory; excessively or affectedly quaint, pretty, or sentimental“), but if you don’t hate them, you’ll love them.

A runner-up for standout would be “…And We Exhale And Roll Our Eyes In Unison”, and the ending lines, their build-up, the delivery, it’s just perfect indie pop.

And woe is me
And woe is you
And woe is us
Together

The World Cup starts this week in Brazil (finally!), and there’s lots of music to go with it. But this week’s Music Monday recommendation won’t include any official (or unofficial) songs by Shakira, Pitbull, or J.Lo. Instead, I’ll point you to the 2007 self-titled debut by Brazilian singer/songwriter Céu (listen on Rdio or Spotify). Standout track: “Roda”:

If you watch much World Cup action, especially any games featuring the Brazil national team, you’ll probably see fans in stereotypical Brazilian get-ups (women in bikinis and big Carnival headdresses, etc.). This beautiful, down-tempo, tropical music is a good counterbalance to that one-dimensional view of the fifth largest country in the world. Yes, the lyrics are in Portuguese; no, you don’t have to understand a scrap of it to enjoy this trip to the Southern Hemisphere. So while you’re waiting for the next match to start, mute ESPN, make yourself a cold caipirinha, and put on Céu. Saude!

P.S. Okay, okay, if you still want some Shakira in your 2014 World Cup, and who can blame you, there’s always La La La.

This week: the 2006 debut from Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not (listen on Rdio or Spotify). Though “Mardy Bum” and “Dancing Shoes” are a couple of my favorites, the standout track has to be their breakthrough single, “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”:

Featuring crisp, rollicking rock with high-speed vocals that are heavily British in both accent and wry humor, the album has come to be considered (per Wikipedia) one of the best rock albums of the decade (an NME poll from 2013 even puts it at number 19 of all time). Their subsequent albums haven’t been bad, and the 50s throwback look they’ve adopted make them a favorite on the Tumblr blogs of my daughter and her friends, but it’s this uncompromising debut that put the stake in the ground for a band so good that they could overcome a dumb name like “Arctic Monkeys”.

This week’s recommendation, an album I just bought last week: the latest from Warpaint, the self-titled Warpaint (listen on Rdio or Spotify). Standout track: “Biggy”.

Atmospheric, haunting, but with some edge & some texture to keep it from going down too easy. Wikipedia says, “Warpaint have been compared to Cocteau Twins, Joni Mitchell, and Siouxsie and the Banshees”, and quote NME describing their style as “Intermittently emerging from plaintive moods into harder rocking . . . expansive, lushly-harmonic psych-rock songs”.

This week’s recommendation: the Grateful Dead live album, Reckoning (listen on Rdio or Spotify). Standout track: “Jack-A-Roe”, their version of a 19th-century tale of cross-dressing and women in the military.

Now, if you don’t really know the Dead, chances are you think of them as one of two things: the band behind the “drivin’ that train, high on cocaine” song (aka “Truckin'”), or a jam band famous for half-hour psychedelic instrumentals in the middle of their concerts. And, okay, they were both of those things. But one overplayed radio hit and concert improv stamina do not a thirty-plus year career make. They also recorded lots (and I do mean lots) of other music, much of it just good, folk-inspired, almost-country-but-in-a-good-way, rock songs.

My recommendation here is the 1981 live album Reckoning. It doesn’t include either of their (in)famous jam tracks, though there is a 9-minute song, “To Lay Me Down” (a lovely snoozer that you are hereby permitted to skip). The rest is solid folk-rock, great for road trips and backyard barbecues.

A few weeks ago, I thought I’d take a stab at a quick music recommendation each Monday, hashtagged #musicmonday. Not “new” as in recently released, necessarily, but more like “new to you”. Or possibly not either of those, but maybe even just a pointer to some good music that you’d forgotten about.

The first five:

• 1st #musicmonday: Deltron 3030 http://open.spotify.com/album/2DjihrD64h6Yw5byJD6d6f not a big rap fan, but: a sci-fi concept album + humor = yes please thank you
• #musicmonday rec: The Cardigans‘ “Gran Turismo” http://open.spotify.com/album/4gNjfAA5axfUEBbHJoAKBO one standout track: “Erase/Rewind” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mkv_2fQ-OLU
• #musicmonday rec: Veruca Salt, “American Thighs” http://rd.io/x/QVkeQCJc8dM/ standout track has to be their hit “Seether” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC9AUR-iTo0
• #musicmonday rec: U2‘s first, “Boy” http://rd.io/x/QVkeQCJcKbE/ a bit 80s, but solid songs. standout: An Cat Dubh > Into the Heart > Out of Control
• #musicmonday rec: Massive Attack‘s “Mezzanine” http://rd.io/x/QVkeQCJcZgo/ standout track (and video): “Angel” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbe3CQamF8k

I’ve been enjoying it, but the 140-character limit has kept me from adding more about why I like each recommendation, or what I like about it. Meanwhile, here’s this blog, with nothing much going on most of the time. . . so here we go (see next post for this week’s pick).