Doe! (taken through a window from inside the house)
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.
sidewalk guardian
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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”.
another computer bug. arachnid. whatever.
Another Brian Phillips Grantland post worth its weight in gold, Stop Making Sense. As always with Phillips’ writing – and I never use words like “always” lightly – the whole thing is worth your time. But basking in the afterglow of the final, and turning a brave face to the next four bleak World-Cup-less years, the passage below sums it up perfectly (note that it was written on July 3, just before the quarterfinals; thus “Germany-France on Friday”, “next 10 days”, etc.).
Every World Cup does one thing better than any other event that human beings organize. It focuses the attention of the world on one place at one moment. Around a billion people watched at least part of the final in 2010; that’s several Super Bowls. When a game becomes so ubiquitous, it almost ceases to be entertainment and becomes something else, an atmospheric phenomenon, an object of astronomy. Will more people watch Germany-France on Friday or see the moon over France and Germany? Only the Olympics brings people together like this, and hey, due respect to the Olympics. But oh man is it ever not the same thing.
And this, even more than neuron-blowing games or unbelievable outcomes, is the magic of the World Cup. Over the next 10 days, a substantial portion of the living population of the Earth will have its feelings altered simultaneously by the actions of 22 men chasing a ball around a field in Brazil. Whether you watch alone or in a group or at a stadium, you will know that what you are seeing is being seen by hundreds of millions of people on every corner of the globe, and that your joy, despair, or disbelief is being echoed in incomprehensibly many consciousnesses. Is there anything more ridiculous than this? There is nothing more ridiculous than this, but it’s an extraordinary feeling, too. When something incredible happens — Messi curls a ball around three defenders; Zidane head-butts Materazzi — it’s not just an exciting moment. It’s a bright line connecting you with the human race.
People call soccer “the world’s game”, and it’s kind of a cliché, but it’s also pretty much actually true.
ok, NOW the World Cup is over ?⚽️ #cachaça #caipirinha
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with my people ??⚽️?
??⚽️
I read a (typically) great post by Brian Phillips on Grantland recently, a Brazil World Cup travelogue but with Brian’s (typical) brilliant outlook: Train in Vain. Lots of good stuff in there about the national character of the country, its history, and some of the problems faced there, in light of hosting the largest sporting spectacle in the world. I recommend reading the whole thing, but the following philosophical aside really struck me.
Think of it this way: Almost every other sport tries to be exciting by augmenting human capability in some way (football pads, baseball bats, tennis rackets) or at least by perfecting it (agile giants flying toward an NBA rim). Soccer diminishes capability. Instead of making athletes superhuman, it gives them an extra problem to contend with: no hands. When a soccer player scores, she’s overcoming not just her opponents but also the absurd demand of the game itself, which tells her to be agile and then takes away the tools of her agility.
If you think of it that way, can you understand the appeal that soccer has offered to billions of people? It exploded among the poor in so many colonized countries in part, of course, because it required so little equipment. But that can’t be the only reason. A soccer player is essentially belittled by the universe. But he outwits the universe. He grins at his ridiculous problem and overcomes it through grace and guile. Soccer is the beautiful game partly because it makes beauty seem so unlikely, seem virtually impossible, and then gives players just enough freedom to do something beautiful anyway. In its best moments — which don’t happen often, which don’t occur even in every match, and which are therefore to be savored — soccer is ballet breaking out of an enforced clumsiness.
I’m on a balcony, I’m on a balcony, take a good hard look at the motherf—ing balcony
I’m on a beach, I’m on a beach, take a good hard look at the motherf—ing beach
I’m on a boat, I’m on a boat, take a good hard look at the motherf—ing boat
#nofilter
where the Department of Redundancy Department keeps their dumpsters
we found a starfish on the beach! we thought he was stranded, but he was so happy!
she says I have a problem, more like I have a SOLUTION #simultaneousgames
the sea was angry that day, my friends – like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli
from hour, idk, 26? of approx 174 in yesterday’s road trip
got in too late to enjoy the view last night, but this morning makes up for it
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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
T-minus 5 minutes until professional soccer returns to Austin #Aztex
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.
debating whether this cow’s brand is actually McDonald’s or not #branding #personalbrand
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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”.
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