Cheer up

Is this a monstrosity? Cheer-Accident's longstanding commitment to signature mathy/proggy styles crashes headlong into a tender-hearted love of '70s AOR piano progressions. It's a strange, twitchy beast that results, and you wonder if this new species should have an island all its own to play out its possible destiny. Maybe one day...

Cheer-Accident — Learning How To Fly

Sybaritic sounds

Combustible Edison deserve some love. Not only did they make themselves expertly versed in Lounge/Exotica/Space Age Pop conventions well before it was remotely hip, but they themselves helped make it all hip for a time. And they were pretty good craftsmen about it for the little window in which they had an audience. All that smoky, musty kitsch has actually aged pretty well for me. This tune in particular feels like swimming through an underwater dream waiting for my next Manhattan to be delivered via mermaid.

Combustible Edison - Carnival Of Souls

See me ride into the sun

Eighth-note piano pounding. It's in my head almost all the time these days. I wanna hear it coming from headphones and from my own fingers when I sit down at the keys. Sometimes I like it stately and steady, like John Cale. Sometimes I like it all frantic, like on this one. Workin' it. And speaking of work, happy Labor Day. Back Tuesday.

Tall Dwarfs - Starry Eyed & Wooly Brained

Template

I used to despise the phrase post-rock. I also used to take the music that attracted this genre tag very very seriously. Time has a way of burning off a lot of the lofty praise lavished on the stuff, but going back to primary sources puts the initial excitement into relief. Or maybe it's the excitement of anti-excitement—rock guys baking krautrock (very much closeted at the time), dub, electronic experimentation, and good old-fashioned minimalism into a whole new kind of cake.

The problem with the post-rock moniker is that it implied much more of an ambition than the music actually exhibited. No one really wanted to do anything with rock other than avoid a lot of its forms. Less an after than an escape route off to the side. A lot of hot air was circulated in music weeklies and dorm rooms (some of it fanned by yours truly). But you have to smile at what you outgrow. In any event, some songs crystallize the kernel of the aesthetic, and this is one of them.

Tortoise - Tin Cans and Twine

Hazy lazy

Yesterday's song was long and fraught. This one's just long and spaced-out. But then the electrons jump an energy level at 3:55. Bands like this take a lot of abuse (even the word "shoegaze" is so sneeringly dismissive), but really, when they create and hold a mood like this, what's to complain about?

Lush - Desire Lines

(Bonus — sometimes these guys rocked it out too. Your patience is rewarded with one such fireball.)

Dead presidents

Admittedly, I was planning on taking today off. Presidents' Day may be a silly holiday (jamming together some Rushmore birthdays and calling it a nationally meaningful day...c'mon), but it has remarkable durability for justifying a day away from work. And since I dodged the bullet of actually going to work today, I should at least pony up a song. So, in the spirit of this barely-a-holiday, here's one from our nation's capital. A band as great and dead as the aforementioned Washington and Lincoln. Sorta. Whatever. Rockage!

Jawbox - Reel

Crane kicks

What's not to love about a singer that sounds like a child who spent her formative years locked in an empty room with only cobwebs and black-and-white TV for company? Apparently, her older brother played guitar and let her join his band of pale boys with black hair hanging over their faces. I remember blasting this out of crappy speakers in my high school bedroom (no b&w TV there) and thinking ominous thoughts about the oncoming Year 2000. Then I did my Physics homework.

Cranes - Shining Road

What's on your mind

May as well follow yesterday's somber elegance with a blast of emotionally malformed crunch pop. I used to crank this up to 10 in high school. I still love how the bass sounds like it's tearing out its own eyeballs. Almost as much as I love this album cover.

Sebadoh - Magnet's Coil

I'm gonna open up your gate

My sister keeps proselytizing me on Lee Hazlewood. I don't resist so much as enjoy at a remove. Just not my cup of '60s, although I do commend his mastery over Nancy Sinatra. Meanwhile, I've had warm feelings for Slowdive since high school, an age when folks are most susceptible to their hazy charms. And those hazy charms work wonders for one of Hazlewood's signature ditties. A shimmering ocean of a pop song.

Slowdive - Some Velvet Morning

Theme Week - Training Montage (1/5)

Exciting stuff this Monday. Songblague debuts a new feature — Theme Week. For the next 5 days, we're all about focus. And for our first great theme, we explore the training montage—that special cinematic interlude where the hero/heroine has gotten his/her head straight and is furiously getting in shape to prove him/her self at the Big Whatever. Think Rocky and Apollo running on the beach, sweat-drenched aerobics classes, endless practice SAT tests. These important moments deserve equally important musical accompaniment.

We start with an unlikely artist. Michael Philips was the original guitarist for Genesis. Apparently, he freaked out early on and retired to some quiet English place to make and release music at his leisure. Most people did not keep up with his pursuits. Neither did I, but somehow I ended up with a soundtrack he did for a film about a global yacht race. It was made in the '90s, but it's so '80s, I feel the dude really should've gotten out more. Anyway, I love this hokey little gem.

Anthony Philips - In the Southern Ocean

His and hearse

I have a hard time with Nick Cave's early albums. I like that they seem to come from another place and time, with good old fashioned archetypes—usually the mysterious, maybe murderous drifter recounting his bad acts and inner torment, seducing and raising hell in equal measure. And yet, my attention drifts. Like watching porn. It's easy to get numb to it.

I think Let Love In is his finest hour. It's still rough and boisterous, but the violence is more submerged and the calm bits stretch out with an eerie tension. This track is probably my favorite. As songs about death go, I'm totally in its spell. I like the funereal pace, the honest, playfully sneering reflection on a life of malice, and the way it slowly rises to a roar. Hats off to the man.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Lay Me Low