Fewer than 30 Songs Less Than a Minute
So, here’s a random mix of my favorite songs that are less than sixty second in length. I tried to avoid intros and interludes, as they lean toward novelty instead of real songwriting, but you’ll see a few that get close. Let me know if you have any to add. Thanks to Aileen and Alex for all their suggestions.
Gone in 60 Seconds
1. Monde Est Grande - Etienne Charry
2. Green Typewriters - Olivia Tremor Control
3. Boa Constrictor - The Magnetic Fields
4. Ask Me - Beat Happening
5. Barnyard - Brian Wilson
6. Tramp-Reszlet - Bergendy
7. Touched - My Bloody Valentine
8. Elizabeth My Dear - The Stone Roses
9. Kolyada #1 - The Music Tapes
10. Martin’s Story - Minutemen
11. Sweetheart - Micachu
12.Sickles and Hammers - Sebadoh
13. Telephone Conversation - Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention
14. Don’t Know, Don’t Care - Nobunny
15. Joanie Don’t U Worry - The Apples in Stereo
16. Avant Dernieres Pensees, Meditation - Erik Satie (Aldo Ciccolini)
17. Straight Edge - Minor Threat
18. Straight Line - Wire
19. My Pretend - The Apples in Stereo
20. The Eyebright Bugler - Deerhoof
21. Air Raid GTR - The Go! Team
22. Clipped Gongs - Lucky Dragons
23. Revelation Two - The Mae Shi
24. Gens Que Les Voitures Ecrasent - Etienne Charry
25. Barbwire - Nora Dean (Diplo dub)
26. V.O.T.E. - Chris Stamey & Yo La Tengo
27. Field Day for the Sundays - Wire
28. In Orbit - Komeda
29. Muscles - Steinski
White Rabbits - It’s Frightening
Artist: White Rabbits
Album: It’s Frightening
Release Date: 19 May 2009
Label: TBD
There are several moments on this album that I love: Simple guitar, piano, drum, and vocal combinations that keep each song evenly interesting. If you liked The Walkmen’s You & Me, then you should give this album a listen.
The vocals are a little cringe worthy at times. It sounds like they were recorded in a space that was too intimate and quiet. They are at odds with the music, trying to overpower the interesting orchestration by oversinging at every moment. I wouldn’t mind the lead vocalist (Greg Roberts) relaxing a little, singing with the instruments, and weaving some vocal elements into different layers of the whole sound.
“Percussion Gun” - White Rabbits
I think this is the boldest track on the album. Roberts could relax his voice a little, but I think the music is strong enough to balance out his vocal “closeness.” The steady drumming fits somewhere between a tribal dance and a military march. It fits the general tension of this album, a balance between groove and stiffness.
“They Done Wrong / We Done Wrong” – White Rabbits
This song is more in line with the rest of the album: hypnotically strummed acoustic guitar complementing a light, tight drum line while the vocals, bass line, and piano add flourishes. My favorite moment of this song is the rolling piano and the guitar picking (2:13 and 3:10, respectively). Moody and relaxed, these moments make the song memorable to me, and I would enjoy hearing those two elements interact more above the steady guitar and drum.
Micachu - Jewellery
Artist: Micachu
Album: Jewellery
Label: Rough Trade
Release Date: 4/7/09
You are what you eat, they say; I say, you are what you listen to, too. And Micachu is that organic, farmer’s market, community garden shit that I should be eating. It tastes fresh and a little dirty, like it’s just been pulled from the ground. With a cavalcade of instruments, some of them invented or repurposed by the artist (like the now legendary “chu,” a homemade guitar), and vocals that range from squeals and sighs to growls and shouts, this is an album of incredible texture and experience. Now if the previous sentence turns you off—perhaps you’ve been burned too often by the more experimental musicians of this world—take heart; Micachu makes pop music. The goal is not to make listeners endure, but to enjoy. So, enjoy:
Eat Your Heart – Micachu
This is on the darker side of Micachu, but it’s good dark. I like how the song has the feel of a sample-based song, one that pulls from many sources and remixes them into something new, but is entirely original material. Micachu, the performance name for Mica Levi, remixes herself and turns her own voice into the hyper, glitchy collage of contemporary pop music.
Golden Heart – Micachu
Yeeeeeaaaaahhhhh
Giorgio Tuma - “Let’s Make the Stevens Cake!!!”
Giorgio Tuma’s “Let’s Make the Stevens Cake!!!” from My Vocalese Fun Fair. Out now. Buyyyyyyy.
Gotta Be Slow
Did you know that if you slow down Desree’s “You Gotta Be,” she sounds like Antony and the Johnsons?
I’ve included videos for your comparison:
Enjoy!
Mike Love, Not War
My friend Rachel was a master of mixtapes. Throughout middle and high school, I was forever trying to meet her level (and rarely succeeding). She designed her own covers and tracklists, dubbed television audio and poetry into the mix, and chose music that only years later I would really appreciate. And no matter how much I tried to emulate—mixing in lines from “Howl” and presidential addresses, switching from Brit pop to chamber music and back, pasting together silly collage covers—I never quite got it. One of my favorite tapes is called “Mike Love, Not War,” and on it is the song I always return to when I think of that early excitement of discovering new music: “We Love You” by The Psychedelic Furs. I really should digitize all these special tapes, but for now I’m happy to have this track:
“We Love You (Rachel Mix)” – Click to play
Please forgive the buzzy, warped sound. My Talkboy (jealous? You should be) is very old, and the tape has been through some warm nights and some bumpy rides. What a good song. Everything is wonderful: the pulsing bass, the light drums, the hypnotic and rough guitars, the shrill sax, and Richard Butler’s steady, slightly fey lyrics (“ooobabyloooove”). As I look up from my desk, my only photo is one of Richard Butler sitting on stage, dressed in a trench coat and pearls, shot by Rachel herself in 1999 or 2000 when The Psychedelic Furs came to a small club in Tempe, Arizona. It brings me back.
New year, New York, new post!
This evening at the gym every treadmill had a runner, every bike had a biker, and every machine had a lifter. I’ve never seen so many people working out at once. It is the new year in New York. A time and a place to change. Delusion? Perhaps. But who am I to judge? The same force flowing through the legs of those runners is now pushing my fingers to type. And just as others look back on what they did or should have done and why they did or didn’t, I’m looking at what music meant to me in 2008, at how my taste and habits changed.
For the last few years leading up to 2008, my predominant experience of music occurred around other people. I worked in a radio station, I went to dances, I listened to music in groups, I shared and swapped mixes, and I talked about music constantly with others. Even when listening to music alone in my different rooms, I felt like people were there with me. My musical life, and the preferences that developed out of my experiences, existed with other people. One could say that I was just following the crowd (so to speak), but I had a really good time doing it. We got excited about music together, and we expressed our love of music through one another.
The music of 2008, however, seemed to play in a different key. The crowd wasn’t there. I could still pick out a hot tune, one I knew my friends around the globe would like. But in general I went into something like a music abyss. For the first time in many years I only listened to music alone. Long subway rides with my headphones replaced those countless dance parties. Silent and diligent CD shopping trips replaced late-night sessions of loud, new music at the station with my friends. I think this new key, this new mode, made me start the blog, in an effort to reconnect with those others, with that crowd, and regain that same excitement.
It didn’t work. Or, it didn’t seem to work in the way I wanted: I still enjoyed music, but the excited crowd was still gone. So I stopped writing and took a few months to do other things. In that hiatus, I’ve realized that the blog itself, and the process of thinking and writing about something I love, should be the central goal. My goal this year is to love the things I love more. To begin this resolution is my 2008 mix, made of songs that brought me to a good place, whether around others or not.
Spring/Summer (click to play)
1. Three Way – The Magnetic Fields
2. Last Day of Magic – The Kills
3. Courtship Dancing – Crystal Castles
4. Paris s’enflamme – Ladyhawke
5. Hercules Theme – Hercules and Love Affair
6. Can’t Say No – Thomas Function
7. Hammer I Miss You – Jay Reatard
8. Converging in the Quiet – Crystal Stilts
9. Room Without a Key (Version by Studio) – Rubies
10. Shempi – Ratatat
11. Constructive Summer – The Hold Steady
12. Give Up – CSS
Fall/Winter (click to play)
1. River Card – Atlas Sound
2. I Am a Girlfriend – Nobunny
3. Valley Hi! – Stereolab
4. Four Provinces – The Walkmen
5. Little Bit – Lykke Li
6. Hundreds and Thousands – Fujiya & Miyagi
7. Mustaa Lunta – Fucked Up
8. Tell the World – Vivian Girls
9. Heavy Water / I’d Rather Be Sleeping – Grouper
10. Highway of Endless Dreams – M83
11. Give Him a Great Big Kiss – The Shangri-Las
If you like any of these songs, support the artist and go buy the album.
Happy New Year
Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Common Life
Artist: Fucked Up
Album: The Chemistry of Common Life
Label: Matador
A prodigious string of released EPs—some released online; others, if pressed, only in quantities in the hundreds—scribbled and confusing album art and liner notes, violent live shows, multiple pseudonyms for bandmembers, debatable misrepresentation to the press, and a name considered by some to be unpublishable: for these reasons, among others, Fucked Up has been a band thoroughly (and intentionally) unfit for the traditional marketing of mainstream record labels.
Is it surprising, then, that the band is now reaching to a larger audience after seven years of marketing transgression? That Matador has chosen to re-release old material and put out this full-length album? In light of their superficial history, yes. A listen to the music, however, marks otherwise. Fucked Up do for hardcore what The Pixies did for rock, mixing pop hooks with gristle and grit. They make a debased nature somehow noble and fun, perfect for parties that slip into that I’ve-had-one-too-many-and-everyone’s-leaving moment.
Fucked Up – Twice Born
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This, like many of their songs, can be surprisingly catchy and disturbing. It is their knack for turning great melodies into something upsetting that makes Fucked Up a great band.
Fucked Up – No Epiphany
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A hardcore band doing shoegaze? Pretty good, I’d have to say. The atmospheric background vocals, buzzing background, and cascading guitars lend to, rather than distract from, the screamed lead vocals.
Anyway, check out the band’s blog, their wikipedia entry, and the Matador site. And as always, buy the album!
Fujiya & Miyagi - Lightbulbs
Artist: Fujiya & Miyagi
Album: Lightbulbs
Label: Deaf, Dumb & Blind
Albums often have that one element, that one instrument, that one voice, or that one lyric that turns you off from the album as a whole. This can be good—a helpful way to sort the millet from the straw—but it can also make you overlook (overlisten?) an album that is putting forward music meant to be enjoyed in a different way. On Lightbulbs, it is definitely the lyrics that, at first listen, annoy. Banal, at time nonsensical, and always prominent, the lyrics of Fujiya & Miyagi seem difficult to overcome. The music, though, is worth the effort, and it is surprisingly easy to relax and (!) begin to enjoy them once you accept the following fact: The lyrics are equally decorative and meaningful and don’t tell a coherent story or give a complete portrait as much as they add to the percussive and playful tone.
Fujiya & Miyagi – “Knickerbocker”
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“Vanilla, strawberry, knickerbocker glory . . . I saw the ghost of Lena Zavorati.” Don’t think about. Just let it happen. If you want to let images of flavors, underwear, ghosts, or Scottish pop singers bubble up, go ahead, but don’t try to string them together. Instead, enjoy the steady beat, the merging and prancing tones, and the general orchestration that is so simple and clean but also very fun and human.
Fujiya & Miyagi – “Hundreds & Thousands”
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I know: I dedicated the first paragraph to describing how the lyrics are great, and now I’m talking about the only instrumental track as one of my favorites. Deal. This makes me happy the way Stereolab makes me happy; though it is much more streamlined and precise, it has that chugging, well-orchestrated atmosphere that gets me every time.
If you are picturing two Japanese dudes rapping all Gertrude Stein over these beats, think again. The British Steve Lewis (Fujiya) and David Best (Miyagi) formed the band in 2000 and later added Matt Hainsby (Ampersand) in 2005 and Lee Adams (yet unnamed) this year. According to their wikipedia entry, a common love for krautrock and heavyweight wrestling unites the members to one another.
Check out their myspace and buy their album!
Technorati Tags: Fujiya & Miyagi, Stereolab, Gertrude Stein, Krautrock
Horse Feathers - House with No Home
Artist: Horse Feathers
Album: House with No Home
Label: Kill Rock Stars
Release Date: 9/9/08
Fans of Red House Painters and Holopaw, this is your new jam. Soft, dramatic, and rich, this album sounds good on a superficial listen and great on a deeper one. Justin Ringle, the founding member of Horse Feathers, has quite a wonderful voice that can sound restrained at one moment and expansive the next, and it is this tension—in the vocals and also orchestration—that makes “House with No Home” an engaging album. The sounds fluctuate from moments of punctuation (choppy strings, Ringle’s whispered voice, finger-picked guitars) to moments of strong and sweet melody (cascading strings, Ringle’s resonant howl, and guitar strumming). Each song, then, has a few moments of release, where Ringle’s voice resounds into the strings. Quite nice. Part of this is due to Ringle’s unique voice—it’s true—but also to the collaborative nature of the music; after several years of performing under the name Horse Feathers, Ringle met up in 2004 with Peter Broderick, who now arranges the music around Ringle’s songs.
Horse Feather – “Curs in the Weeds”
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I love Ringle’s slight yodel (à la Sarah McLachlan) paired with the shrill fiddle. The sounds sway and grow, and somehow the various instruments and vocals complement one another very well.
Horse Feathers – “A Burden”
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Again, the vocals and instruments are in a balanced dance that is quite good, and the song has different phrases—the third is my favorite, starting around 2:20—which is refreshing for a low-key acoustic song.
Check out the band’s myspace, read a cool interview with Ringle, and buy the album!
Technorati Tags: Horse Feathers, Red House Painters, Holopaw