(Source: Spotify)
The thing is its a great voice. Something about it just messes with me.
After close to 14 years of inactivity (their last live performance was in 1999), Neutral Milk Hotel announced on its website that they will be hitting the road for five dates in October, November and December, including a two-night performance at Athens, Ga.’s own 40 Watt Club.
This week: Covers of 90’s songs.
Highlights include a gorgeous cover of The Proclaimers ubiquitous I’m Gonna be (500 Miles)*, Murray Head doing Dido (from one of the better cover albums I’ve heard), and from the strange pile: Paul Anka doing Soundgarden and knda pulling it off.
*Sure, if was from the 80’s but that song is the soundtrack to 1993.
(Source: Spotify)
“Don’t Swallow the Cap”
The National
The lead single from their upcoming album
Apparently, he has gone crazy and no one is calling him Superman.
Hey, frat guys: without Storm Thorgerson you wouldn’t have that Pink Floyd ‘back’ catalog poster with the naked ladies.
Also, I think his full name: Storm Elvin Thorgerson, belongs in the name hall of fame.
Scott Miller, the singer and songwriter of Loud Family and Game Theory, as well as the author of an excellent book of music criticism called Music: What Happened?, has died. He was a huge talent, and incredibly intelligent and kind. You can get a sense of who he was and what he accomplished in this interview I conducted with him about his book back in 2011. There’s a bunch of songs embedded, give them a listen too. The Game Theory catalog is being given away for free on the official site, and you can find the Loud Family catalog on Spotify et al. My favorite albums are Interbabe Concern, Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things, Days for Days, and Lolita Nation.
Recently, I’ve been making a list of the 100 best albums you’ve never heard and Lolita Nation was/is solidly on that list.
I didn’t know that he had uploaded the Game Theory albums for free (so you don’t have to track them down at record stores or on message boards). You should give them a listen; there is amazing stuff to be discovered.
(Source: Spotify)
Or alternate between it and Kanye’s “Power”
We might as well at this point, given that these are in every single movie trailer.
10 years ago today “The Scientist” was released in the US.
Like so many great songs, it started life as a mistake: suffering from writers’ block, Chris Martin was sat at the piano trying to play George Harrison’s ‘Isn’t It A Pity’ when he hit upon a chord that sounded “lovely”. ‘The Scientist’ grew from there - as simple and beautiful a piano ballad as you’ll ever hear. Like a lot of Coldplay songs, the lyrics dissolve into nonsense when you listen closely, but Martin has the knack of communicating on a more instinctive level. It’s telling that the most moving part of the song is wordless. It takes a certain kind of genius to reduce you to a wobble-lipped emotional wreck, just by going “Ooh-OOOOH-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh.” - NME
(Source: Spotify)
