Ben Folds Five - She Don't Use Jelly

A Flaming Lips cover, but one of the best pieces they did. I enjoyed Ben Folds's first solo outing and I thought The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner was some of their best work, but this one that came about between BFF's first and second album is one of their best. Ben Folds writes wonderfully honest songs and my highlighting a cover should not be taken as an effort to diminish his catalog which is superb. The musicianship on this one is just tight and it was obviously recorded at a point before the Five had their "creative differences" and parted ways.
I once had a girlfriend who didn't like Ben Folds because she hated his singing voice. Not sure what to make of that really cause the man works the piano like few others. His are some of the most honest songs I've ever heard and maybe they don't come out in the prettiest fashion but a couple of songs he has written can bring me to tears if I've had a few or am in the right mood. I won't name them by name because I don't want to admit it on my blog.

The Drifters - Save The Last Dance For Me

Tom Dowd was the best recording engineer ever and modern music owes him a great debt. This is the first song he recorded using eight-track. Artists and engineers nowadays have exponential tracks to work with but seldom do as much. The song itself I like for its quasi-misogynistic, jealous man POV lyrical content. That's what I got from it anyway; that the guy is telling his girlfriend to go ahead and get her kicks at the dance hall but not to get carried away. Prelude to a grudge fuck.

Super Furry Animals - Pam V

An old track from their second EP and reissued on Outspaced. The lyrics are in Welsh, but there's atmosphere a plenty. Some say if you don't speak a language, you can't get anything more than the atmosphere of the music, but sometimes that's enough. SFA's music is just fun and their live show's are not to missed. On their most recent turn through the United States, I saw their show at the Gypsy Tea Room. The Man Don't Give A Fuck was turned into an extended jam seguing into Sir Doufous Styles Electronical and then they returned to the stage in the furry costumes. But what I was getting at with that was that the inauguration is on today and the band had some nice visuals in the background with several images of G-dub. Sorry to get political for a moment there, this blog is supposed to be about the music only. This one will probably require an edit.

Yo La Tengo - Let's Save Tony Orlando's House

And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out is, in itself, an auricular work of untold beauty. This track is an unusual sort of performance in contrast to their earlier work but within the context of the album fits in nicely. One need not have rhythm to get down to this one. Georgia's vocal track is buried in the mix as perhaps a false show of modesty. Indie is beautiful and the artists keep it realer than other genres. Yo La Tengo is an iceberg, they have a great body of work and if you have not heard any of what they do get wrecked today.

Guided By Voices - Game Of Pricks

My ballot box-stuffing entry for the greatest song ever recorded--and not just at home. No other 91 seconds of sonic space contains as much. Regrettably, I never gained an appreciation for the band until the very end of their career. Nothing quite matches the output during the Sprout Era but everything made during their Bud Light fueled moments with tapes running has threads of genius running throughout. When I am king, every child will be issued a copy of Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes at birth.

David Bowie - Starman

A mainstay of my Osaka karaoke repertoire, this track is something revolutionary, having been recorded 30+ years ago. Perhaps Wes Anderson's latest film renewed my interest in this tune. The influence of Bowie's early works is felt and heard in a lot of recent college rock. A friend of mine claimed to hear it in The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory by GBV. I never thought of it that way, but this one is for the record books. Not a fixture of classic rock radio in these United States as it was not a selection on ChangesOne but the decisions of RCA moneymen does not diminish its overall grandeur. These days critics are given to pontificating on whether or not the Thin White Duke no longer shapes music and is now shaped by what is being done nowadays. Earthling was a good album regardless, but I can't speak for anything newer because I didn't lay down my lettuce for anything since. Anyway, Bowie cannot be touched.

Keane - This Is The Last Time

Keane is good. It's hard to explain the outsider-ish beauty in such a short piece. I chose to highlight this piece instead of the obvious choice, Somewhere Only We Know, featured in the Victoria's Secret commerical. In the milieu of pop music, I've always found the anti-rock substitution of piano for guitar a tasteful move. Ben Folds accomplished this in a tasteful manner as well. He'll probably be the subject of a piece in the near future.
The voice of Tom Chaplin has drawn comparisons to Freddie Mercury. Probably not that far off. I watched their performance on the Tonight Show in 2004 with my grandmother and she even agreed that he had a good voice. So if you've never listened to Keane and I were forced to make a poorly-thought-out comparison, I might say that they are like Coldplay if Chris Martin could sing.

Cypress Hill - How I Could Just Kill A Man

Their catalog is extensive and many selections are noteworthy but for the blog I'll chose this one which may be obvious. Muggs is still one of the best to have behind any MCs but B. and Sen bring tales of West Coast life to accompany his tracks which seem to have a bicoastal sophistication. These three were one of the first crews to bring Hispanic flavor to a traditionally black milieu, which has never been done as tastefully since.

Trans Am - Alec Empire Is A Nazi/Hippie

This one is rare, and a challenging listen as well. But it's seems to be indicative of the style of music I like. Electronica with a rock element, something nice for the college-educated caucasians to get down to. The Futureworld album was minimalist on the electronic tracks and just good overall. The title of the track is difficult as well. Perhaps that's what pushed it onto the Japanese import version of the album. I don't quite know about mr. empire's politics or work ethic. This is all very six years ago to even have any sort of discussion about it, but Trans Am titled the work for a reason. I have previously touched on the arbitrary nature of titling electronic compositions. But with an absence of lyrics and a vocal refrain, it could be called just about anything.

Folk Implosion - One Part Lullabye

A rare moment in time never again to be recaptured. The departure of the other member of the band definitely influenced the direction (or lack thereof) of the new band, as evidenced by my difficulty in off-loading the disc at a used CD store early last year. Sorry, Pearl wasn't such a bad tune, but Lou seems to be slowly headed back to the harmacy.
It's a good thing that this one is not so well-known, probably. I'd hate to see it fall into the wrong hands.

Aphex Twin - Alberto Balsalm

Richard D. James's entire catalog is worthy of mention, but this little beauty from 1995's I Care Because You Do stands out. It's quite palatable and perhaps the title is apt, the majority of his tracks seems to be arbitrarily named by driving his fist into a keyboard. Such as, Beskhu3epnm, from Drukqs. Rebellion against titling works of music is not such a new phenomenon but the necessity of titles seems impossible to escape given the patterns of human cognitive function. It's the same mother that necessitated DNS databases. The correlation of octets and alphanumerics aside, this one still makes me want to shake my ass.

Chemical Brothers - One Too Many Mornings

A fine track from the way-back machine. One of Beth Orton's early performances, fantastic work. A friend of mine told me once that the Chemical brothers, put simply "make interesting trance." I guess this could be somewhat of an oversimplification because their work contains elements of electronic subgenres like downtempo and chillout before they even started calling it that. Sadly, I owned this album on two juicy slabs of wax but ended up giving it to my good for nothing cousin. If you didn't trade it in years ago, give it a spin.

The Flaming Lips - Waitin' For A Superman

This song embodies the overall melancholy tone of The Soft Bulletin. It keeps with the theme of the album. Although Feeling Yourself Disintegrate may be the best overall of the selections, it is something different entirely. This track, however, puts Coyne in a role of something other than his traditional one of jester. Many comedians suffer from depression, the unexpected seems less recondite, in the context created on the tracks of this album.

Doves - Pounding

This track was not the Doves big single release from The Last Broadcast but perhaps the hidden highlight. The album was at the height of its popularity when I was in the beginning stages of a committed relationship. A conversation I had with a friend about music and the people we once listened to it with keeps coming to mind. I often ponder the emotional response in the individual that music generates. Really it's an old theme, examination of the effects of art on people. It could be the basis for an entire library or museum of prize winners, some I've already read and seen.

The Postal Service - Such Great Heights

In recent times, the visual has come to accompany many modern works of music. The advent of MTV has sullied works of sonic art in the opinions of many critics of a cynical bent. Yet in many cases when tasteful elements are present in both, both are fit to stand apart from one another.
The video for this track is very beautiful, and its Kubrickesque parts do not diminish the overall work even for its flattery through imitation. The wafer factory recalls the space station scene from 2001. The imagery of bodies moving under conditions of weightlessness and dressed in white on a white background while surrounded by the kinetic motion of automations has been imitated to a lesser degree in videos like Lenny Kravitz's "Believe," but in this case it is a proper evocation of classic cinema.
The track itself is delicate and ethereal. College radio may have run it into the ground by now but I still wouldn't change the station if it came on.

Jet - Look What You've Done

Disciples of the Beatles and others who went before. There is a tendency among the smug to pigeonhole what doesn't quite fit into the sound of the day. But there is something captivating about the re-telling of old tales. The inclusion of classical elements in a work of literature is always a good move and speaks to the need for history and the timeless within us all.