Showing posts with label Moo Sack. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Moo Sack. Show all posts
Monday, September 1, 2008
Is that so?
Many people cite "Top That" as the pinnacle of 1980s gimmick rom-com epic Teen Witch, but in my humble opinion, "I Like Boys" is the song-and-dance number to beat. As I see it, it's a perfect aggregate of an era marked by excruciating musical and aesthetic vapidity. Matching purple track suits? Dancing on top of the lockers, in the showers, and under the hair dryers? Two minutes of repetitive lyrics about abandoning childhood whims in favor of the sweet, sweet cock? It's a revelation!
Fortunately, the cranky lesbian gym teacher came to put an end to these crazy boy antics just in time.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Sandcastle Disco; or, one younger sibling's venture into awkwardly-dressed musical stardom
Something this low-key and cute...coming from a Knowles? I almost don't believe it. The video is tacky and messy in all the best ways, but the song is more pure than anything Beyonce has ever done. It's probably a lost cause to wish Solange success, but it won't stop me from enjoying this while it still lasts.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Cover me!
Call me shallow and everything, but a first impression can mean a lot, and generally it's a pretty accurate reflection of what you're going to get - at least in the entertainment world. I didn't actually have this theme planned when I started writing the post, but I realized that I was posting the covers of everything I wanted to talk about, and ran with it. You can call me shallow, but at least call me resourceful too.
First: I just love the DVD cover for David Cronenberg's oft-forgotten 1996 vehicular erotica, Crash. Namely, that quote by Janet Maslin. "Sex and car crashes." I don't think the point of a movie has been so succinctly addressed in any DVD cover quote. It would be like if you put a quote that said "Zombies" on the front of Dawn of the Dead, "Racism" on the other Crash, or "Suburban dysfunction" on any drama that's been made after American Beauty.
I wish my passion for this brilliant work of advertising had transferred to the movie itself; I thought it was incredible that Cronenberg could take a great premise like people who do the sexy time after automotive issues and make it so utterly boring and repetitive. You can give it a philosophical/fetishistic read, but ol' Mr. Body Horror won't allow you a leg to stand on there. (That was a totally unintentional pun that I caught only after a reread. Damn my subconscious.) You can view it as a critique of pornography, but if that's the case then I think it failed in the way Funny Games failed as a critique on stylized violence. The movie stubbornly refuses to expound on its fascinating foundations and that is its undoing. But you do get to see Holly Hunter's tits, and watch James Spader have sex with a leg wound and another man, so I'm not totally discounting it yet.
Moving on to significantly gayer things, check out this herpetic Lisa Frank explosion of a CD. It is the debut effort of American Idol 6 runner-up Blake Lewis and it is awful. My problems with Audio Daydream are innumerable, but there are a few big ones that any idiot (read: not Blake's fans) could pick up. The boy wears his influences on his sleeve: if you've been listening to the radio this last year, you'll notice that his vocal stylings are basically Justin Timberlake and Adam Levine's retarded crack baby. This also moves us to his professed 80s obsession, which apparently crept into the album. "Crept into" is not the right phrase to use, so much as "burst in with a hatchet and shat all over"; Lewis lacks the knowledge of what made 80s music work, which is nothing in my equally unfounded opinion, and it shows. No one wants to remember what they listened to when they were tripping balls two decades ago.
And the final complaint, which is most glaring and least subjective, is that the boy couldn't write a lyric to save his life (or his album, apparently). "Hot and sexy is the definition of her"? Well, it isn't the definition of syntax! If grammar determines how hot and sexy you are, then Lewis's command of the English language seems perfectly appropriate for his gnomish stature.
To be perfectly fair to Blake, I did like "How Many Words". I don't know why it caught my ear amidst all the other swampy ballads and abysmal synthesized abortions on A.D.D., but I think it's pretty much the high point of the album. Now you guys can stone me for actually enjoying something on this. I die without shame.
A few days ago, I made a pledge to myself to start reading for pleasure again; 999 was the first book I picked up to begin this odyssey. Granted, I'm only a few stories in, but it has proven itself to be a consistent and excellently-written collection of horror short stories. "Amerikanski Dead at the Moscow Morgue," the lead-in by Kim Newman, is a darkly satirical tale about post-apocalyptic Russia. It happens to be plagued by zombies, who are all for some reason American tourists. Wacky things ensue.
Less goofy works include my personal favorite entry so far, "The Ruins of Contracoeur", by prolific author Joyce Carol Oates. Ruins is a tale of a politically disgraced family biding their time in a relic of a house, owned and disowned by their grandfather; Oates guides us through their eventual breakdown with stark isolationist horror. She does an incredible job of capturing this melancholy, windswept atmosphere in the pages. At one point she describes two characters as being blurry, like "poorly realized watercolors", and I couldn't help but feel much the same way about the story. It is enigmatic and dizzyingly sad.
The book also includes entries by William Peter Blatty, Neil Gaiman and - who else? - Stephen King, and if it can keep being as awesome in the next 20 or so stories as it has been so far, I'm excited to read the rest.
First: I just love the DVD cover for David Cronenberg's oft-forgotten 1996 vehicular erotica, Crash. Namely, that quote by Janet Maslin. "Sex and car crashes." I don't think the point of a movie has been so succinctly addressed in any DVD cover quote. It would be like if you put a quote that said "Zombies" on the front of Dawn of the Dead, "Racism" on the other Crash, or "Suburban dysfunction" on any drama that's been made after American Beauty.
I wish my passion for this brilliant work of advertising had transferred to the movie itself; I thought it was incredible that Cronenberg could take a great premise like people who do the sexy time after automotive issues and make it so utterly boring and repetitive. You can give it a philosophical/fetishistic read, but ol' Mr. Body Horror won't allow you a leg to stand on there. (That was a totally unintentional pun that I caught only after a reread. Damn my subconscious.) You can view it as a critique of pornography, but if that's the case then I think it failed in the way Funny Games failed as a critique on stylized violence. The movie stubbornly refuses to expound on its fascinating foundations and that is its undoing. But you do get to see Holly Hunter's tits, and watch James Spader have sex with a leg wound and another man, so I'm not totally discounting it yet.
Moving on to significantly gayer things, check out this herpetic Lisa Frank explosion of a CD. It is the debut effort of American Idol 6 runner-up Blake Lewis and it is awful. My problems with Audio Daydream are innumerable, but there are a few big ones that any idiot (read: not Blake's fans) could pick up. The boy wears his influences on his sleeve: if you've been listening to the radio this last year, you'll notice that his vocal stylings are basically Justin Timberlake and Adam Levine's retarded crack baby. This also moves us to his professed 80s obsession, which apparently crept into the album. "Crept into" is not the right phrase to use, so much as "burst in with a hatchet and shat all over"; Lewis lacks the knowledge of what made 80s music work, which is nothing in my equally unfounded opinion, and it shows. No one wants to remember what they listened to when they were tripping balls two decades ago.
And the final complaint, which is most glaring and least subjective, is that the boy couldn't write a lyric to save his life (or his album, apparently). "Hot and sexy is the definition of her"? Well, it isn't the definition of syntax! If grammar determines how hot and sexy you are, then Lewis's command of the English language seems perfectly appropriate for his gnomish stature.
To be perfectly fair to Blake, I did like "How Many Words". I don't know why it caught my ear amidst all the other swampy ballads and abysmal synthesized abortions on A.D.D., but I think it's pretty much the high point of the album. Now you guys can stone me for actually enjoying something on this. I die without shame.
A few days ago, I made a pledge to myself to start reading for pleasure again; 999 was the first book I picked up to begin this odyssey. Granted, I'm only a few stories in, but it has proven itself to be a consistent and excellently-written collection of horror short stories. "Amerikanski Dead at the Moscow Morgue," the lead-in by Kim Newman, is a darkly satirical tale about post-apocalyptic Russia. It happens to be plagued by zombies, who are all for some reason American tourists. Wacky things ensue.
Less goofy works include my personal favorite entry so far, "The Ruins of Contracoeur", by prolific author Joyce Carol Oates. Ruins is a tale of a politically disgraced family biding their time in a relic of a house, owned and disowned by their grandfather; Oates guides us through their eventual breakdown with stark isolationist horror. She does an incredible job of capturing this melancholy, windswept atmosphere in the pages. At one point she describes two characters as being blurry, like "poorly realized watercolors", and I couldn't help but feel much the same way about the story. It is enigmatic and dizzyingly sad.
The book also includes entries by William Peter Blatty, Neil Gaiman and - who else? - Stephen King, and if it can keep being as awesome in the next 20 or so stories as it has been so far, I'm excited to read the rest.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Happy (three hour late) Thanksgiving!
Wanna know what I'm thankful for this year?
No Country for Old Men, for easily being the best movie of 2007 so far (and probably for the rest of the year)
Amy Winehouse, for making fantastic music AND supplying the world with plenty of crazy tabloid fodder
and SaGa Frontier, a 10-year-old Playstation game that just bewitches me for absolutely no reason at all.
I could have said friends and family and health and all that but fuuuuck it. This is how I roll.
No Country for Old Men, for easily being the best movie of 2007 so far (and probably for the rest of the year)
Amy Winehouse, for making fantastic music AND supplying the world with plenty of crazy tabloid fodder
and SaGa Frontier, a 10-year-old Playstation game that just bewitches me for absolutely no reason at all.
I could have said friends and family and health and all that but fuuuuck it. This is how I roll.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
You're Breaking My Heart!!!
Every musician or band releases a disappointing album at one point in their career; if not disappointing, then something that doesn't hold up quite to the gold standard that they established for themselves. Usually these complaints are weathered, by dint of the album growing on you or the people in question moving on to better things. But when three of my most well-loved artists released three disappointing albums within a few months of each other, and I listened to them all at nearly the same time, it was a crushing blow. This is the part where I try to reconcile with myself.
3. m-flo - Cosmicolor
Though I touched upon this one briefly in my previous music post, Cosmicolor is an album of many peaks and valleys...mostly valleys. After band member Lisa left them in 2002, their albums revolved entirely around guest singers on the tracks, generally one song per guest singer. These were called the "love" albums; "m-flo loves melody", "m-flo loves Crystal Kay" and the like. Of the three "love albums", Cosmicolor is the longest at a bloated 13 tracks (17 if you count the cheesy skits). It is also the least engaging.
Though the highlights are really great, like the trim and effective Stuck in Your Love and the bangin' Love Long and Prosper, everything on the album is just dragged out to near-anemia. Few songs on Cosmicolor clock in at under 5 minutes. Lotta Love, a fun but uneven Euro track, is nearly 7 minutes long, with little to show for it but unapologetic repetition. Love Song is a Bonnie Pink collaboration that just goes on way too long; Luvotomy doesn't have anything to do but repeat itself after the 2 minute mark. She Loves the CREAM almost gets away with it, but there's a dull-as-hell jazz interlude halfway through that totally kills the momentum of the song. Though it would be tempting to reward the shorter songs on the album for understanding brevity, Love Don't Cry and Simple and Lovely are completely forgettable.
I could see this making a serviceable dance-floor record, but on standalone listens, Cosmicolor just totally falls apart. After the outstanding Beat Space Nine, this is a disappointing, mincing follow-up. m-flo has announced that the "loves" series is dead, and I can't help but feel a little relieved.
Check Out: Stuck in Your Love, Love Long and Prosper, Love Me After 12 AM, Picture Perfect Love
2. KT Tunstall - Drastic Fantastic
Of the three artists profiled in this list, KT Tunstall was the one I was expecting the least from; concurrently, it's the worst of these three albums. Where her debut, Eye to the Telescope, featured grit beautifully waxing to vulnerability and an almost cheeky empowerment, Drastic Fantastic just feels like a melange of underdeveloped emotional hosannas. Half of the songs sound like they should be played behind a medical insurance commercial, and the other half could serve very well in a commercial for a wacky teen drama.
Tunstall herself is not the least bit preoccupied with appeasing her audience. But since it's hardly an artistic triumph at all, I can only wonder what the goal of the album was. Nearly every song is cut from the same mold; play Beauty of Uncertainty and Someday Soon back-to-back and you won't even remember which is which. Hopeless epitomizes the album by sounding agreeable at first and then totally vanishing into the void right after listening to it. Not every song on the album is as elevator-music, though. Paper Aeroplane is as drifty and wistful as the title entails, and I Don't Want You Now embraces Tunstall's more effective upbeat side. Hold On does a great job at actually engaging a listener, the album's main fault...It's no wonder that it's Drastic Fantastic's first single, but expecting much more of its kind from the album would seriously betray a potential buyer. I mean, look at the cover. It looks like something challenging, exciting, epic. Drastic Fantastic is anything but.
Cosmicolor may have been a massively overlong album, but at 39 minutes, Drastic Fantastic is just not enough to satisfy. It's a jangly, cheap little bauble of an alt-pop album with nary a hook in sight. I can only hope that KT Tunstall hasn't landed herself in one-hit-wonder land with ol' Black Horse and the Cherry Tree, but I think she's got enough talent in her to produce something worth listening to again.
Check Out: Hold On, Paper Aeroplane, I Don't Want You Now
1. Bonnie Pink - Thinking Out Loud
This is the true heartbreaker of the list to me. Thinking Out Loud is Bonnie Pink's 10th studio album, and it is the one that cries "Stop this madness!" to me. Her 9th, the divisive Golden Tears, was her most dangerous flirtation with pop. It put a lot of previously unheard elements in Pink's music to the forefront, like synthesizers and really thick production, and though there were a few great songs some people thought it was a change for the worse.
But at least it was a change. Thinking Out Loud is an attempt to combine her previous style with her new artistic direction and the results are absolutely monstrous. The recurring problem on the album is that the melodies are too simple and the production is too overdone, which leaves poor Bonnie in between a rock and a hard place. To no fault of her own, nearly every song on the album is completely uninteresting. Commercializing her intimate, soulful voice has done her very little good.
As far as standouts on Thinking Out Loud, Anything For You is undeniably the strongest song on there. It is a ball of energy and melodic fun, overpowering the tedium by sheer bulldozer force. It's a shame that this song was shoehorned onto the album as its last track; it would have made a much better lead-in than the pointless Gimme a Beat. Sakamichi is like a grungy, sexy younger sister to her seminal groover Senaka. Catch the Sun is listenable, if not cheesy and unaccomplished.
Unfortunately, the rest of the album does little but make itself seem like a waste of time. The most flagrant offender is the Philharmonic Flava rearrangement of her smash single A Perfect Sky, which is...inexplicable. Totally self-indulgent and pointless. A Perfect Sky was one of Bonnie Pink's biggest chart hits, but cramming this bland old dinosaur on the album seems to have been done solely in commercial interest. You probably won't even make it to the chorus on Burning Inside, Nagusami Blue and - wait for this one - "Broken hearts, citylights and just me thinking out loud." She sounds too sharp on the melodramatic Water Me, sleepwalks through Lullaby, and has nothing to do on the horrible Imagination, which sounds like the retarded bastard child of Communication and The Answer.
What I guess comforts me is that Bonnie Pink has plenty of places to run after this debacle. She can return to her pared-down, beautiful melodies, the gems of the past from albums like Even So or Just a Girl, or continue to change herself as an artist and see if she can find a better niche. But she cannot do both, as Thinking Out Loud proves. Right now, what she needs to do is divorce herself from Burning Chicken's overwhelming production and take a little time to sharpen her melodies. Work like this is just upsetting for big fans like me, just because I know she is capable of far better.
Check Out: Anything For You, Catch The Sun, Sakamichi
3. m-flo - Cosmicolor
Though I touched upon this one briefly in my previous music post, Cosmicolor is an album of many peaks and valleys...mostly valleys. After band member Lisa left them in 2002, their albums revolved entirely around guest singers on the tracks, generally one song per guest singer. These were called the "love" albums; "m-flo loves melody", "m-flo loves Crystal Kay" and the like. Of the three "love albums", Cosmicolor is the longest at a bloated 13 tracks (17 if you count the cheesy skits). It is also the least engaging.
Though the highlights are really great, like the trim and effective Stuck in Your Love and the bangin' Love Long and Prosper, everything on the album is just dragged out to near-anemia. Few songs on Cosmicolor clock in at under 5 minutes. Lotta Love, a fun but uneven Euro track, is nearly 7 minutes long, with little to show for it but unapologetic repetition. Love Song is a Bonnie Pink collaboration that just goes on way too long; Luvotomy doesn't have anything to do but repeat itself after the 2 minute mark. She Loves the CREAM almost gets away with it, but there's a dull-as-hell jazz interlude halfway through that totally kills the momentum of the song. Though it would be tempting to reward the shorter songs on the album for understanding brevity, Love Don't Cry and Simple and Lovely are completely forgettable.
I could see this making a serviceable dance-floor record, but on standalone listens, Cosmicolor just totally falls apart. After the outstanding Beat Space Nine, this is a disappointing, mincing follow-up. m-flo has announced that the "loves" series is dead, and I can't help but feel a little relieved.
Check Out: Stuck in Your Love, Love Long and Prosper, Love Me After 12 AM, Picture Perfect Love
2. KT Tunstall - Drastic Fantastic
Of the three artists profiled in this list, KT Tunstall was the one I was expecting the least from; concurrently, it's the worst of these three albums. Where her debut, Eye to the Telescope, featured grit beautifully waxing to vulnerability and an almost cheeky empowerment, Drastic Fantastic just feels like a melange of underdeveloped emotional hosannas. Half of the songs sound like they should be played behind a medical insurance commercial, and the other half could serve very well in a commercial for a wacky teen drama.
Tunstall herself is not the least bit preoccupied with appeasing her audience. But since it's hardly an artistic triumph at all, I can only wonder what the goal of the album was. Nearly every song is cut from the same mold; play Beauty of Uncertainty and Someday Soon back-to-back and you won't even remember which is which. Hopeless epitomizes the album by sounding agreeable at first and then totally vanishing into the void right after listening to it. Not every song on the album is as elevator-music, though. Paper Aeroplane is as drifty and wistful as the title entails, and I Don't Want You Now embraces Tunstall's more effective upbeat side. Hold On does a great job at actually engaging a listener, the album's main fault...It's no wonder that it's Drastic Fantastic's first single, but expecting much more of its kind from the album would seriously betray a potential buyer. I mean, look at the cover. It looks like something challenging, exciting, epic. Drastic Fantastic is anything but.
Cosmicolor may have been a massively overlong album, but at 39 minutes, Drastic Fantastic is just not enough to satisfy. It's a jangly, cheap little bauble of an alt-pop album with nary a hook in sight. I can only hope that KT Tunstall hasn't landed herself in one-hit-wonder land with ol' Black Horse and the Cherry Tree, but I think she's got enough talent in her to produce something worth listening to again.
Check Out: Hold On, Paper Aeroplane, I Don't Want You Now
1. Bonnie Pink - Thinking Out Loud
This is the true heartbreaker of the list to me. Thinking Out Loud is Bonnie Pink's 10th studio album, and it is the one that cries "Stop this madness!" to me. Her 9th, the divisive Golden Tears, was her most dangerous flirtation with pop. It put a lot of previously unheard elements in Pink's music to the forefront, like synthesizers and really thick production, and though there were a few great songs some people thought it was a change for the worse.
But at least it was a change. Thinking Out Loud is an attempt to combine her previous style with her new artistic direction and the results are absolutely monstrous. The recurring problem on the album is that the melodies are too simple and the production is too overdone, which leaves poor Bonnie in between a rock and a hard place. To no fault of her own, nearly every song on the album is completely uninteresting. Commercializing her intimate, soulful voice has done her very little good.
As far as standouts on Thinking Out Loud, Anything For You is undeniably the strongest song on there. It is a ball of energy and melodic fun, overpowering the tedium by sheer bulldozer force. It's a shame that this song was shoehorned onto the album as its last track; it would have made a much better lead-in than the pointless Gimme a Beat. Sakamichi is like a grungy, sexy younger sister to her seminal groover Senaka. Catch the Sun is listenable, if not cheesy and unaccomplished.
Unfortunately, the rest of the album does little but make itself seem like a waste of time. The most flagrant offender is the Philharmonic Flava rearrangement of her smash single A Perfect Sky, which is...inexplicable. Totally self-indulgent and pointless. A Perfect Sky was one of Bonnie Pink's biggest chart hits, but cramming this bland old dinosaur on the album seems to have been done solely in commercial interest. You probably won't even make it to the chorus on Burning Inside, Nagusami Blue and - wait for this one - "Broken hearts, citylights and just me thinking out loud." She sounds too sharp on the melodramatic Water Me, sleepwalks through Lullaby, and has nothing to do on the horrible Imagination, which sounds like the retarded bastard child of Communication and The Answer.
What I guess comforts me is that Bonnie Pink has plenty of places to run after this debacle. She can return to her pared-down, beautiful melodies, the gems of the past from albums like Even So or Just a Girl, or continue to change herself as an artist and see if she can find a better niche. But she cannot do both, as Thinking Out Loud proves. Right now, what she needs to do is divorce herself from Burning Chicken's overwhelming production and take a little time to sharpen her melodies. Work like this is just upsetting for big fans like me, just because I know she is capable of far better.
Check Out: Anything For You, Catch The Sun, Sakamichi
Monday, November 5, 2007
The soul-crushing state of America, reflected through a cultural prism - a.k.a. LOL DUMB
Yeah, I have an internal comedy bias - it's my least favorite of the genres simply because it's the one most easily duplicated in real life - but seriously, Will Ferrell in another sports movie? Kicking and Screaming, The Legend of Ricky Bobby, Blades of Glory, and now this. Four sports movies, practically in a row. Talk about range! And that's the least of our worries, what with a premature Vince Vaughn holiday nightmare, the impending Alvin and the Chipmunks remake which looks terrrrrrible, some shitty fake biopic (paging Christopher Guest...), and something with Amy Adams pretending to be a princess in a lame Disney abortion.
(Be Kind Rewind might be okay, but I would have to get over my fear of Jack Black first.)
Did I mention I found this on my way to the Day of the Dead remake's page? I heard that Nick Cannon would be in it and, in a whirl of utter disbelief, found it to be true. This is the most disheartening evening I've experienced since I watched I Know Who Killed Me.
Also I think this is probably my favorite music video ever.
My love for it is deepened because of how much it upsets idiots. Apparently, watching a bunch of stop-motion paper children bleed a little bit is profoundly disturbing to them. Perhaps the part where the cat gets its head torn off is what gets them, but they sew it back on! And seriously, how is any of this worse than that God-awful Saw shit Americans continue to watch?
Stay in Iceland where you belong, little Múm. The people here are out to get you with entirely non-violent pitchforks.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
At the behest of Meghan...happiness
Okay, so maybe filling half of my blog's first four posts with unrestrained hate may not have sat well with everyone, or at least my three or four friends who love me enough to actually read this. So I'm sitting here in my underwear, eating snickerdoodles and thinking to myself "how can I be angry at this moment in time?" It's not possible. Here, then, is a digression on something I love very much: music.
I cannot stress enough that my music taste is diverse. To say the least. It's matured considerably - five years ago, I would listen to absolutely nothing but Eurobeat or Japanese techno - but I'm still all over the place. Nothing is too mainstream or too obscure for me. Thus, I've taken myself to task to expose you to whatever I'm feeling at the moment, no matter what it may be. If you don't like it, tough fuckin' titties. It's not like you're paying for it.
Stuck In Your Love
Artist: m-flo loves melody
Album: Cosmicolor
The incontrovertible high point in what can be called a mixed bag of an album, Stuck in Your Love is sweet and forceful - romantic hip-hop at its finest. m-flo is one of the few acts in Japan who truly "gets" hip-hop. For those xenophobes out there, worry not; the song is entirely in English. As such, the lyrics are a little bit simple, but sometimes that's for the best.
Drivin' Me Wild
Artist: Common feat. Lily Allen
Album: Finding Forever
So perhaps I'm on a hip-hop kick right now, but seriously, Common and Lily Allen? That's Drew-bait, right there. Common makes some risky production choices, like playing one of Lily Allen's sonorous howls all through the song - she's not exactly a siren, but it works to surprising effect here.
Going to Georgia
Artist: The Mountain Goats
Album: Zopilote Machine
Yeah, John Darnielle or something, cool. Pitchfork called this the best-written song ever. They've brought a ton of counter-counter-culture hatred against themselves, though, so maybe that isn't a credible thing for me to say. I don't think I've ever been so taken by one man and his guitar before, but this has me singing along Every. Single. Time. Trying to imitate his voice, no less.
Letter ~ From the Lost Days
Artist: Akira Yamaoka feat. Mary Elizabeth McGlynn
Album: Silent Hill 3 Original Soundtrack
I realize that putting video game music on here makes me an unbelievable nerd, but I don't give a fuck. This song has a strange, ethereal quality to it. It kind of reminds me of Portishead. As far as Playstation vocal songs come, this is about as good as you're ever going to get.
Misery Business
Artist: Paramore
Album: Riot!
My mainstream pick of the day. What Paramore lacks in creativity, they make up for in sheer anger and honesty. This is the kind of music you imagine yourself kicking ass to. The kind of music that you put on as soon as you wake up and you're ready to go. This is probably what God was listening to when he created the world.
I cannot stress enough that my music taste is diverse. To say the least. It's matured considerably - five years ago, I would listen to absolutely nothing but Eurobeat or Japanese techno - but I'm still all over the place. Nothing is too mainstream or too obscure for me. Thus, I've taken myself to task to expose you to whatever I'm feeling at the moment, no matter what it may be. If you don't like it, tough fuckin' titties. It's not like you're paying for it.
Stuck In Your Love
Artist: m-flo loves melody
Album: Cosmicolor
The incontrovertible high point in what can be called a mixed bag of an album, Stuck in Your Love is sweet and forceful - romantic hip-hop at its finest. m-flo is one of the few acts in Japan who truly "gets" hip-hop. For those xenophobes out there, worry not; the song is entirely in English. As such, the lyrics are a little bit simple, but sometimes that's for the best.
Drivin' Me Wild
Artist: Common feat. Lily Allen
Album: Finding Forever
So perhaps I'm on a hip-hop kick right now, but seriously, Common and Lily Allen? That's Drew-bait, right there. Common makes some risky production choices, like playing one of Lily Allen's sonorous howls all through the song - she's not exactly a siren, but it works to surprising effect here.
Going to Georgia
Artist: The Mountain Goats
Album: Zopilote Machine
Yeah, John Darnielle or something, cool. Pitchfork called this the best-written song ever. They've brought a ton of counter-counter-culture hatred against themselves, though, so maybe that isn't a credible thing for me to say. I don't think I've ever been so taken by one man and his guitar before, but this has me singing along Every. Single. Time. Trying to imitate his voice, no less.
Letter ~ From the Lost Days
Artist: Akira Yamaoka feat. Mary Elizabeth McGlynn
Album: Silent Hill 3 Original Soundtrack
I realize that putting video game music on here makes me an unbelievable nerd, but I don't give a fuck. This song has a strange, ethereal quality to it. It kind of reminds me of Portishead. As far as Playstation vocal songs come, this is about as good as you're ever going to get.
Misery Business
Artist: Paramore
Album: Riot!
My mainstream pick of the day. What Paramore lacks in creativity, they make up for in sheer anger and honesty. This is the kind of music you imagine yourself kicking ass to. The kind of music that you put on as soon as you wake up and you're ready to go. This is probably what God was listening to when he created the world.
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