Silver Jews - Random Rules

The Silver Jews have written two of my favorite albums of all time, American Water and Starlight Walker. Both were co-written with Stephen Malkmus and both were when David Berman (lead singer) was trashed all the time. I'm not a fan of Berman sober and sans Malkmus, but hey, maybe i'm just a 'Joos purist.

David Berman has written 30 of my top 35 favorite lyrics in songs. I think he's hilarious. Some samples:
"when the sun sets on the ghetto all the broken stuff gets cold"
"suburban kids with biblical names"
"on the last day of your life, don't forget to die"
"He can afford anything, he's got dogs that blow on trumpets"

This video gets huge cred because for some inexplicable reason it's just Connery clips from some biblical-looking movie (cue the "you've never seen ___!?!?!??" comments).

I think Bri's term 'charmingly sloppy' applies to the silver jews in songwriting, guitar playing, and singing, but it somehow stays together and keeps me coming back for more, time and time again.

Iron and Wine - Boy With a Coin

Those of you who know me and have spent any amount of time with me in the last couple of months saw this coming (and the Andrew Bird, for that matter). This is another example of a song that hits me really, really hard.

The acoustic guitar part is crisp, and moving, with a sweet accompanying bass line. The vocals are ethereal, dreamy, but hinting at sorrow or yearning. Then there are the hand drums and claps. I'm not sure if I would like this song nearly as much if it were played on a kit. Without any drums at all it wouldn't have nearly as much drive. The sustaining electric guitars and backwards violin (or whatever the heck that is) are a good compliment to the dreamy vocal harmonies.

If anybody likes this song enough to analyze the lyrics, I'm interested in other peoples interpretations.

Again, I hope you all like this at least a little bit

Menomena - Evil Bee

ok. Since January, i have been completely obsessed with Menomena. They make the most intelligent and interesting music of anyone that I've listened to over the last few years. They are some art school nerds from Portland, and their videos are as sweet as their songs.

This song is the most epic-sounding song on the album. Who knows what they're actually talking about. For all i know, they just tossed together some words that sound good. But, i'd be interested to hear anyone's opinion on the lyrics.

So, enjoy:



ps #1: When you are on the youtube page that you want to embed (enbed? spelling?), on the right side of the page it shows the URL for the link, and the URL to embed the video. You OBVIOUSLY choose the URL to embed the video.

ps #2: I'm afraid that i'm going to blow my load in the first few weeks. I'm going to try to limit myself to only a couple posts a week.

ps #3: Let's try to be consistent with the labels for the posts. It would be cool to have helpful labels to sort through the posts. I suggest we include the type of music, and the person who posted the song. Let me know if you have more ideas.