Fables of The Reconstruction

Alternate Friday Random, taken from my New Music playlist (songs added in the last ten weeks)

It should be added that Emusic has a deal where you can add a toolbar to your browser, and get a free song every day. You get to pick your musical genre too. It's kind of a no-brainer.

Also, and maybe I'll make this a Weekly George:

The caterpillar does all the work, and the butterfly gets all the credit.
-George Carlin

1. Arrival Pad #19. East River Pipe. Low fi genius work, hooked up by SOTD. The songwriter is a guy from New York, who has had mental problems and been homeless. Out of pain comes Art. Downtempo enough for MenD.

2. Tick of Time, The Kooks. Embarassing Confession: I picked this disc because of teh "shine on, shine on" music that plays on some damn commercial. It says something about how ineffective the commercial is that I can remember the song, and the visuals, but I can't remember what the damn commercial was for. And before anybody bothers to remind me, let me state clearly: I don't care what the commercial was for.

The music, however, is damn fine, and recorded at teh Kinks studio to boot.

3. Fables, The Dodos. An eMusic find. The last album was more organic, almost like a bluegrass band that had been fed WAY too much XTC and Tom Waits. This is more straightforwardly Alt, but not a bad thing. The songwriting is a bit more focused, and this song rollicks right along.

4. Monumental Freaks, East River Pipe. More from ERP, off Garbageheads On Endless Stun. Just added this recently, so haven't had a chance to listen to it too much.

5. Chop The Tree (live) The Icicle Works. Loved this band, back when I had them on vinyl. Finally tracked down some digital releases, a singles album and a live recording. They shared an anthemic sound like the Alarm crossed with Simple Minds.

6. All Over Town, The Kooks. Lots of double down on this Random, but who cares? Who really cares?

Bonus track, for whatever that means anymore. Acoustic bit. The british accents on their voices really come out on the quiet songs. I imagine some people might not care for that, but I wonder about those people.

7. No More, Dirty Projectors. I was hoping one of these would come up.

I haven't been able to decide about this album yet. It is a complete cover of Black Flag's "Rise Above" album so, you know, several million points for street cred; but the songs are minimalist,, kind of techno, with warbly vocals and pulsing drum n bass so minus some number of points for too-weirdness. Not the kind of thing I normally care for. will keep you advised.

8. Postcard, Uncle Tupelo. From the early stuff, which showed up on Emusic so it was time to fill in some back catalog. Much more aggressive than later stuff, and I've always been more partial to Jay Farrar's voice than Jeff Tweedy's.

Like Brando mentioned, although I am partial to the solo work by both guys, I like the group work a bit better. Problem solved by lumping all of it into a playlist called Son Wilco Tupelo.

9. Hopeless, Sister Hazel. Was won over by seeing part of their gig at Summerfest this year. Good, solid, mid tempo altish rock. Kind of like aural comfort food.

10. Strangers, Van She. Free song from somewhere.

11. Better To Know, The Indelicates. Debut from a british duo. Starts with a simple riff, piano kicks in, adds drums. Traditional approach, really. But pretty good stuff. Came up as an eMusic recommendation. it worked.

12. Draggin, ' The Von Bondies. Garage rock from Detroit. They played the North Avenue free festival a few weeks back, and rocked pretty hard.

13. You Can Close Your Eyes, Susanna Hoffs and Matthew Sweet. The second in a series of covers albums by these two. Quite a guilty pleasure, even if most of the songs are done pretty faithfully.

Hey! Look! The sun came out!.