Songs You Should Rediscover Today Because They Are Awesome

Album: Distorted Ghost EP, 2000

Justification: It’s another song without a video, but let’s not quibble about such petty concerns: we’re all friends here, are we not? And this entry is a very-slightly tweaked version of a piece I wrote for the lovely Karin Maier, whose blog is here and whose artwork based upon this song is right next to this paragraph. Said artwork is part of an exhibition currently showing in Canberra and looks pretty darn grand.

I've already bought this piece for my next place, art lovers. Don't go getting any bright ideas.

The suicide of Sparklehorse’s Mark Linkous’ suicide was hardly a complete shock: the man had known serious hardship, physical and mental illness and debilitating chemical dependencies to a degree that few could be expected to handle for long. Even without knowing his biography, the most affecting moments on Sparklehorse’s four albums all seemed to be raging desperately to find some light in the gathering darkness. And I contend that nothing captures the rage, sorrow, bloodyminded hope and heightened physical stress of desperate depression and heartbreak like the unhinged ‘Happy Man’.

From the lo-fi sonics to the off-kilter drumming to the hazy stream-of-consciousness lyric (“I woke up in a horses’ stomach one foggy morning” isn’t a line one expects in popular music), this is a song that I adored then as much as I do now. My ex-wife utterly hated it, though: in fact, it was one of the very few songs that she would angrily switch off if I played it in our house. Maybe she had an inkling that, when our marriage finally sputtered out, it would be Linkous’ desperate insistence that all he wanted was to be a happy man that I would take so much to heart as I entered my own long dark night of the soul.

It gave me a lot of strength at the time, but Linkous’ unfortunate coda – performed with a self-inflicted rifle shot to the heart in an alleyway in Knoxville, Tennessee in March 2010 – is a sobering reminder that a song, no matter how powerful and important, is still only a song.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010: Hmmm. Nothing. Weird.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: The Only Ones were celebrating the joys of heroin with ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

466. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: Heart in your Heartbreak (1 May)

 467. Paul Simon: The Boy in the Bubble (2 May)

468. 10,000 Maniacs: Candy Everybody Wants (7 May)

469. Starky: Hey Bang Bang (14 May)

470. Hefner: When the Angels Play their Drum Machines (16 May)

Album: Dead Media, 2001

Justification: Normally I refuse to include songs that don’t have a video, but rules are made to be broken. Or at least I can’t think of any other song right now, so this will have to do.

I prefer the version on this EP, not least because it has a hot space lady with a big gun: that's basically every boy's fantasy, right?

I wonder how many people I don’t know read this blog? I’m guessing it’s mainly people who are familiar with me one way or another – friend, friend-of-friend, smartarse on Twitter etc – so the readership is probably currently people who know my relationship has ended, had they not been able to surmise from the last few songs on this list (especially, oooh, this rather-giving-the-game-away one). And this song so beautifully (to my mind, at least) sums up the feeling of two people with the best of intentions trying so very, very hard to resuscitate something that should have been left to quietly die.

It appeared on Hefner’s final album Dead Media but I don’t remember loving it nearly as much as the version on the following year’s The Hefner Brain EP, upon which it got a subtle remix. It’s the flipside to the Postal Service’s ‘Such Great Heights’, which used a rush of chilly electronics to evoke distance and longing while this has warm analogue squelches and an exhausted tempo that suggests feet being placed one in front of the other by sheer force of will, as though the sequencer itself really can’t be arsed. The EP version isn’t dramatically different, mind: the biggest change is an electronic orgasm in the middle of the song which builds up with slow-burbling keys, crests, and then blinks and sighs back into the chorus.

Much as I adore this, it’s not my favourite song by the band – that honour goes to the jubilant ‘The Day That Thatcher Dies’, which is a) a sentiment that I can wholeheartedly share, and b) contains the awesome line “she wrapped an ankle chain ’round my left-wing heart”. In a similar sentiment, if someone could write ‘The Day That John Howard Succumbs to Pancreatic Cancer (Party Zone)’, I’d be very grateful.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: Speaking of electronics, it’s Alphaville and ‘Big In Japan’.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

465. Weezer: Undone – The Sweater Song (30 Apr)

466. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: Heart in your Heartbreak (1 May)

 467. Paul Simon: The Boy in the Bubble (2 May)

468. 10,000 Maniacs: Candy Everybody Wants (7 May)

469. Starky: Hey Bang Bang (14 May)

Album: Starky, 2006

Justification: And we’re back.

And this is why share houses don't work.

I didn’t love this album when I first heard it, but that was mainly because I’d loved their first one so damn much and couldn’t work out what the hell had happened. On their 2003 album Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre the Sydney three-piece sounded like heirs apparent to the Jam with concise nuggets of gloriously melodic pop, but the enture band disintegrated around singer/songwriter Beau Cassidy between writing quirky energetic singles like ‘Rock’n'Roll is the Devil’s Music’ and this heartbreaking piece of near-shoegaze, making this song a huge and at the time somewhat unpleasant surprise.

These days it’s a favourite, though, and has soundtracked some serious heartbreak along the way. For that reason I tend not to listen to it unless I need to – and when I need it, I need it like nothing else on Earth.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010:The Wannadies were completely contradicting the vibe of this tune with the jubilant ‘You and Me Song’.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: Weekend, so let’s go with the May 13 entry: the Boo Radleys’ mighty ‘Lazarus’.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

464. Tom Lehrer: Poisoning Pigeons in the Park (27 Apr)

465. Weezer: Undone – The Sweater Song (30 Apr)

466. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: Heart in your Heartbreak (1 May)

 467. Paul Simon: The Boy in the Bubble (2 May)

468. 10,000 Maniacs: Candy Everybody Wants (7 May)

Album: Our Time In Eden, 1992

Justification: …because I thought that if someone was a REM fan, they were obliged to be a fan of 10,000 Maniacs.

It's not particularly funny, but god I hate this album cover. Just sayin'.

There were a bunch of bands that I got into because members of REM mentioned them in interviews, played on their records or took them on tour. Many of these bands were amazing – REM was my entry point for enduring favourites like Robyn Hitchcock, Grant Lee Buffalo, Love Tractor, Magnapop, and a combination of REM-approval and a desperate, friendship-ruining crush in about 1991 is why I know how to play a hell of a lot of Indigo Girls songs.

But 10,000 Maniacs were like REM’s weirdly prim younger siblings, giving off a  smalltown puritan vibe in contrast to REM’s collegiate art-cool during the 80s. And I found that kind of hard to stomach for a long time, despite listening intently to In My Tribe and the Hope Chest compilation of early material and trying to develop a fondness for Natalie Merchant’s ill-enunciated mouthful-of-honey delivery.

This song, however, needed no effort from me. It was big, bold and brassy, had a political metaphor that was unusually effortless and unlaboured, and was just catchy as all get out. Merchant co-wrote it having told the band that she was leaving two years hence, and its parent album Our Time In Eden was the last studio album she made with ‘em, leaving for a fitfully successful solo career while the band plodded on with new singers because that always works.

I’ve reconciled the fact that this band will never be more than a footnote to an old passion for me, but this still has a soft spot in my heart.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010: The glorious genius of Talking Heads and the still incredible ‘Once in a Lifetime’.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: It was a weekend, so let’s go for the 6th and ‘Lock It’ by the Falling Joys.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

463. Beulah: Emma Blowgun’s Last Stand (26 Apr)

464. Tom Lehrer: Poisoning Pigeons in the Park (27 Apr)

465. Weezer: Undone – The Sweater Song (30 Apr)

466. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: Heart in your Heartbreak (1 May)

 467. Paul Simon: The Boy in the Bubble (2 May)

Album: Gracelands, 1986

Justification: OK, if I had my way, this would be the Blue Aeroplanes’ version, which is loose and drunk and awesome. Which is not to say that this is not a great song – it is – but just that that accordion could be a bit more aggressive, which the Aeroplanes achieve by swapping it out for some chunky slide guitar. Just sayin’.

Perspective: it's what all the cool artists don't bother with.

But it is one of Paul Simon’s greatest tunes, and arguably another of my occasional Songs That Celebrate All Things Rational (like this, and this, and this). Although that might be because its a song that references technology arguably good (the long distance call, looking upon a distant constellation that’s dying in the corner of the sky, a baby with a baboon heart) and otherwise (a bomb in a baby carriage wired to the radio, loose affiliations of millionaires and billionaires), and reminds me of the Arthur C Clarke axiom that any technology suitably advanced is indistinguishable from magic – for medicine is magical, and magical is art.

I think the other reason I prefer the Blue Aeroplanes’ version is that it doesn’t have fretless bass in it. God I loathe that instrument.

The Graceland album was a firm favourite with my parents, blasting from the tape deck during a hundred family trips and journeys to and from our beach house down the coast. It’s also recently become a massive favourite of my girlfriend, who has made it the soundtrack of lazy weekend mornings. Her discussions about the practicality of diamonds being on the soles of one’s shoes have been powerfully enlightening.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010 and 2011: I had another day off during both years? No stamina, that’s my problem. Fortunately there are loads and loads of songs in the 1986 archive.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

462. Redd Kross: The Lady in the Front Row (24 Apr)

463. Beulah: Emma Blowgun’s Last Stand (26 Apr)

464. Tom Lehrer: Poisoning Pigeons in the Park (27 Apr)

465. Weezer: Undone – The Sweater Song (30 Apr)

466. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: Heart in your Heartbreak (1 May)

Album: Belong, 2011

"You know what the record buying public like? Zombie children."

Justification: I fell in love with this song the second I saw them at the Laneway Festival earlier this year. They rock so much harder live than you’d think, given their charming dream pop, or nu-gaze, or whatever the young people are calling what I still and will forever call shoegaze because dammit, that’s what it’s called.

It hits me right in my sweet spot: sweet little melody, chugging Krautrock beat and a genius lyric in “She was the heart in your heartbreak / She was the miss in your mistake”. Now that, friends, is a lyric. I think I need to see the treatment for this clip written down, though, because it doesn’t seem to be relevant to the song at first glance.

I really wish I’d seen their sideshow. It clashed with two other gigs, though, and I was already rushing between them. Damned if I can remember what they were, though.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010 and or 2011: There wasn’t a damn one. What the hell was I doing? Anyway, here’s the 2011 archive, which consists of one other song. But it’s a great one.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

461. The Sunnyboys: Happy Man (23 Apr)

462. Redd Kross: The Lady in the Front Row (24 Apr)

463. Beulah: Emma Blowgun’s Last Stand (26 Apr)

464. Tom Lehrer: Poisoning Pigeons in the Park (27 Apr)

465. Weezer: Undone – The Sweater Song (30 Apr)

Album: Weezer (the Blue Album), 1994

"I like the title of the album. Let's use it over and over again for the rest of our career."

Justification: I don’t like to complain endlessly about Weezer, but for fuck’s sake: what happened? This song was the first Weezer song I heard (because, well, it was their debut single) and I thought “that is what all guitars should sound like.” I didn’t fall in love with the band immediately, mind – ‘Buddy Holly’ initially put me off because I’m some sort of an idiot – so it took until Pinkerton for me to realise that Rivers Cuomo was a freakin’ genius. Except that wasn’t the case with Rivers himself, of course: when Pinkerton failed to match this album’s success, he threw a little professional tantrum, quit music for a while, did his degree and then came up with the idea that the band should make awful, awful music instead. That’s why albums like Hurley and Raditude exist.

Still, what a tune. Incidentally, it’s one of Spike Jonze’s first videos, and one of the dogs takes a dump on Patrick Wilson’s kick pedal. Now THAT, friends, is entertainment.

I can remember getting this confused with ‘Sweater’ by Eskimo Joe at one point, but that makes no sense since that didn’t come out until 1998. I have no explanation for this.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010: No 30th, but let’s go for the 29th with Pulp and their greatest single ever: ‘Lipgloss’.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: Again, it’s for the the 29th and the Arcade Fire with the mighty ‘Rebellion (Lies)’.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

460. Of Montreal: Disconnect the Dots (17 Apr)

461. The Sunnyboys: Happy Man (23 Apr)

462. Redd Kross: The Lady in the Front Row (24 Apr)

463. Beulah: Emma Blowgun’s Last Stand (26 Apr)

464. Tom Lehrer: Poisoning Pigeons in the Park (27 Apr)

Album: More of Tom Lehrer and An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer, 1959

Justification: This recently came up in a flurry of trawling for hilarious songs on YouTube while dining with with dear friends Alex and Emma Mustakov, and I’m unsure why I brought it up since the other criteria of the night was “songs that are incredibly filthy or at the very least egregiously sexual”. There was a lot of R Kelly going on, basically, and I guess I wanted to class things up a bit. And nothing is more classy than this perky odd to animal torture, sung by a Harvard-educated academic (yes, really: Lehrer was a mathematician and lectured at Harvard, MIT, Wellesley and the University of California, in mathematics, political science and – of course –musical theatre) and master satirist, reminding us that a) smart people are funny, and b) more words rhyme with “pigeon” that you’d necessarily think. By which I mean “two”.

So, all academics everywhere, where's YOUR live album? Huh? Where?

It was introduced to me by much-missed former colleague Alexandra Coghlan whose thought processes clearly went something like “Andrew is a smartarse, and this is the sort of thing that would appeal to smartarses.” Except she’d never put it those term, because she is  an impressively erudite and articulate woman who would use a far more engaging term than “smartarse”, as well as being a demure English Rose with an archetypical BBC accent and crisp diction that at once evokes village fêtes, tea on the lawn and the glory days of the Raj. And I am forever grateful to her for doing so, although now I have this outlier from 1959 on what is otherwise an unbroken 47 years of Songs You Should Rediscover, which is going to drive the highly-suppressed OCD part of me into a tizzy.

I may be misremembering, but I’m pretty sure my grandfather wasn’t above playing the odd Tom Lehrer song when he was feeling expansive at the piano.

Fun fact #1: Lehrer claims to have invented the jello shot while he was working the National Security Agency during the 50s. It was presumably not as a method of enhancing national security, though.

Fun fact #2: Lehrer was university buddies with songwriter Joe Raposo, who was one of the key songwriters for Sesame Street (he wrote the theme, ‘Bein’ Green’ and loads of other classics). In fact, during the 70s Raposo coaxed Lehrer out of musical retirement to write some songs for The Electric Company.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010: Buffalo Tom were getting emotional and moody with ‘Taillights Fade’.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2011: Bjork creates an undeniable masterpiece in ‘Hyper-ballad’. Wow, these are two very emotionally powerful songs, especially to be accompanying this fluffy number. Should maybe have checked that before writing this entry, really.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

459. Cracker: Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now) (16 Apr)

460. Of Montreal: Disconnect the Dots (17 Apr)

461. The Sunnyboys: Happy Man (23 Apr)

462. Redd Kross: The Lady in the Front Row (24 Apr)

463. Beulah: Emma Blowgun’s Last Stand (26 Apr)

Album: When You Heartstrings Break, 1999

"We're an indie band from San Fran, so yeah - something that looks like an oriental greeting card will be fine, thanks."

Justification: Oh, how I love this song. This was where I fell in love with the band, not even initially realising that they were part of the Elephant 6 family (along with fellow SYSRTBIIA alumni Of Montreal and the Apples in Stereo) but just thinking that the San Franscisco combo knew how to write the hell out of a glorious song. It became a staple at Space Capsule, the club at which my ex-wife and sister used to DJ, and every time I hear that joyful brass sting and those melancholy lyrics I’m transported to the sticky dancefloor of Shotz/Stix, pulling an indie layback.

The album is also excellent, with the closing song ‘If We Can Land a Man on the Moon then Surely I Can Win Your Heart’ being another masterpiece – the whole thing sounds like a series of choruses welded together. They never did an album to match it, and split two discs later in 2004. But like so many of the songs in this list, it’s there because it’s haunted by a ghost of my younger self. And there are times I kinda miss that guy.

Oh, and if you’re thinking “hey, that’s not the album cover!” – yes it was, in Australia. Apparently it’s got a different sleeve in every country it was released in. I have no idea why Australia got a mysterious cloud pagoda.

SONG YOU SHOULD HAVE REDISCOVERED THIS TIME IN 2010 & 2011: Seriously? There was nothing for either year? Fine, let’s have a look at the 1999 archive.

AND HERE’S THE LAST FIVE…

458. The Magnetic Fields: Andrew in Drag (13 Apr)

459. Cracker: Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now) (16 Apr)

460. Of Montreal: Disconnect the Dots (17 Apr)

461. The Sunnyboys: Happy Man (23 Apr)

462. Redd Kross: The Lady in the Front Row (24 Apr)