Category: Music
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My 11-year-old daughter, who is way cooler than me, is obsessed with the Strokes right now. She’s got me listening to “Under Cover of Darkness” on repeat. It’s a classic love song–longing and frustration–with the intricacy of a sailor’s valentine. It’s real storytelling, with a multiplicity of musical passages, shifting moods and dynamics. As for…
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I’m starting to think I’ve underestimated the song “Candy,” a 1990 duet sung by Iggy Pop and Kate Pierson of B-52s fame. Pierson performs “Candy” like an actress, moving between ironic spoken word and a good-girl-turned sad keening. She brings a cinematic feel to a ballad where two onetime lovers carry not a torch but…
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I’m just a Gen Xer catching up on music from time to time. This collaboration between rock band Phoenix and legendary mix-master Beck is impressing me. It’s an instrumental built around a simple riff–neither happy nor sad–and a cacophony of sounds of Talking Heads-level complexity. –Sarah Torribio >>last post >next post Listen to more songs…
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This acoustic, laid-back version of The Strokes “I’ll Try Anything Once” is modern but has a crooner-era, lazy sideways lilt like Dean Martin. The keys sound vintage too, like played by Bach in a steakhouse lounge. Masterful. –Sarah Torribio <<last post >>next post Listen to more songs of the day HERE
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“Catch My Fall” is arguably Billy Idol’s most lush and romantic song. It’s an extremely dynamic song, shifting from pillow-talk seduction to an octave-straddling peak. As for romanticism, just listen to the beautiful serenade by saxophonist Mars Williams. It could have been lifted from a track by New Romantic icons Roxy Music. I’ve just learned…
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f you want to get lost in a secret garden or walk, dreamlike, through a melancholy garden, you’ll like “She’s Green” by Little Birds. Whatever you call it–alt-rock, indie, shoe-gaze–it’s lovely and epic. <<last post >>next post Listen to more songs of the day HERE
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“Belong to You” by Cut Copy is a stylish and pretty bit of synthpop, with production full as a supermarket and thick as a forest. –Sarah Torribio >>last post << next post Listen to more songs of the day HERE
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“This “No New Tale to Tell” by Love and Rockets is more rock ‘n roll than rock ‘n roll. For those who don’t know, Love and Rockets is a band that emerged in 1985 featuring former Bauhaus members, including Daniel Ash on guitar, saxophone and vocals, David J on bass and Kevin Haskins on drums…
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If you list, in order, each of the studio albums (I’m throwing in one live album, Nocturne) by Siouxsie and the Banshees and The Cure, you very nearly have an Imagist poem. Again and again and again, not only are you jumping someone else’s train but–when listening to these two legendary goth-rock bands–you are asked…
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I’m going to go out on a limb and say that “Stories of Old” by Depeche Mode is underrated. The layered production makes for the electro-pop version of a Balinese gamelan orchestra. David Gahan’s baritone is seductive af in this gem of a tune. It draws me like “pspspsps” attracts a cat. —Sarah Torribio <<last…