Dear Jesus. If I’m good, I’d like to reincarnate as a Jimmy Eat World guitar case. That would be amazing.
The same part of me that digs American alt-rock also digs Anberlin. Their new album is on the way, and fingers crossed I might be interviewing them in a week or two. Obviously if that happens, then it’ll be here. For now, video for their new single Impossible, and thunk-words.
The times, they are a-changing. Dylan did a video dressed as Santa. I can buy a drink in a Greek Orthodox Church. We can, if you believe the propaganda, ride a magical snake through the sea and get to France. And now I’ve become probably the only person to actually visit this blog, as somewhere I keep easily accessible YouTube videos of all my favourite singles of the moments. Well, I’ll go all the way.
Tris10 is someone I know that produces mixes on occasion. I thoroughly advocate him as someone who knows how to produce an exceptionally listenable hour-long mix. He’s not untalented at the mixing machines, but more importantly he also knows how to choose decent songs for a playlist in the first place. It’s Movember again, and so, his Movember mix. And more here.
Robyn does weirdly sexy videos. She made me swell for short haircuts long before everyone started regressing to This Is England inspired manly pixie cuts. Although this isn’t weirdly sexy. This is kind of bluntly sexy. Hmmm – objects that are blunt and sexy I could expand the analogy with. Nevermind. But even if you’re going to wear boots and ill-fitting trousers and cut your hair like Patrick Bateman, I could still find you pretty if you’re properly-European.
Let’s say that you can roughly rank songs with the following formula
((Playcount + (plays in the 1st week you got it)) * how many times louder than normal conversation you sing the lyrics) – whatever percentage of the song you don’t know by heart.
This song gets MILLIONS of MEANINGLESS POINTS.
I was once told that a good way to test a song, or even just use a song and set yourself to a particular pattern mentally, is to set it to repeat and let it wash right over you and your aural tastes. Whitewashing with the noise, and setting a heartbeat to the strum of percussion or bass or whatever, and then afterwards, only afterwards, letting yourself start the slow process of articulating thoughts on the subject.
Although I used to hate a room-mate-next-door for doing just that with Vampire Weekend. I never claimed it was a social habit.
“This is what I mean about a feeling of guilt if I try to write something negative here. No one likes the kid at the party who doesn’t dance to anything because it’s too poppy. Once upon a time, when I was doing interviews for Etcetera, we’d filled up positions, but someone wrote in asking to do music reviews. I wanted to fuck him around a little, so I asked for 150 words on Lady Gaga’s Just Dance. He sent in something about it being repetitive or bourgeois, or something like that – everyone knows the type. Altronic nutters. So I asked him to write it again, but entirely positive.”
#1 – MY FAVOURITE SONG
Favourite….. Hmmm.
What’s my favourite place to go on holiday is a totally different question from what was my favourite holiday – you see? Love Paris the city, but spent a month there once in the company of an ex-girlfriend – a totally different experience to any other visit there. So it’s a favourite city, but nothing like a favourite vacation. California is sort of the reverse situation there.
So, I’ll take favourite here to be something like ‘a song you like, for just being a song, and nothing else’ – admiration of a song on its own merits, nothing related to how anything except fuck-yes-one-more-time approval – an existentialist favouritism, if you like. ‘Being and Nothingness and Pounding Pounding Techno Music’
God damn it’s early.
So mein neuter song?
Alice Practice – Crystal Castles
I hope you weren’t listening to that in a library with headphones on full or anything. Or even worse, no headphones. Well, now you know.
And yeah, the irony, you’re probably thinking, that the song I like most just for being a song sounds like Optimus Prime victoriously raping Howler Monkeys. The screeching, I’m pretty sure, isn’t meant to be understood. Closest transcription I can find is-
“hi scars, will heal, soon, this drug in us, spins the earth, down. said, i live low i lisp, i die sugar shooting bled with deadbeats only crawl so your sad eyes quite christian blood drop it, it’s dead, we dropped down, and took the body home. sad eyes. scars, like chopping daggers see you’ll never walk only stagger. sad eyes, cry crimson, blood”
And you thought your adolescent years were challenging.
The song comes from discovery of blogs back in them sixth form days. Crystal Castles soundtracked my revision, my mornings of exams (played on repeat, loud enough to be heard two blocks away, at 7am – those were the days), and my summer of nervous anticipation. And then I saw them live the day I found out I’d missed my grades. And it made everything better.
I should talk more song stuff.
Well, hear it somewhere loud. The crunch-crunch-crunch of the start is immune to overplay – you don’t switch over Alice Practice. The album wears after a while, mores years from release, but this holds strong.
It wasn’t a lead single – although this is a matter of contention. Early in their career, CC did an interview for the now long defunct Plan B magazine with Kieron Gillen, where they told him that Alice Practice was basically just what the name suggested – a test recording of the lead singer, Alice Glass, practicing with the microphone. Then it got put up on Myspace and before you know it… It’s appearing on blog posts under the title ‘My Favourite Song’.
Back on topic.
There are memories behind Alice Practice, but this isn’t why its mine. Its because it’s loud, no matter the volume, and fresh no matter how long you leave it on repeat. Cathartic in anger and rejuvenating is lethargy. And all these kinds of things.
Oh, one more story. Roger Crisp, Philosophy professor here at Oxford, and ‘The Bollocks’ when it comes to aesthetic theory (I’m told), compared Alice Practice to the chanting of Gregorian Monks. I went up to him after the lecture and said ‘That was awesome’. And he gave me a look of such revulsion and pity, that I never spoke to him again. True story.
Play it! Play it loud!
I SAID LOUD!
