Song of the Moment: Mistakes We Knew We Were Making

Pretty much anyone who knows me knows that I was an obsessed fan of Brand New when Deja Entendu, their second album, came out. All sorts of headlines on the lines of 'emo grows up,' and I bought the CD on a pure whim, and fell in love with it instantly. But the best thing about obsession is that it leads to hyperlinks; you discover all sorts of new stuff because your obsession loves them, or is linked to them in some way. From the former, I have inherited a great love of Raymond Carver and The Smiths, and from the latter?  Straylight Run. I could go into the endless gossip of who slept with who's sister or girlfriend or wife or mother...

Read More

Band Rediscovery: The Replacements

It's an absolute miracle that I hadn't gotten into the Replacements before now. Back in college, I was a huge Vagrant records kid, and probably listened to every band about a thousand times. Except for Paul Westerberg (lead singer of the Replacements), that mysterious old guy on the label who wasn't doing shoulder-sleeve emo or hardcore lite. I knew a few of his songs, and I knew a lot of obsessed Replacements fans, and I knew that crazy video that's always in top ten lists where all you see is a speaker pulsating. But then I saw Adventureland, with its superb late 80s indie soundtrack. I tracked down pretty much every song in the movie, and...

Read More

Songs that Never Fail to Puddle Me: "I'm On Fire"

Like most people today, I have a healthy amount of disdain for Bruce Springsteen's 80s output (apart from Dancing in the Dark, which I've loved since I was a kid). So while I made an effort to listen to his 70's music, and to a lesser extent his 90's music, I never heard this gem, one of the trillion hit singles from Born In the USA. In fact, the first time I heard it was when Tori Amos covered it, beautifully and hauntingly, and I just thought, my god that's one HELL of a song. It went straight through me, especially the piano solo. Somehow the original version of the song is even moodier than Tori's version, despite having 80s synthesizers...

Read More