NAILED Songs of the Week #28
“love is being remembered, but only for the losing of it”
Carrie Seitzinger, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of NAILED:
"Took the Ghost to the Movies" -- Meredith Graves
This song is Meredith Graves's first solo track, a shift from her lead role in Perfect Pussy to her solo record, currently in the works. It begins with a gentle, sedately unserious guitar that feels like waking from a nap that's lasted too long. Then the feeling changes because you start to reacquaint with the reality you momentarily left behind. And all of life's commotion and drama is waiting on the other side of the quietude. The feeling is a static heartache, an artist's burden, that follows like a shadow.
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Shenyah Webb, Arts Editor of NAILED:
“Atlas Bear” – Grawl!x
Grawl!x is a hidden gem just making its way out of the woodwork of the UK. Good Grief is the debut album just released last February by the solo project featuring James Machin. I instantly fell in love when I first took a listen. I was in search for something to pull on my heart strings a little, the way Elliot Smith did years ago. Each and every song has its way of successfully doing just that. Warm acoustic guitars, piano, chorus-y man vocals… Filling me up and pouring me out, filling me up and pouring my out, over and over again.
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Matty Byloos, Publisher and Contributing Editor of NAILED:
"July" -- Youth Lagoon
Underwater music. Tiny pianos underwater, and that space at the back of the throat where everyone's secrets always seem to come from. There's not much to this song in terms of instrumentation, which isn't to say that it's not complex, but more that it's all soft and beautiful and shot through with reverb. So much space that music can make for itself. How finding the right progression of chords, and repeating that progression enough times can take you somewhere sad or deep or beyond. In the lyrics, love is being remembered, but only for the losing of it. This one's got sadness and something eerie in its veins, look out. "Five years ago in my backyard, I sang a love away." Every bit of it's still present in this tiny little heart of a song.
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Guest Editor: Rick Klaras, Songwriter and Guitarist for Golden Octagon:
"Let it Happen" -- Tame Impala
Tame Impala is getting huge. I’m excited for them. They’re amazing, and they fully deserve the attention. I’m less excited about the fucking vultures who keep buying up all the tickets to every show they play and selling them on Stubhub for three times the price, but I digress.
The band has been releasing teaser tracks for their upcoming full-length album, Currents, slated for release on July 17th. They’ve all been excellent, but “Let It Happen” is the one that has got me most excited for the new record.
The song’s opening filter sweep evokes desert wildlife documentary circa ’83, giving way to a groove worthy of the Supremes in their prime… wooly drums, insistent guitar, snaps and clap over a murky lake of synthesis and delay.
The chorus closes the blinds for a moment of introspection in an empty apartment. 10cc-lush background vox thrum like hotel air. The contrast makes the drums pry open your ears like sun muscles all-nighter irises when the verse returns.
At 3:49, a skip? No. A little symphony with something caught in its throat. Then vocoder mantra, and a bass line that can’t stop believing in the redemptive power of dirt.
At 7:50, “Let It Happen” is a temporal anomaly, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome like some tyrannical prog-rock masterpiece. It takes the time to get to know you, but still leaves you wanting more. Which is the idea, right?
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