NAILED Songs of the Week #24
“the sound thick enough to feel the strings through your ears”
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MATTY:
"Put Your Number in My Phone" -- Ariel Pink
Ariel Pink has been around for a while, but 2010's Before Today opened up their music to a whole new audience. While 2012's Mature Themes referenced more late 60s and early 70s art rock (think Red Krayola here), Before Today established a higher production value on wispy, 80s-inspired pop music reminiscent of bands like Thompson Twins, only with a frosty coating of cross dressing and experimental drugs on top. All that aside, 2014's fall release of Pom Pom, Ariel Pink's newest album, promised to be another amazing album experience, given the release of "Put Your Number in My Phone," the band's latest single. Featuring layered swaths of vocal lines that call out the swan song of a single person trying to land a stranger's phone number, everything comes full stop to the recorded answering machine message. Sure, numbers were exchanged. But then what? Wanting something super badly, but finding yourself reluctant to do anything about it might define an entire generation. And bonus news -- the videos from the band have finally started to catch up to the musical magic they make.
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COLIN:
“Say Goodbye” -- Beck
There’s only one way to feel the way I did when I first listened to Beck’s “Say Goodbye” from his latest album Morning Phase. In order to recreate the feeling you’ll have to get married after being with your partner a year, get divorced two years later in a battle between your heart and your head that leaves your whole body wounded, meet a person you fall in love with two months before you leave the city you spent the last thirty years in to move across the country, have you and the person you fell in love with promise to be together again in this new city--New York City--that you call home, have them visit, make plans to visit them, have them write you an email breaking up with you weeks before you’re to visit, and then listen to “Say Goodbye.” But that’s not necessary to enjoy this mix of pop and country acoustic guitar, the sound thick enough to feel the strings through your ears, with Beck’s melodic voice, telling us what we knew, what we felt, was to not be able to hold onto anything forever. It may not be the same experience I had, but you’ll enjoy it all the same.
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CARRIE:
"Unfucktheworld" -- Angel Olson
Every time I'm going to listen to this song I can't waste it. Like taking little licks, making it last. So precious, I won't write my words through it now. Just listen.
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SHENYAH:
"Pressure" -- My Brightest Diamond
This is the first track on My Brightest Diamonds newest album This Is My Hand. When Shara Wordon, the front woman to this multifaceted project, created a concept for This Is My Hand, she envisioned a fusion of a tribal collaboration while exploring organic sounds mixed with electronic. She certainly achieves this with her unique twist of talents. The beginning of this song hits the listener with a wall of snares performed by a Detroit marching band which quickly introduces a montage of horns and woodwinds and then of course her powerful vocals. There's so much energy, which is only the beginning to this masterpiece of an album.
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