Songs of the Week #5- Editors Pick
“It lives on in some paradise in my memory”
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ROY:
"This Day Next Year" -- Karate
I have a favorite note. It's the high note in the beginning of the solo in Karate's "This Day Next Year." I think it's the eleventh note of the solo proper. It's tremendously beautiful. The rest of the solo -- and the entire song, really -- is great, but that first few seconds leading so adeptly up to that single moment and then... A ping like a thick silver bell. The whole song runs over 11 minutes, which could try anyone's attention span, but it's worth the wait. The five-minute instrumental outro of the song is a compelling musical realization of tact. So subtle, so fucking beautiful. The guitar and drums lock into patterns while the bass works lazily around them. Our patience is rewarded and the tension broken toward the very end when the drums break into rolling fills.
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CARRIE:
"You Don't Love Me (No, No, No)" -- Dawn Penn
There is something really sexy about this song even though it is about heartbreak and love loss. Like Penn is getting off on the very desperation of her desire. I discovered this song, along with other rad reggae songs by women, through one of my friends in Long Beach, CA. We lived together in the most beautiful apartment I have ever lived in, on Ocean Blvd, and dozens of times Anita would put this record on and she, Eva, and I would have a little dance party to it at the end of our night. I don't have a copy of the compilation and I'm not sure what the album is. It lives on in some paradise in my memory.
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JOHN:
“Willow Tree” – Chad VanGaalen
In the midst of the saddest moment in my life, I feel this song in the center of my heart, keeping it pumping, keeping it alive, for in the death of one moment begins life for the next. Chad singing in a French bathroom, one of the saddest songs I relate to. "You can take my body, put it in a boat, light it on fire. Send it out to sea." He also happens to be one of the nicest people I have met and gave me a nice little chat at Holocene before his stunning show a year or so ago. Thanks Chad.
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SHENYAH:
“Televators” -- The Mars Volta
The first time I heard The Mars Volta, I was traveling through the Arizona desert. I stared at the mountain silhouettes, almost black as the sky without a moon. I just stared and listened intently. De-Loused in the Comatorium is one of those albums that need to be listened to in its entirety to really get the complexity and passion it deserves. If you are willing to muscle through this project’s intensity, this album has the power to inspire the artist within.
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MATTY:
"Night Crawler" – Thee Oh Sees, from the album Floating Coffin
I'm partial to the heavy reverb, drony-style music that's found a way out of the underground in recent years past, and I just discovered Thee Oh Sees brand of it this past weekend, through my music guru adviser. Night Crawler begins with the kind of 70s synth that I go bonkers for, the same eerie nighttime city sounds that echo the soundtrack to cult classic movies like The Warriors. After that, the song becomes a slow burn towards something that never quite resolves itself, which just seems to work in this case. Warning: the emphatic and confident chord progression that triumphs at the end of the song will burn your brain if you listen to it too loudly, or too many times in a row.