Bubble pop Electric – Gwen Stefani – “So baby where dya wanna go, eh?” , this is the fifties makeout song Grease missed. An sizzle and pop, gropin in the back seat on a hot summer evening getting hotter by the second. “Johnny, get outta here…”
June On The West Coast – Bright Eyes – How old was Conor here? Eighteen? Twenty? He has yet to write a smarter, more acurate, more painful axiom than “Sorrow gets too heavy and joy it tends to hold dya, the fear it will eventually depart”. The stop start construction is an affectation he’d not bother with now but then -you held in your breath till he was walking the beach of one more potential lover.
All Summer Long – the Beach Boys – This is such an enormously sad song despite the “Not for us now”. You just don’t believe it. It’s a single voice in contradisction to the harmonies. “Won’t be long till summer time is through”? Oh and fave line? “Remember when you spilled coke all over your blouse…”
All Summer Long – Kid rock – Made fans for Zevon , kids who didn’t even know Zevon once re-wrote california sot rock.
Calypso Gold – Princeton – If you think I missed it with my Vampire Weekend comparisons, listen to this song. The clipped iterations, the ohohohohhhs… difference is the vocals here are better…
Go Ahead, John – Miles Davis – From his stunning Big Fun, if I was told I had to hear the same track forever I think I’d choose this for Davis icey cold sax. It is ALL IN THE UPPER REGISTER.
Cousins – Vampire Weekend
You’ve Got The Love – Florence And The Machine – Like Annie Lennox doing Lily Allen covers but not as funny.
Chapter II – Love Via Dance Machine (Acoustic) – I know it from youtube but I’d love to hear it as an mp3
Oxygen Taste s Like Patience – From Jupiter
Come On Up To The House – Thrice
It’s Only Rock N Roll – Juliana Jatfield – Blood and guts
Hello Beirut – Sabbah – Makes me my other home sick. This is pop? Only all these years laters can I hear that when they say pop they mean a) colloquiail Arabic and 2) it has a hook. Written in the teeth of the Lebanese civil war in the eighties, Sabbah wrote it from France: “hello Beirut, if you please my eyes, quickly don’t take your time…” It lacks something in translation, she is trying to call family. “My heart is there” she sings. “Is my soul hidden somehwere?” Here’s the thing: I coulda spent my life very happyin Beirut -compared to Manchester, England, it was heaven. For me, I’m a New Yorker but Beirut was my first love. Beirut is like an ex I can’t get over and since it’s been thirty-one years since I left I guess I can carrya flame like nobodies business… And I wish it was summer.