I found a tiny CD player in the garbage about a week ago, and stuck it on the shelf next to my bed. A couple of days later, in a spindle of random discs, I found a old burned copy of Riot on an Empty Street amidst a bunch of unlabled CDs.
(the google image search; click for full size)
I haven’t listened to this album all the way through since it came out six summers ago. It still hangs together beautifully in all of the ways you’d expect the second Kings of Convenience album to. Quiet, often hushed, sometimes poignant and sometimes almost raucous (“I’d rather dance with you than talk with you”). It’s almost unbeatable for a mid-afternoon doze in a sunny room with the windows open.
The payoff, for me, is the penultimate track, “Gold in the Air of Summer:”
In a summer where it’s often been too hot to even sleep at night, where I’ve gotten a rash from moving apartments in the August heat, it’s pleasantly bittersweet to lie in bed at night, listening to this, and knowing that soon it will be too cold to keep the windows open at night. I listen to the winds preceding a final summer thunderstorm and wonder if my friends here have their windows open and are listening, too.
Yet another brilliant paean to a justified break-up, this one courtesy of Blu Cantrell. This weekend I heard the cover by Carolina Chocolate Drops, which is enough to make me actually enjoy bluegrass:
The banjo sounds so good accompanied by beat boxing! Hey rest of the world, take note.
Beck was sadly mostly ruined for me when I discovered that not only is he a scienmatologolist, but a second generation one at that, on both sides. Now when I listen to his music, I try to imagine how it’s about his religious struggles. Or think sadly about his awesome artist grandfather, Al Hansen.
Anyway, this song isn’t much of a stretch to imagine as a tribute to El Ron:
A weird, bluesy acoustic tribute. I hope he appreciates it, wherever he is!
It’s no secret that I love The Magnetic Fields. What is a secret, though, or at least a less-known fact, is that my romantic Weltanschauung is contained in their song “100,000 Fireflies.”
Here are the MFs performing it live in Hamburg, Germany, a couple of months ago in March-- I love the live vocal arrangement, with Shirley and lovely Claudia joining in on the chorus. And Sam Davol’s hair is especially animate in this video.
In times of great heart-sickness, I have often listened to this song literally hundreds of times in a row. Three parts of it are especially comforting to me, for giving articulation to my misery. First, the second verse: Continue reading →
