« A Google Chat Interview with Jon Burr of How I Became The Bomb | Main | Black Lips - Live @ Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ - 12.29.2006 »
January 03, 2007
MS Picks - Best of 2006 volume 2
End of year smorgasbord of the best 'MS Picks' of last year continues!
Sunset Rubdown - "Us Ones in Between"
"Has there been a more hauntingly beautiful song released this year?"
//Original Post
Sunset Rubdown - "Three Colours II"
"[Spencer Krug] sings in breathy run-on sentences, a quivering desperation complicating the jangly guitar. The sonic results are impressive as SK's voice takes on an even more desperate tone, alone, facing down the chill outside."
//Original Post
Frog Eyes - "The Oscillator's Hum"
"About as catchy as this band comes, but also characteristically uncompromising."
//Original Post
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Hyperballad" (Bjork cover)
"With only a minimal guitar line to hold the vocals up, the song is given a sad facelift not unlike Cat Power's signature reinterpretations. Here is a narrator afraid to be alone, killing time back at her cliff, waiting to be joined by her lover."
//Original Post
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Cheated Hearts"
"A funny, tongue in cheek lyric in which Karen addresses fan fears of a Gwen-ish caterpillar to boring/glossy butterfly transformation head-on goes:
"I'm taking, taking, taking, taking, off/ Sometimes I think I'm bigger than the sound/ I think that I'm bigger than the sound."
//Original Post
Danielson - "Did I Step on Your Trumpet"
"As Dan drops sideways lines like "You so much about my casket/ My body basket/ Did I do something wrong?" the girls echo his sentiments and add their own. In this case the creepy, "We'll grant one more social clue/ the landfill shall be home to you." They also slyly subvert the original message at some points, with "Yes I know how to be quiet" becoming "He thinks he knows how to be quiet." The sung equivalent of a sisterly eye-roll."
//Original Post
Taxi, Taxi - "To Hide This Way"
"Like mirror image twins (identical twins who have opposite features, e.g. one right-handed, the other left-), the Berhan siblings strike the perfect counterpoints."
Silversun Pickups - "Well Thought Out Twinkles"
"Driving rock with the sleeves rolled up because it’s about to get messy."
**The War songs**
"Regardless of blue/red, right/left inclinations consensus remains on the nightmarish reality of war. War is bad, war is hell." - Merry Swankster, 9.11.06
"Effusing urgency through a marching snare, looping keys and questioning lyrics, its no wonder this track was produced by David Sitek from TV on the Radio."
//Original Post
"The whimsical nah-nah-nahs inspire not to be the soundtrack to some theoretical peace rally. They are busy carrying the melody of disguised twee-pop with the very anti-cutesy deadpanned singing."
//Original Post
Pink Mountaintops - "Plastic Man, You’re the Devil"
"An awesomely psychedelic harmonica serves the jittery release out from the chorus, cutting through the track like an epic hangover aggravated by a small earthquake. ...doobiefyng the administration's foreign policy is quite the accomplishment."
//Original Post
Posted by Merry Swankster at January 3, 2007 09:00 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.merryswankster.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/613
