H is for...
Aug. 30th, 2006 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
abbandonoBy way of hangingfire, here's a music meme. Someone provides you with a letter, and you list 5 to 10 songs whose titles start with said letter, and little blurb on why you chose them. Here's my list for the letter H. Let me know if you'd like to play, and I'll give you a letter.
1) How It Shone - Pierce Turner -- Turner is without a doubt one of the most underappreciated Irish musicians on the planet. By the time his solo career began, he was living as an expatriate in New York City, but his 1986 debut album It's Only A Long Way Across is a burbling, brilliant celebration of his County Wexford homeland. It marries traditional Irish folk-ballad conventions with elements of new wave, electropop, and modernist minimal classical a la Phillip Glass. In fact, Glass produced much of the album, including this track, which features Turner's soaring vocals and poetic lyrics celebrating the light of a Wexford sun shining on the water. (Any of my friends who are into Elvis Costello, Black 47, Luka Bloom, or anything of that ilk should go mad for this song. I'm lookinq squarely at you,hangingfire and shadyglenn.)
2) Heartbreak Hotel - John Cale -- Elvis may have made this song famous, but it took John Cale to actually make it heartbreaking. In his skillful hands, it becomes almost disturbingly mordant; dark, slow, and angst-ridden. The studio version features all sorts of musique concrete sound effects collaged into the mix to amp up the creepiness and sense of utter dislocation, but I prefer the naked emotion of the voice-and-piano live version from Fragments of a Rainy Season.
3) How Can I Apply? - Trash Can Sinatras -- It's a wallflower's love song, plan and simple. In my estimation, it's the number one gem on TCS's difficult-to-find third album A Happy Pocket. It reminds me of all those times (so common in adolescence, but naturally a few of them follow you into adulthood) when the depth of your yearning far exceeds the height of your courage.
4) Happiness Is Easy - Talk Talk -- This song is one of the most nuanced, thoughtfully ambiguous considerations of modern spirituality I've ever heard in song. Talk Talk gets name-dropped a lot these days, and credited with being a major influence in the development of post-rock. Meanwhile, the complex philosophical/theological perspectives of Mark Hollis's lyrics tend to get overlooked. One moment he's asking "Spirit, how long?" in a song titled I Believe In You, while the next he's saying "Our decline goes on / But your pride won't heed it / It's the same old song / I don't believe you" in another song titled I Don't Believe In You. And here in Happiness Is Easy, he shoulders an all-too-timely ironic doubt: "It wrecks me / how they justify / their acts of war / they assemble, they pray". And when the children's choir (yes, really) comes in singing
5) Here Comes A City - The Go-Betweens -- This urgent rocker reminds me of late-night trips into New York City on the New Jersey Transit. Insistent rhythmic motion, and an endless movie of urban village backwaters.
6) Heaven - Talking Heads -- I like the Stop Making Sense version for the beautiful vocal harmonies. Despite the name, I think this one is more personal than theological - it's about escaping the unending eventfulness of your own life. Which, when you're as famous as Talking Heads were at the time, can be more than a little hectic and stressful. You'd soon get to thinking that "Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens", where kisses start over again as soon as they're over and the band is always playing your favorite song.
7) Humoresque - Art Tatum -- Tatum is to jazz piano what Glenn Gould was to classical piano. And frankly, that's selling him short. A lot of you reading this have passed through the swing-dancing scene, but chances are you've never heard a Tatum track. What he did to songs is beyond swing, beyond bebop, beyond anything you can package up neatly in a genre. His musical imagination is completely unfettered...these aren't songs anyone could dance to, because they knock you right off of your feet. Here, he takes a classical tune by Dvorak and explodes it into a kaleidoscope of possible harmonies, possible melodies, possible emotions. There are a dozen recordings of him playing this song, but any one of them will be brilliant. Take your pick.
8) Hobart Paving - Saint Etienne -- Reminds me of coming out of a club in DC (or any big city) at 3am. The streets are still wet from a 2am thunderstorm, and the streets and sidewalks are empty. You miss the last train, so you walk home alone through a city that feels almost too big, yet somehow comforting. If I had to put this song into one word, it would be "consolation", but if you allow me more than one, I'd say "a very lonely sort of consolation".
9) "Heroes" - David Bowie -- Everyone knows this song. Almost everyone knows it was recorded in his brilliant "Berlin period" when he was living there and working with Brian Eno. I'm not sure everyone really knows just how "Berlin" this song is, though. It's a cross-border, Cold War love song. It's a love crushed by societal forces stronger than the fragile hearts of two people. It's kissing at the checkpoint and knowing you'll never meet again..."heroes / just for one day". In a way, I think it's the best kind of love song, because even when it's hard, even when it's impossible, love is sweet, and yes, even heroic.
hangingfire, here's a music meme. Someone provides you with a letter, and you list 5 to 10 songs whose titles start with said letter, and little blurb on why you chose them. Here's my list for the letter H. Let me know if you'd like to play, and I'll give you a letter.1) How It Shone - Pierce Turner -- Turner is without a doubt one of the most underappreciated Irish musicians on the planet. By the time his solo career began, he was living as an expatriate in New York City, but his 1986 debut album It's Only A Long Way Across is a burbling, brilliant celebration of his County Wexford homeland. It marries traditional Irish folk-ballad conventions with elements of new wave, electropop, and modernist minimal classical a la Phillip Glass. In fact, Glass produced much of the album, including this track, which features Turner's soaring vocals and poetic lyrics celebrating the light of a Wexford sun shining on the water. (Any of my friends who are into Elvis Costello, Black 47, Luka Bloom, or anything of that ilk should go mad for this song. I'm lookinq squarely at you,
hangingfire and shadyglenn.)2) Heartbreak Hotel - John Cale -- Elvis may have made this song famous, but it took John Cale to actually make it heartbreaking. In his skillful hands, it becomes almost disturbingly mordant; dark, slow, and angst-ridden. The studio version features all sorts of musique concrete sound effects collaged into the mix to amp up the creepiness and sense of utter dislocation, but I prefer the naked emotion of the voice-and-piano live version from Fragments of a Rainy Season.
3) How Can I Apply? - Trash Can Sinatras -- It's a wallflower's love song, plan and simple. In my estimation, it's the number one gem on TCS's difficult-to-find third album A Happy Pocket. It reminds me of all those times (so common in adolescence, but naturally a few of them follow you into adulthood) when the depth of your yearning far exceeds the height of your courage.
4) Happiness Is Easy - Talk Talk -- This song is one of the most nuanced, thoughtfully ambiguous considerations of modern spirituality I've ever heard in song. Talk Talk gets name-dropped a lot these days, and credited with being a major influence in the development of post-rock. Meanwhile, the complex philosophical/theological perspectives of Mark Hollis's lyrics tend to get overlooked. One moment he's asking "Spirit, how long?" in a song titled I Believe In You, while the next he's saying "Our decline goes on / But your pride won't heed it / It's the same old song / I don't believe you" in another song titled I Don't Believe In You. And here in Happiness Is Easy, he shoulders an all-too-timely ironic doubt: "It wrecks me / how they justify / their acts of war / they assemble, they pray". And when the children's choir (yes, really) comes in singing
Joy be written on the earth...it's both satire, and sincerity, all of a piece.
And the sky above
Jesus star that shines so bright
Gather us in love
5) Here Comes A City - The Go-Betweens -- This urgent rocker reminds me of late-night trips into New York City on the New Jersey Transit. Insistent rhythmic motion, and an endless movie of urban village backwaters.
6) Heaven - Talking Heads -- I like the Stop Making Sense version for the beautiful vocal harmonies. Despite the name, I think this one is more personal than theological - it's about escaping the unending eventfulness of your own life. Which, when you're as famous as Talking Heads were at the time, can be more than a little hectic and stressful. You'd soon get to thinking that "Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens", where kisses start over again as soon as they're over and the band is always playing your favorite song.
7) Humoresque - Art Tatum -- Tatum is to jazz piano what Glenn Gould was to classical piano. And frankly, that's selling him short. A lot of you reading this have passed through the swing-dancing scene, but chances are you've never heard a Tatum track. What he did to songs is beyond swing, beyond bebop, beyond anything you can package up neatly in a genre. His musical imagination is completely unfettered...these aren't songs anyone could dance to, because they knock you right off of your feet. Here, he takes a classical tune by Dvorak and explodes it into a kaleidoscope of possible harmonies, possible melodies, possible emotions. There are a dozen recordings of him playing this song, but any one of them will be brilliant. Take your pick.
8) Hobart Paving - Saint Etienne -- Reminds me of coming out of a club in DC (or any big city) at 3am. The streets are still wet from a 2am thunderstorm, and the streets and sidewalks are empty. You miss the last train, so you walk home alone through a city that feels almost too big, yet somehow comforting. If I had to put this song into one word, it would be "consolation", but if you allow me more than one, I'd say "a very lonely sort of consolation".
9) "Heroes" - David Bowie -- Everyone knows this song. Almost everyone knows it was recorded in his brilliant "Berlin period" when he was living there and working with Brian Eno. I'm not sure everyone really knows just how "Berlin" this song is, though. It's a cross-border, Cold War love song. It's a love crushed by societal forces stronger than the fragile hearts of two people. It's kissing at the checkpoint and knowing you'll never meet again..."heroes / just for one day". In a way, I think it's the best kind of love song, because even when it's hard, even when it's impossible, love is sweet, and yes, even heroic.