Project Desperation lets me write about my favorite music. Or, more accurately, the first seven songs that come up on shuffle on my iPod. I landed on seven because there are seven of us, including Mada. I can distribute my text however I want. I can write 2 pages on one song and a sentence to the rest. I just have to write something about each of them.
SO HERE I GO. IPOD DON'T YOU SHAME ME.
Phew. Good work, iPod. This is claaaaassic. Pretty much everyone knows this one. A poll was recently conducted by the New York Times that 56% of the human race will clap, or hit their knees, or hit something around them to the beat. It's hard to resist. I can also trace my loss of innocence to the moment I learned this song was about masturbation. This song is simple and catchy and fresh-sounding. It's straightforward and captivating. And it will work it's way into your head and refuse to come out.
2 for 2 iPod! Molly recently showed me this band, and I am a fan. Eliot's a huge fan, a fact that he has desperately tried to communicate with Molly to mixed results. One thing this band is amazing at, which shows itself a little bit on this song's opening, is controlling atmosphere. The delayed guitar chords, the eerie violin, the crackling sound that kicks in when the lyrics start, all of that creates a tone for the song that I really admire. The chorus, "you've gotta believe me," is a good example of one of my favorite lyrical techniques. I really really like it when bands use a short phrase and repeat it. I think it gives an intense focus, it makes the thought impossible to ignore and that much more meaningful. The best example of this I can think of is the National's "Baby We'll Be Fine," and it's repetition of "I'm so sorry for everything." When the song momentum stops around 2:43 and the singer sings the chorus a couple of times with just a low piano and light guitar to back him up, you can almost see him pleading.
This song is 6 seconds long. It's part of this series of songs at the end of the TMBG album Apollo 18 that are all seconds long. This bites me in the ass all the time when it comes to putting my iPod on shuffle. I really should have seen this coming.
TMBG are a band I was brought up on. They are absurd and awesome. Flood is an album I remember hearing nonstop as a child thanks to my dad and my brother and their most recent album, The Else, is one of my favorite pop rock albums. It's catchy, ridiculous stuff. The subjects of their songs are unpredictable. I think they're the most clever people alive.
Cowboy Bebop is an anime that I truly love SAY WHAT YOU WILL.
The soundtrack oh my god the soundtrack is so great. Yoko Kanno is a goddess. She composed a soundtrack that ranges from western to jazz to rock, and it's all uniformly fantastic. To be able to make such a variety of music is incredible, and I think it makes the show so much better. It's hard to imagine it without it.
I don't know if I've ever listened to this song before. I remember the tune from several episodes. It was a musical theme that played a couple of times throughout the series, but I never realized there was a version with lyrics. This is pretty great. It sounds like an old jazz standard. She has a really nice voice and the piano is cool too. It's so awesome that this was made for an anime. Damn what a good show that was. I want to watch it again now. I have the series DVD at home. I may or may not have brought them with me. I think I did. I think so... I will check later.
Epic. Rhett put this up on my iTunes in middle school. Thanks, Rhett. Andrew W.K.'s such a champ. If I was ever really, really sad, and I could summon any person to make me feel better it'd probably be him. What a cool dude.
HAY ME AND MY CLASSIC FRIEND SAY THEM A FEW WEEKS AGO.
The Strokes are sweet. That Strokes (The Strokes? That The Strokes concert?) concert was my first big concert where I successfully got into the thick of the crowd and it was crazy. Months earlier I went to a Flogging Molly concert and got my glasses broken in a moshpit, so that wasn't all that awesome of an experience. The Strokes were great though. They had this great rockstar feel. They looked apathetic and made how hard they rocked look effortless. They played hit after hit after hit and I loved every second of it. That's probably my second favorite show I saw at Lol.
This is a good Strokes song. I like the way the song almost fools you in the first couple seconds into accepting the guitar chords to be on the beat when they're on the offbeats. CLEVER CLEVER, YOU MADE FOOLS OF US ALL. I really like Julian Casablancas' voice. I love how tired he sounds, how worn out and put down. Like he's been trying his best, but is in the process of giving up. LIKE ME.
Also BOOMBOX if you haven't seen that.
Seven. CANDY FLOSS - WILCO
Nice! My iPod has been kind to me tonight. Wilco's cool! Jeff Tweedy's voice is tragic, too. That's one of my favorite things about their sound, but that's not too evident in this song. This is an enthusiastic, upbeat song. I like the repeated "I'm the boy _____," it gets stuck in my head really easily. I just really like the feel of this song. The instrumental break where 2 or 3 different instruments trade off the melody is really fun. It's just a fun song. The choral groups that kick in late in the song are really funny. This is cool!
Well I enjoyed writing this. Sorry I'm asking you to listen to all of those songs. I'll try to do use Project Desperation that much, but if I'd love to read somebody else's if they would want to write one of these. Hopefully your iPod will be as cooperative as mine has been.
Oh Conor. Always so desperate.
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