A few words about me and mixes (or, you can skip ahead). Like year-end lists (and like a lot of other geeks, I assume), I use mixes as a heuristic–songs as things to think with. I’ve got access to so much music, I’m a compulsive sorter and ranker, and I’m often sitting still in [...]
Guitars! Beards! Punk dudes! Old dudes! A barely-2009 Spoon song! A few ladies! Two (2) bands from Indiana (#8, #18)!
[192kpbs mp3 | 72:14 | 100.5 MB]
1. Yo La Tengo “Nothing to Hide” (Matador)
2. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart “The Tenure Itch” (Slumberland)
3. The Fresh & Onlys “Peacock and Wing” (Woodsist)
4. So Cow “Casablanca” [...]
1. “‘The Underdog’ has a million chords,” says Daniel. “A lot of songs on this record are just one or two chords. There’s a lot more droning.”
Britt Daniel, on the rawer new Spoon record, to Spinner (also).
2. “’Virgin mishandled an earlier remaster series,’ says Partridge, ‘and there were all sorts of bad color separations and [...]
Steely Dan “Everyone’s Gone to the Movies (demo)” (mp3)
from Citizen Steely Dan (1993) (buy)
Pulp “I Spy” (mp3)
from Different Class (1995) (buy)
Destroy All Monsters “Mack the Knife” (mp3)
from 1974-1976 Gospel Crusade
The Fall “C.R.E.E.P.” (mp3)
from The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall (1984) (buy)
The Smiths “Vicar in a Tutu” (mp3)
from The Queen is Dead (1986) (buy)
Roxy [...]
Here are the last two:
marathonpacks year-end mix, vol. 3 (128k mp3, 68.4MB) (expired)
1. Black & White Town–Doves
2. A Little Bit More–Jamie Lidell
3. Gone (f. Cam’ron & Consequence)–Kanye West
4. Trouble With Dreams–Eels
5. All We Are–Fischerspooner
6. Gideon–My Morning Jacket
7. Like A Honeycomb–British Sea Power
8. There Goes the Sun–The Pernice Brothers
9. I Was A Teenage Rainphase–Stereolab
10. So Begins [...]
My favorite characteristic of Spoon’s music is their integration of myriad styles of music into their own, without ever sounding derivative. They’re able to do this (largely through the symbiotic relationship between singer/songwriter Britt Daniel and drummer/sometimes engineer Jim Eno) by incorporating the best rhythmic elements of songs, then working them over to make them [...]
Britt Daniel, the driving force (with drummer Jim Eno) behind Spoon, has guided the band through its myriad incarnations, from the early, dissonant Pixies/Modern Lovers period of Telephono to the brilliant, Pink Flag inspired Series of Sneaks (the title itself a reference to Wire’s song “A Serious of Snakes”) through the ebullient, mature, Beatles/Elvis Costello [...]
For podcast #3, I’ve decided on a little gimmickry. This one is entirely comprised of cover versions. I went out of my way to make sure they’re not totally obscure (like a high school band playing “Just What I Needed”), but I think it could be fun to offer a prize for the first person [...]
The first video today is from Spoon, who, while releasing some of the most challenging and entertaining music of the past few years, have suffered the same video fate as their early influences The Pixies and Pavement–they make bad videos. You get the feeling that Spoon just don’t care, though, similar to the sentiment offered [...]
(This is the fifth and final installment of marathonpacks’ Top 50 of the 90s list. To see #50-41, click here. To see #40-31, click here. To see #30-21, click here. To see #20-11, click here.)
10. A Tribe Called Quest-Midnight Marauders (Jive, 1993)
A whittled-down version of The Low-End Theory, Midnight Marauders is, aside from the obvious [...]