They come from a town not unlike yours. Predictable and unremarkable. They hit a certain age and moved to the city. Most things fit. Some didn’t. We get that, Tokyo Police Club.
We like listening to this when we hit the Wine Rack in the summer. In the car on the road to somewhere new. But it’s when we go home and see the snow falling that we yearn for this sound. It’s being in those familiar spaces. Feeling that ground under foot. Remembering the girls, happy and married now. The nerve we never had. The friends we’ll never talk to again.
The more uncertain the world you choose, the more clarity you pull from the places you never understood when you were in them. That’s our elephant shell. Learning too well the shortcomings of your own heart. Understanding your romance may never be pearly white. And feeling so grateful for that. Knowing that, some nights, you’ll never be a gentleman.
Tokyo Police Club’s best album has one song over three minutes. How they crystallize their many moving parts in such short bursts is an act of impressive alchemy. They aim for the heart and burrow inside. You go back to them for the science. You stay for the decimals.
There are more than a few reasons for us to endorse Spring Breakers. Some are obvious.
Like getting the jump on the hip kids you know are gonna try to bite James Franco’s ‘rows. Harmony Korine subverting the teenage dreams of every fucked up Lindsay headed to Cancun in two weeks. And the virtual guarantee that the many sad developments to be visited on the jailbait cast in this death spiral will ruin the afternoons of so many weird many guys in sticky-floored theatres.
Future post idea: Notes on Sitting Beside Grown Men at a Spring Breakers Matinee.
Only… March 29 is, like, a long time from now. So let’s just get on it.
Skrillex is scoring this joint. It’s a stupid perfect marriage of dumb as hell and too-smart-by-half. And it’s ripping here right now for those who feel like getting streamed on early.
Maybe this should be filed under good bad music.
But when you’re drinking bleach by the pool, wearing headphones on your pills and yelling Spanish shit at the policia, it’ll be with this noise drowning out the sirens in the background.
Flip the switches. One. Two. Three. More. Create your mash-up of sound clips on the Fun Switcher. And save the URL (bottom left of the screen) for instant playback.
A childhood spent on the streets of ’50s Gainesville. Decades spent cooking for cops and patients of a mental hospital. A frozen odyssey spent hitchiking the U.S. and Canada. The hard pursuit of a dream. The predictable failure. But you can always go home. So that’s what Charles did. Just in time to see his brother’s murdered body, shot through the head with a hollow-point bullet.
In time, life began to let up. His hard luck started to break some. Two years ago, at 63, Charles released his first album. These days, he likes to call himself the screaming eagle of soul. That’s apt. But only describes part of the man he’s endured to become. If you’ve seen the documentary of his life, or experienced one of his sermons live, you get that he’s also part rooster and, more than anything, a phoenix.
The flames we walk through are unique to us all. The shit we get dealt, relative. And sometimes nobody hears you crying, baby. But, chances are, your damage has nothing on the shit Charles Bradley has lived. So shut up for a minute. Shut up – and listen.
Or exclusive music. Or that rotation in Top 40 would negate eligibility.
Good thing. Because this song appeals so broadly that even Taco Bell latched on.
Admit it: The day you first heard Passion Pit‘s breakout single it was the best song you listened to that day. You either know the characters in Michael Angelakos’ story. Or you are one.
Work is hard. Winter may never end. And everyone keeps complaining about it.
Ray Wylie Hubbard does not understand your life. But he gets it. The way only a man in his sixties in a good hat from Oklahoma singing songs called “Mother Blues” alongside his teenage son could.
You look after your people. You do what you can. Some days you eat it, alright.
But, still, hope tugs at you. You pick your guitar back up and try to do it a little better.
It may not be enough to get you through 20 more years of bad decisions. But it’s a good start.
The days you keep your gratitude higher than your expectations you will have damn fine days.
A sound reminiscent of sweaty nights shuffling between New York and Detroit.
Songs about working it in Chicago and Brooklyn. We like this.
Escort is 17 hustlers shaking ass into the wee hours and squinting their way to daylight. Seriously, there are 17 people in this band/thing. Most of them are reallygood-looking.
They’re a little bit funk. They got soul. And a whole lot of motherfucking disco.
OK, we’re making one resolution. More Good Music more often.
We begin with one of the best tracks to come around in a long time.
Something distinctly now that harkens to another time. And breathes life into future sound.
Big sax. A mean beat. He gets that rich threads don’t stop you looking cheap and good looks are priceless. He digs your grandpa’s style. And his man Wanz brings one beautiful baritone.
This song could be the anthem for TheRichardAndMartin.
Writing our review of Prometheus, I couldn’t help returning to the film’s impressive score by German composer Marc Streitenfeld. Of course, as usually happens with these things, that quickly led to creating a fresh playlist of some favourite space soundtracks from the recent past. Here’s what we (re)-discovered:
1. Clint Mansell – Welcome To Lunar Industries, Moon
2. Cliff Martinez – First Sleep, Solaris
3. Bill Conti – The Right Stuff, The Right Stuff
4. Johann Strauss II – Blue Danube, 2001: A Space Odyssey
