music update

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Here’s what I’ve been listening to of late:

1) Goat’s Head Soup by The Rolling Stones. (Released 1973.)

Unless you’re a rockophile who’s amassed most of the Stones’ recorded output, the only items you'll recognize from the track listing are “Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)” and, of course, “Angie.” Midwestern deejays still spin the former on Twofer Tuesdays; you once put the latter on a mix tape for a girl at school while in the eighth grade.

Soup ain’t universally loved. The Stones snapped their own four-record winning streak (Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile On Main Street) by daring to release an album that wasn’t entirely perfect. Their cocks back in their pants after eight years of swagger [An aside: Speaking of cocks, you know that infamous crotch shot from the cover of Sticky Fingers (pictured)? The crotch in question belongs to one Joe Dallesandro, an underground film star from the 60s who cavorted about with Warhol and his plastic gang. Now he owns and runs a hotel in Los Angeles. I met the man, the cock, the legend back in the summer of ’06 while visiting my buddy Travis in West Hollywood. Lou Reed commemorated Joe “Little Joe” Dallesandro in “Walk On The Wild Side”, his ’72 radio staple: “…Little Joe never once gave it away/everybody had to pay and pay…”], Mick and Co. recorded a few inspired tracks and a few weightless ones and didn’t know what else to do so they stamped ‘em on bits of vinyl and sent them off to be tomatoed by critics.

Soup, though, is a better album than most critics/bloggers/snarky music nerds would probably lead you to believe. It’s not their OK Computer, to be fair, but then it’s also not their St. Anger. Not great enough to inspire breathless praise, nor lame enough to warrant derision. It just exists in that 18mm space on your shelf and doesn’t say a whole lot. (The album cover is pictured at left.)

I’d like to highlight a specific track. “100 Years Ago,” the second track on the record, is quite the grower. It starts out as a fairly harmless, fairly pretty number about something nice (I haven’t really listened to the lyrics). Then there’s a bitchin’ little teaser of a freakout, then a quiet, contemplative part where all the instruments die away and Mick warbles something about “lazy bones,” which is kind of strange and boring and seemingly anti-climactic. That’s ‘round the time you nod off into your dkeyboyarjklsdssads;;;l;llllllllllllll;.o but wait! When the 2:35 mark hits they scrap all the lazy bones nonsense and just rip your face open with a devastating jam that disrupts your equilibrium and sets the hairs on your arm up up up!

Listen for yourself:



2) Agaetis Byrjun by Sigur Ros. (Released 1999.)

Dear God, where has this album been all my life? Where has this BAND been all my life?

Oh, sure, I knew who they were. I’d heard 2005’s Takk and that swell song from Vanilla Sky (“Njosnavelin”), but their music didn’t stir enough in me to invite repeat listens. Then I gave Agaetis Byrjun a spin.

My iTunes tells me that “Flugufrelsarinn,” the fourth track, has played 51 times in the past week. Quite simply, it’s one of the most profound homages to sound I’ve ever heard. (Check out Jonsi's vocal from 2:05-2:15.)

Here’s “Flugufrelsarinn” (gesundheit!):



3) Moon Safari and soundtrack to The Virgin Suicides by Air. (Released 1998 and 1999, respectively.)

As usual, I was the last to know. Air? What the hell is this Air business? 1998!? How did I miss these guys back when they were relevant? Too busy plunking down dollars for Rush albums and Smashing Pumpkins B-Sides, probably.

Anyway, glad I found ‘em. Moon Safari has consumed my attentions for more than a few weeks. Ask my annoyed friends. (I haven’t shut up about it.)

Rather than bore you by trying to describe their sound (Elvis Costello: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”), I’ll direct you straight to a clip. What you’re hearing is “La Femme D’Argent,” the first track from Moon Safari. What you’re seeing is San Francisco’s Market Street in 1905, one year before the great quake.