Thursday, June 10, 2010

Feel good hits of the 10th June

1. 'The Soft Beating' - Efterklang
2. 'Desert God' - Sleepy Sun
3. 'Dance Yrself Clean' - LCD Soundsystem
4. 'Shady Lane' - Pavement
5. 'Skeleton' - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
6. 'Sometimes Always' - The Jesus & Mary Chain
7. 'Karen' - The National
8. 'Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits' - The Magnetic Fields
9. 'The Room' - The Twilight Sad
10. 'After The Gold Rush' - Neil Young

Notes:

1 and 2. Greenman can't come around soon enough...

3. This Is Happening still isn't really, well, happening for me (certainly not in comparison to Sound Of Silver, which I found myself revisiting tonight), but 'Dance Yrself Clean' is - thanks in part to two doses of it in the pub last night (as well as sequences of songs from Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and Brighten The Corners. Little wonder that the Duke is my favourite pub in Oxford...

6. A nicely louche bittersweet duet (with Hope Sandoval), but bloody hell Stoned & Dethroned is samey - and, as such, at least six songs too long. Something that (incredibly) can't be said for The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs...

7. Still not put my finger on what it is that impresses about The National. New album High Violet has recently been released, but I'm only just exploring Alligator.

2 comments:

Ian said...

Re: The National:

See them live. I've converted a couple of people that way.

Ben said...

Been there done that, Ian. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed them but personally speaking they were always likely to be overshadowed by the band that immediately preceded them, Spiritualized. Didn't help that at the time I didn't know any of their stuff (I've since bought Alligator and Boxer).