Then, rushing to get across the street before the intersection, Candida Rocket tripped over one of those damn heels. Caught it on a manhole cover, or something equally amateurish, and Meg grabbed her arm and pulled. Pulled her right up to the median, right as a taxi whooshed past, shrill horn going. And Candida reached down, adjusted the strap on her left shoe, and “I don’t think I’ve ever saved you before,” Meg said. “’Bout time, huh?”

Now you might be right in thinking Candida Rocket was a little lost, but that sure didn’t mean she was gonna change her bright pink hair color. There she was, just walking down Lake to Meg’s apartment, and she might be a little lost, and it might be her own fault since she never was really good with directions, but she was telling herself for the ninth time tonight that she just wouldn’t do it. Telling herself that even if she wanted to, Meg wouldn’t have any good colors to choose from.

NB: This is cross-posted to our mp3 blog*
Kupek - You Practically Rock
I don't remember whether it was Megan or me who first latched on to this song, but whichever of us it was couldn't have been more right.** Kupek is Brian Lee O'Malley's musical alias, and if you've ever read Scott Pilgrim then you should have some idea of the awesomeness you're in for. The song's incredibly catchy, even in this ridiculously lo-fi form, and that's Point One in its favor. It borrows lyric snippets from Jets to Brazil and Jay-Z and a bunch of others without ever seeming even slightly derivative, and that's Point Two. It's clever, and that's Point Three - as O'Malley says, "She 'practically' rocks because she rocks other than the fact that she stopped liking me." Which, I dunno, maybe you don't think that's clever, but I do.

And it pulls a sort of switch on you, unexpectedly, which I totally love but have a hard time putting into words - it's just done that elegantly! Throughout a lot of the song, there's this chant (one of the 'swiped' bits): "Get your damn hands up," he says, talking to the girl who stopped liking him. It seems a little odd at first, I guess. But at the end, it clicks into place in a so-simple-it's-perfect bit of backwards logic: "Why don't you throw your hands in the air/ And wave them around like you just don't care." She just doesn't care, so she should get her damn hands up. It's a beautiful thing, that line, when it makes you realize that the weirdness of that chant has suddenly turned into something utterly poignant.

It's great! I've sucked all the magic and charm out of it, I realize, so you'll just have to trust me on this. But damn, is it great.

Download: Kupek - You Practically Rock
More stuff available at O'Malley's site. It's worth it, I promise: Kupek

Another song under the jump...
Jens Lekman - A Postcard for Nina
So as some of you may know and some of you may not, I went to the Pitchfork Fest in Chicago. Yeah, I know, blah blah blah pfork sux, whatever. They had a great lineup, so shut yo mouth! I spent the two days hanging out with my now-girlfriend and her kid sister*** And it was hot as hell, but worth it, and the best performance there (Megan and I are in agreement on this) was by Jens Lekman. He did "You Are the Light" and "Black Cab" and "A Sweet Summer Night on Hammer Hill" and all, but there was one song - one song he did - that blew me away. It was fucking amazing, absolutely showstopping. And it had never been released. Brand new, only played a handful of times. I spent most of the rest of last summer looking for it, finally located a crappy, very muddy sounding live version, and figured that was the best I'd get.

Not so! Because just recently, I stumbled onto a much better quality version of the song. It's from a show Jens did in New York while he was in the US for the Pitchfork fest. When he played it for us there, it was half-spoken, half-sung; the spoken parts are a bit different and shorter than I remember, but they still work incredibly well. But enough background; here's why this song kills me every time.

The song starts with Jens explaining that he went to Berlin to visit his longtime penpal Nina, who takes him to her parents' apartment for dinner. On the doorstep, she tells him, "I'm so sorry I haven't told you this, but I've told my family that we're engaged."

And the singing starts: "Nina, I can't be your boyfriend/ So you can stay with your girlfriend/ Your father is a sweet old man/ But it's hard for him to understand/ That you want to love a woman."

If that hasn't sold you on the song, I'm unsure as to whether you have a soul, but I've got more to say (as usual). More, as in, why I love the song so much. Yeah, it's funny, it's clever, it's what you'd expect if you'd heard stuff by Jens before. But at the end, it turns on you. (This is why it's in a post with "You Practically Rock," incidentally.) All of a sudden, after making you giggle or laugh throughout the song, after detailing all the awkward moments and bizarre details of this (true) encounter with Nina's parents, Jens sings, "Nina I just want to check in/ Cause I think about you every second/ So I send you this postcard just to say/ Don’t let anyone stand in your way/ Yours truly, Jens Lekman.” And the song ends with a climactic buildup around the line, "Don't let anyone stand in your way." And you're suddenly pulled in, emotionally invested in the trouble Nina's been facing over coming out to her dad - after spending the song laughing at its ridiculousness. Bam! Jens gets you. It's a marvelous reversal of mood/tone, and I can't think of anyone else who's pulled off something so dramatic, so drastic.

This song haunted me for almost a year, it was so good. I'm not sure Megan was quite as impressed, but I've always known she couldn't be completely perfect, so I let it go. I'm sure you'll love it though: if you listen to no other music today, listen to this.

Download: Jens Lekman - A Postcard to Nina (Live at the Bugjar)




*Cuz holy fuck, it's been a long time since I've updated here, and I figured I'd throw all ___ of you who still click over to here some sort of bone.
**Regardless, the fact that she likes the song perhaps even more than I do is just further proof of what a great girlfriend she is.
***She isn't really a kid, but I like that phrase too much to pass up an opportunity to use it.

A Few Thoughts on Neko Case's "Hold On, Hold On"
+ Pulp News
Bear with me...

"Hold On, Hold On" is my favorite song of the year so far. It was listening to this song for the first time that I realized Neko had finally managed to write something that matched her incredible voice, and that Fox Confessor... wouldn't disappoint me as her past albums had. It's simply an amazing song, and perhaps the best thing about it is that for once, Neko's voice isn't the element that sticks with me the most. Of course, her voice is great - but I could name a dozen songs off the top of my head where her voice sounds great. It's a contributing factor to why I love the song, certainly, but it wouldn't be enough on its own. The lyrics and the emotion of the song, though they obviously must be sold by the vocal, are unquestionably the central attraction here.

What makes the lyric so powerful, perhaps, is that the emotional high point is not the chorus - we only hear it once. It's the moment when Neko sings "I leave the party at 3 AM/Alone, thank God/With a valium from the bride/It's the devil I love." And as her voice swoops through the lines, the song becomes something entirely personal and beautiful and revealing. The lyric is simple in the sense that it leaves the majority of the "story" to be extrapolated by the listener - and that too is one of its triumphs. I don't know that I can convey the emotion and image it leaves me with, but if you feel the same way about the song, you'll know what I mean.

WPGU recently started playing this on the radio, and I have mixed feelings about that. Obviously, it's nice to see Neko getting much-deserved exposure - but I wish it was with a song other than this one. It's not that it isn't "radio-friendly" in the traditional sense of lacking a hook or whatever, it's that it's not radio-friendly because it's a song that needs to be experienced in isolation, maybe on headphones, probably at nighttime. I can't really picture it being performed live, and so hearing it tinnily through the speakers at work seems unmistakably incorrect. It's a personal song, and a delicate one. That's why I love it, and that's why I can't understand it on the radio.


On to the Pulp...

As some of you may already know, Pulp is releasing remastered versions of three albums, with an extra CD each of bonus material. What you may not know is that the tracklistings for all three have just shown up on Amazon, that spoiler of all surprises.

I've now officially shifted from "cautiously optimistic" about the remasters to "incredibly fucking eager and overjoyed." Because yes, there's b-sides (not all, but most of the best ones) - but...

There's also DEMOS! AND UNRELEASED! TRACKS! AND LINER NOTES BY JARVIS! NORMAL TYPING CANNOT EXPRESS MY JOY!

The demos range from the presumably-unexceptional ("Paula," which has cute but not very good lyrics) to the I-can-only-imagine-how-awesome ("My Erection," "Can I Have My Balls Back, Please?") Plus, alternate versions of "Tomorrow Never Lies" and "Cocaine Socialism," two of the better b-sides (trivia: the version of the former included here, called "Tomorrow Never Dies," is presumably the pre-lyric-alteration original mix, which was meant to be a James Bond movie theme before it was rejected for Sheryl Crow)

Anyway, I'm not thrilled with the prices Amazon lists, and will most definitely have to find them elsewhere/cheaper, but otherwise this is, like, incredible.

Links:
His 'n' Hers
Different Class
This Is Hardcore

Okay, so I've been lax in posting - work and class and sleep and reading have taken up a lot of my time, plus the story I'm trying to write is going ridiculously.

But this should make up for it. No introduction is needed, really. Except goddamn, is this awesome!

About Loose Fur's new album Born Again in the USA:
So on "The Ruling Class," which is the album's best song, Jeff Tweedy sings about Jesus returning - the Second Coming. And one of the lines is, "Honey he's back from LA," which I never gave particular thought to until a few days ago when I was listening to it while walking to class. I'd figured "LA" was just a throwaway. But then I realized "Los Angeles" means "City of Angels," which in the context of the song can be seen as a pun - the double meaning, of course, being Heaven. I like to think I would have noticed it sooner if it wasn't a Tweedy lyric - he's never been particularly invested/interested in this type of wordplay before, and so I certainly wasn't expecting a pun of any sort in one of his songs. But maybe I'm just slow. Regardless, it's a fun line, and it Wilco's going to be doing more straightforward rock songs on their next album, I very much hope we at least get this sort of humor in terms of lyrics - rather than the two new songs I've heard (after which I decided to just bide my time for the actual album) which are simplistic and dull, lyrically, rather than simplistic and fun.

An awesome video, for an awesome song, with awesome dancing and an awesome cameo