Jelly-Town! - Five for Friday, The Most Beautiful By Far is the One Growing Wild in the Garbage Dump edition

Jelly-Town!

CAPRICIOUS COMMENTARIES, CAREFULLY COOKED-UP TO CONFUSE AND CONFOUND YOU!

Five for Friday, The Most Beautiful By Far is the One Growing Wild in the Garbage Dump edition

7th-Mar-2008 08:53 am

Congratulations to

jupiterjuniper! I am thrilled that your amazing persistence has justly paid off with a great new gig. I initially had a different idea for today's topic, but decided that instead I should look to a certain swatch of your broad musical taste for inspiration.

As always, please play along...

Five Oddly Beautiful Songs

1. The Langley Schools Music Project, "Rhiannon." In the mid-1970s, a Canadian elementary school teacher led his children's choir through softly elegant performances of famous pop songs. Included in the repertoire was this devastatingly lovely version of the Fleetwood Mac song that helped in the naming process for a couple of different people that I like a great deal.

2. Tom Waits, "Hold On." Any song blessed by Tom's majestic growl is likely to leave the uninitiated a little perplexed. This may not be one of the classics or one of the great examples of his battered paperback storytelling, but I think this is the set of lyrics that most consistently cuts into me somehow. "I miss your broken china voice."

3. Blonde Redhead, "Spring and by Summer Fall." It's got just enough distortion and buzz that you can't call it pretty. It is transporting, though, the sort of song that invites you to get lost in its soundscapes. It bends but doesn't break. "Tell me what you've seen tell me where you've gone/Tell where you've been tell me what you saw" is a great simple chorus, delivered with a muted urgency.

4. Lou Reed and John Cale, "Hello It's Me." A simple song accompanied by Reed's understated and Cale's heartbreaking viola. The lyrics are simple, flatly stated, confessional with Reed taking three minutes to somehow address the entirety of his mixed emotions--admiration, gratitude, resentment--towards Andy Warhol, shortly after he shuffled off this mortal coil. Just the small admission near the close of the song "I wish someway somehow you like this little show/I know it's late in coming but it's the only way I know" is devastating.

5. The Frogs, "Layin' Down My Love 4 U." The preeminent rock 'n' roll weirdos are as aggressively strange and offputting as you can get, but that doesn't mean they can't pull off a charming little pop song every once in a while. Or at least they could in the distant past. I suspect I'd fear for my life if I ever encountered them apart from the relatively safety of the self-titled debut, but I'll always have this song. It has soothing little birdies in it.

As further tribute to you

jupiterjuniper, I compiled my five without Sonic Youth. This was harder than you might think.

Tags:five for friday
Mood:awake

Comments

7th-Mar-2008 02:23 pm (UTC) - I feel very awake as well!

point_cowtown

1. In the areoplane over the sea - Neutral Milk Hotel.
Jeff Magnum's odd vocals are layered over this rather lo-fi and distorted album that somehow works magnificently. It shines here, on a track I was first introduced to by Soul Shear as we shared music director duties that wonderful summer, many years ago, at 90FM.

2. I wanna be adored - Stone Roses.
Taught bass lines eventually lead to shimmering guitars, that coupled with the a ever increasing sense of momentum in this opening track really stike a chord with me. This song can remedy many things for me, especially on a hot summers' night drive.

3. Silent shout - The Knife.
OK...dark, icy and downright chilling is how this song can come off. But, to me, the vast and emptiness of this song has an inner beauty I cannot describe. The closest I ever came was when doing a sound check at a UWSP arts function...and played this track...full volume...through the atrium of the UWSP Fine Arts Center. THAT was beautiful.

4. Teardrop - Massive Attack.
When you add Elizabeth Fraser's vocals to ANYTHING it's gonna be beautiful. Many of her songs with her band the Cocteau Twins would fit the bill here. I simply find her vocals with Massive Attack's slow, simple and sparse use of music near perfection on this one.

5. Deep Blue Day - Brian Eno.
I am facinated with Brian Eno's music. Give that man a scene, time, place and feel and he will compose the perfect music for it. This song is go gorgeously beautiful that I am easily taken in by the track every time I hear it. There may be no better song (and album for that matter) to listen to while calmly flying high above the cumulus clouds on a sunny day headed off on vacation.

7th-Mar-2008 02:34 pm (UTC) - Re: I feel very awake as well!

point_cowtown

me speak pretty someday...let me re-do #2:

taught bass lines eventually lead to shimmerling guitars, that, coupled with the ever increasing sense of momentum in this opening track really strikes a chord with me. This song can remedy many things for me, espcially on a hot summers' night drive..."I don't need to sell my soul...he's already in me"

7th-Mar-2008 02:52 pm (UTC) - Re: I feel very awake as well!

whiskeyson

nice list

7th-Mar-2008 02:50 pm (UTC)

lonecellotheory

Nice Murder by Death reference. :-)

7th-Mar-2008 07:48 pm (UTC)

coffeefortwo

Thanks. I'm hoping for a Murder by Death remake with Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lionel Twain.

7th-Mar-2008 07:53 pm (UTC)

lonecellotheory

has that actually been discussed, or is that just a personal dream of yours?

because it would be AWESOME.

7th-Mar-2008 08:37 pm (UTC)

coffeefortwo

Just a personal dream. When I win a billion dollars in the lottery this will be the second entertainment project I take on. After hiring Tom Waits to cover "C is for Cookie."

7th-Mar-2008 08:39 pm (UTC)

lonecellotheory

seriously. why has no one gotten tom waits on sesame street yet?

7th-Mar-2008 02:51 pm (UTC)

whiskeyson

1.Hidden Cameras...Music Is My Boyfriend...I think this one is rather obvious for anyone who knows me. If I started writing about this song Im not sure if I could stop...sufice to say; Mr Joel Gibb explains his music as "gay church folk music"

2.Anthony and The Jonhsons...Today I Am A Buoy...from Anthony's odd affected vibrato to the gender fuck lyrics to the obvious misspelling, everything about this song(the whole album really)is off putting...and yet...

3.Joy Division...Atmosphere...some people write their own endings; who would have thought pale men from manchester would choose such a baroque
epilogue...

4.LOW...Words...there's almost nothing too this song...simple simple simple...almost hesitant...a 3 am sound...drenched in a tremendous amount of reverb...

5.John Prine...He Was In Heaven Before He Died...odd not so much for sound,maybe not odd at all really but certainly beautiful...John Prine does an amazing job of disarming what could quickly devolve into sentimentality with true poetry...

"There's a rainbow of babies
Draped over the graveyard
Where all the dead sailors
Wait for their brides
And the cold bitter snow
Has strangled each grassblade
Where the salt from their tears
Washed out with the tide
And I smiled on the Wabash
The last time I passed it
Yes I gave her a wink
From the passenger side
And my foot fell asleep
As I swallowed my candy
Knowing he was in heaven
Before he died"

7th-Mar-2008 04:53 pm (UTC)

coffeefortwo

"Atmosphere" is an especially nice pick for Joy Division. I was trying to figure out a good song of their's to include, but finally deferred on that front to greater minds...

7th-Mar-2008 02:54 pm (UTC)

point_cowtown

no...YOU nice list. Joy Division...yes!

7th-Mar-2008 05:07 pm (UTC)

whiskeyson

I'm resopnding to both of you with an AW Shucks...

7th-Mar-2008 03:44 pm (UTC)

Lurker

1. John Zorn, "Giu La Testa." A take on a beautiful Ennio Morricone composition. Zorn adds the "oddly." The rendition starts off sounding like a Japanese re-interpretation (a clever reversal on the Kurosawa-Leone relationship). Three and a half minutes in, Western film percussion kicks in, with Jew's harps making things sound a little too silly the first time around. It gets even stranger, with jazz film noir organs and Zorn summoning birds to sing for him. Despite how strange is sounds on paper, it works beautifully.

2. Disco Inferno, "Footprints In Snow." I've always been a large advocate of "the Public Enemy of the Factory crew," because they created one of the creepiest/beautiful back catalogs of sampled bliss. This one contains shuffled footsteps over dead winter leaves, distant church bells ringing distinct melodies in unison, and car crashes... or probably not, but it sounds beautiful and unsettling.

3. Animal Collective, "Bees." A repetitive harp cycling over an atmospheric undertow with occasional interjections of subdued guitar and calm singing. Alice Coltrane on the substance which damaged her husbands health? When the vocals slow down, it sounds like "The bees, the bees, the bees, the bees, release the beast."

4. Sagittarius, "My World Fell Down." One of the many bands who wanted to be the next Pet Sounds, the studio project were trying their hardest to create their own, darker "Good Vibrations." The song falls apart in the middle with babies crying, street noise, and what sounds like the murder of Don Fanucci.

5. United States of America, "Love Song For The Dead Che." One of the weirdest records period. D. Seeger could probably write about it better than I can, and I know he has it because I watched him pick it up from the Park Ave. used bin. There was a big thumbs up in my mind.

-- Phil

7th-Mar-2008 04:57 pm (UTC)

coffeefortwo

D. Seeger could probably write about it better than I can...

I wish. Shortly after buying that, I completely lost it in the accumulated clutter of the CD collection and only rediscovered it recently. I've barely had a chance to listen to it. I need to sit down with that disc and a bottle of strong whiskey in a dimly lit room and give it a listen. Hmmm, Spring Break is coming up...

7th-Mar-2008 05:57 pm (UTC)

jupiterjuniper

i love this! just love it.
now i have to do mine, which, though custom-tailored to me, is going to be a challenge.

7th-Mar-2008 06:32 pm (UTC)

firthofforth

1. Robyn Hitchcock - My Wife and My Dead Wife

"And I can't decide which one I love the most
The flesh and blood or the pale, smiling ghost"

this entry is here because it is one of my favorite, or most recognizable, Hitchcock songs...AND because it kind of creeps me out because every time I hear it I think about whether

coffeefortwo will think of me when he hears it, if I go first. see, beautiful and ODD.

2. Cat Power - cover of (I can't get no) Satisfaction

3....onward. almost anything Bjork does.

7th-Mar-2008 06:32 pm (UTC)

jupiterjuniper

1) boy george - il adore. it's only strangely beautiful in the fact that it is not the pop music boy is known for. this song came off a 90's release and reads like a memoir about a friend dying of AIDS. sweeping violin, bittersweet lyrics.

2) hercules and love affair - blind. i am obsessed with this song right now. take all the haunting odd-ness associated with antony (and the johnsons), throw electronic melodies on top of it, and film a bacchanal-inspired video for it...viola.

3) rufus wainwright - release the stars. epic symphony, powerful vocals, with a nod towards 40's standards. pretty much everything of rufus' is oddly beautiful to me, but this song's decadence puts it over the top.

4) iron & wine - upward over the mountain. "Mother remember that night that the dog had her pups in the pantry/Blood on the floor, fleas on their paws and you cried 'til the morning/So may the sun--rise bring hope where it once was forgotten"

5) fleetwood mac - storms. couldn't resist throwing in one from this name-sake band. "storms" i think is a scarcely recognized gem, pairing stevie's most beautiful range with a sad but sweet guitar melody and heartbreaking lyrics. "but never have i been a blue calm sea/ i have always been a storm."

10th-Mar-2008 03:50 am (UTC)

jupiterjuniper

i'd like to also add belle and sebastian's "chalet lines" to my list.

7th-Mar-2008 06:49 pm (UTC)

studiesinsecret

PJ Harvey, "A Place Called Home." I don't know what it is about this song. In all actuality the melody is not incredibly varied, the melodic range limited, the lyrics fragmented. The song's charm lies in the unrelenting rhythm of the guitar and drums and the careful layering of Harvey's vocals with the background vocals. The song starts abruptly, in essence throwing you head-first into this incredibly insistent sound world. The effect is beautiful and jarring.

Elvis Perkins, "It's A Sad World After All." This song is just so simple and straightforward: it's quiet, hushed; accompanied by a single guitar, the rhythm relaxed, the melody almost sing-song-like. The true beauty of the song lies in Perkins being doubled on the melody an octave up by a female voice during the verses. It's oddly beautiful in its simplicity.

Low, "Time Is The Diamond." More of a dirge than anything else, this song really doesn't have any right to be as beautiful as it is. Its harmonies are sparse, its tone defeatist: "Well, all right," Alan Sparhawk intones again and again. But then, somehow, the song's sparseness gets in your gut just around the time its lush, gorgeous harmonies appear, knocking you on your metaphorical ass. In a good way.

Secret Machines, "Lightening Blue Eyes." This song is pretty typical for a time--intro, verse, interlude, etc.--but somewhere along the way the momentum of the thing builds and builds, harmonies being layered vocally and instrumentally, until after the bridge, when the final lyric "and I was overwhelmed/ lightening blue eyes against the daylight" actually proves overwhelming--it's that surprisingly gorgeous.

Earlimart, "Gonna Break Into Your Heart." Apparently I'm a sucker for dirges that turn anthemic. This one really isn't much of an exception there, but it is lovely.

7th-Mar-2008 09:52 pm (UTC) - Four because five hurts my head

mmmm_beer

"Like a Hurricane" - Neil Young, a how-to on making odd pitched vocals and a Hammond organ work beautifully together.

"The Deeper In" - Drive by truckers, inspired by a magazine article about the only two people in America currently serving prison time for brother / sister incest.

"The City Sleeps" - MC-900 FT Jesus, makes you think being an arsonist could be kind of cool.

"Anyone else but you" - The Moldy Peaches, i want to kiss you all on the brain.

It's either quitin' time or stay late thinking of a fifth so...

Leave a Comment to the Entry

This page was loaded May 18th 2008, 6:23 am GMT.