February 26th 2008 08:52 pm
The Daily Random Ten, Part 3
- Barenakedladies - I’ll Be That Girl. 4 stars. For all that I completely overplayed Stunt in High School, this is one of the tracks that I still want to listen to. It’s surprisingly upbeat for a song that contains lyrics “when you’re done/being beautiful and young” and “if I had a gun/there’d be no tomorrow”
- The Living End - Prisoners of Society. 4 stars. My long hours of Guitar Heroing have left me with the knowledge that I’m not as much a fan of playing hard and fast songs as I am one of listening to them, which is good for this song. Not being adept in music theory, I’m not sure if the tempo changes are a function of changing time signature, but they make for welcome breaks during the song, something I don’t often associate with punk.
- Cat Stevens - I See a Road. 2 stars. For some reason this song feels horribly awkward, amateurish and campy. Not good, especially when combined with annoyingly vapid lyrics.
- Violent Femmes - Good Feeling. 2 stars. The “so and so on such and such” is annoying enough that I don’t want to hear this again, even though the really fat, loose and upfront sounds of the bass are neat.
- Hem - I’ll Dream of You Tonight. 3 stars. There are times I think of Hem as a poor person’s Over the Rhine; this is one of those times. Inoffensive, and a little bit needlessly sappy, but there’s some slide guitar buried underneath a pleasantly big sound.
- Radiohead - Creep (acoustic). 5 stars. I debate myself sometimes whether this or the original studio cut of this song is the superior (the radio edit can kiss my ass). I love Yorke’s forlorn delivery of the song, and most of the time think it’s a better fit than the anger that comes through on the normal version. There’s a caveat though, I vehemently dislike (I don’t know if that’s possible, but I’m going with it) the change to “very” from “fucking” which is one of the most perfect uses of cursing I’ve ever encountered.
- Juliana Hatfield - No Answer. 2 stars. I really should be able to get past Hatfield’s exceedingly young-sounding vocals, but except in a few cases I can’t. I can’t take the songs seriously, and I have a desire to skip right on past them, and the repeated di-do di-di-do di-do’s are actively annoying.
- Mazzy Star - All Your Sisters. 3 stars. Hope Sandoval could sing a grocery list to me and I’d be happy. This song’s a little too airy for my tastes to be part of the regular rotation of songs, though, so it gets a middling rating.
- Liz Phair - Cinco de Mayo. 3 stars. A mediocre song from a mediocre album. I could absolutely see people with a lesser fondness for Liz Phair’s stuff giving this 2 stars under my rating system, but I’m not them.
- The Flaming Lips - Nobody Told Me. 4 stars. Any passable Lennon cover automatically gets 3 stars, and the Flaming Lips are darn cool, as is the song in general. The super crunch guitars and other odd sounds throughout really add to the “strange days indeed” vibe of the song.
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