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Song
Ever since I came across this Tip Of My Tongue post on Reddit, I can't get this song out of my head. Anybody know who the artist is? Sounds a little like Frazey Ford, but I'm not sure. The clues are few (it came from an old SXSW sampler, maybe?) and Shazam and Google have turned up nothing.
UPDATE: I asked Jolie Holland about it via Facebook. She doesn't recognize the voice.
UPDATE 2: The mystery arist is San Francisco singer and songwriter Indianna Hale. Big thanks to Stuart Woods for solving this and letting me get on with my life.
Our Top 21 Albums issue came out Dec. 22, but that doesn’t come close to telling you what 2011 sounded like. To help find the devil in the details, we’ve asked City Paper’s critics, friends and family to name some of their favorite songs — be they secret gems on terrible albums, sleeper tracks you missed, huge pop songs that need defending, or just plain good songs everybody already knows and loves. (Ignore the video, this is about the audio.)
It makes no sense that the song that rocked me the hardest this year was Craig Finn’s ode to the Minnesota Twins, which appears on The Baseball Project’s High and Inside. “These are grown men,” Finn pleads. That’s debatable. “These are heroes.” They most certainly are not. “Please don’t call them Twinkies.” Why would I call them anything at all? I stopped caring about baseball when I was 6, right about when I learned the Phillies wouldn’t let a girl be their third baseman. I’ve never been to Minneapolis, and I don’t have much use for Finn’s work with The Hold Steady. But Steve Wynn’s guitar solo is short and sharp, Minnesota native Linda Pitmon’s drumming is even more passionate than usual, and I appreciate the nerdery that goes into writing a couplet like “Oliva hit the singles and Harmon hit the homers / Mudcat Grant won 20 games and they didn’t play in a dome yet.” Aw, well, at least it’s not about basketball.
Our Top 21 Albums issue comes out Dec. 22, but that doesn’t come close to telling you what 2011 sounded like. To help find the devil in the details, we’ve asked City Paper’s critics, friends and family to name some of their favorite songs — be they secret gems on terrible albums, sleeper tracks you missed, huge pop songs that need defending, or just plain good songs everybody already knows and loves. (Ignore the video, this is about the audio.)
If you like a song with lots of moving parts, you might dig this crazy, creepy epic on the Felice Brothers’ Celebration, Florida. It’s got fire and anguish and messed up time signatures and screaming kid choruses and shaky Dylan vocal parts and a buried guy digging himself up and walking back into to down. The rest of the album didn’t quite live up to the promise of its grandly strange opener, but how could it? This song demands loud repeat listens.
Our Top 21 Albums issue comes out Dec. 22, but that doesn’t come close to telling you what 2011 sounded like. To help find the devil in the details, we’ve asked City Paper’s critics, friends and family to name some of their favorite songs — be they secret gems on terrible albums, sleeper tracks you missed, huge pop songs that need defending, or just plain good songs everybody already knows and loves.
The Asteroid No. 4 aren’t part of this recent psychedelic rock movement. They’ve been at it much longer. “Wicked Wire” is lyrically perfect for opening Hail to the Clear Figurines, stating this is, “Just another day/ With my wicked wire.” Its echoing vocals are like the bad influence in your head. The layered guitar fuzz and giant drumming feel heavy like you’ve been moving into a new apartment all afternoon, but the background harmonies feel soothing, bringing us back to the summer of love just before the high wears off.
Our Top 21 Albums issue comes out Dec. 22, but that doesn’t come close to telling you what 2011 sounded like. To help find the devil in the details, we’ve asked City Paper’s critics, friends and family to name some of their favorite songs — be they secret gems on terrible albums, sleeper tracks you missed, huge pop songs that need defending, or just plain good songs everybody already knows and loves.
Here’s the leadoff song from the heartbroken album of the year. J, who’s often pretty sensitive, wears his heart on his sleeve more than ever before. No one part of this one shines brighter than another and it works to J’s advantage. He seems aware that playing a catchy, rolling guitar line behind lyrics that sound more like a diary entry than anything else is what makes it appropriate for setting up the next nine songs on the album. Coincidentally, he put it on the market just days after your’s truly was put back on it, too. Thanks for helping fill the hole, J.
Our Top 21 Albums issue comes out Dec. 22, but that doesn’t come close to telling you what 2011 sounded like. To help find the devil in the details, we’ve asked City Paper’s critics, friends and family to name some of their favorite songs — be they secret gems on terrible albums, sleeper tracks you missed, huge pop songs that need defending, or just plain good songs everybody already knows and loves.
Snakecharmed in a sonic maze, you are swaying left to right. The grit and swagger of Carrie Brownstein’s “I’m a racehorse … You put your money on me” disorients and enchants further. The focus of the ears (and the eyes during their sublime live sets) infinitely shifts between the paradoxically dueling and complementary guitars of Brownstein and Mary Timony and the flicker bombast of Janet Weiss’s drums and the organ eccentricities of Rebecca Cole. As a declaration by the most exciting confluence of talent in rock and roll in recent memory, Wild Flag’s “Racehorse” rightly desires jam status, extending to nearly the 10-minute mark in their flagship Philadelphia performance at Johnny Brenda’s in March. And the words “Pony up, pony up” were never before woven together with such power, popping into eternal music consciousness without any politics; just pure aural pleasure bestowed here, raw and timeless.
Our Top 21 Albums issue comes out Dec. 22, but that doesn’t come close to telling you what 2011 sounded like. To help find the devil in the details, we’ve asked City Paper’s critics, friends and family to name some of their favorite songs — be they secret gems on terrible albums, sleeper tracks you missed, huge pop songs that need defending, or just plain good songs everybody already knows and loves.
R.E.M. were always at their best as mythmakers and unravellers. With “Blue,” as the exclamation point on their last album Collapse Into Now, they stack Michael Stipe’s spoken-word mode between the haunting chords of their darkest meditative selves and the jangly resuscitation of the album’s opener “Discoverer.” Patti Smith enters, stage left, “I saw your face…” Stipe, self-effacing, self-reflexive, sends shudders with his “ha-has,” “blue, blue,” and the desire for the fable of the past to continue: “20th century collapse into now.” Mike Mills harmonizes in the raw, Peter Buck packs a final Rickenbacker wallop. The end of their finest album post-Automatic for the People and they know it. Not to scuttle in a dirge forever, the final words of their last album track have so much hope: “discoverer.” Yes, we found you and you found us. And the world of music will never be the same.
Our Top 21 Albums issue comes out Dec. 22, but that doesn’t come close to telling you what 2011 sounded like. To help find the devil in the details, we’ve asked City Paper’s critics, friends and family to name some of their favorite songs — be they secret gems on terrible albums, sleeper tracks you missed, huge pop songs that need defending, or just plain good songs everybody already knows and loves. (Ignore the video, this is about the audio.)
Manchester dudes WU LYF’s album Go Tell Fire to the Mountain was one of my favorite albums of the year, but it was “Spitting Blood” that caught my attention in the first place. It’s a raspy, vulnerable, howl of a man’s discomfort with human excess and a longing for something of a post intellectual innocence. Having taken a page from Arcade Fire’s book in recording the album in an abandoned church, all the cymbal crashes and droplets of guitar ring out organically, giving a sense of thematic logic with the lyrics. What’s great about this song, however, is outside of logic. It’s a pure realization of catharsis drawn together in a disarming balance of grit and delicacy.
Our Top 21 Albums issue comes out Dec. 22, but that doesn’t come close to telling you what 2011 sounded like. To help find the devil in the details, we’ve asked City Paper’s critics, friends and family to name some of their favorite songs — be they secret gems on terrible albums, sleeper tracks you missed, huge pop songs that need defending, or just plain good songs everybody already knows and loves.
Oh geez, I know everybody’s talking about how “indie rock” means “soft rock” these days and I kinda hate that stuff, but I love this song. I mean Belle Brigade is such a no frills name, and they’re a sister-brother duet, and they had something on a Twilight soundtrack. So there’s bland baggage here. But listen to “Losers,” a Simon and Garfunkel folk mission statement about either giving up or being smart. It’s catchy. It’s direct. I’m not sure the message is a “good” one but it hits where it hurts.
Our Top 21 Albums issue comes out Dec. 22, but that doesn’t come close to telling you what 2011 sounded like. To help find the devil in the details, we’ve asked City Paper’s critics, friends and family to name some of their favorite songs — be they secret gems on terrible albums, sleeper tracks you missed, huge pop songs that need defending, or just plain good songs everybody already knows and loves. (Ignore the video, this is about the audio.)
Before the index finger even leaves the surface of the play button on your stereo, I mean iHome, this one gives a clear indication that it’s going to amount to something much larger than you’re prepared for. It’s an homage to a lady in Ty’s court, and the obvious standout on Goodbye Bread. The prebridge that sludges through unnaturally overdriven bass could not end better than with the line, “You make me so happy,” before bursting into one of the best guitar lines of the year.
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