Throw on some headphones, kick back, relax, and listen. Doctor’s orders.
Quiet Hollers – Medicine
Genre: tatted up indie rock
Feeling: couch drunk
Was I inspired by this song to write this blog? Were the Quiet Hollers inspired by this blog to write this song? Does it matter which came first, the chicken or the egg? As Rust Cohle says: “Time is a flat circle.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBeIUnHVG8E
Lyric sample: “You’d like to believe that there’s a pill for everything”
Kurt Vile – One Trick Ponies
Genre: indie folk
Feeling: yeah, okay, I can get to this
Catchy guitar riffs looping over classic rock drumming, plus some agnostic lyrics? Well that’s Kurt Vile’s wheelhouse. “One Trick Ponies” is the strongest song on KV’s latest album Bottle It In. The album is best listened to in bits and pieces–there are some really good tracks in there, but you really have to be the mood to listen through end-to-end. While you’re in the neighborhood, check out a great version of “Hysteria” at 29:00 and stick around for “Skinny Mini.” Now that I think of it, “Check Baby” at 4:20 kicks ass, too. This Pitchfork video is making me rethink everything. Fuck it, “Bassackwards” qualifies as well. Never sleep on Kurty V. You think you have him beat on an album and then you realize there’s 5 or 6 great tracks on it, which in my book constitutes a success.
P.S. Obama abides: https://www.facebook.com/barackobama/posts/10156393283416749
Lyric Sample: “‘Cause I’ve always had a soft spot for repetition” – a very soft spot indeed
Grateful Dead – So Many Roads – 7/9/95
Genre: americana jam rock
Feeling: RIP Jerry
“While we still have bands like Dead & Company, Phil Lesh & Friends, and of course last summer’s Fare Thee Well supergroup with Trey Anastasio, the true Grateful Dead played their last show in Chicago at Soldier Field on July 9th, 1995.” – https://liveforlivemusic.com/news/watch-the-emotional-so-many-roads-from-the-grateful-deads-final-performance/
Jerry Garcia, leader of the Grateful Dead, struggled with addiction and various health problems at the end of his life. He died about a month after this recording.
Lyric sample:
“So many roads, I tell you
New York to San Francisco
So many roads I know
All I want is one to take me home”
Neil Young – Words – Live at Glastonbury ’09
Genre: classic rock (early grunge, in my opinion)
Feeling: riffs digging into your very soul
Old man still had it in ’09! The godfather of grunge really works the distortion like it was gosh darned violin. One of my favorite songs of all time, with a couple of my favorite lyrics:
“If I was a junkman selling you cars
Washing your windows and shining your stars
Thinking your mind was my own in a dream
What would you wonder, and how would it seem?
Living in castles a bit at a time
The King started laughing and talking in rhyme”
Born Ruffians – Too Soaked to Break
Genre: indie rock
Feeling: a butterfly fluttering about in the late spring/early summer (real men do cry)
Too finish things off, here’s a chill track with a wicked bass line from Born Ruffians.
Lyrics: “get rid of the past and don’t forget a thing” – sage advice, whatever it means.
Night yinz