"To be loved like that makes all the difference. It does not lessen the terror of the fall, but it gives a new perspective on what that terror means. I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, the one thing powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity." Paul Auster (Moon Palace)

Saturday, February 17, 2024

The The - slow emotion replay, 1993

"Slow Emotion Replay" was the 94th best-selling single in Iceland."

The Triffids - wide open road, 1986

"I just tried to keep it as blunt and direct as possible, even if the results made myself or the listener squirm"

Bones - rooting for you, 2024

"With its dreamy instrumentals and mesmerizing synths, this song is an absolute treat for the ears."

Jim James - here in spirit live, 2016

"It’s like God or the universe or whatever gave us this gift of a compass. We’ve all got this compass inside of us that says what we should really do, but we fucking ignore it so much of the time."

Car Seat Headrest - beach life-in-death, 2011

"a matryoshka doll of rock tropes: call-and-response vocals cave into winding guitar solos and narratives build and then collapse into desperate monologues"

Peter Bjorn And John - gut feeling, 2018

"There’s a guy throwing a stone on the water and it creates three rings on it. It represents us. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but all our titles are two words and three spellings."

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Echo And The Bunnymen - bring on the dancing horses live, 2018

"Bring on the Dancing Horses has a dreamily catchy chorus and a nice melody"

The Mountain Goats - rain in soho, 2017

"The lyric "There's a club where you'd like to go / You could meet someone who's lost like you" is a reference to The Smith's song 'How Soon Is Now'. D. B. Cooper is an infamous, anonymous plane hijacker who stole $200,000 and has never been found. The Batcave was a nightclub in London, considered a birthplace of goth subculture. The line "No greater love than to lay my life down for a friend" is derived from John 15:13. The lines "Children piping in the main square / But no one’s dancing / No one’s dancing down there" and "We played for you but you would not sing" recall Matthew 11:16-17 (compare the lyrics of Matthew 11:14-19 from The Life of the World in Flux)."

Beirut - nantes, 2007

"I was listening to a lot of Jacques Brel and French chanson music—pop songs shrouded in big, glorious, over-the-top arrangements and all this drama—and that was in some sense unfamiliar territory to me. So I started buying new instruments and relying on things I wasn't necessarily comfortable with, like French horns and euphoniums, carrying these big, epic big brass parts that I used to do all on trumpets, and working with accordion and organ instead of all ukulele—very much throwing myself in the world of classical pop music, I guess you could say."