Songs One-Hundred Twenty-One to Twenty-Four

Time to play catch-up again. It's been a busy week, and now it's time for a clean-the-house and build-a-big-toy weekend. The aforementioned big toy has been sitting in the garage for two weeks in three gi-normous boxes that were dropped off by a real life huge Yellow semi. The very nice guy who dropped them off told me he built one in an afternoon, but he was also able to execute a three point turn in my cul de sac while driving a truck the size of my house--to my applause, so his results may not be typical. On another front, I got invited this week to speak at a conference later this summer based on a to-be-published article, which was nice. And, I've given up my briefcase lust and traded it in for phone lust. Searching the web for the best price on an unlocked razr phone provides a nice break from writing memos and cutting budgets. Kind of offers a cool techno blue light at the end of the tunnel. Now, onto the music . . .

Song 121: The Dears, "Lost in the Plot." Starts out kind of techno then the instrumentation gets fairly familiar. The lead singer seems to be the surrogate-carried son of Morissey and Robert Smith. The band is from Canada, but on their website, they've trademarked their name, which seems a very unCanada thing to do. The song itself doesn't really hold together; it seems to be several different songs stuck together with homemade paste.

Song 122: Oasis, "Lyla." Okay, I'll admit up front that, though I only own one Oasis album, I just adore this band. Why? Let me turn to the band's website: "Noel is writing songs about queuing too long for a pint of milk and Liam is a whirlwind of inspiration and wondrous bullshit." Yay! I caught part of a recent concert on some HD station the other night, and it was grandly dysfuntional. This is a recent song, and it's standard Oasis and pretty good. I know they're having a resurgence in the UK, and this song makes me understand why. It's updated their sound a little, but the sneer of the disaffected and drunk remains. Ocassionally, when I'm away from home, my husband has called and left me random Noel or Liam quotes on my phonemail. Just another reason why I adore him, too.

Song 123: Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris, "Beyond My Wildest Dreams." I read about this album in EW, and thought I'd give a song a try. (Note, the link is to a story about the album.) It really isn't nearly as good as it should be. The musical track is formulaic, and neither one is pushing any envelops vocally. Why get together to do something this mediocre? I guess this is kind of a Traveling Wilburys for the duet set. Disappointing.

Song 124: The Raconteurs, "Steady as She Goes." This is the free iTunes download this week. I love the White Stripes, all the anger, artifice and studied oddness. Jack White is part of this post-super group. The Raconteurs share the artifice (check out the website) but move musically in a slightly different direction. The song is acoustic yet dense and shares a lot of the White Stripes' production qualities. The most notable difference is the percussion (duh!) and a bit of mandolin-ness. The vocal harmonizing is nice, too; plus, this track catches Mr. White chuckling a bit. And, it's free!!

241 to go.