Monday, January 01, 2007

Songs 294 to 301

Admittedly, this has taken me more than a year, but by the end of this post, I will have downloaded and reviewed over 300 songs by almost as many artists--most of which I never heard of before coughing up 99 for their music. (And, most of which, I will never hear of again!) I'll keep going until I hit the magic 365 mark--so here are some more entries, fueled by a generous dose of Starbucks' holiday blend and a peanut butter cinnamon raisin bagel, the breakfast of iPod champions.

Song 294: Laura Veirs, "Rapture." Lyrical singer/songwriter stuff. The delivery is nice and sparse--not little girl lost as so much of this seems to be. There's a choir element to her singing that's nice. The lyrics are interesting as well.

Song 295: Spoon, "The Way We Get By." One thing I've learned this year is that the OC may be an awful show, but it features fabu music. This is from the OC Mix 1 and is a solid rock of today song. Nice use of piano and cymbal work. Kind of like Ben Folds for the young people (rather than Ben Folds for the really, really young people, which follows below). Good song.

Song 296: Catherine Feeny, "Mr. Blue." This is one of those girl singer/songwriter songs that sounds like many, many others. It's not bad; it's just the same. Who signs these people? I can't believe the market supports all of them. She is British, maybe that makes a difference.

Song 297: Si*Se, "The Truth." Starbucks-friendly world music with an electronicity feel. If Shakira had a moody cousin, she would be singing for Si*Se (which is too difficult to type to make this music worth listening to. Phoney diacritics are so last year!)

Song 298: The American Analog Set, "Cool Kids Keep." This song is a love child of "Kids in America," "I Don't Like Mondays," and "Jeremy" with a lovely low-fi hum. Spooky and ominous. I like it!

Song 299: Ben Folds & William Shatner, "Rockin the Suburbs (Over the Hedge Version)." Like most parents of children a certain age, I now spend at least one weekend a month at the movies watching yet another CGI-animation fest--most of which are full-on awful but which the kids, as kids, like anyway. Over the Hedge was actually pretty good, and during it, I kept thinking--I know who's singing here, who is it? It's the five-less Ben Folds. Fun music, and Shatner is always gold, people. (Though seriously, Ben, wash the hair every once in a while. Even McConaughey has trouble rockin that look.)

Song 300: Athlete, "Tourist." Very emo.

Song 301: Band of Horses, "Great Salt Lake." Vocals have been recorded in another state than the music, apparently, which gives this a nice distancing sound. There seems to be a resurgence of a kind of anthemic, postemo power ballad. This is one of those. See, it all comes back.

64 to go.

No comments: