Alright, everyone and their brother’s kid is going to be posting the saddest/maddest tracks for the week of Valentine’s day, which is fine. But I’m a happy person, so I’m gonna take the happy route and dedicate this week to songs that make me smile, or grin stupidly, or make me dance the entire time, or give me that warm melting feeling that only the rarest of rare songs give you. Love may suck, but your playlist doesn’t have to make you cry, right? Therefore, I’m gonna call this “Smilin’ Singles” week, and give you a bunch of singles to make you smile, and if you don’t have a valentine, let’s hope you’re a “Smilin’ Single,” too, eh?. Corny? Yes. But to quote a Geiko commercial, Music Blog Theme Weeks are like pie and chips. I mean come on, who doesn’t like pie and chips?
Sunday’s Smilin’ Singles:
Of Montreal – “Wraith Pinned To The Mist & Other Games” from The Sunlandic Twins (Of Montreal is coming to Champaign Urbana March 11th)
Candy Butcher’s – “Sparkle” from Hang On Mike (Almost too happy, but I still love it)
Keller Williams – “Thirsty In The Rain” from Spun (This is one of those melt-in-your-seat tracks for me)
*Feel free to comment on the tracks, suggest some songs that do the same thing for you guys, email me some songs at burning@burningoak.com, all that fun jive.
*Also, at the end of the week I’ll have a Smilin’ Singles Mixtape post with all of the files together. It’s a nice way to sum up the week, thanks to Bethanne of Clever Titles Are So Last Summer for starting the trend. I’m calling it right here and now, she’s the first one I’ve seen do this at the end of a Theme Week.
{ 8 comments }
I love the Of Montreal suggestion. I would have picked “The Party’s Crashing Us” because that song makes me want to dance like no other. They played that as the last song (I think) at their show in Baton Rouge a few weeks ago and it was amazing.
Cheers,
Ryan.
I like “The Party’s Crashing Us” but the part about “Wraith” that gets me going is the faster bass drum, faster snare, faster bass line, quick saltshakin’, etc. It’s got that bumpin’ little drive to it that makes me bounce. How was that Baton Rouge show?
The BR show was great. I’ll always remember it cause I went in a Polo button down, Levi’s, Sperry Topsider boat shoes, and a Widespread Panic hat and needless to say I was the only one dressed like that. Boy was I sick of clove cigarettes after that night.
Anyway the openers were kinda lame, the second opener Grand Buffet was just flat out weird. I can’t even explain it. One of the most bizarre experiences of my life seeing them.
Of Montreal was really good. They have this amazing red-headed chick who mainly plays keyboard but at different points in the show gets on every instrument. The frontman Kevin Barnes (I think) is very flamboyant in the Elton John style. He’s very entertaining though and keeps the crowd going. At the point when I saw them I was only familiar with the stuff from Sunlandic Twins and they played most of the stuff from that. The best were Party’s Crashing Us, Forced Fascist Future, Wraith, and then Chrissy Kiss the Corpse (or whatever its called) from an earlier album. They covered Diana Ross and Prince and someone else I can’t remember, and that was very cool. They played a relatively long show, over two hours, which was pretty hardcore for all those vintage t-shirt indie kids haha. It was an awesome show though. I danced my ass off, you’ll do the same.
Nice, I’m looking forward to it, I imagine their covers are excellent. I started listening to them sort of randomly when I found out they were coming to town. They’ve got a Talking Heads vibe for me which happens to be one way I’ve been finding new music lately. I’ve decided Sunlandic Twins has one of the coolest covers and is one of my favorite 2005 albums, but that’s just early 2006 retrospect, that could always change, right?
Yeah I got into them cause I randomly found out they were playing the day before the show. I downloaded the Sunlandic Twins album and listened to it like 20 times straight so I’d learn the songs. They do have a Talking Heads vibe, I also got a B52′s type vibe from them (but maybe that’s cause they are from Athens, Ga and they have a funky chick in the band). I loved Sunlandic Twins, my only problem was that some of the back half seemed unnecessary to me. In fact after Party Crashes Us the only song really worth remembering is Oslo in the Summertime. The others are just wastes in my opinion.
yeah the last half is a little less, um, danceable i guess?
Yeah, its much more experimental, which in itself is okay but on the album it takes away some of the momentum created by fast and catchy dance tunes like Party, Alabee, Wraith, etc.
those two songs you guys mentioned are amazing. my other favorite is “so begins our alabee.” that oh oh part is just amazing. it’s like being in space with aliens dancing everywhere. instead of running your ass away from these creatures that might kill you, you just join their dancing and have an out of this world dance party, or something like that
Comments on this entry are closed.