Top Ten Songs of the Week 9/6/10
This is sort of our weekly, Kasey Kasem-inspired luddite DIY version of a podcast. Every week, we try to mix it up, offer a little something for everyone: sad songs, funny songs, upbeat songs, quieter stuff, you name it. We’ve designed this as something you can do on your lunch break if you work at a computer (and you have headphones – your boss won’t approve of a lot of this stuff). If you don’t like one of these songs, you can always go on to the next one: every link here will take you to each individual song. As always, the #1 song here will appear on our Best Songs of 2010 list at the end of the year.
1.Tom Warnick & the World’s Fair – No Longer Gage
From his new album The Great Escape, this is the lurid, creepy tale of 1800s Vermont railroadman Phineas Gage, who took a blasting rod through the skull and lived – but was never the same. The song relates what happened.
2. Serena Jost – Great Conclusions
Characteristically smart, majestic art-rock from the New York cellist/chanteuse. She has a kickstarter campaign going on in case you feel like assuaging your bourgeois guilt and contributing to the fund for her next album.
3. Clinic – I’m Aware
Free download – 60s psychedelic chamber pop from their shockingly mellow forthcoming album Bubblegum
4. Bobtown – Shadow of the Mountain
Click on the video with the vinyl record for a fun oldtimey treat.
5. LJ Murphy – Nowhere Now
Casually intense live version of a standout track from his classic 2006 album Mad Within Reason. He’s at Theatre 86 St. Mark’s at 7 on Friday the 10th.
6. The Snow – Handle Your Weapon
A soul song for a would-be suicide from this magnificent art-rock crew’s latest album I Die Every Night.
7. The Dixons – Thanks a Lot
Real oldschool Bakersfield country music from 1964 – except that this is Brooklyn 2010. Unbelievable. They’re at Union Pool on 9/8 at 10.
8. Garfunkel & Oates – Worst Song Medley
Even if you try to hide from top 40 radio you’ll recognize some of these from the supermarket. And they are awful. And the two girls singing them are hilarious.
9. The Giving Tree Band – Circles
Cool bluegrass/roots kiss-off song – a lot like M Shanghai String Band.
10. Bad Cop – I’m in Lust with You
Completely sick unhinged noise guitar madness. Not for fans of melody. They’re at Don Pedro’s on 9/25 and look like they’d be a lot of fun.
CD Review: Tom Warnick & the World’s Fair – The Great Escape
This album is a triumph on all possible levels. Tom Warnick is a great tunesmith, equally informed by classic 60s soul and gospel as he is by clever Elvis Costello-style songcraft, with a frequently disquieting, carnivalesque sensibility. He’s also a first-class lyricist, his genuinely Joycean stream-of-consciousness wit coupled to a blackly humorous streak. Which makes sense – four years ago, it wasn’t clear that Warnick was going to be around to make another album. A stroke following surgery for a brain tumor had put his guitar skills on the shelf, but Warnick wouldn’t be deterred: he moved to keyboards instead. Here he’s joined by guitarist to the stars of the underground Ross Bonadonna along with Dave Dorbin on bass and Peter Monica on drums. Warnick’s never sung better – there’s a gleeful defiance in his voice, as you might expect from a bon vivant joyously and somewhat unexpectedly returned to the land of the living.
“I’m gonna bust this ice cream headache,” he remarks nonchalantly on the catchy opening cut, Absorbing Man. The boxing parable Gravity Always Wins establishes what will be a recurrent theme here, beating the odds (or trying to, anyway). An indomitable pop gem, A Couple of Wrecks paints a pricelessly surreal post-sunup drunken scenario: “They stepped outside this morning and saw the setting sun.” And that was just the beginning. The Great Calamity kicks off with funeral-parlor organ, a grim but tongue-in-cheek look at disaster, Warnick sticking to his guns despite all odds: “We’re going to give just as good as we get.” A vintage soul vibe runs through several of the songs: the understatedly defiant We Win (Again), the ballad She’s Shining, and Bad Old World, where a Doomsday Book’s worth of apocalyptic omens all prove false.
The best song here is the lurid, creepy No Longer Gage, recounting the tale of Vermont railroad foreman Phineas Gage, who took an iron tamping rod from a blasting site through the head but survived, albeit with a completely different personality style (he turned surly and mean – who could blame him?). The album wraps up with a couple of psychedelically bluesy, Doorsy tracks, the title cut and then Keep Me Movin’, featuring an ecstatic gospel choir of Paula Carino, Neil Danziger, Lucy Foley, Dan Kilian, John Sharples and Erica Smith. Warnick and his band play the cd release show for this album – one of the best of 2010 – on June 26 at 10 PM at the Parkside, preceded at 9 by the excellent, new wave and ska-inspired Fumes.
Lucid Culture 