Songs Of The Week #45

Laura Marling, Radiation City, Jason Isbell, Future Bible Heroes, Sun Gods To Gamma Rays...

Well hello again, MP3 junkies! Welcome to Songs Of The Week #45!

For those of you who are still unfamiliar with the Songs Of The Week column, here's the scoop. TCDroogsma is kind of addicted to The Current's Song Of The Day podcast. He's been a subscriber since January of 2007 when they first started giving away songs and has been hopelessly devoted ever since. Seeing an opportunity to help him deal with his addiction/put him to work, we set him to review these songs each week. 45 weeks later and here we are.

As always, we strongly suggest that you follow this link and subscribe to the podcast yourself. It's free music and it's fun for the whole family!

To that end, once you've given the songs a good spin or two, please take a second to vote for your favorite Song Of The Day track in the poll to the right side of the page. The winning artist receives the validation that comes with winning an anonymous internet poll, arguably the loftiest goal to which a modern musician can aspire.

So, Droogsy... thoughts?

01. Laura Marling – Where Can I Go? (from the album Once I Was An Eagle)

TCDroogsma:

     While my love of British music is no secret, I've never really been able to connect with the British folk rock scene.  For reasons I can't completely explain, the Brits have never been able to nail folk music as well as Americans (and keep in mind, I'm none too fond of America folk music).

    
     With "Where Can I Go?," Laura Marling comes on like a British Lucinda Williams.  However, where Williams is able to sell a song through force of personality alone, Marling comes off like a passenger in her own song.  Maybe it's just another example of American brashness vs. British subtlety, but that's a discussion for a different day.  "Where Can I Go?" drifts by on some pretty guitar strumming and keyboards, but seems to disappear as quickly as it arrives, leaving nothing behind.

Final Score: 2/5

02. Radiation City – Foreign Bodies (from the album Animals In The Median)

 
TCDroogsma:

     "Foreign Bodies" is yet another example of why I spend a week listening to each one of these SOTD tracks first thing in the morning.  The first few times I listened to "Foreign Bodies" it didn't really stick.  It bounces a bit, and the chorus seemed nice enough, but meh...

    
     Quick aside: The first few times I heard this I thought, "Man... this sounds like a Portland thing."  Sure enough, after digging into Radiation City a bit it turns out to be from Portland.  Congrats, Rose City!  You have a distinctive sound! In that same vein, it's probably best that I didn't see that picture of the band before I wrote this review.  Portland has a distinctive look too.  Unlike their "sound," that's not a compliment.

     Anyway, the fourth or fifth time through the song really started to hit.  That chorus that "seemed nice" earlier in the week finally started to stick (a sign of a great hook is when it doesn't hit immediately).  The additional vocals give the hook a bit of a modern-day-girl-group sound.  In fact, if you trim away the fuzz, "Foreign Bodies" sounds like lost Supremes song.  Definitely a solid left-of-center summer jam.

Final Score: 3.5/5

03. Jason Isbell – Stockholm (from the album Southeastern)

 
TCDroogsma:

     It's been several years and several songs now since Jason Isbell first turned up in the SOTD songs and I'm still not entirely sure what to make of the guy.  The tracks I've hear with his rock outfit The 400 Unit have a great Replacements-In-Memphis vibe to them.  His solo track "Dress Blues" is an absolutely soul-crushing track about burying a young soldier that, admittedly, carried some extra weight with me as I have a friend in the Navy.

    
     Still, it's nearly impossible not to think of Jason Isbell as the guy who used to be in Drive-By Truckers.  I'm sure he hates being classified that way (and rightfully so as DBT is one of the most boring bands I've ever come across), but he made his name with that band and now he's stuck with it.  Tough break, bud, but it's a two-way street.

     "Stockholm" is exactly the song you'd expect to hear if you were told you were about to listen to a song by an ex-Drive-By-Trucker.  It's got a solid alt-country sound, swinging like a pendulum back and forth, as Isbell laments a relationship rougher than "love songs that make a Georgia man cry" and is more difficult than reading "The Good Book."  The one curveball "Stockholm" throws comes in the form of strings that sound like they're being played on a phonograph in the next room.  Save for those strings, "Stockholm" is the living definition of "rote." 

Final Score: 2.5/5

04. Future Bible Heroes – Living, Loving, Partygoing (from the album Partygoing)

 
TCDroogsma:

     I'm not going to waste too many words getting to my point: "Living, Loving, Partygoing" is the worst song The Current has given away this year.  Frankly, it's not even close.  When you consider the number of Ben Gibbard songs I've reviewed, that's really saying something.

    
     I don't know if Stephen Merritt and company are aiming for some sort of cultural snapshot by chronicling the oppressively mundane experiences of the hipster parties (The Guy Fawkes Day Bash?  Go fuck yourselves), but if that's the case they've come too close to their subject.  "Living, Loving, Partygoing" is like an audio version of a sophomore in college's Instagram account.  Just picture after picture with hashtags like #Realest and #Badass.  All the while trying to dance with the girl from English Lit that he's had a crush on all semester.  Perhaps if Future Bible Heroes had taken the time to illustrate the sadness that undoubtedly crosses the minds of these kids at parties then the song would carry a little more weight.  Or maybe the fact that they don't show that side is the point, reminding us that college kids are self-indulgent jackasses with terrible taste in pretty much everything.  If that's the case, I certainly didn't need three verses to be sufficiently reminded.

     Add that ridiculous lyrical content to the type of keyboard plinks that lack all of the baroque-pop character of Merritt's Magnetic Fields work and "Living, Loving, Partygoing" quickly becomes an exercise in how quickly I can remove his iPod his pocket and find the "Next" button.

Final Score: 0/5

05. Sun Gods To Gamma Rays – Burn Me Through (from their forthcoming album)

  
 
TCDroogsma:

     "Burn Me Through" is a fantastic example of how talented musicians and producers can take a good song and turn it into a great one.

    
     For the duration of the verses singer Brianna Kocka sings through a lyrical-haze of midwestern passivity and a audio-haze of buried vocals and drifting instrumentation.  She works through metaphors, telling a (potential?) significant other that he's "the sun, the moon" and "the burning fire..."

     Then, almost as if she's exhausted from trying to elicit a response via romantic metaphor, the haze breaks, the instruments become clear, and Kocka's voice comes brilliantly to life as she puts it as bluntly as possible: "I want, I really, really want you, I need, I really, really need you..."  The lines end with a guitar ticking back and forth between two notes like a clock counting off the moments spent waiting for a response, aware that there's no more pretending to misunderstand the metaphors anymore.  Again, a lovely job by the whole band to find the extra depth in "Burn Me Through."

Final Score: 3.5/5

There you have it, folks! Another week's worth of songs downloaded, reviewed, and filed away!

As always, we ask that you please remember that neither Newest Industry nor our contributors are in any way affiliated with the artists above, The Current, or MPR. We're just music fans with laptops and a little too much time on our hands.

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