Songs Of The Week #49

Jonny Fritz, Boards Of Canada, Sonny & The Sunsets, Susanne Sundfor, & First Communion Afterparty...

Well hello again, MP3 junkies! Welcome to Songs Of The Week #49!

For those of you who are new to the SOTW column, here's the deal: TCDroogsma has been a devoted fan of The Current's Song Of The Day podcast since its inception back in 2007. Droogsy is also kind of opinionated and has a lot of free time. As such we figured we'd put him to work reviewing the songs given away each week. 49 weeks later and he's still doing it.

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

To that end, once you've given the songs a spin or two we encourage you to cast a vote for your favorite Song Of The Week in the poll to the right side of the page. The artist with the most votes receives the validation of winning an anonymous internet poll, arguably the loftiest height to which a modern musician can aspire.

So, Droogsy... thoughts?

01. Jonny Fritz – Trash Day (from the album Dad Country)

TCDroogsma:

     Back in May I reviewed Jonny Fritz's song "Goodbye Summer" for Songs Of The Week #40.  Admittedly, I was not a fan.  I gave that track a final score of 1.5/5, calling it, "A pretty standard country rave-up could have legs if there was a story to be told, but really, "Goodbye Summer" sounds an awful lot like a genre exercise and not much more."

     You can imagine, then, that I wasn't particularly excited about reviewing another Fritz track just two months later.  Based on "Goodbye Summer," I assumed I was in for another character sketch-type track that was heavy on details but slim on purpose.  Fortunately, I was way off the mark.

    
     Over a low-key shuffle Fritz crafts three succinct verses in "Trash Day."  In the first he laments that he forgot to take the trash out and that his woman will be upset with him.  In the second he explains that his neighbors never forget to take their trash out, they never fight, and, "I hate them."  In the third he reminds himself that tonight is the night that he needs to take the trash it.  Cleverly, he ends each verse with a refrain of "Oh my god..." delivered with varying levels of sadness, anger, & resignation.

     What Fritz does so brilliantly in "Trash Day" is sum up the exhaustion of the little things in life.  The small responsibilities that serve to cause the cracks in a person's whole life.  He smartly ends each verse with snarling guitar solos that somehow manage to capture that anger better than any lyrics ever could.  As a lament on the mundane pressures of being a regular dude in America you won't find many better songs than this one.

Final Score: 4/5

02. Boards Of Canada – Reach For The Dead (from the album Tomorrow's Harvest)

TCDroogsma:

     A few years back I dated a girl who was a big Boards Of Canada fan.  She tried desperately to get me to appreciate their first somewhat iconic album Music Has The Right To Children.  At the time I was even more pop-oriented than I am now and the sparse, glitchy album held absolutely no appeal for me.

     Well, as the years have passed it seems that Boards Of Canada and I have met somewhere in the middle.  As I mention here frequently, I've developed a much deeper appreciation for the mood & structure of instrumental music.  For their part, with "Reach For The Dead" BoC has left behind any vocals or "found sounds" and left me with a very moody, slow-burning instrumental.

     After spending a week with "Reach For The Dead," I can't help but think that, much like Marijuana Deathsquads' "Wade" a couple weeks back, it makes a lot more sense as a piece of a larger album.  Taken on its own it comes off a bit meandering.  Still, it's nearly impossible to listen to the song and not feel the sense of dread that they were no doubt aiming for.  It takes nearly two minutes of bass drum & static his before a synthesizer line finally starts to break through the mist, but as it comes closer and closer to the fore it brings with it the energy of a chase moving from suspicion to a brisk walk to a dead sprint.  I've no idea what's suppose to chasing me (or what the literal harvest of the album's title implies), but it seems terrifying.

Final Score: 3.5/5

03. Sonny & The Sunsets – Void (from the album Antenna To The Afterworld)

TCDroogsma:

     Growing up a fan of punk rock I never had much time for anything that could be considered "psychedelic."  That whole late-60's, early-70's sound, with its instrumental freakouts and acid-damaged lyrics did nothing but annoy me.  To this day I still hate The Doors.

    
     Fortunately over the last seven or eight years the retro-ideas of psychedelic rock have mated with the stripped down energy of good old punk rock.  Bands like King Khan & The Shrines & The Black Lips have managed to craft a new, exciting sound out of two genres that were pretty much running on fumes.

     Enter Sonny & The Sunsets.  Taking a cues from both Syd Barret & The Dead Milkmen, "Void" comes on with a sort of casual immediacy.  That's not a term that's easily describable, but opening a song with lines like, "When I look into your eyes... though you're trying hard to hide... you know it's a funny kind of sad joy, I see the void..."  Much like the term "casual immediacy, those opening lines are the kind of lines that make no sense yet are immediately relatable.

     Sonny & The Sunsets spend the rest of the track building on the template laid out over that first.  More passionate vocals, more fuzzed out guitar, & some hoots and hollers continue to build the song before it finally comes to brief climax of an organ solo.  On its surface it seems like none of this should work, but that was true of mixing those aforementioned genres from the very beginning.  "Void" is a great summer single that should appeal to anybody who enjoys guitar rock, hooks, and just a bit of "WTF?"

Final Score: 4/5

04. Susanne Sundfor – White Foxes (from the album The Silicon Veil)

TCDroogsma:

     "White Foxes" stands as my introduction to Susanne Sundfor and my first impression was that she sounds like Fiona Apple.  While, a bit of Google searching turned up that not only do their share a sound, but Sundfor created stir during an award acceptance speech in her native Norway claiming, "I am first and foremost an artist, not first and foremost a woman."  That's not quite, "This is all bullshit," but the sentiment is certainly there.

     "White Foxes" opens with an atmospheric low end hum before Sundfor's voice cuts through the noise, claiming clearly and aggressively, "Poses, poses... that's all you are to me.... Roses, roses, that's all you're offering me..."  Clearly, this is an artist with no time for moral victories or trivial awards.

     The song builds with piano and further impassioned vocals until Sundfor let's loose with a chorus of, "You gave me my very first gun, I'll go out and hunt, with white foxes..." With a line like that it's hard not to view the metaphorical "gun" as one of the spotlight afforded to her via one of those trivial awards, the metaphorical "hunt" a feminist demand.

     Of course, it's entirely possible that I'm missing the point and than these aren't metaphors at all, and that Sundfor has a stable of white foxes she brings with her while hunting.  Given the barely concealed anger of the song that's an intriguing concept.  Regardless, being compared to Fiona Apple is certainly a compliment and not one that I would dole out casually.  Sundfor's passion is clear as a bright, Norwegian winter morning.

Final Score: 3.5/5

05. First Communion Afterparty – Jesus Told You (from the album Earth Heat Sound)

TCDroogsma:

     My knowledge of First Communion Afterparty is not particularly extensive.  I've seen them live a couple of times and, via it's appearance as a Song Of The Day, am very familiar with the song "Twenty-Five."  When they turned up on the MPLS landscape a few years back they were met with plenty of deserving hype.

    
     As I've lamented many times before, the Twin Cities used to be awash is precious, arty, keyboard-pop bands.  Don't get me wrong, it still is, but a couple of years back their wasn't really anybody just turning up their guitars and creating a racket.  That's why FCAP was such a breath of fresh air back then.  These days, however, the pendulum has swung back towards the middle and the city is once again populated with shaggy-dog rock n roll bands.  Unfortunately for FCAP competition hasn't seemed to cause them to bring their sound up to the next level.

     "Jesus Told You" is a fine tune, make no mistake.  The shoe-gaze guitar drone & boy/girl spaced out vocals are still a unique sound in the Twin Cities.  Unlike, say, Sonny & The Sunsets up above, FCAP doesn't look to take an old sound and give it a new twist as much as they just want to embrace an old sound and bring it back.

     Not to bring up Marijuana Deathsquads again, but FCAP suffers from the same problem that's plagued that band for years: finding a way to take a sound based far more on texture, repetition, and volume than hooks and put it to tape.  Both of these bands are awfully close to cracking the code, but neither is quite their yet.  I'm certain that in a venue like 7th St. or The Turf Club "Jesus Told You" is an epic, chest-rattling tidal wave.  As an MP3 single it loses that extra oomph.

Final Score: 2.5/5

Well there you have it everybody! Another week's worth of songs downloaded, reviewed, and filed away!

As always, please keep in mind 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 bit too much time on our hands.

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