It's a happy bop bop day! Have you heard of Passion Pit yet? I'm a bit late on the trigger lately as we all know, but I just learned of Passion Pit from The Fader, and I'm really digging them. This music - along with Los Campesinos! who I am going to see Feb. 14 at the Bowery Ballroom (yay!) - has my blood moving despite the frigidness going on out there.
p.s. you can download the song in the video here for free.
is my favorite song on Alicia Keys' new album. I love it. Well-written musically, and the best her (great) voice sounds on this album. Have a listen:
Once again, sadly, I can't endorse buying this entire album. Why the wildly talented Alicia Keys has yet to put out a consistently stellar album I cannot understand given how many amazing individual songs she has, but at least this album has many more good songs than her past albums have. These are the tracks worth buying, in my opinion:
*Wreckless Love
*No One
*Go Ahead (the chorus is awesome -- the rest of the song is nothing great)
*Superwoman (hell yeah, she needs to go on Oprah with this one ;)... "Even when I'm a mess, I still put on a vest, With an S on my chest, Oh yes")
*Like You'll Never See Me Again - this song gives me chills every time
*Lesson Learned - i like the john mayer groove in this one - you can tell he co-wrote even though he doesn't take over the song
*The Thing About Love
p.s. haha, as I'm writing this, dear husband tells me: "I actually like R&B. You know why? Think about it! It's happy bop bop, but different." YES. "Wreckless Love" is definitely "happy bop bop", but different. Indeed. Ha. Good job, husband.
Credit goes to Arjanwrites for introducing me to Young Love, who I think would be *perfect* for your message board song contest, Arik.
p.s. check out the video for "Find a New Way" too.
"Discotech":
Sorry it has been so long since I posted... I don't know where the past 2 weeks have gone. I was out of town for part of it, saying goodbye to dear friends/newlyweds, saying welcome to my sister who just moved to NYC and started her first "real" job, visiting with a childhood friend who was in town briefly, and, of course, manically working on my dissertation study.
Since this is a mostly music blog, what has been musically notable (haha that's almost a bad pun) in my life in the past couple weeks?
1. A fun impromptu "DJ Charlie & Me" set late night Sat/Sun. We pulled our gracious little audience back through time via such gems as "Put It In Your Mouth", "Informer", "Push It", "California Love", "It Takes Two" & "Poison" ... we also had some crowd members tragically attempting to replicate the MC Hammer dance, the Kid N Play, NKOTB's Hanging Tough video ... (okay, okay... me included)
2. I have been trying really hard to love the new Kelly Clarkson album, but I would say I like 1/3 of it. (I still love Kelly regardless).
3. I have been effortlessly loving the new Patrick Wolf album, The Magic Position & a lot of the new Spoon album. Patrick Wolf's new album is kind of like Sufjan Stevens meets Tahiti 80, with a heavy spot of New Wave. And I was never a huge Duran Duran/Depeche Mode (the vocals were too melodramatically damp in my ear or something), but I really love this Patrick Wolf album. There are parts that definitely border happy bop bop, so maybe even my dear husband will like it (check out "Get Lost" & the title track). Listen to "The Underdog" and "Finer Feelings" from Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga - you'll want the whole album.
Last month I dragged Rich to an Amy Winehouse show. Amy Winehouse was quite the spectacle live - at the time, I actually wrote about it to JShep, who posted part of my mini-dissertation about it on her blog.
Thank god for the Pipettes (the openers), who were as intriguing as Winehouse, only sober and full of spunk and sass and Shangri-La moves. Rich, with his British appreciation for irony, found them "endlessly entertaining". They kept his blackberry in his pocket while we waited for Winehouse. Haha. I think Pitchfork describes them as "post-retro" - that's a perfect description. You have to see them live to fully appreciate them (they are better live/as performers than on recordings), but check them out on myspace if you don't know them already.
Today I'm in the mood to give a random Josh Rouse plug --because he's a really quality singer-songwriter but not that commercially recognized, and the man deserves more popularity. My favorite song of his is "Winter in the Hamptons" -- it's a really delicate mix of two invented subgenres Rich & I call "whiny white boy music" (e.g., Howie Day) & "happy bop bop music" (e.g., Tahiti 80). Now, that's a hard combo to pull off, but this song does it well.
While searching for an MP3 posting of the studio version of "Winter in the Hamptons" elsewhere in the blogosphere, to my surprise I discovered that another music blogger felt a very similar random-josh-rouse-posting urge just a few weeks ago! And Cronhauer's version on his Your Moment of Zen blog is way more thoughtful than mine. So check it out for his insightful two cents on Josh Rouse & for his mp3s! Thanks Cronhauer!
