how to make your baby disappear completely

perfect rainy day music. i am quite upset my google image search for "invisible baby" did not come up with anything good, but i will keep looking.

rockabye baby radiohead

UPDATE:

i did find this, which combines thom yorke with ed o'brien piss-taking with courage wolf; that's pretty good, all things considered.

www.blog.com

...is what i typed in when trying to get here to post about how much i like emily haines. well done, me. i think that says some very interesting things about my subconscious conception of my place in the universe; interesting insofar as they make me feel fucking selfish and stupid.


which is a good segue into how good metric is! (aside: if i had to calculate how many years it takes me to worship a band after everybody else knows and loves them, it's usually somewhere between 5 and 50, with a few outliers [either new bands or brahms, which skew from -2 months to 150 years]. yeah, i'm lame.) i just read an article about how james cameron, in addition to being a huge dickhead and control freak, loves, marries, and makes action heroes of super strong women, which i think is awesome. everybody knows i like emily haines and the soft skeleton, because, duh, basically unaccompanied depressive piano music!, but sometimes you just want to rock the fuck out to somebody who is justifiably acidic, sometimes angry, sometimes vulnerable, and in general a total fucking badass. i love everything she does.

Combat Baby - Metric

"ever since you have been gone, it's all caffeine free faux-punk fatigue." YES. "no one here wants to fight me like you do." DOUBLE YES. maybe jemina pearl is going to grow into a version of emily haines?? one hopes.

Hustle Rose - Metric

great synth riff, great middle that showcases her unbelievably beautiful voice, oh, and a subject matter that huuuurts. "remind me not to feel a thing."

Love Is A Place - Metric

does this not sound like an encore? i love great closing tracks (what people are made of by modest mouse comes to mind) and this kills it. also a great example of the twisty, half-step songwriting that she does so well.

Calculation Theme - Metric

my 2nd-most played song on itunes. duh.

oh also here's a playlist: does this work better?

metric blog post 2009 10 24

maybe in a few years i will check out their other records!! DON'T RUSH ME

false optimism

i've been listening to a lot of kid a recently, since i bought it from lala (which i love, in case you were wondering) for $1.99. optimistic came on first this morning, and in honor of the recent recurrence of my horrendous stress dreams (a sample from just today: i slept through our big conference, which is coming up; came home on the train after that and it turned out it was christmas, and i didn't get anyone anything) i thought of making a list of my favorite fake-optimism songs.

at some point i realized that list is really, really long.

but here's a first crack. i'm trying lala embeds, because they are reliable, and you can get your requisite one listen out of them for free. if you want to download them, go to hypemachine.

Optimistic - Radiohead

comment: uhhhh, duh.

Bows + Arrows - The Walkmen

the least convincing "nothing's wrong" i've ever heard.

Used To Be - Beach House

she's arguing with herself at the end! sounds just like my head, except for way more beautiful. also, i could have posted almost any beach house song for this theme.

Here It Comes - Modest Mouse

one of my most favorite, most upbeat modest mouse songs. yet: "you always told me life's a dam that breaks, well, here it comes"; "keep it clean and no one's ever won"; and, of course, "the place and the time where we knew everything could go wrong"

Slow Show - The National

i always thought this was a no-brainer, but i can't tell you how many people i've had to convince that this is NOT A HAPPY SONG.

Waitin' For A Superman [Mokran...

the absolute, definitive, best version of this fantastic song. also, it's probably about jesus, or the messiah? i think that counts for bonus points.


so, yeah. that makes a pretty good front half of a mix-- and if these seem like very typical al;ec songs, and the type of songs i listen to all the time, that's because THEY ABSOLUTELY ARE.

false optimism

i'll never turn my body clock back

two bon iver covers

one is awesome and epic

and the other made me really sad and wistful all of a sudden

addendum

this appears to work with pictures of will oldham as well.

teh kitteh priciple

david roberts is a new hero of mine. he writes for grist, an awesome enviro blog. he's got a sweet beard. he blogs about music sometimes. and he has followed a very important principle of getting people to listen to you and understand what you're talking about: pute pictures of cute things in your reports. this could well be called the sprigings principle.

exhibit a: bunnies

exhibit b: puppies

see? don't you feel smarter now?

wait...

i mean,

yeah. you feel smarter now.

WE'RE NUMBER TIED FOR FIFTH!! WE'RE NUMBER TIED FOR FIFTH!!

as you all probably know, my homeland has won two World Cups. what? you didn't know? YOU DO NOW:



yeah. TIMES TWO. and, since the US tied Costa Rica at the last minute last night, Honduras qualified for the cup, El Salvador (sorry mt. pleasant neighbors!) were knocked out, and Uruguay plays Costa Rica in two play-in games for World Cup qualification in November.

i hope you didn't expect to hang out that day. i will be busy draping myself in Uruguayan flags and inventing disparaging things to say about Costa Rica. i would imagine Steve is going to bear the brunt of this.

regularly scheduled programming

bahahahaha
getting my hair cut tomorrow.
maybe posting some Great Moments in Sentence History.
we'll see.

blog of fame

i think the new year can start now. let's have a good weekend, eh? trivia tonight.

it's the end of the discussion that just goes round and round

and it ain't no use