It’s hard to go wrong when a Barenaked Ladies song pops up on Random Weekends.
No matter the album, their songs are interesting thematically and musically, and almost always enjoyable listening (I’ll make an exception for the handful of lame-ass songs written by bassist Jim Creeggan).
The Random iTunes Fairy got cute today, serving up a second helping of Elvis Costello after yesterday’s belly-aching about not finding enough time to listen to all of his music.
She even went straight to one my favorite Costello albums, the sublime King of America, zeroing in on one of its signature sad ballads.
I wonder if at some point an artist can release too many albums, too many songs.
I don’t mean that in the sense of running out of steam, though that is certainly the case for some long tenured musicians (The Rolling Stones, for example, who continue to record despite their best work being 40 years behind them).
Another early R.E.M. track, this one as early as they get (at least when it comes to their studio releases). Chronic Town is a 1982 EP that was released before Murmur, their full-length debut.
The band hadn’t quite found their groove on this EP, but all of the elements are in place. And the release does feature ‘Gardening at Night,’ a classic R.E.M. track.
Lyrically, this might be the shortest song I’ve ever featured on the blog. Just four lines, no more than five words in each.
And yet I uncovered a wealth of conversation about the meaning of those four lines.
The most compelling analysis I read was that this is a song about God, told in a call-and-response style with God speaking the second and fourth lines.
Meet Me In Montauk 