I give Indigo Girls a lot of crap for their college-lit pretentiousness and the fact that their songs all sound alike. I don’t even know if the latter criticism is true, because I own only two of their 14 albums, but it sure feels true.
I come today not to attack but to praise. Today’s random iTunes selection, ‘Love’s Recovery,’ is a stunningly beautiful song, and the best thing on the duo’s wonderful self-titled 1989 album.
Funny coincidence as today’s random iTunes selection is a song my family was jamming to during a drive to the mall just hours earlier.
‘Steven’s Last Night in Town’ is a standout song on an album full of standout songs, Ben Folds Five’s sophomore release Whatever and Ever Amen. It’s about record producer Stephen Short, a friend of Ben Folds who came to visit and never left. As Folds recalls, “we must have thrown five or six going-away parties for him.”
‘Automatic Systemaitc Habit’ is the lead track on Garbage’s 2012 album Not Your Kind of People, their first record after a seven-year hiatus.
Garbage is very much a late 90s band, with their first three (and best three) albums coming out between 1995 and 2001. 2005’s Bleed Like Me was a misstep and for a while seemed like the end of the band. But this album showed a renewed spirit and a sound very much like the one they mastered back in the day.
Here’s a great song from Billy Joel’s debut album, 1971’s Cold Spring Harbor. A live version was later released on the 1981 compilation album Songs in the Attic.
‘Everybody Loves You Now’ is a bitter serenade to a woman who hit it big and, in the narrator’s eyes, turned her back on the neighborhood (“you ain’t got the time to go to Cold Spring Harbor no more”).
The first three random songs that popped up on iTunes had already been featured on the blog: Aimee Mann’s ‘4th of July,’ Art Garfunkel’s live performance of ‘A Heart in New York,’ and The White Stripes’ ‘I Want to Be the Boy to Warm Your Mother’s Heart.’
When that happens, I like to go back and read the old posts, both to see if my opinions have changed and to enjoy the comment threads. In that batch, frequent commenter Dana took shots at Garfunkel, occasional commenter Amy took shots at Mann, and Jack White emerged unscathed.
Meet Me In Montauk 