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Song of the Day #601: ‘Temporary Like Achilles’ – Bob Dylan

In May of 1966, Bob Dylan completed the most extraordinary trilogy in modern music history by releasing Blonde on Blonde just 14 months after Bringing it All Back Home, with Highway 61 Revisited sandwiched in between. Where did he get the nerve?!

Blonde on Blonde is certainly one of Dylan’s finest albums and it sits in the top ten of virtually every list of the “greatest albums ever recorded.” It’s the fourth member of my Dylan Six and a strong candidate for my favorite of his records. This is the album I’d likely recommend if somebody new to Bob Dylan wanted a sense of what he’s all about.

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Song of the Day #600: ‘Dive In’ – Dave Matthews Band

I’ve been pretty down on Dave Matthews Band ever since the non-release of The Lillywhite Sessions, the bootleg album that remains their best work even if it never debuted officially. The band put out Everyday and Busted Stuff instead, the former a generic mess and the latter filled with lesser versions of the Lillywhite songs.

2005’s Stand Up didn’t even reach my radar… to this day, I don’t think I’ve heard a single one of its tracks. For all I know it’s a hidden masterpiece, but I believe it was received rather coolly by critics and fans alike. And then the band did nothing for a few years, after which they suffered the death of saxophonist LeRoi Moore, a beloved band member and the key element musically in so many of their best songs.

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Song of the Day #599: ‘All I Want’ – Darius Rucker

Former Hootie & the Blowfish lead singer Darius Rucker put out his country album Learn to Live in the middle of 2008, so it’s not really in the same category as the other albums I’m discussing this week (all of which had ’09 releases). But there’s no harm in getting it on record.

Rucker has had an impressive second act, landing this album and its first three singles at #1 on the country charts, no mean feat in general but even more impressive as he’s the first black man to make that kind of impact in country music since Charley Pride. I’m almost entirely unfamiliar with Pride, but a quick scan of his biography shows what great company Rucker is in.

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Song of the Day #598: ‘Kind of a Girl’ – Tinted Windows

The first new album I bought in 2009 was Tinted Windows’ self-titled debut. These guys were the first of the “supergroups” that were so ubiquitous last year and initially the one I found most promising.

The lead songwriter is Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne and Taylor Hanson (the talented member of Hanson) handles lead vocals. The Smashing Pumpkins’ James Iha and Cheap Trick’s Bun E. Carlos round out the band but it’s the first two fellows I mentioned who had me excited. Both Fountains of Wayne and Hanson have a knack for power pop and this band promised to be power pop nirvana.

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Song of the Day #597: ‘Better Than This’ – Keane

I have a small pile of CDs from the past year or so that I’ve never gotten around to reviewing. I even have draft posts sitting in the admin of the blog ready to go, but they’re sitting empty. I find it difficult to review albums, especially when I don’t feel strongly one way or the other and the artists aren’t in my stable of favorites. How many ways can you say “this is a pretty good album by a pretty good band?”

So I’m finally accepting that I’m never going to give these albums proper reviews but rather than ignore them entirely I’m going to pick a song from each to highlight the rest of this week as Songs of the Day.

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