by

Song of the Day #205: ‘The Sun I Always Wanted’ – Stew

stew21I’ve always disliked Valentine’s Day. It’s the ultimate commercial holiday, designed to do nothing more than sell flowers and candy. Fortunately my wife feels the same way.

And yet, two of the most significant moments in our lives took place on February 14. The first was our engagement. I asked Alex to marry me on Valentine’s Day of 1996, coincidentally for the most part. We had bought the engagement ring a few days earlier and had planned to dine out that night, so I dropped on one knee during a stroll on South Beach and popped the question.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #204: ‘At My Most Beautiful’ – R.E.M.

upR.E.M.’s last four albums — Up, Reveal, Around the Sun and Accelerate — have been mild disappointments. Those records followed New Adventures in Hi-Fi, the excellent and underrated follow-up to Monster, and they were all recorded without drummer Bill Berry, who quit the band to live on his farm after surviving a brain aneurysm.

By no means is it a coincidence that R.E.M.’s weakest efforts followed the loss of Berry. I don’t know how much he contributed to the songwriting, but there is a chemistry in some bands that, once altered, can never be reclaimed.

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #203: ‘Crush with Eyeliner’ – R.E.M.

monsterR.E.M. followed Automatic for the People with the grunge and feedback overload of Monster, the most love-it-or-hate-it album in their catalog.

I fall into the “love” category, though I do lose patience for a couple of songs toward the end of the album. But the first ten songs are twisted and glorious, none more so than ‘Crush With Eyeliner.’

Continue reading →

by

Song of the Day #202: ‘Nightswimming’ – R.E.M.

automatic1I’m leaping over four albums now — Life’s Rich Pageant, Document, Green and Out of Time — to reach my second-favorite R.E.M. record, Automatic for the People.

The band was huge by this point. They had big hits with ‘The One I Love’ and ‘Stand’ but then reached new heights with the unexpected blockbuster ‘Losing My Religion.’ Who could have predicted that a song about loneliness and uncertainty driven by a mandolin riff would top the charts?

So there was a lot of interest in how R.E.M. would follow up the smash success of Out of Time, and what they did was release an instant classic.

Continue reading →

by

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

vickyTo say Vicky Cristina Barcelona is Woody Allen’s best film in years is damning it with faint praise. His record has been so spotty of late (I’m not a fan of the overrated Match Point) that a minor success winds up as a Golden Globe winner for Best Comedy.

And Barcelona is indeed a minor success. It is well-acted and beautiful to look at, but feels over-written in the way Allen’s more serious films can be. He doesn’t spend enough time making fun of the upper-class intellectualism on display here, especially as exemplified by Rebecca Hall’s Vicky.

Continue reading →