“Coffee” - WILDSANG
No particular blurb today, but if you are a coffee drinker (I’m not but I like the song anyway), you will probably get what this song is saying all too well. There are, of course, undertones of politics addressing racism and historical inequality, but we’ll leave that alone for now because I am tired and the song is fun.
I believe I originally collected this track in 2003 for a mix CD my mother had requested of “songs about coffee.” Why, yes, she is a caffeine addict.
“Clash” - Caravan Palace
This French electro-swing/gypsy jazz band became a group when three of its members were hired in 2005 to score soundtracks for silent pornographic films. Eventually, it grew in size after searching for more members via MySpace, built a following through live performances and gigs as well as Internet releases, and simply swung it all out.
Electro-swing is a fusion genre drawing inspiration from swing and jazz music (often from the 1930s) and adding dimension from influences such as house, lounge, and hip-hop. The result is a positively fantastic, swanky sound!
Caravan Palace, along with Austrian artist Parov Stelar, are considered leaders of the electro-swing genre. Listen to this track, jitterbug or tecktonik or shuffle yourself mad to it as you please, and I think you’ll know why.
(Note: Caravan Palace’s “Clash” EP is not yet available in most US-online stores, but you can often find them in the French ones.)
Clash EP on FR iTunes
Caravan Palace’s debut album on US iTunes
“My Boy Builds Coffins” - Florence and the Machine
It is immediately evident that this rendition of the song is quite different from the one featured on Florence Welch’s debut album Lungs. I believe I picked up this deeper, reverberating track in early 2009, before the hype began to build for this English artist and her band, the Machine. My first instinct tells me that I lifted it from a recording of a live performance that struck me as powerful and clear enough, but it may have been from one of the many many demo EPs and the like I was collecting at the time. I labeled its album name as “pre-Lungs” for lack of alternative. Unfortunately, I could not find it for sale anywhere when I looked today for the sake of this post, so you’ll be hard pressed to find it somewhere other than on YouTube or here.
Regardless of its origin in my personal collection, this raw, big recording of “My Boy Builds Coffins” is a favorite out of my entire musical library. Welch has mentioned that the inspiration for its lyrics came from dating a fellow at one point who skipped a date with her because he had to build an actual coffin to use in the cover art of his band’s album. Of course, the story told in the song is more extensive. It can be interpreted to simply praise the work of an otherwise thankless laborer, or to muse upon the Great Unifier that is death.
Meaning aside, though, it remains one thing: a song to be belted out with every last bit of air in one’s lungs and all of the heart between them.
“Drink Me” — Anna Nalick
This acoustic track is littered with allusions to some dark and moody references. The character of the sociopathic Cathy from the novel East of Eden, who wears a vial of poison labeled “Drink Me” around her neck until the day she at last swallows it and dies is the most clear inspiration, and the obvious inspiration for Cathy’s idea of the drink-me vial would be Alice in Wonderland.
“Snake Farm” - Ray Wylie Hubbard
Considered one of the elder statesmen of the Texas music scene, a key player in the outlaw country genre, and with a gritty, growling, weathered baritone to draw you in, Ray Wylie will charm you with this fun song. It simultaneously purrs out notes of sexiness and revulsion, and you may not be able to help but shudder along.
The inspiration for “Snake Farm”—and its fictional, tattooed, dancing Ramona—comes from the famous Animal World & Snake Farm of New Braunfels, Texas. Ray Wylie broadcasts his “Roots & Branches” radio show from New Braunfels, promoting new and established Americana musicians.
“I Love You and Buddha Too” - Mason Jennings
This song embraces the concepts of tolerance and belief in B-flat. Jennings has noted that while this catchy track came to him as what a “modern protest song” might sound like while driving and that he knew it was meant to be in B-flat from the beginning, he later learned two pieces of information he felt were just a little more than coincidence.
One, researchers have found that there is a black hole in the Perseus cluster which is emitting massive sound waves in the tune of B-flat. Over a million billion times lower than the lowest sound audible to the human ear, this single note travels 250 million light years to buffet the Earth in a perpetual, deeper-than-deep tone.
Second, many love songs and songs purported to “open up the heart chakras” are recorded in B-flat.
Regardless of such ponderings, “I Love You and Buddha Too” is simple, melodic, fun to sing, and openly loving of the great wonder that is humanity’s desire to believe.
“Forewarned” - The Swayback
A band out of Denver, the Swayback is mostly a local name so far, but have shared the stage with the likes of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Cage the Elephant, and Wolfmother. They take their name from the curve of a woman’s back. Their sound is at once ominous, vibratory, sexy like a femme fatale, and has what they have referred to in interviews as “the weirdness.”
If you’ve liked Joy Division or the Stooges, or just want a taste of punk, indie, and spook to tide you over through a bad itch, give this track a try.
“Mule Skinner Blues” - The Fendermen
Originally titled “Blue Yodel #8,” this classic country 12-bar blues song was composed and recorded in 1930 by Jimmie Rodgers. Some versions credit a second author, George Vaughn; this is a pseudonym of Vaughn Horton, who wrote new lyrics for the song when Bill Monroe did his second recording of it. It has been recorded by many different artists in the decades since. This version, by the Fendermen, was recorded in 1960 and is my favorite rendition.
A muleskinner is a person who drives mules, typically as pack animals.
“My Body Is A Cage” - Peter Gabriel
Cover of an Arcade Fire (album: Neon Bible) track for the song-swapping and reinterpretation project between Gabriel and other artists: Scratch My Back and I’ll Scratch Yours.
