Goodbye California - Jolie Holland

Goodbye California - Jolie Holland

3:28

Escondida, 2004

Written by Jolie Holland

Holland is unrelated to Squeeze keyboardist Jools Holland, but is a founding member of the Be Good Tanyas.  This song is an old-timey Americana plaint.  Her sometimes quavering vocal reminds me a bit of Gillian Welch, except Holland sings here with a unique (albeit compelling) Southern accent, vowels all stretched and distorted.  The song struts along at an easy shuffle, a spare but evocative arrangement, with guitar, maybe a mandolin, and what sounds like a singing saw.  The lyrics tell of someone burdened by all the ills of the world — "Now folks that know what's good for 'em / Are good at ignoring 'em / But I just can't put these thoughts down / I'm harrowed and abused and broken and pursued" — before veering off into a quasi-mystic picture of postmortem dissolution into the natural world, a Californian, less defiant, take on Frank Turner's "One Foot Before the Other."

Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand

Take Me Out – Franz Ferdinand
3:57
Franz Ferdinand, 2004
Written by Alex Kapranos, Nick McCarthy, Bob Hardy, Paul Thomson

This song starts out with about a minute of post-punk energy very much in the vein of the Strokes.  Then it stutters to a slow, until bursting out into an uptempo, sharp, stalking, danceable guitar riff.  The contrast of the two tempos and riffs is what grabs everyone's attention in print, although to me it's just a pretty interesting intro and segue; I didn't think much of it.  The lyrics are inspired by a sniper battle as metaphor for a kind of adversarial romantic situation: "And if you leave here / You leave me broken, shattered I lie / I'm just a crosshair / I'm just a shot, then we can die."  It's a strong song for a debut, all art-rock cool and pure pop instinct.  It's architectural in its precision, but still immediate and visceral.

Go West - Geraint Watkins

Go West - Geraint Watkins

2:55

Dial 'W' For Watkins, 2004

Written by Geraint Watkins

This song is a western-tinged swing jazz in a throwback style, a winking music-hall song with a half-spoken intro that sets the tone: "When it's cold and damp in New York City / And all the girls don't look so pretty / And you can't find a job / And you're looking like a slob...." There's a little slide guitar, and Watkins' voice is smooth like a British, old-timey singing cowboy's.  It's a fun song, with lightweight lyrics and a toe-tapping blend of styles.

Toucher l'horizon - Oxmo Puccino

Toucher l’horizon – Oxmo Puccino
2:58 

Cactus de Sibérie, 2004 

Written by Oxmo Puccino and DJ Duke 

This Mali-born French rapper delivers a conscious rap, but not in the preachy, thesis-statement sense.  It's more like an assertive monologue about ambition, exhaustion, and the stubborn belief that you can still push past whatever walls life builds in front of you and not settle for being less than. He casts himself as the guy who started from less than nothing (“Recommences ta vie à zéro quand je la redémarre à moins dix / J'suis né blasé sans un sous / Puis brassé me suis retrouvé sans issue / J'suis rentré en collision avec mes obstacles"), but instead of slipping into braggadocio, he uses that bleak starting point as fuel. The tone is self-mythologizing but never smug; it's more like he's he's inviting everyone to break down barriers with him. The production is all soft edges and slow burn.  Oxmo isn't just talking about reaching the horizon; he's reaching out a hand for you to be dragged along with him ("Viens, la vitesse de mon son frisons").

Good Times - Charlie Robison

Good Times - Charlie Robison

3:56

Good Times, 2004

Written by Charlie Robison

A quite funny declaration of hedonism: drinking, music, and carpe diem.  You know the song doesn't take itself seriously when the opening lines are "Pick up a pizza, pineapple ham / And put it in the back of a Good Times van."  This is pure Texas honky-tonk country blues with piano and guitar, and it takes itself less seriously than even those sly rascals in ZZ Top.  "I'm gonna start singing so don't interrupt," Robison counsels, and it's good advice; his witty lyrics deserve to be heard.

Night Time Train - Dan Patlansky

Night Time Train - Dan Patlansky

2:43

True Blues, 2004

Written by Dan Patlansky?

Never heard of this South Africa artist.  This is a straight electric blues number with a catchy sing-along chorus.  The first verse seems to be about a tough life on the road, but the second verse is a bit more obscure: "You live in a dream with a head full of green / Lots of vibes coming on so strong."  Maybe a weed reference?  Well, Patlansky may not be a poet lurking among us, but this is a feel-good toe-tapping blues.  Ironic or not, I can see a mellow, happy crowd chanting "My life is easy" along with him.

C'mon C'mon - The Von Bondies

C'mon C'mon - The Von Bondies

2:13

Pawn Shoppe Heart, 2004

Written by Jason Stollsteimer

After a few beats of surf guitar this song erupts into a super-catchy, rollicking swagger of a rock track.  The vocals are booming, the bass line is thumping, the chorus hooks into you and demands you sing along.  The quiet/loud approach is the Pixies, the lyrics are Danzig ("With my teeth locked down, I could see the blood / Of a thousand men who have come and gone").  This is the band's only successful single; they're best known for being produced by, and then punched by, Jack White.

Dairy Queen - Indigo Girls

Dairy Queen - Indigo Girls

3:47

All That We Let In, 2004

Written by Amy Ray

A song about a love that went awry somewhere; the addressee found being true "hard to do."  Ray muses on how love can flicker and fade: "Ain't it funny how we lose one day / And a lifetime slips away."  But what sets this apart fro other lost love song is Ray's empathetic, humanistic view.  The love is still there; parts of you are always in the one you once loved.  The memories are good enough for a lifetime. "At least you were mine / If not for all time / Enough to hold / Or at least enough for me to hold you."  I am always enthralled by Ray's poetic and rational worldview.

Dancin' Fool - Barry Manilow

Dancin' Fool - Barry Manilow

2:38

Scores: Songs from "Copacabana" and "Harmony", 2004

Written by Barry Manilow, Bruce Sussman and Jack Feldman

This is a rerecording of a previously released song, though I can't find when Manilow originally recorded it.  Manilow's vocals are smooth and powerful, while the band brings high energy brass blasts and string stings.  Ther's perhaps an overabundance of scatting, but chalk it up to Manilow's enthusiasm.  I love it when writers put rhymes, especially multiple word rhymes, mid-sentence: "When that crooner starts in to scattin' / Just give me a chance an' / My tuxedo pants an' / Presto! I'm a dancin' fool."  

Will You Come And Fetch Me - Of Montreal

Will You Come And Fetch Me - Of Montreal

1:59

Satanic Panic in the Attic, 2004

Written by Kevin Barnes

The narrator is heading for collapse in the face of a bizarre world and pleads with a nameless girl to pull him from the brink.  "If this nightmare can't be stopped / Go out and find me when I'm dropped."  It's a ramshackle burst of psychedelic pop with found sounds, swift changes in beat, instruments like bells popping up and receding, and surreal lyrics that bring to mind "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds."  At under two minutes, it's sadly over before you can fully appreciate it.

Pigs That Ran Straightaway Into the Water, Triumph Of - The Mountain Goats

Pigs That Ran Straightaway Into the Water, Triumph Of - The Mountain Goats

2:52

We Shall All Be Healed, 2004

Written by John Darnielle

I think the Goats are the first artist to appear four times on this blog.  I must be a superfan!  The song title, of course, references Mark 5:13.  "Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding.  And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.  And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea."  It's a metaphor for the narrator and his meth addict "evil spirits."  Will he be sent back to the correctional facility where he came from, fitted for an orange jumpsuit?  "I come from Chino where the asphalt sprouts."  But his better angels want to go where dragonflies glide and magnolias bloom.

Breathless - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

Breathless - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

3:13

Abattoir Blues / The Lyre Of Orpheus, 2004

Written by Nick Cave

When Cave writes a love song, he damn well makes everyone on Earth join in.  "The sky of daytime dies away / And all the earthly things they stop to play / For we are all breathless without you."  Over a blend of baroque pop and tunes from timeless English ballads comes a flow of images tumbling over one another and tumbling straight out of Romantic Age Christian hymns.  "The happy hooded bluebells bow / And bend their heads all a-down."  Come to think of it, is this song delivered to a woman or to a child or to God?  Maybe yes.

When This River Rolls Over You - The Stands

When This River Rolls Over You - The Stands

2:58

All Years Leaving, 2004

Written by Howie Payne

This song is coated in vocal harmonies, harmonica breaks, gently jangling guitars, and it practically exudes nostalgia, especially the Byrds and early Bob Dylan.  Lyrically and in the guitar and nasal vocal delivery and imagery, Dylan is a towering shadow here.  "Ain't it a shame babe how your words fall in an empty place / No one to follow or to trace."  I like it, but I would not have been surprised to hear it was from the late '60s.

Mushaboom - Feist

Mushaboom - Feist

3:44

Let It Die, 2004

Written by Feist

I only know this artist from the great earworm "1 2 3 4."  Mushaboom is apparently a town in Nova Scotia.  In the song, the narrator muses about having a life in a house, presumably in this rural community.  "I got a man to stick it out / And make a home from a rented house / And we'll collect the moments one by one / I guess that's how the future's done."  Those are some weighty lyrics, delivered with a beautiful voice.  The soft guitar and piano lines make the song feel like a warm cozy home.

Crazy In Love - Eminem

Crazy In Love - Eminem

4:02

Encore, 2004

Written by Marshall Mathers, Luis Resto, Ann Wilson, Nancy Wilson, & Roger Fisher

Listen for the silent E!

Over the hook from "Crazy On You," Em rap/sings about the woman he can't get enough of, when he hasn'y had enough of her.  It's a love-hate relationship, and it could be about drugs, or fame, or anything else that someone is attracted to but would like to be able to walk away from.  This isn't the best track on the album, and the album isn't one of Eminem's best.  One of the cleverest rappers in the game and with one of the quickest tongues, his lyrics don't exactly shine here ("The only way that I am able to stay so stable / Is you're the legs to my table").  Nor is his rightfully lauded wordplay at work ("They say that every man grows up to marry his own mother / Which would explain why you're such a motherfuckin' bitch").   Eminem can be insulting and hilarious, but this song doesn't hit the mark.  Sprinkling metaphors that are either flat and tired or bizarre ("you're the ink to my paper," "the reason for my existence"), he sounds kind of tired.  

Palmcorder Yajna - The Mountain Goats

Palmcorder Yajna - The Mountain Goats

4:08

We Shall All be Healed, 2004

Written by John Darnielle

The Mountain Goats aren't the first artist to reappear here, but this song marks the first reoccurrence of an album on this blog.  Continuing the tweaker theme of the album, this song finds a group of meth heads gathering at a decrepit hotel to get high.  What's that title all about?  A palmcorder is a brand of Panasonic camcorder ('And I dreamt of a camera / Pointing out from inside the television").  A Yajna or Yagna is a Hindu ritual done in front of a sacred fire ("If anybody comes into our room while we're asleep / I hope they incinerate everybody in it").  Grim, foreboding, strident.

Play a Train Song - Todd Snider

Play a Train Song - Todd Snider
4:09
East Nashville Skyline, 2004
Written by Todd Snider

I know Snider primarily from the novelty-adjacent but great song "Vinyl Records."  This one is a more straightforward, the tale of one Skip Litz, a hard-drinking, hard-living man, a music lover, who was found dead at his home.  The narrator of the song salutes Lutz, taking a small sad solace in the fact that he apparently died with a smile on his face.  Snider's ragged vocals and impassioned delivery make him one of a million New Bob Dylans, but to me his sound and his everyman lyrics help him stand out.  The rhythm section pounds out a steady train beat, clickety clack.  I like the album title's nod to Bob also.

Letter From Belgium - The Mountain Goats

Letter From Belgium - The Mountain Goats

3:11

We Shall All Be Healed, 2004

Written by John Darnielle

I only recently got into the Mountain Goats, though several of the artists I admire have extolled their praises in print.  It is told from the point of view of a tweaker, sweating out a meth addiction, afraid to go outside, "Chewing our tongues off / Waiting for the fever to break."  Darnielle's impassioned, urgent voice and the stark, driving chords really sell this song.  Despite its rather narrow reach, lyrically, it's one of my favorites by this band.

New Year's Day - Charlie Robison

New Year's Day - Charlie Robison

3:54

Good Times, 2004

Written by Charlie Robison

I never heard of this guy but based on this song, he's my kind of alt-country outlaw.  From the opening lines ("I woke up early Sunday morning, had myself a piece of toast / Had fifty dollars in my pocket, gonna chase myself a ghost") to the fascinatingly ambiguous final lines about an alleged transvestite bar (the Dallas Cowboys, in Laredo), this is not your typical Texas road trip tale.  Toe-tapping weirdness.