Gold Lion

Song: Gold Lion
Artist: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Album: Show Your Bones
Link: Gold Lion
Genre: Indie Rock, Alternative Rock
Mood: fiery, feisty, infectious

Description: On Gold Lion, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs simply rock out. It starts as a plodding (in the tempo sense, not the mood sense) rocker, and slowly builds into a wall of sound that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs specialize in. There’s guitars and drums and distortion and Karen O’s vocals, which have an amazing intensity about them. My favorite piece of singing she does is her “uh-uh”, which are so high pitched it’s freaking scary. I have to admit, the first time I heard this song, it didn’t seem so great. But it slowly built on me, and it became incredible addicting. There’s just no way you can not sing along to her nonsense lyrics, like “Gold lion’s going to tell me where the light is…Take our hands out of control…Now tell me what you saw!” I read online that it is about Las Vegas, and ‘Gold Lion’ is a nickname for one of the casinos, but that kinda seems a bit too random to be true. Whatever they’re about, they’re sung very well; she manages to get more range and emotion into them than almost every other singer I have ever heard. Not that the song is actually emotional – the sound is chaotic and the guitars are brash. But all in all, an addictive song.

Oxford Comma

Song: Oxford Comma
Artist: Vampire Weekend
Album: Vampire Weekend
Link: Vampire Weekend
Genre: Indie Rock, Indie-pop, and a hint of African rhythms
Mood: lighthearted, bubbly, playful

Description: Vampire Weekend is brand new; their self-titled album was released in February. They seem to combine indie-pop with African-ish influences (though it’s harder to tell on this song than some of their others) and a wise-cracking attitude. Oxford commas, in case you didn’t know, are the last comma in a series; for example, this song is good, very good–>,<– and really quite good. Apparently, they really hate them: “Who the fuck gives about an Oxford comma, We’ve seen those English dramas too-oo, they’re cru-el.” I used the hyphens there to show where the singer goes incredibly high pitched. It’s so high pitched that I can’t even tell if its falsetto or he’s just insane. But those vocal dalliances are really cool, spicing up a song that doesn’t even need spicing up. On top of that, they use some really cool instruments that I haven’t the faintest idea what are. Is it a flute? Or maybe just a piano? I have no idea, but it works. The tempo also works, which starts pretty causally and then slowly builds intensity so that you don’t even realize it happening. All in all, this song, and really the entire self-titled debut really shows promise for what could very well be an up-and-coming band, so look out – Vampire Weekend has arrived…

Such Great Heights…and Such Great Heights

Song: Such Great Heights
Artist: The Postal Service
Album: Give Up
Link: Such Great Heights
Genre: Electro-pop, Alterna-pop
Mood: hopeful, on edge, thumping

Song: Such Great Heights
Artist: Iron & Wine
Album: Such Great Heights – EP (or Garden State (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture))
Link: Such Great Heights
Genre: Acoustic Rock, Folk-Rock
Mood: hushed, drowsy, mellow

Description: For English class today, we had to bring in a song and an original cover that shows how, using the same material, an artist can create a unique work (we were doing this to explore and identify the unique sense of aesthetics of different artists.) Anywho, Iron & Wine does an amazing job covering a song written in a style completely polar to his. The Postal Service’s Such Great Heights features some cool electronic beats, which surprised me when I first heard the song because it comes together really well, despite using completely disjointed beats to get there. Those back beats contrast really well with the pop-style singing, which forms a neat, not quite rushed (but certainly on edge) song.

On the other hand, Iron & Wine’s is a slow soulful ballad featuring his amazing hushed voice and a guitar. It’s certainly the same song, but at first it seems hard to believe; the songs are so different. The tempo is far slower, it uses completely different instrumentation, but the melody and the lyrics are still the same. What Sam Beam (the main guy of Iron & Wine) really does differently is use the guitar to add some complexities that are uniquely different from The Postal Service. His beautiful voice certainly only adds to the mood that he creates, which is totally different than what he is covering. I feel that this is an incredibly good cover, not only because what it is covering is great, but because it is able to take that and make something so different that is still so good.

When, after I had played the two songs in class, my English teacher asked which one I liked better. Because he was expecting a specific answer, I went with Iron & Wine, but when he asked why, I went, “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”

July, July!

Song: July, July!
Artist: The Decemberists
Album: Castaways and Cutouts
Link: July, July!
Genre: Indie-pop, Indie Rock
Mood: anthemic, cheery

Description: Between the sophisticated lyrics and the brash indie rock, July, July! really rocks out. But not in that hard rock kind of sense; they are more the thinking person’s troubadours than anything else, and by that I mean they rock. This song, and really all of The Decemberists, has a unique penchant for combining story-telling lyrics with a unique, cheery tempo that can be sung along to surprisingly well. While The Decemberists can get very depressing, this song is anything but. (Well, except for the gory lyrics he sings out with cheery gusto: “The blood rolls down the drain/ O, what a lonely thing/ In a blood red drain”, and then precedes to the last oh-so-happy chorus.) But that’s more edgy than creepy, so it’s all good. Ok, so that line was kinda creepy. Why is blood running down a drain? You never find out… But anyway, this song really shows the breadth of what The Decemberists are capable of, adding their typical complexity of lyrics and song-crafting to July, July! just like their sadder songs.

That Was a Crazy Game of Poker

Song: That Was a Crazy Game of Poker
Artist: O.A.R.
Album: The Wanderer
Link: That Was a Crazy Game of Poker
Genre: Jam Band, College Rock, Alternative Rock
Mood: infectious, meandering, reminiscing

Description: This song demonstrates that O.A.R. is a master of the extended jam. I think that it even goes so far as to transcend the genre in its ability to form a cohesive song, and at the same time, and at the same time able to cover the meandering story-telling of an almost nine minute long song. As with most songs of its vein, (most famously of bands like the Grateful Dead, Phish, etc.) it incorporates folk, rock, reggae, and ska, which goes very well with the eclectic nature of any song as long as this one. It maintains an incredibly catchy melody that can be difficult to sustain over nine minutes, but O.A.R. very successfully pulls it off. I know that I can’t but help singing along to it for the entire length of the song. This is essentially the coolest part about this song – it’s catchy and well tuned, but simultaneously maintains its looseness in arrangement and ability to jam like crazy.