I SAID "OH, NO SIR, I MUST SAY YOU'RE WRONG"

- I got a 120 gig Zune over the time I wasn't writing (don't judge me, it was cheap), so, I don't have an "other songs" folder anymore. Therefore, this will be my last post of this type; it was over before it even began:

Re: Stacks - Bon Iver

You might know this song if you're a House fan as it was featured on one of that show's episodes. It's kind of an odd-context for a song like this but, in a weird way, it makes sense. For Emma, Forever Ago, which "Re: Stacks" closes, was one of my favourite albums of last year, for the way it both evoked the lonely winter spent in a Wisconsin cabin by its maker and the way it tempered that atmosphere with warm-but-spare instrumentation and the high fragility of Justin Vernon's voice. This is the warmest moment on the record, trading the black-hole reverb of some of the darker songs for a close-miked approach, and the most traditionally melodic but the idiosyncrasies remain in the vocals and the lyrics which suggest lovelorn indie-guy without going towards it full bore; they're a little more obscure and poetic than that, with their references to gambling and a "black crow" holding the narrator's keys. Ultimately, it's that tension between the sappier elements and the more intriguing ones that holds the song together, much like House's balance between its standard medical elements and its unique ones.

A Looking-In View - Alice In Chains

Dirt = Awesome
This = Not, for reasons mostly unrelated to the new singer.

It sounds tired and bored and it goes on far longer that it has any right to. The only things that work here are the bridge (which gets a nice headbang feel going) and the vocal harmonies (which are classic Alice In Chains). Otherwise, this is like "Rain When I Die" except bad, and "Rain When I Die" had problems to begin with.

Goodbye Horses - Q Lazarus

Mostly known as the song from THE SCENE in Silence of the Lambs, I still think this song deserves a little better. It's a sharp, punchy little Gothic new-wave number, with struttingly fey vocals that perfectly compliment the pillowy instrumentation. Everything is swept up into this shaowy area that's cloudy rather than swampy: the guitar pings feel more like keyboards, when the keyboards do enter, they're these wormy squiggles that disappear as quickly as they came, the bass isn't really there unless you listen for it, the lyrics are memorable as far as their melodic phrasing but they're pretty much meaningless. About the only thing that emerges from that shadow is the stiff-shoe drumbeat, ticking with metronomic precision. All the elements add up to something brilliant, both appealing and sinister.

Ten Million Slaves - Otis Taylor

I'll admit that I first heard this song in the trailer for Public Enemies and sought it out from there, and, thus, it may forever be associated with images of 30's gangsters to me, but, even so, this is a tough, mean, hard tune. The lack of drums might seem like a hindrance but, really, this is minimum-as-maximum at its finest; by removing everything but that pounding bass beat, the gritty guitar-and-banjo combo riff and Taylor's deep-throated bluesman vocals, this song is the best it could possibly be, anything else would be extraneous. I'm willing to bet this was probably adapted from an old Negro spiritual tune as the melody has that kind of gospel/soul quality to it. It's kind of a collusion of different ideas, in that way, as the banjo gives a country/bluesgrass twang to the proceedings, the guitar injects a bit of rock flavour and Taylor's singing keeps it firmly in the blues arena. The lyrics (relating to hiding in a "fallout shelter") speak to a kind of deep-rooted paranoid-but-tough complex, which the music reinforces with aplomb.