Sunny-Day Music: Dead Heart Bloom Edition

I wish I'd written about Dead Heart Bloom sooner. At least a couple of years ago, they had their entire discography up for free download on their website. Very underrated - great mellow acoustic driving music.

Impossibility Makes Wavves Once Again

I never thought it'd happen, but I officially like Wavves:



"King of the Beach" is the first Wavves song I've liked, and maybe it's because I've been going to the beach every day I can lately, but I like the song A LOT. I haven't written about the Best Coast/Wavves/No Joy triple bill I went to back in February yet, but Wavves was the worst show I'd ever seen. In fact, I HATED their show. And I've always just generally hated the snotty little bastards. But damn it, "King of the Beach" is the shit.

So, what changed? Again, all of that beach-going, as well as a forecast for almost a solid week of solid sun. You bet your ass I'll be hitting the beach all day, every day, until the sun goes down for good, especially to make up for all of the rainy, cloudy and even sunny days I didn't spend at the beach. Yes, come Hell or high water, I will be there.

"King of the Beach" pretty much sums up how I've been feeling lately:

Let the sun burn my eyes
Let it burn my back
Let it sear through my thighs
I'll feel wide, wide open

Let the sun burn my eyes
Let it burn my back
At the beach
In my dreams
But you still

You're never gonna stop me x3
You're never gonna stop
King of the beach x2

Let the sun burn my eyes
Let it burn my back
Let it burn through my thighs
I'll feel wide, wide open

At the beach, I'm with Jeans
It’s wide, wide open
At the beach
In my dream
But you still

You're never gonna stop me x3
You're never gonna stop
King of the beach

Never gonna stop me
You're never gonna stop me x3
King of the beach x5

Sunny-Day Music: Akron/Family Edition

I feel like I should be floating on a small raft in the middle of an ocean, a few gulls gliding overhead, waters calm, skies blue and sun blinding.

Wavves - "Post-Acid"

I remember when I thought this was the stupidest, most crumb-bum song/video/band ever. I still think so, only now, I love the song, and I like the video for its immature stupidity. More on my recent Wavves revelation later. Hopefully.

Sunny-Day Music/Those Memories: AIR Edition

With colder mornings and cooler nights lately, summer seems to be winding down, though there's no shortage of sun or afternoon-to evening heat. Thus, I continue to share sunny-day music.

This edition of "Sunny-Day Music" features the song "Ce Matin Là" by French electronic pop duo AIR. I've been a fan of AIR since they released their debut album Moon Safari (which contains "Ce Matin Là") in 1998. Okay, so I only knew their singles "Sexy Boy" and "Kelly Watch the Stars" back then, but I have vivid memories of watching the videos for both songs on MuchMusic when I was ten-years-old and loving them every time they came on.



Fast forward to 2011, long after I'd read Jeffrey Eugenides' much-acclaimed debut novel The Virgin Suicides (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993) and watched Sophia Coppola's 1999 film adaptation several times each. I can no longer listen to "Ce Matin Là" without imagining the scene in which the neighbourhood boys are reading the diary of deceased thirteen-year-old Cecilia Lisbon, the youngest of the five Lisbon sisters. Cecilia narrates the entry which is brought to life in a fantastical montage of her sisters (including Lux Lisbon, played by a seventeen-year-old Kirsten Dunst) dancing, playing and sitting in a field and amongst flowers, swinging on a swing and twirling sparklers with everything basked in a soothing sepia. Everything about the scene is perfect, from the delicate cross-fades to the selective slow-motion, down to the way the camera catches the light. All the while, "Ce Matin Là" playfully shimmers, creating an ethereal ambience.

Listening to "Ce Matin Là" always gives me the same feeling as watching this scene: utter peace - escape through daydreaming. There’s nothing like listening to "Ce Matin Là" while sitting on the balcony, laying on the beach or going for a walk and just letting the song take me away.

Here's the complete scene:

Right Sound, Wrong Time?

I was reading Pitchfork's fifteen-year retrospective interview with Beck when "Cloudburst at Shingle Street" by 80s New Wave/synthpop artist Thomas Dolby came on at random in my iTunes. Such happenstance was appropriate, as when I first heard the vocals, I thought it was Beck.

When I realized I wasn't listening to Beck, I thought, "I could easily see Beck making music like this." Then, these Beck quotes I'd just read instantly sprang to mind:

... there's a reason the music I've made came out at the time it did. I qualify that with the fact that there were many records and musicians who were doing stuff that was really ahead of their time back then. There have been many times when I thought we stumbled upon something new, and then I'd hear something like Os Mutantes or Brigitte Fontaine and just think, "How did nobody hear this?”

His thoughts on a different matter much further back in the interview may explain his comments:

When I was a kid and putting out my first records, there was a lot made out of the fact that the 50s/60s generation was so dominant. Then, about 10 years ago, this "American Idol" thing became so dominant. I was reading something in The New York Times where they were looking at the demography of the last 60 years. It struck me that, after the 50s/60s generation, [the birthrate] was about two thirds less in the 70s, and then, in the late 80s and 90s, it goes back up. So if you're of that 70s generation, you're bookended by these two other monolithic generations-- maybe that's one of the reasons why that little time of weirdness in the late 80s into the early 90s was coming through the mainstream. The field was a little more open, in a way.

Interesting perspective. But are demographic trends enough to explain why someone like Beck, who made music similar enough to Thomas Dolby that I momentarily confused the two, could become the face of 90s alternative music while Dolby was relegated to one-hit wonder status, despite being an active musician today (you may know Dolby for his 1982 hit "She Blinded Me with Science")? And Thomas Dolby's The Golden Age of Wireless, his debut album on which "Cloudburst" appeared, came out in 1982 ... Was Dolby just a bit too early and didn't fully catch the "little time of weirdness in the late 80s into the early 90s"? But he still worked throughout that period... Furthermore, I don't think Beck's demographic observation explains why bands like Animal Collective or indie in general (which is often preeetty weird, to say the least) were able to explode, if their successes were concurrent with the "American Idol" era. Regardless, the similarities I heard between Beck and "Cloudburst" in particular got me wondering how much of success really is just circumstance.

On an unrelated note (but one that still regards Thomas Dolby), "Cloudburst at Shingle Street" is another case of me paying attention to a kick-ass song in my own library essentially for the first time only because my iTunes was on shuffle or I'd typed a certain word or phrase into the search bar, and the song I’d meant to listen to finished and moved on to the next item in the list. I was on a kick of wanting to give one-hit wonders a chance a while ago, and one of those albums was The Golden Age of Wireless. I listened to the album maybe once and basically let it sit on the virtual shelf. Maybe now that I've been hooked by "Cloudburst at Shingle Street," it's time to give The Golden Age of Wireless a second spin.

Today in "WTF Album Covers"

Candy Walls single by electronic/synth-pop artist Trust.