song obsession friday! (for the week ending May 16)
Song obsessions are those songs that we listen to on repeat. I noticed that my obsessions are often a week long. I also thought that other people might have similar obsessions. I’ve collected a panel of a few like-minded individuals and gotten their “song obsessions of the week.” Quite often it’s easy to explain why the song is good; it’s much hard to explain why we’re obsessed. Maybe you’ll become obsessed with one of these.
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Adrian (me):
Adem – Loro (mp3) (pre-order)
I finally got to listen to Takes which I’ve been excited to hear. The album is a set of covers of Adem’s favorite songs.
When I got it I knew I had to listen to two covers of some of my favorite songs first: Pinback’s “Loro” and Low’s “Laser Beam”. I love both Adem versions, but “Loro” reminds me of the amazement I felt when I first heard the Pinback version. I had such a wide grin on my face listening to it for the first time in both cases. The grin stayed for the second time through…and the third…and the fourth…and….
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Keith:
Brendan Benson – Insects Rule (mp3) (buy)
Before Brendan Benson released a handful of highly regarded indie records (or teamed with Jack White in the Raconteurs) he had his own shot at the brass ring with Virgin Records in 1996. The resulting record was an unfortunately ignored infectious celebration of power pop teamed with deft and daring songwriting such as this tune about an infestation.
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Oz:
Black Diamond Heavies – Bidin’ My Time (mp3) (buy)
I’ve been spinning Black Diamond Heavies’ upcoming release, A Touch of Someone Else’s Class, for a few days now. This track channels Tom Waits and serves as a reprieve from the the band’s powerful, gritty blues style.
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Your obsesssion are a week long because you write a blog and feel you must tell us something about yourself at these regular intervals.
Mike, most of the time I’m obsessed with songs regardless of writing this blog–I only started this column because I noticed these obsessions were happening anyway. Many of them are actually about a week but sometimes I’ll have the same obsession for weeks in a row or the week will be split between two different songs.
[...] gotten all sorts. I try not to let the complimentary ones go to my head and I try to learn from the negative and caustic ones. I like the ones that provoke thoughtful discussion and some are just interesting [...]