Saturday Songs - July 23

1. “Gotta Have You” – The Weepies

What a cute song. People struggle to write love songs—thinking they need to be up front about their passions and ending up with these hand-wringingly obvious affairs with clear storyboards and he-said/she-said dynamics. But “Gotta Have You” is understated and on tiptoes where those other songs are all bombast.

And how about those harmonies?

2. “Dance Yrself Clean” – LCD Soundsystem

This is a song I didn’t warm to until actually seeing James Murphy belt it out on stage. Some songs are like that. They sound kind of dead on the album, but once the artist fleshes them out in concert, they never sound the same again. Listening to this on Thursday as I drove through the 90+ degree weather along Route 1 interviewing men and women working out in the heat, this song captured an epic grandeur to my quest that I would not have stumbled upon on my own.

One of my favorite pieces of musical commentary comes from Bruce Springsteen, who, during Dylan’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, commented on the first time he heard “Like A Rolling Stone,” calling the drum hit at the start of the song “the snare shot that sounded like somebody’d kicked open the door to your mind.”

The rapid fire snare at 3:05 into the song is not so much kicking open the door to my mind…but certainly kicking down some kind of door...

3. “Holocene” – Bon Iver



Something in me cringes a little in catering so much to this Bon Iver album; last week, I called out “Towers,” also on Justin Vernon’s most recent album, as the song that “refused for three straight days to leave my head.” But here I am one week later still clinging to this fantastic album.

“Holocene”—the third track on Bon Iver—with a more complex sound than the following track. I cannot stress enough how lost I am as to the significance of the song. With lines like “we smoked the screen to make it was it was to be / now to know it in my memory” it’s too incoherent to make heads or tails of. But one thing—“jagged vacance, thick with ice”—makes me tremble. Maybe that’s just me yearning for winter? (Your own comments below are appreciated.)

4. “Life Is Life” – Noah and the Whale



Especially after Bon Iver, this song provides some welcome relief. I don’t remember the last time I’ve heard such an exuberantly hopeful song; its cheerful, pick-me-up attitude is entirely infectious.

“Well you used to be somebody, but now you’re someone else,

took apart his old life, left it on the shelf.

Sick of being someone he did no admire,

took apart his old things, set them all on fire.”

5. “Think Twice Before You Go” – John Lee Hooker



Some good old-fashioned blues from the master John Lee Hooker, “Think Twice” is a veritable slice of Americana.