Saturday Songs - Oct. 15

1. “Starman” – Seu Jorge

Coming directly out of the soundtrack for Wes Anderson’s film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, this is Brazilian samba star Seu Jorge’s cover of David Bowie’s “Starman.” The song—translated into Portuguese by Jorge—is a bizarre cross-cultural amalgam. Bowie’s beloved melody remains, but is transformed by Jorge’s spare studio performance, featuring only vocals and acoustic guitar.

Additionally, Jorge also worked out 10 other Bowie tracks, which are equally interesting, although not quite so striking as “Starman.”

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2. “Eleanor” – Jay Nash

Eleanor

With more of a mainstream rock feel than some of Nash’s other, more acoustic work, “Eleanor” comes off Nash’s album Some Kind of Comfort, recently voted as Nash’s best album by his fans. (He temporarily put up a free link to the album on his website earlier this week—that’s how it ended up in my hands!)

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3. “Tree By The River” – Iron & Wine

In an earlier post, I talked at length about “growers”—those albums that don’t capture your fancy immediately, but take some time to get used to—and I mentioned Iron & Wine’s 2007 album The Shepherd’s Dog as a prime example of this phenomenon. It took me a few years of letting it hang out in my CD collection for its subtle brilliance to dawn on me. I posited in that post that I didn’t think Iron & Wine’s 2011 album Kiss Each Other Clean would strike me the same way.

But, as slow to the punch as I am admitting myself to be, I’ve recently been investigating Kiss Each Other Clean again and I’ve begun to find some of the charm beneath its somewhat slipshod surface. The album, which sounds somehow paradoxically clean but frazzled, has the same beautiful textures as The Shepherd’s Dog. “Tree By The River” exhibits the clean side of that equation, with a mixture of acoustic guitars and keyboards that is positively ecstatic.

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4. “A Cedar Dream (II)” – River Whyless

Hailing from of Asheville, North Carolina, River Whyless (formerly Do It To Julia) provided me with this pleasant poppy surprise that carries a neat atmospheric sound with some alternating male/female vocals—a dynamic that I always enjoy. Find it for free here!

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5. “Big Machine” – Goo Goo Dolls

One of Kayla’s favorite songs, we heard this Goo Goo Dolls song on our recent trip up to Montreal. Starting off with compact, angular guitars, it’s a version of the band that I’d like to hear a little more often. Rzeznik, coming out of a recent divorce, sounds hurt and angry, with lots to say about romances past and future. Definitely one of their best efforts, they could learn a lot from this song; great melody + memorable guitar + vitriol > the somewhat banal Dizzy Up The Girl.