We just wanted an excuse to play these songs. So today’s theme is knives. A dance song or two about knives! A band named The Knife! A ballad about a dirty knife! I doesn’t get much better. We swear.
“Rippin’ Kittin” from Golden Boy and Miss Kittin
“Heartbeats” from The Knife’s Deep Cuts
“Knife” from CSS on Grizzly Bear’s Friends
“Dirty Knife” from Neko Case’s Fox Confessor Brings The Flood
Bill Wasik wrote a great essay, “Hype Machine,” on indie rock as a web extra for Oxford American’s 2007 music issue. Wasik dissects the culture of indie rock and the power of the blogosphere to turn an unknown band of yesterday into the It band of today, and ultimately, the passé band of last year. Wasik illustrates his point with The Annuals, a band touted in 2006:
As promised, half past ten on the morning of July 18 saw Ryan Schreiber, the founder and editor-in-chief of Pitchfork, place his imprimatur upon the new band, which he likened to “some fantasy hybrid of Animal Collective, Arcade Fire, and Broken Social Scene.
We’ve provided a few references to some of the songs and bands mentioned in the article for the uninitiated.
Yesterday in the NYTimes, David Brooks lamented the decline of arena rock and decried that the music of young musicians “stinks” in his article, “The Segemented Society.”
Brooks sounds like a curmudgeon complaining that Rock n’ Roll ain’t what it used to be. Despite his longing for “all-purpose rock,” Brooks is honestly trying to participate in a debate about the effects of racial, socioeconomic, and technological forces on today’s music. Brooks was rather clumsy in his argument, perhaps because he is limited by the space of an opinion column in the NYTimes and the fact that he isn’t a rock journalist. But he refers to two great articles by people who don’t share his limitations.
Everyone has their favorite bands. Grizzly Bear is not one of ours.
But we believe if you look hard enough, you can find a gem or two that can redeem an album or a band you don’t like. It might take a lot of time and patience.
David Shrigley Worried Noodles is a musical mine field of experimental rock interpretations of Shrigley’s book of song lyrics. Regardless, the first song that we enjoyed on the album was Grizzly Bear’s “Blackcurrant Jam.” Unfortunately, the album is so experimental that we don’t enjoy a most of it. We expected to like David Byrne’s interpretation but didn’t. We love Islands — they are experimental themselves. No dice. These facts make our enjoyment of “Blackcurrant Jam” even more dumbfounding.
From David Shrigley Worried Noodles:
“Blackcurrant Jam” by Grizzly Bear
The other Grizzly Bear song that we like is “He Hit Me” which is a cover of the same song by The Crystals. Grizzly Bear has garnered a lot of attention from this cover. There are at least three recordings of them singing this song floating around on the Internet.
“He Hit Me” is a shocking, haunting song. We couldn’t believe that The Crystals, the same group that gave us “Da Doo Ron Ron,” originally recorded this song. Nor could we believe Carole King and Gerry Goff in wrote it — this is the duo that wrote “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” together. But we could kind of believe Phil “Shoot-To-Kill” Spector, and his famous Wall of Sound, would be involved. Supposedly, the song protests domestic violences, but it sounds more like it evinces the thought processes of a victim of domestic abuse.
So in Grizzly Bear’s hands this haunting song takes on new layers. The Crystals voices are contrasted against a rather jaunty beat for a song about domestic abuse and a richly textured arrangement. Grizzly Bear’s version sounds bleak and empty in comparison.
“He Hit Me” by The Crystals
“He Hit Me” by Grizzly Bear
