My favorite song (that I never listen to): Part 2 of an ongoing series.

1. "I Against I" - Massive Attack and Mos Def
2. "And It Rained All Night" - Thom Yorke
3. "Baby's Got A Temper" - The Prodigy
4. "I Feel You" - Placebo
5. "Use You" - Dave Gahan
6. "Race - In" - Battles
7. "God Given" - Nine Inch Nails
8. "Walk Away" - Sisters of Mercy
9. "Loose Fit" (12" Version) - Happy Mondays
10. "This Is Love" - PJ Harvey
11. "The Weeping Song" - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
12. "Then" - Charlatans UK
13. "Konichiwa Bitches" - Robyn
14. "Satellite" - Depeche Mode
15. "Music Is My Radar" - Blur
16. "Red Tape" - Agent Provocateur
17. "Skip Divided" - Thom Yorke
18. "Neighbors" - Gnarls Barkley
19. "Deeper and Deeper" - Dave Gahan
20. "Leyendecker" - Battles
21. "When The Body Speaks" - Depeche Mode
22. "The Beginning of the End" - Nine Inch Nails
23. "Big Fun" (Original "Magic Juan" 12") - Inner City
24. "To Hell With Poverty!" - Gang of Four
25. "Out of Time" - Blur

This is what iTunes Genius gave me when I plugged Massive Attack/Mos Def's "I Against I" into it. Some of these are expected, either by virtue of being in a similar genre or groove (Charlatans, Thom Yorke, Gnarls Barkley) or by being performed by an artist with an oblique relationship to Massive Attack (Agent Provacateur... Thom Yorke). I wasn't really expecting the HEAVY Depeche Mode bias, though. Also, the Nine Inch Nails, Battles, PJ Harvey and Blur songs leave me scratching my head. Admittedly, it flows pretty nicely (except for the last four tracks, which are kind of the aural equivalent of shaking a baby, only you are the baby) but I never would have put all these songs together like this.

Oh yeah, the Robyn track sticks out like a SORE THUMB yet still manages to be the perfect thing to put into that spot. It's like the Genius algorithm knew what I wanted despite what I was thinking, and it was right and I was wrong. Creepy.

EDIT: Links to videos (a mix of official, bootleg and fan-created) are now up for all of these. Check them out if you don't know them; there's some good stuff here.

Albums I have loved this year: a list

Fever Ray - Fever Ray


I don't know why The Knife never really connected with me; I heard a couple of their songs via on-demand videos and thought they were interesting but not really worthy of my attention. The Fever Ray album takes the seeds of what I thought were interesting and implodes them into an inescapable black hole of awesomeness, simultaneously chilling and beautiful. A lot of people have talked about how terrifying this album is; I don't really see it. Maybe the video imagery evokes some horror tropes, but the music itself is all about icy, mechanised love. Truly wonderful.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz


Holy shit. Every time I listen to this album, I get more out of it; another song stands out as being the best thing the YYYs have written to date. The middle section especially is amazing; two songs that are much more restrained in their structure ("Dull Life", "Shame and Fortune") use that to launch into fantastically aggressive performances, leading into the full-on steamroller of anguish that is "Runaway", easily the sledgehammer of awesome among the songs offered here.

The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die!


It is probably gross overstatement to call this album "Fat of the Land done correctly" but I've never let hyperbole stop me in the past. The great thing about this album is that it goes through a slow build on the first four songs, where each one is good but not necessarily AMAZING, but then it drops "Take Me To The Hospital" on you, a song that both launches the album firmly into the stratosphere (honestly, I think it's the best tune they've done in 18 years) AND does the neat track of making the first four songs click into place. From that point on, even slight missteps like "Piranha" are fucking fantastic.

Depeche Mode - Sounds of the Universe


Real talk: if you cannot get behind "In Chains", you are a sad, soulless person. The anguish in Dave's voice hasn't been this palpable since Songs of Faith and Devotion and the slow build and breakdown in the music shows a band that didn't decide to age gracefully; in fact, aging isn't really a consideration here. They've taken aspects of all of the things people loved about them: bleak and/or oppressive lyrics about life and relationships; warm analog synth lines; layered vocals; industrial percussion; all of these make their presence known on the album, contributing to an ever-permutating groove that is at different times angry, rebellions, seductive, indignant, resigned, menacing, welcoming, yearning and indifferent. I thought that Playing the Angel was the clarion call that signaled DM's return to greatness; the degree by which that album is eclipsed by SotU (ugly album cover and all) is astonishing.

YES!

Pet Shop Boys released an album called Yes last month. I finally picked it up after prying my ears away from the new Depeche Mode (which, btw, is easily my album of the year so far, and if you haven't heard it yet you FAIL). Embedded below is the video for their lead single, "Love Etc."



I'm not going to say that "hard-hitting" was ever an adjective I consciously associated with PSB, even at their raviest. Their appeal lies in the intertwining of their super-warm synth lines with sometimes cynical, sometimes wistful, sometimes hopeful but always thoughtful lyrics. I will admit, though, that my first reaction to this song was to scratch my head a little bit. It isn't a bad song, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it does seem to be somewhat... complacent, particularly coming from the group responsible for "Rent" and "Yesterday, When I Was Mad"; it's almost as if they internalized the arch pose of "Being Boring" to the point where it is no longer satire, it's their life. Two things happened that made me reconsider:

• I saw the above video. There still an aura of understatement about it, something kind of astonishing considering the dayglo color palatte and the hypnotically-rhythmic videogame imagery running through it, but it still brings a sense of vibrancy to the song missing from a cold listen to it.
• I listened to the full album. Not only is this song perfectly indicative of the lush atmosphere permeating Yes, its own charms are greatly enhanced by leading into a song ("All Over The World")that bases its bridge riff off of "The Nutcracker Suite"; it's difficult to get worked up over shoehorning limp football sloganeering into a song when you're boggling at the blatantly fake horns blaring the March at you. In all honesty, I can't decide if I love it or hate it.

At any rate, once I was able to realign my thoughts and place Yes in its proper place (warm, gentle album from aging synth-heads who are more interested in doing comfort food than pushing boundaries), I started enjoying it a lot more. I don't like it as much as I liked Fundamental or Release, but it's not something I regret buying. (The newest Prince albums, OTOH... Yikes.)

http://www.petshopboys.co.uk (dead end world?)
https://www.lotusflow3r.com/th3b0mb.html (what the hell, why are you ruining my childhood memories with this shit)

so yes by the way, we also have puppies

In the interest of causing an internet wide uncontrollable blog related media blitz, it has come to my attention that puppies are popular with broad spectrum internet popularity trends (heretofore referred to as BSIPTs) so in order to monetize our fantastic blog via the tools made available by the blogger group to the best of our abilities, we present puppies that will be purchased by me in the near future for maximum cuteness:




oh yeah also the new depeche mode album is a great return to form and as a dude that started getting cranky at the "personal jesus" slippery slope into an eventual waht who asked for all this geetar nonsense reaction (not to mention that no offense that whole "songs of love and devotion" thing kind of was poo city IMHO) this new album is perhaps SOME GREAT REWARD to dudes that think yer last several albums were blaaaaah and maybe you fey british dudes should stick to the bleep bloop stuff and leave the RAWK to people that can do it/cant make the bleep bloops even if their lives depended on it:

RONG

embedding disabled by request, but i forgive you, the depeche mode, because that is probably a little too creepy to embed and i assume that is your excuse.

www.seriouslydudeitsdepechemodenooffenseyoureallyneedmyhelp?.com