I recently downloaded 'Moderat', a minimal, downtempo electronica album that further pulls my playlist towards the lofty, gloomy and contemplative. As I've found with many of these albums, there are one or two songs that really resonate with me and a handful that are interesting but not great. The rest are indifferent filler that I am too guilty to skip after purchasing the full album.
Lucky for me, my two favorite songs on Moderat are right at the beginning, "A New Error" and "Rusty Nails." The video for "A New Error" is a perfect fit for the song; its abstract but not weird, it lacks the ego of a rock video's star, instead focusing on a single simple theme, and it develops slowly but purposefully to the end.
I started re-watching the anime series Gunslinger Girl with .tiff recently and I was reminded how awful the intros can be for anime shows. "We'll just skip the intro until you've seen a few episodes" I said. The problem with them is that they tend to feature horrible music with flowery overly dramatic lyrics. If its really bad, the main characters are featured in strange situations that don't reflect the spirit of the show.
Today however, I was reminded of Cowboy Bebop and how much I've always enjoyed its intro. Its sparse on the lyrics (one to be exact), the visuals don't recycle endless clips from the show but they still convey its feeling and its entertaining to watch:
The short Thanksgiving week combined with cool but sunny weather here in SF has my spirits up. The last song I posted was a bit sad, so I thought it'd be good to post something a little more upbeat. Here's one of my favorite songs from The Lucksmiths:
I'm listening to my friend's band 'Scrabbel' album "Hijacked Tunes" and remembering how much I like this album. Its a collection of covers they put together a few years ago from bands like The Aislers Set, My Bloody Valentine and Van Morrison.
This version of "Two Wrongs Won't Make Things Right" by Tarnation always gets me: