This week, the world’s largest music festival kicked off and we have been listening to, and seeing more music than ever. But these are the ones that we can’t hit pause on. These are the 5 Songs We Can’t Stop Listening To. Also, there is a special patriotic song for the 4 th of July.
Click the Soundcloud link below to hear all the songs in one nice stream.
ELEL- "40 Watt"
ELEL’s song "40 Watt" is the Eureka moment, a surge of energy, a light that has been turned on. After toiling in thought, or brought to the brink of a breakdown there is a breakthrough. An Ah-Ha. Eurika. This song is that moment
The Greek philosopher Archimedes first exclaimed Eureka after he entered a bathtub and noticed that the water level rose and he became the first person to understand volume displacement. I exclaimed it when I figured out what to say in this monologue. The eureka moment marks the end of struggle with the exclamation of pure, giddy joy.
It was said that Archemedes was so happy with his discovery that he ran through the streets of Greece completely naked. I have found it! Eureka. The light bulb had turned on.
ELEL’s album, Geode, is out now.
Listen if you like: Tounges by Joywave, The Stepkids, world dance music
The Shins- "So Now What"
Many of us, including me, were introduced to The Shins when Natalie Portman put her headphones on Zack Braff and said, “You gotta hear this one song, it’ll change your life, I swear.”
The Shins and Zack Braff’s Garden State became a cult movie and a cult soundtrack for anyone who had ever felt overwhelmed and lost in life. In the years following The Shins released a few new albums, but Zack Braff never another movie, and didn’t give us a chance to feel the way we did hearing "New Slang" for the first time. And it didn’t look like he was going to, until about a year ago. Inspired by other crowd funded successes, Zack Braff got on Kickstarter and tried to raise money from the community of misfits who fell in love with Garden State. And it worked. In a very short amount of time he raised all of the money for his new movie, called I Wish I Was Here. For the past year he has been directing and producing it. And in a nod to music he showed us in Garden State, he asked The Shins to come along and make a new song just for the movie. This is that song.
It will change your life, I swear.
The I Wish I Was Here, soundtrack will be released on July 15 th, but this song is available on iTunes right now.
Listen if you like: The Shins, Zack Braff, Garden State, Scrubs
Eagulls- "Tough Luck"
Last week, the World’s Largest Music festival started. On day one, I got to see Hamilton Leithhouser, San Fermin, and the Arctic Monkeys, but amidst all of the excitement I often find myself slipping into a malaise. Its somewhere between the Uline Warehouse and guy selling bathtub accessories, and sometime after eating the combination plate of the deep fried appetizers form Sazes, finished with a heaping plate of fried eggplant, and it just might have something to do with passing that shoreline with the funny smell coming from it one too many times. At some point my mind goes numb, takes a step back, and views me from the perspective of the Sky Glide, and as I noticed this feeling of fuzzy isolation, a hazy distortion, I started feeling more and more like this song.
Eagulls debut full-length album, Eagulls, is out now.
Listen if you like: post-punk, stuff like Joy Division, a throatier Smiths
Got A Girl- "Did We Live Too Fast"
If this song were a film, it would be period piece.
The scene:
France. 1962. Dr. No, the first James bond movie is in theaters, Francoise Hardy’s monumentally cool self titled album plays on the radio, and the sexual revolution hasn’t quite gotten off, but tension is heavy. It’s a time and a place of excess. Living too fast, and loving too hard
The Character:
Our protagonist is a disenchanted female lead who drank a little too much from the vodka and tonic of life and is waking up with a breathy emotional hangover.
A period piece is fitting of this duo, Got a Girl. The group is two halves. One is Dan “the Automator” Nakamura. He is the producer. By way of sampling* he has created other period pieces like Music to Make love to your Old Lady By, and has used samples* to create an ambiance, or a scene. The second half of the duo is Actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead. You might know her from Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. It was on the set of this movie that the two met. In this song, they act as one. Dan "the Automator" Nakamura creating the scence, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead acting in it.
Allow me to present: "Did we live too fast".
Got A Girl’s debut album, I Love You, But I Must Drive Off This Cliff Now, will be released on July 22 nd.
Listen if you like: Francoise Hardy, 1960’s French pop, café jazz
*Dan "The Automator" Nakamura does not use samples. Correction from The Automator himself.
The Paramount Symphony Orchestra- "Made in America"
It’s the 4 th of July. Today marks 238 years since we told those tea tottling tyranists, who’s boss. Today was the day that America established its own identity. Key to anyone’s identity is music. There has been no record label that has been more instrumental in establishing America’s musical identity than Paramount Records.
In the end, Paramount recorded American music across every class, creed, and color between 1917 and 1932. They recorded the earliest blues artists like Ma Rainey, Charlie Patton, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. They recorded Jazz before it was called Jazz. And hundreds of other artists that laid the foundation of America’s musical identity. And it did this all, from it’s home, right here, in Grafton, Wisconsin.
At its beginning, Paramount was a furniture company. They only started making records because they thought that it would help them to sell the phonograph cabinets that they were making in their factory. And when they first fired up the press, in 1917, they recorded the most popular songs of the day. Those songs were, "The Star Spangled Banner," "American Patrol," "Stars and Stripes Forever," "America Fantasia," and this song, the earliest known Paramount recording, "Made In America."
The Paramount Symphony’s single, "Made in America", was released by Paramount Records in 1917.
Listen if you like: America.
THIS SONG DOES NOT EXIST ON THE INTERNET (I know, crazy, right?) Instead, I am posting a video of Ray Charles singing "America the Beautiful," but I urge you to listen to the Soundcloud link at the top of this article to hear the earliest ever Paramount Recording.