I love it when indie artists cover radio-friendly pop songs. Here is a great one that I stumbled upon recently. Even if you still aren’t convinced about The Bird and the Bee, like myself, or you find the original song slightly repetitive and a little annoying, you should still give this song a chance. In my opinion this is one of the rare instances where the cover actually trumps the original. That’s all I got. Hope it makes your ears bleed.
A coda is a musical means to an end. It’s the final transition into a song’s finish. This concluding passage is often what the listener remembers after the glow of the music has faded, and it determines whether a song sprints or stumbles over the finish line. These are a few of my favorite songs with instrumental codas, in which the singer is either too exhausted or too overwhelmed to continue.
Interpol’s albums have grown exponentially worse with each new release, but this song is from their moody masterpiece of a debut, Turn On The Bright Lights. The song chugs along mechanically, led by throbbing bass drum hits and stabbing, dissonant guitars, returning to a confounding chorus about sleeping on “200 couches.” But then the song pauses, brightens. The chugging returns more excited than before, carrying a fragile organ coo on its shoulders, and the sounds zigzag and crash into silence.
This wonderful Pet Sounds track is buried awkwardly in the third quarter of the album, which is perhaps why it is so criminally ignored. All the components of the song’s final 37 seconds are singularly present throughout the entire song: the bizarre circus piano, the merry banjo, and thattambourine. But it’s not until the song’s wordless coda that the threads are played together, and it is the blending of these elements that create true magic. It’s Christmas morning, it’s your first kiss, it’s absolutely perfect.
The song seems to begin in the middle of a phrase, without introduction. Stephen Malkmus croaks, “Dad, they broke me,” over drunken arpeggios and repeats the line twice at the finish of the first chorus. But he sings it only once for the second chorus, so we know a change is coming. Suddenly all falls silent, save for the sluggish 6/8 heartbeats of the drums. A brooding finger picked guitar line enters and is soon joined by another, each of them rising, falling and intersecting. The noise builds to a fever pitch, narrows to one single note of feedback, and then erupts again, roaring into a second coda.
I love remixes that catch you off guard. Diplo is showing me that more and more lately. Rather than throwing breakbeats into songs I like, they restructure the song and turn it into a completely new piece of art.
Well last week I had a greater example of that, this week I go for a much more subtle remix, by a much more subtle artist, Feist.
Feist seems to be fairly “in” with the indie blogging scene [i guess that includes us ] and it’s more than just a fascination. Feist has a voice that other singers don’t. Britney Spears would ruin a Feist song. P!nk would ruin a Feist song. T-Pain and his endless supply of crappy auto-tuning will never achieve the same musical nirvana that Feist hits.
As Death Cab for Cutiepointed out at the Grammy’s wearing their blue ribbons, there’s something sincerely human about an imperfect voice. And that’s what makes Feist soo irresistable, her voice is… real… and… friendly.
Well today’s remix is of Feel it All, one of my fav songs. I hope that this re-imaginging of the song helps your understand the point that I’m trying to convey. Maybe it’s the green-tea talking, but I think her voice deserves some kind of award.
I love remixes that catch you off guard. Diplo is showing me that more and more lately. Rather than throwing breakbeats into songs I like, they restructure the song and turn it into a completely new piece of art.
] and it’s more than just a fascination. Feist has a voice that other singers don’t. Britney Spears would ruin a Feist song. P!nk would ruin a Feist song. T-Pain and his endless supply of crappy auto-tuning will never achieve the same musical nirvana that Feist hits.
