Project 2010

#1: For some reason I consider anything that R.E.M. did after "Monster" to be late R.E.M. Ridiculous, I know, but really at that point R.E.M. stayed great but much of the world seemed to have lost track of them. This is all my way of saying "Hope" off of "Up" is great. I love it. Unfortunately I couldn't find a version to embed, so you'll just have to trust me on this.

#2: "Horchata" by Vampire Weekend. Horchata is non-alcoholic. Gotta be honest, makes the song less fun for me, but like all Vampire Weekend songs I'm not 100% sure what this song is really about.



#3: Nothing is more fun than getting through a totally random 9 second track in the middle of everything else. Here it is for your enjoyment:



#4: Today I've been hearing a lot of Beck. Apparently he likes writing song titles that start with the letter H. The sentence "I'm the enchanting wizard of rhythm" is pretty great.

#5: And I've been hearing even more R.E.M. I'm up to maybe four R.E.M. songs so far. Scratch that. I'm up to five. Really. Almost half of an R.E.M. album at this point. And nothing from before "New Adventures in Hi-Fi." Crazy.

#6: I think I've talked about how much I love Snow Patrol when just one random song of theirs comes on. Can't really explain it. Today was "How to be Dead." I think I just enjoy how this song feels like it is building and building until it... well doesn't quite explode, but it does go somewhere.



Today I made it to 2654 of 7,132. The newest album on my ipod is The National's "Boxer." It's really great but again I'm super late to the game. The new Paste Magazine Sampler should be getting on my ipod pretty soon, and I can't wait for that.

Project 2010: Girls

So I was taking a little break from Project 2010 and blogging for a bit while I caught up on some stuff that I put on my iPod (the newer Shout Out Louds album, some Super 400, The Rentals) as well as some podcasts. Then today I continued down the list of songs and have been delighted.

It is as if every song that starts with Girls is fantastic. Here's what I mean:

"The Girl's Distracted" is my favorite Saturday Looks Good To Me song:


Matthew Sweet's "Girlfriend" will get me every time, and I kind of can't believe that it was 1991:



"Girls and Boys" by Blur. Do I even need to comment?


One of my favorite summer songs- Beck's "Girl."




That's all.

Project 201: Day 76 - The E's!

Sodastream is a guitar player and cello player from Australia. I have their album "The Hill For Company." I saw them opening for Saturday Looks Good to Me in an Ann Arbor, Michigan basement several years ago. Today I listened to "A Drum" and it is just an incredibly beautiful song. The vocals for this duo are just really wonderful. I couldn't find anything good to embed, but the link above sends you to their discography page and has lots of tracks that you can listen to.

In the same vein of kinda mellow songs, I got to Dashboard Confessional's "Dusk and Summer." I have a pretty strong love for Dashboard. His "So Impossible" EP's is one of my favorite song cycles.



Started the "E's" today with R.E.M.'s "E-Bow The Letter." I think I talked about R.E.M. yesterday, so I'll give it a rest for a minute.

Apparently bands were really into E songs with hyphens, because I also heard Beck's E-Pro. Who doesn't love a little bit of Beck on a Thursday?



Finally, I heard Iron and Wine's "Each Coming Night." Samuel Beam makes some really beautiful music, and this is a really good example of what he does. I think a lot of people would recognize he cover of "Such Great Heights" that was on the Garden State soundtrack.

Project 2010

Today I only got to song 1,303 of 6,779. I think I added more songs this weekend than I was able to listen to today, so I might be losing a bit of ground. I put Freestyle Whales onto my ITunes the other day and I am really enjoying their album.

One of the things I really like about this project is that it gives me an opportunity to find some songs that I may have overlooked, either because they are on albums that I didn't listen to much or because they were buried somewhere in an album where I was no longer paying much attention. One such song is Animal Collective's "Derek" which is off of "Strawberry Jam." I've listened to "Merriweather Post Pavilion" about 100 times and "Strawberry Jam" about 3 times. So, I was pretty happy with this find.



I love Bob Dylan, but at around minute eight of Desolation Row I'm ready for something else to be going on.

Another artist that I seem to have a lot of on my iPod is Beck. Almost every time I hit one of his songs I'm pretty happy about it. Definitely loved "Devil's Haircut" today.




Finally, I got to hear "Dialtone" by Saturday Looks Good to Me. Saturday Looks Good To Me is a Detroit area band that I saw several times when I lived in Michigan. They always put on a really fun show and were one of those bands that always seemed to be having a party on stage with a plethora of band members participating. I couldn't find a good version of "Dialtone" to embed, so here's a link:

http://www.last.fm/music/Saturday+Looks+Good+to+Me/_/Dialtone