These posts are about the songs that just barely failed to cross the key line of chart success, entering the Billboard Top 40. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 41. For college rock bands in the nineteen-eighties, … Continue reading Top 40 Smash Near Misses — “Pretty in Pink”
684. Steely Dan, Gaucho (1980) For a band renowned for the meticulousness of their recordings, Steely Dan endured a remarkable amount of messiness on the way to Gaucho, their eighth studio album and their final effort until a reunion launched … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #684 to #681
The brilliance of the extended performance piece that was The Colbert Report duly acknowledged, the portions of the program I most adored were those instances when the host’s disguise fell just enough for his inner fan to emerge. In crafting a nightly show partially dependent on the guests with some amount of celebrity, Stephen Colbert at some point figured out that the rundown could be shaped in part by his own personal predilections formed through a lifetime of obsessive attention to science fiction, fantasy novels, comics books, and other touchstones of Gen X geekery. I admired the way he lived … Continue reading This Week’s Model — The Mountain Goats with Stephen Colbert, “This Year”
Designer, the third album from New Zealander Aldous Harding, is so luxurious in its beauty that listening to it is like sinking into a cushion so soft it defies the laws of physics. And yet it’s not precisely right to … Continue reading The New Releases Shelf — Designer
688. The Clash, Black Market Clash (1980) For U.S. audiences, new material from the Clash arrived at a dizzying rate across the final months of 1979 and through 1980. The band’s 1977 self-titled debut, originally deemed too rough for the … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #688 to #685
BEDTIME SONGS by Kiese Laymon Published in Oxford American, this essay by Kiese Laymon is lovely and moving in its purity. She writes evocatively about the experience of driving at night — with no particular geographic destination, just circling through … Continue reading Outside Reading — Right Track, Wrong Track edition
Merging orchestral music with modern pop stylings often results in a sonic mess, tilting toward either the pure cheese of the disco classical that burbled up in the nineteen-seventies and -righties or the unbearable pretension of rock acts trying to expand their … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Anna Meredith, “Paramour”
692. Go-Betweens, Tallulah (1987) Tallulah might not have delivered the Go-Betweens their first experience with professional disappointment, nor even their most pronounced. And yet the recording experience and subsequent related duties were peppered with enough frustrations that the album stands … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #692 to #689
Long Beard is the performing moniker employed by singer-songwriter Leslie Bear, whose 2015 debut album, Sleepwalker, stirred up admiring interest from music fans inclined towards the wistful. Recently relocated from Canada to her native New Jersey, bear acknowledges her songwriting … Continue reading This Week’s Model — Long Beard, “Sweetheart”
696. Dan Fogelberg, The Innocent Age (1981) There was a point when music artists of a certain stature couldn’t simply release a new record. An extra level of import was required, and so singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg followed his greatest commercial … Continue reading College Countdown: CMJ Top 1000, 1979 – 1989 — #696 to #693
Coffee for Two 