brave young bachelors

She Gave Orders

I was thinking about posting the Furnaces' "Teach Me Sweetheart," but Stereogum beat me to it. You should give it a listen if you haven't already. It's an interesting case study when you compare it with the guitar-only version they did on the radio a while back--whereas they had a tendency with the other songy-songs on Bitter Tea to dress 'em up in maybe a few more things than they needed, or to deliberately avoid using traditional arrangements, arguably to the songs' detriment at times, "Sweetheart" clearly needed a little something, since while it does have a very nice melody, it's pretty much one chord a bar, starting right at the beginning of the bar, in two four-chord patterns. So most of the odd little noisy bits they perhaps overuse on the rest of the album fit right in here, especially that high-pitched little backwards loop that runs through most of the song (and is kinda Beatlesy), and that allows all the fancy variations (different keyboard noises, subtle percussion changes, guitar noodling) to come off as much less showy. It all sorta fits here, and while a big part of what they're doing involves things not fitting, when that final little flourish comes at the end, it really hits. This is a different kind of pop purity than on Gallowsbird's, but it's still quite a jolt.

ADDENDUM: I'm quite a fan of "Borneo," too.
posted by Mike B. at 11:43 AM 0 comments

Power to the People

We've all gotten sick of hearing a certain song on the radio. I first heard Ne-Yo's "So Sick" for the inagural edition of the new Stylus singles jukebox, and I liked it fine. But then, a few weeks later, I started hearing it on the radio. All. The. Time. So now, of course, I hate it, and I really wish the radio would stop playing it.

So I decided to do something about it.

See, it's not really worth bitching to the radio stations, because they are many, and you are one--plus, they are getting perks to play what they're playing, and you are offering none. But there is one person who could instantly cut down on radio play for a given single, and that is the record company executive who is directing radio promotion efforts for that song. In this case, the guilty party would appear to be Island / Def Jam's head of promo, a probably very nice man named Greg Thompson.

Now, I could publish his e-mail and ask you all to bombard him. But that would be super-rude and probably get me in some sort of trouble. So instead, I have created a petition.

Here is the petition statement:

We, the undersigned, totally think Ne-Yo's "So Sick" is a decent song. Cool, laid-back, catchy, all those kinds of things. The thing is, it's on the radio all the goddamned time. Seriously, on more than one occasion we have turned from one station playing it to another station that's also playing it. While we admire this sort of crossover success, it's getting a little ridiculous.

And so we petition you, Greg Thompson, head of radio promotion for Island / Def Jam, to stop getting radio stations to play the song so much. We're not saying totally pull it--I'm sure if we heard it once in a while (and, just to stress, we are sporadic radio listeners at best) we would mildly enjoy it. But you are wasting your money paying for all these spins. We understand you want to break this dude, but why not play that Ghostface song he sings on instead? We would totally enjoy that. But we feel it is in our mutual interest for you to cut down on the radio play: you will save money, and we will not want to write you snotty petitions like this anymore. We all promise to download it from iTunes or something. Seriously. Please.

Go here to sign it. When it's done, I'll send it to Greg.

posted by Mike B. at 11:25 AM 0 comments