The Future Has A Valley And A Shortcut Around

Nathalie Nordnes “Cars and Boys” – Though the line “(the) next thing I know I’ve got three kids and a dog” lacks the neurotic urgency of David Byrne’s midlife crisis freakout in “Once In A Lifetime,” it’s still communicating a miniaturized version of the same “how did I become an adult, where has my youth gone?” dilemma in context. Nordnes sings nostalgically about a youth spent cruising with her best friend Catie and flirting with boys, trying all the while to reconcile this yearning with her perfectly happy domestic life. It’s not the cars and boys that she misses, per se, but the thrill of novelty, freedom from responsibilities, and the romance of endless possibilities. Lyrically and musically, it’s a lovely companion piece to The Smashing Pumpkins’ hit “1979,” which lamented a similarly romanticized version of an aimless youth spent in the backseats of cars. (Special thanks to Nick Sylvester.)(Click here for the official Nathalie Nordnes site.)

Wilco “Spiders (Kidsmoke) [Live in Chicago, 2005]” – Though it took me a while to warm up to the Neu!-ed up A Ghost Is Born arrangement of “Spiders,” I’ve come to like it much more than the shorter, more new wave-ish original version that was a Wilco setlist staple for two or three years. Conceptually, extending the song so that it stretches out like some kind of endless grey horizon works for the song’s lyrics and allows the emergence of the song’s signature guitar riff to seem like a dramatic, cathartic development rather than a musical inevitability. Live, the song allows touring guitarist Nels Cline some time in the spotlight with slow-motion lead lines and string-shredding noise bursts. Wilco were wise to scrap their dvd plans and release only a live album from their engagement at the Vic Theatre – they aren’t much to look at, but their performances come off very well on disc, to the point that whenever I’ve wanted to listen to them in the past year or two, I almost always opt for a live version of a song if I have one available. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)