Strung Out On Heaven’s High

The commentary for the songs on David Bowie’s new greatest hits package that are up on David Bowie.com are kind of charming in how incredibly audacious and contentious they’re willing to be. I especially love the commentary for “Ashes To Ashes”:

Arguably the most perfect pop record ever released (though a devil to nail live), this catchy, haunting, and beautiful song, with its peculiar beat, boasts the finest video ever made, with Bowie as Pierrot, madman and the astronaut, three potent symbols of alienation, the queasiness of the music and the song’s singalong denouement making for nursery-rhyme pop music, New Romantic-style.

(They went a little crazy with the commas in there – don’t they have anyone proofreading this stuff? Run-on sentences are one of the easier grammatical errors to catch, I’d imagine.)

I’m also fond of the commentary for “I’m Afraid Of Americans”, which wistfully notes that the song should be an anthem for all anti-globalization protestors. But it’s not. Maybe they’re all too busy singing along to “Changes”, which they declare “the greatest pop anthem ever recorded”.

What I Learned This Weekend:

That I’m never going anywhere for an extended period of time without a book or two ever again.

Download These Songs (If You Can)

Sonic Youth “I Know There’s An Answer”. Unreleased Beach Boys cover, Lee Ranaldo on lead vocals, very enjoyable. [WRONG! Vic Funk corrects me: It’s not unreleased; it’s from the “Smiles, Vibes and Harmonies: A Tribute to the Beach Boys” LP.] This song was recorded at some point in between the Goo and Dirty sessions, and may appear on the upcoming Dirty reissue.

Pavement “Nothing Ever Happens”. From the new Pavement Slanted And Enchanted Luxe + Redux set. The credits say that this song was recorded during the S+E sessions and remixed in 2002, but it sounds suspiciously new to my ears, like a Preston School Of Industry song built on the “Wounded Kite” riff, with Malkmus on backing vocals. If nothing, I suspect that perhaps part of mixing the song involved Spiral recording a new vocal take. Nevertheless, a good song and worth checking out if you’re not planning on buying the reissue.

Bono and the Million Dollar Hotel Band “Jump Start My Heart” – One of the most pleasant and charmingly off-center songs I’ve ever heard Bono sing. The vocals are faux-soul Bono (think: the majority of Rattle And Hum, “In A Little While”, “The Sweetest Thing”), the music is muted and minimal (think: The Passengers LP, the production on some of Achtung Baby, especially “Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around The World”). It works very well, I can’t even begin to understand why it was never released since virtually everything on the Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack album is bloodless and awful. Are we to believe that “Stateless” or songs with Milla Jonavich on vocals are better than this? Please.

Scarce “All Sideways” – The sole great song of a rather obscure Rhode Island band from the early 90s. They were clearly influenced by the Pixies, but unlike most bands who knock off the Pixies, they are one of the few that ran with the “deranged-sounding male singer with somewhat ethereal female foil” formula. Very good song, some strong guitar playing, too. For more about Scarce, go here.

Baader Meinhof “Baader Meinhof, version 2”. From the album, Baader Meinhof, no less. It’s a concept album about terrorism by Luke Haines, and the song in particular is a dark little folk-pop number with a great recurring evil keyboard riff. Pretty much everything about this song is wonderful, and the record itself is pretty good too.

Also, a friend of mine gave me a copy of a cd with Lil Wayne rhyming over the backing tracks of other people’s hits – Jay-Z’s “Girls Girls Girls”, Raekwon’s “Incarcerated Scarfaces”, some other songs. Most of them are terrible, but their version of “Pass The Courvosier” is pretty good, even if Lil Wayne and his friends are abysmal MCs. I have no idea how this song may be labelled or titled, it’s a bootleg being circulated by Lil Wayne’s people, but keep a look out for it. It’s worth checking out.