Great Songs: "The Skin of my Yellow Country Teeth" by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

Listen to it at the band's MySpace page. I can be hung over and full of chocolate, you put me on a treadmill and play this song and by the time the first chorus kicks in I will be actively engaged in trying to make my heart explode, it's that rockin. A song about the neverending incremental change of life, the fact that a single continuous "I" that persists through time is really nothing more than a useful working model of what consciousness is. There's the boy with the shotgun shooting down honeybees that sting, but the boy could use a little sting, which is a perfect metaphor for resisting painful positive change, which seems to belong to the earlier, West Virginia part of the protagonist's life. Immediately after he's asking to go to a party, talking to someone who 'looks a bit like coffee'. I take this to mean that in New York the country boy has been exposed to people he never would have met back home.
All crappy analysis aside, this is a perfect song. All the more shocking is that a band which nearly always sounds like a cross between Pablo Honey-era Radiohead, The Violent Femmes and Rufus Wainright sould some up with something so perfectly perfect.

Once - The dogs have quit their barking

"Son," - my neighbor said to me."

Know the emptiness of talking blue

the same old shoe.

"Run - I'll do no more this walking

Haunted by a past I just can't see

Anymore

Anymore

But let me tell you I have never planned

To let go of the hand that has been

Clinging by its thick country skin

To my yellow country teeth

Far - Far away from West Virginia

I - Will try on New York City

Explaining that the sky holds the

Wind the sun rushes in and a child

With a shotgun can shoot down

Honeybees that sting

BUT THIS BOY COULD USE A LITTLE STING!

Who - Will get me to a party?

Who - Do I have yet to meet?

You - You look a bit like coffee

And you taste a bit like me

How - Can I keep me from moving?

Now - I need a change of scenery

Just listen to me I won't pretend to

Understand the movement of the wind

Or the waves out in the ocean or how

Like the hours I change softly slowly

Plainly blindly oh me oh my!

Great Songs: "A Passing Feeling" by The Thermals

If you aren't familiar with the Thermals, you certainly should be. The song (You can listen to it at this sparse Myspace page) is about the ephemeralness of life, but the power and enthusiasm of the music makes it clear that rather than being concerned by the facts that memories fade and die, triumph turns into regret and vice versa, and in the end we are, like any machines, destined to wear out and die, and our minds to die with us, that we still have a lot to celebrate about the whole set-up. We have our baggage and all that that implies, but in the end we don't really want to be rid of all that baggage, because what would we be left with? The stand-out line of the song is of course "The hum is gone when the power's off". I highly recommend this song for jogging, when you and your body are most at peace with your mechanistic nature.

Memory wise
Memory flies
Memory barely satisfies
The past steals
It's a passing feeling

Memory wise
Memory flies
Memory rarely satisfies
The past tense
Tense and bleeding

You can choke
Or you can focus
I wanna forget
I don't wanna forget
I don't wanna forget

Memory knows
Memory goes
Memory dulling
But I'm learning slow
The passing heals
The past is healing

Memory knows
Memory stops
The hum is gone
When the power's off
The passing heals
The past is healing

And you can choke on it
Or you can focus
I wanna forget
I don't wanna forget
I don't wanna forget

If you have no wishes
You can still have an opinion
Everybody's got one
If you have the free time
I'm sure there's something
We can agree on
When you're passing the blame
No one remembers the same

Memory wise
Memory flies
Memory barely satisfies
The past steals
It's a passing feeling

Memory knows
Memory stops
The hum is gone
When the power's off
The passing heals
The past is healing

And you can focus
Or you can smoke it
I wanna forget
And I don't wanna forget
I don't wanna forget
I don't wanna forget
I don't wanna forget