Fall all over myself

India Rubber
Radiohead
High & Dry/India Rubber [single]
Capitol : 1996
[Listen] [Buy]

Forcefield
Beck
One Foot in the Grave
K Records : 1994
[Listen] [Buy]

My Old Flame
John Vanderslice
Time Travel is Lonely
Barsuk : 2001
[Listen] [Buy]

Samson
Regina Spektor
Songs
2002
[Listen] [Buy]

The Commander Thinks Aloud
The Long Winters
Future Soundtrack for America
Barsuk : 2004
[Listen] [Buy]

Kelly Watch the Stars (Edit/Video Mix)
Air
Kelly Watch the Stars [single]
EMI Int'l: 1998
[Listen] [Buy]

It’s been a long, hard week in Roy-land. I wish there were more time/energy I could devote to this, but the well’s run dry. So I’ll keep it simple.

These tracks have been ringing my autumnal ears as I prepare for the slip into winter. They’re not new, and that’s probably why they’re good for me right now. Comfort music for the soul in transition.

India Rubber – This track came from two CD’s this kid burned for me in high school. This was back when burned CD’s were a big deal. He had a list you could make requests from, then five dollars and two days later you’d get your goods. Being that we were in electronics together for an hour and a half, we had a lot of time to talk about music. This is how I found out he had a bunch of Radiohead remixes and b-sides, and how I paid ten dollars for two discs of Bends/OK Computer era miscellania.

It was worth it.

Forcefield - I listened to One Foot in the Grave an inordinate number of times in high school because:
A) I worshipped Beck
B) Pre Winamp, listening to an entire CD was the musical norm
C) I didn’t have a lot of money, so I spent a lot of time with the CD’s I did buy (which is how I became so well acquainted with the hard on the ears Stereopathetic Soulmanure)
D) It’s a really catchy disc
E) All of the above

My Old Flame – You’ll be hearing more about John Vanderslice here someday. My Old Flame is the song that got me to pay attention to him. If I had to make a list of the top ten songs I’d ever heard, this would have a place up there. Both from moving as a child and from having loved/let go, the lines Our old house / Everything’s changed / Bleached out and aired / Ikea-d and swept bare poke at bruises I’d hoped healed and had forgotten. That, and if you listen close, the guy’s holding a clinic on production.

Samson – This is the only Regina Spektor song I really know. After being hypnotized by Powaqqatsi, a friend and I sat on the couch, chatting. We needed music, and she said I needed to hear this song off this CD her friend gave her. She played the first track and we sat silent, listening.

At this point I could talk about the texture of Regina’s voice and how human it sounds, or sweetness of Samson’s story retold, or how I could see her, cutting her young lover’s hair in the bare light of a 60 watt bulb, picture every tile of the apartment. But as a song, I don’t know what to say about it, because my friend and I, we stayed up listening to it on repeat and talking into the late evening. She gave me a copy of the CD, and I’ve never listened past track 1.

The Commander Thinks Aloud - I remember after the Columbia disaster thinking how lucky those astronauts were. They all work hard and rise through the astronaut program. Succeeding, they get to go into space, to touch the heavens and float among the stars, and experience shared only with the smallest fraction of humans. They see the Earth below, the expanses beyond. They miss their loved ones, send messages back home. They perform their duties: gauges, switches, checklists, the day to day that is a mission in space. They share in the oddity together, veterans telling stories, first timers soaking it in. They prepare to come home, half sad, half excited. They watch the windows, and black turns blue turns orange as plasma gasses dance past.

A creak, a moan, and the craft begins to tumble. A half second of panic, then blackout. Watched by millions, they splay beautiful over blue southern skies. Statues erected, high schools renamed, all debts forgiven, transgressions erased.

Kelly Watch the Stars – Kelly, watch the stars.