songs:365

  • day 87: City With No Children

    City With No Children, by Arcade Fire.

    The first appearance in this project of the third band the whole family agrees on, Arcade Fire. We’ve seen them live three times now, once with the kids, and they never disappoint.

    The Suburbs is the album I take most personally — I remember hearing the first single (it was Month of May) in the middle of the afternoon as a non sequitur during some other show on NPR while I was driving back and forth to the hospital after our second child was born. And when they get to the kids out on their bikes after dark, I know which kids and which neighborhood I’m imagining.

    This song is a banger, but there are a lot of bangers on this album. It was easy enough to play, although I’m starting to wonder if my wrist is sore because I’m playing guitar every day, or if my wrist is sore because I’ve been playing guitar every day except for a couple after I sprained it, like, 33 songs ago.

    Added, um, some synths and stuff and the smashy drums. It’s all a muddy mess because I still don’t know how to record the rhythm guitar and vocal when I play loud.

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  • day 86: Me By The Sea

    Me By The Sea, by Edie Brickell.

    Sorry, not sorry. My teenage years involved Edie Brickell’s first two (maybe three) records, and although I must admit, in hindsight, the lyrical content doesn’t go much deeper than What I Am (I mean, except for Ghost of a Dog itself, which, ugh, my heart). It’s fun, and a little sad, and often both at the same time, and this one is cute at best, but enjoyable.

    Recorded this without listening to the original version of this song — it could be 25 years since I last heard it — so hopefully I got close with the melody.

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  • day 85: Hannah Hunt

    Hannah Hunt, by Vampire Weekend.

    There are three bands that the whole family can get behind — and that the whole family has seen live — and one of them is Vampire Weekend. This song off their third album holds some quiet meaning for me like the rest of that 2013 record with all its foreboding, as if they knew what might come next.

    My most vivid memory of listening to this album alone was in the car on a long drive back from the USMNT-Germany match at RFK that June, during a dark time at home, when we had our own warnings and rumblings afoot, and I had this thing on repeat for hours.

    When this album came out, it was at the peak of my interest in (what was then called Rap) Genius, and I still get notifications about my notes on the lyrics to some of these songs. Annotate the web! What could go wrong.

    //

    Mostly guitars here, but I couldn’t resist a little MIDI marimba and then was looking for a spot to drop a beat and realized there’s a spot for that when it gets “loud” at the end.

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  • day 84: Rainbow Connection

    Rainbow Connection, by Kermit the Frog.

    This song is so personal, it’s almost embarrassing.

    https://twitter.com/ryansholin/status/1353024698989342725?s=20

    Kermit the Frog is the first thing I remember “wanting to be when I grow up” — an actor, a singer, a showman. Well, a showfrog, to be fair.

    I’ve sung this song a thousand times, met some Muppets, and passed this tradition along to my children, but apparently never tried it on guitar until tonight. The recording here is the second time I played it, and trying to sing it without the voice did not work as well, but it was earnest af, so I’m leaving it as is.

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  • day 83: Empathy

    Empathy, by Three.

    Might have to go to Wikipedia for this one… I heard this song, and the rest of this band’s one majestic DC punk album from that one DC punk friend I had in New York. It was always hard to tell with him if stuff like this was like “a seminal important record in the history of punk rock you should’ve been there” or if it was like “my roommate played bass in this band” or, often, both.

    Whatever the provenance and whatever the importance, I’ve been listening to this record for 20 years, which is 10 years less than a real punk rocker, who also wouldn’t need to tell you we’re in punk rock mode, and then proceed to start the song (I mean, post-the amazing orchestral brass intro) at some sort of Michael Stipe / Peter Buck pace like I’m playing a mandolin, which I don’t.

    Anyway, my new favorite drum kit in Garageband is called “Smash” and I did. On the bright side, the electric guitar is less obnoxious than usual in the mix? I made efforts.

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  • day 82: Long White Line

    Long White Line, by Sturgill Simpson.

    By my casual count, this is at least the third song of 82 involving an eighteen wheeler, which, honestly, doesn’t seem like enough.

    I have no intentions of going full Convoy here, but also, the mystique of big rigs comes down a direct route from Smokey and the Bandit to a film school-era treatment I wrote for a sort of Mad Mad World in semis. Which was not the “meteor strikes in small town” script, although I think that was probably the one where the first treatment involved a talking dog reciting… Shakespeare? Because the meteor.

    Anyway, I am a mark for a song about driving down the highway in a big truck, but also, for the way Sturgill Simpson belts out “Albuquerque, New Mexico” with unabashed pride on this song.

    I lived in Albuquerque for a year — less than that if you consider the last couple months of that year were mostly in Taos — and loved it. There are mornings along at the Frontier with a breakfast burrito, sweet roll, and fresh orange juice that I still think about, not to mention that one place in the middle of Central with the chile relleno burrito, or El Patio, or the rest. (I did more there than eat, honest.)

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    Messy guitar parts, and MIDI keyboard drums and bass after the fact.

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  • day 81: Creep

    Creep, by Radiohead.

    Radiohead is one of those bands I absolutely experienced first through MTV. In later years, I remember sitting at the bar at the vegan comfort food spot on Avenue B, where I heard Kid A for the first time on the day it came out, because excited indie rockers were excited, though outnumbered by the hardcore kids in that place.

    (Pour one out for Kate’s Joint. No, seriously, pour it out, because their liquor license was the beginning of the end. Not that I’m bitter. *glares in Unturkey Club*)

    Anyway, yes, Radiohead. I don’t know how to sing this song without sounding sincere, because it’s sincere as fuck.

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    Had fun with this one on a weekday, layering in parts during quiet moments between calls and crises. Multiple guitars and vocals, several loops, and all the perils of manually playing the drums on the midi keyboard to record the loops, then listening to them sort of gradually slide out of time, maybe? It gets hard to tell after you’ve been listening for a while, I think.

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  • day 80: Wave of Mutilation

    Wave of Mutilation, by the Pixies.

    Once again, this song is from the Pump Up The Volume soundtrack that absolutely planted itself in my brain. The “UK Surf” mix, of course. This is definitely one of those songs where I heard the remix first, and the original always irritates me by not having the same vibe. (Big Day Coming by Yo La Tengo does this in reverse; I like the heavy one, and the slow one never drops the beat, it just leaves me waiting.)

    A little annoyed with myself that I didn’t let the drums start, but I tried to get the vibe close enough. That’s what I get for adding the drums toward the end of the process, natch. This was fun.

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  • day 79: Hot Knife

    Hot Knife, by Fiona Apple.

    This song is one of those where you remember exactly where you were when you first heard it. I was on the way home from work, in my commuting days, and can remember singing along with this playing on an All Songs podcast on a particular highway ramp exit, at the end of what was probably a long day, given the year, and all the long days I had that year.

    I haven’t been bothering to gender-switch any of these songs, excepting the cover-of-cover confusion around Bobby McGee and the like. It feels silly, and inaccurate, and not worthwhile. But everyone hears what they want to hear.

    Fun set of vocal layers toward the end, and didn’t take that long at all. Honestly, adding the extra verses after I stopped the video was the trickiest part.

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  • day 78: Beautiful Strangers

    Beautiful Strangers, by Kevin Morby.

    This song is quiet and arresting and provokes attention and thought, which seems to be true of most Kevin Morby songs. I think I mentioned the Farewell Transmission cover with Waxahatchee once already — and I’ll need to play that song soon — but that’s where I first heard his name, then his 2020 album dropped in the middle of everything, and it’s a nice solid heartbeat with a lot of questions.

    This one is actually a single from 2016? It is. You can tell, because the references to mass shootings and police killings are… dated… and timely as ever.

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    Just acoustics and vocals tonight. Listening to the original, it could’ve used a little drum.

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