Dane D. Lion's Music Den ##############

Oh, man.  When I listened to this Girls track yesterday, I kept thinking about Elliott Smith and how much I wish he was still around, making music.  I wish he had found a way to get back to this sort of confidence and playfulness (see the Owens blurb below) in his last few years.  I have trouble listening to From a Basement on the Hill (and sometimes even Figure 8) because they sound like an obsessive’s endless, anxious search for utmost refinement or distillation of the self.  Not like it’s not compelling, beautiful songwriting, but the production sounds desperate and something other than the songs themselves.  It’s like when you happen to snap a photo of a loved one that captures a mannerism, gesture, or facial tic that you’ve never consciously noticed before, but that manages to summarize - just right - that person’s presence in your memory.  It’s there, but it’s not.  And, with regard to Smith’s final works, it’s sad because that presence or soul started to overwhelm the heart of the music itself.  Imagine your greatest moments as photos always taken the day after, with you in your sweats and some mad bedhead.  Totally self-aware.  Kind of pantomiming the event/moment.  That’s “Shooting Star”.  

I guess the closest Smith got to such jouissance, for me, on those last couple of albums would probably be “L.A.”  Or, off the record, when covering somebody else’s song, like “Don’t Fear the Reaper”.  When I compare that to something like “X.O” - or, maybe, any song off of X.O. - it sounds somewhat jarred.  Contained.  However, the guy who performed “fX.O.” sounds like he could head into the studio with the thought of doing Brian Wilson as filtered through Elvis Costello on a Dick Dale kick.  Or something like that.

Sorry.  I guess this is just a long-winded way to say this new Girls song is great, and that it reminds me of listening fondly to other great and even greater songs by other artists, recorded as they surfed the crest of their creative waves. 

disconaivete:

Honey Bunny is the second joint taken from Girls’ sophomore - and brilliant - effort Father, Son, Holy Ghost, out on September 13. Here’s what the band’s Christopher Owens says about it: (via)

Honey Bunny was my 19th song to write. I wrote it on my birthday in 2008. I think the fact that it’s No. 19 gives it a little perspective. My first songs were kind of like, “Ahhhh, Help!” This one has a bit of swagger to it, and some reflection about my mother. It’s a special song to me now, not for the sassy swagger bits as much the parts about Mama. But I think for the listener, it could be the exact opposite. The energy and optimism and determination in it is quite appealing. But that’s the great thing about these things, right? The fact that all of us are hearing something entirely different. I believe that. And so, in 2011, surfer guitar still rules.