This is a tough category. All of the songs on the my upcoming top fifty songs list have excellent vocals, many of which are standout performances. However, there are also songs that go unrecognized on the top fifty list that are notable for their outstanding vocals. Thus, as a rule, songs included in the top fifty list are not considered here.
I suppose you could consider this my way of sneaking in an extra ten songs that I didn’t find room for on my best songs list, but I hope you’ll consider it an additional category. These ten songs are great in their own rights, but especially by virtue of the excellence of their vocals. Some are smooth, some are rough; some are passionately outraged, some are tenderly heartfelt. Taken together, they’re the standout vocal performances of 2011:
1) “Something to Believe In” – Parachute (The Way It Was)
2) “Estate Sale Sign” – The Mountain Goats (All Eternals Deck)
For Death Cab for Cutie chords & lyrics, CLICK HERE!
By Chris Moore:
This one gave me blisters on me fingers and numbness in me thumb (thanks to all the sliding up and down the guitar neck, the barre chords in the progression, and the fact that I didn’t really know the lyrics to the verses before playing it tonight), but it was all worth it, for all two minutes of it.
And, quite a number of takes of this simple little song later, I know the lyrics by heart!
“The Sound of Settling” is the second single from Death Cab for Cutie’s fourth album, Transatlanticism. This is the album that my sister, Jaime, strongly recommended I hear if I hear nothing else from the band. Seeing as how this is one of those “I’ve heard of them, but I haven’t heard any of their songs” bands for me, I picked it up on sale and enjoyed it. Apparently, it was the first album that frontman Ben Gibbard felt was a truly serious, well put together record.
While I like several of the songs on this album very much, I haven’t found myself very interested in picking up their other material, as they seem to have a penchant for EPs and other non-album releases. Those sorts of releases seem nice if you’re a fan and have new material to look forward to, but they’re really quite expensive over the long run. Consider Ben Folds’ EPs Speed Graphic, Sunny 16, and Super D; those added up to a combined total of about $24.00 for 15 songs, about 7 or maybe 8 of which were any good. This is not a slight to the good songs on these EPs; some were tremendous and among his best ever released.
Then there were the covers and outtakes from previous albums that he re-recorded. And, as any music fan knows, some songs were never meant to see official release outside of designated bonus track status on another album or collection.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this cover song music video, as it is the first Death Cab for Cutie song to be debuted at the Laptop Sessions blog. There was so little new music of interest this week as well as last week that even I don’t feel a need to visit Newbury Comics today. And THAT’S saying something! So, instead, I went back to my iPod to find a band that we had missed along the way. There are still a lot of bands that have gone uncovered, as well as classic and/or great songs from artists that we have, so don’t even think about taking us out of your “Favorites” menu.
Instead, be sure to stop by later tonight when our founder makes his triumphant return to the second day of the week as it should be: Jim Fusco Tuesday!
See you next session!
(The text of my original Monday night post follows below the video…)
Well, my cover song music video for tonight is recorded, rendered, and ready to go…
…and if I actually had Internet (thanks for nothing, Cox!) or even a wireless signal from an unsuspecting, password-phobic neighbor, you’d be reading my post and watching my video. Instead, I’ll be posting both my session and the accompanying chords tomorrow after I get a visit from the cable guy (lower case for any of you Jim Carrey fans thinking the worst!) some time between 10:30 and 12:30.
Until then, I’ll leave you with the following clues about the song I’m playing:
1) The song is from one of my favorite albums to listen to at night in a dark room, sometimes to fall asleep to.
2) The aforementioned album is NOT “Pet Sounds.”
3) My sister recommended this band and album.
4) The band is named for the song performed by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band in the 1967 Beatles movie, “Magical Mystery Tour.”
5) The band’s name is comprised of four words – an adjective, a noun, a preposition, and an object of the prep. -in that order.
Okay, that’s all I’ll give you. Check back Tuesday afternoon for the startling conclusion to this post!
And welcome once again, one and all, to the most recent installment of new, original music here at the Laptop Sessions music blog. We like to call this “Original Wednesday,” as we take a break from our daily acoustic covers to air a song written by one of us.
Today’s selection is the second in my “New Album Preview Project.” Each time I post an original song, I will record the next song in order of my preliminary track listing for my new album. From now until I’ve posted them all, I’ll be continuing this project, and hopefully it won’t be long after I finish this little side project that I will finish recording the actual album.
Probably the most difficult part of this project is that I needed to come up with a track listing now, as opposed to when I usually do — after I’ve recorded the principal tracks for an album. To be honest, this order may change by the time I actually release the album, but it’ll be interesting to see how close I came to estimating what the final product will look like.
“No More” is going to be the second track on the album — one with strong guitars up in the mix and an energetic, driving beat. The song is fairly self-explanatory, particularly in the first verse or so. What I like about the song (and another reason why I like having the track so early on the album) is that the second half can be interpreted in a few different ways. This works, as I hope you will see when it is released, for the album concept as a whole.
On the heels of Jim’s big announcement today, I’m definitely getting the itch to see my numbers going more quickly in an upwards direction, so I hope to come back with good news and milestones in the weeks and months ahead, to join him in these exciting times for the music blog.
Thank you, as always, to our loyal viewers (and, if you aren’t one, I hope you will be one starting now!). This is really only the second or third time I’ve played this song in full since I finished writing it, so it’s just a starting poing. I hope you enjoy it and see the potential in it. That’ll be it for me for now, but stay tuned for Jeff and then Jim and then I’ll be back on Saturday.
Belle and Sebastian’s Write About Love (2010) – MAYBE NOT
Write About Love (Belle and Sebastian, 2010)
(October 11, 2010)
Review:
Belle and Sebastian have certainly made their niche in the middle ground between indie pop quirkiness and sixties quasi-nostalgia — and no one should dispute that they make beautiful music on Write About Love — but too much of it simply fails to get off the ground.
