Tune Of The Day #41

Stereophonics - Help Me

Another great driving song, this one from Stereophonics' 2003 album You Gotta Go There to Come Back.

Tune Of The Day #40

Sarah Walker sings Henri Duparc's Extase, Roger Vignoles on keys

One of the most beautiful and challenging 3ish lines of French poetry ever put to music.

Tune Of The Day #39

Spoon - Don't You Evah


This has been one of my favorite driving songs this year along with "Don't Make Me A Target", also from their Summer 2007 album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga. It's a cover of a song by The Natural History that wouldn't find its way onto a one of their own albums until a few months later, in November 2007.

Tune of the Day #38

William Shatner - That's Me Trying


Yeah, you're probably going to see that name and wonder what I'm on, but I'm telling you guys: Shatner's Has Been is a great album and totally deserves the attention of everyone in the world.
Seriously. So Good.

Tune of the Day #37

Blind Pilot - The Story I Heard


Caught this sweet little bit of music the other day on npr's top debut albums of 2008. From their album 3 Rounds and a Sound. Pretty smooth, indeed.

Tune Of The Day #36

Ben Gibbard - I was a Kaleidoscope

Solo and acoustic on Live at KEXP. The song with the rest of Death Cab for Cutie is found on The Photo Album.

Tune Of The Day #35

Richard Swift - The Novelist


There's only one way to properly punish Patterson for preempting my TOTD post yesterday - I have not choice but to choose a Richard Swift song for today's TOTD. This is the title track of his 2005 album.

Tune Of The Day #34

Cool Kids - A Little Bit Cooler


I had to beat Simon to this. This is a hip track from the Cool Kids EP, Bake Sale.
They bill themselves as "the new black Beastie Boys," and if that doesn't sell you on these guys, then I guess your gonna have to get sold like I did: by listening to the above track and crapping your pants from how freakin' awesome it is. Enjoy.

Simon can have the totd tomorrow... screw that guy for now.

Tune of the Day #33

The Old Soul - Vege-tables


This awesome Beach Boys cover is found on their eponymous debut album.

Tune of the Day #32

"Warm as the autumn light", from The Ballad of Baby Doe (Douglas Moore / John Latouche)

This is from the premiere recording with Beverly Sills as the title character, and Walter Cassel and Frances Bible as Horace and Augusta Tabor. Heretically, I don't think this is the best recording ever, but it's hard to argue with the emotion the singers put behind it (even if their tuning isn't always spot on). Also, this entire opera was recorded in one take. Which is insane.

I picked this song because A) it is gorgeous, and B) it is a good example of the unparalleled quality of poetry this opera offers (perhaps even better is Baby Doe's closing aria, "Always through the changing"). It definitely is not a perfect show, but in terms of character development in American opera...it's pretty hard to beat. And, again, this music is fantastic.

Tune of the Day #31

Pierre Bernac sings Ravel's Chanson romanesque, from Don Quichotte à Dulcinée

I think this was originally written for a movie adaptation of Don Quixote, but then the director decided he could do better than Ravel in the film score dept, so Ravel cut his losses and turned it into a song cycle. Pierre Bernac, although with Gerard Souzay, is one of the premiere interpreters of French song, but if you don't already know what it's "supposed" to sound like, this probably won't convince you. Still, a pretty rad tune with the perfect amount of old record vibe.

Tune of the Day #30

The Long Winters - Pet Name


This is a great band performing a great cover of a great song by another great band (They Might Be Giants). Definitely TOTD material.

Tune of the Day #29

Electric Six - Gay Bar


Wait, it's Thursday already? (Image courtesy Married to the Sea)

Tune of the Day #28

Pedro the Lion - Second Best


So here's the history of the song cycle, according to me: Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, Faure, Respighi, Vaughan Williams, Finzi, Bernstein, David Bazan of Pedro the Lion.

This particular song is from the album (cycle) "Control", which tells the story of a failing marriage that leads to spousal murder. It is...a little intense. But so is the Schwanengesang.

Tune of the Day #27

King Missile - Eating People


A ridiculously sticky and smooth tune by my favorite spoken word comedy group.

Tune of the Day #26

Yo soy Maria from María de Buenos Aires by Ástor Piazzolla

Julia Zenko sings the title role in this "tango operita". It's really more like a tango ballet. Violinist Gidon Kremer leads the ensemble. You really have to listen to this.

Tunes of the Days 24 & 25

No internet the past 36 hours means today's a double feature.

Zero 7 - The Pageant of the Bizarre

Fun track from Zero 7's third album, "The Garden".


Aesop Rock - Pigs


The hidden track from "None Shall Pass", also the coolest song on the album.

Tune of the Day #23

Jeff Buckley - Moodswing Whiskey

From Mystery White Boy Live.

Tune of the Day #22

Björk, Mark Bell, Sjón & Lars von Trier - New World


From Selmasongs, a collection of re-produced songs from the movie Dancer in the Dark. Even if you don't like Björk, it's hard not to like this expansive, definitively European orchestral trip hop tune. Freaking awesome finale.

Note: the posted track has all kinds of errors in it, both tagging and encoding. For better quality, try this ogg file instead (you'll need a plugin to play this in most commercial audio programs, like iTunes or Windows Media Player).

Tune of the Day #21

Wynton Marsalis Septet - Local Announcements


From Live at the Village Vanguard. (The single disc, not the 7-disc set. Although presumably it's on both.)