It’s that time of the year, so I’m sharing one of the few Christmas themed tunes that I actually enjoy. Hell, I love this song.
Here’s Christmas At The Zoo, a classic Flaming Lips tune from 1995:
rock
Skyjelly – Black Panthers
Skyjelly is that perfect kind of discovery, the sort of album that falls into my lap when I least expect it. I wasn’t looking for music like this, and I didn’t know how much I’d enjoy it at the moment.
What I’m Into This Week (9/18 – 9/24)
So it goes and so it goes, and in some bleak moments, the world seems a bit more abrasive this year. Sometimes I retreat entirely into art and fiction, absorbing as much beauty and weirdness as I can before having to emerge to responsibility. It’s inevitable, it’s cathartic. It’s where things change.
Peter Gabriel – Sledgehammer
Yes, I’m posting one of the most famous songs of the last half century. I don’t care if it’s well known. The video, created by Aardman Studios and Brothers Quay, is one of the most original and exciting music videos ever crafted.
Despite all the acclaim and the “you should have already seen this” atmosphere, it’s a vital, wild, uncompromising vision of music in motion. This is one of the greatest short films of all time.
Radiohead – A Moon Shaped Pool
The impossible is now possible.
Radiohead have come back from a well-deserved but decade-long victory lap, making truly fascinating music again. This is vital stuff, the kind of work that will actually justify the coming weeks of breathless dissection. It’s more deserving of the clichéd descriptors that critics have reflexively thrown at the band – haunting, gorgeous, unnerving, innovative – than anything they’ve ever recorded.
Radiohead – Daydreaming
Radiohead dropped a song out of nowhere last Tuesday. It was good enough to fill me with hope for the first time in over a decade. Then they did the seemingly impossible: released a second pre-album single, three days later, that was better than the first.
As if fans wouldn’t have gone crazy enough with a simple, “we’ve got a new album” tweet, the band went for a full-blown now you have my attention moment:
What I’m Into This Week (5/1 – 5/7)
This week was shot out of a cannon. I was out of town, spending the weekend in Chicago, visiting the aquarium and accidentally joining a political protest, but I returned to great news.
Radiohead was suddenly back and doing interesting things. I had new vinyl from Can and Andy Stott. Beyoncé was still riding high on the crest of a mighty art-pop wave, and her album was still lodged in my car stereo. Then, after the worst storm of the year, the sun came out to play.
Let’s get into it.
Optimistic Underground 