the rest of the best of 2006

arizona : alejandro escovedo
click here or on the image below to listen



An outstanding Nick Cave proxy. The song is very personal to the singer-songwriter who overcame Hepatitis C due to over-boozing, but I just love its manly-man sound. The long electric-guitar notes that undulate in the middle of some lines and that are left to tail off end-of-verse make the emotion of this song about passion and self-restraint.

black and white : upper room
click here or on the image below to listen



Upper Room is a new British band with a sound that harks back to the best of the 80s with a fresh twist. While the songs in their album deal with the typical alienated-youth themes of apathy, rejection and pain, there isn't a lot of emotional baggage in their sound, thanks to the light arrangement, swirling with catchy guitar melodies and smooth vocal harmonies, and Alex Miller's voice that's at once glum and sanguine. It's like drinking mint tea in bad weather.

half-assed : ani difranco
click here or on the image below to listen



Amazing guitar work on this one – raw, hasty, arrogant.

no use crying : embrace
click here or on the image below to listen



They weren't exactly the popular choice to record the World Cup anthem for England last summer, but Embrace gets my vote for their rally-the-troops instrumentation that's a more rousing treatment of The Verve.

patience of angels : boo hewerdine
click here or on the image below to listen



A great song returns to its owner. Popularized in the early 90s by Eddi Reader, Patience of Angels was composed by this former The Bible frontman. What smart songwriting this song has. She's all Tuesdays and forgetfulness, and a little money saved. The sentence doesn't make any literal sense, but it gives you just the right amount of hint at the character of the subject that it almost forces you to create your own story about her life. The song could have done without the sprinkler-from-outer-space intro, though.

peace and hate : the submarines
click here or on the image below to listen



My favorite song in my best-of list. One of the most impressive debut acts of 2006, The Submarines are US couple John and Blake, and their album, Declare A New State, is a collection of songs each of them composed during a prolonged break-up. Theirs is a feel-good-movie rather than a rock-and-roll kind of love story, and the outcome is a sweet and clean work of art, illustrated with vivid lines by their simple lyrics that are tangibly real-world even in their clichés. Take a line from the chorus: Still I love you with all peace and hate. With my series of break-ups and get-back-together episodes in the past, I could have written that!

safe in your arms : beth orton
click here or on the image below to listen



somewhere down the river : elf power
click here or on the image below to listen



the yeah yeah yeah song : the flaming lips
click here or on the image below to listen



The second-best first song from any album of 2006.

you only live once : the strokes
click here or on the image below to listen



The best first song off of any album last year.

yours and mine: calexico
click here or on the image below to listen

merry christmas, i'm sorry

Though that sounds like a title for a Morrissey song, that's basically what I have to say. It's Christmas eve and this is my last post for the year, and I'm sorry I didn't even get to finish my Best Songs of 2006 list. But that will be the first thing I'll do in the new year. I'll be back on January 4th and add 6 to 11 more. Please send me an e-mail at alternativesounds{at}gmail{dot}com if you would like to receive updates of this blog. In the meantime enjoy this song that I posted a few weeks back to spruce up my profile in a travel forum. It's called Yumeji's Theme by Shigeru Umebayashi, used in the Hong Kong film In The Mood For Love.

new in my top 25

Most played songs in my iPod, that is.

mid-november : johnathan rice
click here or on the image below to listen



A fitting post given that we just crossed that part of the month. There seems to be so much Johnathan Rice is trying to say in this song, but I can't get through the lyrics. What's the story behind it? While it speaks of war, I couldn't make out if it's literal. The mention of death and coins on the eyes – a reference to the ancient practice of placing copper coins on the eyes of soldiers who died at war, according to the movie Troy – made me think it is. I have an outrageous theory. The narrator is the spirit of a soldier at war, wounded and fighting for his life. He visits his loved one, finds her in bed restless, and wonders if she somehow knows of his condition. This is probably nowhere near what Rice had in mind, but nonetheless I find Mid-November gravely sentimental, especially with that voice that seems to have just been squeezed out of clinical depression. Feel free to share your ideas.

please don't send me away : matthew jay
click here or on the image below to listen



Here's another song that breathes with trouble and secrecy. Following the lyrics, one might immediately look at it as paternal discourse. But Matthew Jay was not even 24 when he wrote the song – that was his age when he died from falling from the seventh floor of a building – so it might be that it was his conscience, personified by his father, speaking to him. Torment, after all, comes in many voices. I'm not familiar with Jay's life story, but it looks like suicide was never ruled out as a cause of his fall, and I think his family even volunteered the information that he left no note. It's probably just me, but the words, especially the last three lines of the song, read like a self-addressed farewell note of someone who expected way too much responsibility from himself and failed to meet his own expectations in spite of second chances. Ah, but I think I'm being too morbid.

way of the sun : archer prewitt
click here or on the image below to listen



I don't normally like the sound of everyday objects or even nature being used in a song, and the chime or music box effect at the intro of Way Of The Sun is no exception. But the rest of this clever and striking post-apocalyptic song makes it a worthwhile listen. Think of a massive disaster, natural or man-made, that cost lives and property and imagine people huddled on rooftops waiting for evacuation. That's the image I get from the third and fourth verses of this song, and as if the lyrics weren't sufficient enough to hint at salvation, comes the invocation of "Ave Maria" which falls just a bit short of sounding somber. I thought it was an unnecessary turn, but here I am talking about it, which means it did its job of calling attention to itself. But what follows after that – a series of claps – is a charming melodic transition to the gradual, restrained ending of the song.

Anyway. I'll try to post newer songs next. I'm off to get Teitur's latest album. I can't wait.

grumpy old men

end the vietnam war : allen ginsberg
anarchy : utah phillips
click on either title to listen



Off to Singapore for a business trip; I will be back this weekend. Here are a couple of old anti-war records, which are as much as I can say about the war in Iraq now. The Democrat victory pleases me; I would love to see a reduction of troops there together with a more decisive exit strategy as far as the government of the country is concerned – one that takes into careful consideration the differences of the domestic political forces there, and that will preserve lives and prevent Iraq from spiralling further down into the hell hole the Bush administration has dug for it. I am now especially eager to find out what happens about Iran more than anything else. As far as I know, an attack on the Islamic Republic was almost a done deal before the mid-term election. I count on the Democrat-led Congress to change that. Iran, and more importantly the Iranian people, do not deserve any form of military hostility, regardless of the government's new claim that its nuclear program will be completed by March. To be sure, Iran does seem to want to annihilate Israel – I've seen the propaganda posters all over Tehran myself having been to Iran last July – but my feeling is this intent is just that, a propaganda being perpetrated by the mullahs for whatever purpose they are trying to achieve. To preempt this empty threat by attacking it on the back of the failure in Iraq is neither morally nor politically astute.

introducing alternative tales

Alright, as some of you know, I write for a living, and that what I do is nowhere near what I want to be writing about. I used to write a lot fiction and poetry, but I've stopped. I plan to change that, and just to make it more fun to do, since music is my foremost interest, I decided to combine both music and fiction.

Introducing alternative tales : stories from my ipod. Essentially, this is my self-imposed mental exercise, and it will only work with your help.

Here's what you do: Give me a song, pick a line from that song, and then give me a name, place, or object.

And here's what I do: I'll write a flash fiction* about or inspired by that song, throwing in that line and name, place, or object you picked.

Anything but rap, metal, country and bubblegum pop.

*It's basically a very, very short story of 250 to 1,000 words. I have one online: Here. (No, that's not my real name.)

I'll post the story – and the songs so you can listen to them as usual – at alternative tales.

To start, I give you a story called Rudie Can't Fail -- from the song by the same title by The Clash. A member of a forum I often visit suggested it, and he chose the line "How you get a rude and a reckless, don't you be so crude and a feckless, you been drinking brew for breakfast, Rudie can't fail." His person is Mother Teresa.

And so it is. Let me know what you think, please, and don't forget to make your own suggestions.

holiday pics anyone?

I'm just taking care of some backlog project here. Apart from a couple of songs, below are links to picture galleries from my last two summer holidays. The first one is from the Cyclades Islands in Greece where the significant other and I spent about a couple of weeks just this July; the second is from Oaxaca, part of my three-week Mexico trip in July last year. Oaxaca isn't actually in good shape right now, and I sure hope they sort things out pronto.

Listen to the songs I'm posting while you, it is my hope, enjoy the pictures. The songs and the pictures don't exactly go together, but these are bands I've been listening to lately, as I just bought their Best Of compilations that they released a few months ago. The Tragically Hip and Gomez are underrated bands I like. TTH live up to the tragic in their name. These talented Canadians, who pre-date the recent wave of bands north of the border such as The Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade and even The New Pornographers, should be bigger than they are. In fact, they've been around since 1983. Gomez, likewise, came before the Brit wave that we are still seeing. And even though they have a Mercury Prize to prove their worth, admittedly, I think they were not as exciting as the fresher lot. They're finding new popularity, however, after Grey's Anatomy used one of their new songs, a boost they could certainly use.

So. Click on the titles to listen to the songs, which will pop up in a new window as usual, then click on the pictures to go to the galleries. They will open in this same page, but there's a link back if you want to return to this here blog.

scared : the tragically hip
click on the title to listen
click on the picture to see greece




diskoloadout : gomez
click on the title to listen
click on the picture to see oaxaca

sometimes i am such a wuss

auto rock : mogwai
click here or on the image below to listen

Has a song ever made you cry, and not in a contemptuous smart-ass kind of way? In the wide range of human emotions, nothing is as confusing and unreal as shedding a tear over a song that has no sentimental meaning to you. I was standing at a bus stop the other day, staring at nothing, iPod in my ears as usual. The morning had been perfectly ordinary: a slice of bread, a swig of orange juice, fumbling with my keys, waiting for the elevator, a foggy horizon, an elderly man walking his dog, a breath of autumn, missing the 8:40. I could call for a shared cab but decided to wait for the next bus, which was to come in 18 minutes. Alone at the station, I crossed my arms by force of habit, and rested my back against the billboard . There was nothing in particular to occupy the mind. I focused on the music. What was this quiet intro? An 18-second soundtrack to the birth of the universe? And then came the piano, calling, heaving, a stirring succession of notes pulling me out of my early-morning indifference. And before I knew it, an invisible lump had welled up in my chest, beating with every pound of the drums in the song, growing larger with the rise in its volume, and finally forcing a tear from the corner of my eye. I looked down and pressed my lips against my fist. Another tear fell. I turned back to wipe my cheek. The pounding only grew louder. Was this a never-ending crescendo? All I could do was wait for the song to end, and it did with little warning, a sudden break after a rush, rug pulled from under feet, throwing me into a wall of questions that had no words but spelled the same: What the fuck just happened?

alone in kyoto : air
click here or on the image below to listen

I will never know, and I don't care enough to find out. All I know is that Auto Rock continues to haunt me, minus the tears. I could not connect the song to anything in my memory – unlike Alone In Kyoto, which comes from the soundtrack to the film Lost in Translation. I saw it shortly after it came out and really liked the score, especially the intro where Bill Murray was being driven from the airport to his hotel. I remember the part of the film where this song was used. Three scenes, in fact: a Japanese couple marching to their wedding, holding hands; Scarlett Johansson tying a strip of white paper on a wishing tree; and again her character half-bouncing on a trail of circle steps. The film succeeded in resonating the isolation and alientation of travelers. This song brings to me that kind of sentiment; it doesn't make me weep, but it sure isn't happy. Even without the memory of the film, the song actually stands on its own as a mild blow to the heart. If the trilling vocals don't release butterflies in your stomach, then congratulations for not being the wuss that I am.