Song confessions:

Santana " The Game of Love"

Ok. If you said, "Dude that song sucks!" I might be inclined to agree with you, in any case I'd find it hard to disagree. But I was in Y Not II with Zack on Saturday afternoon and I realized that I really like this. And I told Zack there on that spot/stool, "Uh oh, I think I really like this song!" Like the scene in Revenge of The Nerds where the cheerleader comes to the sobering realization "I'm in love with a nerd!", only some strange reversal. All the Santana shit I don't care about, let's get that straight. It's the way Michelle Branch stretches out 'whyyyyyyyyy-hyyyy don't you come around no more?' that gets me. It makes me cringe with a combination of swooning pleasure and revulsion that I can only identify as love. A peculiar kind of love, for that of a song with at least one moment of beguiling 80s-reminscent vocal histrionics to rival anything from Aha, Howard Jones, Ariel Pink or...

Til Tuesday "Voices Carry"

This is my favorite song on the Polish Falcon jukebox. I know there are more tastefull things on it, The Beatles, a Dylan's Greatest, even the Everly Brothers (tho no "I Know We'll Love Again" or "You're Gonna Be Lonely" or even "Dream") but this is just a perfect fucking pop song. The cautious, ephemeral fade-in, ghosty keyboards, Aimee Mann's long-since abandoned yelpy vocal style. This has that quality from 80s songs that I find fascinating in that they just seem to leave plume in their wake. Zack said it would be better if the chorus said "This is scary". But that would defeat the whole premise of the song, which is that Aimee Mann's boyfriend is making her suspicious, always wanted her to keep her voice down, keep a low profile. "Fuck THAT!" she essentially says, by the end mockingly yelling "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP", throwing the corsage he gave her back in his face and just generally making a scene at the opera house. If I were a DJ I would play this back to back with "Shut Up Shut Up" by the Residents. I don't think I'd be asked back.

Ariel Pink "Oceans of Weep"

Rain sounds. Piano sounds. Very plaintive vocals sung over the phone (sounds like anyway). This is one of the songs, like My Bloody Valentine where I'm thinking "What are they saying? And do I even want to know, based off prior experience, and also just the fact that this emits a beautiful sound?" I think Ariel Pink's greatness lies partly in his consciousness of the way music sounds coming out of an abyss. You have a stereo sitting in your room and put this disc in it and it produces music. Is that too reductionist? I think this song is close to what DJ Shadow wanted when he was in his "80s period". Something I admire in a performance is when a performer is willing to just vomit out whatever's there to vomit out and see how far it goes, when art reverts to an infant state, from Suicide to Will Ferrell shrieking in a phone booth.