Those Old Melodies: Songs Rediscovered

Duncan Browne

“The Wild Places,” Duncan Browne
By Emily Carney
This song is reminiscent of Browne’s work with the band Metro (which also featured Peter Godwin, better known for his insane music videos). Why I love this song: it’s very 1970s sounding with a funky bass line, acoustic guitars, semi-whispered vocals, and lots of lush, choir-like atmospherics. Imagine Seals & Crofts with less bad facial hair and more sexiness. This song sounds positively decadent, and is best listened to when sipping a 1970s drink (like Paul Masson champagne in a jug, preferably “Rhine Castle” flavor).

“The King of Carrot Flowers, Pts. 2 & 3,” Neutral Milk Hotel
By Michelle Patterson
I’ve re-discovered a song from my past and simultaneously tapped back into the power of it because of its connection to a “lightning in a bottle” moment at a festival in Athens, Georgia almost a decade ago. Neutral Milk Hotel’s “The King of Carrot Flowers, Pts. 2 & 3” was the band’s kick-off song to all of their concerts that I’d seen, but this time, on the last day of the music festival in the middle of August, with 100% humidity and stifling 85- to 90-degree weather, it was like a lit match thrown on a puddle of gasoline. The bar decided to play a New Order song directly before Neutral Milk hit the stage, which Jeff Mangum hummed a few bars of before letting out a ponderous, “God, isn’t that song amazing?”

Straight away, the song started out with him wailing out the first lyric of “KoCF” while the band steadily built up the volume and tension behind him, as usual. But, some of the audience was still softly singing New Order’s “True Faith (the Morning Sun)” and bobbing up and down. Because of the heat and my unfortunate short height, I had moved to the back of the room, and stood up on a dirty old couch, in order to see the stage. This allowed me to witness the synchronized waves of heat, smoke, and undulating heads-and-shoulders which all leapt together and merged into one giant swell as soon as the song switched to its sonic peak and Jeff elegantly yowled as loud as possible. It took my breath away. How cool I get to think of that exact moment every time I hear the song now.

“That’s The Way Of The World,” Earth, Wind & Fire
By Jimmy Ether
Mid-70s R&B is my chill pill. A quick spin of the iPod wheel and I’m transported to dark, green shag carpet at the foot of my parents’ mammoth Spanish-styled stereo cabinet. My toddler mind clung to those warm melodies like precious toys. And occasionally, I’ll realize one is shamefully absent from my collection. Today, it was “That’s the Way of
the World” by Earth, Wind & Fire. You can almost hear WKRP‘s Venus Flytrap whispering calmly over the intro, “You gotta keep hearts of fire, my children. . . in this cold world.” I defy you to find a smoother track.

And modest!

“Hot,” Avril Lavigne
By Christian Lipski
There are not many “personalities” that I hate more than Avril Lavigne. Her carefully-crafted “skater rebel punk” image is offensive on so many levels with its Hot Topic mass-consumption aims. Add to that the claim that she writes her songs when there are usually three or four people credited on her songs. Then add to that her new-found sexy grown-up look that she has been assigned in some videos while still playing the skater punk in others. I’m no mathematician, but that all adds up to Number One Suck.

I saw the video for “Hot”—it’s Avril in what seems to be a combination of the Mya/Pink/Xina “Lady Marmalade” video and a Ringling Brothers circus commercial. It’s obviously constructed to push her into a grown-up role, but it’s just embarrassing. I can’t watch more than about 15 seconds of it, even now. But the umpteenth time it came on, in between the curses I hurled at the TV, I heard the chords G-D-A-C played in the chorus and thought, “That’s an epic rock progression.” I investigated further and found that when the song is removed from its poisonous video environment, it is quite possibly the most perfect song ever. I’ve heard the rest of the album, and there’s a whole lot of the skate-punk-rebel-girls-rule stuff, but this one song has broken out of the slime for me, and in the next issue of Popshifter I’ll tell you why.

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