The Wily Filipino

The August 2007 Mix.

It's The National month here at The Wily Filipino, but there's other music besides. So here goes: my favorite music of the last 30 days. (The mp3s can be played in the Box widget at the end of the entry. No, you can't download them, because I'm already violating enough copyright as it is. UPDATE: Oops. It looks like you can indeed download the stuff. Hmm.)

1. the brilliant green, "Flowers"
from the 2002 album THE WINTER ALBUM

Other than the fact that their lead singer, Tomoko Kawase, is the most beautiful woman in the world other than Rosario Dawson -- and feel free to navigate away from here and come back in 15 minutes -- the brilliant green specializes in straightforward, no-nonsense, radio-friendly guitar pop of the highest order. Tommy Kawase herself has two excellent side projects, Tommy February6 and Tommy Heavenly6, exploring different facets of her personality, but now TBG are together again. (Funny thing is, Tommy clearly can't sing live very well, and despite her danceable, creme-filled TF6 songs, is a rather lackluster dancer. I love her anyway.)

It's the brilliant green's midtempo ballads that really shine, though. Folks familiar with their singles would probably hear nothing very little in "Flowers" to differentiate it from, say, their hits like "Angel Song" or "Hello Another Way", but such perfectly calibrated, wistful pop -- particularly this song buried in the middle of the album -- shouldn't go unnoticed.

Lyrics in English transliteration.
Live version on YouTube.
Amazon Link.
Official website.

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2. Eggstone, "Against the Sun"
from the 1994 album Somersault

I've always had a soft spot for jangly indie pop, particularly in short bursts like "Against the Sun"; the fact that Eggstone comes from Sweden [insert gratuitous reference to IKEA, the Cardigans and Volvo here] seals the deal.

Lyrics.
Amazon link.
Official website.

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3. Maria João & Mário Laginha, "From Both Sides Now"
from the 2003 album Undercovers

Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" is as chestnutty as it gets, covered to exhaustion by different artists in the last four decades. (My first exposure to it was not to the original song, but to a Frank Sinatra version on his odd 1968 album Cycles -- which I remembered because of its front cover, showing a weary Frank.)

And despite the relative triteness of the song -- it's like the Beatles' "Yesterday" -- there's something awfully sweet about this version, all lovely piano tinkle and that soft but insistent percussion in the background. (It's not actually representative of João's work; in my favorite song of hers, "Pés No Chão", her vocals swoop and sputter like Bjork.)

Amazon link,
Official websites.

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4. Mandy Moore, "Looking Forward to Looking Back"
from the 2007 album Wild Hope

Drove to your house in the hills
Where I wanted to be
The lights were all on
And I knew you were waiting for me
And that road became familiar
Like the mystery shape of your heart

[CHORUS]
And I know you loved me in your way
I'm looking forward to looking back on these days
And I'm fine, but I'm not okay
I'm looking forward to looking back on these days

The fog in the morning clouded the world that we knew
It was almost enough being lonely and living for you
And the rain came to our window

And I wish I could've stayed

[CHORUS]

Let it go
Let it go sunshine
Now you know
Now you know it's time
It's time

You were asleep while I gathered my things in the dark
The burns on my fingers were all that was left of the spark
Didn't want to wake you
'Cause I knew I couldn't stay

[CHORUS]

I'm looking forward to looking back on these days

It's a remarkably simple song, but filled with little grace notes: the harmonies on the chorus, the great line "And I'm fine, but I'm not okay." As I wrote in a previous post, Wild Hope is Mandy Moore's largely successful attempt to be taken seriously as a singer-songwriter, and if the writing of the songs probably started off with her and an acoustic guitar rather than a producer with a synth and ProTools, then so be it. People grow up.

Amazon link.
Official website.

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5. The National, "Secret Meeting"

and 6. The National, "Mr. November"
from the 2005 album Alligator

All right, so The National is my favorite artist of the month, and I'll tell you why: it's not just Matt Berninger's baritone, but also the darkly ambiguous, vaguely romantic, evocatively filthy lyrics. Most of the time they don't make much sense; one gets the feeling that, like Yo La Tengo's songs, the lines refer to various private references, to glimmers of intimacies. "I won't fuck us over, I'm Mr. November," goes the chorus for the last song on Alligator. There's something both valedictory and despairing in his delivery, and it's this contradictory combination of elements that also animates the uplifting yet self-absorbed "Secret Meeting", with his vocals half-drowned out at the end by the voices inside his head.

Lyrics (scroll to the bottom for "Mr. November").
Amazon link.
Official website.

7. The National, "Fake Empire"

and 8. The National, "Mistaken for Strangers"
from the 2007 album Boxer

Fake Empire

Stay out super late tonight picking apples, making pies
put a little something in our lemonade and take it with us
we're half-awake in a fake empire
we're half-awake in a fake empire

Tiptoe through our shiny city with our diamond slippers on
Do our gay ballet on ice
bluebirds on our shoulders
we're half-awake in a fake empire
we're half-awake in a fake empire

Turn the light out say goodnight
no thinking for a little while
let's not try to figure out everything it wants
It's hard to keep track of you falling through the sky
we're half-awake in a fake empire
we're half-awake in a fake empire

Mistaken for Strangers

You have to do it running but you do everything that they ask you to
cause you don't mind seeing yourself in a picture
as long as you look faraway, as long as you look removed
showered and blue-blazered, fill yourself with quarters
showered and blue-blazered, fill yourself with quarters

You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends
when you pass them at night under the silvery, silvery citibank lights
arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under
oh you wouldn't want an angel watching over
surprise, surprise they wouldn’t wanna watch
another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults

Make up something to believe in your heart of hearts
so you have something to wear on your sleeve of sleeves
so you swear you just saw a feathery woman
carry a blindfolded man through the trees
showered and blue-blazered, fill yourself with quarters
showered and blue-blazered, fill yourself with quarters

You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends
when you pass them at night under the silvery, silvery citibank lights
arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under
oh you wouldn't want an angel watching over
surprise, surprise they wouldn’t wanna watch
another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults

You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends
when you pass them at night under the silvery, silvery citibank lights
arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under
oh you wouldn't want an angel watching over
surprise, surprise they wouldn’t wanna watch
another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults

It actually wasn't very easy to pick my favorite The National songs; I ended up having to cull out "The Geese of Beverly Road" and "The Daughters of the SoHo Riots" and "Slow Show" (which contains the fantastic refrain, "You know I dreamed about you / for twenty-nine years before I saw you"). "Fake Empire" is the first song on their new album, which is very likely to be on my year-end shortlist of albums; "Mistaken for Strangers" seems like a dark companion piece to LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends", or at least the way Hua Hsu writes about it.

Video for "Mistaken for Strangers" on YouTube.
Amazon link.

Posted by the wily filipino at September 1, 2007 10:17 PM