6 posts tagged “soundtrack project”
Pensive. In a good way.
Just because.
Also, this:
Must be the time of year.
Elope are a broody and schooled-by-the-70s (in an excellent, songwriterly way) trio from Sweden.
The record this song is on will be released sometime late summer/early fall.
I heard this and loved it, because I have a thing for the song "Sunset Grill" by Don Henley strained through 1973-75, as though Hotel California and The Long Run never happened.
I was particularly enamored of the record this song is from, The Colour of Spring,
my first two years of college. I wore out a couple of cassette tapes,
even. When all the Talk Talk stuff got reissued as a set 10 years ago,
I snapped it up and still listen to all four CDs all the time - they're
so not '80s even though they're totally 80s; Mark Hollis' voice
is timeless even if the electronic drumming isn't. His self-titled solo
record is definitely worth searching for.
This song was playing while I was dressing for a spring 1988 party
where an ex-fling was going to be, and I was going against my
boyfriend's wishes. It was also playing often the spring before, with
the sun pouring into my room in Bigelow Hall weekend mornings after a
workout while I reveled in being 18 and on my own.
Oh, Smithereens!
Oh, Especially For You! Oh, Beauty and Sadness EP (especially Beauty and Sadness EP)! Oh, Green Thoughts, even! Such brilliant, brilliant stuff.
The Smithereens released their best work in the mid-80s; by the time 11
came out in 1989, they were getting the likes of Belinda Carlisle to
guest on vocals and being real asses on stage (I saw them in early 1990
after this record came out - it was a terrible day, with lots of
drunkenness and lighting the wrong ends of cigarettes at a venue we
couldn't leave; even Soul Asylum, who were opening, were lackluster) -
essentially, the more commercial their music got, the less I liked them.
But when I heard this song it caught me; a little unexpected chord
change here, a sweet harmony there. It's eminently coverable, with lots
of potential for other, unexplored harmonies. It's short and sad and
doesn't try too hard.
In my movie, this song is playing my senior year of college, in the
fall, just before - well, everything that happened that year, which
was, well, everything. The record store job. The radio station.
A guy named G, who taught me so much about music and remains a friend
17 years later. No, this song is playing as I swing across campus,
freed from a silly boyfriend but wondering about someone sillier,
leaves falling around my head.
Memes always ask the question who would play you in the movie about your life?
I prefer to ask the question which songs would be on the soundtrack to the movie about your life?
The songs in this ongoing series would be good in any movie if
appropriately
placed. I've dreamed, in the past, of having the job where you get to
decide which song goes where. I have a friend who does that now for a
very popular show on NPR. Jealous. She has great taste in music.
For me, the songs don't have to have to be attached to a particular event to make my soundtrack. For example, the song below wouldn't necessarily be in the movie during the part of my high school life where I'm swooning over E (which is what I was doing when I was into this record); it could be during a montage of Jim and I walking the streets in CHGO, or playing frisbee on the beach, or frolicking with the kids, or whatever. It's definitely an action song.
The song is "Burn For You" by INXS, from their completely underrated 1984 classic The Swing.
Most records from that period have withered and dated themselves; this
record is 22 years old (!) and sounds fresh and potent and earnestly
sexy and blunt. Michael Hutchence effectively channels Mick Jagger on
this record but not in a he's-being-obvious-on-purpose kind of
way; it's the subtleties - the way he sings with the women on this song
reminds me, strangely, of the way Jagger sings with Carly Simon on
"You're So Vain". It's totally effective and a little sad; this record
was really INXS' creative apex.
This song would definitely be in the my autobiographical movie. It
would be during the part, I think, where Jim and I are walking in
downtown CHGO, record shopping, eating ice cream, trying on clothes,
falling in love.
