orginal voices in music

i am going to now write about of some of my favorite voices in the world of the singing and the dancing.

(i had a longer intro here but looking around on youtube i noticed something, that i am sure a lot of people have noticed/commented on but i just have to put in my three and a half cents: why the fuck would you put a cover on the internet that sucks, and not only that, acknowledge that said cover sucks. like magnetic fields, which i am about to write about, you get covers with titles like "really shitty cover of why i cry on the ukulele". why would you even put something out there with your face and name and suck that bad? if you like or admire the song, why would you butcher it in front of maybe millions of people? and you even admit it sucks? i do not get the kids nowadays. is being noticed more important then being fucking good at something???)

anyway. there are going to be a lot links here for you to feast on so fucking CLICK THEM.

***Corrin Tucker, lead singer and guitarist of Sleater Kinney.****

corine tucker has one of the best singing voices out of any body in any genre in any timeline. the only female i think comes close the heartless bastards, and while they are good, sleater kinney is pretty much the end all female voices in the indie/punk scene. you see a lot of bands that come out with a girl lead singer or an all girl line up and the press swallows it up like its something unheard of. "these girls can not only play music, they sing about blowing off guys, they sing about female empowerment!" and they use this hyperbole to talk about bands like fucking pink or no doubt or paramore or whatever, taylor swift, i dont know.

here was a band that was more true to their guns then most indie bands that i listen to. shit, modest mouse, death cab for cutie, even fucking sonic youth all jumped over the a major label. which is fine, i dont give a shit along as the music stays good, but sleater kinney stayed DYI till the very end. their music was always loud,raw, tight, deep, and beautiful, both on record and live. they were self referential in the way they would use classic riffs and vocal melodies from classic rock songs, and make it sound like some new found breed of sound that was about the crack the earth in two. the embodied female power and truth by just getting out there and doing it louder and better then everybody else. thats how you change minds, thats how you get respect, not by talking about how much of a pioneer, or how much of a role model you are, but by doing it.

but every time corin tuckers sings, her voice hits the bone right where it should. she is absolutly beautiful, singing about topics ranging from driving to the golden gate bridge to jump off of it, waiting in the hospital waiting to find out if her son is going to live after giving birth, to flat out calling out the guys with their guitars trying to be badass. after fans kept yelling for her to show her tits, she went on stage with a t shirt that said "show us your riffs". they were a great band, and while i understand why she stepped away from the music scene, to be a full time mother to her two children, its a shame for the rest of us.

an interview with corin

your no rock and roll fun

the swimmer




*** Stephin Merrit, lead singer and songwriter of the Magnetic Fields.***

i found out about these guys watching an old pete and pete episode. it was the one where artie leaves town , forcing pete to grow up. it may or may not make me cry. it doesnt. but it might. anyway over the credits played this way too gorgeous song for a nickelodeon show. i forgot about it until a couple weeks after the accident, and i looked it up and bam, like that, i found one of my favorite songs. i listen to why i cry a little too much. and like smoking weed for the first time, it was a gateway drug to a great pop band.

i have said that i would love to be stephin merrit. not because of his enormous talent, but because he is such an externally cranky and disinterested human being. one of my all time favorite interviews is with him and and this dorky emo kid. i dont know how this interview happened, but it is so funny and awkward that is makes me smile. i wish most people would react to such stupid questions with the same disdain. i wish i could get away with talking to most people with that kind of open boredom.

but the song at the beginning is actually a great little summary of his music. he is a morose gay man playing a ukulele singing about wanting to be a topless dancer and a playboy bunny and a backstreet hooker. it is funny, weird, and kind of sad. his music exists in this weird cloud of real, actual emotion and very dark ideas, but also this odd irony and detachment. one song could be a dark acoustic narrative about killing himself for no good reason, and the next song is a distorted epic about hating california valley girls. but the music is always poppy, catchy. the band is just natural genius, someone writing about love and loss and life and death, not calling any attention to himself, writing consistent and unpretentious pop songs.

100,000 Fireflies

I Don't Want to Get Over You

Too Drunk to Dream (the story of my fucking life)



*** Alec Ounsworth, solo songwriter, lead singer songwriter to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah***

Alec Ounsworth is probably the best example of someone following their own muse. the very idea of the audience digging anything he does never even pops up in the back of his mind, i am sure. his voice is a high pitched wail of something falling down a very long flight of stairs. his work with clap your hands and say yeah is a very urban and smoky indie rock sound, while his solo stuff is a little more neil young. but thats not to say that any thing he writes sounds like anything else. he is one of the most mysterious and baffling musicians that i listen to on a regular basis. his lyrics are fragments of a bigger and larger idea, but you are not invited to the big picture. the odd thing is, once you get past the vocal pyrotechnics, there is a kind of calm and serenity to all his songs.

i guess what i am trying to say is Alec Ounsworth is more about the mood and the feeling then a direct interpretation of what he is doing. if you get it, you get it. and if you don't, then thats perfectly understandable. you get the feeling that he is making music for nobody but himself, and that line of thinking breeds an unique and kind of insane creativity that you kind of have to just ride the wave on.

personal side note here: one of my most beloved memories is of me and lindsey drinking rum and smoking a joint, doing nothing but listening to music and talking about life and art and whatever song was on. lindsey took a while to warm up to the whole indie scene as a whole, but once she got the feeling behind the band or the song, she would love it, and not only love it, but interpret it in a way that would make me understand it better. i could say that i was "in" or that i "got" it, but i didnt really get something all the way until she did. anyway, we are high as fuck and drunk as fuck and this song comes on the ipod. and for some odd reason, we shut up and just listen to this song. it is scary and weird and demented, catchy and melodic but unhinged, and the last two minutes is easily some of the most grating, annoying, genius, psychotic verses put to record. and we just sit there and nod our heads, and when the climax comes, when the Alec Ounsworth loses his shit and starts chanting with the beat, we both geek out at how much it makes sense. we both understood something abstract and crazy at the same time for the same reason, and nothing needed to be said about it. that moment made the song a favorite of mine for the rest of my life, and every time i listen to it, i think of that moment and it makes the whole thing an infinite and bigger then life affair.

Holy Holy Holy Moses

Modern Girl(with scissors)


enjoy. i will start doing this type of thing more often, even though it takes me hours and hours, it is fun.