Category: Tunes

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Best tunes of 2003: #11 The Decemberists “Los Angeles, I’m yours”

<< #12    |    #10 >>

I’ve spilled plenty of virtual ink already on the Portland, Oregon based indie-folk quintet led by Colin Meloy. However, the band keeps coming up on these lists of mine because I love them so much, so I might as well spill a little bit more.

“Los Angeles, I’m yours” is a track off The Decemberists’ second album, “Her majesty The Decemberists”. As I’ve already shared, I first heard this album, along with the debut, a year after its release and promptly fell for the literate tales* that frontman Colin Meloy spins into his globalized and folkloric indie rock. Apparently, he wrote this track after his band’s first visit to the great metropolis on the west coast and found that he hated it. The song is a hilarious number where he pokes fun at its denizens and their collective fashion sense**, the sights and the smells, and likens the entirety of it all to vomit from the Pacific Ocean.

“It’s streets and boulevards
Orphans and oligarchs are here
A plaintive melody
Truncated symphony
An ocean’s garbled vomit on the shore”

In true Decemberists fashion, though, the song is not a straight-ahead diss track. The music tells a completely different story, giving the feel of an answer to Sinatra’s “New York, New York”. The melody is at times joyful and wistful but always upbeat. There’s an aggressive strum on the acoustic that sets the mark and the tone. There’s strings. There’s a harmonica. You can almost hear birds chirping at one point… but maybe that would be too much.

As a post script to this entire thing, it’s worth noting Meloy’s story about the first time The Decemberists played this song live in LA after it was released into the world. He had been half expecting to be pelted by tomatoes by the crowd. Instead, the crowd all happily sang along, loudly and proudly, and this changed Mr. Meloy’s mind about the city and its people.

Happy endings all around.

*It was no big surprise to me when Meloy started publishing works of fiction, all of which are great. I just finished “The stars did wander darkling”.

**The women with their underwear straps showing about the waist of their pants and the men with their pants hanging off of them, well below their bottoms.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2003 list, click here.

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Best tunes of 2020: #12 Elliott Brood “Stay out”

<< #13    |    #11 >>

It was an old high school friend that tipped me off to Elliott Brood close to two decades ago. I haven’t seen Jeff in the flesh for many, many years but we’ve long been friends on the Facebook and at some point in the 2000s, he posted on his page about his cousin Casey’s band. I was mildly curious so I checked out their website. Their self-description as ‘death country’ made me laugh enough to give their debut long player, “Ambassador”, a listen and the rest, as they say, was history.

The trio of Mark Sasso, Stephen Pitkin, and Casey Laforet formed in Toronto in 2002, a few years before that fateful Facebook post. I’ve since found much to like in their alternative folk/country/rock over the years, have seen them live a couple of times, and would jump at the chance to do so again. By my count, they’ve released six studio long players and a bunch of EPs, including 2023’s “Town” and 2024’s “Country”, which were collected together to form one super album last year.

Today’s song, though, comes care of their last full-length album, “Keeper”. Of track two, Casey Laforet fully admitted that it was inspired by an old mandolin that he bought in St John’s, Newfoundland, that he calls ‘Old Smokey’. He hadn’t picked the instrument up in a while but when he finally did, “Stay out” simply burst forth into existence. He says that he doesn’t think the song could have or would have been written on a guitar. It was ‘Old Smokey’s tale to tell. Indeed, the mandolin strum is prominent and alive in the song. But so too are the foot stomps and hand claps* and for that we can only be eternally grateful.

“I got healthy kids and a beautiful wife
But I don’t wanna go home
I’m proud and thankful and terrified
But I don’t wanna go home”

“Stay out” is a joyful sounding number despite its not-so-joyful lyrics. Sometimes everything appears to be going well on the outside but things are not quite right on the inside. Thankfully, we have songs like this that make it all feel alright and we can get up to stomp it all out.

Thanks, Old Smokey. And you too, Elliott Brood.

*Both are sounds that the band went to great lengths to include on “Keeper”.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2020 list, click here.

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Eighties’ best 100 redux: #85 Thompson Twins “Hold me now” (1983)

<< #86    |    #84 >>

Check out that hair! Yeesh!

Thompson Twins’ “Hold me now”, at song #85, is something of a guilty pleasure* of mine. When I was in grade five, I thought the band was the coolest thing ever and even today, I still know all the words to this song. I’m dedicating this one to Victoria, my lovely wife, for whom this song is also a pleasure, but maybe not so guilty.

Like so many British New Wave bands of this era, Thompson Twins began as a post-punk band (seriously) and at the time of their debut album, had a roster of six members! Alannah Currie was only officially added as the seventh member for the band’s sophomore album, 1982’s “Set”. The band’s core of Currie, Tom Bailey and Joe Leeway were convinced by their manager at the time to whittle themselves down to a trio and expand on their synth pop direction, given the North American success in 1982 of single, “In the name of love.” The changes paid off because the band enjoyed global success for the next four years and three albums, culminating in an appearance at Live Aid in 1985 where they were joined onstage by none other than pop icon, Madonna.

“Hold me now” was the first single released off Thompson Twins’ fourth album, “Into the gap” and despite the sneers of critics everywhere, was a huge hit the world over, charting into the top ten of many countries’ charts. I personally remember watching this video for many weeks running on my favourite music chart show at the time, CHUM FM top 30 videos. Sure, it sounds dated now, as does most of the band’s back catalogue, but it still has a place in my Apple Music library. The nostalgia factor is strong here.

Click the play button on the video below and sing along loudly with me.

Original Eighties best 100 position: #88

Favourite lyric: I like: “You say I’m a dreamer, we’re two of a kind / Both of us searching for some perfect world, we know we’ll never find.” But I’m near certain Victoria likes: “And then I’ll ask your forgiveness though I don’t know / Just what I’m asking it for.” Maybe because it reminds her of the two of us together.

Where are they now?: Joe Leeway left the band in 1986 and the remaining duo of Bailey and Currie officially called it quits in 1993. The band has never considered a reunion but since 2014, former lead singer Tom Bailey has regularly toured under the name “Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey”.

*I’ve always called this one a ‘guilty pleasure’ but I think I’m nearly ready to own it. Give me another year or two. 😉

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.