Tag: Indie

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2013: #25 Cayucas “A summer thing”

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Tomorrow is the last day of August. And although, technically, there’s still three more weeks left of the season, the passing from August into September always feels like summer is coming to an end. This is why the timing is perfect for this song to pop up and for me to share this very post. “A summer thing” by Cayucas was a great summer song back in 2013 but it could also be perfect for every summer since.

“The summer’s starting to drift away but you don’t want to let go.
Now you’re watching the rainfall by yourself from your bedroom window.
And I’ll be checking the mailbox for the postcards you said you’d send,
Telling me that you might stop by in the winter for the weekend.”

Zach Yudlin was originally making music by himself in the early 2010s under the moniker Oregon Bike Trails. By 2012, though, he had enlisted his twin brother Ben to the project, changing its name to Cayucas, and then, they signed to Secret Canadian Records. They’ve release four albums in all, the latter two were self-released but the only one I am really all that familiar with is the debut, 2013’s “Bigfoot”. It’s 9 tracks and just a smidge over 30 minutes of sunshine and surf and nostalgia for California, where of course, the brothers call home.

The real gem of the album is track four. “A summer thing” sounds unabashedly like The Beach Boys. Harmonies and yellow light filtered through a kaleidoscope and a music box playing “Sloop John B” on repeat. A bopping bass line and zipper-like guitars and ticky tacky drums. Even the most jaded of music fans or Beach Boys purists couldn’t hate this song. It’s faithful in its blue-eyed wonder and wistfully drenched in memories. It’s a song you just want to restart before it comes to an end because maybe, just maybe, it might delay that cold weather just a little bit longer.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2013 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2003: #16 The White Stripes “Girl, you have no faith in medicine”

<< #17    |    #15 >>

I first came across The White Stripes with their third album, 2001’s “White blood cells”. The primary single from that album, “Fell in love with a girl”, came in at number three on my Best tunes list for that year. And I wrote in that very post about their blues-influenced garage rock and their contribution to the early 2000s indie rock resurgence.

For an encore, Jack and Meg White put together what is arguably their best album, critically and commercially, as a group. Recorded in two weeks in the spring of 2002, purportedly without the help of any technology newer than the early 1960s, “Elephant”, their fourth, found favour with a lot of people, placed the group in the hearts and minds of everyone, each player recognized for their instrumental prowess and the album on many best of the year, decade, and century lists. Personally, I found it delightful from many angles, my favourite track a moving target from day to day while I was initially discovering it, finding in it much to pick apart and unpack. In the end, though, it wasn’t their two big tracks “The hardest button to button” or “Seven nation army”*, nor the Burt Bacharach/Dusty Springfield cover “I just don’t know what to do with myself”** but the penultimate track on the album, “Girl, you have no faith in medicine”, that got me going every time.

Interestingly, this track was recorded for and was supposed to appear on “White blood cells”. Meg wasn’t a fan of it, however, so it was pulled and shelved until Jack lobbied hard for it a couple of year later. A lyric that Meg really took offence to was pulled and the track was re-recorded for “Elephant”. Jack being Jack, he used to tease Meg with it when they played it live and changed the lyrics to ‘Meg, you have no faith in medicine’. I don’t know and really don’t want to investigate what the offending lyric was because if Meg thought it misogynistic, I don’t want it to ruin the song for me.

Indeed, the words in this song have always little import for me. Some have talked about its placebo references and linked it to relationships and others have marvelled how White managed to string the word ‘Acetaminophen’ into the lyrics. I just think the song rocks, and that, in an album full of bangers. Meg’s anger with the skins is palpable and Jack is unrelenting on the guitars. He howls and screams breathlessly and dares us all to keep up with him. Sometimes it’s just this energy that you need to feel and absorb and that will get you through.

*The latter of which is played every night in some stadium or arena somewhere on earth.

**Though it is quite fantastic also.

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

Categories
Vinyl

Vinyl love: Beach House “Teen dream”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: Beach House
Album Title: Teen dream
Year released: 2010
Year reissued: 2020
Details: Gatefold sleeve, clear vinyl, Love Record Stores 2020 release

The skinny: A few weeks after the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down in March 2020, a campaign called ‘Love Record Stores’ was started in support of brick and mortar independent music vendors in England and a number of musical artists, big and small, threw their weight behind it. Many record stores, not just in England but worldwide, had to rethink how they did business and shifted from analog and tactile sales towards the online marketplace. It didn’t happen quickly enough to rescue the Record Store Day festivities in April but Love Record Stores managed something in June, which saw a bunch of artists offer a lot of great albums for special edition pressings in support of the cause. I found and purchased once such record, this clear vinyl reissue of Beach House’s third album, “Teen dream”, a couple of years after the original event. This no-brainer purchase came courtesy of one such indie record store in England that actually has a great online presence and from whom I order quite often. The album had been on my wish list for a while, being one of my favourites by the Baltimore-based dream pop duo. “Teen dream” took the well-practiced elements from their first two outings and amplified them into a collection of memorable numbers. Victoria Legrand’s vocals feels more pronounced, more melodic, and pushed to the fore, breathing new life and energy into their sound. It’s an album that, from the start, I was able to delve into deeply, soak my whole body into its warm flowing eddies and let it stream through my fingers.

Standout track: “Used to be”