I Feel Love

About Me

I'm a freelance copywriter. I live in Melbourne.

This is my personal blog. Older posts are here.

I also have a blog about copywriting. It's here.

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2010 (5)
2009 (31)
2008 (27)
 

25 from the 00s | 2: Rihanna - Umbrella (2007)

Take my advice, bloggers with no self-discipline and an overwhelming tendency to nag yourselves about unfinished business: don't start a "project". It will haunt you.

So anyway, it turns out I've had a massive block about the idea of writing a blog post about "Umbrella". No doubt Keats went through much the same thing in regards to Chapman's Homer.

Anyway, here it is, the second best song of the 00s, according to me six months ago. After several years of R&B tracks that were experiments in rhythm more than "songs" in the traditional sense, it was a nice change to get a hit tune that made such a massive investment in melody. It's one of the few tracks of the 00s that it's easy to imagine being covered in 20 years' time (probably by aliens).

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Ascot Vale has some of the zaniest Edwardian houses in Melbourne

(download)

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25 from the 00s | 3: Felix da Housecat - Silver Screen Shower Scene (Thin White Duke Remix) (2002)

(download)

Remember electroclash? Remember being told it was a flash in the pan, style over substance, how the backlash seemed to set in before the thing itself? (The musical subgenre equivalent of the iPad perhaps...) Anyway, jump to the end of the decade and it's hard to think of a single good thing in dance-ish music that doesn't bear the traces of electroclash. It seems to me that irrespective of any particular stylistic feature, the most important contribution electroclash made was to complicate the idea of the late 80s house/techno boom as a completely new thing, a sweeping away of all that had gone before. Instead, electroclash emphasises the longue durée of dance music - the continuities going back through the 80s all the way to the moment when Giorgio played with his first synthesiser.

The combined talents of Felix da Housecat, Miss Kittin and Stuart Price make this monster of a track one of my signature memories of the electroclash era. Particularly notable is the way it combines a detached overall stance with surges of pure emotion.

By the way, I'm now cross-posting to Tumblr for the benefit of anyone who happens to be a member of that strange cult.

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Non sequitur of the month

When you have as much gleeful gravitas as Goldstein, you don't have to find quirky ways to show off. This latest novel is called 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, and they're really listed, along with their refutations, in the appendix of this book.

- Book review on NPR Fresh Air

Um...

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25 from the 00s | 4: Life Without Buildings - The Leanover (2000)

(download)

OK, let's get this thing done.

This was my favourite "indie" song of the 00s, possibly ever. I've sometimes seen people say they wouldn't mind Life Without Buildings if it wasn't for the awful caterwauling. They couldn't be more wrong, of course, but comments like this are always a good sign for me. One of my favourite things in pop music is a female vocalist who carry off a completely individual, even mannered, style without a trace of apology or irony - Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Kate Bush, Siouxsie Sioux, Chrissy Amphlett, Björk, Roísín Murphy - and Sue Tompkins of Life Without Buildings fits gloriously in that company. Describing her lyrical flow, you automatically reach for the term "stream of consciousness", but it's not quite stream as consciousness as we know it. It constantly teeters on the precipice of meaning - more Gertrude Stein (in Tender Buttons mode) than Virginia Woolf. Again, for me this is a compliment!

Anyway, Life Without Buildings produced one perfect album, Any Other City, then broke up. That's another good thing about them - their career is easy to follow.

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25 from the 00s | 5: Justin Timberlake - My Love (2006)

I've actually heard people say they prefer this track without the intro. Which just goes to show that you should never give people what they want. Yes, the intro is a banal vamp featuring Timberlake and Timbaland swapping intentionally dumb rhymes, BUT that's precisely what makes the vertiginous plunge into celestial, synth-bathed half-time at the start of the song proper one of the most breathtaking pop moments of the decade.

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25 from the 00s | 6: Friendly Fires - Paris (Aeroplane Remix) (2008)

And I was doing so well! Somehow I managed to post a semi-coherent update on pissed-as-a-newt Christmas Day, but forgot completely on hungover Boxing Day. So now, two in short order.

Aeroplane are two Belgians. Pretty much everything they touch turns to gold, and this might be their best work. It's not the first time vocals have been re-recorded for a remix, but the particularly clever touch here is that the original vocals are (briefly) repurposed as backing (around the 3'50" mark). So far, my favourite track of the last couple of years.

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25 from the 00s | 7: Gnarls Barkley - Crazy (2006)

One of the singles of the decade without a doubt, but the definition of "slept on" for me - I didn't really listen to it properly until a year ago, when I heard Lil' Wayne's version of it and was struck not - of course - by the melody, but by those incredible suspended harmonies that plunge you straight into the 18th century. Quite, quite incredible. Happy Christmas!

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25 from the 00s | 8: DJ Koze - Brutalga Square (2004)

We'll have something pretty for Christmas, I promise! In the meantime, here's another track untainted by a hint of melody. "Brutalga Square" is a testament to what you can do with a single note. It's a pretty "hard" track - when the main beat eventually enters, it does so with an earth-shaking thwack - but part of its effect comes from how much of the rhythmic weight is taken by tiny tinkles and snaps that in other tracks would be mere decoration. This is another one you really have to hear in a DJ set though. (Try Michael Mayer's bowel-liquefying Speicher 2 CD.)

Of course, it's Christmas Eve so you'd probably rather listen to this:

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25 from the 00s | 9: Dizzee Rascal - I Luv U (2003)

From darling of the blogosphere at the beginning of the decade to chart-topping pop artiste at the end - it's hardly overnight success, but back in the day I'm not sure we could have seen it coming. In any case, musically speaking it's hard to imagine Dizzee ever topping the astonishing bolt from the blue that was this debut single. For that matter, has any musician ever gone from something this bleak and uncompromising to a No 1 single, over any length of time?

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