Austin Kleon – Page 606

FAVORITE SONGS OF 2005

Thursday, December 1, 2005

10 bands that wrote good songs that sounded good to me this year. Some with legal MP3s, some with videos.

$A River Ain\'t Too Much to Love$ Smog – “I feel like the mother of the world” [VIDEO] | [MP3]

…with two children.

Bill Callahan’s songs are the sound of home–the landscape that haunts my head. He recorded it in a new city, with his back to Chicago–and I listened to it in a new city, with my back to Chicago.

Andrew Bird – “A nervous tic motion of the head” [MP3]

Somebody should make another spaghetti western, so Andrew Bird could score it. On stage this song becomes epic–toes tapping pedals, looped violins, and that whistle. That whistle!

Feist – “Mushaboom” [ITUNES]

collect the pieces / one by one / guess that’s how / the future’s done
i got a man / to stick it out / and make a home / from a rented house

Sheer domestic bliss.

The National – “Abel/All The Wine” [VIDEO | MP3]

Abel, come on, give me the keys, man | I’m a perfect piece of ass

Good guitars, good singer, good songs–it ain’t brain surgery, folks. These songs follow each other on the album, so it’s best to just listen to them both.

Crooked Fingers – “Sleep All Summer” [WEBSITE]

Sunday morning, moping around the apartment. Heartache, even if you’re happy.

Decemberists – “Engine Driver” [MP3]

I am a writer / a writer of fiction / I am the heart that you call home. And I’ve written pages / upon pages / trying to rid you from my bones.

And the creative writing students swoon.

Animal Collective w/ Vashti Bunyan – “Prospect Hummer” [MP3]

No idea what they’re saying. Don’t know, don’t care. It’s the beat, and that “wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wha-wooooooooo.”

Antony – “Hope There’s Someone” [MP3]

The good stuff is always about death, or the fear of death. Check out that ghost vocal line.

Jeremy Warmsley – “I believe in the way you move” [VIDEO]

My mind is in the gutter / but I’m looking at the sky
You get the privelege / of being with me

Sugary singer/songwriter pop with Bjork or Aphex Twin doing the instruments.

Wolf Parade – “Shine a Light / I’ll Believe In Anything” [MYSPACE]

Further proof that Springsteen is an unshakeable influence. Arcade Fire, Wolf Parade, Walkmen…all copping The Boss.

UPDATE: suggestions for making your own list

IN THE STUDIO

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

trying my best to ape Olivier Kugler

KAFKA AT HIS DESK

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

“Poseidon sat at his desk, going over the accounts.”

So here’s Kafka at his desk. At the insurance company. All he wants to do is go home and get to Work, but instead, he’s got to be at the office, doing work. The problem is: he’s competent. This was supposed to be a “temporary” sort of gig, but they’ve promoted him twice in the last six months. They’ve got him writing memos. They’ve got him writing articles. Annual Reports. Lectures. Evaluations. The work piles up. Everybody loves him. “That Kafka,” they say, “he sure can write a memo!” He’s in his twenties. It’s a respectable job. His father brags to friends. He enjoys the bread, but the work means nothing to him. He dashes off e-mails to his girlfriend: “The office is a horror!” He only wants to Work, but he must work. So he writes in secret. He writes a story about a god who can’t be a God because he’s too busy doing godly paperwork. He writes a story about a faster who’s pretty much out of a job, because nobody sits around and watches fasters anymore–they have cable and internet. He writes a story about a guy who hates work so much that he transforms himself into a giant cockroach. (Think of the sick pay!) Then one day, with the Microsoft Word cursor blinking at him, his fingers hovering over the Minimize Shortcut [WINDOWS key + M], his nerves shot from looking out over his shoulder for snoopy co-workers passing the cubicle, Kafka has a revelation. “Screw it,” he says. “I’m going to go get my MFA.”

*sketch from Kafka’s notebook

3 CHUNKS OF MAXWELL

Monday, November 28, 2005

1. On memory: “What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory–meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion–is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.”

2. “Nobody I know in the Middle West has ever gone out of his way to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition.”

3. “…generosity might be the greatest pleasure there is.”

– from William Maxwell’s SO LONG, SEE YOU TOMORROW