Thursday Random Eight (10/23/2008)

The first eight songs of the day after setting the iPod to shuffle play:

My Bloody Valentine - To Here Knows When: Probably a thousand bands have tried to mimic the noisy, wall-of-sound music of Loveless, but nearly all of them miss the fact that every track on the recording is a genuinely good song before it got "noised-up." It sounds cliche at this point, but this is still one of my favorite releases ever.

Robyn Hitchcock - Queen of Eyes: A fairly straight-forward track full of lyrical Hitchcockianisms that makes for interesting listening.

Peter Holsapple / Chris Stamey - Here Without You: A cover of the Gene Clark / Byrds song from the former dB's front men.

Archers of Loaf - Assassination on Christmas Eve: A catchy tune from the somewhat-concept album All The Nation's Airports, which probably has a story behind it that I never bothered to understand. If you can avoid letting the words "concept album" scare you, this is a very solid release from the Archers, probably only second in enjoyability to their studio-finale White Trash Heroes.

Dengue Fever - Thanks-A-Lot: A California band playing Cambodian traditional (or, at least sounding) songs; as an early release, this one is more ethnic sounding than eventual tracks that mixed the sound with more contemporary riffs.

Dengue Fever - Sui Bong: Speaking of more contemporary sounds, this one is from Escape From Dragon House and mixes the female Cambodian vocalist / lyrics with a harder edge sound.

Talking Heads (Tom Tom Club) - Genius of Love: The strange opportunity Tom Tom Club to play at the Talking Heads show during the Stop Making Sense tour (and subsequent CD release). Can't say this track impresses me much.

Jeff Buckley - Satisfied Mind: From the posthumous Sketches CD, an insight into the quiet practice sessions he apparently would record.