Davey Recommends: Five songs

A couple years ago I read that Cameron Crowe (the dude who wrote and directed such great films as Say Anything and Almost Famous, and such subpar ones as Jerry Maguire) made a bunch of mix tapes every year and kept them as a kind of journal. I thought that was cool. I was thinking about that on the ride across the country, and thought with this blog it'd be fun to post a few things I've been enjoying recently--movies, books, music, etc. Maybe once a monthish. As a means of sharing, and hopefully providing some good recommendations and whatnot. So anyways, without further ado, here are five songs I've been superdigging of late:


"This Bitter Earth/On the Nature of Daylight," Dinah Washington; Max Richter; Remix by Robbie Robertson
A brilliant, beautiful, heartbreaking remix of Washington's vocals with Max Richter's haunting orchestral piece. Robbie Robertson (lead singer of The Band) arranged this for the credits of Shutter Island, and, if anything, it's even greater in context of the movie. Both songs are great on their own, too. I'm usually not big on the whole mashup remix thing, but this is just gorgeous and inspired.

"Wake Up," Arcade Fire
I listened to this probably a dozen times while driving back to Utah last week, and it made me super happy every time. I love the sound of Arcade Fire (trivia: lead singer's Mormon! Percussionist and backup vocalist is his wife!); they sound a bit to me like a band Arvo Part might have formed if he'd been asked to write rock music for a Wes Anderson movie or something. Love the texture of the instruments and the sounds. This was used in the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are, which is not only pretty much the best movie ever made, it was also pretty much the best trailer ever made. Super inspiring song. Somehow, the live version of it with David Bowie on vocals is not The Best Thing Ever, even though it has every reason to be.

"Emily," Joanna Newsom
Part 1
Part 2
Joanna Newsom's totally distinctive vocals and harp-based songwriting are at their best on Ys, which I'd say is her best album, and this is probably my favorite song on it. I love her voice and the harp and the orchestra and the whole strange, magical feel of it. Any song that evokes celestial bodies in the lyrics also wins bonus points from me. All the lyrics are great, in fact--there aren't too many songs with lyrics that I think are necessarily worth looking at as poetry outside their original context, but this is one of them. Newsom is probably not for all tastes, but I think she's one of the best musicians around these days; she came out with a three-disc album just a few months ago that's almost on par with Ys.

"Afterglow," The Small Faces
Man, why is it no one talks about The Small Faces? One of the most underrated rock groups ever. This song stands up to anything else that came out of the British Invasion--so good. The songwriting, the performance, everything--such a wonderful combination of devotion to craft and nearly bursting energy. This is what a (pop-)rock song should be.

"Christian Zeal and Activity," John Adams
This was also used on the Shutter Island soundtrack (the whole soundtrack is worth checking out as a wonderful collection of some beautiful 20th century classical music). I ran across this particular piece a number of months earlier, and I love the holy, hypnotic, strings-induced trance, and the incorporation of the speech sound loops. This is the piece that got me into John Adams, who, in addition to being a pretty great president, is also one of my favorite composers these days.