Friday, December 24, 2021
i've got a mental image of the way you used to look at me
I've always wondered--and still don't know--how this song got relegated to b-side status, because, maybe after "Stuck Between Stations," it's always sounded like the most Hold Steady Hold Steady song. We're back in Penetration Park and there's some of the most obscure references, even for Craig Finn. That line about the Locust has always made me smirk like a teenager and it's so sweet when everything drops out and they quote the Mountain Goats (and I'm not even that much of a Mountain Goats fan--yeah, I know).
I flew to NYC in 2016 to see PS Eliot's show at the Market Hotel and I remember feeling like that guy at the Metallica show going, "do you think they'll play Sandman?!" Buddy, they're gonna play "Sandman".
i've got a mental image of the way you used to look at me
2006 - The Hold Steady - Girls Like Status
Comparatively, "Stuck..." has always seemed smarter because it has literary references and this one just has relatively obscure indie rock ones, but I've always been more of a smart dumb cat (or maybe dumb dumb cat).
These were close: Cat Power - The Greatest, TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me, Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins - Happy, Califone - The Orchids (Psychic TV), Ladyhawk - The Dugout, Camera Obscura - Lloyd, I'm Ready to be Heartbroken, Fiery Furnaces - Waiting to Know You, Voxtrot - Warmest Part of the Winter
2007 - LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great/All My Friends
These songs have always felt like they just fit together, so here they are as intended.
That said, while I think "Someone Great" is something great, "All My Friends" is my favourite song of all time.
Maybe it's something that would've dawned on me once I sat down to write something like this anyways. But being mostly stuck in once place during the pandemic, has made me think (more than once) about how I've heard this song in so many places at so many different times in the last decade and a half. In NYC actually seeing them for what (at the time at least) could be one of the last times. But also in bars and clubs in San Francisco and Copenhagen and when I used to throw it on at parties here (if you need to pee or grab a beer or both, a 7 and a 1/2 minute song that never really lets up once it gets going is ideal).
It would be a little disingenuous to say this song soundtracked me growing up, since I was already 25 when it came out, but I still had a lot of growing up to do over the next 15 and this song was playing for a lot of that.
These were close: UGK feat. Outkast - Int'l Players Anthem, MIA feat. Bun B and Rich Boy - Paper Planes (Diplo Street Remix), Wilco - Either Way, Shellac - The End of Radio, Jim James and Calexico - Goin' to Acapulco (Bob Dylan cover), Feist - 1234 (bonus: the Sesame Street version), Dntel feat. Jenny Lewis - Roll On
2008 - Waxahatchee - Black Candy
In the grand tradition of Guided by Voices, a good song is still a good song, even if the recording sounds pretty shit. And I love this one. It is, however, weird going year by year like this, cause I think a bunch of songs a couple years before or a couple years after, would bump this out (including forthcoming Waxahatchee songs), but I can't think of anything else in 2008 that I liked more.
A note on another one of my favourites from '08: I certainly haven't devoured music as much as I did when I was writing this thing regularly, but there's still quite a bit of music that I've stumbled upon since then that isn't just new music. And there isn't anyone's songs that I have fell in love with more than Laura Stevenson's. "Mammals" is the first time she'll show up here (and it's off of her first record), but it certainly won't be the last.
These were close: The Hold Steady - Constructive Summer, The Walkmen - In the New Year, Laura Stevenson - Mammals, The Gaslight Anthem - Casanova, Baby!, Chad VanGaalen - Inside the Molecules
2009 - PS Eliot - Tennessee
They closed the show with "Tennessee" and in my brain full of New York moments, the ooh-ooh-ing intro with the subway flying by outside the window behind the band remains one of the my favourite ones.
These were close: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Hysteric, Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys - Empire State of Mind, Marissa Nadler - Little Hells, Japandroids - Young Hearts Spark Fire, Warpaint - Billie Holiday, Pink Mountaintops - Holiday, Miley Cyrus - Party in the USA, The Abramson Singers - Take a Camera
2010 - Japandroids - Younger Us
When this song came out, it reminded me a lot of my last year (you know, the 5th one) of university, particularly buzzing peoples' dorm rooms even though they'd retired for the night, because we found another party.
It's a toss up between this, "Young Hearts Spark Fire," and "The House That Heaven Built," but this one's up there.
There's an argument to be made that this should really just be that part when the beat drops in "Dance Yrself Clean" too.
These were close: Jason Collett - Rave on Sad Songs, Spoon - Trouble Comes Running, LCD Soundsystem - Dance Yrself Clean, The Walkmen - Angela Surf City, Titus Andronicus - A More Perfect Union, Sleigh Bells - Rill Rill
now playing: Jason Collett - Rave on Sad Songs
