I'd make wine from your tears

I can't say I was ever a huge fan of INXS' Never Tear Us Apart when it originally dropped. At the time, thought it was too melodramatic, too bombastic and, worst of all, overplayed. I hear the original every now and then and it's really a decent song. I think my dislike for it stemmed from the fact that it was just a product of its time coupled with my distaste for chart music. That said, I really dig this cover by Beck's Record Club. The Record Club appears to be a rotating cast of whomever he can gather to come hang out in his studio to cover random albums. They've already done Skip Spence, The Velvet Underground and Nico, and Leonard Cohen. Right now, they're in the middle of INXS. You can check out the rest of the Record Club entries by clicking here.


Record Club: INXS "Never Tear Us Apart" from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Jukebox il topo

It's mixtape time again, kids!

Something of a linguistically confused blind mole's grapple in the dazzling spring sun for cultural sure footing, calling to mind this fucked up Jodorowsky film, but without the Wild West and more sex and art-damaged Italian shoes instead? A still from Antonioni's La Notte provides the cover image, and a few shots of cachaça, euro politico-financial anxiety, and a helping of Kubrickian ultraviolence spike the punch bowl of my melted mental topography map, pop-musically speaking, circa May 2010.

Download here; tracklisting after the jump.

I was not sitting with the gargoyles

I don't know where it came from or how, but I am completely obsessed with Hiding All Away by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. It's got this menacing lurch, like a monster looming in the distance, its shadow cast upon you as it slowly moves in your direction. I'm not sure what to make of the lyrics, it seems sorta like a stream-of-consciousness rant. Maybe about God, and how he is everywhere no matter what is going on? Nick Cave has never shied away from religious imagery, so I wouldn't doubt it. I like the part where the backup singers sorta lose it and start laughing. Finally, when there is no more tension to build, the climax of the song hits. The band practically explodes and all of the voices are shouting "THERE IS A WAR COMING!", and it makes me either want to take shelter or run out in the streets, screaming along with them.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds > Hiding All Away

Happy Mother's Day

For all you mothers and mothers-to-be, here's an amusing little story from the legendary Tom Waits.

Tom Waits > Untitled #2

Sometimes I Dream of Willie Mays

Happy (belated) birthday to Willie Mays (May 6, 1931), one of the best ever to play the game.

Grab The Baseball Project's underrated Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails album, on which you can find this track. Thanks to Madmadcat, die hard San Francisco Giants fan, for steering me to this album.

The Baseball Project > Sometimes I Dream of Willie Mays

Funeral for Churchill

In honour of Britain's freshly hung parliament, I pass along a fine mixtape made by my brother a couple weeks ago: "An admittedly tenuous blend of old British imperialism and full-on freakout psychadelia," he writes. "Preferably listened to while wearing a Victorian military jacket of some sort (and, uh, lined with acid.) Good times."

It is worth noting that Churchill himself was never once elected prime minister with a popular vote greater than 50 percent. David Cameron, carrying on the peculiar tradition of British politics, thinks he should now be PM with 36 percent. Proportional representation in parliament, with all the messy coalition-building that entails, is the core demand being made by the monkeywrench in this election, the Liberal Democrats. Seems to be an idea whose time has definitively come...