Sunday Shuffle #1

So, in the spirit of actually writing about things that aren't Sugar Rush, I'm introducing a new weekly feature, cunningly designed to, hopefully, require a fairly minimal amount of effort on my part, while providing something interesting to read. If either one of those two things is actually the case, I'll consider it a rousing success.

Here's how it goes; every Sunday, or thereabouts, I'll open up [MUSIC PLAYER OF CHOICE], stick on the shuffle function, and then write something about whatever ten songs come up first. Some of them, I will probably have more to say about than others. It's that simple.

First up this week, Pulp - Roadkill. I'll preface by pointing out that Pulp are constantly vying with a couple of other bands for the esteemed position of my Favourite Band In The World Ever!!! II. That said, this is most definitely the weakest track on the otherwise sublime We Love Life, being an honestly rather dreary affair, and lyrics that are simply OK, with no stand-out examples of Jarvis Cocker's stellar wit.

Next, Radiohead - Creep (Acoustic). Well, thanks, [MUSIC PLAYER OF CHOICE]. I'm sure I'll have lots to say about Creep that hasn't already been said. Well, it's the acoustic version, so you've got the hilarious deep-voiced substitution of "very" for "fucking" and Thom getting really, really into it at the end. I think I like this version better than the studio version, actually. Also, if you haven't seen it before, check out this awesome video that someone made for it.

Modest Mouse - Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes. "I'm gonna get dressed up in plastic/gonna shake hands with the masses/OH NO!!!". Fantastic.

Manic Street Preachers - Baby Elian. So, the Manics have always had a habit of making ridiculously overlong albums, and Know Your Enemy may be the worst example of this, but there are diamonds to be found in the rough, and Baby Elian is one of them. It's by the Manics, so the lyrics are of course intensely political , but they're tied into a very nice tune.

The Flaming Lips - Slow Motion. Wonderfully uplifting drift-away stuff. The Soft Bulletin is a really great album, isn't it?

Natasha Bedingfield - These Words. Wow, I wouldn't have expected that something could follow The Flaming Lips and be even more joyous and uplifting, but seriously. I haven't listened to this for a long while, so overplay problems that it may have had at some point have worn off, and I can just enjoy the fuck out of it. "Read some Byron, Shelley and Keats/recited it over a hip-hop beat/I'm having trouble saying what I mean/With dead poets and a drum machine". If you can't see the utter genius in that, I just... you're dead to me.

Lisa Brown - Sad Day In Tennesse. Ooh, this is one that I don't actually know at all. There's one Lisa Brown (now known as, I believe, Snowfight In The City Centre) song, Hey I Really Love You that I've played a whole lot, because it's awesome, but I've never really paid attention to the rest of their stuff. Well, anyway, this song is OK, but the vocals seem a little off, somehow. I dunno.

Blur - I'm Just A Killer For Your Love. Never noticed this before, but this is definitely one of their most Gorillaz-like songs, I think.

And now it's time for a long rambling story! So, uh, some years ago, me and a somewhat varying number of somewhat like-minded individuals formed a band, known for a majority of it's lifespan, at least, as Avarice, to take the world by storm. Or, not. Anyway, all fired up on adrenaline and youthful exuberance and such, we came together one wonderful Friday evening, and recorded our first song, Silent Pipe hoping to take a triumphant victory in the Songfight competition that week. To this day, it remains, in my opinion, our greatest work, and probably only two of our many other opuses would even join it in the category of "remotely listenable". However, due to general incompetence or something, we didn't actually enter it in the Songfight competition. A few weeks later, we made our first and only Songfight entry, with a song called Frannie, featuring horribly out of tune vocals ("in the manner of a tired heroine addict", according to one reviewer), a cheap Casio keyboard drumloop, all instruments out of time with each other and, for no reason, an oppressively loud synth-string solo in the middle. It did, however, have a pretty awesome bassline, not that you can hear it. The point of all this? Well, Frannie was written in "tribute" to Fran Healy, and the steady decline of the quality of Travis's music over their first four albums, and the next song on this week's shuffle is Travis - Peace The Fuck Out, the absolute nadir of their career to date. It's incredibly ham-fisted anti-war posturing, and, unlike fellow 12 Memories ham-fisted anti-war posturing anthem The Beautiful Occupation, it doesn't even sound good if you can manage to ignore the lyrics. Nonetheless, I'll admit that Peace The Fuck Out is still an infinitely better song than Frannie.

Finally, Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb which, see above re: Creep, only even more so.

And that's all. Next week may not, in fact, have a Sunday Shuffle, since I've cunningly timed starting a "weekly feature" a week before I go back to uni and might be somewhat lacking in internet access for a while.