Shuffle Sunday, 12/3/17

Joe listens to a lot of music, and usually sticks to listening to music as the artist intends—whole albums, in order. However, on Sundays, he listens to his iPod on shuffle the whole day. Here are the ten songs that played when he was writing this blog post, and what they mean to him.

I'm finding that I'm really looking forward to putting my iPod on shuffle recently, especially now that I'm doing it sparingly, just on Sundays. There's a certain excitement I feel, not knowing what song is coming up next, rediscovering songs I haven't heard in a while, giving songs another chance in a different context, etc. Shuffle Sunday may be a little boring to read, but I always have fun creating it.

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"Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones, from their 1968 album Beggars Banquet

I'll never forgive classic rock radio for ruining a lot of the alltime great songs for me. Had I grown up in the '70s and I bought a fresh copy of Beggars Banquet, I probably would've thought "Sympathy for the Devil" was the greatest song of all time. But having grown up with it on rides in the family minivan, having it shoved down my throat by the likes of Pierre Robert, John DeBella, et al, I don't particularly like the song anymore. It's not special. I've had this problem ever since I started to seriously listen to music on my own. I have trouble getting into the classic rock canon because there are songs like this on every album, and those songs stick out like a sore thumb. When my child(ren) are growing up, I won't allow this to happen to them. No radio in the car! Only daddy's iPod classic!

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"The Greatest Gift" by Sufjan Stevens, from his 2017 "mixtape" The Greatest Gift

Hey, I just downloaded this album like last week! So I'm still sinking my teeth into it. Half of the "mixtape" is B-sides to Carrie and Lowell, the other half is reworkings of songs from the same album. It's okay! Sufjan can sound a little same-y sometimes. This is exactly what you'd expect, fingerpicking and half-whispering vocals. You need to be in a certain mood to hear these slow Sufjan tracks. I think a cloudy Sunday morning classifies at the correct context for it.

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Next came "North Country Blues" by Bob Dylan, and ladies and gentlemen, we have our first repeat! I'm going to skip writing about the song when this happens, though I will not skip listening to it. Gotta respect the Shuffle Sunday rules.

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"All in a Daze Work" by Kurt Vile, from his 2016 album b'lieve i'm goin down...

Christ, my iPod is in a depressing mood this morning. Maybe it's sad that I had bad things to say about "Sympathy for the Devil." I love Kurt Vile, and I love this album, but I'd probably rank it third of his last three albums. "All in a Daze Work," like "The Greatest Gift," is just fingerpicking and vocals. Kurt Vile's vocals are special. They aren't good, per se. In fact, objectively, I'd say he is a terrible singer. But it fucking works, and I love listening to him sing, even on borderline mediocre songs such as this.

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"When the God of Love Returns There'll Be Hell to Pay" by Father John Misty, from his 2017 album Pure Comedy

I'll be talking briefly about Father John Misty's latest album on a blog post tomorrow, and how I was pretty excited to hear it and was ultimately sorely disappointed. I don't listen to Pure Comedy anymore, really, so this is my first time hearing this particular song in a while. I mean, the dude's shtick is pretty clear by this point. He sits down at the piano and sings a slow ballad about how society is fucked and humans are dumb. That's it. It's a shtick that's hit or miss. I'd call this song more miss than hit, only because it bores me to tears, even though the lyrics are pretty decent. Thankfully it's less than four minutes. If any of his ten-plus-minute cuts from Pure Comedy come up in the next six songs, I'm skipping, rules be damned.

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"Take It All" by UV-TV, from their 2017 album Glass

Here's another one that I only downloaded less than a month ago, so I don't have much to write about. I read about UV-TV in Stereogum's 40 Best New Bands of 2017, and the description of the band made it seem like they would be a good fit. And mostly they are! I'm trying to think of a good comparison. Maybe Sonic Youth if Sonic Youth made an attempt to make punk rock music that's even close to be listenable?

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"Rememory" by Donnie Trumpet and the Social Experiment, from their 2015 album Surf

Chance the Rapper is decent, but when it's just him and a trumpet, it's just filler. I do appreciate, however, that Donnie Trumpet has since changed his name, after... well, let's not get heated over politics during Shuffle Sunday, okay? Okay. Not the time or the place. Fuck trump! Okay, that's it. Back to the music. Surf is an enjoyable album! "Sunday Candy" is one of the best songs of the decade. But "Rememory" is not "Sunday Candy." It's forgettable.

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"I'm One" by the Who, from their 1973 album Quadrophenia

A great song from the best Who album. Quadrophenia is a great album because the band was able to explore the main character's inner psyche without having to use silly plot devices like LSD gypsies or mirror smashing.

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"Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)" by Sufjan Stevens, from his 2003 album Michigan

The exact opposite type of Sufjan song from "The Greatest Gift" above, and exactly the type of Sufjan song I was craving this morning. We got your 9/8 time signature, your full, fluttering woodwind section, the complex, repeating percussion cycle, a choir singing the "la la la" backing vocals, a crazy, scratchy piano(?) solo, all in an ode to a city crumbling in poverty. Christ, I fucking love Michigan. (One note, though. I don't mind it in the context of the album, but the two minutes of soft organs that end this song are kind of a bummer, only because it disqualifies this song from a party playlist.)

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"Lips" by the xx, from their 2017 album I See You

I think if the xx had put out another album like their debut, I would've given it a hard pass. But I See You is a bit bigger, a bit fuller than the xx typically is, and they are all the better for it. I wouldn't classify "Lips" as, like, a banger or anything, but there's a lot more going on than you would expect. You won't see the xx on any of my Best Of lists this week, but they quietly put out a very underrated album this year.

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"Visiting Statue" by Grimes, from her 2012 album Visions

Me and Pam listened to "Oblivion" so much a few years ago that we felt that we had to dig into the whole album. Visions was a disappointment. Too many songs like "Visiting Statue" that feel like they don't really go anywhere, they just... exist. It's all good though. Grimes went on to release Art Angels, which is the true classic I expected after I first heard "Oblivion," and it was so good that it wiped the bad taste of Visions right out of my mouth.