Monday, April 23, 2012

modern love

My favorite love songs are the ones that don't waste time - simple, unrefined and (most importantly) awkwardly ingenuous. In other words, the ones that don't really sound like love songs. They're the ones that might make you cringe a little not because their quixotic sap will give you a toothache, but because their bumbling honesty will induce some parasympathetic sweaty palms - or at the very least a vicarious coy-bitten-lip kinda thing. They're the ones that make you question whether you're falling in love with the song, the person behind it, or the feelings the person behind it is so bravely sharing. Here's a very small sampling of my favorites; prepare to swoon.

Cheap Girls - "Her and Cigarettes"

"And we took the long way so we could have another."

Pinhead Gunpowder - "Beastly Bit"

What could be more honest than crust-punk-turned-acoustic love? Also, the end features the best appropriation/perversion of a "Brown Eyed Girl" sample ever. (P.S. - if that voice sounds familiar, it's because it is. PHGB is/was one of Billie Joe Armstrong's many, many side projects.)

Built to Spill - "Distopian Dream Girl"

I think I love this song mostly because Doug Martsch's voice sounds like a Midwestern teenager who just woke up from a nap. I'm also not entirely sure whether this is a love song, or rather the random musings of a Midwestern teenager who just woke up from a nap. Either one works for me.

Paul Baribeau - "Blue Eyes"

Definitively, one of the loveliest songs I have ever heard. Maybe the loveliest. Just goes to show that folk punks do it better.

7 Seconds - "Trust"

Proving that hardcore straight-edgers fall in love as hard as they mosh. An unsurprisingly straightforward, unapologetically honest love song that you can nevertheless violently run around in a circle pit to. But also, it's so sweet!


1 comment:

  1. What an unexpectedly lovely compilation! thank you "blue eyes".....

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