Category: Towards the Within

  • Towards the Within — New Model Army, “Vagabonds”

    We are old, we are young,
    We are in this together
    Vagabonds and children
    Prisoners forever
    With pulses a-raging and
    Eyes full of wonder
    Kicking out behind us again

    Out planting trees a few weeks ago, I had a portable speaker on my beltloop and streaming music on it. I hadn’t listened to Justin and Co. for a spell and decided it was time to remedy that omission via giving the album “Thunder and Consolation” a spin (if that’s what you call it when you stream music and not put a record on a turntable).

    Talk about earworming… Vagabonds is one of those songs that easily to sing the chorus with the band on, once you know the lyrics (see above) and NMA have been firmly stuck in my head since.

    I came to NMA late in the game.

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  • The Milkman — Mice feat. Julianne Regan

    Hey isn't this neat
    But we've got to be discreet
    'Cause something this supercalifragilistic
    Can get sado-masochistic so quickly

        So if you want to know me
        Well you'd just better take things slowly

    Man, I sure miss the tongue in cheek saccharine-laced snarky sugar pop of albums like this. A little more over-the-top than Strawberry Switchblade (who were more polka-dot laced bubblegum goth), but I loved this shit.

    As you might recall from a few days ago, Julianne sang for the more folksy-hippie-goth All About Eve. Yeah, I’m in a J.R. mood this week.

  • And… Billy Bragg is with us, too

    Now, Billy Bragg is a folk musician I do listen to. He wrote a classic tune for Minneapolis in the past few days as well. If you haven’t listened to Billy Bragg before, I recommend you remedy with that below.

    When they came for the immigrants
    I got in their face
    When they came for the refugees
    I got in their face
    When they came for the five-year-olds
    I got in their face
    When they came to my neighborhood
    I just got in their face.

    I will bear witness to terror
    I will bear witness to tyranny
    I will bear witness to murder
    I will bear witness to fascism.

    For reference, a five-year-old was used for bait by ICE to arrest his father. They wouldn’t let the young boy go into the house, and then they took him to Texas with his father against judge’s orders.

  • Towards the Within — Citizen I.C.E., Dropkick Murphys

    Too scared to join the military
    Too dumb to be a cop
    Citizen I.C.E.

    This is an old song of theirs, formerly called “Citizen C.I.A”, and lyrically reworked to reflect current events. The rest of the lyrics are in-video.

    I have to admit, I should probably listen to more Dropkick Murphys than I do, and that will probably change in the coming weeks. Every time I encounter news about the band, I see them in an increasingly positive light. I don’t have to like every song a band writes to know them to be stand-up folks that deserve my support.

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  • Towards the Within — Sólstöður, Kælan Mikla

    A little Icelandic darkwave in honor of the upcoming solstice, perhaps?

    Á sólstöðum í svartnætti tunglið geislum grætur
    Vetrarnótt; við erum þínar sönnu svörtu dætur

    Winter solstice in the black night
    the moon cries its beams
    Winter night; we are your true dark daughters

    Of course you may have some, my darkling dearies. Enjoy.

  • Towards the Within — Succulence by Foetus

    J.G. Thirlwell, also known as Clint Ruin, Frank Want, and Foetus (multiple variants of the name), among other pseudonyms is an Aussie musician that has been putting out albums of an experimental nature since the early 80s.

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  • Towards the Within — Vicious Thorn, Rose Chronicles

    It’s been a spell since I added a song to the series of posts that was originally intended to look backwards to look forwards for music discovery.

    I was disappointed with the discovery process, which either sent me to bands I already knew full well or directed me to bands that sounded nothing at all like my “seed” music.

    Rose Chronicles, copyright status unknown

    After yesterday’s post quoting an opinion piece writer who has essentially declared that we have settled for the enshittification of our culture via the monetization of everything artistic thanks to the internet, I was left thinking about the last time I really enjoyed most of the music I was discovering. I can safely say that started to wane at some point near the end of the 90s.

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  • Towards the Within | Dominion (cover) by Heartworms

    While not aways the case, I do like myself a good cover song now and again, just to see how a band reinterprets a song and tries to own it. I’ve never seen much point in a band that tries to make something sound exactly like the original — I mean, what’s the point? And there are a few songs and bands that just don’t translate well into a new sound (Doors, Zeppelin, post-Barrett Pink Floyd). But, on the balance, it is fun to see how a band tries to reimagine a song and make it their own.

    I’ve not made it any secret that I am a Sisters of Mercy fan (for the first two albums and early singles, anyway). And I’ve grown to really like the neo-gothic Heartworms after Chris Nelson introduced me to them at the beginning of summer. So, when I saw that JoJo and band performed a Sisters song in-studio, I definitely had to check it out.

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  • Revisiting Syd

    Since last week, I’m been very much in a Barrett mood.

    It’s been a while since I last listened to Madcap Laughs and Barrett, and I was only slightly surprised to see that they had been pulled from my streaming service. It seems like albums are chronically coming and going, especially when they are from acts “across the pond” [Syd Barrett joins Jesus and Mary Chain for albums I can’t listen to… at the moment]. Without super-simple access to Syd’s solo albums, I opted for Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn album to tide me me over until I could either pull up my MP3s or find time to find a quality upload of the complete albums up on YouTube for me.

    Listening with “fresh ears”, it strikes me just how much Syd indirectly and directly influenced some of my tastes in music.

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  • Towards the Within — New Bible

    Confession time.

    Back in the 90s, I had completely fallen in love with Ani DiFranco based on a single album, Out of Range. If I were to be completely honest, I actually fell in love with her over a single song, The Diner, and I did so while I was sipping over-roasted coffee in some bohemian-styled converted warehouse with the brick walls and exposed support timbers in the Lowertown neighborhood of downtown Saint Paul. I fell hard for her before the song was even over.

    Ani DiFranco; Image source: Rolling Stone

    My conversation partner had gone off to take a piss, as you are prone to needing to while drinking far too many over-roasted cups of black coffee over an afternoon spent doing largely nothing in a very bohemian manner, chain-smoking cigarettes in a very artistic way in the artist quarter of a revived downtown area.

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