Tag: maximo park

30 Songs in 30 Days: day 30 – your favorite song at this time last year

I considered the possibility that, by virtue of this meme dragging out so long, I might be able to simply go back and use my Day 1 favorite song as my favorite song “at the same time last year,” but no. This meme ended up being 30 Songs in 60 Days – it’s been a busy summer – but it is ready to end.

Today’s entry will be short and to the point, because I’ve spent most of the day helping Dave and a handful of other guys (including Jim – gratuitous blog pimping FTW!) install flooring in Dave’s condo. Yes, you read that correctly: installing flooring. I know! A construction project? Me?? Jews don’t do construction. Yeah, well, it actually went really well. Except for the part where I’m going to be crippled for a week now.

And now I have to get ready for a friend’s birthday party, where I will almost certainly pass out after one drink because I’m a wee bit knackered at the moment.

So.

I didn’t have to (or get to) look back a year to my Day 1 song, but I will use the same band. Now the circle is complete. Maximo Park has so many damn great songs, and last year around this time, today’s song was in heavy rotation. Like five-or-six-times-in-a-row rotation. That’s partly because I was trying to learn the lyrics – Maximo Park as some of the best songs for singing along – but also because it just works. The lyrics, the changes, the rhythms – the whole package hits me on a visceral level. I probably could have used this song as the answer for many of the entries in this meme (and the same holds true of the Day 1 song, Apply Some Pressure). Sadly, none of the concert footage on YouTube had good sound, and there’s no “official” video for it, so no video for this entry. But if you are like me, you will play this tune over and over until it is etched in your brain matter, and visual imagery will become superfluous.

07_The_Unshockable.mp3

I hope these guys tour the US again soon. Really really want to see them live.

30 songs in 30 days: day 01 – your favorite song

OK, if I’m going to do this… thing… I might as well start now, with Laphroaig-induced boldness and time on my hands.

So. Maximo Park became one of my go-to bands a couple of years ago, and this song is one that I go back to again and again. (Don’t be surprised if more Maximo Park songs pop up in this meme. Not sure it will happen, but it might.) I’ve played this one so much over the past two or three years that I think it gets the title of “current favorite” by default.

Why this one? Hard to say. The jangly guitars and harmonizing vocals (in a British accent) are right in my wheelhouse these days when it comes to loving music. There’s a frenetic energy that revs me up every time the track comes on. Like a lot of Maximo Park songs, it becomes a couple of different songs as it progresses from beginning to end, structurally and thematically, and that appeals to me more than the standard verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus that characterizes most songs. “What happens when you lose everything? You just start again; you start all over again.” That doesn’t directly apply to me (thankfully), but with the world as precarious as it sometimes seems to be these days, it resonates. It seems like the right attitude to have just in case.

But I guess the strongest argument in favor of this one being my favorite song (at least for the moment) is that I have listened to it at least a dozen times in a row while I’ve been struggling to write this entry. And I could listen to it a dozen more times without a second’s hesitation. Hard to top that.