Seven Songs for Seven Days 4

(the picture is my very own, from the sounds show @ the house of blues in boston)

Red Riders - Ordinary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtBY7_3gj6o

A slightly dreamy song about being too boring. Certainly it is a woe that has never befallen me. Nothing really complicated going on in the song - just a shimmery curtain of guitar and a plain but somehow comforting voice. Even though the song clearly proclaims "nothing I do ever seems to go my way" it does not have the sound of a sorrowful song.


The Sounds - Living in America
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjY4Wj_-Zec

The Sounds are Swedish. The Sounds have sprouted from some sort of punk rock. I'm not really sure where to take it from there.  Nor am I able to deduce the actual meaning of this song - it just has the strains of a punk rock anthem to it and that is good enough for me.


Foxy Shazam - Wannabe Angel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HK89uXahpGw

I had the strange pleasure of seeing Foxy Shazam (who opened for the Sounds) play - what a strange bunch of dudes. Sadly their keyboard player is missing his iconic beard in the photo for this youtube video - alas. You will just have to suffer the multitude of influences that pepper Foxy Shazam's pop without his hirsute appearance.

Ensiferum - Iron
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cJ3k7yTNqk 

The title track of Ensiferum's second album is just a kick in the face of an awesome mixture of power and death metal. The pace of the song is feverish and and the majestically plodding guitars and occasional gang choruses just propel the music forward ever-faster. It's definitely a pre-workout song. Get this stuck in your head, and you're bound to have a good day.


Gwyllion - Entwined

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sybtEQy9o5U

The only way to actually properly listen to this song is with the intro before it. It's straight up furious while being fronted by a female vocalist - really entertaining mix of pounding rhythm and soaring vocals. The background choir of male vocals mixing with hers makes things considerably more complicated. A good mix of dynamics means that you're not entirely pounded into the ground, and it doesn't hurt that the singer is quite talented.


Drake - houstatlantavegas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7CTlBUsmHs

Drake's an interesting guy. I have to put him up past Kid Cudi as the better of the two - what I've heard of Cudi's album isn't really all that interesting, but Drake's mixtape this year is pretty fantastic. houstatlantavegas is spacy, dreamy, warm, and mellow - a really interesting direction to take for hip-hop / r&b. It's pretty reminiscent of 808's and Heartbreak (Kanye guesting, too). Kanye is probably actually the weakest part of the song, but there does need to be some break from the previous material to make it not simply monotonous.

White Wolf - America (Hello Again)

Sadly, kiddos out in the field will have to find this one themselves. I promise it's worth it - it is only one of a few patriotic songs I can seriously stomach and enjoy. It's sort of like Pain of Salvation's similarly entitled "America," minus the lambasting - just a call for whoever is still listening to answer. Really powerful, if you can get past the cheese.

Is My Message Getting Through?

This past weekend, I had a fine adventure of cooking.

I'm not exceptionally great at it - I have a decent sense of 'oh fuck this is totally burning' and 'well it looks like that's about done' and 'these would taste pretty okay together.' Once you start throwing around braising and basting and stuffing and fluctuating temperatures, it gets a little too hairy for me.

So I underwent a small challenge when composing the, ahem, high-class menu for my girlfriend's birthday this past weekend. I knew I had to deal with both vegetarian and decidedly non-vegetarian people, so I had to make two entrees - and in fairly large quantities.

Here's what I ended up making:

* roast potatoes
* arugula salad with peaches and blackberries
* vietnamese dipping sauce with steak and romaine
* corn tomato and basil chowder - nytimes link
* baked apples

Some of these were thoroughly stolen. I was planning on doing something more ambitious with the apples, but I didn't end up having time.

The one that is thoroughly my own is the Vietnamese dipping sauce. At least, I think that's its national origin. Here's my take on it:

1/3 cup fish sauce
1/2 cup lemon juice
4-5 large garlic cloves
3 tablespoons sugar
6 hot peppers (your choice of variety - I use chilies, they are rad)
1 head of romaine lettuce
1 1/2 pounds of steak (I usually use sirloin)
1 1/2 cups of rice

Conjure yourself a fair-sized dipping bowl. Pour the fish sauce, lemon juice, and sugar in. Mix thoroughly - taste and make sure you've got some acceptable combination of sour, sweet, and salty going on. Mince the garlic and the peppers and add them to the mix. Make sure that you're not adding too many peppers - that can make this sauce somewhat of a masochistic food otherwise.

Cube the steak and grill it - I usually leave it somewhat rare.

Cook the rice.

De...frock? the lettuce, leaving the leaves intact.

Procure yourself a plate for the steak, a bowl for the rice, and a plate for the lettuce leaves. Wrap steak and rice in lettuce, dip in sauce, eat, repeat. This is probably proportions for 2-3 people.

It's super-awesome, I promise. It's also relatively fast - the longest thing is going to be cooking the rice.

Seven Songs for Seven Days 3

Threshold - Fighting For Breath

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYuiCM1Jl_M

Man! How the hell had I never heard of Threshold before this year? Evidently they've been cranking out studio albums since the mid 90's - if any of them are nearly as solid as "Dead Reckoning," I have an awful lot of listening to do.

The music might be a little formulaic, but it's a tough formula to master. The songs all go something like this: crunchy, slightly discordant verse, harmonized and simple chorus, repeat once, spastic guitar and keyboard solo, fucking insane bridge that blows your mind.

Seriously. That bridge is BANANAS.

I suppose this doesn't really apply to all their songs but certainly Sarah's and my favorite, Slipstream, fits right into it. This one does too...soooo I feel justified enough in calling that a formula.

The Few Against Many - Sot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXGROAFKgzQ

How many bands can one Swede be in? By Christian Älvestam's growth rate, it seems possibly...an uncountably infinite number? (Somewhere, I just caused a math geek to inflict harm upon themselves...)


And how the hell are they all this good? The Few Against Many evokes early In Flames and Moontower. If you know anything about me, you know I love Dan Swanö with all of my body - so the resemblance to Moontower is about the biggest erection-inducer ever.


Ensiferum - From Afar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALrjjJdmxgA

(an actual video for a metal song?! gasp!)

Not really anything diverging from the usual for Ensiferum - but since the usual is so well done, it's perfectly acceptable. Choir-chorus laden songs with surging rhythm and warlike howling? Invoking pagan imagery and orchestral accompaniment galore? Check, check. Really cheesy video basically only featuring a scowling vocalist shaking his fist? Check plus.

Kid Sister - Control

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiNTVqtLjCI

My head nearly popped off when this song started. I had no idea what was happening for about 30 seconds. It's spastic, freaky, chock full of an accent that makes her lyrics nearly impossible to deduce, and fucking catchy. Woooooooooo!

J. Cole - Lights Please

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dyPeGDeS3o

It's really hard to pass up this song's simplistic but ear-burrowing beat and lyrics like:

And all that deep shit that I was previously down for
Replaced by freak shit that I am currently down for

There's something very positive and comforting under all the layers there (I'm not referring to that specific lyric) but it takes a couple of listens to confirm that he's just not misogynistic and whiny.


Axel Rudi Pell - Live for the King

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CToaWplSSHI

Axel Rudi Pell is like the king of guilty metal pleasures. I have an acquaintance from Norcal who would definitely term them 'buttrock.' He can't stomach super-cheesy power metal with soaring vocals and dragons and rainbows and chain mail - however, I can.

I don't know if Axel Rudi Pell has ever written a song that isn't just oozy with warm catchy awesome goodness. It's really weird - some songs have a kind of discordant nature, or maybe just the production...that makes it difficult, in a way, to listen to them. Therion kind of comes to mind here.

Not so at all with Axel Rudi Pell. I could listen to this shit all day and my ears would never get tired.

Royal Hunt - The First Rock

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD7XtcC4XT0

Royal Hunt, while definitely still firmly in the cheese camp, is a step more respectable than Axel Rudi Pell. They seem to have some deep-seated problem with religion or God - they seem to be a frequent topic, and rarely in a positive way.

Whereas Axel Rudi Pell is really chill and shit, Royal Hunt is flipping out all over the place with keyboards exploding and belts and guitar solos happening nearly constantly. Or at least this song...it's much more driving, in general. Both methods certainly have their place...which is why they are both in this list!

Okay, that is it for now. I need to buy bananas, lest I blow away in the wind due to my slight figure.