Archives for January 2023

Certain Songs #2542: Sugar – “The Act We Act”

January 31, 2023 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Copper Blue
Year: 1992

. . .

After Hüsker Dü suddenly (and surprisingly, at the time) broke up in 1988 after having released five fucking amazing albums in row — two of them doubles — in the 2 1/2 years between July 1984 and January 1987, Bob Mould & Grant Hart almost instantly went to work on their solo careers, both instantly distancing themselves from their former band.

And so Grant Hart’s 1988 “2541” single and subsequent 1989 Intolerance album were full of acoustic guitars and keyboards, and Mould’s first two solo albums, 1989’s Workbook and 1990’s Black Sheets of Rain were too light and too heavy, respectively. At the time, I preferred the latter to the former and still think the best song from that period was the b-side, “All Those People Know,” which played to his strength.

Certain Songs #2541: Sufjan Stevens – “Too Much”

January 30, 2023 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: The Age of Adz
Year: 2010

. . .

And so the official follow-up to Illinois, The Age of Adz, finally came out in October of 2010, a year that had already seen a slew of ambitious albums, from Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and The Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs to Janelle Monae’s The ArchAndroid.

Certain Songs #2540: Sufjan Stevens – “Djohariah”

January 27, 2023 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: All Delighted People EP
Year: 2010

. . .

Out of all of the who knows how many songs I’ll eventually end up writing about, my guess is that “Djohariah” is in the top 1% of the “you either fully love this song or utterly despise it” category. Because I can’t see any other reaction to a 17-minute song from a brother to his sister where the actual lyrics don’t really start until 11 minutes in.

Despite the fact that All Delighted People is billed as an EP, “Djohariah” is two minutes longer than The Clash’s Cost of Living EP and only slightly shorter than the Pretenders Extended Play EP. Though, that said, it is a minute or so shorter than Future Certain Song “Close to The Edge,” so there’s that.

Certain Songs #2539: Sufjan Stevens – “Heirloom”

January 26, 2023 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: All Delighted People EP
Year: 2010

. . .

Of course, we weren’t ever going to get the other 48 albums of Sufjan Stevens’ purported “50 States Project.” No single human being could have possibly done that. Even one as prolific as Sufjan Stevens.

What we did get was a shit-ton of other things: a Illinois outtakes album called The Avalanche, a soundtrack album called the BQE and a box set of 42 Christmas songs. But no official follow-up. Not until 2010, when it was announced that Sufjan’s next official studio album, entitled The Age of Adz, would drop in October.

Certain Songs #2538: Sufjan Stevens – “Casimir Pulaski Day”

January 25, 2023 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Illinois
Year: 2005

. . .

On the short list of Prettiest Songs Ever Recorded, Christian Indie Folk Division, “Casimir Pulaski Day” is also one of the most heartbreaking songs ever written, and Sufjan Stevens gets right into it over a lonely acoustic guitar.

Certain Songs #2537: Sufjan Stevens – “Chicago”

January 24, 2023 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Illinois
Year: 2005

. . .

Road trip!

Another one of those songs that I love beyond all reasons, Sufjan Stevens grand and glorious travelogue “Chicago” is one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard about being a small-town young discovering the beauty and madness of the big city. And realizing that even if that experience somehow changes you, you’re still yourself, too. Just a different yourself.

Certain Songs #2536: Sufjan Stevens – “Decatur, Or, Round of Applause for Your Stepmother!”

January 23, 2023 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Illinois
Year: 2005

. . .

Utterly bursting at the seams with ambition and musicality, Sufjan Stevens 2005 album Illinois betrays just how over the top it is by having at least three different titles. You can refer to it as Illinois, Illinoise, or the hilarious Come on and Feel The Illinoise!

Oh, and then there are the song titles: my favorites are “Prairie Fire That Wanders About” and “They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!”, but I also have to give a shout out to “The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You’re Going to Have to Leave Now, or, ‘I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!'” because it’s an instrumental.

Certain Songs #2535: Suede – “She Still Leads Me On”

January 20, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Autofiction
Year: 2022

. . .

I believe that this is the longest time gap between two songs I’ve written about by the same artist. Yesterday’s Suede song, “Metal Mickey,” originally came out as a single in 1992, and today’s Suede song, the gloriously soaring “She Still Leads Me On” came out in 2022. That’s thirty years. Of course, given that which songs I write about and don’t write about is the very definition of arbitrary, it’s also a statistic that means nothing — like postseason counting stats — but I figured that I would point that out anyways.

Certain Songs #2534: Suede – “Metal Mickey”

January 19, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Suede
Year: 1992

. . .

Suede was formed by guitarist Justine Frischmann, her singer boyfriend Brett Anderson and bassist Mat Osman back in 1989, but it took awhile for them to release their first album. In in that time, a lot of things happened. First, they they recruited Bernard Butler, who not only was a hotshot lead guitarist, he also had the most Britpop name ever. Secondly, Anderson & Frischmann broke up, and she was eventually booted from the band for preferring to hang with her new boyfriend, Blur’s Damon Albarn.

That turned out to be the best for all involved: Frischmann formed Elastica and wrote songs like “Connection” and “Stutter,” and Anderson and Butler got down to business of writing their big glammy songs that made the British press go absolutely apeshit.

Certain Songs #2533: The Suburbs – “Love Is The Law”

January 18, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Love is The Law
Year: 1984

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While “Who are The Suburbs?” will always be the answer to the Jeopardy clue “this artist’s self-titled EP was the first release on the Minneapolis label known as Twin/Tone Records,” I do recall listening to their early 80’s albums — In Combo and Credit in Heaven — during the pre-air KFSR days and nothing really sticking.