Keith Pille's Weekly Shuffle
10.24.05

Every week, I will fire up the Shuffle Songs option on my iPod; the first song to come up, no matter what it is, will get an instant, unvarnished review. We're at the mercy of random chance and the limits of my digital music collection. Let's see where this takes us.

The Calming Seas
Beechwood Sparks, Beechwood Sparks

Beechwood Sparks are, along with the New Pornographers, kind of an interesting case for how the iPod changes my approach to music. Both are bands that I like quite a bit, but have gotten into after moving from CDs to the pod. These means that my enjoyment of them is aimed entirely at individual songs, with no concept whatever of what their albums sound like.

A few years ago, I would've thought this was heresy, but these days it feels pretty natural. If nothing else, it makes me pay closer attention to individual songs. And "The Calming Seas" is worth paying attention to-- it's a nice, laid-back little song, with a present-but-not-overwhelming country flavor. It bounces along amiably, with a pretty sparse arrangement, nice vocal harmonies, and some cool acoustic guitar work. Sounds sort of like what Wilco would have become if A) they hadn't taken a left turn after A.M. and B) Jeff Tweedy had a much higher voice.

There's nothing in "The Calming Seas" that's going to change your life. Maybe that'd be the case if I sat down and really experienced the song in the album context as it was intended. But I don't really need to. The song offers to calm me down, and it delivers, and that's good enough for me.

Weekly Shuffle Scoreboard (Best to Worst):

1. "Rock N Roll Radio V2," Derailleur
2.  "Back from Somewhere (live)," Husker Du
3. "Powderfinger," Neil Young
4. "Gassed & Stoked," Lou Reed
5. "Nicotine & Gravy," Beck
6. "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (live)," Wilco
7. "The Calming Sea," Beechwood Sparks
8. "John, I'm Only Dancing," David Bowie
9. "Take It or Leave it," The Strokes
10. "I Wanted to Tell You," Matthew Sweet
11. "Soldier's Joy," Mark O'Connor
12. "Masoko Tanga," The Police
13. "The Big Foist," The Minutemen
14. "Climbing up the Walls," Radiohead
15. "That's When I Reach for My Revolver," Mission of Burma