3 Favorite songs on my iPod this week

1. Luna Broken Chair - Track 6 from 2004's Rendezvous is a lush, lovely song with swirly guitars, pedal steel and the neo-Lou Reed/Velvet Underground stylings of bandleader Dean Wareham. I have always sort of liked this band, sometimes finding them a bit too languid for my tastes, but this song caught me at the right time and continues to be pleasing. I have a particular weakness for pedal steel guitar but am not a real country music fan at all (other than some "alt country" stuff and The Flying Burrito Bros). Somehow the hybrid of NYC downtown hipster rock and cosmic Americana works here and makes me want to sip Manhattans and eat pork rinds at the same time.
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2. Big Star What's Going Ahn - All of you who follow the music press have heard critics blather on and on about Big Star over the years and I am emphatically stating that everything you have read (in this case) is true. I will not even attempt to start explaining the band - here is their history for those interested.
What's Going Ahn (yes - correct spelling) is beautiful, spacious Beatle-esque folky rock rendered fragile and sad by the magnificent Alex Chilton. For a band that created and personified 70's power pop their music sounds damn fresh today and still trumps their many disciples (Teenage Fanclub, Posies, New Pornographers).
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3. Chris Bell I Am The Cosmos - Chris Bell was a member of Big Star, playing on their first two albums, leaving the band, having problems with depression, attempted suicide, drugs religious guilt and closeted homosexuality, not getting any recognition in the cruel music industry and final crashing his car into a tree, dying instantly in 1978. This song is as devastating as you would imagine someone living his life could make it, providing the soul-crushing sadness that permeated many a Big Star track, tempered with some indescribable brightness... That is the dichotomy of Big Star & Chris Bell's brief discography - empty darkness that is tainted with sunny melodies and an optimism that keeps you from turning it off and accusing them of harshing on your buzz. I am a masochist for sad music to begin with, but this song was some thing different from the first time I heard it - It haunted me. Not many songs do that to a jaded ass like myself.
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