It’s never easy to pick the best songs of any time period — there are always songs that rise above the common herd of new music without attaining top status. That’s where Disc 2 comes in. It’s a place to record that second tier of great tunes aren’t quite great enough on their own to […]
Songs
Posts about individual songs
Whatever The Party Calls For – Best Songs of 2016 Part I
This year was the first in three years that I’ve bothered to put together a year end best of compilation annual CD, as we had for so many years before. For whatever the reason, I got bored with current, nowaday music. I started listening to classical! It was bad. This year, maybe because of the […]
A Wintry Mix – December 7, 2016
On Bubble Wrap radio this week, we tried to stay away from Christmas without being totally unseasonal in our selections. The end result was a wintry mix of new stuff just in and songs from past years with the words “winter” or “snow” in their titles. I know, it’s a cheap algorithm but it works, and gives […]
Summer of Black Lives Ending – September 21, 2016
There were more police killings of black men this week, including Keith Scott and Terence Crutcher, bringing a sense of frustration and grief that can’t go away because they don’t stop happening… This week’s Bubble Wrap show featured lots of funk, r&b, hip hop, and even some disco (imagine that), mostly addressing the black experience, […]
If I were from the Big Town, I would be calm and debonair: Summer Sounds
It’s August here in the small Vermont town where I live, and even here, in the so-called north country, we’re experiencing a bona fide heat wave. To celebrate, we watched Seven Year Itch while eating take-out sushi and drinking basil vodka. Yeah, it’s that kind of summer night. This week’s Bubble Wrap show was not […]
Your Empire Is Burning: Songs of 2011
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was pop music in 2011. In the larger world, there were eruptions of populist sentiment accompanied by chants and machine gun fire, depending on what part of the world you experienced “spring” in that year. Arab Spring rolled through the Middle East […]
Beeda Weeda – Baserock Babies
| Songs
One of the better songs of 2008 seems to have vanished without a trace — Baserock Babies by Oakland’s Beeda Weeda. Like The Roots and How I Got Over, they don’t bother to sugarcoat the reality of urban life for people of color. Sure, the song is funny in a grim kind of way but […]
Live at the Future: The Suitcase Junket, Bella’s Bartok, Wooly Mar
The Future Collective keep bringing us great music. Their latest show featured The Suitcase Junket, a one-man band led by Matt Lorenz, a Vermonter now living in Amherst who’s already getting airplay on The River. In addition to having an amazing voice and top notch songs, in a quirky folk vein, he also knows how […]
Channeling Rimsky-Korsakov On The Simpsons
The other night, I happened to be listening to Pan Voyevoda by Rimsky-Korsakov when, to my surprise, out popped the Simpsons theme song. Not literally, but the theme R-K used to open his suite is the same, almost note for note, as the theme to the Simpsons. It’s slower, to be sure, and unsyncopated, but […]
Dent May – Best Friend
| Songs
Sweet Life by Frank Ocean
| Songs
Not that many records have impressed me this year, but there’s something about Sweet Life by Frank Ocean that stuck with me even though lyrically, it’s completely alien to my life. Somewhere between rap and R&B, Sweet Life takes you to a land of milk and honey somewhere in Beverly Hills where happy young people enjoy […]
Spiral by Wye Oak
| Songs
I’ve been intrigued by Wye Oak for a few years, partly because they’re called Wye Oak (the ancient oak tree in Maryland that died a few years back) and partly because they’re from my old home town of Baltimore. “Civilian” was one of my favorite tracks of 2011 and now they’re back with “Spiral,” a […]
Superfast Jellyfish Are Running Out
| Songs
First, there were superfast zombies, now it’s jellyfish. What next? I do love this tune, which combines great poppy hiphop with great poppy pop, dedicated to the “water breathers.” It’s great summer music, although maybe not for beach-goers. Thank you, Flux Blog. Gorillaz: Superfast Jellyfish Speaking of FluxBlog, they had another recent favorite of mine, […]