Sunday, August 17, 2008

A Song I Heard On The Radio And Actually Liked


I was riding in a car a few days ago, and the radio was tuned to a modern rock station, a genre from which I usually don't expect too much these days, but a song came on and it sounded reasonably good. "Sounds like Arcade Fire, or The Killers," I thought, "but...it sounds too good." Then the vocalist began singing "To the center of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you..." and I realized "Oh! This is a Joy Division cover! That's why it sounds so good." Turns out The Killers covered "Shadowplay," one of my favorite Joy Division songs. Which is sort of like Scarlett Johansson doing an album of Tom Waits covers, but who cares, it was better than anything else I'd heard on modern rock radio in months. It also instantly became my favorite Killers song (which, granted, isn't saying much - I generally find their music overproduced and affected) because it actually had hooks and chord changes. I suppose it's kind of sad that the best modern rock has to offer in 2008 is an inferior cover of a track that's almost thirty years old, but let's just say that any song that comes on the radio these days and doesn't make me immediately want to change the station is a raging success.

If you're looking for a taste of the real deal:

3 comments:

Ole Pal Gram said...

Hiya Earl,

That song is from a movie that I quietly enjoyed called, "Control". It's about Ian Curtis and, though it was kind of all-over-the-place-but-never-too-deep, it had me dusting off my Joy Division tapes the next day.
The Killers got me with their song that was used for an Olympics commercial too (the one about having soul, but not being a soldier) -

Hope your doing well,
Yer ole pal,
Graham from the Exploratorium
candy_gram@msn.com

Little Earl said...

Hey "old pal gram," good to hear from you, it sounds like you invented your blogger name for the sole purpose of posting for the first time on our blog, but that's OK. Hopefully you're not rolling around in too much frog vomit out there in the Marina. I imagine you're surviving.

And yes, I just saw Control and I know the song is from the movie because there are clips of the movie in the music video! I may get around to writing a review of Control at some point, but the quick version is that it was pretty to look at and it gave me a deeper appreciate of the band, so I liked it.

And don't you just hate it when you have a soul but you're not a soldier? I certainly do.

yoggoth said...

I've got soul but I'm not a