Music Monday

A bit late, but better than never; the second installment of Music Monday.

It’s a shame that for most people, myself included, it took the toiling of somewhere along the lines of 13 years for the band Phoenix to finally start to show up on the amazingly good music radar. Anyone who reads this and has known of these guys for that long, or even remotely close to that long, probably want to punch me for adding to the poisonous collective of scavengers who are uncovering one of their beloved diamonds in the rough, but it had to be done.

Phoenix – 1901

I know I have already described things worthy of the moniker “summer anthem(s)” but I swear to all the holy upstairsmen that this electronic alt-rock offering is the end all be all of the season. The French quartet open Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix with Lisztomania, a catchy upbeat jam with about 600 remixes surfacing already on the internet. It also may be the only song ever written about Franz Liszt, a 19th century classical composer. There is also a point at about 2:52 on this track where they steal a bass riff from Gene Simmons on the song Detroit Rock City, I swear. On Fences, the band channels an almost funk/disco feel, and it’s one of the tracks where you can feel the Daft Punk influence, along with Love Like a Sunset, as guitarist Laurent Brancowitz was in a short-lived side project prior to Phoenix with the two gents who went on to form Daft Punk. The album is full of perfectly placed build-ups and break downs, [done especially well on Countdown (Sick for the Big Sun)] that manage to channel a spectrum of emotions from joyous to melancholy; energetic to relaxing; and they make it all work extremely well in a coherent 10 song bundle of joy that, as soon as it ends, you can hit repeat and it feels brand new again.

Tumbling Tumbleweed

These houses are great. I would tow mine to a lush valley, right next to a babbling brook with a mountainous landscape in the background; all the while reducing my carbon footprint. The Lusby would be my choice. Check out all the makes and models at Tumbleweed Houses.

Apparently today is “Rustic Monday” because the wooden iPod would be perfect to listen to in this house in the prior described setting above.

woodPod

The next time you are trying to find something for the IMPOSSIBLE to shop for lumberjack in your family, you’ve now got the perfect solution. Load this pup with Bon Iver, 3 Inches of Blood, Grateful Dead and whatever else the modern woodsmen may listen to these days.