Favorite album transitions, part 3

I’m still reeling from the awesomeness of the Radiohead concert last week, so I’ve been playing through a lot of their albums.

On Kid A, the 2nd track is Kid A and the 3rd is The National Anthem. This tunes work so well together that Kid A seems incomplete to me on its own. It’s meditative, jazzy and wandering… all fair enough if a little dull when taken by themselves. But when you follow it up with the thumping intro to The National Anthem, my little heart goes pitter pat.

As usual, I can’t really recommend these videos, but the recordings are pretty decent. (For two Radiohead videos that are completely on-par with the music, see this earlier Vinny post.)

Postscript: Am I supposed to italicize album names, or song names? I always forget.

Favorite album transitions, part two

I wrote Part One a few months ago, and then never got around to making a Part Two. Blogging tip from Uncle Vinny: Overpromise and Underdeliver, always keeps your readership in frothy fightin’ form.

When thinking about favorite albums, I often end up back at Sleater-Kinney’s completely ass-kicking Dig Me Out, my favorite of all their records and one of my favorites period. It’s one of those albums that has to be played loud or not at all, and my favorite track switch on it is between Dig Me Out and One More Hour, tracks 1 and 2. This album used to give me chills on a hot day; I’d be tapping away quietly on a coding project in grad school with the first song blaring in my headphones, and the little pause between the tracks was completely electrifying. I think some of the excitement has died down over the years, but it still packs a punch.

I was going to provide YouTube links, but… man, I dunno. Sleater Kinney was a lot of fun to see live, but nothing on YouTube captures anything worth sharing. So, do yourself a favor and just go buy the album (or borrow it from me!).

Favorite album transitions, part one

Now and then you hear people talk about how .mp3s are killing off the “album”, and that in the future folks will mostly listen to individual songs instead of 8-12 songs in a row by one artist.

That may very well be, I don’t know. But what I do know is that there are a couple of completely awesome things that can happen when one artist gets your attention for 40-60 minutes at a time, one of which is the transition from one song to another.

One of them just happened on my iPod. Yo La Tengo has a terrific album called Painful, and one of my favorite things is when “Big Day Coming” ends and “From a Motel 6″ begins, especially if it’s rilly rilly loud. Yo La Tengo sometimes perfectly blends sweet, sour, buzzy and melodic. It’s toothy. I love it. Loud.

I’m not sure why anyone would watch a Yo La Tengo video, but turn off your monitor and turn up your speakers: