SOD: Cayucas -- High School Lover

Spring is coming, or so I've heard. This brings the promise of trail running and shorts. It only follows that I've been looking for happy music recently, and lately I've been missing the combination of humor and pop sensibility that was so great in the Clinton-era releases by Beck and Weezer. When I heard "High School Lover" by sleepy seaside town, San Luis Obispo, California band, Cayucas, it immediately put a smile on my face and there was much dancing.

Cayucas will be at SXSW on Thursday, March 14 at 3pm on Radio Day Stage Austin Convention Center.

SOD: Jackson Scott -- The Awful Sound

I keep digging for info on this dude, but brass tacks is that Jackson Scott has a damn fine psych-pop tune in "That Awful Sound". I listened to this track 5x after the first play and kept discovering fresh bits that I liked about it: the practically implied drums, the MBV wash of electric guitar at 1:28, and the warbling pitch at 2:13 like the singer's about to go into a freak out but instead shuts the song down at a mere 2:26 of pop economy. More, Mr. Scott!

SOD: The Modern Lovers -- Roadrunner

The Modern Lovers, Pavement, Guided by Voices. I've only listened to them for the past three years, but I feel like I've known them since I was 14. If I could go back, I'd have discovered them earlier. Maybe I've invented the nostalgia, but I think that listening to bands from another era is about connecting with songs regardless of time.

Roadrunner plants itself in my head on many long runs, road, trail, and races of any kind. The lead singer, Jonathan Richman, sounds like he's walking a slack line, ready to unhinge from ordinary life at any moment, lose his shit, and start freaking out...if it weren't for pop music. He's so obviously in love with pop, rock, and music at large that it becomes his catharsis, his introspection, his dance all at once. The man can ride the slack.

Dang, I've fallen so in love with this song that I can't write about it. Jus' listen?

SOD: Kishi Bashi -- Bright Whites

This damn song is irresistible. I'm serious. I don't want to like this song as much as I do. But one listen isn't enough. 2-3 times through per session is a must. It's a great summer song, which means it's a great winter song too.

I'm pretty stoked for Yankee Springs trail 50k this Saturday, and if I decide to run with music, Bright Whites is getting several slots on the mixtape. At the very least it'll get played a few times in the heated cabin we've rented at the race start for the weekend. Dang, 2013 is gonna be sweet by starting it off with this much fun.

SOD: Best Coast -- The Only Place

Happy New Year! It's been a great 2012. This year, I made new running friends, got a promotion at work, finished my first 100 miler, run-explored the trails in Kentucky, Tennessee, Connecticut, Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. Some of my best memories were running in Red River Gorge, Pictured Rocks, Great Smoky Mountains, Tecumseh trail, and the Rocky Mountains.

So here's a song about loving where you are and realizing how lucky you are to be right there. For Best Coast that place is California, and they love the waves, the mountains, etc. But the song's not about why CA is awesome and everywhere else sucks. Not to me anyway. It's about being in love with your place, wherever you are.

Produced by pop guru (and underrated), Jon Brion, the title and lead track off Best Coast's 2012 album celebrates everything I love about the band. Tight melodies, hooks that can make crowds smile, and a bouncy rhythm section that is undeniably fun.

"Why would you live anywhere else?" sings Bethany Cosentino.

I have no idea.

SOD: Freelance Whales -- Generator 1st Floor

I miss The Postal Service. Not the people delivering the mail. I mean the one-time music partnership of Ben Gibbard (Death Cab) and Jimmy Tamborello (Dntel) that released the album, Give Up, in 2003 and never made another record.

Story goes that Tamborello and Gibbard sent each other ideas for this record through the snail mail, hence the name. Tamborello writes the music on Give Up, which skirts electronic nostalgia with its glitchy bleeps of 8-bit video games and distorted beats that usher it into the laptop era. Gibbard writes the poppy vocal melodies and lyrics that wear their anxiety, loneliness, and desire for love on every fiber of their sleeve.

I first heard Give Up after graduating from college and it felt like my personal soundtrack to those first years of 'real world' life. The music is so hopeful and upbeat but tempered by the disillusionment of the characters in the songs. They want to believe that they can be successful, that they can fall in love, that putting themselves out there is worth it, even when the world keeps closing its doors.

Postal Service isn't coming back. They aren't going to put out another album. And I guess I miss the potential in things.

I recently found two bands that are cousins to Postal Service -- Letting Up Despite Great Faults and Freelance Whales. Give them a try. They're not PS, but they do combine clicky, distorted electronic sounds with sharp, introspective lyrics.

Freelance Whales from SXSW 2010:

SOD: Tame Impala -- Feels Like We Only Go Backwards

I'm crushing so hard on Tame Impala I swear it's not my fault they do this psychedelic 60's throwback production with swinging rhythms and otherworld textures that squeak through my earbuds and take over my brain while singer Kevin Parker sounds, as Jayson Greene says, "like someone trapped John Lennon's vocal take from "A Day in the Life" in a jar and taught it to sing new songs" man that's brilliant and so are Tame Impala is this thing called love?

Lyric Nugget:
I know that you think you sound silly when you call my name
But I hear it inside my head all day
When I realize I'm just holding on to the hope that maybe your feelings don't show

POD: KEXP -- Music That Matters

Looking to break out of your music rut? Tired of the same 10 bands you've been listening to all year? Check out KEXP's consistently awesome podcast of Seattle DJ selected, (mostly) indie bands, many of whom are from the Pacific NW and have been overlooked by the Brooklyn-heavy east coast music outlets. 

That's right, they play bands that might not even have been reviewed or mentioned on Pitchfork yet. My favorite DJ is John Richards, whose selections make me think he goes to a shit ton of local music shows around the country -- and in GB -- and hand selects the best to play alongside the bigger indie rock music of Cloud Nothings, Modest Mouse, Of Montreal, and Japandroids. 

The KEXP website and their youtube channel are other goldmines of live recorded and free video streaming music. 

Download the podcast free on iTunes or here.

Tallest Man on Earth live performance in KEXP studios:

Song of the Day: Passion Pit -- Constant Conversations

This entry needs a better title if it's going to be a regular thing.

Anyway, I listen to a lot of music.  One metric ton of music in fact (not an actual fact).  And I love discovering new bands, songs, albums, sounds, and genres. I'm a non-partisan music listener.  Hank Williams?  Hell yeah. Kendrick Lamar? Definitely.  So I had this idea on my run today that every day I'd post one short blog about a song that has captured my ear, with the youtube video included.  Let's kick the tires on this idea.

Passion Pit -- Constant Conversations

On Gossamer, Passion Pit's 2012 electropop release, Michael Angelakos hones in his prototypical song type -- manic-dance-beat-meets-dark-introspective-lyrics -- with fantastic songs like "I'll Be Alright" that build on "Sleepyhead"'s sonic bi-polarism from Passion Pit's first LP, Manners.  But what I find even more intriguing about Gossamer is the inclusion of tracks like Constant Converstaions, a slow, swinging, intimate R&B song that is today's song of the day.

Favorite lyric:

I never wanna hurt you baby /

I'm just a mess with a name and a price /
And now I'm drunker than before /

They told me drinking doesn't make me nice