Below is the latest edition of our weekly feature, Stuck On Repeat. The premise is simple, we’ve asked all our contributors to submit one track and a brief write-up. The track can be new or it can be old, just whatever we could not stop listening to this week. These are the songs we’ve had Stuck On Repeat.
:: selected by: V :: Sylvester – I Need Somebody To Love Tonight (192 kbps)
In my opinion, Test Pressing is the Holy Grail of music blogs (though it feels weird to use the word ‘blog’ as a descriptor). It’s one of a very small handful of sites that I religiously follow. Run by folks a couple decades older than your average music blogger, a visit there never fails to send me away more historically informed. They boast a wide array of mixes, and this week I came across what is probably one of the most topically intriguing finds of my year. The most recent installation of Jon Savage’s Savage Music series for the site profiles gay records released between 1961 and 1978, a time when it was still largely unaccepted to be a publicly out musician. Some tracks featured are completely obscure cuts relegated to the “gay underground” and thusly unafraid to proclaim pride. Others, perhaps familiar tracks with vaguely loaded lyrics that only now in the context of this mix you realize allude to same-sex subject matter. Closing out the mix is Sylvester’s “I Need Somebody To Love Tonight” off his 1979 LP, Stars. I can’t stop listening to this track if for no other reason than really wanting to discuss Sylvester’s influence with Toro Y Moi.
:: selected by: BryanB :: Ou Est Le Swimming Pool – Our Lives (196 kbps)
Not to sound insensitive, but it took a suicide to put Ou Est Le Swimming Pool on my radar. After the lead singer’s death on August 20th, I checked out their debut album The Golden Year, and while I didn’t find much to connect to, alot of it was middling electro dance, I did gravitate to “Our Lives”. It’s got a galloping bed of synths, with a punky, raw vocal delivery somewhere between Pet Shop Boys and Empire of The Sun. I’m not gonna read too much into it, or try to draw allusions between it and his death, it’s just a really good track and I have been listening to it alot this week.
:: selected by: Jams Dean :: Domo Genesis – Domier (299kbps)
Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All is a crew of skater dudes in California that have their heads on a different level. These guys are weird and funny and cannot stop smoking to save their lives. But they flow poetically, with the emphasis on flow, making the listener’s mind bend just as far. The vision is dark and far out, and it works really well. Listen while glancing over their blog for a heightened experience. These guys are teenagers in LA and they seem like they might torture the elderly or set police cars on fire.
:: selected by: Moneyworth :: The Boo Radleys – Wish I Was Skinny (320 kbps)
The Boo Radleys initially appealed to me because of their perfect name, and then because of their perfect pre-Britpop brand of shoegaze. Signed to Rough Trade in the early nineties, they were one of those bands that indie kids died for and everyone else just sort of ignored; however, their 1993 album “Giant Steps” was generally regarded as one of the year’s best albums in its own little indie sphere. I’m not going to lie, I really don’t fall for too much… guitar music, basically, so I’m not really sure why this song speaks to me so much. But I think everyone can agree that these lyrics are fantastic. I don’t want to be famous, or skinny, as much as I once used to, but I think it resonates somewhere deep and universal.
