Heavy Rotation – July Playlist
U2 in Berlin during the recording of Achtung Baby / Photo by Anton Corbijn
I Am Not a Robot (Starsmith 24 Carat Remix) / Marina & the Diamonds
New Dress / Depeche Mode
Burial / Miike Snow
Combination Pizza Hut & Taco Bell / Das Rascist
Silver Waterfalls / Siouxsie & the Banshees
Shot in the Back of the Head / Moby
Ultra Violet / U2
All Night Diner / Modest Mouse
Sweet Harmony / The Beloved
Just a Lil Bit / 50 Cent
I’ve been out on Fire Island for the past week and I feel like I haven’t stopped playing the Marina & the Diamonds tracks Gio gave me before I left. That and the Miike Snow album, which if you haven’t heard yet, you need to go to their myspace immediately and listen to the track in this month’s playlist.
Miike Snow is like a Swedish version of The Postal Service. And just like The Postal Service, it was conceived as a side project by its members, Andrew Wyatt, Christian Karlsson, and Pontus Winnberg. Karlsson and Winnberg, known better as the production duo Bloodshy & Avant have produced for Madonna, Britney Spears, Kelis, Kylie Minogue and loads of others. Their self-titled album is electro emo at its finest. Sophisticated songwriting married with melodies that are just as catchy as they are complex. Favorite tracks include the summer ballad “Sans Soleil,” the discotastic “Black & Blue,” the anthemic “A Horse is Not a Home,” and the brainwashed sing-along “Cult Logic”—not to mention the song in this month’s list, one of the darker moments on an album that isn’t all that cheery to begin with.
Another song that I will probably never be able to hear again after this summer is Das Racist’s “Combination Pizza Hut & Taco Bell,” which teeters somewhere between brilliance and Harold & Kumar.
My bandmate David, recently reminded me of this track.
Remember the 90s when everyone was naked?
Speaking of throwbacks, this month’s most rewarding re-visit belongs to U2’s Achtung Baby—an album that redefined a band and an entire genre of music.
Did you know the original album was stolen? I have a bootleg copy of it somewhere on audio cassette. I need to go digging. Some of the tracks were eventually recreated for Achtung Baby, but a lot of them were “lost” with the stolen DAT Tapes. Call it a false start, because what eventually came together on Achtung Baby can only be described as a once in a lifetime achievement.
I still love U2 just as much as I did then, but I think these days, when they were all in their 30s, starting families, archiving the past, and leaving everything they knew about who they were and what their sound was like behind… well, it’s all there, and it’s beautiful.
As much as I love Anton Corbijn’s work with Joy Division, I would have loved to have been in his shoes while he was documenting that time with U2. Watch his video for “One” here >
