Song of the Day
Each day in 2022, I chose a song. Sometimes it chose me.
Needle In the Hay
Elliott Smith
Sometimes I still imagine Steven Paul Smith walking the streets of Portland looking to score and get high. 6th and Powell, unable to quit. What a songwriter though. He’s on that short list of songwriters who has made some records that will outlive us.
This one captures his harrowing drug habit. Nothing’s going to stop it. It’s used so well in Royal Tenenbaums, but this song doesn’t even need a great movie sequence to stand out. It paints this heartbreaking picture all on its own steam.
In The City
Chromatics
Had this one going through my head today — a track with a palpable dangerous vibe, complete with melancholy streaks. And it has a perfect mix of electronic and analog instrumentation. Bass, real drums, electric guitar and these incredible synths — even a swirling synth solo.
It’s the title track from an EP I’ve played so many time since 2006 — it just sets a mysterious, cinematic mood. A great song to walk big city streets with if you’ve got good headphones.
Famous Monsters
Chromatics
Feels right to close out this Chromatics chapter with a newer song fit for Halloween. The freaks come out at night, but also in the daylight, especially in LA — those pining for celebrity status and power — cruising the Hollywood Hills and drinking strange blood. There’s a darkness in those high rises and it’s been there for a long time. We never die…
Ruth’s deadpan spoken word is so cinematic and cool. And that little keyboard riff that comes in at 2:10 is addictive and wonderful.
Cherry
Chromatics
Another amazing Portland band — and my favorite artist from the outstanding Italians Do It Better record label. They put out a lot of work together over 20 years (!) and it’s a catalog worth celebrating. All their music features gorgeous vocals from Ruth Radelet and melodic synths and engineering from Johnny Jewel.
This is the title track from their terrific 2014 release — a mesmerizing track full of dreamy emotion that just transports. Love the Super 8 video, because their music is always cinematic and captures such a vibe.
Watch Out
Richmond Fontaine
One more from Willy and the band — 2009’s WE USED TO THINK THE FREEWAY SOUNDED LIKE A RIVER is becoming the Fontaine record I reach for most often. I have it on vinyl and it’s just one of these LP’s that’s easy to play with numerous tracks that make me happy. For this great tune, the darkness is all in the subtext. Only a few lyrics, essentially a warning.
Watch out or your heart will be nothing but scars.
And I love the male/female trade-off with these — and the music is just heartfelt, sweet, optimistic — the guitar and piano. You get the feeling these two will be alright. ❤️❤️
The Eagles Lodge
Richmond Fontaine
When I consider the great northwest bands, and specifically Portland bands, RICHMOND FONTAINE is near the top of my list. Willy Vlautin has a voice you just don’t forget — and not just his singing voice, but the artistic voice you feel in his songs and books.
This one’s a love song and it’s one of my favorites. It tells a story. For ten minutes these two slip away...and those drums at 1:00 kill me — they're like fireworks going off. Would love to make a music video for this song, where we see those fireworks in the sky above them as they kiss. In my mind it would have to feel like a great short film with the right cast, cinematography and locations. 🎬🎵
Post to Wire
Richmond Fontaine
Such a great alt-country single — on perhaps my favorite RF record — the first Fontaine LP I ever heard. So many great songs on this one, but this title track’s an all-timer. A fun, emotional call & response love song about sticking it out together. Love those those guitars and that pedal steel.
Don't you think we should be the ones who go Post to wire?
The Honest Truth
Typhoon
No easy way to transition away from the Beatles, so I didn’t need a clever reason to land on this great band. It was just that their A NEW KIND OF HOUSE EP came to mind over coffee this a.m.
I often think of Portland bands. It’s just one of those great west coast cities where you find great artists — the kind of city that inspires. And so another rabbit hole presents itself. Bands from Portland you may not have heard of? That feels exciting and fun.
TYPHOON has one of these hopeful sounds I love. Big hooks, choruses and horns. And I really love the video, worth a watch. Kyle walking around his Portland neighborhood carrying a (wooden) baseball bat and coffee mug. And that singalong chorus in the living room is divine.
You’re gonna piss and moan, you let the devil in your home… ❤️
Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight / The End
The Beatles
Getting misty eyed with this one. Even though LET IT BE was their last record released, these ABBEY ROAD recordings are the final Beatles collaborations. And this medley is their mesmerizing finale on Side Two. They knew it was the end of their run and that they would carry that weight for a long time.
Once there was a way to get back home…
Two of Us
The Beatles
One of my favorite Beatles songs and it feels like Paul in every way — so simple and infectious — the melody, the earnestness. Fun to watch him walk the band through the song in GET BACK. It’s about he and Linda getting lost in the woods together, so you can feel the tenderness and that it comes from a real place. And how beautiful it is to see this loving montage from the Get Back sessions. Incredible.
Oh! Darling
The Beatles
Even though it came out in November of 2021, Peter Jackson’s GET BACK is still probably my movie event of both ‘21 and ‘22. Sometimes I just put it on in the background — it’s that good — and watch/feel/sense the Beatles working out their songs. Their wit, humanity, their harmonies and talents on full display, and with intimate details. Mind-blowing to be a fly on the wall in that studio.
I love hearing this song rehearsed in GET BACK — so passionate and perfect. Somehow Paul and John could sing with a kind of abandon at just the right time and never took it too far. It feels like all instinct in a way too. And I find Paul’s screaming on this one so timeless and beautiful,.
Don’t Let Me Down
The Beatles
I have a soft spot for some of these “new” songs recorded during the LET IT BE sessions. After watching GET BACK three times (!) — this one makes me giddy out of the gate, because Billy Preston gets a writing credit.
For me, this is one of Lennon’s finest moments with the Beatles. So many of the great Lennon songs are surreal and emotionally distant. With this one, he was emotional and direct about the kind of commitment he wanted with Yoko. Normally the band leaned on Paul for this kind of vulnerability.
John was full of hope and had a new relationship that he hoped would last forever. And so he wrote about it. It lasted the last eleven years he was alive.
I’ve Got a Feeling
The Beatles
From their last released record LET IT BE — one of my favorite tracks — so soulful and raucous, infectious. I have to go with the ROOFTOP VERSION take 1 because we see the boys playing it with real excitement. Love the call and response of John and Paul and the fact Billy Preston joins them as Beatle #5.
We get to see this song over and over and over in GET BACK as it’s worked out, written and recorded. It’s one of my favorite aspects of the doc. The fact we get to see some of these songs born. We watch them evolve and come full circle.
Here Comes the Sun
The Beatles
George wrote some of the very best Beatle songs when it was all said and done. And this one was probably the first Beatles song I absolutely loved as a kid. I remember it made me happy. That beautiful acoustic guitar, the melody and the idea of a brand new day still makes me happy. 🌅☀️🎵
Blackbird
The Beatles
A song I almost don’t want to comment on. A song so unbelievable and timeless and meaningful that I just want to leave the lyrics and the link here. I will say that growing up, I thought it was about death and the afterlife. But it is actually — according to Paul — a civil rights song about the Little Rock Nine. 💔
Tell Me Why / If I Fell / I Should Have Known Better
The Beatles
When I think about music on film — Richard Lester’s A HARD DAY’S NIGHT is near the top of my list. He captured the Beatles cinematically at their initial, youthful peak as they took over the world, verité. The screaming teens, the harmonies, the exhilaration in that auditorium. What a privilege to look back and watch it fully now in real time — it’s so much more than the February ‘64 Ed Sullivan TV appearance. With Lester’s movie, we feel what it was like to watch these four young men accept their coronation to superstardom in real time. And this three song medley still sounds unbelievable.
A Real Hero
College / Electric Youth
I love when an under the radar indie pop tune gets a spotlight — especially when it’s featured in a terrific film. Somehow DRIVE feels like cinematic art and pure entertainment at the same time. Not many films can walk that tightrope.
And this song? It’s a huge centerpiece for the filmmking — Gosling and Mulligan get to play “family” — soaking up LA — even just for a day. That last shot of Gosling carrying her sleeping son to bed while she watched him tenderly just killed me. I knew and felt that beautiful moment. And I also knew it was peaking…and it would all be taken away during the next hour. 💔🎬
Mother
Pink Floyd
This track? Wow. The greatest collaboration between Gilmour and Waters? Maybe. There are others, but this one truly flies to special heights.
Melody? Oh yeah.
Lyrics and ides? Profound.
Shredding guitar solo? No doubt.
And it also features some of their best Pink Floyd vocals — a call & response between mother & son. ♥️ This newer version of MOTHER from the film is so unique and perhaps even better. It features new stems that were recorded and mixed into these cinematic scenes below. A song and sequence that is deliberately paced for emotional storytelling.
Nobody Home
Pink Floyd
From THE WALL, this song is the center piece of the record. Pink isolated at home alone. Grasping at meaning. Unpacking painful memory. The danger of tipping over the edge and losing sanity (like Syd Barrett did) feels very real and lurks in the subtext.
This is ultimately a long form music video with Bob Geldoff playing Pink. But I love the risks Alan Parker’s movie took — cinematic risks is what gives the film shelf life. It already has music that will stand the test of time — but the images do as well. Seeing Young Pink walk the war zone is a stirring piece of experimental filmmaking. RIP Alan Parker who passed away in 2020.
Come Get to This
Marvin Gaye
There’s something about his music — how it makes me feel. So many of his songs make me feel like love, joy and personal happiness are actually possible. And this track is one of my favorites.
In a six episode series I wrote called FAIRWAYS — one of the characters has a mix going in his truck and this song pops on. I can still see and feel this sequence in my mind. Most likely, we’ll never make this one, but I like the fact that it exists on paper and in my mind. Whenever I hear this song now, I think of this story I wrote in a series we’ll never see.