
Anyway, it's sort of ironic that our subject this month is brass, because I arrived at it via the assessment that I generally don't like brass gussying up my music. But if there's one thing I've learned from four years in a creative field, it's that the least logical path is often the most interesting. To wit: surely there are some songs with brass arrangements that I'm capable of enjoying. Going through my iPod, I was actually surprised by the number of contenders for this list. I disqualified acts like Dave Matthews and Bruce Springsteen who rely heavily on a brass presence, by the way. But even without those, I had a heap of material to work with.
And you know what? Since I skipped last month, we're going to up the ante. Here are 17 songs for ya ass. Like June, these are in no particular order:
- Neil Young - "After the Gold Rush": A regal trumpet solo toots the vocal melody on one of Young's most famous songs.
- Silver Jews - "Random Rules": I love the bed of lounge brass that lifts behind the chorus of this classic album opener.
- Radiohead - "How to Disappear Completely": A lone trumpet dances in the shadowy middle distance of Radiohead's ghostly ode to getting the hell outta dodge.
- Wilco - "Monday" - I remember reading that Jeff Tweedy was incensed when the Stonesy horns were stripped from the radio edit.
- Bob Dylan - "Most Likely You Go Your Way (and I'll Go Mine)": This is actually a serviceable remix of the original, which is unavailable on youtube apparently.
- Tom Waits - "Ruby's Arms": Takes the cake for the saddest horn section on the list. Short instrumental horn introduction sets the stage for this all-time bawler.
- Hold Steady - "Chillout Tent": Every great album has that one polarizing track. This one--featuring choral exchanges by the song's subjects--often proves to be the one on Boys and Girls in America. But I love the bed of trumpet hits that complement the second chorus. They provide an open-air feel that conjures the mid-day sprawl of a rock festival.
- The National - "Fake Empire": As the coda of this establishing act unfurls, the frantic and overlapping brass section embodies the song's big city setting.
- Broken Social Scene - "Art House Director": The rich, shimmering swaths of Price Is Right style horn blasts are a large part of why this was my favorite track from Forgiveness Rock Record.
- Spoon - The Underdog": Rarely a band to reach across stylistic boundaries, they introduced some choppy horn runs to round out what is probably their most digestible track to date.
- Bright Eyes - "Landlocked Blues": Maybe a little cliched, but I still get goosebumps every now and then hearing the charged "Taps" blast that unfurls after Conor screeches "'Cause they're comin' for ya!"
- TV On the Radio - "Crying" - The pool is deep with TVOTR, but I'll place "Crying" slightly ahead of "I Was a Lover".
- Whiskeytown - "The Ballad of Carol Lynn": The soft horn section here is just the right amount of sweetener for this sleepy-eyed number.
- The Low Anthem - "Boeing 737": The newest entry on the list, I love the soaring brass draws that score the violent rush of an airliner passing just overhead.
- Elliott Smith - "A Question Mark": A baritone sax puffs along beneath the chugging XO tune.
- My Morning Jacket - "Dancefloors": It was a treat seeing this one played with a full jazz band in tow, fleshing out the horn-laden outro jam.
- Beck - "Tropicalia": Fact: it is impossible not to shimmy in some form or fashion when hearing "Tropicalia".
Wild card, you say? Look, I just rolled out 17 of the horniest songs in my collection and you still want a wild card? I'm hardly posting these days as it is--how are you going to bug me for more content? Nah just kidding, I've got a treat for the six of you reading this: how about I throw my own shit under the microscope for once. Check out my self-produced (re: shoddy) track "Thunders of the Morning". Listen close during the chorus and the outro jam, and you'll hear some midi-horns.
3 comments:
Love the clarinet used in many of The Low Anthem's songs. Such a beautiful/eerie instrument.
Here's one of my favorite brass tunes:
Romantica - "The National Side"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtFKYuBczQU
Wow, I really, really enjoyed that. Thanks for posting! Great video as well.
The mariachi-ish horns also reminded me of an egregious omission, Okkervil River's "A Girl In Port".
A Girl in Port is great! I'm not very familiar with Okkervil River, but I'm definitely going to dig into their music after that song! Thanks
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