Song of the Day 53: Kid Cudi - Day n Nite

Hip-hop is kinda cool sometimes.

Song of the Day 52: Bowerbirds - House of Diamonds

It's that time of year when I retreat to my room for hours upon hours and rarely see sunlight. As horribly unhealthy as I've become, I'll always find solace in the fact that music never quite pulls the plug on me. Fairly often I find music that clings to me like ants to the soda I never cleaned from my hardwood floor. And more often than not, I find that music to be indie-folk. Indeed I've grown quite a love in my heart for the whimsical and care free music that blooms beneath the bridge of the mainstream. Bowerbirds' little unknown bit of joy, Upper Air, is precisely what I need these days, and 'House of Diamonds' starts it off humbly and effectively. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

Song of the Day 51: Tim Neuhaus - As Life Found You

Tim Neuhaus is one of those fantastic little gems that pops up when you aren't looking. The video for his song 'As Life Found You' is both clever and sincere, accentuating the tender nature of the music. It's simplistic, but evolves beyond its structural boundaries when paired with the brilliant composition of the tale in the video. This might be one of the few instances when a music video adds onto the enjoyment of a song for me, and I recommend everyone give it a view. Tim Neuhaus hasn't quite hit the crescendo of his career, but promises to be something worth looking for in the future.

Song of the Day 50: The Doors - The End

It's difficult to believe that music recorded forty-five years ago can still be full to the brim with life and relevance. 'The End', an apocalyptic fever dream of a song by the worshiped psychedelic-rock group The Doors has somehow kept its claws sharp and planted in the psyche of anybody that has heard its haunting rhythms. It crawls at a nightmarish pace, randomly breaking into spouts of explosive rage, then pacifying itself back down to a stalking creep. Every time I hear it, I'm taken to the opening of Apocalypse Now, where Michael Sheen is shouting belligerent and drunk in a bloody mess. He said that while filming that scene there wasn't any sort of script, but rather he was expelling his inner demons. I think Jim Morrison may have had a similar mindset when writing this song.

Song of the Day 49: La Dispute - Sunday Morning, at a Funeral

Since the release of their groundbreaking full length LP in 2008, La Dispute have focused their efforts on smaller, more concise pieces of music. A series of spoken-word EPs and two splits with two different bands over the past three years have kept their name alive and fuming with buzz as well as helped them perfect their sound and slowly progress as a band. 'Sunday Morning, at a Funeral' comes from their most recent split with Koji, and is a perfect snapshot of what their sound has become over the past years. Instead of telling a grand story over 13 tracks on an LP, they've instead started telling quick and substantial tales over single tracks. Like I say with every La Dispute track I hear, they're slowly becoming a force to be reckoned with.