Musical Musings

FELINE EQUINE BOVINE URSINE: FRIDAYS 5-6PM WSPN 91.1

Last show. Animal: THE ZOO. Anything goes!

Click for music.

O’Death: Bugs
Portugal. The Man: Elephants
Joanna Newsom: Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie (includes: bats, dragons, bumblebees, clams, crabs, cockles, cowries)
Patrick Watson: Big Bird in a Small Cage
Joanna Newsom: You and Me, Bess (about Dick Turpin and his horse, Black Bess)
Ratatat: Wildcat
Horse the Band: Face of Bear (DON’T FEED THE BEARS OR THE BEARS WILL FEED ON YOU)
Venetian Snares: Második galamb (includes a monologue pondering a pigeon)
Joanna Newsom: Only Skin (includes horses, bats, whales, snails, hound-dogs, squids, seagulls, spiders, sea-cows, rattlesnakes, vultures, cats, finches)
The Antlers: Putting the Dog to Sleep (putting this show to sleep!)

(This image contains every animal ever mentioned in Joanna Newsom’s music.)

FELINE EQUINE BOVINE URSINE: FRIDAYS 5-6PM WSPN 91.1

Today’s animal: THE SLOTH. You guessed it- slow tunes, 50 bpm and under.
Click for music!

Earth: Omens and Portents I: The Driver
Low: The Plan
The Low Anthem: Sawdust Saloon
The Middle East: Deep Water
My Brightest Diamond: She Does Not Brave the War
Joanna Newsom: This Side of the Blue
Soap and Skin: Boat Turns Toward the Port
Sunn O))): Alice (if you have fifteen minutes, listen to all of “Alice.” It really is something.)

FELINE EQUINE BOVINE URSINE: FRIDAYS 5-6PM WSPN 91.1

This week’s animal: THE CHEETAH. Fast tunes. Nothin’ under 180 bpm.

Venetian Snares: Tache
Boris: Furi
Maps and Atlases: Everyplace Is a House
Piglet: Anthropology Anthology
Ahleuchatistas: Unfolding
Lite: Phantasia
Volta do Mar: Mass Transit Highways
O’Death: Allie Mae Reynolds
Mars Volta: A Plague Upon Your Hissing
Jardín de la Croix: Blacksnout Seasnail
Behold… The Arctopus: Canada
About Tess: Violence Freak
Adebisi Shank: Logdrum 

FELINE EQUINE BOVINE URSINE: FRIDAYS 5-6PM WSPN 91.1

This week’s animal: THE PRAIRIE VOLE. The prairie vole is one of the few non-human mammals that forms lifetime pair bonds. So, songs about love (good or bad). Now with selected YouTube links!

Björk: It’s Oh So Quiet - about the excitement of first falling in love. zing boom! (if you’re going to click on one video, make it this one. directed by Spike Jonze)

The Low Anthem: Apothecary Love

Alexi Murdoch: At Your Door

The Format: Snails - about taking a relationship slow

Fun: The Gambler - about the long-lasting love between the singer’s parents

BADBADNOTGOOD: Fall in Love - instrumental, but you can hear it

Lykke Li: Unrequited Love - title says it

The Antlers: Epilogue - horribly depressing end to a horribly depressing album about a male hospice worker who falls in love with a cancer patient. spoiler alert: she dies

Murder by Death: Intergalactic Menopause 

My Brightest Diamond: I Have Never Loved Someone - the next line is “the way I love you”

Joanna Newsom: Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie - admiring someone from afar

Washed Out: You and I

Spiritualized: Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space 

Weezer: El Scorcho - contains my favorite line from a love song: “I think I’d be good for you, and you, you’d be good for me”

GWAR: I Hate Love Songs - perfect end

FELINE EQUINE BOVINE URSINE: FRIDAYS 5-6PM WSPN 91.1

This week’s animal: DEER. Calm, woodsy tunes. Stuff you might listen to while walking through a forest.

The Middle East: Months
The Low Anthem: Smart Flesh
Ólöf Arnalds: Í Nýju Húsi
Joanna Newsom: Swansea
O’Death: Home
The Middle East: Very Many
The Low Anthem: To Ohio
Murder by Death: Holy Lord, Shawshank Redemption Is Such a Good Movie!
Joanna Newsom: Ribbon Bows
Alexi Murdoch: Crinan Wood
José González: Far Away
Patrick Watson: Tracy’s Waters

FELINE EQUINE BOVINE URSINE: FRIDAYS 5-6PM WSPN 91.1

This week’s animal: FISH. Chill-out, floating-in-the-ocean tunes.

Tortoise: On the Chin
múm: We Have a Map of the Piano
Helios: Bless this Morning Year 
Jónsi: Hengilas
Low: Sunflower
Amiina: Hilli/Lóri
Tristeza: Wand
Washed Out: A Dedication
Sigur Rós: Untitled 4
Helios: Dragonfly Across an Ancient Sky
Murder by Death: Canyon Inn, Room 16

FELINE EQUINE BOVINE URSINE: FRIDAYS 5-6PM WSPN 91.1

This week’s animal: THE BIRD. Tunes with great melodies, the kind you can’t help but sing along to.

Ólöf Arnalds: Vinur Minn
Dirty Projecters: Two Doves
The Low Anthem: Charlie Darwin
Joanna Newsom: Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie
Ólöf Arnalds: Náttsöngur
My Brightest Diamond: We Added It Up
Joanna Newsom: In California
Patrick Watson: Big Bird in a Small Cage
Sufjan Stevens: The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders (Part I: The Great Frontier - Part II: Come to Me Only with Playthings Now)
Joanna Newsom: ‘81
Ólöf Arnalds: Innundir Skinni
My Brightest Diamond: In the Beginning
The Low Anthem: Coal Mountain Lullaby 

(Yeah I know, but Joanna and Ólöf are both really good at writing melodies)

Next week’s animal: FISH

FELINE EQUINE BOVINE URSINE: FRIDAYS 5-6PM WSPN 91.1

This week’s animal: THE MONKEY. Lots of loud, fast, crazy tunes.

Melt-Banana: Shield for Your Eyes, a Beast in the Well on Your Hand
Boris: Ibitsu
About Tess: Violence Freak
Adebisi Shank: Masa
Fang Island: Welcome Wagon/Daisy

Joanna Newsom: Monkey and Bear (the one lyrical one- the lyrics are in a style kinda like a fable about a monkey and a bear who live together in captivity as performance animals. The bear seeks freedom despite the riskiness that comes with living in the wild, while the monkey tries to dissuade the bear from desiring such a fate. But, you could also interpret it as being about relationship inequality, the idealism of freedom, or even the creation myth of the constellation ursa major) 

The Mars Volta: A Plague upon your Hissing
Melt-Banana: A Dreamer Who is Too Weak to Face Up to
Ruins: Yawiquo
Piglet: Anthropology Anthology
Maps and Atlases: Songs for Ghosts to Haunt to
Boris: Furi

Next week’s animal: BIRDS

FELINE EQUINE BOVINE URSINE: FRIDAYS 5-6PM WSPN 91.1

New show! Every week brings a different animal and music that relates to it, either musically or lyrically. This week’s animal: THE WHALE.

Joanna Newsom: Colleen (about a whale that turns into a girl, see here)

Sunn O))) & Boris: The Sinking Belle (slow, atmospheric)

Mono: Halcyon (Beautiful Days) (big, slow post-rock)

Red Sparowes: Finally, As That Blazing Sun Shone Down upon Us, Did We Know That the True Enemy Was the Voice of Blind Idolatry… (same vein as Mono but a little more aggressive)

Ahab: Yet Another Raft of the Medusa (Ahab takes their name from the captain of the Pequod, and most of their lyrics were written by Herman Melville) 

Sigur Rós: Untitled 6 (more atmospheric post-rock)

Dirty Projectors + Björk: All We Are (dialogue between a sympathetic human and a family of whales, see here)

Next week’s animal: THE MONKEY