Friday 5

It is Friday and time for a little something I am calling the Friday 5. The five songs that are blowing up my eardrums and putting a smile on my face right now. The titles are links to I Tunes' 30 second samples of the song. And in case you are wondering, these are in a specific order.

1. Crazy / Gnarls Barkley
I knew when I heard this back in March that it would be huge. Though not everyone is familiar with Danger Mouse or CeeLo, the masses will know who Gnarls Barkley is by the end of the summer. Far beyond the realms of The Gray Album or Goodie Mob, these two are bringing forward thinking soul music to all y'alls ears with St. Elsewhere, a listen-to-it-straight-through kind of album. I dare you not to move to this track.

2. Miss Murder / AFI
The lead single from a highly anticipated album (for me at least) is almost guaranteed to be high on my list. AFI's Miss Murder is no exception to that rule. There are plenty of pretenders to their throne (and if you're 15 or consumed by "goth rock", you know who they are), but Davey Havok and company are the real deal for me. They melded their punk sound with a gothic approach for the last album, Sing the Sorrow, and continue the successful marriage of styles on decemberunderground. This song is catchy as hell and rocks hard enough to make my head move.

3. Phenomena / Yeah Yeah Yeahs
This isn't the first single off Show Your Bones. It's not the second either (that's Cheated Hearts which is awesome in its own right). This should be released though. Phenomena is all about Karen O and the boys rocking hard and getting their groove on. And how can you deny a song with a car alarm in it? I sure can't. The Yeah Yeah Yeah's have given us a perfect song to crank while driving down the hot streets of summer. And from what I understand, Karen O live is something like a phenomena live herself.

4. A Certain Romance / Arctic Monkeys
Had I started doing this blog 6 months ago, everyone would see that this Arctic Monkeys track would be about the sixth one to make the Friday five, but since this is the first installment, suffice it to say that AM have been on my Ipod and soundtracking my life nonstop since late last year. A Certain Romance is one of the grander songs on Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, clocking in at five and a half minutes. The ending is purely anthemic jamming by four young British lads who are not seeing the same fanfare in the states that they had in the UK. Regardless, they have lived up to the hype and this song alone is worth the price of admission to the album. After all, it does contain one of the best lines of the year in, "There's only music so that there's new ringtones." Bloody genius I say.

5. Lay Low / My Morning Jacket
As with Gnarls Barkley and Arctic Monkeys, this track has been a permanent fixture in "The Five". This week actually marks the five month mark for Jim James and the rest of MMJ's modern day Freebird calling "The Five" its home. Though Lay Low clocks in at an anemic 6:01, compared to versions of Lynrd Skynrd's opus that run approximately three days, it follows Freebird's build up to eargasmic jam formula pefectly. The second half of the song is completely instrumental and showcases MMJ's new additions of keyboardist Bo Koster and guitarist Carl Broemel, replacing Johnny Quaid and Danny Cash, who had enough of the rock and roll lifestyle so to speak. Judging by this track and the rest of MMJ's newest album, Z, the band is recovering just fine and expanding their sound in correlation with their fan base.


Your comments are welcome. Please tell me what your "Five" consists of. I would love to hear it and hear from you. If time permits, I may just put up alot more than 5.

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