The Shower Playlist...and other oddities

don't worry, I can see it too

I shower with my laptop. Yes. Well, not in the actual shower of course, but I bring it with me so that I can have some music while I'm in there. Yes, some people have a radio. In my apartment, we don't. So laptop it is. You know how tough it is to figure out what you wanna listen to for 15-20 minutes when there's nothing you can do about what's playing? It's one thing to make a playlist (believe me, I have a couple), and it's something totally different to choose an album to throw on. 

You have to be picky. If it's a morning shower, what can you play that's gonna get you excited for the day? If it's a late-night shower before bed, what are you gonna play that'll help wind the day down? If it's something you enjoy, is it gonna be too quiet to even hear over the fan and the running water (I'm looking at you The xx)? If it's something that's best played loud, is it gonna be to the point that you're gonna start annoying your roommates? These are all the considerations that must be made for The Shower Playlist.

Sometimes though, you luck out, wake up at 11am on a Monday like this, your roommates are gone for the day, you have nothing to do but study for your final exam tomorrow, so you jump in the shower and turn up We Are Wolves' electro-rocker of an album Invisible Violence. 

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...but The Shower Playlist is only the lead-in to this post. What I really wanted to do was two-fold: I originally wanted to highlight "Reaching For The Sky" from that album, but then I was just listening to "Something Hiding For Us In The Night." from The Wooden Sky, so I figured I'd tie those two together somehow. They're both on the longer side of their respective albums (The Wooden Sky's comes from If I Don't Come Home You'll Know I'm Gone), and as I've made clear on here before, I'm an absolute sucker for a longer song that's done well. If there's two pieces of music that are equally good, but one is 3 minutes long, and the other is 5, wouldn't you rather the longer one? That's my attitude at least.

So anyways, I was giving The Wooden Sky's tune a spin like I was saying, and I noticed it was a great slow-builder, so I went and checked, and it clocked in at 5:29. I scrolled up a bit in my iTunes library, and there's the We Are Wolves track I wanted to feature...also checking in at 5:29. So I figured that coincidence was as good as any reason for creating this post.

I was initially tabbing "Reaching For The Sky" because for all of We Are Wolves' immediate, chugging rockers (like my can't-stop-spinning-it-right-now favorite "Paloma" - check that one out at the end of the post), it's one that sounds more LCD Soundsystem-like in its cadence, quickly building up with an undercurrent of a jive, adding electronic bloops and bleeps, drum machine hits, some deft keyboard work, a crunchy guitar after about a minute, then finally some vocals. It takes its time though, not rushing things along, almost recalling some of The Who's sprawling rockers if I'm really gonna make a reach for comparisons (around the 2:20 mark though, tell me you can't hear it too).

We Are Wolves - "Reaching For The Sky"

Like LCD Soundsystem's more outstanding grooves, "Reaching For The Sky" really hit its stride at 4 minutes in, just when you think you've settled into a monotonous rut. There's no real chorus here...just good old fashioned dance-punk done with We Are Wolves' own great twist.

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On the other end of the music spectrum lies "Something Hiding For Us In The Night." (alright, maybe acid jazz or death metal actually lies on the other end, but humour me here). It's a great, slow ballad, kept alive for the first few minutes by the faster-than-usual-paced percussion and expressive vocals. The latter seem to be The Wooden Sky's hallmark - pensive lyrics delivered with sincerity and an underlying power to them. 

The Wooden Sky - "Something Hiding For Us In The Night."

Around 3 minutes into this one, the cymbals crash here and there, and the vocals raise in intensity and volume, before mellowing for a verse or two, coming down to a level even quieter than the intro, hitting a nice little guitar solo...then bam! exploding into a pained-sounding chorus, which - whether this is just a case of the file I have, or the actual mixing of the album - sounds like it's going to burst out of the speakers.

Either way, that's two great slow-burners, from very different areas of (Canada's!) alternative music. And two more to add to my ever-growing list of great long(er) songs.

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As promised, We Are Wolves' raucous affair: (bonus points if you know what the hell he's saying...I'm pretty sure it's Spanish, but from a Montreal-based group that has some Francophone songs on their albums, it's a strange direction to be sure)

We Are Wolves - "Paloma"