She & Him released their second album this week. My previous experience with them was with The Smiths cover on the "500 Days Of Summer" soundtrack which was on my Valentine mix this year. The connection I never really made was who She & Him were. It is Zoey Deschanel and M. Ward. Now I knew in the back of my mind that Zoey had some singing project, but I hadn't amde the connection that this was it until this week. I know, lame. M. Ward I've been a casual fan of since I saw him open for The White Stripes some years ago. I think I love his collaboration with Zoey better than anything he has done that I've heard.
So this morning I was listening to their first record "Volume One" and was just blown away by how great just about every track is on the record. So much so that I'm actually going to go pick up the CD so I can have it in my car. I'm a sucker for that retro 60's pop sound. I've written about Lesley Gore. I believe I've talked about my love of the Pippettes and if you've been paying any attention, you know I love Holly Golightly who often dances around that retro world.
Well, I loved what I was hearing so much, that I thought maybe I should share it with the few folks who actually do check in and read this blog. So here are some tracks, thanks to youtube.
Just wanted to take a moment to share a really fun mashup I heard at a party this past weekend. I went to crew wrap party for "How To Train Your Dragon", which was an amazing movie by the way. When I walked into the club this mashup was playing and I instantly said to my wife, I gotta track this down. It ended up being really easy to find with a simple google search. I found it here at mashuptown.com.
Boy it has been far too long since I posted something. I hope someone is still reading. Before getting into the record I thought I'd give a brief explanation for the long absence. The quick story is that a few weeks ago I had a hard drive crash on me. Luckily I had the majority of everything backed up, but it had been a few months. The backed up drive worked with an older version of my itunes library that I luckily had backed up. So I've been trying to recreate and fix all the songs in my ituned library since the beginning of December. Then of course nothing is ever easy, so some links went dead when going to the new drive and so I've been fixing that stuff. I figure I have another week or two of work ahead of me, but I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.
An interesting part of this whole saga was that I bought a couple new drives to put everything on and to have a back up. The reason being that the drive I did have that had everything backed up was already sketchy and had been crashing. So after a couple weeks of work on one of the hard drives, it starting making noises like a lawn mower. I couldn't believe it. I backed up everything I had done onto the second new drive and brought the broken drive back to Fry's Electronics. I just wanted to exchange the drive. What I found was that the drive was now $40 cheaper and so in addition to getting the drive swapped out I got $87 dollars refunded. So how lucky was that?
So to the record. This is one weird Bugs record. I'm pretty sure this isn't Mel Blanc doing the voice and so Bugs sounds a little weird. I'm not even sure the record was produced in America. There are some goofy songs like "The Bus Song", "Cricket", "Merry is The Month Of May" and "London Oh London", but the best song selection for my money is "The Bunny Hop". Is has a little groove to it and stands up to repeated listens. There is one part in the song that is driving me crazy because it reminds me of a sample from an 80's rap record and I can't think what it is. I keep thinking it is Run-DMC, but I'm not sure. I know it isn't the actual sample, but it is pretty close to whatever sample is used in the 80's record that I can't place. Give it a listen and if you know it please let me know.
The runner up for 2nd best song is "London Oh London". I could see this as being a good song for a elementary school choir singing. It has some slight educational value and it is kind of catchy.
Enjoy!
01 London, Here I Am.m4a 02 Meet PC 37 1_2.m4a 03 The Bus Song.m4a 04 Buckingham Palace & Taxi Ride.m4a 04 Buckingham Palace.m4a 05 Taxi Ride.m4a 06 Lords Cricket Ground.m4a 07 Cricket.m4a 08 River Thames.m4a 09 Kew Gardens and Hampton Court.m4a 10 Merry Is The Month Of May.m4a 11 London Pub.m4a 12 The Bunny Hop.m4a 13 To The Airport.m4a 14 London Oh London.m4a
Bugs Bunny - Bugs Bunny Comes To London side 1.zip Bugs Bunny - Bugs Bunny Comes To London side 2.zip
ADDENDUM
I'm adding to the post because I did finally figure out what Run DMC song I was thinking of. It is "Christmas In Hollis" which has a sample from Clarence Carter's "Back Door Santa" which is actually the horn phrase that reminds me of a section of "The Bunny Hop"
