The International House of Bacon

An ongoing series.

Coconut Records - “West Coast”: A song I heard on Sirius that had to take some time to grow on me. By the time I loved it, I learned that it’s actually Jason Schwartzman’s post-Phantom Planet project, where he plays and sings everything. It’s…interesting. I’m always a little shady about famous people doing music (even if I guess you could say Shwartzman was doing the Phantom Planet thing before he hit it “big”), but this really does it for me. This song in particular is great - fun melody, goofy lyrics, great chorus. Definitely worth looking up.

Weezer - “Pork and Beans”: Ken made the observation that they need a support group to help people break up with Weezer. I haven’t heard more than 3 songs of the new album yet, but even while I think “Pork and Beans” is a fun, goofy rock song, this is all too true. Accepting that a band is a shell of its former self is hard - I still can’t quite believe it with R.E.M., the awesomeness of Accelerate aside - but when you figure that Rivers Cuomo knows how to write a great pop/rock song better than most in the business, how is the mediocrity that we’ve largely seen from Weezer recently forgivable? It’s not like Deep Blue Something, who somehow made one - and only one - good song, after all.

The Watson Twins - “Just Like Heaven”: I fear that the Watson Twins will never gain any significant traction as a music act, because they a) sound like everything that has come before them, and b) don’t especially do anything new with it. Yet, even with those two truisms, everything they produce seems to have a quality to it that feels significant and weighty. Even when they’re doing a cover song in their style like this, it just sounds right coming from them. As does everything, I think. Really crazy.

Paramore - “crushcrushcrush”: Shut. Up. Yes, I’m a teen girl right now, but there’s something strangely addicting about this song. I know it’s not evidence of a trend - I’ve heard three other songs from them and they’re quite bad - but this song, even when it’s so shiny and polished and soulless, I dunno. I’m an addict.