Two songs thrown up in succession by the sh-sh-shuffle perhaps encapsulate the two extremes of what I am looking for in a song. Okay, it's just two songs at random, and any other two songs chosen at random might be able to be analysed in the same way, but there you are. First we have the Marine Girls' version of "Fever": charm; brevity; a kind of goodnatured naivete; taking a good song and making something new out of it; Tracey Thorn's voice. Then we get "Halleluwah", by Can: strength through repetition; experimentation; length; a sense of the unknown; Jaki Leibezeit's drumming.
And all things in between, obviously.
The funny thing was, the very next song to shuffle up was Talking Heads' "Electric Guitar", from "Fear of Music". I don't recall ever having connected Talking Heads and Can before. But knock me down with a feather, the two songs have an almost identical rhythm. (And it's not the kind of rhythm you have ever really heard anywhere else. If I didn't already over-use the word "counterintuitive" I would be using it again here.) Who knew?
