The wife & I were happy as a clam on Oscar night this past weekend because art triumphed over commerce in at least one category: Best Song, where Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglóvá’s “Falling Slowly” from the “little movie that could” Once triumphed over August Rush gospel shmaltz and a trio of hideously canned, musical-by-the-numbers numbers from the vile rat kingdom’s Enchanted. We lurved Once and its soundtrack, and when it won we actually high-fived.

You might not have heard, but there was some question over the song’s eligibility for Oscar. The award is given to a song written specifically for a film, and in the time between the filming of Once and its release in theaters almost 2 years later, the song had popped up on two albums: Hansard’s band The Frames’ disc The Cost, and The Swell Season, a full-length collaboration between Hansard & Irglóvá. Thankfully, after discussing it with the filmmakers & the nominees and determining the timeline for the song’s creation, it was given the thumbs-up and it was included on the official ballots.

Here, now, are all three versions of the nearly-controversial Oscar-winner. The first is the winner from the film’s soundtrack; the second is an extremely similar one from The Swell Season, whose real differences are more vocal contributions from Irglova and an orchestral bridge; and the third is the fleshed-out, full-band version from The Frames, which, thanks to the pounded piano during the chorus, feels a little Chris Martin-influenced. All good stuff — enjoy:

Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová, “Falling Slowly” (mp3 — from the film Once)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová, “Falling Slowly” (mp3 — from The Swell Season)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

The Frames, “Falling Slowly” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Welcome to a new feature around these parts, the Draft Board. To help keep your music library Selective, I’ll be letting you know what new releases each week are worth your time, and which online retailers will give you the most bang for your music-purchasing buck. On with the show:

Tift Merritt, Another Country
I was a huge fan of Merritt’s last album, Tambourine, which was drenched in horns and southern-fried soul, but I was strangely hesitant about Another Country. Early reports were that it was a return to the more traditional alt.country sound of her debut Bramble Rose, of which I’m not much of a fan. One listen to the single “Morning Is My Destination,” though, (Amazon MP3 is offering a free download through March 3) and I was converted. Great voice, great tunes (the music is a nice blend of her previous two discs), and a hard-to-argue-with price of $7.99. Although Amazon is offering the freebie, iTunes is the best bet: for the same price, you get a bonus track (”Heart Run Wild”) and a PDF digital booklet.

Los Campesinos!, Hold On Now, Youngster
I don’t remember how I first discovered Los Campesinos!, my new favorite Welsh indie-pop collective, but their debut EPs were giddy fun, like Broken Social Scene on a sugar high. Youngster, their proper full-length debut album, isn’t due in stores until April, but thanks to the beauty of the internets, you can grab the digital version right now. Amazon MP3 is the deal at $8.99.

See you next week!

Given that 2 of us 3 uncles live in the greater Boston area, it’s only fitting that we continue the “big dig” out from our unintentional hiatus by presenting our planned January playlists. My idea was to create a pair of bookends with these lists: end ‘07 with some of our favorite final album tracks, and start ‘08 with some of our favorite first album tracks. UNKLE Matt, as always, put it best:

You know, like in High Fidelity: “top ten side one, track ones.”

The lists may not run through the all-time album-opening cuts (how many copies of “Like A Rolling Stone,” “Street Fighting Man,” or “Wannabe” does one need on their iPod, after all?), but we hope to turn you on to some lesser-known opening shots. Enjoy!

• UNKLE Matt’s “Alphalpha” (now with linky mp3 goodness!)
• Uncle Sam’s “First Impressions”

Commentary to come, but I thought it might be nice to drop the tunes right away — have at it!

Download: Elliott Smith, “Sweet Adeline” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Tom Waits, “Big In Japan” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: David Holmes Presents The Free Association, “Don’t Rhyme No Mo” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Primal Scream, “Movin’ On Up” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Malcolm Middleton, “We’re All Going To Die” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Wilco, “Misunderstood” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Uncle Sam’s “First Impressions” (XML Playlist)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

You can grab the whole thing in a single ZIP file, too:

Download: “First Impressions” (ZIP)
(Click here for download instructions)

Happy New Year one and all! To celebrate the buying of new calenders (in January at 50% off), and to bookend our playlists of favorite closing songs to albums, this month we’re spotlighting some of our favorite opening songs. You know, like in High Fidelity - “top ten side one, track ones”. Yeah, a lot of what we do around here can be expressed best as scenes from High Fidelity. Historically, opening songs have fallen into three general categories, that is for albums where some thought and planning went in, and it’s not just a collection of whatever platinum singles the band had lying around already.

Category one is the “hit em fast and hard right off the bat” variety, which of course the punks excelled at (”Blitzkrieg Bop”, “Search And Destroy”, “Roadrunner”), but even The Beatles liked to hit the ground running (”It Won’t Be Long”), and more recently people like Soul Coughing (”Rolling”) and Snow Patrol (”You’re All I Have”) have expressed their inner Mu-Mu and kicked out the jams as soon as the needle drops (or the laser, um, scans…).

Category two is the long slow fade in, that desert wind gathering strength at the beginning of U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name”, the raindrop plucks building into the sunshower of XTC’s “River Of Orchids”, and the “walk from the street into the club where the band is already jamming” sound of The Stone Roses’ “I Wanna Be Adored”. As a lowfalutin’ producer myself, these are often my favorite.

The third ridiculous generalization is the almighty INTRO, which has found its perfect home on the modern hip-hop album. Thus, even though “Bring The Noise” and “Brothers Gonna Work It Out” are two of the best opening rap tracks, they are of course preceded by their respective introductions. I’m not sure why, some combination of artistry and pretention and storytelling, but there really have to be more intros and interludes on hip-hop albums than in any other genre. And thus you won’t find “The Magic Number” or “Oodles Of O’s” on here either. Nor have I included U.N.K.L.E.’s amazing “Guns Blazing (Drums Of Death part 1)”, which although it features Kool G Rap and starts off a truly revolutionary new-school-mining-old-school hip-hop album, it’s kind of just one big intro.

I’ve also tried to spotlight some lesser-known tracks, stipulating that yes, “Bittersweet Symphony”, “Gimme Shelter”, “Whole Lotta Love”, “Our Lips Are Sealed”, “Hard Times”, “What’s Going On”, “One Nation Under A Groove”, “Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine”, “Hurricane”, “Science Fiction / Double Feature” and “London Calling” are some of the best opening tracks ever, but I figure why would you need yet another duplicate track for your iPod.

Anyway, as always I’m wasting my keystrokes and your refresh rate discussing songs that aren’t on my playlist. Without further further ado, here’s the off-the-beaten-tracks that did make it: (audio files coming soon!)

1. Neutral Milk Hotel, “The King Of Carrot Flowers, Pt 1″ (from “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea“)
While I love this whole album and spent quite literally months of my life playing it nonstop, I’ll often just pop this first track on, especially when I need to get that inspirational adrenaline boost that only some music can provide. Whether it’s blasting in the store while I’m closing, blasting in my ears as I walk faster than everyone else through Harvard Square, or blasting at home while I clean or something, it’s meant to be blasted. A wailing whirling dervish of emotional nonsense, building and building and building and then kicking you out the door.

2. Stereo MCs, “Connected” (from “Connected“)
Okay so there is just nothing to this song. I know that. There’s nothing to this song, just a few groovy loops, someone not quite singing, not quite rapping over it, some cool sax & horn stabs, bits of flute and organ, the requisite female backing singer… Really nothing special. But for whatever reason, I think it works, weaving a hypnotic rhythmic groove, and eventually adding harmonic strings to vary things up a bit. I know there’s lots of people who probably can’t stand this song, whether because it was horribly overplayed, or because in lack-of-originality terms, it’s really just the last Happy Mondays song ever recorded. But I still enjoy it, and let’s face it, none of us even care about tracks 2-up on the album. An album (and artist) defining opening song.

3. Regina Spektor, “Samson” (from “Songs“)
My unabashed fanboy status for Regina Spektor is of course a matter of record on this site, but as far as an “alphalpha”, this is the first song on her first album. And considering that it is, in my opinion, the best song I’ve heard so far in this, the last millennium I shall be alive to see, that’s quite an opening statement. She redid this song in a faster and more polished version for her fantastically popular “Begin To Hope” album, but this is the original, complete with mic buzz and piano pedal thumps. Quite a promising beginning, but it still took her another five years or so to become an overnight success.

4. Blind Melon, “Galaxie” (from “Soup“)
Here you go, here’s what you do - you combine the intro and song together into one track! That way people like me, slavishly obeying their own arbitrary guidelines, can still include both. If only PWEI had combined “The Incredible PWEI Vs. The Moral Majority” with “Dance Of The Mad Bastards”, those would be on here instead. But no, it cuts to track 2 just as everything’s getting going. Anyway, this song kicks off a wonderful but overlooked album (”Galaxie” was even released as a single, to little avail), recorded by the band in a big house down in New Orleans, where they soaked up all the funk and jazz and brass band stuff all around them and applied it to their swingy countrifried rock, and you’ve got one tasty “Soup”. Didn’t help much, Shannon Hoon had already found something else far tastier.

5. Jay-Z / The Beatles / DJ Dangermouse, “Public Service Announcement” (from “The Grey Album“)
Interestingly, this is not the opening song on Jay-Z’s own “Black Album”, but this remix does start off the unofficial and unreleased but we all have it anyway “Grey Album”. I really don’t even like Jay-Z’s stuff all that much, but it’s always been mostly because of the sparse and choppy production, in part necessitated by the fear of being sued for stringing together long musical samples like people did back in the days before “Transmitting Live From Mars”, “Alone Again Naturally” and “Bittersweet Symphony”. Dangermouse sirsumvents this by going ahead and sampling the holy grail of what you can’t sample, The Beatles, but not really releasing it for sale or anything, and treading very Grey legal areas. Anything to keep Michael Jackson from making more legal-defense money off Lennon & McCartney, I guess.

6. Cocteau Twins, “Blue Bell Knoll” (from “Blue Bell Knoll“)
Another hypnotic mood-inducing opening number. I actually don’t know whether I like Cocteau Twins - I’ve only ever had this album, and loved it, since hearing my sister play it back in 88 or something. For some reason I’ve never really sought out more of their stuff, so for all I know I’ve been listening to “New Morning” when there’s plenty of “Blood On The Tracks” out there. One of these days I’ll delve. Until then, the collected works of Sigur Ros have filled that spooky beautiful meaningless gibberish niche that the Cocteaus initially stirred up.

7. Black Grape, “Get Higher” (from “Stupid, Stupid, Stupid“)
Give the drug addicts the samplers, get ready to buy them back from the corner pawn shop a few times, but eventually something like this might emerge. The band is just jamming in their old Happy Mondays / Primal Scream way, but the real fun are the vocal samples from Ronald & Nancy Reagan, pulled apart and restructured to seem like a big pro-drug diatribe. And they save the best for last, I won’t ruin it for you, you deserve to have that milk spurt out your nose. Oh and this also features the only rap verse I’ve ever heard where the guy says, “Thank you very much” every time he finishes. A great song from a largely unknown album. Funny music snob anecdote - I decided to go get the Black Grape albums a few years ago, never saw them in Newbury or Tower etc, so I thought I’d pop into CD Spins, a wonderful chain that deals in used-only CDs. Voila, there they were on their shelves. I commented to the young woman working there that I’d been looking for them everywhere and was glad they had them. She acted surprised, telling me that they always have a lot, nobody seems to want it, what is it anyway - in a kind of derisive tone that made me feel I had to defend my purchase a bit. I asked her if she knew of Happy Mondays, and it was like I’d asked her if she knew of black lipstick. OF COURSE… So I pointed out that this was basically the same guys, fooling around more with hip-hop and electrodub grooves, and that she might like it. …I believe the word is “chagrin”.

Download: Neutral Milk Hotel, “The King Of Carrot Flowers, Pt 1" (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Stereo MCs, “Connected” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Regina Spektor, “Samson” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Blind Melon, “Galaxie” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Jay-Z / The Beatles / DJ Dangermouse, “Public Service Announcement” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Cocteau Twins, “Blue Bell Knoll” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Black Grape, “Get Higher” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: UNKLE Matt’s “Alphalpha” (XML Playlist)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

You can grab the whole thing in a single ZIP file, too:

Download: “Alphalpha” (ZIP)
(Click here for download instructions)

Folks, the uncles are sorry for neglecting you for so long. Put down those phones, there’s no need to call child protective services: like any guilty family member, we’re going to make it up to you with gifts. And by gifts, of course, I mean lots of free music, so let’s get to it! We’ll start with our planned playlists from last December. As Matt put it:

Sam thought we should celebrate the end of the year by compiling playlists of our favorite “last tracks”; songs that close albums — you know, “A Day In The Life,” “Brain Damage/Eclipse,” “When The Levee Breaks,” etc. Only not those of course. Right off the bat, in one of our not-so-famous comic-shop brainstorming sessions, Sam and I hammered out a few guidelines. None of those hidden tracks, those bits ensconsed ten minutes after the “last” song, those tracks that when you hit “duration” in iTunes, they pop up as these memory-gobbling 17-minute tracks. You know. Untitled. Annoying.

Matt, as usual, was the responsible one, posting his playlist for the world to see when it was actually due, all the way back in 2007. However, he was hampered, as usual, but a dial-up internet connection at home, and I didn’t do my webmasterly duty of uploading & properly linking his mp3s. So I’ve fixed it & reposted Matt’s list complete with links to the actual tunes. Rudi was also on the ball, uploading mp3s to his FTP account, but I didn’t do my part in posting them. I’ve remedied that below, too. And my list? It’s there, too.

Thanks for your patience, and happy rocking! Matt’s is the first to be resurrected, and, I swear to the sweetmonkeyjesus, both Rudi’s and mine will follow later today or tomorrow.

• UNKLE Matt’s “The Omega, Man!” (now with linky mp3 goodness!)
• Uncle Sam’s “Happy Ending”
• Onkel Rudi’s “And In The End…”

UNKLE Matt was right — setting at least personal rules for this playlist was important: otherwise, my list would be a rundown of my favorite artists’ greatest album-closing hits, and you’d have nothing really new to add to your iPods. So when I approached this challenge, I decided to focus on the usual suspects, but make my list from lesser-known tunes. I hope you dig:

1. The Rolling Stones, “Slipping Away”
   Some of the Stones’ most iconic tunes are album closers (”You Can’t Always Get What You Want” from Let It Bleed, “Salt of the Earth” from Beggar’s Baquet, “Moonlight Mile” from Sticky Fingers), and you can add this (more) recent gem to the list: the Keith-sung ballad “Slipping Away,” which closed their 1989 comeback album Steel Wheels. It’s one of the best Keith numbers from a Stones album, and after the riff-heavy rock of Wheels, the song’s R&B-flavored sound and woozy sweetness sound fantastic. It’s rightly become a live favorite.
2. Bob Dylan, “Shooting Star”
   Dylan’s most famous closers are generally long, poetic affairs that drive fanatics wild with analysis (”Desolation Row,” “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands,” and even the recent “Highlands”), so I decided to pick something a little shorter, sweeter, and digestible from his Lanois-produced ‘89 comeback Shot of Love Oh Mercy (thanks for the catch, Sally — note to self: don’t write these posts right before bed).
3. U2, “The Wanderer (feat. Johnny Cash)”
   Bono and the gang usually keep the ends of their albums moody and spiritually reflective, especially recently (”Grace,” “Yahweh”), and that’s why their synth-gospel collaboration with the late, great Johnny Cash is so darn striking.
4. David Bowie, “Strangers When We Meet”
   I’ve sung the praises of this song before, but I think it still deserves mention here. On Outside, he saved the best song of his late-period albums for last.
5. Prince, “Gold”
   On 1993’s criminally ignored album The Gold Experience, Prince reminded us all that his list of classic, guitar-fueled, album-closing epics does not begin and end with “Purple Rain.” Damn, that’s one hell of a solo.

Download: The Rolling Stones, “Slipping Away” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Bob Dylan, “Shooting Star” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: U2, “The Wanderer (feat. Johnny Cash)” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: David Bowie, “Strangers When We Meet” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Prince, “Gold” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Uncle Sam’s “Happy Ending” (XML Playlist)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

You can grab the whole thing in a single ZIP file, too:

Download: “Happy Ending” (ZIP)
(Click here for download instructions)

So as Sam mentioned, we’ve all been away for awhile, various non-Service issues requiring our attention. But long absence short, we’re back and full o’ideas for the holidays. Specifically, Sam thought we should celebrate the end of the year by compiling playlists of our favorite “last tracks”; songs that close albums - you know, “A Day In The Life”, “Brain Damage / Eclipse”, “When The Levee Breaks”, etc. Only not those of course. Right off the bat, in one of our not-so-famous comic-shop brainstorming sessions, Sam and I hammered out a few guidelines. None of those hidden tracks, those bits ensconsed ten minutes after the “last” song, those tracks that when you hit “duration” in iTunes, they pop up as these memory-gobbling 17-minute tracks. You know. Untitled. Annoying. I then brought up the possible problem that these last tracks would just redundantly represent our lists of favorite albums. That is, I was thinking that in order for a last song to really stand out, you’ve probably liked the whole album to that point, and the last song is kind of the icing on the cake, the closing chapter to a great book. To mix my media as well as my metaphors. So what I decided to do was find last songs that were actually my favorite songs on their albums, or perhaps even the only song I really like from that album.

Anyway, to make a short story long, I’ll continue. After a cursory browsing of my iTunes, which really made this list very easy to research, I boiled this list down from an initial group of contenders that included, among too many others: The Sex Pistols’ “E.M.I.”, Joanna Newsom’s “Clam Crab Cockle Cowrie”, Van Morrison’s “Glad Tidings”, The Zombies’ “Time Of The Season”, Subhumans’ “From The Cradle To The Grave”, Dido’s “Take My Hand”, The Stone Roses’ “Fool’s Gold”, Princess Superstar’s “My Machine”, The Doors’ “When The Music’s Over”, and just for gits and shiggles, Kraftwerk’s “Morgenspaziergang”. …You know! Two hip-hop closers almost made it, MC Shan’s timeless “Living In The World Of Hip-Hop” and The Streets’ “Stay Positive”. Oh and then there’s the appropriately holiday-themed “The Closing Of The Year” by Wendy & Lisa and the cast choir from the “Toys” soundtrack - but upon searching my stacks I must admit with some embarrassment that I seem to not actually own that! Anyway, all great stuff and as always it was tough to boil down to <26 minutes. But here you go:

1. Faith No More, “Edge Of The World” (from “The Real Thing“)
Okay so actually I do like this entire album a lot, but how I got there was partly through this song. Back in the days of cassette singles (or “cassingles”), I picked up the overplayed “Epic” and was overjoyed to find I kinda liked this other song on the “b-side”. Then “Falling To Pieces” came along, cassingle again, and it was backed with what would eventually become one of my single favorite songs, “Zombie Eaters”. At that point, liking and listening to four songs off the same album, I figured what’s the risk here, and got the whole thing. So okay this song has some creepy lyrics (probably banned in the red states), but it makes for a wonderful soothing coda to a roaring force of an album.

2. The Flaming Lips, “Slow Nerve Action” (from “Transmissions From The Satellite Heart“)
Yeah the Lips are my favorite current band (or is Floyd only “dormant”?) so this example won’t shock readers. But this is not only my favorite song off an album that also contains the now wince-worthy “She Don’t Use Jelly” and the listen-worthy “*******”, otherwise known as the “Cool Hand Luke Song”, but more importantly it contains probably my favorite lyrics since Chapman became the Great Silencer. Verse 2:

She had a cool invisible dog that she called Paul.
We’d always sit around her house watching her feed the dog.
Now she’s got a man who don’t like dogs, he just likes cars.
She’s just got a job ’cause times are hard, so Paul is gone…

Oh and I also sampled the beat at the end for the opener to TYPE 4’s album “Trailmix”.

3. Jellyfish, “Calling Sarah” (from “Bellybutton“)
A wonderful little-known gem of an album, I’m always pleasantly surprised when I’m playing this in the store and a customer’s ears perk up and they turn to me and with a quizzical look, inquire… “Jellyfish?” Yes! I love this little Beatlesy album put together in the era of “Let Love Rule” and “No Rain”, look out world, psychedelia is back! …I guess not really. But this is my favorite song on the album, which is a bit more Queen-y than Beatles-esqe. Note the “My Best Friend”-style Rhodes piano and the doubled harmony guitar solo. Come back Jellyfish, all is forgiven!

4. Beck, “Modesto” (from “Stereopathic Soulmanure“)
To be fair, there is one more track after this, one of several short vocal samples that punctuate this dense multi-genred album. But this is the last song on the album, and it bookends it very well with the earlier “Rowboat”. Again it has some lyrics I adore, especially the last line, which succinctly sums up the slacker / flannel crowd: “And I’m feelin’ bad even though nothing’s wrong…” I know what you mean, man. …And you haven’t helped matters with your recent releases… Thank MOE that eels continued your early sound to wonderful evolutions.

5. Men Without Hats, “The End Of The World” (from “Pop Goes The World“)
Okay so this is actually one of my favorite albums. But most of you guys haven’t heard it, right? So there. Upon review, I find it interesting that a few of these songs have a waltzy / swingy feel to them, either playful like Jellyfish and Faith No More, or slow and elegiac like this one. Not really a concept album, but full of small stories that seem to add up to a bigger picture (like a lot of Lips work), this album closes with the last word on Jenny and the band and asks what it might mean when all is said and done. Which takes place, to the dismay of many a betoweled hitchhiker, two days early - on a Tuesday.

6. Pink Floyd, “Bike” (from “The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn“)
I did us all a favor and edited out the crashing, jangling, bashing, jingling sounds that go on forever at the end of this album. But okay yeah I guess that does diminish somewhat that impact of the final lyric, “I’ve got a room of musical tunes, some clang, some jingle, most of them are clockwork - let’s go into the other room and make them work.” It’s the final flight of Roger “Syd” Barrett’s whirlygig mind, just before his transmission seized up and that diamond shone no longer on this side of the moon.

7. The Cranberries, “No Need To Argue” (from “No Need To Argue“)
A dirge, to be sure. But containing some of my favorite lyrics about breaking up, looking back, getting to the point where you can do that without bitterness or fatalism, and remember the “good times”. This is by far my favorite song on this album. “You’re special”. Yes you are, Dolores. Thank you.

Download: Faith No More, “Edge Of The World” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: The Flaming Lips, “Slow Nerve Action” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Jellyfish, “Calling Sarah” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Beck, “Modesto” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Men Without Hats, “The End Of The World” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: Pink Floyd, “Bike” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: The Cranberries, “No Need To Argue” (mp3)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

Download: UNKLE Matt’s “The Omega, Man!” (XML Playlist)
(Right-click/control-click link to download)

You can grab the whole thing in a single ZIP file, too:

Download: “The Omega, Man!” (ZIP)
(Click here for download instructions)