Saturday Sessions: Long you live, and high you fly...

What better way to spend a Saturday blog than with a Saturday Session from The Shins? The Saturday Sessions is a fantastic compilation from BBC Radio 2 that outshines its more famous counterpart, Live Lounge, by a mile. It's a similar idea - bands pop in to the studio and perform a session featuring a cover. The key is in the bands that are invited to take part. Live Lounge had rubbish Brit soul-singers and such, where The Saturday Sessions invite bands such as this week's choice, The Shins.

They cover Pink Floyd's 'Breathe' a song I had never previously heard by a band I tend to rank as the dullest of all bands, ever. I stick with that, by the way. But The Shins inject an uncharacteristically dark feel to their version, and James Mercer's distinctive voice shines here.

Also, a secondary Shins treat for you - a version of their song 'Gone For Good' recorded on the streets of Montmartre in Paris. The sound quality isn't fantastic, in fact it's far from it, but what it lacks in clarity it more than makes up for in loveliness.

mp3: 'Breathe (Breathe In The Air)' by The Shins
mp3: 'Gone For Good (Montmartre Acoustic Street Version)' by The Shins

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One Of These Is Not Like The Other...

I always loved it on Sesame Street when they sang the song about One Of These not being like the others. I'd have liked it even more if it were with this odd-one-out. Though to be fair, the lovely girl is obviously not the oddest of the bunch by a long shot. Still, it's The Shins, and it'd be wrong to complain about a band so consistantly perfect in the output. Their latest album, for instance, has only been around since February, and has already confirmed itself as in my All-Time Desert-Island Top-Ten list. 'Sealegs', in particular, catches my ear every time - it's terrific, typical of The Shins lyrically, but musically so offbeat for them. I am already preparing myself for the first rapper to notice how awesome the riff is, so when it's sampled I'm not too traumatised. I'm considering become a rapper myself, just so I can get to the riff before anyone else. It makes me happy and funky at once. And not funky in the 'smelly' sense, either - though I had a rough night last night, so that too may well be relevant.

mp3: 'Sealegs' by The Shins

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