douglaswolk:

postpunk:

The Top 35 Or So Songs of the 80’s

Guest Post: Family Fodder - Film Music

It’s a shame then that both in spirit and in sound this isn’t really what we think when we hear the phrase “80s music”—if we’d had more music like this to counteract Reagan and Thatcher, instead of letting “rock” slip into the slumbering cocoon known as “indie rock,” arena pap like U2, or the musical non-entity of hardcore punk, the zeitgeist and the politics of the 80s (and 90s and 2000s) might have been different.  The good news is that Family Fodder’s joy is so enveloping and visceral that when listening to this track, it’s easy to believe that this sort of musical adventurousness, humor, and fad-averse timelessness is always waiting just around the corner to be rediscovered and lived anew.

This song is so great.  Takes post-punk’s anti-pop ethos and puts it in an actual pop song that works on a very non-ironic level.  The lyrics are kind of cloyingly brainy/collegiate, but the music is epic — it shouldn’t be emotional, but it is.  It’s a paradox, and a good one.  Or, to quote the song, it’s empty, and it pleases me.

I should add that I first heard this via Douglas, so reblogging it from him now has a nice symmetry.  Thanks Douglas!