Simple songs that are emotional fuckin bulldozers

[alan nagsworth]

Tunes where there's just like, a guitar or a jug or a bit of wood, and some words, and that's all it takes to plough your guts into the dirt. It takes raw talent to write a song which is minimal in composition but maximal in emotional clout. I think subconsciously that's why I've never enjoyed a lot of second-wave post-rock stuff, because it's just shite. Layer upon layer of FEELINGS and unless you're tripping on mescaline or something the point is entirely lost. Fuck off Explosions in the Sky.

Not so long ago "Rock Bottom Riser" by Smog was posted in here and I was reminded just how much I love music like this. I know there's also bass and drums and piano in this song but the delivery is so dry and Callahan's voice is so simplistic so I think it definitely fits.

Also, yesterday I was introduced to Julia Jacklin, who is wonderful, and halfway through the first track on her album "Crushing" I knew at some point she would really get me, and I was right. "When The Family Flies In" is the precise reason I wanted to bring this subject up, because it is just a muddy sounding piano, two extremely simple verses and a chorus, but by the end of it yesterday I had stopped what I was doing and I was in tears. Fucking beautiful song that sums up loss perfectly without needing to say much at all.

I expect there'll be a fair whack of Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits in here, which would be great as I've still not got into them properly after all these years. Hit me.

[Gregory Torso]

Smoke's song Chad has always been heart desctructively rough and brutalising to me. It's all in the frontman Benjamin's scraped-away, rasping voice like Tom Waits without the affectations or performance, an emotional amphetamine stick thin man in a blue silk ballgown. Just growling through this lonesome gay poetry about loss and a boy who won't return his affections. There was a documentary about him and the band released a while ago, he was messed up, to say the least.

Smoke - Chad

[samadriel]

Morphine - Gone for Good.

[Gregory Torso]

Another heart stopper, here. Complete soul annihilation, wailing pain, smacking shit out of an acoustic in a spotlight, laying waste to false orchestration with just a voice and minimal chords. The bits where she starts gargling phlegm and barking in pure coyote lust slay that silence, pierce that fucking darkness

Odetta - The Waterboy

[Shaky]

There's so much Will Oldham to chose from, but this Superwolf ditty is definitely one of my favourites. The song features Oldham's strained vocals and a simple, descending guitar line with alternating bass notes but it packs a quiet wallop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JDaBRVy4ek

[earl_sleek]

I expect there'll be a fair whack of Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits in here, which would be great as I've still not got into them properly after all these years. Hit me.

Tom Waits - Johnsburg, Illinois

One and a half beautiful minutes with Tom and a piano.

[chveik]

I'm not sure to understand what simple means in this context, but here goes

Mirel Wagner - No Death

Sibylle Baier - Tonight

[I.D. Smith]

Teenage Fanclub, 'Broken'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlA_iO3LEEM

[Sin Agog]

Musically Morita Doji got some cool producers like J.A. Caesar and a string section on board, but this is the slightest wisp of a two-chord melody and the way it just stops on a dime at the end feels like a suicide.  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lSGSWve2epU

[Puce Moment]

Elliott Smith 'Waltz #2'

[big al]

Levi Stubb's Tears.

[pigamus]

He Was A Friend Of Mine.

[DrGreggles]

Teenage Fanclub, 'Broken'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlA_iO3LEEM

Beautiful song.
Had me welling up a bit when they played it on the final night with Gerry.

[Icehaven]

Eels' "It's Motherfucker". Can't listen to, or think about, even one line of it without welling up, and pathetically it's for my own soppy reasons (moping over Mr. H before we got together) which are nothing like on the scale of what actually inspired the song (E's entire immediate family dying). I quite wish I didn't know that as it makes it even worse.

[Better Midlands]

[tag]JCB Song[/tag]

[thecuriousorange]

[tag]JCB Song[/tag]

tag]Miley Cyrus - Wrecking Ball[/tag]

[non capisco]

'Just Make It Stop' by Low. On the face of it a simple, pretty melody from their most commercial and musically conservative album 'The Invisible Way', produced by Ian Wilco out of Wilco and seemingly sonically designed to appeal to Uncut and Q readers. I love Low but that's one of their few albums I don't really care for, it's a bit too 'Later...with Jools Holland' for me, a bit of water treading in-between the go for broke lush anthemics of 'C'mon' and the necessary process of distortion and mutation that led to the album that for now stands as their bold and gripping masterpiece, 'Double Negative'.

I don't really care for 'The Invisible Way' too much apart from 'Just Make It Stop', which lyrically sums up and calls out the dickhead that's been squatting in my psyche since about age 14. You know the one, the one that's continually needling me and casting doubt on everything I do, say and think and then laughing and gleefully saying 'I told you so' when everything I want to happen doesn't happen or if it does then it inevitably fucks right up. That cunt. He's the 'it' that Mimi is singing about so beautifully.

If I could just make it stop
I could tell the whole world
To get out of the way
If I could just make it stop

Oh, the things you could have seen, the person you could have been, non capisco, if you could have just made it stop. Self disgust is self obsession, honey, etc. [nb]Faster by The Manics is an emotional fuckin bulldozer but I wouldn't call it simple[/nb]

I burst into tears when I first heard this album track, nestled amidst a load of disappointing Mojo friendly mediocrity. Oh fuckin hell where did that come from? They've nailed it. They get me and all the other thwarted fuckers like me. Buried in the middle of one of their worst albums.

[Sebastian Cobb]

tag]Miley Cyrus - Wrecking Ball[/tag]

The Dj Dettweiller version did properly evoke an emotional response in me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHYgN4lYJtU

[Polymorphia]

King Crimson - Trio

[Pingers]

DNR by Jesca Hoop

Don't listen to this if your dad is really ill in hospital

[famethrowa]

Has to be John Prine doing a tv spot, dressed like a bin man, holding the guitar all funny and a razorblade of a voice:

https://youtu.be/OLVWEYUqGew

[Twit 2]

Kevin Gilbert - Song for a Dead Friend

[peanutbutter]

https://youtu.be/GBNdOTu2Wn0
Carissa by Sun Kil Moon is pretty fucking crushing, Mark Kozelek is a really confusing prick

[studpuppet]

Mrs. Andre Previn's "Lady With The Braid".

Would you care to stay awhile and save my life?

[alan nagsworth]

I don't really care for 'The Invisible Way' too much apart from 'Just Make It Stop', which lyrically sums up and calls out the dickhead that's been squatting in my psyche since about age 14. You know the one, the one that's continually needling me and casting doubt on everything I do, say and think and then laughing and gleefully saying 'I told you so' when everything I want to happen doesn't happen or if it does then it inevitably fucks right up. That cunt. He's the 'it' that Mimi is singing about so beautifully.

Oh, the things you could have seen, the person you could have been, non capisco, if you could have just made it stop. Self disgust is self obsession, honey, etc. [nb]Faster by The Manics is an emotional fuckin bulldozer but I wouldn't call it simple[/nb]

I burst into tears when I first heard this album track, nestled amidst a load of disappointing Mojo friendly mediocrity. Oh fuckin hell where did that come from? They've nailed it. They get me and all the other thwarted fuckers like me. Buried in the middle of one of their worst albums.

Very well put. I still haven't made the time to properly get into Low but the last time I gave them a brief look this ended up being the first song that came up, and much like yourself I was absolutely in bits before it ended. I remember listening to it about three or four times afterwards, and a few times in the days that followed, completely awed at how they'd managed to condense the mental affliction of depression and self-doubt - both of which can be a fucking swirling and all-encompassing miasma of baffling uncertainty - into something so simple, pure, honest and true.

I think the thing with these mental conditions is that, for me at least, trying to describe them at great length and articulating them into big winding essays is ultimately as fatiguing as trying to overcome the issues themselves. The cold reality is that the myriad overwhelming and debilitating horrors that come with depression etc all stem from one or two very basic quibbles of the mind. They're small but they're mighty, and it predominantly feels totally impossible to claw back through all the brambles and the weeds to strike directly at the roots. It's fucking exhausting. Even though you know the problem, finding the strength to fight back can seem unimaginably daunting.

With "Just Make It Stop", Low have managed to precisely nail that exact feeling whilst also articulating it as simply as it should be, probably better than any other artistic expression of the condition I've ever seen or heard.

[jobotic]

Pet Money by Heavenly. Calvin's bit particulalry. I remember saying to the then love of my live, who had dumped me years before and I still hadn't got over (don't try and be friends!) "this is what i sound like, isn't it?" and she agreed. Agh. Still makes me shudder.

The Last Letter by The Field Mice.

[The Crumb]

Has to be John Prine doing a tv spot, dressed like a bin man, holding the guitar all funny and a razorblade of a voice:

https://youtu.be/OLVWEYUqGew

Was thinking of this exact performance while reading the thread, what an amazing talent he was.

Low how have been mentioned in this thread, I love Point of Disgust. Such a comforting, gorgeous song. Here's a lovely video of them singing it in a church https://youtu.be/LvaqUYqrghk

[Dannyhood91]

https://youtu.be/FsCx5Iej6HY

John Cales tribute to his friend Andy Warhol

[Dr Syntax Head]

https://youtu.be/T-ke4_lAQFc

Eels. End times. Kills me every time. But I do still sometimes smile at the 'shut up cat' line. It's such a nice little touch of something so mundane being important when you're dealing with the subject matter of the song. It's a beaut for sure

[chveik]

Townes van Zandt's entire oeuvre