Five bands who have, at one point, been my favorite:
1.Ben Folds Five
2.Wilco
3."Weird Al" Yankovic
4.Soundgarden
5.The Presidents of the U.S.A.

I used to be fanatical about having a favorite band. Shouldn't you have a band that you think is the best, harest-working band in all of show business? Maybe. The truth about that is, I probably haven't had one since Ben Folds Five broke up. Wilco made this list because for years, they were a torch I had to carry against all of you hater (H8R) bastards who wouldn't listen to them.

The thing is, I don't have one now, and I don't feel the need for them. But if I did, today it'd almost certainly be Clem Snide. [See comments for explanation of why it's not the mountain goats, and furthermore, why it's not clem snide. But bear with me.] Because they have several records, and it's not just shocking that none of them are sub-par. What's shocking is just how high "par" has become for Clem Snide.

Today I listened to Your Favorite Music, previously my least-favorite Clem Snide CD. Now, I don't have a least favorite. I just don't. On "Your Favorite Music," there are at least three songs I consider Jaw-Droppingly Good. I will now tell you about each one:

Bread is high in the list of the prettiest or most moving songs I know. Don't ask me why. It's about baking bread, and it's so good it makes my heart ache a tiny bit when I think about it too hard. Some songs are good because they paint a scene using exactly the right details. This is one of them. Let me tell you about the first time I heard this song--not the first time I listened to it, but the first time I really heard it, the way White People can listen to Jimi Hendrix, but they can't hear him. I can remember sitting in an anonymous truck stop I've never seen before, and it's raining and I'm waiting for a girl to come and guide me to her house, and my windows are fogged and I'm exhausted, and I recline the seat in my car and laid there and, for the first time heard this.

Exercise was not a song I was sold on until I heard the singer from this band play it by himself, and halfway through the song, the multi-instrumentalist got on stage and played tuba with him. No shit. It sounded, all of the sudden, fragile and caring, which it only sounds like underneath the bouncy surface of the recorded version. The song is a piece of advice that breaks down like this: "You wouldn't try to pick up a couch on your own, would you, Buddy? No. You really might hurt yourself doing that. Yet, you don't think twice about trying to move mountains with your heart, and while that is admirable, you've got to watch out for your heart. Brace yourself. It is a muscle, that's all."

Sweet Mother Russia is almost full of unintelligible lyrics. But they're the sort of unintelligible lyrics that surely mean something to the singer, and to some listener out there. Then again, some of the lyrics are perfectly intelligible, and any song that contains the line "how's that Deep Purple record I hummed in your hear/like a fight song whispered through a pillow" is a stunner in my book. Again, this song uses little snippets of ideas to sound deeply, achingly intimate with someone. And you get to look in on it really briefly. It's so beautiful, and somehow still very private. When the singer says "How's my sweet mother Russia/do you know sharks never sleep/busy bending their spine to receive you" it, somehow, some way, kills you. I have no idea how. When I know, I shall write something exactly that wrenching and esoteric. And that's the truth.