Dodging One Song For Another

There’s one clear reason that I have a hard time with genres whose songs all tend to sound same-y, and it’s that I will probably find myself definitively realizing that one song is better than the others like it and proceeding to just listen to that song. It’s my problem with a lot of genres, bands, albums, etc. where that one stand-out performance just makes all of the rest feel pointless. But the cases can get sort of odd.

I’ve once stated how Saturdays=Youth by M83 makes me feel like I don’t have to listen to Mogwai. I can’t get into Mogwai-style post-rock, nor 80s music, and since M83 puts those two together on their album, I managed to find something that had the best of both worlds. But there’s an odd bit about the first song on Saturdays=Youth that actually draws my Mogwai comparison closer.

The first track, ‘you, appearing’ is a decent piano intro with a bit of a crawling build before the second song really brings things in. Well, as it so happens, Mogwai’s Mr. Beast album starts off with another piano track with a slow build called ‘Auto Rock’ that gets blown open by it’s second track as well. Huh.

The songs are actually so similar that for the sheer fact that I like ‘Auto Rock’ more, I feel no need to listen to ‘you, appearing.’ There is this sense of ‘this can be done better’ and it makes the song lose all value to me. Odd indeed. I guess that’s why I usually skip the opening track on Saturdays=Youth but never on Mr. Beast.