Song by Boston Spaceships: "Tabby and Lucy"

I knew Amy Seidenwurm had good taste in music when I saw that she had painted the names of some of my favorite bands on her beehives. Amy worked in the record business at Enigma, Elektra, Virgin and Sub Pop before she got sucked into the technology vortex.  She co-founded the Backwards Beekeepers, a chemical-free urban beekeeping collective in Los Angeles and now runs digital marketing for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and The Hollywood Bowl. I'm glad that she is going to be presenting some new music recommendations on Boing Boing. -- Mark

Sound It Out, by Amy Seidenwurm

Boston Spaceships - Tabby and Lucy

The word "prolific" may well have been invented to describe Robert Pollard, who I must guess is sick to death of people telling him about his POTENTIAL if he would just FOCUS HIMSELF and CHANNEL HIS ENERGY. Pollard has recorded over 1000 songs under 28 names/bands, the most celebrated of which is Guided by Voices, who broke up in 2004 when Bob was tired of being in a band (so he formed 20+ more bands). I can’t pretend to have listened to all of Pollard’s work, but of the hundreds of songs I’ve heard at least a third are world-class and catchy as hell. It’s sometimes a slog through messy discordance and fragmented songlets to discover the Pollard-ly spoils, but the payoff is worth the work.

Robert nails it with “Tabby and Lucy” - it’s a melancholy anthem that resonates like someone spent months locked in a room crafting it to perfection. The probability that Bob wrote and recorded it in a matter of hours makes it all the more extraordinary. The chorus of “Something to know, something to say, something to take my blues away” manages to ache and shout at the same time. I’ve listened to it 5-6 times in a row today, and I’m not done.

Boston Spaceships is Robert Pollard, Chris Slusarenko (Guided by Voices, Sprinkler) and John Moen (The Decemberists, Dharma Bums). They’ve released five albums(!) since 2007, including a new double album called “Let it Beard” that is as consistently great as any Pollard-led project.

The kind people at Guided by Voices Inc. are gave us this free download for a week, but now you need to buy it like a normal person. You should.

• [Curt E]

  Check out the NSFW video for Tabby & Lucy at http://cluster1.tv/2011/08/02/boston-spaceships-tabby-and-lucy-nsfw/

• [petsounds]

  From a recording standpoint, there’s some real sibilance issues on Bob’s vocals. Pretty good song though.

• [Conrad Heiney]

  Whoa! Sprinkler! That’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. I loved “More Boy, Less Friend.”

• [roman411]

  “Christmas Girl”!  New classic!