What is your favorite song on Faces & Names?

Discuss any aspect of Soul Asylum, their music, and the band's members.

What is your favorite song on Faces & Names?

Teach Me To Breathe
3
12%
Never Recover
1
4%
Faces & Names
9
35%
Feel the Need
1
4%
Someday Love
3
12%
364
1
4%
I'll Have My Day
4
15%
Tea
2
8%
Much Too Easy
0
No votes
Levitation
1
4%
Start Treating People Right
1
4%
 
Total votes: 26

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Homesick
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What is your favorite song on Faces & Names?

Post by Homesick »

It's been a while since our latest poll, so I figured I'd pose a new question: What is your favorite song on Dave's solo album Faces & Names?

To me, this is a close race between Never Recover, Faces & Names, Levitation, and Tea.

Never Recover sounds pretty traditional, unsurprising, almost "too" clean bordering on anonymity, but I feel it has a certain charm—perhaps the lyrics and the guitar solo, perhaps something harder to define—that raises it.

Faces & Names is another one of Dave's ever-so-fascinating "storyteller" songs—this one perhaps more surreal than any other—and it's difficult not to like it just because it's so unique, compared to the the rest of the album as well as other music.

I got hooked on Levitation pretty much thanks to Monolith Maniac (just like with Cradle Chain). It's a brilliant, funky piece of happiness encapsulated into three and a half minutes of music that you just can't help but sing along to.

Finally, Tea is unique in that I've never heard Dave sing with such a high pitch for so long anywhere else. It's extremely cute and playful, filled with funny lyrics and odd sounds that culminate in the incredibly catchy ping at 2:58.

It's a tough choice, but my vote in this one goes to Tea.
Jakob Kallin, webmaster of EnterTheSoulAsylum.com

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Miss Fitt 2
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Re: What is your favorite song on Faces & Names?

Post by Miss Fitt 2 »

Homesick wrote:It's a tough choice, but my vote in this one goes to Tea.
Yay! I love the fact that "Tea" is your favorite, because that was the first song I fell in love with on this album and I think it is a great song. I love the playfulness and the funky feel of it. I think that is also perhaps the boldest song (because of how different it is) on an album where Dave took a lot of risks, and it demonstrates just how broad his range is.

It was a toss up between that and "I'll Have My Day" for me. I ultimately had to go with "I'll Have My Day." I love the gospel feel of the song and the lyrical quality of the following lines:

She left town; the car broke down; when she got back someone had taken her place.
I bounced my head off a hot sidewalk, saw so many stars I thought I was heaven-bound.
I've been gone for so damn long, I know you can't remind me of my name.


By lyrical quality, I mean the lilt and cadence of the lines as well as the lyrics themselves. (Despite the fact that I have edited his lyric to say "can't" instead of "can", which makes more sense to me. ;) )

Of course, if I were to respond to the poll tomorrow, I might choose "Tea." :)
All that we are not stares back at what we are. - W. H. Auden

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Re: What is your favorite song on Faces & Names?

Post by sheryl »

Oh, yikes. It's a tough call between Faces & Names, just because I like it and have always liked it, and kind of resonate with what it has to say, (and because for some reason the phrase "work related head wound victims" has always triggered deep understanding in my soul =P )I'll Have My Day for that great gospel vibe and something kind of different and warm in the sound of the vocals, and Someday Love because it tastes like New Orleans :)

I'm very very torn.

But I guess I"m going to go with Faces & Names.

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Re: What is your favorite song on Faces & Names?

Post by Judgmental Patient »

This is sooooooo tough. I went with Faces and Names, but I love Someday Love, Teach Me To Breathe, and Never Recover. Start Treating People Right is awesome too. Faces and Names is just over the top though, even for Dave. The whole record is an orgy of voice cracks and clever wordplay, and kind of fits really well as a complement to the Soul Asylum discography.
What happened son, you could have been someone
You could have been much more

erocmann
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Re: What is your favorite song on Faces & Names?

Post by erocmann »

I picked Start Treating People Right, but had a hard time picking between that, Faces & Names, Tea and I'll have my day...All great songs!

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Yaz McBoo
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Re: What is your favorite song on Faces & Names?

Post by Yaz McBoo »

Many good candidates for top song here, indeed. I went for I'll Have My Day. I don't care much for Tea or 364. Volunteer and Keep Coming Back woulda been nice on the album.

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Re: What is your favorite song on Faces & Names?

Post by CrazyLittleWoman »

I voted for I'll Have My Day because I love the fact that Dave has written a secular gospel hymn (unless there's some religious symbolism in the lyrics that I missed, which is entirely possible). I love the music. I love the chorus, especially the line "When anxiety haunts me, it'll no longer want me." This is a great song.

Still, this was a difficult choice to make because I loved this entire album from the very first listen. (I did wonder, though, if hardcore Soul Asylum fans were disappointed or upset because it sounds nothing like SA's albums.) If there's a song I like less than the others, it would probably be Much Too Easy.

Top contenders for favorite were Faces & Names, Someday Love, and Teach Me to Breathe.

In Faces & Names, I especially like the lyrical quality (to borrow Miss Fitt's phrase and definition thereof) of the line "There I was stark naked with a racist politician in about three feet of water in a building that was burning." That's the line that always sticks in my head after I've listened to the CD.

I love the way Dave's voice sounds in Someday Love. Also, I love the notion that it isn't that love eludes us, it's that we have outpaced love and it's trying desperately to catch up to us.

Tea is great, too. I like the Motown falsetto and the wordplay and that "ping" that Homesick mentioned.
"Dave Pirner was the coolest motherfucker to wield a low-strung telecaster who isn't called Keith Richards." -- Ginger (Wildhearts)

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Cordelia
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Re: What is your favorite song on Faces & Names?

Post by Cordelia »

Great Album! But my favorite song is 364. :D
Many Greetings from Germany
yours Cordelia

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Monolith Maniac
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Re: What is your favorite song on Faces & Names?

Post by Monolith Maniac »

Wow, okay... I've delayed this one too long (well I forgot to post my message). I voted last month for Levitation.
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foureyedsometimes
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Re: What is your favorite song on Faces & Names?

Post by foureyedsometimes »

Among my friends who are SA fans, I'm the only one who likes this record, but I would say it contains some of Dave's best songwriting, and I hope he does another solo record soon. This of course sounds nothing like SA, and in lots of ways is better for that.
I voted for the title track, but any song off here could make the grade.
Lovely for sitting in the garden on a hot and sunny afternoon, with a nice cold beer. In fact I think I might just go and do that now...
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