Music for English majors?

grendel824_

I recently recommended the Decemberists to a fellow English teacher, and described them as "music for English majors." After thinking about this, I want to put together a mix CD using that theme.

Besides a few Decemberists songs, I thought of the following:

Morrissey - Billy Budd
Kate Bush - Wuthering Heights
Boo Radleys - Wake Up Boo!
My Latest Novel - the Reputation of Ross Francis

I'm also figuring I could put some Magnetic Fields and Belle & Sebastian on there... I'm pretty much looking for anything that can be considered "literate Indie rock" or something that wouldn't be totally out of place with the aforementioned songs. They don't have to directly relate to literature or have clever titles that evoke authors or book titles, but I'm interested in those, too. So... any recommendations?

contraband

The Mountain Goats.

Dulcius_ex_asperis

Anything by Of Montreal. Specifically, I would recommend 'A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger', 'Art Snob Solutions', and 'So Begins Our Alabee'.

Also, I would recommend mewithoutYou. They have terrific lyrics, but they are Christian and their lyrics often reflect that. So...from them I'd say "In A Sweater Poorly Knit".

I don't think any English nerd music would be complete without Simon & Garfunkel and The Cranberries, but maybe that's just me.

Mithrandir86

Try Sunset Rubdown and Wolf Parade.

Sam

velvet underground

Craigopogo

The Magnetic Fields.

contraband

Just popped into my head, Joanna Newsom.

Johnny Fabulous

Yo La Tengo.

Hewn

Hey, great thread. I'd love to see your final song list, as I'm also an English teacher. Keep us, or at least me, updated on your final cut. Now, onto the recommendations, which I hope will be of some use.

Regina Spektor has a song about Oedipus, fittingly titled "Oedipus." Check that out, as I'm unsure if it fits the theme of your previous choices.

For an artist similar to what you have so far, try Bright Eyes. I think you'd find "Waste of Paint," "A Perfect Sonnet," and "At the Bottom of Everything" of particular interest.

And because I can't help but plug them, I think Death Cab for Cutie has some fantastic lyrics and fitting tone. "Marching Bands of Manhattan" has a special place in my heart, due to the imagery presented. Other standouts, for me, include "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" and "Passenger Seat."

And for fun, as I don't think it will fit with the rest of the CD, check out "Brand New Colony" by Postal Service. I think it's one of the most cleverly crafted long songs I've heard in awhile, and sometimes I use it to demonstrate to students personification and highlight finding new ways to express threaded themes. Lyric excerpt: "I'll be fire escape / that's bolted to the ancient brick / where you will sit and contemplate your day" and "I'll be the platform shoes / that undo what heredity's done to you / so you won't have to strain to look into my eyes."

Oh! And Patrick Wolf has a song titled "To the Lighthouse" that always reminds me of the book of the same name by Virginia Woolf.

Superunknown

You'd be surprised by the lyrical content of Klaxons.

yourspaceholiday

Okkervil River

Lux

Popular folk music.

SuperSockNinja

Johnny Cash, Woody Guthrie, I second Regina Spektor (just because she was in teh same music program I'm in) , I also find a good freind of mine who recently got his degree in english listens to tons of rap i.e. MF Doom, Del, Ghostface Killa and the like, And by this run on sentence it may be apparent, that I , am not, an english major =].

Mai-Kero

Midlake.

necroSYS

Iron Maiden - Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Metallica - The Thing That Should Not Be (Lovecraftian)

Anthrax - Among the Living, Skeletons in the Closet, I Am The Law

Crash Test Dummies - Afternoons and Coffee Spoons (Really, the whole God Shuffled His Feet album is for English majors).

deadonthestreet

contraband wrote: »

The Mountain Goats.

Yeah.



Yeah.


All Hail West Texas or Full Force Galesburg would be good starter albums from them.

LoveIsUnity

Leviathan is a concept album based around Moby Dick. Mastodon, the band who wrote it, is a progressive heavy metal band.

Also, the post-metal band Isis wrote an album about panopticism and governmentality (based around the Foucault's book Discipline and Punish). The album is entitled Panopticon.

I'm currently working on a graduate degree in English. I'm glad to see there are other English people around here.

Tav

I'd like to recommend Bad Religion (again) but they're not indie.


Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly would be the first indie thing that pops into my mind for English Majors.

wakeboarderblunt

The Tragically Hip

Pheezer

Iron Maiden covered The Rime of the Ancient Mariner...

Okay seriously I'd go with the entire shoegazer genre generally speaking, and I'd also go to Of Montreal's most recent album. And Devo.

elevature

contraband wrote: »

The Mountain Goats.

The Hold Steady. The band themselves look like english lit TAs and they have lyrics like, " he quoted her some poetry / he's tennyson in denim and sheepskin." and "and i met william butler yeats / sunday nite dance party summer 1988 / at first i thought it might be william blake." But all of Craig Finn's lyrics are great, he tells a story like no other. His songs have recurring characters, Holly and Charlemagne and Gideon, and their three records tell the story of the characters' lives. Try to get a hold of Separation Sunday.

The Smiths, especially "Cemetery Gates." - "A dreaded sunny day / So I meet you at the cemetery gates / Keats and Yeats are on your side / While Wilde is on mine." Morrissey is definitely the english major type.

The Weakerthans. Lyricist John K. Samson is a super well-read dude and runs his own publishing imprint. They have a song called "Our Retired Explorer (Dines with Michel Foucault in Paris, 1961)," and it includes the line, "thank you for the flowers and the book by Derrida"

And no english lit mix is complete without Moxy Fruvous' "My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors." Google the lyrics, you'll love it.

Hewn

Great stuff in here, folks. Very nice. I'm picking up lots of cool new stuff.

Johnny Fabulous

The Lucksmiths
Darren Hanlon
Iron&Wine
Nick Drake

wombat

Les Savy Fav


but they are not the kind of band I would recommend to a professor

PorkChopSandwiches

Wilco
Doves

Djinn

Nas

lunasea

Seeing as how I'm applying to be an English Major, this is some of what I like to listen to:
Lupe Fiasco - Trouble me soul
Cat Stevens - Trouble
Animal Collective - Purple Bottle
Stars - The very thing
Mondialito - En Chantant
Nujabes - Feather

Good luck ^_^

jackisreal

I'm pretty sure The Cure have a song about The Stranger.

fastnoid

And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead - Baudelaire

A cool song if you are familiar with Baudelaire.

Rook

jackisreal wrote: »

I'm pretty sure The Cure have a song about The Stranger.

Killing an Arab, it's on the first album, Boys Don't Cry/Three Imaginary Boys.

The Drowning Man is about Fuschia from Gormenghast.

cooljammer00

I do agree that Ben Gibbard is a talented lyricist. But there are acoustic versions of his more trancier Postal Service songs, which would fit well on this album.

In fact, that NPR concert was amazing. Good thing I snagged it off NPR before it got so popular they had to take it down.

bsjezz

billy bragg tells some of the most touchingly human stories in music

you'd be missing out if you didn't put a song like 'waiting for the great leap forward', 'a lover sings' or 'levi stubbs tears' in there

grendel824_

Looks like it'll have to be at least a double album... thanks for the suggestions so far, and by all means keep them coming if you have something to add. I've got tracks from MOST of these already, either in my CD collection or on my iPod, but they don't do me any good if I don't remember to look for them, so these suggestions have already been a big help.

Irond Will

The Cure - Killing An Arab is from Camus' L'Stranger
U2 - Ground Beneath Her Feet from Rushdie's Ground Beneath Her Feet
Tom Waits - Alice (the album inspired largely from Alice in Wonderland)

Dulcius_ex_asperis

Jay Z. Honestly, I think he has amazing lyrics and I've used them in literature papers before. "99 problems" is a good song. Or "Song Cry".



I just love Jay Z.

And second that req for DCFC. I'd say Jimmy Eat World, too. Something from Clarity. Maybe "Goodbye Sky Harbor"? It's based on the novel A Prayer for Owen Meany.

gneGne

Ghostface if you wanna hear some stuff that doesn't make sense . He's good though.

ufo

margot and the nuclear so and so's.

how this band is unsigned still pains me. if you enjoy the decemberists its a similar vein of indie pseudo acoustic rock. great lyrics too.

Pojaco

gneGne wrote: »

Ghostface if you wanna hear some stuff that doesn't make sense . He's good though.

Doesn't make sense? Man if Ghostface was here right now...

gneGne

How do you explain "jurassic plastic gas boobie trap"?
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan.

Etelmik

A good way to find new ones: Wikipedia entries always have popculture/music references when you look up novels and authors.

For example, the other day I learned that Collective Soul took their name from a phrase coined by Ayn Rand, even though they have nothing to do with her. Yay.

Murago

I can understand not wanting Pop music, so when i recommend the following, i recommend b/c its the non-pop albums.

Machina: the machines of god -- smashing pumpkins -- pretty conceptual, but heavy...heavy as shit.

Good Apollo I'm Burning Star IV, Vol. 1: From fear through the eyes of madness - Coheed and Cambria - the man is a poet...

Secret Machines - Secret Machines -

Ten Silver Drops - Secret Machines - Psychadelic / Shoegaze / Indie -- These guys are like pink floyd meets zeppelin meets indie....