(Sad Songs & Waltzes is a recurring feature on Muzzle of Bees, where artists share their favorite sad songs. Previous contributors include Megafaun, Delta Spirit, Damien Jurado, Conrad Plymouth, and Roadside Graves.)

With the year coming to a close next month I’ve been revisiting a lot of my favorite records from earlier in the year. One record that has continues to amaze me is Decibully’s World Travels Fast, released on Listening Party Records. I wrangled BJ to give me a few of his favorite sad songs. Have a listen.

Depeche Mode – “Somebody”
It was the summer between 6th & 7th grades with a worn VHS copy of Depeche Mode’s 101 that I replay this song over & over in my basement bedroom on the old pull-out couch I slept on singing along with tears in my eyes and joy in my heart. It was on those humid nights I realized the happiness that only a sad song can bring, a deep bittersweet melancholy that would inform my entire Life of songwriting.

Red House Painters – “Make Like Paper”
I feel in love with the Red House Painters while living in my first cold apartment on Milwaukee’s east side during the later part of the 1990’s. It was fall and my heart was broken. I spent the hours that I should have been studying in bed drinking cheap wine with my guitar on my belly listening to sad music. This song, about the crunching of leaves as a lover leaves, always filled the emptiness.

Tom Jobim / Vinicius de Moraes – “Chenga de Saudade”
There are a million billion versions of this song for good reason, it’s one of the most satisfying sad-songs-hidden-within-a-catchy-tune ever written. Chenga is translated as “no more” and although there is no exact translation of saudade in English, it has been described as a feeling somewhere between withdraw, romantic longing and homesickness. There is something in that cheeky flute intro in Joao Gilberto’s version that feels like a nudge and a wink: the sadder the words the happier the singer.

Pernice Brothers – “Overcome by Happiness”
“You don’t feel so overcome by happiness / You’re broke / Do you think you might scrape your life together? / Just in time to find you got no piece of mind / When everybody wants a piece of your pretty white ass”.

Another great pop album about the disconnection of what you think you are, what you really are and who you ought to be. Joe Pernice has always straddled the line of poet and cringe-inducing songwriter – I thank him for teaching me some things are better left sung.

Buy: Decibully – World Travels Fast
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MP3: Decibully – “We’re Just Friends” (Wilco cover)
MP3: Decibully – “Get In The Car”
MP3: Decibully – “Weakest Kind of Heart”

(Sad Songs & Waltzes is a recurring feature on Muzzle of Bees, where artists share their favorite sad songs. Previous contributors include Megafaun, Delta Spirit, Damien Jurado, Conrad Plymouth, and Roadside Graves.)

We’re very excited to be presenting Frontier Ruckus in Madison (High Noon Saloon, November 10th) and Milwaukee (Cactus Club, November 12th) later this month. Their album, Deadmalls & Nightfalls, is one of our favorites of the year and we cannot wait to see the band live. The band recently got in touch, with each band member providing a song for our Sad Songs & Waltzes feature. Enjoy.

Red House Painters – “Katy Song” (Matthew Milia)
I was torn between picking this tune and something maybe a tad more classically heavyhearted, such as Chet Baker singing “I Get Along Without You Very Well.” However, the pure despondence of this song’s mood and its personal prevalence over me in a hot small room during a seriously low summer a few back leave me little choice. My favorite version, and the one I shamelessly wallowed within during that time, is off of Kozelek’s live solo album Little Drummer Boy. There’s this distraught conflict in it between the unlimited potential for sweetness inside love (“…there in the clearing I know you’ll be wearing your young aching smile, waving your hand”) and the grievous impossibility of actually knowing how to access it, protect it, keep it whole (“…you got some kind of family there to turn to, and that’s more than I could ever give you”). This essential failure to harness love in its overabundance is so regretful that it debilitates, embitters, overrides everything else to the extent of existential crisis–melodramatic, sure, but no one can dispute the reality of the emotion: “without you what does my life amount to?”

Townes Van Zandt – “Tower Song” (Brian Barnes)
A string of sober realizations on the brink of a severance. Like most Townes songs, there’s a penetration that can’t be shook; the distance is numbing, and the hopeful ending doesn’t quite break the clouds. Out of all of his brilliant songs, when night falls and I’m sitting alone with a guitar, I return to this one most.

Pedro The Lion – “Bad Things to Such Good People” (Ryan Etzcorn)
“Bad Things” stands out in the sense that the usual grip of sadness and hopelessness in Bazan songs is abandoned for a moment of shaking wrath. Whereas a lot of his tunes are content to plod along in that sensation-dulling, punishing Mark Kozelek sort of way (see: Matt’s pick) this is a rare speed-monster that heightens the terror of Bazan’s yelping accusations: “and all the while/the good lord smiled/and looked the other way.” It’s the story of the faithful Job retold…minus the happy restoration at the end. The worthless and wicked son is forced to stand on the “well kept cemetery lawn” in his jail shoes and witness his righteous father’s destruction following the death of the better, “golden child” son. This is my go-to song when I feel like ruining my day.

Built to Spill – “Twin Falls” (Zach Nichols)
In the genre of one-sided reminiscence emphasizing nostalgic ache, this song is the most heartbreaking. How painful it is to know with certainty your alternate life. Listening just once is difficult–when the elementary school flirtations drain away into a brand of small-town-escapee survivor’s guilt–the only anesthesia is starting over.

Robert Ellis – “Bamboo” (David W. Jones)
If I weren’t a brawny, emotionless lumberjack, I would have cried my eyes out the first time I heard Robert Ellis‘ “Bamboo”. It turns out that the rest of Frontier Ruckus isn’t so stolid as me; upon the band’s first listen to the song, our van, Desperauto, was stricken with a kind of somber silence I’ve never heard before. Even the continuous rattle and vibration of Dessie’s shocks seemed insignificant. Zachary sighs audibly every time Robert laments not having a backyard. It truly is one of the more powerful sad songs I’ve heard in some time.

P.S- I am not particularly brawny, nor am I a lumberjack. I cried a little, alright?

Buy: Frontier Ruckus – Deadmalls And Nightfalls
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MP3: Frontier Ruckus – “The Upper Room”

While combing through some new releases on my desk I came to enjoy Tim Williams‘ Careful Love over the past few weeks. The album was written in the aftermath of Williams recovering from open-heart surgery and the reflections and hope of such an experience shine through on first listen. I talked to TIm about some albums that have been meaningful to him, including ones that helped him on his way to recovery.

Fionn Regan | The End of History
If there is one musician I would like to buy a beer for it would be Fionn Regan. His record The End of History made my time in the hospital following my heart surgery somewhat pleasant. I was hooked up to a million machines at the time and this record was the one thing that transported me to another place. I have listened to a ton of music in my twenty-some years on this earth and nothing has hit me the way this record does.

Guided By Voices | Bee Thousand
Bee Thousand takes me back to my days of recording with my friends in middle school on my trusty Tascam 4-Track. Whenever I listen to this record it helps to remind me that a good song doesn’t have to have a million different parts or have a million different words; it just has to sound good.

Red House Painters | Songs for a Blue Guitar
Mark Kozelek’s songs are so personal that sometimes it can be really uncomfortable to listen to. As much as I love music that is really strange and out there it’s nice to come back to something that is honest and beautiful. Mark has continued making great records post RHP’s with Sun Kil Moon and I am always the first person in line to buy them.

Six Parts Seven | Things Shaped In Passing
I have bought this record more times than any other one as I keeping giving my copy to my friends. “Things Shaped In Passing” is as close as I will ever get to doing yoga. As a musician you spend so much time working with words it’s nice to listen to something that doesn’t have any at all. Here it is my friends: Simple, clean, perfect.

Will Oldham | Western Music
I got into Will Oldham pretty late in the game and in reverse of how I was told one should. I started out by buying all of his obscure vinyl releases on Drag City (because they were cheaper at Kim’s on St. Marks) and then finally worked my way to his much revered “I See A Darkness.” Mr. Oldham’s name is thrown around a lot in the indie world as a influence to many bands that are making a living by ripping off his sound. I hope the start to give credit where credit is due.

MP3: Tim Williams – “I Hit Another Wall”