We are not rational animals, we are animals that must work to be rational

Category: mrshuffle

  • Reason to Believe & Something to Believe In

    Crisis of confidence? Resilience of hope? Springsteen and Clannad (via Mr. Shuffle) offer two hauntingly laments on the seemingly illusory nature of hope, the endless disappointments of life, and the essential challenge we face in finding something to believe in. This might as well be the soundtrack to the latest TW2BR essay on materialism and…

  • Cities in Dust and Go, Go, Godzilla

    Seems like Mr. Shuffle might have played these two songs in the wrong order. I would have put them the other way around. But then… History Shows Again and Again How Nature Points Out the Folly of Men.

  • Saturday Sun & Chelsea Morning

    After a long, wet SF winter, it’s easy to appreciate how New Yorkers and the English feel about a warm sunny day. And what better company for the sun could Mr. Shuffle devise than a rare almost cheerful Nick Drake tune and Joni Mitchell’s buttery ode to the sun through yellow curtains…

  • The Man Who Can’t Be Moved & I Will Follow You Into the Dark

    Mr. Shuffle channels his grown-up Romeo with two impossibly romantic songs. It isn’t stalking if you’re just hanging out on a corner with The Script. While for Death Cab for Cutie, even the big D isn’t an excuse to part.

  • Be My Number Two & Be My Mistake

    Mr. Shuffle gives a sad, cynical shrug with these two bitter as kale “love” songs (from Joe Jackson and the 1975). If you had to choose, you’d probably rather be someone’s second choice than their drunken folly. Or maybe not.

  • This is the Sea & Theme from Brideshead Revisited

    You might wonder what links a classic Waterboy’s song to the iconic theme from Brideshead in Mr. Shuffle’s “mind”. Both are epic stories of Christian conversion. We may never have gone their personally, but, damn, it can make for good art.

  • The Beauty of Dissolving and Oblivion

    Ambrose Akinmusire’s Beauty of Dissolving is as perfectly named as any piece I know. There are many songs named Oblivion, but here Mr. Shuffle didn’t place Grimes but Allison Balsom playing Astor Piazzolla’s tango piece.

  • Cantus for Benjamin Britten & Four Seas Interludes

    Mr. Shuffle scores big time with this remarkable pairing. Arvo Part’s Cantus is a lovely and moving memorial and following it with Dawn from the Four Seas makes for a truly fitting combination. MTT couldn’t have programmed it better.

  • America & American Pie

    Simon and Garfunkel and Don McClean go back to back with quintessential American songs of ambition, longing, and sadness.