She's A Wild Thing

In 1963, Maurice Sendak wrote and illustrated a children's book entitled "Where The Wild Things Are."  You may be vaguely familiar with this book due to a) your childhood or b) a somewhat popular Spike Jonze movie of the same name that was released in 2009.  My question to you:  where ARE the wild things?  Well, they're everywhere.  Everywhere in music, that is.  Since 2009, I've seen a growing trend of wild things in the indie music scene.  Maybe it's not so much a trend as "Jackie likes to play connect the dots with her favorite musicians."  So, here we go:

In 2009, Patrick Watson released a song strangely titled, "Where The Wild Things Are" on his album Wooden Arms.  When this came out, I was convinced that it was going to appear on the soundtrack for the movie.  I mean, the song was written about the book.  But no.  It was pure coincidence.  I just posted a live performance of this song on my Facebook page because it was brilliantly fun.  However, I'm posting the original here, because I love the percussion's feeling of an animal dragging along in chains.  (Do you hear the shuffle sound on every other downbeat?)  Pitter patter, I think I hear my cat running around.  Oh no, it's just the music.

Along the same time that Patrick Watson released what could be the soundtrack to "Where The Wild Things Are," Karen O released the real soundtrack to "Where The Wild Things Are."  Here's a very tribal, Karen O. take on how to be "wild."  This is the song "Capsize" (and no, this is not an original video).  Apparently, people from the wild like to clap!:

If we're going to have tribal music, I should start playing "connect the musical dots" with Milhaud's La Creation du Monde.  But I won't.

I'm skipping to 2011.

Noah and the Whale... new song, blatantly titled "Wild Thing." 

Has this new trend come from all of the vampire movies?  Have you been in the Borders' Teen Fiction section recently?  Not that I have.  The song makes references to a woman with blood stains and messed up hair.  I'm assuming there's a deeper reference and this isn't a vampire song.. but eh, I don't know.   

And for video of the year:

The Black Keys take the wild thing to an all new level.  Music connection?  Noah and the Whale sang something about howling.  This song is called "Howlin' For You."  And that's how my brain works.  And if this movie really existed, I would go see it.  Let's move on to more "wild" songs...

Here we're headed into the wilderness.  In fact, the lead singer of Dawes is apparently named Wilderness in the song "Wilderness."  Here's a clip of the new supergroup, Middle Brother (featuring the dude from Dawes, the dude from DeerTick, and the dude from Delta Spirit).  

But it's not good to be named Wilderness.  We must come out of this place... Oh no!  Cold War Kids' "Out of the Wilderness" is not on YouTube?  This song is also that new.  I don't know how to stream audio on a blog.  Well, it's about someone walking out of the wilderness, which brings us back to society.  It's like we've made a full circle of beasts and animals coming from the wild, back into humanity.  And for some reason, this circle reminds me of a movie that I didn't even see... but which contained a soundtrack that was apparently influential in the music scene.  Yes, I am talking about Eddie Vedder and "Into the Wild."  Never seen it.  Never listened to it.  But hell, there's a song called "Society" and that makes this blog complete:

(note "Into the Wild" came out in 2007, so really, we went back in time and my circle does not work as we are still in our vampiress/beastly world of music right now... but really, the song "Society" is about running away from society, so let's forget about everything)