tracks that GENUINELY send shivers down your spine without fail

Rufus Wainwright's Oh What a World and In My Arms.
Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
Fugazi - Do You Like Me?, or Full Disclosure
Mission of Burma - Mica
Underworld - Dirty Epic
Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Comely
Sufjan Stevens - Come On Feel the Illinoise, or Casimir Pulaski Day
Aretha Franklin - Chain of Fools
Four Tet - Unspoken
DJ Shadow - Building Steam With a Grain of Salt
Tori Amos - Professional Widow (ugh, this song came on the iPod yesterday and I got incredibly fucking distracted while I was driving. This is probably her greatest moment. Fie to those who doubt Boys for Pele's brilliance! Nothing else she ever did or has done since matches it, but what a definitive statement from a weird artist).

I mentioned it in another thread just the other day, but Built to Spill's "Velvet Waltz", particularly the "and you better not be angry, and you better not be sad!" part.

Kraftwerk's "Neon Lights", especially the 1/3 of it.

Microphones - "Map"

A lot of Neutral Milk Hotel.

I guess they're my "artists that consistently send shivers down your spine)

Also, the live/acoustic recording of Bjork's 'The Anchor Song' with the Brodsky Quartet gobsmacks me every time--just thinking about it stands my arm hair on end. It was a song I'd completely forgotten from 'Debut'--she wasn't even able to hit the single note that gives me the shivers on the original recording.

-- Emily B (emily.burnha...), April 15th, 2006.

I may hang out in the wrong circles, but this is the first time I've seen anyone share my opinion on the awesomeness of this song.

Phoenix "If I Ever Feel Better (Todd Edwards remix)"
- never listen to it if you're going through a break up.

The Avalanches "Live at Domino's"
- it's like they condensed all the joy and sadness from the album into one track. And when strings somewhere in the middle of the song start to change pitch... Pure genius, with a soul of a child.

Pet Shop Boys "It Must Be Obvious"
- unexplainable sadness kicking in at 0:04 and then despair at 0:20.
Oh, and that line, "It should be poetry, not prose". Horror of everyday commonness in just 6 words.

Kate Bush -- Pull Out The Pin

you like kate bush??

hush you

When the guitar comes in for the noodly bit in Eno's "Golden Hours."
When everything but the guitar drops out before the last verse of "Teenage Riot."

The little guitar riff in Fugazi's "Repeater" after the "1-2-3... REPEATER!" literally kicks off an adrenaline rush in me, 18 years running...

Kate Bush -- Pull Out The Pin

"I LOVE LIFE, I LOVE LIFE"

I think I need to get high to get shivers down my spine.

I think the first few times I heard Robert Wyatt's Cuckooland I had shivers. The atmosphere was so thick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7PJpFhkEds Just A Bit

A Jobriath thread got revived last week, which reminded me of the line in "Street Corner Love" that goes "love me like we never met". Maybe because it's a bit of honesty from someone who otherwise dressed like a Christmas tree bauble.

those martial drum breaks that come right after

"cameras ready prepare to flash"

I heard twin peaks theme track last night and this happened
I don't even like the song that much!

What a lovely thread.

Some great songs listed above and I'm gonna nick some and more. Fwiw a random few:-

Swallow - My Vloody Balentine
Spirit Ditch - Sparklehorse
Jumbo- Underworld
History Lesson - Minutemen
Sain- Grifters
Lorelei- Cocteau Twins
What Does your Soul Look Like _ DJ Shadow
Suspension Bridge Over Iguazu Falls- Tortoise
Don't Stop Now -Guided By Voices
Bat's Mouth - Bat For Lashes
What's Going Ahn - Big Star
Holes- Mercury Rev
Whatever or Eight Miles High - Hooooosker du
Still Be around _ Uncle Tupelo
Bad Losers on Yahoo Chess- Half Man Half Biscuit

and Nine million more - off the top of my head. Wednesday Night mood. And totally showing my age.

Wu-Tang Clan "Protect Ya Neck" (It also makes me pump my fist)
Minutemen "Little Man With a Gun in His Hand"
The Mountain Goats "Snow Owl"/"Family Happiness" (two distinct flavors of intense desperation)
Talking Heads "Crosseyed and Painless"
Al Green "La La For You"
Funkadelic "Can You Get To That" (yes, I certainly can)
Issac Hayes "Walk On By"
They Might Be Giants "She's An Angel" (mainly just the pre-chorus w/ the slide guitar)
Sambomaster "Futari Bochi No Sekai"
Can "Oh Yeah" (I intend to play this at the apocalypse)

Electric Wizard "Barbarian" ("THE WIZAARRD"--RIFF)
Boredoms "Synthesizer Guide Book On Fire" (whoa)
The theme music from Cowboy Bebop
David Bowie "Five Years" (especially the line about the girl in the ice cream parlor not knowing that she's in this song)
The part of "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celest" by Bela Bartok that Kubrick used in The Shining (eerie as all hell)
John Fahey "Desperate Man Blues"/"On The Sunny Side of the Ocean"

Man I could keep doing this forever

ESG "UFO"
Stereolab "Jenny Ondioline"
Number Girl "Omoide In My Head"
CCR "Born On The Bayou"
REM "Radio Free Europe"
Radiohead "Everything In It's Right Place"
The intro to Metroid 2

it's a wonder my spine isn't perpetually shivering

fake plastic trees does it for me. For the song itself and for the memories attached to it.

Big Star - Thirteenth
My Bloody Valentine - Sometimes
Elvis - Blue moon
Peggy Lee- Is that all there is
Rick Nelson - Lonesome town
Robert Wyatt- Sea song
Scott Walker - Farmer in the city
Low - If you were born today

too many to mention

War, "There Must Be a Reason"

This song triggers some really hard realizations for me, In a lot of ways I see myself as that "Lookin' Boy".

someone else needs to pick up that meme, to take a load off your back, if nothing else

How about Ooberman's "Shorley Wall", particularly the end poem?

First thing that comes to mind is Billy Bragg's "St. Swithin's Day"

someone else needs to pick up that meme, to take a load off your back, if nothing else

Doin' it alone lookin' boy

Funkadelic - Maggot Brain

Great topic. I'm sure I am only echoing a lot of these choices, but:

The Beach Boys -- God Only Knows
Iron & Wine -- Bird Stealing Bread
The Clientele -- Losing Haringey
The Clientele -- Dreams Of Leaving
Chris Bell -- You And Your Sister
Dennis Wilson -- Carry Me Home
Dennis Wilson -- It's Not Too Late
Jimmy Cliff -- Many Rivers To Cross
Grant Hart -- You Don't Have To Tell Me Now
Bruce Springsteen -- One Step Up
Low -- Silver Rider
Miles Davis -- In A Silent Way
Neil Young -- See The Sky About To Rain
Wilco -- Jesus, etc.
William Basinski -- The Disintegration Loop 1.1

. . . among others.

Off the top of my head:
Zombies - Leave Me Be
Badfinger - Baby Blue
Lefty Frizzell - Mom and Dad's Waltz
George Jones - Color of the Blues
Ann Peebles - I Can't Stand the Rain (pretty much the entire album)
Gram Parsons - Streets of Baltimore
Joe Tex - Skip a Rope

It's always higher frequency sounds that do this to me, so it's usually guitar solos or backing strings. Typically a chord change involved too.
And the effect is incredible if I haven't heard the track for a good while. I'd love to know the neuroscience behind it! If somebody could map the parts of my brain that are affected mid-shiver and then artificially/electronically recreate the stimulation, I'd probably collapse, comatose with pleasure.

Isaac Hayes - Walk on By
Think it's the first string swell with chord change.

Pearls Before Swine - Ballad to an Amber Lady

Budgie - Hot as a Docker's Arm Pit (No shit!!)
The long run of notes toward the end of the main solo.

Blue Oyster Cult - Harvester of Eyes
Again, the guitar solo

"An Ending (Ascent)" by Brian Eno. Every. Fucking. Time. I am reduced to an amoeba-like pile of amorphous goo.

anything by O.A.R., bro

the Eno one that does it for me is "Everything Merges with the Night", I feel funny just thinking about it

The live version of 'Silver Springs', when it transitions into the 'Time has cast a spell on you...' section.

The moment in the Scott Walker track on Climate Of Hunter when he sings 'And the ceiling is rising and falling' and the swarm of Evan Parker soprano saxes comes in.

The final section of George Crumb's Music For A Summer Evening

fuller list, off the top of my brain:

Parliment - The Silent Boatman (bagpipes)
Autechre - Silverside (the ending, where you finally get to hear the entire melody)
Soul Coughing - Lazybones (the entire thing is so damn heavy)
Devo - Race of Doom (don't know why. something about the way the synths intersect with the rhythm gets me)
ELP - From the Beginning (everything about it is gorgeous, but especially Emerson's solo in the end)
Faust - No Harm (the scream at the end)
Underworld - Most 'Ospitable (the whole thing)
Underworld - Jumbo ("Telephone breath between us/there are no borders between us/Only these wires")
Happy Mondays - Dennis and Lois ("Honey, how's your breathing/If it stops for good we'll believe it")
Kraftwerk - Neon Lights (the onslaught of shimmering major chords that make up the second half)
Yellow Magic Orchestra - Gradated Gray (great song with an inexplicably creepy atmosphere)
The Books - Getting the Job Done (when the vocals come in)
Can - Oh Yeah (when the rhythm section really kicks in, 2 minutes in)
Gary Numan - Complex (mostly the intro, but really everything)
Neu! - Isi (c'mon, nobody can disagree with this)
Michael Jackson - Stranger in Moscow (already mentioned, but holy cow, this is a monster)
Boredoms - 7 (from VCN - when the guitar chords finally come in, braaang brooong)
Harry Nilsson - Morning Glory Story (gosh the vocals are pretty on this one)
Todd Rundgren - When the Shit Hits the Fan ("I think I have to get my ass back to Sunset Boulevard")

#1 tune along these lines (the one that makes me feel funny the whole time) is here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph7sHvMYkIk

As we've just had the kinks poll, might as well mention the moment in Shangri-La after the horns do a rall and tando, all grandiose magificience, and Ray comes back: "put on your slippers and sit by the fire..."

kinks - shangri-la (OTM!)
sam cooke - a change is gonna come
manics - 4st 7lb (espec last 30 seconds)
fall - lay of the land (when the song proper finally kicks in)

Cecil Taylor's version of "This Nearly Was Mine."