Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but strep throat can really suck on both my balls at once. Somehow I managed to maintain a twenty-five year streak of not getting it, but like my mom always said, "Streaks are just a way for you to measure the time between failing". Or something. Anyway, here's some music. Joakim, "I Wish You Were Gone" (vocal edit) - Look, here's the deal: I really, really, really want to open this up by discussing Joakim as an active participant in that whole Justice/Digitalism/ Nite Versions BOSH-BOSH-BOSH school [...]
Eddie Holman, "Time Will Tell" (album mix) - It's weird how you never see a holy grail coming - and for once, I don't mean that in the hey-check-out-this-album-I-jus t-found sense. I've known about Eddie Holman 's 1977 Salsoul debut A Night To Remember for, well, pretty much as long as I've been aware of Salsoul; being that the title track was both one of the first songs I ever associated with the label/style and , on a good day, one of the single greatest disco/soul songs I've ever heard (and on a bad day, still [...]
Radiohead, "Fog" - Goddammit, I was totally ready to be artfully snooty about Thom Yorke's much-ballyhooed solo debut The Eraser , and then it had to go and be one of the best album's I've heard this year. I hasten to add that good as it is, it's nowhere near being in the mix with the best 2006 has to offer so far (that would be Silent Shout , Through the Window Pane , and So This Is Goodbye for those of you keeping score at home), but considering that we're talking about an [...]
The Squares, "The Edge" Los Campesinos, "You! Me! Dancing!" Harry Nilsson, "Vine Street" Full disclosure: I've known the Squares for years, and I mean that in the "hey, I went to college with these dudes" sense, not the "hey, I bet you could get some ratty indie ass if you started talking about how profound these guys' allegiance to Interpol's first album" sense. I mean, these are people whose beer I've drank, with whom I've argued about the [...]
Black Leotard Front, "Casual Friday" - Sigh; it looks like the dream may well be dead . You really can't imagine how much I was looking forward to Delia & Gavin 's first album (hopefully of many) as Black Leotard Front - posting "Casual Friday" may be as superfluous a gesture at this point since everyone with even the littlest lick of sense in their heads already has DFA Compilation #2 by now, but I'll be damned if I have another gesture of any worth at my disposal for the task at hand, [...]
The Rakes, "The World Was A Mess But His Hair Was Perfect" (full 18-minute version) - Two out of the three opening bands opening were unimaginably, indescribably boring; the third (Scanners) were merely OK in that all-too-familiar I-like-bands-with-influences-j ust-not-the-ones-that-influenc ed- you way (seriously, Hole = EURGH). The crowd was comprised of a stunningly well-detailed constellation of Los Angeles indie-rock douchebaggery; as if the guy singlehandely trying (and failing) to bring the vest back as a viable fashion accessory, the lanky tool with a big permed Kenny G mop of hair who kept hurling himself into Brian 's area [...]
Polytechnic, "Won't You Come Around?" - A year or so later, here's the one immutable thing about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah: by this point, I don't think even the old guard of the Shoegaze and Spiderland Marching And Chowder Society can deny the fact that they're notable if only on the basis of how quickly they carved out a name for themselves as a category of modern music - by this point, you can pretty much go up to anyone with even a passing familiarity with 'Forkery and start talking about "that new band [...]
Snowfight in the City Centre, "No Light Left" The Long Blondes, "Fulwood Babylon" I used to think of downloading as the last refuge of the digitally retarded, but my habits in consumption seem to have brought me to a point where I either nut up and buy a turntable (or as I like to think of it, a one-way ticket to debtor's prison) or grit my teeth and start paying for ones and zeroes. Frankly, I'm still not all that comfortable with the situation - when you've had hard drives die the [...]
James Figurine, "55566688833" - Here's what I really want to say: I don't know how many more chances I have left in me to give Jimmy Tamborello to really put together the kind of musical package that I buy once and never sell. I mean, by this point I've paid cash money for two of his albums (well, okay, the Postal Service album and the "This Is The Dream of Evan and Chan" EP, but I don't even think I've ever met anyone who listens to anything off the DNTEL album outside of that song with any regularity, even [...]
Sunny Day Sets Fire, "Wilderness" - Goddamn but it's been a minute and change since I found a song quite like this one. I mean, yes, I suppose if you want to approximate the stick up your own ass, it's inarguably Yet Another In A Series Of Indie-Pop Songs, but that just kinda seems like it's overlooking the immutable fact that I haven't found an indie-pop song that's seized my attention quite so forcefully since "Trains To Brazil"-gate, and we all know how that one turned out. Fuck, I'm actually so desperate for people to pay attention to this [...]
Guillemots, "Never Went To Church" (Streets cover) - It's really tough to know where to start with this song, mostly because it lays itself open to criticism so thoroughly - I mean, (a) novelty cover, (b) radical restructuring of an original song, (c) I stopped paying attention to Mike Skinner within about four seconds of doing so becoming a Virtuous Act Of Musical Appreciation, (d) how the fuck do you take a choir off of any song ever?, and so on. But I seriously doubt that I've stumbled over many songs since discovering this cover (at [...]
Dinosaur L, "#5 (Go Bang)" (original mix?) - Ah, my sweet, nurturing stupidity; truly ye shall rescue me from perdition and carry me up into the light of Knowing like none other. I mean, in light of the fact that I've rather emphatically called "Kiss Me Again" the greatest disco song in the history of everness before , you'd think that I'd have hurdled over my grandmother's corpse at the hint of a chance to attack some of their other material, but somehow I managed to "acquire" a copy of 24/24 Music and then forget about [...]
Franz Ferdinand, "Do You Want To" (Metronomy remix) - I really, really, really wish Metronomy's LP, Pip Paine (Pay Back The £5000 You Owe), had more vocals on it - I've given it like five chances to knock me out so far but it just don't seem like that dog has any plans to hunt. Not that it's a bad album, mind you - one could probably characterize it as Playgroup-gone-chillout if one were so
MSTRKRFT, "The Looks" - At the risk of embarking on an endless spiral of self-Rob Gordoning, I have to say that the main thing I took away from Little Radio on Friday night was a renewed conviction that I'm absolutely not a class warrior. I say this, of course, because I doubt I've been so palpably out-of-my-depth in terms of coolness since I was on my high school's Latin quiz bowl team (which, sadly, is exactly what it sounds like) and it would be incredibly easy to turn this post into one big creative writing exercise at [...]
Beyonce, "Deja Vu" (feat. Jay-Z) - It's pretty safe to say that once something's been covered by Oliver Wang , it's been covered period - there is, after all, a reason why there's a ( very very very very very very excellent ) Soul Sides CD and this very blog doesn't (well, okay, several reasons). Plus, it's not exactly like this song's going to be languishing in obscurity; it's Jay, it's B, it's summer, it's a fucking hit, end of story. Clearly it's not that I'm not aware of all of [...]
Gal Costa, "Tuareg" - Anyone else feeling a little burned out by all the fast-n-furious Hott Leak Action from the last few weeks? I mean, of course it's always cool to see crazy new shit popping up all over the place, but it's awfully hard to cultivate the smug sense of self-satisfaction that powers every mp3 blog ever started when the front keeps getting moved back. Fortunately, there's also a bunch of music worth covering for reasons unrelated to the hype (not that Loose doesn't deserve all the hype it's getting, mind you) - not that [...]
If my musical 2006 has had a running theme, it's got to be "second chances" - these days, I can barely turn around without a jaw-dropping new album by an artist I'd previously written off smacking me in the face. This is, of course, really great; as a dude who listens to way too much music, I can testify all day about the soul-crushing ennui that can set in when the time you waste on music you don't really care about starts to stack up, so of course it's going to be incredibly refreshing any time you get [...]
Janet Kay, "Silly Games" - Every few months, I start listening to reggae again, although given how loud my friends tend to collectively groan whenever I set off on one of these phases you might not even need to be told. Well, fuck my friends; if I have to listen to music they couldn't possibly care less about in order to dig up a song with as much palpable splendor as "Silly Games", then they're just going to have to grin and bear it. It really should say a lot that my immediate frame of reference for this song [...]
Vitalic & Linda Lamb, "Bells" - Good lord, The Internet At Large - there's been a new collaboration between Linda frickin' Lamb and motherfrackin' VITALIC out there for a few weeks now and you leave me to find out about it for myself? I mean, okay, fine, "22 Ghosts" it ain't, but that's still a pairing that's always going to get my blood rushing; given that my favorite thing for which Mr. Arbenz has ever been musically responsible is of course the famous MONSTROUS synth pitch-up-and-down of "La Rock 01", it should probably stand to [...]
Goldfrapp, "Ride A White Horse" (Ewan Pearson Disco Odyssey Parts 1 + 2) (WARNING 34 MB FILE ALERT FIRE IN THE TACO BELL) - Ask yourself: Can a post on this blog really be considered complete if it doesn't feature at least one painful moment of overpowering stupidity on my part? I mean, I certainly hope not; lord knows I already put too much time and effort into last week's Rapture-related post* to go back and excise all the frothing over DangerMouse's contributions to "W.A.Y.U.H." just because it [...]
Green Pea-ness
Stream: Disclosure – When A Fire Starts To Burn
Belly - "Now They'll Sleep"
You’ve GOT to Hear This: “Enemies”
Boards of Canada :: Tomorrow's Harvest
