Duran Duran - "New Moon On Monday": "All this press about the recent vampire entertainment craze (largely focused around HBO's True Blood and Twilight: New Moon)...really just makes me think about "New Moon on Monday" by Duran Duran instead. I hope someone figures out how to get it on the New Moon soundtrack so the tweens can discover it's awesomeness. Besides, I hear that the Twilight vampires sparkle...not unlike Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes."
Shakira - "She Wolf": "I can't get over how there is now a pop song whose lyrics include 'this is lycanthropy' - and doesn't automatically kill the flow of the song. I even kind of like the disco-club vibe of the song, even if I still somehow prefer parts of in Spanish. (Perhaps someone will mix the two versions together...) I just wish she didn't actually howl in the song, in either version."
Sarah Michelle Gellar - "Teen Horniness is Not a Crime": "I stumbled onto this track completely by accident - I had no idea it was on the soundtrack to Southland Tales, the convoluted-yet-fascinating (if in a train-wreck kind of way) movie by Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko fame. SMG performs this track as her character in the movie, Krista Now, a porn star/recording artist/talk-show host. Even if you haven't seen the movie, just knowing that it's SMG performing this song should make it entertaining enough."
Gladys Knight & The Pips - "I've Got To Use My Imagination": "Miss Knight gives it to you rough and the Pips give it to you smooth. The music is taut, using lush strings and horns in what is largely an economic arrangement, all as a perfect stage for Gladys' raw-but-strong lead vocals."
Servotron - "I Am Not A (Voice Activated Child Identicon)": "Following up on yesterday's 'robot' track, here's another. This time, evil-Devo-on-speed rockers Servotron become a murderous version of pre-teen humanoid robot Vicki from television's "Small Wonder" - now plotting the death of all humans, chanting "HARRIET TERMINATED! HARRIET SHALL DIE!" while hunting the show's precocious red-headed neighbor. Twisted and brilliant."
Royksopp - "The Girl And The Robot": "Pulsing Giorgio Moroder synths back Robyn's glorious vocals for a tale of girl-on-metaphorical-robot love and drama. I don't like the way she says the song title, for some reason, but everything else sounds terrific."
Culture Club - "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me": "I will always love the video for this song, where Boy George:
- emerges out of a pool completely dry!
- wears a shirt with Hebrew on it, but only to be different!
- is thrown into jail after harassing stuffy old rich men for some reason or another!
- is then freed from jail by 'magical' Caribbean women who open his cell by simply holding onto his cell bars and dancing. Boy helps by looking at them and pouting.
Then again, he is hurt.
Of course, it helps that this is a great song, equal parts soul and pop, with a touch of island rhythm."
I Was a King - "Norman Bleik": "This album reminds me of Olivia Tremor Control's retro vibes turned back in a more straight-forward manner, but this song specifically echoes 60s California pop, with its Byrds-y jangling and energetically hushed androgynous vocals."
Messiah - "Temple Of Dreams": Remember when rave culture seemed like the biggest trend ever? This song can't help but make me think of that time, but also listening to KROQ in LA, circa `92. I'm pretty sure the "stomp your feet" sample is the 'Spirit Child' from Prince's Lovesexy album, but the real sample gem is - obviously - Richard Dawson from The Running Man movie. Survey says 'awesome'."
The Human League - "The Lebanon (12" Extended Mix)": "I know that I've already posted about "The Lebanon" before, but this version is even more Lebanon-y than the original - which means a few extra go-arounds of the bass line that I love so well."
Spoon - "Got Nuffin": "A new, lean, mean rocker from Spoon. I got a little worried on the last record when we started getting horns and stuff, but this is a good blend of their older, angular tunes with their newer sound."
No Knife - "Academy Flight Song": "Even though there is a Jimmy Eat World-meets-Jawbreaker quality to songs like this, No Knife keeps up the rock while working in some less obvious instrumental shifts. (I also can't help but wonder if this is a nod to Mission of Burma's "Academy Fight Song", since No Knife does also recall MoB in some ways.)
The album as a whole (Fire In The City of Automatons) is a under-appreciated slice of straight-forward modern rock mixed with subtly adventuresome song structures and instrumentation."
Fischerspooner - "In A Modern World": "I was originally going to post that, despite coming from a somewhat milquetoast record, this track has a subtle charm - but then I noticed, in the spoken word interlude, that the female narrator says "call everyone you know / text everyone you know". Text?? Why not tell folks to get a ringtone? I just hate unecessary cell phone references in songs and I wished they had left it out."
Grand Duchy - "Seeing Stars": "I get a little skeeved out when famous musicians put out records with their significant others, especially when the significant others are not as well known. While I had this trepidation about Grand Duchy, featuring Pixies' Frank Black/Black Francis and Mrs. Black/Francis (Violet Clark), it defies those concerns, even if it's still easier to evaluate this on its own merit when you forget about who the dude is in this band."
Michael Jackson - "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)": "I'm not sure how I'm supposed to be feeling, after his passing. I love songs like this, but it's hard to reconcile that Off The Wall/Thriller magic with his latter works, if not his personal activities since then as well. No matter what you think, it's hard not to agree that something so right went wrong, somewhere along the way."
Swell - "Song Seven": "The elements of this song are rather simple, allowing something subtle like additional electric guitar in the last section of the song to be powerful, despite its otherwise minimalist addition. The drum part during the (wordless) chorus has always been a favorite of mine, even if it too is a simple part."
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - "The Pains of Being Pure at Heart": "From Slumberland, the label that brought you the Aislers Set and Velocity Girl...
This is the song where The Pains of Being Pure At Heart hit that Jesus & Mary Chain, that Vaselines, that twee-pop-but-rockin' sweet spot that all the reviewers anoint them with generally. This is the song where it really all happens - and it's already named after them. (Imagine if they had actually put this self-titled song on their self-titled album...)
I also meant to include them in my SXSW `09 recap. So, better late than never:
It took a while for them to really amp up (no wonder, since they were playing a million shows down there) but once they hit a groove, it was good, sweet-n-buzzy fun, as one would expect from their record."
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SXSW 2009 Recap
Wire - "Map Ref 41 Degrees N 93 Degrees W": ""I'm not sure if they're singing about map-as-metaphor or map as, well, map. It's Wire, so it could be either. Here (on 154), they're only two albums out from their debut, yet they've already morphed their angular rock away from visceral punk and towards a more detached artiness, but without abandoning their stumbled-into melodies."
The Walkmen - "In The New Year": "I'm a little surprised that it took me so long to come around to this song. It's got a off-kilter retro-garage vibe much like that of the Rock*A*Teens (as well as the similar, if more centered, sound of Cut Off Your Hands), but it didn't really take with me until more recently. Then again, it always seems to take me a while to get into Walkmen and Rock*A*Teens songs because I have to get over the rough edges, which often become the parts I love the most."
Adam Franklin - "Surge": "Swervedriver frontman Adam Franklin rolls out some tasty solo work on his record Spent Bullets, which kicks off with this track. Despite being relatively mellow with acoustic guitar fairly prominent in the mix, there's still some classic Swerv-y elements, like the energetic-yet-melancholy melodies, without being derivative of that past work."
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