Sharpen The Air That I Breathe

Lali Puna “Left Handed” – This isn’t a great depature from the formula of their previous recordings, but this time Valerie Trebeljahr’s breathy, heavily accented vocals are accompanied by very prominent guitars along with their typical downbeat electronica, making this sound something like electro shoegazer rock.

Sally Crewe and the Sudden Moves “Wake Up The Heroes” – Ah, perfect rock pop music! There’s almost nothing to say about this song other than that it’s short, it’s catchy, it has clever lyrics, and it probably sounds great on a car stereo. If you’re a fan of the two most recent Spoon albums, you really ought to check this out, not just because Crewe’s songwriting style is very similar to that of Britt Daniel’s, but Daniel and Jim Eno also recorded the album, lending the same raw/clean recording aesthetic of those albums to her songs. For more Sally Crewe mp3s, go here. I highly recommend “Forget It.”

Stark Reality “Junkman’s Song” – This is a selection from Stark Reality’s Discovers Hoagy Carmichael’s Music Shop, which has recently been rereleased after decades of obscurity. It was very difficult for me to select just one song from the record, so much of it is remarkable and fascinating. Stark Reality were essentially a psychedelic rock/funk/jazz fusion act, and part of what I find very interesting about them is how they were able to combine familiar elements of those three genres in fairly unpredictable ways, making them seem vaguely alien and peculiar in their new context. This particular song is one of the more psychedelic tracks from the album, and features some amazing distorted keyboard sounds.

Adam Green “Jessica” – This is Adam “Moldy Peaches” Green, who has suddenly become a much better singer on this Scott Walker-style ballad which imagines a pathetic, washed up older version of minor pop star Jessica Simpson. It’s more than a little mean spirited, but it’s somehow vaguely sympathetic, too.