The Monster Standing By Your Heart

Wiley “Problems” – More grime. This is taken from the forthcoming LP Treading On Thin Ice, as well as the single for “Wot Do U Call It?,” though this really should’ve been the a-side. Aside from maybe “Fix Up, Look Sharp,” this is the most pop (in the contempory chart sense of the word) of all of the grime music that I’ve heard. I’m hoping that this or something like this can make a dent in the US charts, though I’m certainly not holding my breath. It’d be fantastic if hip hop had its own British Invasion, though. It already has an Elvis now, so why not a Beatles?

Unwound “Demons Sing Love Songs (alternate mix)” – I was going through some old cds the other day, and came upon an old Matador Europe sampler titled Draw Me A Riot which came polybagged with an issue of (I think) The Wire a few years ago. It’s a pretty good cd as far as promo compilations go, which is mostly to do with the quality of Matador Europe’s roster, which includes artists from the American Matador stable, plus strong acts poached from other American indie labels.

There were some interesting alternate mixes included on the disc, most notably this spacey, menacing version of Unwound’s “Demons Sing Love Songs.” This was the first I heard of the song, so it led me to purchase a copy of the album with the regular version of the song, Leaves Turn Inside You. While by no means a bad album, that record was a big disappointment for me. Nothing else on it was quite like this, and though the proper version of “Demons Sing Love Songs” was still a fine song, it was missing the shoegazer-y daze of this alternate mix, which was a large part of why I liked the song to begin with. The album version’s vocals are buried in the mix, the keyboards are less prominent, and it has percussion evenly distributed throughout the song. The effects are all but gone, there’s more guitar, and the whole thing is far less dynamic. It’s such a shame, because it’s obvious that it didn’t have to sound so typically indie.