I Guess Intuition Has Spoken

Freaks “The Creeps (You Are Giving Me)” – That’s a pretty accurate title for this song. Lyrically, the song seems to be about being stalked, but even if it was an instrumental, the title would work given the eerie, somewhat pervy electro-funk sound of the track. If you’re not immediately into this song, I’d recommend giving it a few more chances – I didn’t realize how much I liked this song until the fifth time that I heard it. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Detroit Cobras “Mean Man” – Maybe it’s a reaction to the overabundance of scuzzy faux-garage rockers who’ve copped their shtick in the past few years, or it could be the logical arc of their career, but either way, hats off to The Detroit Cobras for adding several coats of poppy gloss to their new album. It suits them well. Lo-fi Nuggets wannabes are a dime a dozen, but there aren’t nearly enough bands that sound like The Pretenders fucking the J Geils Band. (Click here to buy it from Rough Trade.)

Ol’ Dirty Bastard “Brooklyn Zoo (live in San Bernardino, 2004)” – John has already said just about everything that I wanted to say about Ol’ Dirty Bastard over at The Tofu Hut with a greater eloquence than I could probably pull off, so I’m going to keep this brief. A lot of people throw around the word “genius,” but I think that ODB actually was one. There has never been another performer even remotely like him in any genre, and I don’t think that it could be possible to replicate his unique style, charisma, and skills. I think that there are a lot of casual listeners who have written him off as a ridiculous cartoon character, but anyone who has ever seriously listened to his music and lyrics would be keenly aware of the strange, compelling mixture of rage, desperation, wit, intelligence, uninhibited lust, and madness that informed all of his recorded work. ODB was clearly and unfortunately mentally ill, but that insanity was key to his art – at his most unhinged, we could see a reflection of the creepiest, darkest corners of our ids. He revelled in the stuff that we all attempt to keep hidden. For a person who spent a sizeable chunk of his life locked away, ODB was a very free man.

This recording of “Brooklyn Zoo” is from Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s final live performance with the Wu-Tang Clan earlier this year, which is now available on cd and dvd. He spent most of the show calmly sitting on top of a monitor sipping from a water bottle, looking very serene and childlike until he’d get up and instantly shift into full-on ODB mode to drop a verse or engage in some bizarre stage banter. He was there in the moment, but he seemed removed and aloof. Maybe he was drugged. Maybe he was tired. Maybe that’s what he was like all of the time. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)