Too Crunk To Ensure The Dunks

Yelle “Je Veux Te Voir” – What do you even call this music? It moves restlessly between identifiable sounds — punky French rapping, heavy electro, Baile funk/booty bass, twee synth pop, intense rock guitar moves transposed to keyboards — but it’s like everything and nothing else. It’s as though they just figured out what 2007 was supposed to sound like and ran with it, making every moment more amped up and ridiculously exciting than the last.

I found the lyrics and ran them through Google’s translation tool, and it just gets crazier. She seems to be objectifying this dude, but the lusty bits get mixed up with obscure details about sleepwear, fried potatoes, and lacking a driver’s license. Here’s the best bit from the translation: “Your posters of Lil’ Jon cover those with Magic Johnson / Your body is too crunk to ensure the dunks.” It’s funny and cute, but also wonderfully precise and well-observed. I get a very specific image of this guy and his life, but more than that, an idea of how smitten she is — after all, when you have a crush like this, you tend to focus on this sort of silly, endearing trivia.

I don’t think that I could ever hear this song loud enough. I want to blast it at such a high volume that it reduces me to atoms. (Click here to buy it via the official Yelle site.)

Elsewhere: Eric Harvey on Alfred Hitchcock’s use of music to present a notion of mass-culture passivity in Rear Window.

Let’s Have A Contest!!!: As I mentioned last week, Of Montreal are playing a special live-band karaoke show at Studio B in Brooklyn on April 14th. Basically, they are going to have a list of other people’s songs, and they’ll play them behind whoever is brave enough to get on stage and give it a shot. (I have no idea what songs will be available, but they’ve been playing selections by Gnarls Barkley, Prince, the Fiery Furnaces, Neil Young, and David Bowie in the past two years.) In addition to all that, they’ll play a regular Of Montreal set, which is awesome in and of itself. Obviously, this is a pretty unique and fabulous event, and as such, it sold out in less than a day.

You might be thinking something along the lines of “Why the hell is he telling us this? Is he just trying to make us feel bad about missing this show? Why is the Fluxblog guy such an irredeemable prick?” I honestly don’t know the answer to that last question, but I promise you that I’m not trying to make you feel lame about not getting tickets. In fact, I’m actually going to hook some of you up. Well, two pair of you, anyway.

Here’s the deal: If you want to get in the running, you have to get creative. I want you to make something that shows off your karaoke skills and/or expresses your personal karaoke philosophy. It can be an mp3, a youtube clip, a set of photographs accompanied with text, whatever. Go wild with it! I don’t know what I’m looking for, but the two raddest entries will win the tickets (thanks to New York Magazine, btw), and a few of the runners-up might get something too. The top entries will all appear on the site when the winners are announced.

Please send all contest entries to: ofmontrealkaraoke @ gmail.com by April 10th, 2007. Please do not enter if you can’t be in Brooklyn on the day of the show, and/or if you know me personally. (I mean, if we met once super-briefly, fine.)