Archive for 2007

The Human League “Mirror Man” – After years of loving this song, I still can’t figure out its angle on this “mirror man,” or, given the way it’s sung in the first person but then switches to an ambiguous chorus announcing the arrival of the “mirror man,” whether or not the singer is the “mirror man.” It seems that the singer is disassociating himself from the part of his mind that is eager to change, and he’s afraid that this makes him a bit of a sociopath, or that being so adaptable wipes out his sense of identity. Still, even though the character is chilly and aloof, the song signals some kind of remorse, hinting that maybe he does have some very good reason to feel guilty. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Antibalas, RJD2, and Santa Maria.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists “The Unwanted Things” – Some people might roll their eyes at the token reggae song on Ted Leo’s new album, but as far as I’m concerned, “The Unwanted Things” showcases everything that I love about his music — effortless warmth and humanity, an easygoing sense of melody, and his thin yet extraordinarily endearing falsetto. “The Unwanted Things” overflows with gentle empathy, and though it strays from his typical style, it still seems like a defining work for the Nicest Guy in Indie Rock. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Ted Leo “Rock and Roll Dreams’ll Come Through” – At the start of this clip from last week’s special marathon episode of the Best Show On WFMU, Ted Leo mentions that he got a request for the Gorch’s “Chain Fight Tonight.” I was the guy who requested it from the phone room, but honestly, hearing Ted nail Barry Dworkin’s classic “Rock and Roll Dreams’ll Come Through” instead was much, much better and pretty much a fahntasy come true for this, or any, Best Show fanboy. (Click here to buy the full “Gas Station Dogs” bit on Scharpling and Wurster’s New Hope For the Ape-Eared double-disc set from Stereolaffs.)

Elsewhere: The next batch of 33 1/3 books has been announced. I’m pleased to say that some of my friends have made the cut — Bryan Charles (Pavement), Chris Weingarten (Public Enemy), and Jessica Saurez (Weezer) — and some guy I don’t know at all managed to land a book on one of my five or six favorite albums ever, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Let’s hope he doesn’t eff that one up, okay? One thing I can guarantee is that Bryan Charles is going to do an amazing job with Wowee Zowee. There really is no one else I’d rather have writing the book on my favorite album (and favorite band) of all time.

Also: Tom Breihan’s interview with James Murphy is pretty crucial. If you only click on one blog link today…

Shapes & Sizes “Alone/Alive” – There’s no nice way to say this, so I’ll just be blunt: The dude in Shapes & Sizes needs to let this woman sing every one of their songs. The difference between their tracks on their new album isn’t as drastic as on the first, and his voice isn’t as painful to hear either, but if you’ve got this compelling, assertive, supremely expressive vocalist in the band, why clog up the record with songs sung by a guy who sounds like yet another limp, nondescript indie rocker? Why drag down the average when every song could be an A+?

Caila Thompson-Hannant’s songs tend to condense epic adventures into compositions that rarely crack the five minute mark, implying moments of excitement, danger, despair, aimlessness, and romance along every twist and turn without seeming disjointed or cumbersome. Her words drop hints, but the sound of her voice is far more articulate, slipping from high pitched squeals to brassy shouts, gradually fleshing out a rich character that is alternately authoritative and deeply confused. (Click here to pre-order it from Asthmatic Kitty.)

Elsewhere: I’m not 100% sure how I feel about this essay that I wrote for Artistdirect. I like it for the most part, but I definitely think I’m biting off more than I can chew at the beginning and the end, and I worry that the general tone is overly peevish.

Also: Glenn Coolfer has some very good ideas about SXSW, Dan Kois is totally OTM about the “inarticulate narrator,” Mark Pytlik somehow made me like Sound of Silver more than I already did, and Pageblank quietly defends North American Scum hipsters, or at least the ones that he knows in Canada.

Squeeze “If I Didn’t Love You” – The full line is “If I didn’t love you, I’d hate you,” and the more I hear this song, the more I realize that ultimately the singer is erring on the side of the latter. The woman being addressed is a total cipher — an object, an objective, a source of unending sexual frustration. He fumbles through these forced, cliched romantic scenarios — all of which seem distinctly early 80s to me; I’ve always imagined this being played out by Sam Malone and Diane Chambers — but for a song about trying to get laid, it seems rather short on lust. Glenn Tilbrook normally sounds warm and friendly, but here he’s chilly and aloof, especially when he stutters like a broken robot on the hook. (Click here to get it for cheap on a greatest hits record, or here to spend a lot more money and get the original Argybargy album.)

David Bowie “What In The World (Live)” – Halfway through this live recording from the Stage tour, Bowie and his band cycle back to the beginning of the song, but kick up the tempo to the point that its extreme romantic angst becomes an overwhelming physical sensation. The song seems as though it could derail at any moment, which speaks to the emotional truth of its words while also turning the key line “I’m just a little bit afraid of you” into a hilarious understatement. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Fountains of Wayne “Yolanda Hayes” – Some artists are so good at what they do that they can make tricky, labored craftwork seem easy, and others are merely just good enough that they can turn out strong material without actually trying very hard. Fountains of Wayne are erring on the side of the latter on their new album Traffic and Weather, and though it doesn’t make a song like “Yolanda Hayes” any less enjoyable, it’s hard for me not to dwell on how the band seems totally unwilling to challenge themselves or their fans. Like a lot of other acts in the power pop genre, they’ve got this all down to a scientific formula, to the point that the group’s primary songwriter Adam Schlesinger has built a lucrative career penning pop pastiches for Hollywood productions. He aims for comfort and familiarity and generally hits the mark, but now that Fountains of Wayne’s central gimmick — humorous yet sympathetic lyrics about the mundane details of suburban life — apparently comes as easily to them as the chord changes, the entire endeavor seems forced and insincere, as though they are just pumping out more product to keep the brand alive. In fairness, that description applies to a lot of different artists, and that sort of competence and strength of identity can yield pretty amazing work, but Fountains of Wayne’s stubborn refusal to alter their approach in any way is beginning to seem stale and unimaginative. “Yolanda Hayes” is a delightful little song that works on its own terms, and that goes for a lot of other songs on the new album, but there’s a nagging sense that it could be a lot better if only they’d deviated from their recipe a little bit. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

LCD Soundsystem “Someone Great” – Honestly, I didn’t really care for that thing James Murphy made for Nike. It was pretty good fodder for think-piece riffing, but as an actual composition, it’s just kinda alright, and the only part of it that was totally astonishing was essentially an instrumental trailer for this song. And this song…well, wow, if you want to hear the difference between “good” and “mind-meltingly awesome,” just play it immediately following that Nike mix.

Granted, the instrumental track for “Someone Great” is distinct, gorgeous, and emotionally complex, but it is stuck in middle of an otherwise uninspiring longform composition, and it’s lacking the added dimension of Murphy’s shell-shocked vocal performance. He sounds utterly lost within himself and unsure of his every feeling as he attempts to process a major emotional trauma. The lyrics are tricky with tense agreements and never allow us to understand exactly how much time has passed — sometimes it seems as though the horrible event is far behind him, and at others, the hindsight seems like an artificial perspective and a coping mechanism. The melancholy tone of the song is ultimately a by-product of the way Murphy so expertly simulates the sensation of hollow, confused grief. “Someone Great” is not about sadness; it’s about having absolutely no idea of how to deal with loss, and trying desperately to respond with maturity and grace when you can’t even understand how you feel about this sudden void in your life. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Macy Gray “Treat Me Like Your Money” – As much as I appreciate Will.I.Am’s track for this song — it’s very well composed and flatters Macy Gray’s nice very nicely — I just want to punch him in the face for jumping in for an exceptionally hacky rapped cameo towards the end. It’s not enough to wreck the song, but following Gray’s own somewhat puzzling quotation of Dead Or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record),” it nearly derails an otherwise fantastic tune. When the chorus comes back around it’s good enough to forgive their momentary lapse of good taste, but every time I hear the song again, that bit seems like a new betrayal. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Blonde Redhead, the Victorian English Gentlemens’ Club, and Joan As Police Woman.

Wu-Tang Clan “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthin’ To Fuck With” (Bird Peterson Remix) – Bird Peterson’s remix of the Wu-Tang classic is all blunt force, bludgeoning the listener with quick, violent bursts of words from the RZA’s verse and a dynamic, heavy beat that comes closer to the Jock Jams aesthetic than anything from Enter The Wu-Tang. Peterson essentially throws all subtlety out the window and turns the song into four straight minutes of intense, super-concentrated belligerence and deranged swagger. (Click here for Bird Peterson’s MySpace page.)

Jackson Jones “I Feel Good” (Pilooski Edit) – It’s hard to feel entirely present when listening to this track. Nearly every element in the arrangement seems designed to zone you out and make you feel as though you’re just wandering through some half-conscious haze. Psychedelia, vintage electro, disco, funk, dub — it’s all in this mix, but just as in a dream, their characteristics are blurred and somewhat illogical. (Click here to buy it from D*I*R*T*Y*)

Elsewhere: Rob Mitchum on “the new brand of drug song.”

Also: As you can see from the banner on the top of this site, the annual WFMU fund raising marathon is currently in progress. I strongly encourage you to donate whatever you can afford to the station — they are 100% listener supported, and do not accept any money from the government or advertisers of any kind. Simply put, there are no other radio stations as progressive as WFMU on the planet. It’s important to support the station as a whole even if you only like a few shows here and there, if just because there really is no other home for a majority of the programming. I strongly encourage you to donate during tonight’s Best Show On WFMU, which airs between 8 and 11 PM EST, and will feature special guest stars Ted Leo and Laura Cantrell. Tom Scharpling, Jon Wurster, and Andrew Earles pour a lot of heart and soul into that show, and if you’re a fan, you really ought to let the station know that you appreciate what they’ve been doing. You don’t need to donate a lot — just $10 would be perfectly fine — but if you pony up $75, you’ll get a nice gift set including a new WFMU t-shirt and an exclusive cd of new material recorded by Scharpling and Wurster featuring Philly Boy Roy and Zachary Brimstead.

And: Tracy Morgan visits Texas, El Paso.

Of Montreal @ Irving Plaza 3/9/2007
Suffer For Fashion / Sink The Seine / Cato As A Pun / Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse / Labyrinthian Pomp / She’s A Rejecter / We Were Born The Mutants Again With Leafling / October Is Eternal / I Was A Landscape In Your Dream / Vegan In Furs / Du Og Meg / Climb The Ladder / Tropical Iceland (with a bit of And She Was) / Forecast Fascist Future / I Was Never Young / Rapture Rapes The Muses / Gronlandic Edit / A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger / The Party’s Crashing Us // Bunny Ain’t No Kind Of Rider / Faberge Falls For Shuggie / Moonage Daydream / Requiem For OMM2

Of Montreal “Bunny Ain’t No Kind Of Rider” (Live @ Irving Plaza 3/9/2007) – Of Montreal’s current live show is essentially a low-budget surrealist potluck cabaret. It comes together as a delightfully incoherent mess of glam styles, performance art signifiers and mythological references, and part of the reason it works is because there is absolutely no pretense of theme or narrative. Instead, it all just comes off like a bunch of very smart people gleefully dressing up in outlandish costumes and indulging in artsy silliness without ever seeming smug, or letting the irony taint the emotional and intellectual content of the show. There was a strong sense that everyone on stage felt liberated by their whole-hearted embrace of an absurd camp aesthetic, and that they all were very excited about whatever they were bringing to the show. “Oooh, I’ll wear my fishnets and for one song dress up like an enormous wizard, like Peter Gabriel would have done if he only ever wore costumes made out of stuff from his dad’s garage!” “Hey, I’ll wear my angel wings!” “Cool, I’ll be the guy who slinks around in a skintight white body suit, and you can drop bananas down into my crotch during the encore!”

Of Montreal “Tropical Iceland” (Live @ Irving Plaza 3/9/2007) – I’m reasonably certain that Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? is my favorite album since 2003 — or to be specific, since the Fiery Furnaces released Gallowsbird’s Bark. That said, I probably don’t need to explain why it was so exciting for me to see Of Montreal perform one of the best songs from that record, or why it made me so glad that Kevin Barnes loves their work and recognizes the Friedberger siblings as being his “contemporaries.” (Let’s be very honest: neither he nor they have many true peers in this era.) “Tropical Iceland” is an inspired cover, in part because the single version sounds so much like something Barnes might have written himself, but also because its melody flatters his slippery voice and fake British accent. Is there any chance that we can get the Furnaces to have a go at “Wraith Pinned To The Mist (And Other Games)”?

(Big thanks to Dan Lynch.)

Elsewhere: Pageblank on unrequited love.

Marnie Stern “Logical Volume” – Marnie Stern’s busy arrangements are like a highly stylized representation of a world of infinite distractions. Whenever her tiny but enthusiastic voice breaks out of the din it seems like a minor triumph, as though she is defeating insurmountable odds by cutting through the collective noise of humanity and asserting her will. Her songs mostly blast the listener with rapid bursts of treble which require concentration on her part, but eradicate every coherent stream of thought in its path. There’s some peace at the center of each song, but you can only feel it if you can tune out the clutter. “Logical Volume” is actually one of the most focused numbers on her debut album, and unsurprisingly, it’s also the most overt statement of identity and ego. Stern indulges in building up her own myth, proclaiming that she’s “off the radar way too long” and announcing that this (the song? the album?) is her “Thunder Road” and “Marquee Moon.” It’s a refreshing show of confidence, even if the tone is slightly jocular. (Click here to buy it from Buy Olympia/Kill Rock Stars.)

Gameboy/Gamegirl “Sweaty Wet/Dirty Damp” – There’s a temptation to rebel against these sort of deliberate fun machines, especially if your idea of a great time isn’t so extremely lewd and extroverted, but there’s so much cutesy mischief and barely-contained glee to be found in this track that it’s hard not to at least smile along. Gameboy/Gamegirl are approximating the sound of booty bass and Funk Carioca, but something has been twisted in their adaptation of the formula, resulting in a track that filters those sensibilities through the fluorescent funk common to the music of fellow Melbourne dance acts such as Muscles, the Avalanches, and Cut Copy. (Click here for the Gameboy/Gamegirl MySpace page.)

Squimaoto “Rich In Vitamins” – The beat and arpeggios are not especially weird, but Squimaoto’s song still feels as though it has been folded inside-out. Not to imply that it sounds awkward — it moves along with this stealthy ninja grace, even when it launches into a noisy fit towards the end. (Click here to buy it from Brothersister Records.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Luke Slater, Sylvie Marks & HAL9000, and Aesop Rock.

Also: Mike Barthel on cynicism, Stephen Colbert, blogs, and pop music.

Spank Rock – Excerpt from Fabriclive 33 including: CSS “Let’s Make Love and Listen To Death From Above (Spank Rock Remix),” Chicks on Speed “Wordy Rappinghood (Playgroup Mix),” Mr. Oizo “Nazis (Justice Mix),” and Dominatrix “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight” – The album-length mixes in the Fabric series are very hit or miss, and the quality largely depends on the character and genre affiliations of the DJ on any given disc. A good number of them do their job well, but feel anonymous and aesthetically flat, and though I appreciate them in a distanced sort of way and a strong argument can be made that I simply lack a nuanced taste for certain dance subgenres, I just can’t connect with a record that never strays from a limited palette of textures and one monotonous beat for 80 minutes. Spank Rock’s mix is characteristically restless, rowdy, and fun as it cycles through bits of recent crowd-pleasers, electro cuts, and tweaked oldies. The mix is fluid and intuitive, but not overworked, lending the set a loose feeling that implies that they are whimsically skipping around through their record bins.

I’m not sure why, but I’d never really paid much attention to Spank Rock’s remix of CSS’ “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above” before acquiring this Fabric mix. Interestingly, Spank Rock’s version modifies the arrangement so that it is easier to mix seamlessly into one of their sets, but the by-product of that pragmatism is that the mood darkens considerably and it contrasts with the raunchy cheer common to the rest of the mix. The lyrics are foregrounded by the newly spare arrangement, and the alternate vocal take by Lovefoxxx emphasizes the sadness just barely obscured by her “live for the moment” optimism as she tries to make the most of her time with a long distance love that she’s finally just met in person. The excitement and open-hearted lust is still there, but her doubt, frustration, and nervousness isn’t nearly as well concealed as it is on the original recording. The shift isn’t all that drastic, but it’s enough to to reinforce my estimation that its words fall into the highest percentile of quality pop lyrics from the past ten years, and make the song sound fresh to me all over again after having heard it soooooooo many times throughout 2006.

Edit:

I’d like to address this comment left in the box below, which more or less echoes what I was railing against the last time I wrote about CSS at length:

I’m sure Lovefoxxx is not emoting that much. She’s in a dance band for crying out loud and not a very good one. – Anon

To a certain extent this (obviously quite brave!) anonymous poster is entitled to their opinion, and since it is apparent that they haven’t given this a great deal of thought, it’s not really worth arguing with them, at least not in the interest of trying to change their mind. But honestly, there’s no way I can read this sort of comment without assuming some pretty harsh things — mainly, that they seem to have extremely rigid and unimaginative ideas about what signifies intelligent and emotionally moving art.

I think that a lot of the problem that some people run into with CSS is that their record is very much a product of the present tense, and though I believe that accounts for a great deal of its beauty, art that is so tied into a moment that will inevitably pass tends to freak out a certain type of insecure fan who demands permanence and timelessness, often because they are terrified of ever having to admit that they enjoyed something that has since become dated. If you want to cling to the notion of having an imagined aesthetic upper hand, you will most likely become allergic to this sort of music, and find refuge in safe bets. If you’ve conditioned yourself to think of contemporary culture (especially internet culture) as being an endless stream of vulgar novelty — a notion that is not entirely inaccurate, by the way — you’ve most likely blinded yourself to any art that speaks to the humanity and emotional truth of experiences within that culture.

This particular CSS song is about an increasingly common experience that was quite rare less than a decade ago, and there are very few songs that explore it, especially not in a way that so articulately expresses the mixed emotions, expectations, and awkwardness of the situation without getting all emo about it. Like the rest of their album, “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above” is dealing with both the positive and negative aspects of living in a world that seems small on the internet, but is still quite vast — physically and culturally. They do this while being playful, while sounding fun, and without making grand pronouncements or diving into the deep end of angst. I can’t see how that isn’t a totally remarkable achievement. (Click here to pre-order it from Fabric.)

Elsewhere: Chris Conroy on false authority and the nature of the modern backlash.

Deerhunter “Wash Off” – The stakes always seem very high in Deerhunter’s best songs, and even though it’s not always clear what’s happening in them on a literal level, there’s certainly a sense that no emotion, idea, or fictional construct is going to emerge from them unchanged or entirely intact. “Wash Off” consciously steals its central motif from krautrock, but it’s in the interest of pragmatism rather than pastiche. Like the most memorable Neu! songs, the music feels as though it is accelerating toward some endless horizon, but unlike that band’s rather serene compositions, Deerhunter seem to be in a hurry to achieve some form of transcendence, periodically kicking at their effects pedals for moments of inspired rocking. When they rock out, they sound as though they’ve let their spirits run free from their bodies. Joyous isn’t quite the right word given their solemn tone, but it’s halfway there. (Click here to buy it from Kranky.)

James Brown “Call Me Superbad (Cornelius Rework)” – James Brown would’ve fined Cornelius into the poor house if he was actually a member of his band. The first minute of his reworked track seems like a handful of false starts, but it eventually settles into a groove that seems to move diagonally away from Brown’s vocal performance. It all comes together by the time the horns kick in, but it always feels as though it’s about to tip over and fall apart, as though Cornelius is playing a thrilling game of musical Jenga with Brown’s song. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: Peter Birkenhead on the problem with Oprah and “The Secret.”

Pleasure “Out Of Love” – You know that point in some songs (most especially new wave tunes) when the sentiment of the lyric overcomes the singer and they reflexively close their eyes for a moment and swoon as they hit a higher note? It’s a glorious thing, and most good songs about new infatuation tend to do this at least once, if not a few times over. This new single by Pleasure sounds as though it was engineered to maximize the impact of these swooning moments, and so when they come, the rush is exhilarating and sorta exhausting. “Out Of Love” is a sublime mix of gleeful synthpop bounce and sad-eyed melancholy, and though there are some echoes of Blondie’s “Heart Of Glass,” it tosses out that song’s cynicism and wounded pride in favor of an entirely earnest sweetness. (Click here for the Pleasure MySpace page.)

Dan Deacon “Okie Dokie” – Dan Deacon’s absurd, cartoonish electro-punk is like being assaulted by a street gang of Pokemon characters. It rocks out and hits you hard and fast, but it never stops seeming cute and silly even when the track accelerates so much that the electronic snare hits begin to sound more like rapid gun fire than any kind of musical instrument. (Click here for the Dan Deacon website.)

Elsewhere: Eric Harvey on why going to see Girl Talk play a live gig may not be a very good idea.

Previously on Fluxblog: Rob Sheffield wrote a great memoir called Love Is A Mix Tape, and I’m talking to him about that, and some other things. Here’s part one and here’s part two.

Rob Sheffield: “International Airport” is very Charlottesville. When I moved there James McNew had the only fanzine in town, And Suddenly.

Matthew Perpetua: I wish that I could read a lot of those old fanzines. It would be great if there were books reprinting them, like big telephone book sized things, sorta like the zine equivalent of those Hyped2Death compilations.

RS: I don’t understand why those don’t exist yet. Somebody could scan them into a website, I guess. Did you ever read Conflict, Cosloy’s ’80s zine?

MP: Only fragments that I’ve seen reprinted here and there. I really like Cosloy’s writing.

RS: The entire run should be a DVD or something. No, a book’s better, more fun to read on the subway or under a tree, the way I used to obsessively read fanzines.

MP: Yeah, there’s a limit to the length of something that I can comfortably read on a computer screen.

RS: Phil Dello’s Radio On, in the 1990s… literally the best zine ever. Reading computer screens is more like watching TV, less like reading.

MP: Since you have the frame of reference, how do you think music blogs rate compared to that scene?

RS: Well, I’m from a fanzine frame of mind so I’m definitely biased. I liked reading them over and over, and blogs aren’t meant to be read twice. Not putting them down or anything — they’re supposed to be immediate, like the UK pop press or something. I’m always surprised how little fanzine stuff gets reprinted now. It amazes me so many people haven’t had the chance to read Conflict or even Forced Exposure. Why Music Sucks, Chickfactor, Teenage Gang Debs, Swellsville, Too Fun Too Huge…those were different times.

MP: I mostly just know Gerard Cosloy from Matador, and Forced Exposure as being these nice people who send me weird records.

RS: Before Cosloy was a mogul or a sports writer, he was the funniest writer-about-music ever. He compared Jandek’s harmonica solos to watching a man with no arms climb a hill in a wheelchair…and MEANT THAT AS A COMPLIMENT, which is why it works.

MP: Did you ever make one yourself?

RS: I never did a zine. I wrote for friends’ zines. You would wait six months for the new one, and then spend six months reading it. The type was always too small to save on Xerox costs.

MP: Did you use a magnifying glass?

RS: I will probably need glasses someday because of the zines. Frank Kogan’s book has amazing stuff from his zine, and other people’s zines. Usually with blogs I like, I print them out and read them at a coffee shop. Life’s short. “Eyesight is precious,” as Gert Stein used to say. Blogs can do stuff zines couldn’t do… like move fast.

MP: Yeah, I think I would never have lasted long in zines because to me, the thing I enjoy is the daily routine, and moving on through things and not lingering on anything for too long. I like the challenge of having to constantly find new things.

RS: You write like a zine guy. (That’s meant as a compliment.) You know the Great Plains song “Letter to a Fanzine”?

MP: Nope.

RS: “Isn’t my haircut really intense, isn’t Nick Cave a genius in a sense…” Source of the eternal question: “Why do punk rock guys go out with new wave girls?”

MP: Who do new wave guys go out with?

RS: Lydia Lunch.

MP: Man, who is the modern Lydia Lunch?

RS: Chrissie Hynde…is she a punk rock girl or a new wave girl? Not that any new wave guy would ever get to go out with her. The modern Lydia Lunch, that’s a tough one.

MP: I’m thinking that Chrissie Hynde is ultimately just the Rocker Girl, which transcends punk or new wave.

RS: True that. I love Karen O because she has the new wave heart and the punk rock voice. “Cheated Hearts” proves that “Pretty Vacant” is the same song as “Into the Groove.” I never noticed that before. She is Lydia’s Lunchbox.

MP: I like Karen O the best when she’s comfortable enough to just be herself. I feel like she’s too often trying to impress us with antics and she never gets that people like her for stuff like “Maps” and “Our Time.”

RS: She kills me. See, “Maps,” that proves that Jerry Butler’s “For Your Precious Love” is the same song as Siouxsie’s “Spellbound.”

MP: “Maps” sounds like a song that was written especially for mix tapes.

RS: Yes yes yes. It would be the first song on Side 2, right?

MP: It’s the kind of song that says the kind of thing people feel like they can’t verbalize.

RS: Funny, though, it says it with the guitar and the voice, not so much the words.

MP: Yeah, the lyrics are like subtitles. I mean, that’s really the job of artists, but especially musicians. To provide that service, to express those things we just can’t say.

RS: I have no idea what I would do

without them to provide that service for me. I feel like I’m still learning how to talk from musicians. James Honeyman-Scott’s guitar, you know? It always sounds like his guitar is calling and her voice is responding. I always wished I had a cool name like James Honeyman-Scott. Rob Honeyman-Sheffield.

MP: Is his name actually Honeyman?

RS: It was his middle name I guess?

MP: People always ask me if my surname is real, and it is.

RS: Perpetua’s a righteous name. Catholic much?

MP: Thank you for catching that! Most people are not up on their Catholic saints.

RS: Perpetua was hardcore.

MP: I should marry some girl named Felicity.

RS: My God, that would be great. Or maybe some girl named Help, Our Lady Of. The record collector/taper/blogger mentality is really close to Catholicism in many people. Collecting relics, obsessing over hagiography. Show me an altar boy and I’ll show you a potential record geek. Isn’t doing a music blog kind of a pastoral calling? You’re offering up daily bread! The text is like the parish newsletter. You get the regulars who come every morning, then the casual ones who just show up on your blog for Christmas and Easter.

MP: I never really had any strong Catholic upbringing — I went through religious instruction and got confirmed, but my family wasn’t especially religious, and I didn’t go to Catholic school. I don’t have a Catholic Block inside of my head.

RS: But you had all those years of CCD, right?

MP: Yup. I played CYO basketball, the whole thing.

RS: You can still say the Act of Contrition, I bet. Do you cross yourself on planes?

MP: Nope.

RS: Me neither. Why ask for trouble? But I do cross myself in mosh pits, that shit’s just scary.

MP: I’m such a wuss, I’ve never really been in one. I just get out of the way. I saw the Blood Brothers last year and just moved to the side.

RS: Ok, shit, I loved that Blood Brothers show. What would go on the other side of the Blood Brothers album? Drum’s Not Dead?

MP: Mmm. Probably something really intense that I don’t listen to. Lightning Bolt? Something to make the Blood Brothers sound poppy. Wolf Eyes?

RS: Morrissey.

MP: That works!

RS: It’s funny, I remember my Pazz & Jop ballot in 1988, I had the Pet Shop Boys number 1, followed by Morrissey, Public Enemy, Sonic Youth, Scritti Politti… and the weird thing is all 5 of them had new records LAST year! That’s just strange. The rest of my 1988 top ten is harder to remember…EPMD, Stetasonic, a Fairport Convention BBC thing, and I’m also pretty sure I voted for a bloody-curdlingly awful Brit-psych record by the Bounty Hunters, who were a spin off of a Swell Maps spin off. Or a spin off of a spin off of a These Immortal Souls spin off. I was a barrel of laughs back then. I’m accustomed to being the only Scritti Politti fan in the room (or the area code), now they’re so huge!

MP: They have a nice little cult now.

RS: Maybe it’s that great Simon Reynolds book…it made me play my old Pop Group tapes! It’s funny, Scritti Politti went through all these principled contortions to finally decide, hey, you know what? Indie rock! I’m gonna play indie rock! Wry, literate, rueful indie rock! Kind of like…Aztec Camera?

MP: And do a bit of rapping, on the side.

RS: Cupid & Psyche taught me so much about pop, about the connections between disco and eros. Now he’s worked hard to forget everything he taught me! And of course more respect to him for trying something different, but it’s funny he was so into the tawdry disco and now it’s just fingers strumming catgut.

MP: When you first heard that, were you totally aware that was what the songs were about? I came to those records having read about the content and ended up wanting more from the songs.

RS: Lucky me, I loved the Scritti songs first. “Perfect Way” was an actual radio hit. Better than R.E.M.’s “Perfect Circle,” maybe even better than Husker Du’s “Perfect Example.” Definitely better than Talking Heads’ “Perfect World” or Jermaine Jackson’s theme from “Perfect.” That Cupid & Psyche album is just like honey.

(Click here to buy a Great Plains retrospective from Amazon, and here to buy Scritti Politti’s Cupid & Psyche 85 from Insound.)

Previously on Fluxblog: Rob Sheffield has a lovely new book called Love Is A Mix Tape, and I’m talking to him about it, and other things. Here’s part one of the interview.

Matthew Perpetua: How did you get into writing about music?

Rob Sheffield: I always wrote about music, even when I was a little kid. I started sending out clips and freelancing. My first published piece was a Spin review of the second Tiffany album in 1988, in an issue with Nick Cave on the cover. Not as good as the first Tiffany record, but still pretty great.

MP: Was Renée also doing this, or did you encourage her to get into that game? I remember you both being in the Spin Alternative Record Guide, which was a big deal to me when I was a teenager.

RS: Renée caught the cooties from me, I’m afraid. Poor girl. She was a fiction writer, she was also a huge music fan, so it came naturally for her. She was a much better writer, funnier, she had that “casual easygoing” vibe. She did a lot more writing on the West Coast, something about her southern sensibility, I guess. She wrote for Option a lot, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

MP: Is this the first time you’ve written a full book?

RS: Yes. The Spin guide was the first book project I was involved in, and it was loads of fun. Renée did a particularly fine essay on Everything But The Girl, and MC Lyte too, and Marshall Crenshaw. It’s probably weird for somebody who didn’t grow up in the ’80s to realize how much we all loved Marshall Crenshaw. The dB’s are like that too. Everybody had their minds blown by the dBs, and today nobody under 35 has even heard of them. “Wine in plastic cups, listening to the wind, I would tell you everything, where do I begin…”

MP: See, that’s how I think a lot of bands from this era are going to be. “Really, you all loved the Decemberists?” Not that the Decemberists totally suck, but it’s hard to make a strong argument for them being this great band.

RS: Last fall I walked into a friend’s room and said, Why are you playing Emerson Lake and Palmer? It was the Decemberists.

MP: Oh wow, it must have been the new one, right? “The Island.”

RS: Yes indeedy.

MP: I always feel like the people I hate are the ones I’m doomed to live with forever. I’ll be hearing all about Sufjan in the afterlife.

RS: It’s surprising how temporary some of the people you hate are, like Wilson Phillips. I assumed those girls would be annoying me the rest of my life, but they were gone in two years. And I missed them! If I knew how temporary they were gonna be, I would have enjoyed them more. You know, this might sound weird, but the Talking Heads were in that Wilson Phillips category too.

MP: How so?

RS: In the mid ’80s, when the Heads were running out of ideas, we all figured they’d hang around and keep annoying us forever. If I knew how temporary they would be, I would have enjoyed them more, but they were so inescapable.

MP: I remember being sorta surprised when I first found out that the Talking Heads were this critically respected band. I always thought they were this corny 80s pop group, at least until I was 14 or 15. I think I found out in that Spin book. I just knew that I liked “Once In A Lifetime,” “Psycho Killer,” and “And She Was.”

RS: Well, on behalf of the Spin book, let me apologize for your having been recommended to purchase Naked. Or Little Creatures.

MP: I never did, no worries.

RS: But Fear of Music and Remain in Light? BEYOND GREAT.

MP: Definitely those two. I like the live record a lot. I bought a tape of that when I was 14 and that was good enough for me until I was 20.

RS: The live record is phenomenal. And it is SUCH a tape. Everybody had that on tape. It SOUNDS like a tape. Everybody had a tape with Remain in Light on one side and Fear of Music on the other. Everybody in 1985 had a tape with Little Creatures on one side and Fables of the Reconstruction on the other. In 1983 it was War and Murmur. You always like one side better. Summer ’83, everybody had a tape with Speaking in Tongues/Synchronicity. In 1986, everybody had a tape that was split Lifes Rich Pageant and True Stories, but everybody taped over it with Raising Hell and Licensed to Ill. In 1988, it was Nation of Millions and Lovesexy. I taped a Sonny Rollins record over Lovesexy, it just didn’t fit. You’re Living All Over Me and Sister, that was another universal one. I miss that–like, what would be the right album to put on the other side of Boys and Girls in America?

MP: There’s a few songs that you mentioned in the book that you sent over — how did you first get a hold of that Grenadine song, “In A World Without Heroes”?

RS: It was the “slow one at the end of Side 1” A million times better than the rest of the album.

MP: Those are the best songs for mix tapes! You’ve got to give those orphans a good home.

RS: They came up with this brilliant, breathtaking, mind-crumplingly great song and they had NO IDEA, they didn’t even give it a real title. They had no idea. Grenadine wasn’t even their real band. We went to see Mark Robinson play and yelled for it and he had no idea what we were talking about. So you DO have to give those orphans a home. I am Angelina Jolie, this song is Maddox. Mix tapes, like blogs, are perfect for rounding up strays. As Uncle Jesse would say “shepherd to lost sheep.” I put “In a World Without Heroes” on a million tapes for people, and never got a single person to like it, or even pretend.

MP: How did you find Dump’s “International Airport.” You say that it’s your favorite song. It was a lot…longer…than I had expected.

RS: I first heard “International Airport” driving in the hills, late at night, summer 95. Most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. I wanted it to NEVER END, and it didn’t! It sounds like somebody compressed Pet Sounds and Wild Honey into one song. Everybody tries shit like that but nobody, NOBODY gets it right — the way it builds from tender little jangle strums and then gets monstrously loud and noisy without ever losing that tenderness.

MP: Where do you normally sequence it when you put it on tapes for people? It sounds like one of those songs that only work at the beginning, or the end.

RS: First song on Side 2, definitely. Easy to skip!

MP: That makes sense. First song on side 1 should be really accessible. Something that says “hey, welcome to the show!”

RS: “International Airport” answers the question, what would Pet Sounds sound like as a guitar solo. Not Pet Sounds with a guitar solo, but what if the guitar solo WAS Pet Sounds? Kind of like “Marquee Moon.” I’m always obsessed with that song because it answers the question what would “Visions of Johanna” sound like as a guitar solo? Not a guitar solo in the middle of “Visions of Johanna,” but what if a guitar solo had all the emotional chill and sinisterness and twistiness of “Visions of Johanna”? “International Airport” is like that for me — what if a guitar solo had all the emotional range of Pet Sounds?

MP: I’ve put “Marquee Moon” on so many mixes. It’s such a staple. I remember this one that I made that I liked a lot, I made a bunch of variations on it, and it was called “The Darkness Doubled.”

RS: “Marquee Moon” is maybe the only song where you can fill a whole tape with different versions! I have never heard a version I didn’t love. The Portland ’78 version, 18 minutes long, just builds and builds…

(to be concluded…)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Lemon Party, Calvin Johnson, and Lee Hazlewood.

Rob Sheffield’s witty, thoughtful, and heartbreaking new book Love Is A Mix Tape is technically a memoir, but more accurately, it is a passionate testimonial about the way art is meaningless without life, and life is meaningless without art. Rob tells his story in the context of a series of mix tapes accumulated since his childhood, and in examining the selections and motivations behind each cassette, he digs deep into the music, the culture of his youth, and his own history. At first, he’s a lonely, awkward young man, but he eventually meets a sassy Appalachian punk-rock girl named Renée Crist, and his previously monastic existence is suddenly filled with joy, excitement, and love. They get married, build a life together, and on one horrible day in 1997, she dies suddenly from a pulmonary embolism. Music brought them together, and later, it carried him through his loss.

In this three part interview, Rob and I mainly talk about mix tapes and writing, but along the way we go off on a number of tangents about bands, songs, blogs, zines, and the ’90s. Rob happens to be a fan of this site, and sometimes he’s the one asking me questions, and so it might be better to read this as being more of a conversation than a traditional interview.

Matthew Perpetua: How and when did you decide to tell this very personal story? I mean, music and pop culture critics are seldom required to reveal all that much about themselves in their writing, so was this a deliberate move to put more of yourself into your work?

Rob Sheffield: I started writing it when I moved into a new apartment four years ago. It had this old-fashioned china cabinet built into the wall, and naturally I thought, at last, a place to store all my tapes. Before that, I just had rattly metal Elfa shelves that weren’t any fun at all. Unpacking all my tapes, stacking them together, playing them back to back, it just made me want to write about them. There was no chance it wouldn’t get into personal memories, but I didn’t really worry about that. As Oscar Wilde said, “Criticism is the only civilized form of autobiography.”

MP: How often were you listening to these tapes before this point?

RS: In my previous apartments, I didn’t have so much shelf space, so the tapes were all over the floor and at any given moment I was blasting a tape I just stepped on, which was usually one I just made. In terms of organization, it was pretty deplorable.

MP: So you really kept the faith with tapes, you never really phased them out like most everyone else. Is there any particular reason why?

RS: There’s no sound-bearing medium I DON’T like… but cassettes are my favorite. They have the hum. I love my iPod but it doesn’t hum. Where do you stand on cassettes?

MP: I like tapes, but at a certain point I just gave up on them because I got a discman. I was still making tapes for other people up through 2000, but once I had regular access to a cd burner and a computer, it was all over. CD mixes are so unsatisfying though, so I really don’t make mixes for people anymore, only once in a while.

RS: I do love making CD mixes. (You get to make a 5 x 5 cover, which is nice…) Making tapes is so much more work, but you get a real artifact that way. You make a tape for somebody, you prove you spent 90 minutes thinking about them. Almost any tape I’ve played a lot, I can remember making it. Sometimes, you make a mix tape and it’s stressful or dull to make, and you have to just tape over it or it’ll ruin all the songs on it. I’ll always remember September 4, 1999, because I made a really excellent walking tape that day. (Moby Grape’s “Fall On You,” The Monkees’ “What Am I Doing Hanging Round,” Cornershop’s “Looking For A Way In,” Tom Verlaine’s “Breakin’ In My Heart,” Can’s “Father Cannot Yell,” Buffalo Springfield’s “Out Of My Mind”…)

MP: One of the things I immediately noticed in your book was that your approach to making tapes was a lot more sentimental or whimsical than my own. With mixes for myself or others, I always had strict rules about having an artist only appear once per tape, and some artists that I loved dearly, like R.E.M. and Pavement, were seldom featured on mixes because they were better suited to single artist ‘greatest hits’ compilations. When I made tapes for other people, it was less about communication and more about trying to convert them to a band, or get them to like a set of songs. I was always really obsessed with having really tight flows, and having perfect beginning and ending songs on each side. I still hear new songs and think “oh, that’s a great song #2” or “that would make a great final song on side A.” I’d make variations on the same tape for different people until I settled on the perfect sequence, and then I’d retire them completely. I’m probably making myself sound like a profoundly uptight guy.

RS: Beginning and ending songs for each side are SO important. I rarely made a tape without a Pavement song; in fact, I had to instigate a one-Pavement-song-per-tape rule. Nowadays, do you make mixes at all? For yourself or others? or is Fluxblog filling that role for you?

MP: The last cd mix I made deliberately aped the style of a tape — it was two discs with distinct but complimentary moods, and I had this gatefold double disc cardboard cd package that I redecorated with art from bad comic books. But yeah, doing the blog every day has replaced the impulse to share music on tapes and cds — it’s more effective, reaches lots of people, it has the written component. Fluxblog is basically all the songs I’d be putting on tapes if this was 1998 instead of 2007.

RS: It’s probably easier to hook people up with songs one track at a time, the way you do on Fluxblog.

MP: Was it hard at all to get into the extremely personal things that you discuss in the book? In my own experience, I have to talk myself into going into any sort of detail, I’m very paranoid and nervous about that sort of thing.

RS: For me it’s usually hard to listen to (or write about) music without getting personally involved. Like I was writing last week–I love the way you write about these songs that have meant something to you, and you write about the song in a way that expresses where you’re coming from, even if you’re not getting into personal narrative details. I never noticed that Malkmus song “Malediction” until you wrote about it.

MP: I’ve been trying to do more of that as I go along, but there’s still this feeling that my life is so boring and uneventful that it would just bore the hell out of the readers if I indulged in that too often. There was one part in your book that I identified with very strongly — it’s when you’re writing about your life in the time just before you first met Renée, and you’re stuck in these monastic habits and lamenting that all of the romance and excitement in your life is vicarious. But at that point, you’re a few years younger than I am now. Do you feel like you ever really got over that? It seems l

ike you kind of went off on another course once you met Renée.

RS: I definitely did go off on another course. It’s funny, when I was 24, I felt so old and used up. I thought life had passed me by and I was going to have to be ok with that. I don’t ever think I’ll feel older than I did when I was 24. I was lucky that I had music, and that music led me to people, specifically to Renée. I really learned to write by listening to her talk. Do you know the Kinks song “Waterloo Sunset”?

MP: Yup.

RS: When I was in my teens, I totally identified with the old guy who narrates the song. And then when I was in my late 20s, I realized I’d turned into Terry-and-Julie, and I missed being the old guy, on some level. But then in my mid-30s, I felt like I’d turned back into the old guy, and I was like, shit, well, that’s fine, I had my Terry-and-Julie window of time, and it was grand, and I’m glad I appreciated it while I had it, and now I’ll just stare out the window and look at the train station, etc. And now I’m in Terry-and-Julie mode again. It’s weird, there’s no way to predict these things.

My natural inclination is definitely to be monastic. I have to really force myself to get out of the door sometimes. I am hardwired to stay in and listen to records and wonder whether the Yardbirds were better than I thought they were but why they didn’t make Jeff Beck play bass more often and why his post-Yardbirds records were so bad and why they influenced so much post-punk and then I look at the clock and a couple of years have gone by. I really have to push myself out of the house and when I do I am almost always glad. My natural inclination is to be a hermit but I’m just not satisfied that way. When I was 19 and my favorite song in the history of the world was “Waterloo Sunset,” I felt really superior to the Terry-and-Julies… but I had a lot more to learn from them than they had to learn from me. At least that’s my opinion now.

MP: There was a really good line about the Yardbirds in the book — something to the effect of Jeff Beck being the kind of guy who controlled every situation and produced very little great work as a result. I think there’s some kind of universal truth in there somewhere.

RS: It’s funny, Jeff Beck was somebody I just noticed a few years ago, a guitarist friend of mine convinced me Beck was a genius, but he never got to the point where he could play with other people. The way he plays bass on “Over Under Sideways Down” — phenomenal. But here I am getting off on a tangent. Bill James has a funny essay about why left fielders are bigger jerks than third basemen–the skills of the position reflect different personality types. I wonder if that’s why bassists tend to be the likable ones, as opposed to lead guitar whizzes?

MP: Unless you’re in Fall Out Boy. Or the Police.

RS: This ain’t Synchronicity, it’s a goddamn arms race. Ron Wood would be the counter example to Beck–he can barely play guitar, but he’s a famously friendly and nice guy, and as a result, he’s gotten to play on (and add to?) a lot of phenomenal music. Keith Richards had a funny line about how Ry Cooder was a much better guitarist than Ron Wood, but nobody would want to be in a band with Ry Cooder. Having Ron Wood around, even if he was no great shakes instrumentally, made everybody around him more relaxed and increased the quality of the music, the will to work, etc.

MP: He’s the Bob Nastanovich of the Stones.

RS: YES!

MP: Who wouldn’t want to be in a band with Bob Nastanovich?

RS: Renee called Bob Nastanovich the “lurker.”

MP: It’s no joke, sometimes you really need there to be this friendly guy who cools everyone out. Sometimes they are a good musician in their own right — Ringo, for example.

RS: I’m a hardcore Ringo fan. That break on “Drive My Car”!

MP: Yeah! I distrust people who put down Ringo. How many other drummers have such a distinct, instantly recognizable sound like that?

RS: It was the sweater tucked in the bass drum! (Supposedly.)

MP: Well, that, and he had these great, easygoing fills. He made everything sound casual and easy.

RS: He was also the only one who’d ever SEEN the band. As Christgau used to say, “Ringo is our man in the Beatles.” Remember the first Malkmus solo tour, when Nastanovich was at the merch table and people were lining up to shake his hand and take photos? He made the whole room hum. I can’t believe that isn’t an essentially musical skill.

(to be continued…)

(Click here to buy the Kinks album, and here to buy the Yardbirds record, both from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: I have a brief review of the new album by Arcade Fire up on the Artistdirect site. I also wrote a review of the new Dean & Britta, but I can’t seem to find it.

Joss Stone “Put Your Hands On Me” – Joss Stone never inspired any enthusiasm from me before — her voice is strong but generic, and she seemed to be going out of her way to win cred points with the dullest sort of mainstream pop fans. Her music was inoffensive and generally dull, the sort of thing that you can hear and tune out, or maybe enjoy just enough to ask “hey, who is this?,” get the answer, and then totally forget about it the next day. This song, on the other hand, is quite fun. It’s extremely corny and not especially original, but Stone is utterly unashamed, and embraces its cheesiness wholeheartedly. Her collaborator Raphael Saadiq is clearly mimicking Rich Harrison’s “1 Thing” and DJ Premier’s “Ain’t No Other Man,” and though the track and the vocal performance do not reach the incredible heights of either song, it’s a worthy tune, and I’m glad to hear another song in the style much in the same way that I’m likely to enjoy any reasonably successful copy of the Pixies’ formula. Aside from the obvious affectations, she reminds me a lot of early ’90s Mariah Carey on this recording. She sounds completely overwhelmed by infatuation, and totally amped to be singing. Her pure pleasure in the act of performing is obvious and it elevates a song that would otherwise just be pretty good to something kinda thrilling and special. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

The Clientele “Joseph Cornell” – You can listen to this song during the day, and because it is an exceptional composition it will sound just fine, but it will only really make sense at night. (This is also the case for the vast majority of the Clash’s discography, most of which sounds as though it was recorded in a world illuminated only by the moon, street lamps, neon signage, and fluorescent light leaking out the windows of buildings.) The lyrics are fully aware that the music is about the night, and more than that, a feeling of emotional absence accompanying physical presence as two people make their way home in the wee hours. The words set the song in London, but the mention of Delancey Street and quiet late night train rides keeps my mind in Manhattan, in part because I can’t help being a bit provincial, but more in that the Lower East Side is a place that I associate with this type of scene, and this particular sort of loneliness. (Click here to buy it from Merge.)

Grachan Moncur III “When” – The song walks in aimless circles, somehow lost in a place it knows too well. It doesn’t matter what the other instruments do — if they pull off in another direction, if they whine and moan and protest, if they cool out and nod gently — they can’t escape the gravity of that unchanging piano motif. It’s an anchor, and even if its chords are calming, by the end of the piece, it becomes clear that it has kept the song contained within a stifling perimeter. It grinds down on hope, and reinforces pessimism. It’s a beautiful performance full of inspired improvisations, but that just makes the piece more terrifying and seductive. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Tiger Tunes “The Walk” – This song would’ve been on the next Tiger Tunes album if…well, if they didn’t just stop being a band sometime over a year ago. The key personnel have moved on to a new band called Beta Satan, but I’ll come back to them another time. Today, I just want to lament the passing of what was most likely the best Danish band of this decade. Or maybe ever. There’s really not a lot of Danish bands that are well known to Americans, so I can’t be certain. Let’s just call this a hunch and chalk it up to well-meaning hyperbole, okay?

Tiger Tunes maintained a balancing act that unfortunately very few bands ever manage. They played hyperactive keyboard-driven new wave without sounding wimpy or self-consciously retro, and basically sounded as though they learned everything they new about playing punk rock music from video games. Their lyrics were witty but full of angst, and even when they sounded like they were about to totally wig out, they didn’t seem as though they were taking themselves very seriously. They respected their emotions and experiences, but clearly regarded them as being inherently absurd. They sang about getting bullied by a “fuckmachine” named Kirsten, attempting to smooth out relationship problems with pancakes, and in this case, a party so awful that it, as they put it, undermined their very existence. It’s easy to hear “The Walk” as a vague explanation for why they called it a day, but who knows. I just wish they at least finished the record, or kept going. It’s too bad, really. (Click here for the official Tiger Tunes website.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with music from Mutual Appreciation, Shortbus, and Stranger Than Fiction.

Also: Mike Barthel on hardcore punk, hardcore porn, Sarah Silverman, conservatism, and transgression.

And: Tom Ewing thinks that recent changes in the Marvel and DC Universes may be tied in with their ambitious MMORPG projects.

Mark Ronson featuring Santo Gold “Pretty Green” – The original version of “Pretty Green” by the Jam is hardly a sleepy tune, but in comparison to this super-kinetic cover by producer Mark Ronson, it seems stiff and comatose. Is there even a proper genre name for this thing, other than “classy dance-pop stuff with horns that Mark Ronson makes” or um, “modern Ze“? Santo Gold has a prissy, bratty voice similar to that of Cristina, though her delivery is more playful than caustic and ironic. Not to say that there isn’t some irony in this record; it’s just that it’s not the kind that is meant to make you feel bad. (Click here for Mark Ronson’s MySpace page.)

Bonde Do Role “Gasolina (Radioclit remix)” – Things we lose by not listening to the original mix of “Gasolina”: a great blurting horn hook, a fantastic drum break that kicks in just before the first minute is up. Things we gain by listening to this remix by Radioclit instead: a jumpy electro beat, a slightly devious synth lead, and vocals that pop out a bit better, especially when she chants the name “Afrika Bambaataa.” I mean, this really shouldn’t be an either/or situation, but the Radioclit mix wins today. (Click here to buy it from Turntable Lab.)

Elsewhere: R.I.P. Charles Gocher from the Sun City Girls.

Also: Sean Michaels didn’t die.

And: Craig Ferguson explains why he is not going to mock Britney Spears.