Archive for 2007

The Brunettes “Her Hairagami Set” – The Brunettes were once a fairly standard indie pop band, but this new single finds them experimenting with a more baroque version of their usual twee sensibility. The lyrics are rather heavy on irony, but the tune sounds deadly serious and the vocals are entirely straight-faced, even when the guy starts crooning on the chorus. As befitting a song about hairagami, the piece is highly stylized, casual yet elaborate, and slightly tacky. (Click here to buy it from Lil Chief Records, but keep in mind a domestic version is being released by Sub Pop in August.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Jandek, Life Without Buildings, and Black Lips.

Also: My review of Eagle Vs. Shark is up on the The Movie Binge. Please please please please please DON’T see that movie. You deserve better in life, no matter who you are.

The Dirty Projectors “No More” – I sometimes wonder if you read these posts before hearing the songs and get really disappointed if they aren’t as good as I make them out to be, especially when the writing gets a bit more impressionistic. I’ve bought enough disappointing books and records in my time based on persuasive criticism to know that many times someone’s description of their experience with art is more evocative and interesting than the work itself.

This is also the case for the Dirty Projector’s forthcoming album, which is a virtuoso art-pop record that essentially sounds like nothing else I’ve ever heard, but is an attempt on their part to interpret the feeling of Black Flag’s 1981 album Damaged, a record that I respect but do not particularly enjoy. If you’ve never heard that Black Flag record, I can assure you — their song “No More” doesn’t sound much like this one. Or really, anything like it at all. The Dirty Projectors run with the basic theme, but follow their own tangents to create a peculiar blend of rhythm and harmony.

Perhaps this should be something more artists should try. Why mimic your influences when you can express your impression of their art in ways that don’t necessarily have much to do with their methods and process? Surely getting to the core of why the work affected you is more exciting than just crafting a miniature replica of something that feels very profound. (Click here for Dead Oceans’ Dirty Projectors page.)

Ween “Friends” – Why is that whenever dudes are blessed with impressive technical skill and versatility, they usually end up throwing themselves into pastiche or parody? When you’re forced to view all of music as a set of formulas and modular chord changes, does it all just seem easy and silly? “Friends” is Ween’s version of gay disco (specifically Erasure and the Pet Shop Boys), and though it’s amusing the first time through, by the fifth or sixth listen it becomes clear that it’s not only a fantastic song, but that these guys could probably make an entire album of this stuff without really trying too hard. There’s a fondness for the genre that comes through in the song, but also a bit of condescension in its inane lyrics (“a friend’s a friend who knows what being a friend is”) and its relentless cheeriness. (Click here to buy it from Chocodog.)

Elsewhere: I teamed up with Meg Deans and Erik Bryan to review Nancy Drew over at The Movie Binge. I forgot to get into the randomness of that movie’s soundtrack, but Erik commented on it. The weirdest bit is when Spoon’s “The Delicate Place” plays nearly in full for no apparent reason around the halfway point.

The White Stripes “You Don’t Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You’re Told)” – Jack White has a lot of big ideas, but I’m starting to get the sense that he’s mainly just concerned with writing songs that are ideally suited for bar jukeboxes. I suppose that lead singles from White Stripes albums must always be heavy thudding riff machines in order to curry favor with what remains of rock radio in the United States, but this number is the obvious smash, the one that will probably do okay if it gets pushed within a few months, but would’ve been HUGE if it came out thirty years ago. The song hits an ideal balance — it’s big and crashing, but tightly composed and full of instantly ingratiating hooks. It feels a bit old and lived-in, but it’s just different enough from previous Stripes songs to seem relatively fresh. The lyrics aren’t all that special, but they are simultaneously gallant and dickish, which is the perfect distillation of White’s public persona. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Chungking “Love Is Here To Stay” – I’m enjoying this song now as much as I can because it seems inevitable that it will be used in some horrible advertisement within the next year. How could it not when it’s got this glossy, glammy hypersexuality and the sort of insistent catchiness that borders on jingle-dom. The most obvious comparison is Goldfrapp, but Chungking are far more eager to be flamboyant than austere and elegant. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Elsewhere: Anthony Miccio has some ideas for VH1 reality series.

A Sunny Day In Glasgow @ The Carriage House 6/15/2007
Laughter (Victims) / Our Change Into Rain Is No Change At All (Talkin’ ‘Bout Us) / The Best Summer Ever / Lists, Plans / A Mundane Phone Call To Jack Parsons / Things Only I Can See / C’mon

The Carriage House isn’t a “real” venue. It’s an annex to an industrial building that has been transformed into a makeshift loft apartment despite not being zoned for residential usage. The living room is also a practice space, and the bands on the bill played on the opposite side of the room from a slightly David Fincher-esque kitchen area. If it were not for a large courtyard area just outside, hosting a show like this may have been a bit unworkable, but as it was, people could just hang out outside between sets. The show was $5, you could get a beer for $2, and the audience was uniformly cool and friendly and I wish I’d had the time or opportunity to talk to everyone there. I wish more shows were like this.

Weird, unexpected thing: The first band, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, are an indie pop trio that includes two of my friends, but I didn’t know that either of them were in a band, or that they knew one another. The third band, My Teenage Stride were fun and really got people going, but I’ll come back to them some other time.

A Sunny Day In Glasgow “Lists, Plans” – A Sunny Day In Glasgow are a different band every time that I see them. This time they were missing one of the singing sisters, and had an entirely different rhythm section. They were a little bit sloppy, but the set had a somewhat off-kilter sound to it that echoed the effect of their studio recordings while sounding slightly different. The songs, most especially “Lists, Plans” and “C’mon,” seemed more like dream versions in which the song is there, but the memory of it is incomplete and the elements are exaggerated, conflated, or confused. I remember the bass being very prominent, and Lauren Daniels hitting keyboard samples of her sister’s voice that sounded more like otherworldly noises than harmonies, and that Ben Daniels was playing guitar, but it only occasionally sounded like one. (Click here to buy it from Notenuf.)

Arthur & Yu “There Are Too Many Birds” – I’ll admit that I liked this song right away in part because it’s central guitar parts echo two songs that I love very much — Electrelane’s “Enter Laughing” and …Trail of Dead’s “Source Tags and Codes” — but even if it weren’t for the familiar feeling, it’s hard to imagine this feeling anything other than relaxed and cozy. The song has a laid back pastoral quality, but the band don’t push that angle too hard. It sounds kinda like a mellow Yo La Tengo tune, but without the noise and neuroses. (Click here to buy it from Hardly Art.)

Elsewhere: Drink deep of the Lava juice, my friend. You now have within you the fiery blood and aged spirit of Italian volcanoes, and they will fortify you for the task at hand.

Charlotte Hatherley “Love’s Young Dream” – There’s another version of this song on the b-side of “I Want You To Know,” and it’s called “Suspiria.” It has the same verses and melody, but the arrangement is far more mellow, and the chorus is completely different, enough to justify the alternative title. The subject matter is identical in each song — Charlotte is interrogating the female half of an estranged couple (her mom?), trying to suss out details of the time when they were young and in love since she only has a familiarity with the bitter aftermath — but whereas the music of “Suspiria” captures the wistfulness of the outsider looking in, “Love’s Young Dream” evokes the feeling of being trapped between two people who refuse to see eye to eye. The verses are grey and turbulent, and the chorus splits into a strange, sideways harmony that nearly trips over a low, mumbling male vocal on its way to a gorgeous, melancholy climax. There’s a palpable sense of disappointment and frustration in “Love’s Young Dream,” and a sense that the singer is very afraid that she will eventually find herself in the same scenario. (Click here to buy it from Charlotte Hatherley’s official site.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Nick Drake, Elliott Smith, and the Exploding Hearts.

Sonic Youth “Eric’s Trip (Demo Version)” – It’s actually hard to imagine that this acoustic demo of “Eric’s Trip” predates the version that we’ve known for years now. I’d always assumed that the noise came first, and the song came second, but no — it started as a quasi-folk ballad, and the crazed urgency came later on. This take sounds loose and unfinished, but it’s quite appealing, especially if you’re like me and you’ve heard the completed studio version enough times so that you’ve unintentionally memorized every twist and turn of the lyrics. The words are a bit off, but the miniature arrangement and intimate performance underlines the clueless narcissism that defines its narrator. The finished song emphasizes a sense of impending doom or hints at an imminent psychotic break, but this version just seems to drift through its epiphanies in a starry-eyed haze. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

The Honeymoon Killers “Decollage (Prins Thomas Multitrack Edit)” – I’ve been nervous, I’ve been anxious, I’ve been paranoid, and I’ve been listening to this on repeat, which is extremely counter-intuitive because it just exacerbates those feelings. Then again, it’s so stylized and slick that it somehow twists the dread into a strange sort of comfort. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Citizen Helene “‘Til Tomorrow” – It’s only one guitar and one voice overdubbed into a gorgeous harmony, but it’s enough to build this perfect image in my mind. It’s a small apartment, a walk up in some old building with a gray stone facade. There are books in piles, too many to fit on the shelves. There’s empty tea cups on a coffee table, and a newspaper from three days ago folded out of shape. The decor is a bit scattered, but there’s a lot of browns and oranges — curtains, rug, pillows. The window is open, and rain drizzles in fits and starts. It’s a bit too humid, but there’s no fan, no air conditioner. There’s a couch and chairs, but you’re sitting on the floor by the window, and when a bit of breeze drifts in on the 1:13 mark, it might just be the best thing you feel all day. (Click here for the Citizen Helene MySpace page.)

Lavender Diamond “Like An Arrow” – “Ah, like an arrow, closer,” over and over and over. It doesn’t sound anything like an arrow — it’s more like a spiral, or concentric circles. Becky Stark’s mantra sounds less like actual words as the song progresses. By the middle, it’s just pure melody offset by the thumping beat, the faint echo of a male singer, and snippets of piano and guitar that suddenly enter the foreground of the composition before seeming to vanish entirely. (Click here to buy it from Matador.)

The Long Blondes @ Bowery Ballroom 6/9/2007
Five Ways To End It / Lust In The Movies / Guilt / Weekend Without Make-Up / Only Lovers Left Alive / Heaven Help The New Girl / A Knife For The Girls / You Could Have Both / Giddy Stratospheres / Once And Never Again // Swallow Tattoo / Separated By Motorways

The Long Blondes “Giddy Stratospheres” – The Long Blondes’ Kate Jackson sounds like a cross between Jarvis Cocker and Justine Frischmann on record, but in live performance, she’s a lot more like Gwen Stefani from back when she was in No Doubt. The snarky, erudite persona is still there, but it gets a bit overwhelmed by her girly glamor and star power. Let’s put it this way: I’m not sure whether it’s a good or bad thing that the most memorable thing about the gig was that Jackson looked a like a dead ringer for a ’50s pin-up in her lovely red dress. There wasn’t anything obviously wrong with the Long Blondes’ show — they played all of the songs I wanted to hear, they had some good energy, the audience was fairly into it — but aside from being very excited to hear “You Could Have Both” and “Giddy Stratospheres,” they didn’t leave much of an impression on me. Maybe I was in the wrong mood, maybe I was a bit distracted. I don’t know. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Amerie “Gotta Work” – About ten years ago someone asked me what I’d want to be my intro music if I were to ever have a talk show, and I answered that it would have to be “Hold On, I’m Comin’,” specifically the Reuben Wilson version. It’s still my top choice. I mean, how can you not get psyched up when hearing that hook? All at once, it sounds classy, rakish, confident, sexy, and just a bit anxious. Amerie’s “Gotta Work” is built upon a tweaked sample of that hook, and she uses that odd mix of emotions to her advantage by having it prop up an otherwise banal set of inspirational lyrics. The sentiment might be trite in another context, but between the sample, the busy beat, and her insistent vocal performance, the track feels urgent and down to earth. It helps that the song puts an emphasis on effort and commitment rather than bratty entitlement. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Elsewhere: Dan Beirne and I did a Siskel & Ebert-style review of Crazy Love for the Movie Binge.

Marianne Rosenberg “Wieder Zusammen” – This is a symphonic Philly-style disco song, but created by Germans in the mid-70s. It’s an immaculate and sparkling production featuring delicate, perfectly arranged layers of strings, piano, horns, and miscellaneous twinkling chimes. It sounds luxurious, expensive, and only slightly kitschy. It’s a gorgeous piece of music, but the vocals are the key element. I can’t understand a word that she’s singing, but Marianne Rosenberg’s voice conveys an intense joy and unapologetic pleasure that elevates the song to the realm of the sublime. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Candie Payne “By Tomorrow” – The beat of this song is so steady and focused that every other element in the arrangement seems like a wandering thought in an otherwise one-track mind. Candie Payne’s voice is sweet and gentle, but she sounds distracted and confused, as though she’s suddenly being forced to think about a dozen things that she’s totally unprepared to deal with because she’s completely consumed by a single aspect of her life. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from YACHT, Pistol Pete, and MESH.

Also: Mike Barthel on Rihanna and Amerie.

The Pipettes @ Highline Ballroom 6/5/2007
Don’t Forget Me / Because It’s Not Love (But It’s A Feeling) / Why Did You Stay? / Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me / Your Love For Me / It Hurts To See You Dance So Well / Tell Me What You Want / Baby Don’t Leave Me / Really That Bad / The Burning Ambition Of Early Diuretics / True Love Waits Patiently For A Miracle / I Love You / Guess Who Ran Off With The Milkman? / By My Side / Judy / One Night Stand / Dirty Mind / Pull Shapes // ABC / We Are The Pipettes

The Pipettes “One Night Stand” – My God, they are so pretty and charming! It seems ridiculous to have to say that about the Pipettes of all people, but it sorta needs to be underlined. In the live show, the songs are the songs — wonderfully catchy, impeccably crafted, almost always witty but also sometimes quite moving — but the entertainment value comes from the girls’ charisma and sense of humor. They played a rather large number of new songs which were fine enough on first listen but didn’t seem to match up to the effervescent perkiness of their best numbers, which were mostly played straight in a row at the end of the gig. “One Night Stand” and “Dirty Mind” were highlights in particular, but of course I’d say that — those are probably always going to be my favorite Pipettes songs. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Marit Bergman was also on the bill. She was backed up by a miniature chorus of female singers, one of whom was Nina Persson from the Cardigans. Marit writes extremely literal and straightforward lyrics, but has a funny habit of explaining her songs before playing them. This can lead to awkward situations when she gets a bit more poetic in her language and you’re standing there waiting for her to sing something like “I am a 20 year old girl who has been raped by three Swedish hockey players” after she has announced that the song is about a 20 year old girl who was raped by three Swedish hockey players. Her introduction to her final song was rather inspired, however. She explained that she wrote it for Kylie Minogue, and that when she came up with the lyrics, she thought about the first two words that came to mind when she thought of her music — “sex” and “gay” — and so she wrote a song about gay sex on Chelsea Piers. Of course!

Smoosh played between Marit and the Pipettes’ sets. The most wonderful moment of their show came when they brought out an even younger sister who played a bass guitar that was taller than her body about as well as Adam Clayton from U2. Smoosh’ music generally falls into the category of “amiable mediocrity,” but when you consider the fact that most people twice their age struggle to write and play as well as they can at their age, they totally deserve respect and support. If I were one of those Smoosh girls, I’d end every show by saying “We’re, like, twelve or something, and you just got SMOOSHED!”

Elsewhere: Erik Bryan on Bruce Springsteen, Teenage Fanclub, Lou Reed, and Jimi Hendrix.

Electric Six “Mr. Woman” – Dick Valentine keeps singing “you can’t be sure if you are going up or down,” but he knows the answer. It’s right there in the music — you are going down, down, down even if you think you’re coming up in the world. Most Electric Six songs are bleak, but “Mr. Woman” is full-on post-Apocalyptic scorched earth madness. Everything and everyone in the song is poisoned by cynicism and idiocy, culture has devolved into voyeurism and gossip, and the entire planet is nothing but a nuked junkyard where only the cockroaches and robots can survive. It’s extremely dark, but it’s a fun ride as the song plunges straight into the ground. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

MESH “Let The Dance Begin” – This would be a good, fun electro funk tune with or without the vocals, but damn — this guy sounds like the Monopoly Man freaking out at a hipster dance club! Seriously, it sounds like he’s just pounded eight cans of Sparks, has stripped down to just his slacks and top hat, and is grinding on the dance floor with some 19 year old girl who looks exactly like an American Apparel ad. It’s pretty wild. (Click here for the MESH MySpace page.)

Rihanna “Lemme Get That” – Whereas her rival Beyonce is capable of expressing the emotional toll of living in an intensely competitive, hyper-materialistic subculture with her sympathetic, soulful delivery, Rihanna‘s cold, aloof voice lend her songs an opportunistic, ruthless tone that comes closer to the aesthetic of last year’s Clipse album than your average R&B starlet. There’s a relentless self-serving nihilism that carries through all of Good Girl Gone Bad, including her weak attempts at sappy balladry. The Timbaland-produced track “Lemme Get That” is her best song by far, mainly because it plays up the compelling soullessness of her voice and casts her as a straight-up conniving villainess. Though the contrast of her frighteningly blank voice and the sentimental lyrics of “Umbrella” makes for some appealing cognitive dissonance, she sounds far more natural and expressive when she’s overtly callous, manipulative, and obsessed with acquiring money and status. (Edit: You should probably read the comments section for this post.) (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: The Face Knife’s Summer Movie Comparison Chart returns for 2007. It will update throughout the season.

Also: Potato wave; make me fries. (Via Lindsayism)

R. Kelly featuring T.I. and T-Pain “I’m A Flirt (Remix)” – If you listen to R. Kelly’s new album Double Up (or really, most any mainstream rap or R&B record to be released in the past few years), it’s easy to get the impression that the singer is physically unable to leave “the club,” as though there’s some sort of snow globe dome keeping him stuck in that environment. He sounds like he’s having a great time — and why shouldn’t he, it’s a social situation in which he is constantly rewarded and his primacy is rarely threatened — but his obsession with that milieu makes the music seem hermetic and distanced from any other sort of culture. It’s escapism for the average listener, but a willful break from reality for an artist who refuses to acknowledge any aspect of the world aside from his own privilege. On the surface, it’s all bravado and cheer, but the relentless focus on the club and its mores highlights his isolation, which in turn nudges the audience towards wondering what it is in life that he’s avoiding. There’s a lot of fear buried deep beneath the glamor of Double Up.

Like most other R. Kelly singles that announce the fact that they are remixes both in their title and the lyrics, “I’m A Flirt (Remix)” is a winner. Its light, easy-going melody and bouncy, cutesy track is instantly ingratiating, but also serves to dilute the lyrics’ machismo. Kelly is essentially announcing his sexual dominance over anything within a ten mile radius. Though he sounds coy and light-hearted, the song is actually addressed to other men as a threat, a friendly warning, or a smiling invitation to being publicly cuckolded by “The King of R&B.” (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: More new “Oeuvreblogs” are popping up: Blursongs (Blur), One Imaginary Blog (The Cure), and Ten Thousand Lies (Nine Inch Nails).

Parts and Labor “Brighter Days” – The beauty of Parts and Labor is simple — they write anthemic pop-punk tunes, but replace the standard textures and dynamics of the genre with warped keyboards, severe electronic effects, and wild, heavy, inventive drumming. Their first two albums were good, but their new record Mapmaker is most definitely the best, the one where they fully deliver on their promise/premise by pushing everything to an extreme. The melodies are catchier; the arrangements are more vibrant; the drums simulate an exaggerated sense of space and depth, resulting in a record that sounds like it’s coming out of your speakers in 3-D. Like a lot of other things I’ve been loving in this year, it makes me wonder why this sort of thing isn’t more normal. Is it really that hard to tweak winning formulas and put in the effort required to rule? I guess I already know the answer to that question. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Shapes & Sizes, Dandi Wind, and Dog Day.

Speaker Bite Me “Fistful Of Air” – This song feels just as weightless and intangible as its title implies. The beat creates a sensation of forward momentum that is countered by the stillness of the horns, which seem to float in mid-air like clouds of smoke. The song somehow finds a way to have it both ways — the feeling of endless motion, and the moment of perfect, motionless peace. It feels like running through cool air and having your mind go completely blank. (Click here to visit the official Speaker Bite Me site.)

Wir Sind Helden “Die Konkurrenz” – Wir Sind Helden sound like a band who probably have great, witty lyrics, but since I don’t understand German, I have no way of knowing for sure without resorting to running their words through Google Language Tools and getting an awkward translation that might be extremely confusing or misleading. Judith Holofernes’ inflections come across very deadpan and sassy, and there’s an exchange with a male vocalist that seems rather cute. All I know is that the title translates to “the contest,” and that the music gives me the impression that they would very much like to be its winners. (Click here to buy it from Amazon Germany.)

Von Südenfed “Fledermaus Can’t Get Enough” – I posted the first Mark E Smith/Mouse On Mars collaboration way back in October of 2004, and like a fair chunk of the music that I’ve written up over the past five years, it eventually sorta slipped out of my life. I dimly recall reading about their full-length as Von Südenfed a few months ago and being mildly excited about it in much the same way that I’m eager to hear most anything that Mark E Smith does at least once, but man, I was never prepared for the relentless excellence that was about to come my way.

When it comes down to it, Mark E Smith is just like a rapper — he may be capable of maintaining a baseline level of quality just by showing up in the recording studio, but the merit of any given recording depends greatly upon the talent of his collaborators. Smith’s two records this year are an extreme example of this: Whereas sounds as though he’s stumbled upon a bunch of amateurs on The Fall’s Reformation Post T.L.C., Mouse On Mars’ intense, nuanced tracks on Tromatic Reflexxions are top-drawer bangers custom-made for Smith’s unique vocal talents. The album’s opening cut “Fledermaus Can’t Get Enough” rides a beat that would not sound out of place on LCD Soundsystem’s most recent album, and amps itself up for a violent chorus that seems to repeatedly pistol-whip the listener with the full force of MES’ aggravated shouts. This may sound like hype, but I’m dead serious: Tromatic Reflexxions is aggressive, inspired, and easily the most consistently rewarding album featuring Smith since the late ’80s. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Erasure “Sucker For Love” – Like the rest of Erasure’s new record, “Sucker For Love” sounds as though Vince Clarke has not acquired any new musical equipment since 1991, but unlike most of the other selections, it actually sounds as exciting and overwhelmingly great as the duo did back during their creative peak in the late ’80s. (Okay, so maybe there’s a theme today.) At its core, the track is basically Erasure-by-numbers — bouncy beat, colorful synths, campy crooning — but they’ve blown it all out to an absurd, hyperactive extreme. The song is so incredibly jumpy and bombastic that it’s actually sort of like a self-drawn caricature of their signature sound. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: After a long hiatus, the second season of The Movie Binge began this week with my review of Lars von Trier’s The Boss Of It All and this group review of Pirates of the Caribbean 3. The All-New, All-Different Binge has the same mission as last year — we’re going to review every single movie that comes out between Memorial Day and Labor Day — but there’s a bunch of new writers in addition to a few original Bingers. This year’s new recruits include Dan Beirne, Erik Bryan, Lia Bulaong, Bryan Charles, Meghan Deans, Todd Serencha, and Kyria Abrahams. There will also be several really awesome guest writers joining in along the way. It should be a lot of fun, so please join us.

Guided By Voices “Buzzards and Dreadful Crows (Live in Austin 2004)” – Guided By Voices’ final appearance at Austin City Limits was just released on cd and dvd, and though the setlist is quite good and the sound quality is high, it’s a very disappointing live album. I realize that a lot of GBV’s charm comes from their ramshackle, who-cares-let’s-just-get-to-the-next-song nature, but what worked very well in person comes off rather badly when recontextualized for home listening. It would have been wiser to release a live record that compiled strong performances from multiple shows into an alternative version of a greatest hits album, but instead the Austin set alternates between quality performances and mediocre or downright awful readings of beloved classics.

The worst offender is “Cut-Out Witch,” a fan favorite that was normally a major highlight of any given show, but appears on the record as a sloppy mess that is made even worse by guest vocals by a clueless Pete Yorn. (Then again, what version of “Cut-Out Witch” could possibly top the Peel session version with the snippet of “Acorns and Orioles”? Surely that is the definitive version.) On the opposite extreme, there is a spirited take on “Buzzards and Dreadful Crows” that pumps up the song’s rock power considerably without actually changing much about it. Also, I kinda love that weird sound in Bob’s voice as he announces the title. Actually, the entire record is worth hearing just to hear him introduce the title of pretty much ever selection, usually along with a brief note relating to its place in the discography. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site with mp3s from Battles, Dan Deacon, and Black Moth Super Rainbow.

Noonday Underground “Come One Come All” – Daisy Martey normally sounds as though she is attempting to blow holes through your speakers with the strength of her voice, but she’s relatively smooth and sedate on this number, which floats along like a light cloud of psychedelic funk on a sunny summer afternoon. The arrangement is a shifting, fluid structure of sweet, soft hooks — swirls of groovy organ riffs, mild electronic distortion fashioned into melodic hooks, miscellaneous samples that float in and out of the mix like a gentle breeze. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

San Serac “That Obscure Object Of Desire” – I can describe this song in two words: Suave lunacy. The piano chords shimmer like the self-consciously “classy” hook in Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out,” but that nod towards elegance and sophistication is just a superficial ruse — at its core, “That Obscure Object Of Desire” is corrupt and unhinged. This might be what happens when you grow up wanting to be a debaser. (Click here to buy it from Frog Man Jake.)

Elsewhere: Baby, could you just get little pointy ears for me?

Sophie Ellis-Bextor “Love Is Here” – I’m not the type to dismiss lyrics for their banality, but “Love Is Here” pushes my limits just a little bit. The lovey-dovey “I was made for you” gushing comes on VERY strong, but I suppose it is rather well suited to the song’s bright Lite FM melody and brisk disco beat. I’ve got a major soft spot for this sort of groovy, upbeat balladry, and though I imagine that a great many of you will hate this song for its unapologetic corniness, I just can’t help myself. Interestingly, though song floats from hook to hook like a super-polished pop machine, it ends with a fairly counterintuitive move: The chorus runs through a few more times before the conclusion, and then everything drops out but the bass and drums, which shifts into an urgent dance-punk groove for a few seconds into the fade-out. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

New Young Pony Club “Hiding On The Staircase” – “Hiding On The Staircase” fronts like a manifesto, but it feels more like a glossy fashion pictorial. The words never quite gel into a position, though the singer keeps telling us that “it’s the sound” of something or other like they are just learning how to push the buttons of their critics. It’s one of my favorite tricks: Make it sound smart and feel totally fantastic, and throw in just enough clever lines to make the audience piece together an idea much better than whatever the writer probably had in mind. (Click here for the New Young Pony Club MySpace page.)

Prinzhorn Dance School “Up! Up! Up!” – Since the artists associated with DFA have all been pushing toward an increasingly slick and sophisticated sound, it’s something of a surprise that the newest act on the label breaks the DFA aesthetic down into something so primitive and essential. “Up! Up! Up!” sounds like the burned-down remains of a punk song, and in that context, the vocals seem more like the calls of rescue workers stumbling through the wreckage. The music is extremely spare and bleak, but there’s just enough dark wit and campy horror film drama in the mix to keep it from getting too bitter and dreary. (Click here for the Prinzhorn Dance School site.)

Golden Bug “St. Tropez” – Okay. This song is called “St. Tropez” and it’s the middle of May — logically, it should follow that there will be no tan lines tonight. (Sorry. I couldn’t resist. I have no idea how many people will get that reference. It can’t be very many.) Anyway, this song has got nothing to do with obscure indie rock b-sides, although now that I think of it, its chopped up guitar riff has a similar sort of staggered swagger, and so I begin to wonder if that’s a coincidence, or something that suits “St. Tropez,” which is a place I’ve never been and will likely never see in person. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)