Everywhere I Look, It’s A Darkness

McLusky “Without MSG I Am Nothing” FACT: McLusky’s Andy Falkous has an amazing rock voice. It just drips with contempt, deadpan wit, exasperation, and joy. He’s the kind of guy who can make righteous anger sound simultaneously ridiculous and totally reasonable, and make the most obscure lyrics seem menacing and/or funny. There’s a certain rough quality in Falkous’ voice which reminds me of Joe Strummer, but the style is all his own. This is the lead track from the forthcoming The Difference Between Me and You Is That I’m Not On Fire, which isn’t a terribly consistent record, but the best songs are worth sitting through the mediocre tunes. “She Will Only Bring You Happiness” is another highlight worth seeking out, particularly for the sweetly sung refrain “our old singer is a sex criminal.”

Toktok Vs. Nena “Bang Bang” (Tocadiscos Don’t Fake The Break Mix)– Yes, this is the same Nena who did “99 Luftballons” back in the 80s. This new single was made with the Berlin techno duo Toktok, who have done some other impressive work recently with another German singer called Soffy O.

Elsewhere: Songs To Wears Pants To is an amusing web project in which a man named Andrew crafts brief songs from suggestions and descriptions sent to him via email. As one can imagine, the requests are often very peculiar, but he almost always pulls it off. Two recent highlights include a song with the words sung in reverse and then reversed again after the recording, and a rap which does not include any words containing the letter E. (Thanks to Sharpeworld.)

Also: Please do listen to today’s special episode of Seven Second Delay on WFMU, in which Ken Freedman and Andy Breckman will both do call-in shows live on the air simultaneously in two separate studios, to be broadcast so that Ken’s show is in the left speaker, and Andy’s is in the right. I’m going to be helping out on the technical side of this, which is very exciting for me. This is going to be a very unique radio event, so please tune in. If you can’t catch the show live at 6 PM EST, it will be archived on the WFMU site tomorrow.

And: Am I the only one who was kinda sad to see Lane Kim display toxic Pitchforkian levels of Rockism while rhapsodizing about the “Death To Disco” movement on Gilmore Girls last night? I suppose that it was within character, but it still let me down in some way.