Nicki Minaj featuring Eminem “Roman’s Revenge”

It makes sense to pair Nicki Minaj and Eminem. Most obviously, he’s still a commercial juggernaut, and she could use the boost. Beyond that crass consideration, Nicki and Em have a lot in common. They share a talent for radical shifts in delivery and slipping into cartoonish voices. They’re both from outside the dominant black male paradigm in rap, and compensate for that social disadvantage with impressive technical prowess and over the top personality. They’ve made themselves into characters so fierce that they cannot be ignored. So yeah, this team-up was pretty much inevitable.

The problem with “Roman’s Revenge” is that while Nicki and Eminem are quite similar, they are at very different points in their career arcs. Nicki is still new to the scene, and she’s hungry. Like most any rapper, she’s thriving in the moment where she has a bit of recognition, but still needs to prove herself. That mixture of earned confidence and underdog status amplifies a competitive quality that can bring out the best in artists. I hope she can keep this up for a while, because right now she is as colorful, refreshing, and listenable as it gets in hip hop.

Eminem, on the other hand, is a guy with nothing to prove, other than perhaps a continued relevance as he ages in a genre that has never been kind to elder statesmen. His craft is still remarkable, but it hasn’t progressed much since the early ’00s. He’s still telling the same mean-spirited jokes, but he’s no longer funny. He used to say awful shit and get by on playfulness and charm, but he’s so serious and angry now that he just sounds like a full-on creep. His verses on this song are joyless and hateful, a sad contrast with Nicki’s gleeful arrogance and camp absurdity. It says a lot about how much I enjoy listening to Nicki that I’m willing to put up with his parts at all. But really, I just wish I could get a version of this track with all his vocals removed and replaced with someone who isn’t a pointlessly bitter asshole.

Buy it from Amazon.

My main takeaway from this fall’s solo releases by Avey Tare and Panda Bear is that both of these artists produce better work together in Animal Collective than when left to their own devices. I suppose this is a pretty standard thing for solo work by artists who are part of famous bands, but in this case, the difference may provide some insight into Animal Collective’s unusual group dynamic.

Most obviously, Avey and Panda’s most recent offerings are considerably looser and less polished than their most recent Animal Collective work, which was by far the most accomplished music of their career. It’s pretty reasonable to expect that they’d back away from pop songwriting and discipline on their solo projects. For one thing, it gives them a chance to work through musical tangents that may not be right for their regular gig, which suddenly has to live up to very high critical and commercial expectations. Also, part of the point of doing solo work when you have a full-time band is the opportunity to cut loose without compromising your ideas. All the same, the diminished craft on their solo material makes me wonder how they edit their work when they are writing as part of a band. Is it simply a matter of the two men having excellent creative chemistry? Is the tunefulness and focus of their post-Feels work something we can attribute to the presence of the Geologist, whose function in the group has always been somewhat difficult to discern? Hmm.

Avey Tare “Ghost of Books”

Avey Tare’s first proper solo album Down There is a strange, murky set of songs that cycle through some fairly dark emotions and experiences. It’s still Avey though, so the material has an oddball levity that keeps it from getting too bleak. Panda Bear tends to produce prettier, more heart-tugging music, but Avey Tare is much better with melody and structure, and has a stronger singing voice. This is an advantage for his solo work, though he is also more indulgent and eager to sabotage his compositions with ugly musical elements that distract from his strengths. This seems to be at least some of the point here, though — it’s supposed to be this uncomfortable, sorta icky album. However, despite some songs like “Ghost of Books” and “Lucky 1” that push hooks to the foreground (or at least close enough the foreground to click), the album is easier to admire than love.

Buy it from Amazon.

Panda Bear “You Can Count On Me”

Unlike Avey, Panda Bear faces high expectations for his solo material as well as whatever he does as part of Animal Collective. His album Person Pitch is already considered a classic; to many people he is the star attraction of the group, despite the fact that Avey has traditionally been the primary lead vocalist. I’ll admit that I’m something of an Avey partisan — I generally prefer his long melodies, spirited intensity, and thoughtful lyrics over Panda’s heavily treated vocals, simplistic words, and penchant for extended drones. Even still, Panda has an emotional directness that can be difficult to resist, and I can understand how for many people that trumps his collaborator’s more nuanced and playful approach. “You Can Count On Me,” the a-side of the second single from the forthcoming Tomboy album, is close to what people seem to want from his work, but it seems a bit off and underdeveloped. It’s more like a sketch than a fully formed song — pleasant but not entirely resonant. It’s too nice to be entirely dismissed, but to some extent this comes across like a parody of Panda’s aesthetic rather than an example of what he can do when he’s fully inspired or working with partners who complement his voice and/or compensate for his shortcomings.

Buy it from Amazon.

Mr. Dream “Learn the Language”

I put off listening to Mr. Dream for a while because two members of the band are colleagues of mine. I try to avoid music made by people I know for reasons you can probably understand if you give it a bit of thought. I’m glad I set that aside and gave it a shot because as it turns out, they are making exactly the kind of brainy yet very physical rock music that is always desirable but generally scarce, especially in the past decade. “Learn the Language” is a lumbering giant of a song, loud and violent and difficult to ignore. There’s not a lot of subtlety to it in terms of form and function, but there’s a hidden grace in the band’s performance that makes it ruthlessly effective rather than blunt and dumb. They lock in together with great intensity, but keep things loose enough that even the expected moves seem slightly unpredictable, and you kinda flinch with each dynamic shift. Adam Moerder’s vocal performance is fantastic all on its own — an unaffected deadpan at some points, a self-aware laugh breaking through one line, and a unrestrained holler at the climax. Every bit of this song is very well-thought out, but it’s played on instinct, which is always an ideal balance in loud rock music.

Visit the Mr. Dream MySpace page.

George Michael “One More Try”

So much of the tension in this song comes from George Michael’s use of the word “teacher.” Taken literally or metaphorically, it makes it clear to the listener that the context for this heartbroken ballad is an imbalanced power dynamic. To take it as a metaphor — and this is reasonable since he extends it with phrases like “teacher, there are things I don’t want to learn” — they could very well be the same age, but the implication is the singer came into this now bitter romantic entanglement naive and new to the complexities of love and lust. This in turn makes Michael’s passionate, nearly melodramatic vocal performance seem all the more poignant, as it is basically the sound of a young man’s sweet earnestness turning to sour cynicism. It is absolutely gutting when he sings “so if you love me / say you love me / but if you don’t / just let me go.” He sounds used and confused, and just about to reach the point of emotional exhaustion. It’s notable that the musical arrangement is fairly static, a simple organ dirge paired with a spare drum machine rhythm and a bass line adding subtle dynamic changes — his mind is running in circles, but the prevailing mood is sad, flat and seemingly endless.

Buy it from Amazon.

Pigeons “No Other Way”

Very few of the words being sung in this song actually sound much like words to me. This is just fine, mainly because the emphasis in this arrangement is a bit skewed — what would normally be foregrounded is shifted to hazy accompaniment, and the noodling lead guitar part is presented with sharp focus. Luckily, this doesn’t destabilize the track. If anything, this makes the whole thing seem warmer, richer, cozier. It’s got that feeling of super-comfortable exhaustion, when your mind softens up a bit and you focus on detail rather than form and meaning. In this, it’s all about the abstract pleasure of horn parts that float through the piece like little fluffy clouds, and a guitar solo that radiates gentle empathy.

Buy it from Soft Abuse.

Reading Rainbow “Always On My Mind”

It wasn’t too much of a shock to find out the two members of this band are a married couple — they sing with each other like people in love. “Always On My Mind” is about struggling with a long-distance relationship, and missing someone very badly and hating every moment of being apart. Given that this is a married couple who are also an indie rock duo, I imagine this means they are singing about their ultimate nightmare. The song itself is a brilliant, elegantly constructed, extremely catchy indie-pop gem. It’s a bit lo-fi, but its charms come from its old-fashioned hooks, not an affected haziness. In a field overcrowded with lo-fi indie rock, this stands out as a keeper.

Buy it from Hozac Records.

James Rabbit “Options”

No one makes neuroses sound as fun and exciting as James Rabbit. “Options,” basically a song in which Tyler Martin freaks out because he can’t figure out a way to get through to an elusive girl who is “free of all media”, places all its emphasis on the thrill of the chase. The song barrels forwards, totally urgent but also quite gleeful, and eager to take on the challenge. It always sounds good-natured and sweet, but that especially comes through when the song drops into a slower waltz section that contrasts a genuine romantic whimsy with the girl-crazy anxiousness of the verses and chorus. And man, what a chorus — it goes from hook to hook to hook, bursting with ideas like a guy who can’t keep his mind in one place despite focusing on only one thing.

Get it for free from James Rabbit’s Bandcamp page.

Matthew Dear @ #offline Brooklyn Bowl 10/23/2010

Honey / Monkey / Soil To Seed / Shortwave / Slowdance / You Put A Smell On Me / Tide / Little People (Black City)

Matthew Dear “Little People (Black City)”

This was a strange show. I wasn’t sure what to expect of Matthew Dear’s live performance — I half-suspected it would be a guy-with-computer-and-sequencers deal, but as it turns out, he augments that setup with live drums, bass, trumpet, keyboards, and guitar. Dear and his band are dapper pros, and perform with an aloof intensity. There were two guys up near the stage who started dancing wildly even before the funk in the music started to kick in, and as the set progressed, they got even more rowdy and took their shirts, revealing chiseled, muscular physiques. These guys were fist-pumping, air-grinding, bro-ing the fuck out. As Matthew Dear played increasingly funky material, their enthusiasm became contagious, and the dudes started going back into the crowd to rev people up. By the time Dear started in on his epic funk suite “Little People (Black City),” lots of people were totally down for it. It was kinda awesome. Matthew Dear should consider hiring these dudes to be his aesthetically incongruous hype men.

Buy it from Amazon.

Marit Larsen @ Oya Festival at CMJ, Public Assembly 10/22/2010

The Chase / Ten Steps / Solid Ground / Only A Fool / Don’t Save Me / If A Song Could Get Me You

Marit Larsen “Don’t Save Me”

It’s hard to imagine that any act at CMJ was more wholesome and sweet than Marit Larsen, a young woman who is basically Norway’s answer to Taylor Swift. Larsen was incredibly friendly and polite — I think she thanked the audience at least 20 times in a six song set, and she made some self-deprecating remarks about her tendency to write extremely sad songs with very cheerful melodies. She’s about as professional, poised and adorable as you might expect, and didn’t have to work to sell her immaculately crafted hits to a small audience mainly comprised of Europeans. I suppose it would have been nice if more of the young people who do CMJ had showed up, but let’s face it — this is not their music, and it’s just kind of a lucky fluke that this happened at all. Well, at least for me — I’ve been wanting to see a Marit Larsen show ever since “Don’t Save Me” came out in 2006!

Buy it from Amazon.

Marnie Stern @ #offline Brooklyn Bowl 10/22/2010

Nothing Left / For Ash / Transformer / Transparency is the New Mystery / The Crippled Jazzer / Risky Biz / Prime / Vibrational Match / Her Confidence

Marnie Stern “Transparency is the New Mystery”

Marnie Stern and her band played seven shows in the span of four days at CMJ last week. This set was the second show of Friday, and I couldn’t hear much wear and tear on their sound. The songs seemed a bit streamlined in a good way — her current drummer isn’t quite on Zach Hill’s level, and it sounded to me like he was simplifying the drum parts in a way that placed a more traditional emphasis on the guitar hooks. And really, that’s great — people fixate on the flashiness of Marnie’s playing, but I’m sold on the tunes and the emotional weight of it all. The new songs came off very well, most especially “Transparency,” which hits a great peak on its chorus, and “Her Confidence,” which is just towering and epic stuff. I would love to eventually watch Marnie rock to a room full of fans. That would be the best.

Buy it from Amazon.

Arcade Fire “Month of May”

A few weeks ago, I woke up with a melody running on a loop in my head. It was a simple, vaguely eerie keyboard riff, it made me think of cars zooming along roads at night, turning around curves, lights moving along lines in darkness. The part was isolated in my mind; I couldn’t place it. I’ve heard so many songs, figuring out what it was would be a needle-in-a-haystack endeavor. I forgot about it.

Not long after, I was listening to the Arcade Fire and realized that the keyboard part was at the end of “Month of May,” one of the best songs on their new album. It’s actually a fairly prominent part of the composition, but it’s the big blaring guitar, shouted vocals, and rhythmic hooks that take up space in your memory. You remember the Neil Young-ness, you remember the uncharacteristic punk-ness, and the moody synth part digs into your unconscious.

“Month of May” distills all the anxieties on The Suburbs into a four minute burst of restless energy. It’s the feeling of needing something more, of driving around aimlessly in pursuit of some ill-defined excitement, of wanting something that just isn’t coming. It’s the sound of trying to be active, but having nothing to do. The noise builds and the beat has a violence to it, but it’s all thrashing around for nothing, like trying to kick and punch at the very concept of one’s boredom while believing in stuff that’s probably just as illusory — “some things are pure and some things are right.” Yeah, yeah. So why are the kids still standing with their arms…folded…tight?

When the keyboard part comes in, that’s when the sinking feeling hits, and you resign yourself to futility after acting out. It’s knowing that you can’t escape that desire for something else, even if the idea isn’t fully formed in your mind. The grass is always greener, the lights are always a bit brighter on the other side of wherever you are. Even still — rocking out, making a record about how you feel, trying to start again — it’s worth a shot.

Buy it from Amazon.

A Sunny Day In Glasgow “Drink, Drank, Drunk”

The most surprising part of this song comes at the very beginning — a clear, bold lead vocal in a Sunny Day In Glasgow song! As the song moves along, we get back into their comfort zone of soft-focus haziness. It’s a gentle slide from lucidity to dreaminess, and the shifts in the composition mirror the progression in the title. The lyrics follow a similar path — they start off very assertive and direct, attempting to talk someone out of bad behavior, but as the song gains momentum and layers of sound, the words become more emotional and vulnerable. Eventually, it’s just feelings without words, inarticulate longing and complexity rendered in sad, beautiful, epic music. It’s a very clever piece of music, and another fine example of why Ben Daniels is the most interesting and inventive artist working in the shoegazer genre.

Get the album as free mp3s or buy the vinyl LP from A Sunny Day In Glasgow.

Victoire “I Am Coming For My Things”

The most obvious thing in this composition is the sound of the phone message — “I am coming for my things,” repeated a few times over, rewinding the memory to make sure it happened, or going back over the thought as if to underline it and make it more real. It was said, it’s over, you have to stick with it. The music is deeper, darker, totally abstracted. I hear shock, I hear loneliness, I hear self-pity, I hear anger, I hear relief. The emotions seem isolated to different instruments in the arrangement, but they overlap — never quite coming together on the same plane, but relating in some way. It’s the feeling of having all these thoughts and feelings, and not yet knowing how it all connects. The past is a painful memory, the present seems like an agonizing eternity, and the future is inconceivable.

Buy it from Amazon.

Warpaint “Undertow”

Warpaint’s “Undertow” is like a granddaughter to Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” both in sound and substance. In the music, you can hear Stevie and Lindsey filtered through years of indie and alt rock — languid chords and plaintive vocals picked apart and reconfigured with a stoned haze and a vague post-post twitchiness. Lyrically, it’s the same sort of song — someone at the end of a relationship, addressing this person they still love, but from a distance. It’s the thing you do when you’re having a serious discussion with someone inside your head, saying everything you need to say, running through ideas, practicing for the time you actually have to communicate these things to them directly. “Undertow” may be more direct, but that only makes it more sad to me. There’s not much hope in this song, it doesn’t sound like there’s much room for forgiveness and change. The bad patterns emerge, they don’t really go away — not any time soon, anyway.

Buy it from Amazon.

Deerhunter @ Webster Hall 10/15/2010

Desire Lines / Hazel Street / Never Stops / Memory Boy / Rainwater Cassette Exchange / Don’t Cry / Revival / Little Kids / Fountain Stairs / Nothing Ever Happened / Helicopter / He Would Have Laughed // Basement Scene / Spring Hall Convert / Fluorescent Grey

I should have written about this show after I saw it, rather than waiting a few days. I don’t remember enough of the specifics — there was a lot of awful things on my mind during the event, and the following days were busy and off on a different tangent. I can tell you that Deerhunter played very well, and that I think the live arrangements for the newer songs are quite good, particularly “Rainwater Cassette Exchange,” “Helicopter,” and “Revival.” I remember the audience being kinda lame — a lot of dickish young NYU guys spoiling the crowd, basically — and the energy level for “Nothing Ever Happened,” a song I’ve seen inspire actual moshing, being low to virtually non-existent. I didn’t mind that so much, I wasn’t in the mood for it either. I connected with the songs that were on my wavelength at that moment — “He Would Have Laughed,” “Helicopter,” “Memory Boy,” “Rainwater,” “Never Stops.” The sad songs, the mournful songs, the songs about endless frustration.

Deerhunter “Helicopter”

The liner notes of Halcyon Digest preface the lyrics of “Helicopter” with an excerpt written by Dennis Cooper that provides context for the words. Basically, the song is about a young gay Russian boy named Dima who fell into pornography and prostitution, and eventually was sold into sexual slavery to an organized crime figure. His ultimate fate is unknown, but one account had him dying after being pushed out of a helicopter over a remote forest in northern Russia. Anyway, it’s very hard to unlearn that context — suddenly every line of the song becomes unbearably sad, even the bits that were already painfully melancholy. The music is gorgeous, one of the most brilliantly crafted pieces of Bradford Cox’s career to date, and it perfectly conveys this feeling of frailty and powerlessness, and total doom. When Cox sings “now they are through with me,” it’s sweet and fragile and utterly devoid of hope. It’s terminal passivity.

Buy it from Amazon.

Belle & Sebastian @ DAR Constitution Hall, Washington, DC 10/14/2010

I Didn’t See It Coming / I’m A Cuckoo / Step Into My Office, Baby / Like Dylan In The Movies / I’m Not Living In The Real World / Piazza, New York Catcher / I Want The World To Stop / Lord Anthony / Sukie In The Graveyard / Green Onions / Read The Blessed Pages / I Fought In A War / Write About Love / Dog On Wheels / The Boy With The Arab Strap / Dirty Dream Number Two / Simple Things / Sleep The Clock Around // If You Find Yourself Caught In Love / Judy And The Dream Of Horses

Belle & Sebastian “I Want the World to Stop”

Ahhh, another great Belle & Sebastian concert in support of their fantastic new album Dear Catastrophe Waitress! Oh, no, sorry, the new one is called Write About Love. Maybe you can see why a person could get confused about that. I guess they just really like that album these days? Obviously, a lot more than The Life Pursuit, which is my favorite.

Anyway, this was a fine set, even if some of the more energetic moments seemed a bit forced/overly staged. I like the way Belle & Sebastian have evolved into this very professional, very charming bunch of entertainers, right on down to including silly rituals like tossing autographed (American) footballs into the audience at every gig. The downside to the group’s professionalism and eagerness to please is that they’ve come to the point of nearly apologizing for playing new material, which they really shouldn’t be so bashful about given that “I Want the World To Stop” and “I’m Not Living in the Real World” were obvious crowd-pleasers and Write About Love is now available in stores. I would’ve enjoyed a few more songs from that record — “Come On Sister” and “The Ghost of Rockschool” might have been great additions to the set. Nevertheless, aside from “Lord Anthony,” which I’ve never particularly cared for, it’s hard to argue against anything they did play. Such a great catalog.

Buy it from Amazon.

Belle & Sebastian “Judy and the Dream of Horses” [BBC session version]

I was very glad to hear “Judy and the Dream of Horses,” which was a song I listened to all the time when I lived in DC for a spell about fourteen years ago. Earlier in the day, I visited where I used to live and retraced some familiar paths from back then, and so the nostalgia was fresh in mind. “Judy” will always remind me of someone very specific, and so I thought of her too — the star upon her shoulder lighting up the path as she walked the street from morning to night, falling asleep with ants in her pants, worrying about the best-looking boys, giving herself to books and learning. I wondered about where she was now, what her life has become, who she might be. I’m kinda glad that I don’t know, though.

Buy it from Amazon.

Veruca Salt “Number One Blind”

Almost inevitably, this new decade will bring us a large crop of bands recycling ’90s guitar rock. Of all the various strains of ’90s rock, I think the most quintessential and commercial is “alt-rock,” an aesthetic I think is best connected to the bands on the DGC label — Nirvana, Weezer, Hole, Elastica, Sloan, Sonic Youth, Teenage Fanclub, Veruca Salt — as well as other major label acts like Bush who were running with a similar formula and aesthetic. But what is that formula? What is that aesthetic? I think “Number One Blind” is a very good answer to those questions. In my mind, this song is a perfect example of the archetype, and just hearing it takes me back to the era of actually-pretty-great mainstream rock radio and suburban malls full of alterna-teens.

I’ll break it down for you.

* Gently rolling, thick bass line. Kim Deal has so much to answer for, and even the worst of it is pretty decent. (Like, say, “Good” by Better Than Ezra.) I think Krist Novoselic’s approximation of Deal’s style was itself extremely influential. I would argue that even ahead of fuzzy guitar tone, this is the most essential and recognizable element of ’90s alt-rock, especially when contrasted with a simple, pretty guitar figure as it is on the verse of “Number One Blind.”

* Strict verse/chorus/verse construction. I find that archetypal ’90s alt-rock very seldom includes pre-choruses, and bridges are generally quite brief. The bridge in “Number One Blind” takes us from a chorus into a solo, but it’s not necessary — a lot of songs in the subgenre will just slam a solo between choruses, or skip the solo entirely.

* Verses are mellow; choruses are loud. Duh! You stomp on your fuzz pedal when it’s time for the chorus. ’90s rock radio was basically this steady ebb and tide of soft verses and loud choruses. Black Francis didn’t invent this, but I think pretty much all of this music is directly traceable to the Pixies catalog.

* The solo break is very short. The solo is always melodic, but the playing is never too smooth or overly professional. These are mainly to add some touch of melodic flourish and to break up the rigid grid of the song’s construction for a few seconds.

* The melodies are simple. Okay, but not so much that it’s totally sing-song.

* The vocals have an arch quality. This depends on the character of the frontperson, but there’s pretty much always some touch of irony and bitterness in the tone.

* Obscure title and/or lyrical references. The chorus — “Levolor, which of us is blind?” is a play on words — blindness, as in obliviousness, and Levolor, as in the manufacturer of window blinds. There’s a metaphor in here, but it’s not fully formed, which is pretty much the way things go in this style. It’s more about suggesting an idea and an image rather that explicating it. Bonus points for the specific reference to Levolor, which has some kind of nostalgic quality despite being a brand that still exists.

Buy it from Amazon.

Antony and the Johnsons “I’m In Love”

A lot of people sing about feeling overwhelmed by love, but in this song, Antony really does sound like it, as if he could just pass out at any moment as a result of love overload. A lot of this effect comes from the arrangement, which is light, gently shifting, and doesn’t seem to have any solid center. The song is all free-floating joy without any sense of stability, which is a pretty good metaphor and approximation of intense infatuation. There are some great, unexpected details in this arrangement. I’m particularly fond of that tapping, shuffling percussive sound in the last minute or so — it’s right on the edge of being distracting, but it works for just that reason. It’s like some feeling or sensation that gets in the way of the huge, emotional sweep of the song.

Buy it from Amazon.

Women “China Steps”

The steady bass pulse and detuned guitar rattle throughout this song get a nice horror movie vibe going on, but what really makes “China Steps” sound creepy is that the track seems to be haunted by the ghost of Layne Staley. The vocals share a similar tonality with the late Alice In Chains singer, but they are low in the mix and washed out in reverb, making the words almost entirely indecipherable, and filling the empty space in the track with a non-specific dread that amps up the already high level of paranoia evoked by the composition. Happy Halloween.

Buy it from Amazon.

No Age “Valley Hump Crash”

I don’t usually like it when guitars are mixed loud over a thin lead vocal, but it works very well here, mainly because the guitar seems to whoosh by like the ambient noise you get in a car going fast with the windows rolled down. I can’t hear this without thinking of being a passenger in a car going fast to nowhere in particular; it has this perfect balance of laid-back melancholy and careless momentum. The sadness is muted a bit, but despite not being a particularly good singer, Dean Spunt conveys a bit of conflicted nuance when he plaintively calls out the name Catalina over and over at the song’s climax.

Buy it from Amazon.

Elvis Costello and the Attractions “Two Little Hitlers”

My favorite Elvis Costello songs tend to be the ones where he is least sympathetic and kind of an asshole, but you’re with him because he’s coming from this highly relatable position of wanting some unattainable thing very badly. He’s brilliant at blending pettiness with yearning romance and making it seem appealing, maybe because he always self-aware enough to make a joke of his worst impulses without canceling out the emotional truth of his darkest, most selfish feelings. “Two Little Hitlers” is a parody of the power plays in romantic and sexual relationships in which the singer — a man who doesn’t seem to have anywhere near the sort of power in these situations he would want — imagines himself with the authority of a ruthless dictator. He’s a mess of seething resentments and deep insecurities, trying in vain to establish some kind of uncomplicated physical relationship in which he has the upper hand, but he keeps finding himself in a battle of the wills with another imagined tyrant. The song is perky and light in tone, full of great little melodic hooks that go by quickly on the way to the next bit. This highlights the humor of the piece — this could be played for drama, but it’s more pointed as a bitter joke at the expense of its character.

Buy it from Amazon.

Jumbling Towers “Ramifications Of An Exciting Spouse”

I like the way this song never lets you get a good idea of exactly what it is. It keeps mutating and shifting and adding all these musical elements that maybe shouldn’t add up. It’s like a person in a surprising outfit of mismatched items that work because they are good looking in a distinct sort of way. There’s a spot or two where the song threatens to fall off the rails — specifically the bit with the title phrase — but it snaps back into place and moves on to another oddball hook. This could do with a bit more finesse, but there is a great character to this music, and the catchy, interesting bits really do pile up.

Visit the Jumbling Towers website.

James Blake “Klavierwerke”

There’s a particular sound in this piece that really grabs me, and I can’t really describe it in musical terms. It’s the bit that sounds like someone being suddenly teleported somewhere against their will. It’s the part that sounds like R2-D2 unexpectedly running out of battery charge. It’s the noise that is like a little universe getting shrunk down to nothingness. Do you know what I mean? It’s ghostly and colorful and weird. The rest of the composition is like a frame for that one incredible sound.

Buy it from Amazon.

Discodeine featuring Jarvis Cocker “Synchronize”

I wish Jarvis Cocker would do more dance music. Like, an entire album of it. That lusty, wry, erudite voice of his fits perfectly in this context, especially when the electronic grooves and stately disco strings match his particular balance of classiness and lasciviousness. “Synchronize” is pretty straightforward in its conceit, but Cocker has a way of bending fairly standard lyrics about dancing and time just enough to make them seem fresh and sexy. Discodeine’s arrangement builds around Cocker in exciting ways — I love the rhythmic keyboard part that kicks in on the chorus, thought it’s kind of a stock move — and gives him enough space for vocal nuance as well as dramatic gestures. This is a fantastic team-up. Is there a petition we can start to get more like this?

Visit the D.I.R.T.Y./Discodeine site.