Sunny Day Sets Fire “Wilderness (CSS Remix)” – The original version by Sunny Day Sets Fire is fine enough, but the CSS mix plays up the immediately ingratiating melodic turns of the vocal while streamlining the arrangement into something that is urgent and elegant in equal measures. There’s no shortage of musicians aping ’80s synth pop these days, but too often the results are little more than uninspired tributes to poorly-written shlock. This song, however, is rather successful in approximating for the oft-unheralded craft and slick sophistication of the most enduring British one-hit-wonders of the era. (Click here to buy it from IAMSOUND.)

Meanwhile, On Fair Game: Faith and I talked about the new 3D concert movies by U2 and Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus.

Cat Power @ Terminal 5 2/6/2008
New York, New York / Rambling (Wo)Man / Don’t Explain / I Believe In You / Aretha, Sing One For Me / Lost Someone / Silver Stallion / A Woman Left Lonely / Lord Help The Poor and Needy / Metal Heart / The Moon / (instrumental) / Where Is My Love / The Greatest / The Tracks Of My Tears / Could We / She’s Got You / Naked If I Want To / Song To Bobby / Dark End Of The Street / Willie // Lived In Bars / I’ve Been Loving You Too Long

Cat Power & Dirty Delta Blues “Aretha, Sing One For Me (Live Black Session)” – Let’s put it right out there: Terminal 5 is a fucking terrible venue. It’s in a very inconvenient location, and getting out of the place is a total hassle. Unless you manage to squeeze into the densely packed front of the floor or get a prime spot on the balconies, your sight lines are going to be horrible. I have no idea what the optimal usage of that place might be, but it sure as hell is not for concerts. To make matters worse, the sound is shoddy, and you end up with a show like this in which the musicians are consistently on point, but plagued by seemingly elementary sound issues — mysterious buzzes, unintentional feedback – that are never resolved in the span of a 90 minute set. I only recommend going to the venue if you want to see a band that is unlikely to play any other show in the area for the foreseeable future.

Chan Marshall, a woman who not so long ago would stop a show dead in its tracks for a lot less than a lousy sound mix, just sorta rolled with it. I hesitate to say that she has become a polished professional — there’s an unpretentious rawness to her that’s probably (hopefully) never going to disappear — but she’s at least become more of an extrovert on stage, and there’s a clear awareness of the fact that she’s got to put on a show, and that the audience is willing to follow her where ever she goes. She displays a lot of nervous energy on stage, but it’s mainly evident in her physicality — she’s never still, and she spends a lot of her time on stage pacing around aimlessly. On the other hand, her vocals are careful, focused, and invested with emotion. Her voice isn’t quite as devastating as it once was, but even when she’s very low key, she’s selling the songs with soul. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Robyn @ the Highline Ballroom, 2/5/2008
Cobrastyle / Crash and Burn Girl / Who’s That Girl? / Bum Like You / Handle Me / Keep This Fire Burning / Konichiwa Bitches / Be Mine! / With Every Heartbeat // Show Me Love / Jack U Off / Be Mine! (Ballad Version)

Robyn “Be Mine! (Ballad Version)” – Here’s an understatement: The audience was very excited to see Robyn play her first real concert in the United States. Here’s a statement: Robyn is a ridiculously charismatic performer who ought to achieve mainstream popularity on the level of, say, Fergie. Here’s an overstatement: That probably won’t ever happen because American pop culture is really, really unfair. We can settle for cult stardom though, and that’s certainly what she’s got: As far as the crowd was concerned, nearly every song in this set was a gigantic hit, and Robyn herself was a badass, super-sensitive, adorable, unstoppable superstar. The dance and hip hop songs were the most fun — how could “Konichiwa Bitches” and “Crash and Burn Girl” not steal a show? — but the ballads near the end were the most evocative and revealing. The full-band version of “Be Mine!” was melancholy and gorgeous, but the unadorned piano version of the song at the end of the encore was like a concentrated shot of heartbroken vulnerability, with the singer stripped of all her defenses and left to feel alone, awkward, and slightly defiant. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Kelley Polar “Entropy Reigns (In The Celestial City)” – Form follows content: The surface is almost unbearably, inhumanly slick, and so the lyrics portray the inner life of a man who has been poisoned by aesthetics, and left to wander around a world of glamor with a broken, nihilistic soul. The song is structured like a “Don’t You Want Me”-style “he said/she said,” but it’s worth noting how oddly inconsequential the female parts seem in context — it’s impossible to escape the gravitational pull of his self-absorption, and at it often feels as though she’s just there to prove to himself that they are both real, and that there’s something in the world aside from his glassy-eyed disaffection and self-pity. Weirdly, this all comes off as a sympathetic character study, perhaps thanks to the warmth buried beneath Polar’s synthetic textures and the precise enunciation of the vocalists. (Click here to buy it from iTunes.)

Santogold “L.E.S. Artistes” – The Lower East Side was once an area mainly reserved for the immigrant population, but has since become a super-gentrified playground for the city’s hipster population. That said, it still thrives on a well-heeled variation of the immigration narrative — artsy people from around the world come to it (and other similar neighborhoods) in the hope of reinventing themselves and achieving some form of success and upward mobility. The character in “L.E.S. Artistes” is one of those people. Her ambition and competitive streak exacerbate her feelings of alienation — she’s surrounded by hacks and phonies, she’s paranoid about being exploited, and mindful of the fact that the odds are stacked against her potential success. Nevertheless, it is not a song about freaking out. If anything, it’s an expression of muted courage, and working nonstop, and desperately hoping that there’s a payoff to the relentless grind. Basically, it’s a sympathetic ballad for the “creative underclass.” (Click here for the Santogold MySpace page.)

Electric Six “Kukuxumusu” – One of the things the Electric Six do better than most anyone is subvert catchy, macho mainstream rock tunes with a deranged sexual panic that highlights the paranoia and insecurity at the heart of typical dudeness. The structure of the lyrics in “Kukuxumusu” is a play on the old “in each verse, I’m gonna tell you all about some sexy lady I’ve fucked” paradigm — good examples would be “Sir Psycho Sexy” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers or “Free Love Freeway” by David Brent — but in this case, instead of attempting to prove his sexual prowess, he describes a series of brief relationships in which the women drain him of life, figuratively or literally. It sounds as though he’s trying to show off his promiscuity and his conquests, but the details reveal him to be a rather passive character who can’t stop himself from becoming involved with vapid, toxic personalities. It may be that he is drawn to entering into relationships with people who validate his fear of women, or perhaps more damning, it’s just a case of water finding its level.

The chorus flips a slogan from Bruce LaBruce’s left-wing terrorist parody The Raspberry Reich into a confused, nihilistic, self-deprecating shrug: “I’m not the Revolution, I’m just your boyfriend — a fuck solution until the world ends!” Like a lot of Electric Six characters, the dude in “Kukuxumusu” has forsaken idealism in favor of empty hedonism, and the joke, as always, is that he just does not understand why he’s made that decision. He’s just standing around, shouting “OH MY GOD!,” constantly surprised by the inanity of his life, and doomed to never figure it out. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Throw Me The Statue “This Is How We Kiss” – For a lot of people, punk rock is a teenage phase. They may never grow out of it or lose their affection for the music, but it ends up getting tied with teenage feelings, and teenage memories. In the context of Throw Me The Statue’s 00s-indie album, “This Is How We Kiss” uses the genre as something of a flashback device, a nostalgic sound for a nostalgic song. Essentially, the singer is confronting strong, immediate feelings with the benefit of perspective and hindsight. He misses the thrill of naïveté, he laments his emotional clumsiness, but he ultimately sounds secure in his adult self, or at least incapable of regressing too much. He can revisit the feelings, but he can’t recreate them, or hang around them for too long. It’s a bit like revisiting your old school — it seems like a quaint idea in the abstract, but if you do it, you just feel weird and out of place and every room in the building seems smaller than you remember. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Britta Persson “At 7” – The title refers to the time when a game is set to begin, and though it very well may be literal (ie, a sporting event), the real significance lies in the figurative meaning: Once again, the singer and her suitor will be stuck in a romantic stalemate, with neither of them knowing just how to progress to the next level of their inept flirtation. She worries about overstepping, she wishes she could be more aggressive, but she’s resigned to feeling powerless and confused. The best she can do is to ask him to sit next to her, and cross her fingers in hope that maybe this will be her lucky night.

I really must emphasize just how much I love Britta Persson’s voice on this, and pretty much every other track on her new album. Her phrasing and tonality has a great emotional depth to it — at her most confident, she recalls the restrained warmth of Natalie Merchant, and at her most fragile she reminds me of a more polished version of Liz Phair. Without overplaying a sense of intimacy, Kill Hollywood Me as a whole seems very personal and distinct, to the point that I come away from it feeling as though I know her, or at least in the sense that some fictional characters (and/or the actors who play them) can seem as familiar to me as my own friends and family. (Click here to buy it from It’s A Trap.)

Yesterday I mentioned that terrible essay by Todd Burns about “dance music” that was published along with the 2007 Pazz & Jop critics poll in the Village Voice, but I didn’t really get into what I disliked about it. I mean, Jess Harvell already tore it to bits over on Idolator, but I feel that it’s such an incredibly wrong-headed piece of writing that I ought to respond to it in my own way.

If you’re the type of person who, for whatever reason, does not have any intention of actually reading what Todd Burns wrote in the essay, let me paraphrase it for you:

I love dance music, and the dance music that I love is the real dance music. Many of my peers — and a fairly large number of ordinary music fans — love Justice, Simian Mobile Disco, and other contemporary musicians who make dance music, but that stuff can’t possibly be real dance music because OH MY GOD YOU GUYS that music has a lot of hooks and shares some stylistic DNA with rock music! Ugh, rock music! Rock music is for total fucking idiots, and you can’t possibly dance to that shit. Even though a great many people from around the world get happy and dance to music by Justice, you cannot actually dance to it because…..uh, I’m not going to explain that. YOU JUST CAN’T DANCE TO IT, OKAY? Everyone knows that it is im-fucking-possible to dance to music that has a strong beat and catchy bits! The dance music I like is pure and authentic, and you rock-loving motherfuckers will never understand it! Real dance music lacks hooks, vocals, novelty, dynamic shifts, and just kinda blends together into an amorphous blob of sound, and only special people such as myself can appreciate it.

Okay, I admit that I’m not being very charitable, but I really don’t think I’m wildly misrepresenting anything Todd is saying in that essay.

One of the more depressing aspects of Todd’s essay is that he comes on strong with some anti-rockist sentiment, but seemingly without realizing it, he’s expressing all the most odious elements of rockism, but he’s just swapped out classic rock or punk or metal or indie or whatever for a strain of European electronic music specifically designed for a smallish subculture. He can barely conceal his reactionary zeal — check out that sneering condescension in the second and third paragraphs — but he seems entirely oblivious to the notion that he sounds exactly like the sort of provincial asshole he’s so vociferously deriding.

The bigger problem is that on a fundamental level, Burns seems to misunderstand the reasons why people dance to music. In his mind, dance music is a weirdly prescriptive thing — it has a specific sound, purpose, and context. It is a thing that is governed by rules, and those rules are primarily dictated by random people in Germany. It is a thing that is somehow naturally opposed to rock music, and when elements of rock — or presumably any other mainstream sort of music — enter into it, the aesthetic is compromised, and the experience is cheapened.

This is, of course, total nonsense. People dance to music because it moves them, physically, emotionally, and sometimes even, spiritually. If you’ve ever actually DJ’d for people — or better yet, have ever been to a wedding — you would know that people are most willing to dance to music that they feel connected to, and music that makes them feel connected to the people around them. When you start decreeing what people should or should not be dancing to, you just sound like a prick: People are going to dance to whatever they enjoy, and anyone who begrudges their pleasure in doing so is nothing more than an uptight snob.

The anti-rock thing is just baffling, at least on a rhetorical level. It’s not hard to figure out why Burns might feel a bit alienated by rock fandom, but it’s truly mystifying that a person who clearly has a wide frame of reference on both new and old music would so willfully ignore rock and roll’s roots as a form of dance music, or reject the notion that “dance music” could be improved by elements of rock and roll, and vice versa. As far as I’m concerned, much of the best music from this era comes from artists who embrace “dance music,” rock, hip hop, and any other genre that works in order to produce a bold, inclusive, super-dynamic, ruthlessly effective strain of pop music.

Justice “DVNO” – And that brings me to Justice, who do just that on this song, and a few others on their debut album. “DVNO” is one of the my favorite songs of the past few years. I listened to it almost every day in the latter half of 2007, usually when I was out and about. It is a reliable jolt of energy, and no matter how many times I hear it, it never loses its capacity to thrill me. I can’t be fully still when it’s on, and when that first beat hits, I always feel a sudden rush, like OH YES INDEED, IT IS ON. I love the way the vocals are bent and cut so that about a half of the lyrics are entirely unintelligible, and the other half hint at something fabulous and tantalizing. I put it on a mix for a friend, and she told me that it sounded like being en route to an event more than being an event itself, and I think she’s pretty close to it: “DVNO” is the excitement of anticipation and expectation, it’s the feeling of being so close to something amazing. Basically, it’s the moment just before the thing you want soooooooo badly is diminished by reality. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Joy Denalane “Soweto ’76-’06” – How’s this for a “huh, really?”: This Afro-funk/neo-soul hybrid is by a German artist. Okay, so, an Afro-German artist, but still, it’s hard to imagine anything sounding less Germanic than Delanane and her most recent album Born & Raised. “Soweto ’76-’06,” a clear highlight from that record, is a dense and moody track that sounds a bit like Mary J. Blige fronting Fela Kuti’s band. The lyrics are relentlessly grim, but the tone of the piece errs on the side of celebration, which makes a lot of sense, actually, given that it’s essentially a song about finding a way to survive against all odds. (Click here to buy it from Amazon Germany, or here to buy it from eMusic.)

Meanwhile, on Fair Game: Ted Leo stopped by for a solo session, and it was very awesome.

Elsewhere: The Pazz & Jop and Idolator polls are both up now, and if you are for some reason interested in seeing what I voted for you can see my Idolator ballot here and my Pazz & Jop ballot here. I really need to emphasize that these should NOT be taken as my personal “year-end list.” This is a matter of voting, and my selections are totally arbitrary. (The only real constant is that the Of Montreal is my favorite record from 2007. It just is.) If you read this site regularly, you may have picked up on the fact that I like a lot more than ten albums per year. To be very blunt, I feel like any critic who either finds it a little too easy to fill those things out or struggles to come up with enough records to fill the positions really ought to find another line of work.

Anyway, I find it really, really hard to care about any of this stuff right now. I think both of the lists skew heavily in favor of records I either enjoy or respect, and so there’s really nothing much to bitch about other than the fact that I felt like I needed to pry my eyes open in order to read through the Voice’s essays, even the ones written by friends of mine whose work I usually admire. (The most disappointing by far is certainly Todd Burns’ cringe-inducing, disturbingly elitist essay about dance music.) I don’t think it’s really their fault, though. It’s just a lot of tired bullshitting, and smart people working hard to find some kind of narrative in their given topic. The thing is, though — who the fuck needs a narrative at this point? Aren’t we already overflowing with narrative, whether it’s from magazines, blogs, publicists, and the artists themselves? If anything, we should all be running screaming from any attempt to force 12 months of music into some tidy storyline. It all just seems like a huge waste of time (and talent) at best, and an exercise in lame-ass witless punditry at worst.

White Hinterland “Dreaming of the Plum Trees” – Casey Dienel — who you may remember from all those times I wrote about her debut album — is no longer called Casey Dienel anymore, or at least not in a “the name that goes on the spine of the cd/artist tag in the metadata” sense. At least partially in the interest of expanding her commercial appeal, she will now be recording under the name White Hinterland, presumably because market research showed that indie audiences are more willing to deal with a band name that is easily confused with White Williams, White Stripes, White Rabbits, and White Magic (not to mention a couple called the Hinterlands) than confront the reality that the music is the work of a single young woman. In my experience, indie labels and publicists like to claim that it’s easier to market a band rather than a solo artist, but I’m extremely dubious of that bit of conventional wisdom — if anything, it seems that the reverse is true in the larger marketplace. It just seems a bit silly to stake Ms. Dienel’s career on a tiny niche market (indie people) that is mostly quite hostile to female artists, particularly those who almost exclusively play jazzy piano-centric ballads.

Perhaps the best justification for the switch to the band name is that though Casey is clearly the dominant player, she is now working very closely with the other musicians. Whereas even the songs on Wind Up Canary that featured accompaniment seemed bare and unadorned, nearly everything on Phylactery Factory sounds active and full, with arrangements that emphasize movement and rhythm without crowding out Dienel’s piano parts or her delicate, keening voice. “Dreaming of the Plum Trees” in particular highlights the interaction of the full ensemble — her terrific rhythm section shimmies and shakes around her piano motif throughout the piece while her keyboard player slides around her notes, gradually tightening their part until it shifts into a braid-like outro. It’s a remarkable piece of music, effortlessly graceful while also playful and amusing in its lyrical detail and vocal delivery. (Click here to pre-order it from Dead Oceans.)

Meanwhile, on Fair Game: I was on the show last night to talk about songs by Marit Larsen, Katy Rose, and Siobhan Donaghy.

Elsewhere: Good to see that I’m not the only person who thought “Hey, what if Nick Denton had Heath Ledger killed to boost traffic on Gawker?”

Katy Rose “Sloth” – The ironic thing is that Katy Rose was originally marketed as an alternative to modern dance pop, but when she got her artistic independence, she went out and made a bunch of songs that are like warped, unsettling versions of Britney Spears et al circa the first couple years of this decade. Like a lot of pop songs from this decade, “Sloth” is sexual but not quite sexy, but that’s on purpose — it’s supposed to sound tarted-up yet sickly and zoned out. It’s a song about uncomfortable feelings, or the discomfort of not quite feeling your feelings the way you think they ought to be felt, and trying to make sense of the difference. The synthesizers in this track are brilliant — it sounds as if the funky hooks are giving the woozy, dizzy textures an awkward, nervous lap dance at some seedy club. (Click here to buy it from CD Baby.)

No Kids “For Halloween” – The basic sentiment of this song is sort of mundane — he’s lonely and depressed because someone special has left him — but the careful, vivid details in the lyrics and the band’s gentle, nuanced arrangement combine to create a very well-observed portrait of a man stumbling through a period of quiet, low-grade misery. There’s a shot of pure self-pitying melancholy in there, but it is diluted by comfort and the knowledge that things will inevitably get better, or at least change. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I get the sense that on some level, this is a song about easing into more mature forms of depression — you get older, you get some perspective on things, and then you can’t really rationalize these dramatic young emotions anymore, but you still want that purity of feeling, but all you can muster is this watered-down grown-up bullshit, and even though it’s more functional and reasonable, you feel a little bit cheated. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Cat Power “I Believe In You” – I hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have been so dismissive of Cat Power’s brunch album. I mean, it’s not her, it’s me — I mostly just want her to do one thing, and that thing is Moon Pix, basically: Stark, fragile ballads sung in a way that articulates undiluted pain, loneliness, shame, and love with such primal accuracy that when they connect, the feeling is overwhelming, almost unbearable. The Covers Record and You Are Free had these moments; The Greatest simply did not, because it mostly just kinda sounded like a Beth Orton album or something. Jukebox is another story, though. It doesn’t sound much like classic Cat — this Bob Dylan cover straight-up rocks, for example — and some of the tracks are duds, but when it clicks, it’s very potent stuff. She sounds like a woman who is just beginning to find her strength, and high on the pride that comes with finally getting one’s shit together. There’s still a lot of heartbreak and sorrow, but it is tempered by perspective, confidence, and faith. Above all other things, the Cat Power of Jukebox sounds thankful — for her life, for her art, for the singers, and for the songs that give her inspiration. Keeping that in mind, it doesn’t seem like much of an accident that one of those singers just happens to be the Cat Power of Moon Pix. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Evangelicals “Bellawood” – File under psychedelic psycho camp: Much of the song sounds as though its disturbed protagonist is being chased by a vicious, unrelenting gang of b-movie soundtracks from the ’50s and ’60s. He shakes them off during a quiet passage in the middle, but the over-the-top panic never goes away, it just gets muted by fearful self-reflection and crippling paranoia. Were it not for the band’s self-awareness and obvious sense of humor, this might be a bit too overblown, but they manage to hit the appropriate balance of terror and fun, just like a good horror movie. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Magik Markers “Empty Bottles” – The song is a direct descendant of Cat Power’s spare, rambling, heartbreaking piano ballads — “Colors and the Kids” is certainly the finest example — but Elisa Ambroglio’s persona is far less fragile, even when she sounds as though she’s about to break. There’s a lot of sentimentality, love, and intimacy here, but it’s guarded and careful, as though she can’t help but protect herself. Honestly, I don’t blame her. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Miss Kittin “Barefoot Tonight” – The title implies something soft, gentle, and demure, but the song itself is harsh, aggressive, and unapologetically confident. It’s essentially Miss Kittin psyching herself (and the audience) up for a show, and reestablishing her persona for listeners who may have drifted off in the years since the big Electroclash boom. In other words, it’s kinda sorta like her “Mama Said Knock You Out,” but with a swirling, wordless hook in place of a straightforward chorus. (Click here to buy it from Miss Kittin.)

Meanwhile, Over At Fair Game: Dead Meadow dropped by for a session and played songs from their new album.

Ssion “Heaven” – First off, I definitely think you could trick someone into believing that this is a Gwen Stefani demo or something; the voice and melodic style at the start isn’t that far off. Once the chorus kicks in, we’re in a different zone altogether — it’s an underdog’s anthem, full of bitter optimism and hunger for success and validation. They’re singing about the desired result of success, but the joy in the music comes from the work, the hustle, the grind. This is really about the terror and the thrill of putting yourself out there, and believing in yourself and what you do enough to fight through every indignity on the way to…who knows, maybe total failure, but as long as the people in the front are dancing, it’s okay. (Click here for the official Ssion site.)

Nimbus Coleman “Fourth Grader” – There’s a hint of agitation in Coleman’s trebly guitar arpeggios, but his singing is almost absurdly gentle and relaxed, to the point that his lyrics get a bit lost in the fog that results when the warmness of his voice comes into contact with the brisk, chilly tone of his arrangement. Well, at least until the song takes an unexpected turn towards the end, and the vibe shifts from very mild nervousness to something a bit more perky and free-wheeling. (Click here for the Nimbus Coleman website.)

The Magnetic Fields “The Nun’s Litany” – True to its name, the new Magnetic Fields record is full of distortion, but it rocks about as much as anything the group has released in the past ten years — a little bit, but not a lot. Stephin Merritt’s songs remain tight, small, and mannered, and the application of severe effects on the backing tracks (never the vocals) highlights the deliberately minor scale. It’s meant to sound a bit cheap and tossed-off, like a band of amateurs attempting to obscure their lack of chops with loads of feedback, or a bunch of kids turning up at Joe Meek’s studio to turn out a quick, reverb-soaked single. Many of the tunes play off the noise for cheap irony, but as per usual for Merritt, the easy gags dovetail into more complicated jokes and thematic motifs.

Merritt’s humor is distant and droll, but it’s never lacking in humanity, even when the laughs are at the expense of his characters. “The Nun’s Litany” manages a very delicate balance — the lyrics and seemingly earnest vocals by Claudia Gonson set up a pointed joke about the way a generation of girls seem overly eager to find validation in objectifying themselves (especially for financial gain), but the song is sensitive and fair enough to let us in on the character’s insecurities and rationale. By the end of the piece, you’re not so bothered by her immodest desire to enter the sex trade — this is not the work of a prudish mind — but you might be disappointed by the modesty of her ambitions. (Ha, it might not be a total coincidence that the cover of Distortion has the same color scheme as Ariel Levy‘s Female Chauvanist Pigs.) (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: R.I.P., Olga Sarantos.

Sian Alice Group “Larsen B” – Each chord in “Larsen B” seems like a single, delicate rain drop falling in slow motion. Even when the song picks up a bit, the moment still feels so small, so focused on detail. The rain falls harder and the puddles get deeper, but we’re still thinking about every little droplet that’s building up to a flood. The lyrics switch out the rain drops for tears, or years, but it’s the same idea: Every little thing adds up. (Click here to buy it from the Social Registry.)

Silje Nes “Dizzy Street” – Seriously, there could be no better title for this song than “Dizzy Street.” I just imagine some girl walking around in a quaint small town with a case of self-inflicted vertigo in an attempt to make the same old streets she’s been seeing for years look a little different. And hey, it works — it all looks totally new for a few moments, and then she falls over, and maybe she gets a bit sick. (Click here to buy it from Fat Cat.)

Meanwhile, on Fair Game: Maxi Geil & Playcolt were on the show and played a fantastic session that included what may be the definitive version of “Your Best Won’t Be Enough.” Highly recommended.

Dub Narcotic Sound System featuring Lois Maffeo “Ship To Shore” – Dub Narcotic produced many strong tracks in their day — at this point in time, their entire back catalog is a treasure trove of potential samples — but this single with Lois Maffeo stands as their most fully realized piece of music. Maffeo’s sweet, gently soulful voice provide the strongest melodic hooks in “Ship To Shore,” but the song is really all about the steady, melancholy click and throb of the rhythm section. The guitar and keyboard parts mostly provide color and texture, and are so subtly integrated into the arrangement that their presence is nearly subliminal, even when the synthesizer is providing a crucial melodic counterpoint to the lead vocal. (Click here to buy it from K Records.)

Meanwhile, over at Fair Game: Au Revoir Simone recorded a session that included a new arrangement of “Through The Backyards” and the previously unperformed song “Don’t See The Sorrow.”