Ponies in the Surf “Slow Down Sugar” – “Slow Down Sugar” is a wonderfully appropriate name for this song, but an even more accurate title would have been “Slowed Down, Sugared.” Camille McGregor’s voice is almost cartoonishly sweet and angelic, but it’s never so gorgeous as when it’s extended into an ethereal drone that merges with a lightly humming organ. Following a brief, gently clanging middle section, the song drifts to a halt for over a minute. It seems even slower than it actually is, but it’s absolutely mesmerizing and almost seems to set the entire world in slow motion. (Click here to buy it from Asaurus.)

These Are Powers “The South Angel” – The opening of the track sounds like a stream of clipped inanities set to a backdrop of motionless, muddied but still shrill noise, as though you’re somehow being forced to listen to a loop of a few seconds of an overheard conversation outside a rock club. However, the tension escalates and the tone takes a turn toward outright panic, and it seems to retroactively transform the opening bit into something that now sounds more like pleading and less like a girl excitedly trying to tell her friend about some new whatever. (Click here for the These Are Powers MySpace page.)

Planningtorock “Think That Thought (Stringed Up Version)” – I’m not usually a person who privileges acoustic instruments over synthesizers (it’s often the other way around), but this new string-based arrangement can’t help but to make the album version sound like a home demo. The album recording compensates for its thin fakey string sound with a pleasing backing vocal that answers and counters the lead, but it’s just nowhere near as elegant. Whereas the song had been a bit lost in a track that called attention to its artifice, the string arrangement doesn’t burden it with nearly as much context. In addition to the removal of the second vocal and its attendent responsive lyrics, there’s a shift in pronouns in the first verse that completely changes the meaning of the song. In the first version, she sings about trying to dig beyond her conscious mind to uncover what is truly motivating her, and recognizing the resulting echo chamber in her brain: “When I think about that thought, that thought thinks about me.” In this take, the lyric shifts ever so slightly outside of herself, as she attempts to predict and understand the thoughts of someone else while unable to shake off the tainted filter of her own perceptions. The song becomes much sweeter, and the low key pizzicato and breezy melodies echo that sentiment while also mimicing the fluid tangle of notions and motivations within a mind.

Another great thing about this arrangement is that in cutting out some clutter, it highlights what an amazing Led Zeppelin song this would have been. Seriously, just listen to this and think about how it would have sounded if performed by Houses of the Holy-era Led Zep. She comes a bit close to Robert Plant vocalization already, but the instrumental parts definitely seem like something Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones would have written around that time. (Click here to buy it from iTunes.)

Jumbling Towers “Beggars” – Since there are some obvious and well-known touchstones in this track — Matthew Friedberger’s playful yet seasick jauntiness; Walter Martin’s late night urban romanticism; Jack White’s most over-the-top faux-old timey vocals — there is some temptation to simply list off its components and leave it at that, but it all comes together to form something rather special and unique. There’s a wonderful economy of tone in this arrangement as it rations out its limited set of textures in a highly deliberate and effective manner, with the song passing through distinct sections as though they were rooms in the same house. It’s catchy in a fairly traditional sort of way, but it’s ultimately a mood piece focused more on the specific sound of its instruments, most especially the crisp, cool tone of the Rhodes keyboard. (Click here for the Jumbling Towers MySpace page.)

Chicks On Speed Records’ new Girlmonster compilation is a treasure trove of high quality, foward-thinking music by female artists new and old, and if you’ve been enjoying a fair chunk of what’s been on offer here over the past five years, there’s a good chance that you’ll quite like it given that I wish that I could write up a majority of its 60 tracks. A number of the artists featured have been on this site in the past — Le Tigre, Barbara Morgenstern, Rhythm King and Her Pals, Kevin Blechdom, Ana da Silva, Sir Alice, Chicks On Speed, Cobra Killer, Vivien Goldman, Client, Peaches, Boyskout, Erase Errata, The Slits, Delta 5, Planningtorock, Bjork, Gustav, LiliPUT — and it’s probable that many others will pop up here before too long.

Cobra Killer “Mr. Chang” – Apparently sung from the perspective of an airline representative informing a businessman that his luggage has been lost in transit, Cobra Killer turn out what may be their most charming and catchy tune to date. They affect the sing-song tone of a disconnected person cheerfully delivering bad news, but somehow it’s hard not to be on their side or feel too badly for “Mr. Chang” or “Mr. Scarface.”

Michaela Melián “Manifesto” – The title sort of gives away the tone of the lyrics, but only so much. This song is not particularly strident, but it is strong, serious, and patient, and plays out over a subtly arranged track that is extremely calm and collected without stifling the warmth and humanity under its mostly cool textures and Melián’s thick German accent. (I am sort of ridiculous because I did not realize that this is a Roxy Music cover, most likely because I just never really liked Roxy Music very much.) (Click here to buy it via Chicks On Speed Records’ Girlmonster site.)

Boyskout “You’re Not Around (Demo)” – “Kinky” is a highly relative word that gets thrown around quite a bit and as such can be something of a devalued linguistic currency, but there’s something in the drowsy, kittenish, matter of fact sound of Boyskout singer/guitarist Leslie Satterfield’s voice that makes me suspect that she’s not overstating anything in this song, especially when she qualifies it as something that would happen with her (pretty fantastic, judging by the lyrics of this song) lover long before any clothing was removed. It’s a song full of sweaty thoughts, and the sound of the music is perfectly matched to the lyric, falling somewhere between moody Pixies-ish surf punk and the slow sultry tone of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game.” (Click here for the official Boyskout site.)

Elsewhere: My review of the (totally, totally awful) Zach Braff/Paul Haggis team-up The Last Kiss is up on The Movie Binge.

Also Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site, and features mp3s from The Blood Brothers, Pony Up, and Georgia Anne Muldrow.

The Howling Hex “Hammer and Bluebird” – Neil Hagerty achieves a focused yet thoroughly zoned-out Zen sort of rock on Nightclub Version of the Eternal, and by that I don’t mean just on this song or a portion of the selections — I’m talking about the entire seven track, 52 minute duration. The album, which is essentially a collection of lengthy grooves, zonked chants, and lateral jams, sounds as though it was recorded in a fugue state. On one hand, it’s one of the more self-indulgent records of Hagerty’s career, but it’s also one of the most natural and free, with its zombie vocals and matter-of-fact noodling seeming like the product of a man who has plugged his unconscious mind directly into the soundboard. (Click here to buy it from Drag City.)

Excepter “The ‘Rock’ Stepper” – If you can imagine a version of Girls Against Boys (oh yes, remember when you could say “GVSB” in indie circles and not mean Gorilla Vs. Bear?) that had never flamed out with that really lame faux-industrial album that they recorded for Geffen, and kept going with the creepy druggy sex vibe of House of GVSB , it would probably sound a hell of a lot like this, especially if none of the band’s members slept at any point between 1998 and right now. This isn’t the most representative track in the Excepter catalog, but part of the beauty of it, and especially this year’s Alternation LP, is that there doesn’t really seem to be one in spite of their fairly distinct aesthetic overall. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Marit Larsen “The Sinking Game” – On a record that overflows with heart and grace, “The Sinking Game” sneaks in toward the end and steals the show. It’s not tremendously obvious, but amidst ten other songs with hooks that put to shame virtually everyone else in pop music in 2006, this is the number that sticks in my head through the day and the one that I find playing in my head some mornings, whether I had heard it recently or not. It’s not a song about passively falling in love so much as actively jumping down into it, and it sounds just as terrifying and exhilirating as it ought to be, especially as the start to every chorus feels like an emotional swan dive. It’s not for nothing that the instrumental bridge evokes the sensation of gliding on moonlit air! (Click here to buy it via the official Marit Larsen site.)

Scritti Politti “After Six” – Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside is British pop’s switcheroo king, a songwriter who seems to derive endless pleasure from subverting the expectations of his audience with extremely meta tunes that smuggle ironic reversals and sharp critical theory into what would otherwise come across as some of the most innocuous music available anywhere. The man is fascinated by black music — mainly gospel, soul, and rap — but he can’t help but sound like one of the whitest men on the planet, especially when his sweet cooing voice and crisp production aesthetic sounds like the perfect aural expression of freshly laundered hotel bed sheets spread out on an infinite horizon. “After Six” is a variation on one of Gartside’s favorite tricks — the atheistic gospel tune — but there’s something more to this one, even if in comparison to its predecessors it is rather simple and brief. As in the past, he finds great beauty and pleasure in the expression of faith, but just can’t find it within himself, and so he haggles with no one in particular over what he can and can’t get behind. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

In Flagranti “Genital Blue Room” – Following a brief intro tune, In Flagranti begin their brilliant debut LP with a track that immediately asserts control over your central nervous system, and obstensibly casts the listener as an object of desire caught between the first-person demands of the lead vocal and a third party’s voyeuristic urging for total submission. All of In Flagranti’s exotic neo-disco tracks are fetishistic in content as well as in form, resulting in a 17 track blur of signifiers that are meant to be more exciting than what is being signified. The seduction informs the act, and the implication of the sound is crucial to its physical function. (Click here to buy it via Codek’s In Flagranti site.)

Holiday On Strings “Touch The Tiger” – The singer’s voice has the weary “how could this night possibly get any worse” tone of Lou Barlow, but the stark, atmospheric track is distinctly un-Sebadoh. True, he sounds like he’s lost and confused in an environment of creepy decadence, and there’s a sense of impending doom that never lets up, not even in the lingering acoustic outro, but it doesn’t sound as though he’s in for a bad time. In fact, it seems like this definitely could be the most exciting and romantic (in any sense of the word) night of his life, even if it turns out to be something that he regrets. (Click here to buy it via the Holiday For Strings official site.)

Elsewhere: Eric Harvey has a few things to say about music blogs.

Scissor Sisters “Paul McCartney” – Scissor Sisters fans hoping for more “Comfortably Numb” and “Filthy/Gorgeous”-style full-on disco numbers will very likely be let down by Ta-Dah, an album largely focused on 70s-style radio pop in the vein of “Laura” and “Take Your Mama.” (My taste errs toward the latter, so I’m in luck. Lots and lots of luck.) “Paul McCartney” sits in the middle of the record, and splits the difference between the two sides of the SS aesthetic by marrying its blue-eyed soul tune to a bouncey groove that sounds like the audio equivalent of the color chartreuse. Much like CSS’s “Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex,” it’s a song about loving music that closely replicates the thrills of the sort of songs that it celebrates, as well as the excited rush of fandom. Whereas CSS’s Lovefoxxx attempts to verbalize the ineffable and ends up with a strange translation that somehow gets it exactly right, Jake Shears is more analytical, asking questions he knows can’t be answered, and expressing a profound love that is simultaneously returned and unrequited. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: Troubled Diva has a great song-by-song review of Ta Dah.

Excerpt from WFMU’s Aircheck – Morrissey fans on KROQ circa 1990 – This recording is taken from the most recent episode of WFMU’s radio anthology series Aircheck, and was apparently also released as an EP bonus track back in the early ’90s. As part of some sort of promotion, the famed Los Angeles radio station KROQ had Morrissey fans call in to record messages that would be sent along to the man himself. This eight minute clip is only a small sampling, but it is fascinating to hear whether you’re a fan of Morrissey or not if just because the passion and gratitude that comes through in these messages is just so overwhelming, beautiful, and a little bit funny. My favorites are definitely the fast-talking, super-enthusiastic girls who sound as though they may burst into tears at any moment, but there’s also a certain charm to the guys who spout off trivia as an awkward display of their love and dedication. (Click here to buy it as a bonus track on the Live At KROQ ep from Amazon.)

Erase Errata @ Irving Plaza 9/13/2006
Cruising / Rider / Another Genius Idea From Our Government / Hotel Suicide / (brief song that I did not recognize) / Dust / Beacon / Giant Hans / He Wants What’s Mine / Retreat! The Most Familiar / Wasteland (In A…) / Tax Dollar

Erase Errata “Another Genius Idea From Our Government” – I’m not usually so thrilled with shows that pull their setlist almost entirely from an act’s most recent record, but in the case of this Erase Errata set, it was both perfect and sort of necessary. Without the presence of Sarah Jaffe, the emphasis of their music has changed considerably without compromising the basic identity of the band. I don’t mean this to be a knock on Jaffe or their previous recordings, but Nightlife is the sound of a band that has finally found its focus, and that carried over into their performance last night. With Jaffe, their music had a constant nervous twitch that shook the songs in place, whereas the current incarnation of the group specialize in capturing a feeling of propulsion through space. “Another Genius Idea From Our Government” in particular begins with a few moments of tension before shooting the remainder of the song foward like a poisoned dart at its intended target. (Have a guess as to who that might be.) The trio were as tight as I had hoped they would be, and filled lulls between selections by linking outros and intros rather than halting for breaks. The group’s demeanor on stage is a bit hard to pin down — they are friendly and unpretentious but not at all warm, and often come across as people lost in concentration even though they play so casually that it makes their taut grooves, sharp hooks, and inspired noise seem easy. (Click here to buy it from Buy Olympia.)

The Gossip “Standing in the Way of Control” – My memory is a bit fuzzy on this, but I have not seen the Gossip play since rather early in their career when they were opening for Sleater-Kinney and had more of a scuzzy garage rock thing going on. They were fun and compelling back then, but they’ve grown into something much better. Though I’m not crazy about the explosion in rock duos over the course of the past ten years (I understand the interpersonal and economic reasons for this, but more often than not I think it leads to a poverty of texture and dynamics in the music), but Brace Paine has a talent for implying a full sound with only his bass or guitar, and Beth Ditto’s strong, confident voice is more than enough to color in the rest of the compositions. The best songs in their set were the intense dance numbers from their latest record, as well as an irony-free cover of Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody” with backing vocals by Erase Errata’s Jenny Hoyston. (Click here to buy it from Buy Olympia.)

Mika Miko “Business Cats” – Mika Miko seemed shy and nervous on stage, but in the sweetest, more ingratiating way possible. Between bursts of quick, shouty punk tunes largely sung via a red courtesy phone, the girls in the band occasionally addressed the audience with an obviously anxious and grateful tone, but spoke so quickly that every apparent “thank you” was almost entirely unintelligable. Though only a few of their songs were fully formed, the group was long on charm and showed great promise. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if they eventually evolve into something quite good, just as Erase Errata and The Gossip have over the past half-decade or so. (Click here to buy it from Buy Olympia.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site and includes songs from Minimum Chips, Soulwax, and Viva l’American Death Ray Music.

James Kochalka Superstar “Britney’s Silver Can” – There is something so strangely iconic and resonant about the relationship and subsequent break-up of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, and even four years down the line, it dominates the way most of us interpret their highly publicized lives. Since celebrity gossip is really just an extension of dishing about your classmates in school, it was almost too perfect when the two were together, a perfect pop approximation of the post popular boy and girl at school hooking up and becoming something like the homecoming king and queen of pop culture for a few years. Justin was (and remains) douchey and doofy, but he is possessed of a charm that makes it easy to forgive even his most embarrassing mis-steps, and Britney is at once warm, simple, shrewd, and unknowable. They both evoke the sort of charismatic amiability of “popular” people, but also the cold calculation involved in currying such favor and maintaining their position of social power, which is alienating but also vaguely sympathetic if you recognize the emotional cost of being a public figure of such magnitude.

In this song from his latest album, full-time cartoonist and part-time songwriter James Kochalka presents his sympathetic, fannish fantasy vision of a post-break-up Britney who stumbles through her life despondently until settling into her current state of oblivion. Before the song breaks into its lengthy, majestic chorus, Kochalka’s version of Britney makes a lonely vow to become “her own best friend” before sadly acknowledging that the only person who can ever truly understand her is Justin Timberlake, Justin Timberlake, Justin Timberlaaaaaake! (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Regina Spektor “Edit” – Fragile and tense, but with moments of courage and grace, this subtle and beautifully composed track perfectly captures the feeling of confronting an extremely sensitive and volatile person, all the while editing and re-editing your words in your head before expressing them out loud. Spektor doesn’t hate the person she’s cornering, and obviously isn’t looking to burn any bridges, but that doesn’t mean she’s unwilling to dig at this person’s confidence. She will not deny this person’s talent, and so she cuts deep into their insecurity with the icy critique “you can write, but you can’t edit,” a line that ought to injure the pride of most any artist. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My review of The Covenant is up on The Movie Binge.

Holy Hail “Dig My Grave With The Songs I’ve Sung” – There’s a tension in this song, this audible push and pull between what this great tune would be in the hands of other artists, and how it is performed by the people who wrote it. Holy Hail’s tiny voices and relatively anemic playing renders in miniature a song that seems built for hugeness and passion, and it’s hard to tell whether this is simply the band performing to the fullest of their potential, or the result of timid bet-hedging. I believe that they err on the side of the former, and that they are getting by on their considerable cuteness and charm when even they know the song could use more power. There’s some cleverness in scaling the song down and avoiding the obvious, and in most ways it works, as their reading lends some interesting subtext to the recording. It sounds like children dressing up in their parents’ clothing; this grasp for a maturity that’s just out of reach. (Click here for the official Holy Hail site.)

Elsewhere: My review of Andrew Bujalski’s Mutual Appreciation is up on The Movie Binge. I’m not sure if it is totally clear in the review how much I really, really like the film, but you should know that I do.

Los Super Elegantes “Where Is The Whiskey?” – I like Los Super Elegantes quite a bit – I’ve written about them twice here, and have included them in my ASAP column and in some DJ sets that I’ve done in the past year. They are a clever, interesting pop group and so it didn’t take much to convince me to see them play a free show yesterday, especially when it was early enough that I could make it home in time for the season premiere of The Wire. Unfortunately, the band happened to be playing at one of the most subtly icky and strangely uncomfortable venues that I have ever visited. There was something rather unsettling about the scene at the Starbucks Salon, and it’s difficult to express why that is without coming across as a total misanthrope. Everything about the place – a “nomadic interactive coffeehouse, gallery, and performance venue” – felt unreal and fake, as though the project was to create in real life an environment that mimicked the sort of venues you would see on tv crossed with the most ambitious fantasies of an earnest youth marketer. Imagine the coffeehouse from Friends mixed with The Bronze from Buffy, but designed with the “urban lifestyle” aesthetic of The Fader. Everyone in the place seemed as though they were cast, leaving me to feel as though I’d stumbled onto a set.

Not to put down any of the (I’m sure quite lovely) people in attendance, but to give you an idea of the general vibe in the room, you should imagine one of those McDonalds ads featuring generic affluent multi-cultural “hipsters.” All of the archetypes were present, including the skinny white guy with perfect cheekbones and blonde dreadlocks. There’s nothing very objectionable about these people, and the intention of presenting art and music is fine and admirable at face value, but it’s hard to shake off the creeping feeling that this was in fact the prototype of a future in which Starbucks and other like-minded companies could successfully colonize the live music market with thousands of bland approximations of small clubs in every desirable marketplace in the country. A lot of my discomfort in this venue is tied to feeling insecure in the presence of attractive, obviously wealthy Soho people, but there certainly is something to fear in this sort of aggressive corporate expansion into the arts. If this event yields a packed house in the middle of a city overflowing with galleries and live music, just how enthusiastically would it be embraced in a place with far fewer options? (Click here for Los Super Elegantes’ official site.)

Irwin Chusid presents Hello, Autumn’s “Never Getting Married” and Robert Alberg’s “I Been Single All My Life” on WFMU, 9/6/2006 – Between 1997 and 2002, Irwin Chusid and Michelle Boulé hosted Incorrect Music, a weekly program on WFMU in which they played an hour of what is commonly known as “outsider music.” The name of the show was quite diplomatic in that it didn’t quite condemn the work being presented so much as acknowledge that the oddball obscurities did not conform to anyone’s ideas of what music should be – mainstream, avant garde, or otherwise.

Much of the music aired on the show (some of which has since been featured in Chusid’s book Songs in the Key of Z and its attendant cd anthologies) is astounding, compelling stuff; documents of artists who seem to completely lack the sort of self-consciousness that holds most people back from either revealing too many embarassing aspects of their personal life in song, or creating music that ignores the very basics of musical composition and performance out of incompetence and/or a skewed vision. Incorrect Music was the show that got me into WFMU as a teenager, and its influence is still rippling through the world. Its aesthetic is gradually sinking into the margins of mainstream culture, most notably in the cult success of the Langley Schools Music Project reissue, which simply would not exist without the efforts of Mr. Chusid.

Though the Incorrect Music program is gone, Chusid has not completely abandoned the world of “outsider” music, choosing instead to fold the sort of tunes that would have been earmarked for IM into his regular weekly show on WFMU, where they sit in the context of a lot of relatively normal recordings. In this segment from Wednesday afternoon’s show, he plays a fairly recent song by a young woman known as Hello, Autumn whose work he sort of accurately describes as sounding “like Cat Power fed through the Jandek wringer,” though in some ways it’s probably more fascinating for being like the lyrical intent of early Liz Phair warped by the sort of whiney entitlement fostered by Sex And The City reruns and bad self-help books. In its way, it is not thematically far removed from a lot of contemporary pop sung by young women – she’s striving for empowerment and social leverage, but happens to be lacking in status, sexual charisma, and good fortune. It’s a bit hard to get through the song, but it’s undeniably fascinating in its apparent lack of self-awareness and total commitment to expressing the sort of sentiment that is often best kept to oneself if just because it is so unflattering and self-defeating. If nothing at all, recording this track and putting it out there for public consumption is evidence of some kind of bravery.

Chusid follows up the Hello, Autumn cut with a somewhat unnerving track by a troubled man named Robert Alberg that he suggests is the musical, emotional and thematic mate to her “Never Getting Married.” He’s exactly right. They seem to answer each other like a bizarre, bleak mating call that goes unheard by either. Though Alberg sounds totally insane and is in fact locked away for producing the bio-chemical weapon ricin at his home in Washington state, hearing the recordings back to back makes you want to set the two songs up on a blind date. Surely for every terminally lonely song in the world, there is another that it ought to be paired up with, if just for companionship if not a full-on love connection. However, since it’s very clear that Hello, Autumn’s song has sort of convinced itself that it’s got it going on, it may be holding out for some dreamy Conor Oberst tune, and poor ol’ Robert Alberg will continue to be single for all his life. (Click here for more music by Hello, Autumn.)

Beyoncé “Get Me Bodied” – There are many probable factors that can help to explain why Beyoncé Knowles is not widely recognized as being among the most brilliant and creative songwriters of her generation – her gender, age, race, genre, fame/success, the fact that her work is primarily collaborative – but it’s unfair, condescending, and indicative of obnoxious ingrained preconceptions about songwriting. From the beginning of Destiny’s Child on up through “Crazy In Love” and “Check On It,” Knowles has racked up an impressive catalog of songs (many of them smash hits) that combine foward-thinking arrangements, fierce vocalization, and lyrics that frankly navigate the dynamics of heterosexual relationships in the context of late capitalism. A large number of her best songs sound like contract negotiations, and it’s not meant to be ironic, it’s just how many of us live now, and the remainder of her catalog tends to deal with the ways we suffer or thrive when we treat love and sex like deals to be brokered. Knowles’ lyrics are especially fascinating given the fact that she’s most definitely not coming from a leftist position, and so her ambivalent, occasionally highly contradictory or hypocritical stances on materialism, ambition, and feminism end up mirroring the conflicts of an enormous number of American women. Intentionally or not, Knowles’ music portrays the personal effects of being a hard working, ambitious person in a culture with irrational priorities.

B-Day, her strongest and most thematically consistent album to date, finds Knowles at an inevitable low ebb, essentially the point when she realizes that living life according to a meticulous plan that looks great on paper is not exactly ideal in practice. If you read the record as a narrative, the arc is clear – she becomes serious with a man who matches her drive and high end taste (one of the few moments of emotional prosperity on B-Day comes in a duet with Jay-Z in which they offer to “upgrade” one another with expensive makeovers as part of their courtship, and though it’s well-meaning and somewhat enthusiastic, the track seems cold and stiff as though the music is fully aware that this is more of a business transaction than an emotional exchange), but he eventually cheats on her and she has to spend the rest of the record attempting to stay strong and reconstruct her self-esteem in spite of intense doubt and resentment. We’ve seen this story before, but Knowles’ execution is compelling. Her songs convey bitterness, paranoia, confusion, rage, vulnerability, ego, and desperation, often in subtle combinations that avoid simplistic broad strokes, even when the music is as bold and harsh as on the current single “Ring The Alarm.”

In context, “Get Me Bodied” is the lull before the storm, the period of avoidance and denial before the bottom drops out. She goes out for a night of dancing, approaching the entire scenario with the calculation of a military strike, and seeks to get away from her problems on the dance floor while pleading “I wanna be myself tonight” as though she’s asking herself for permission to cut loose. As the beats jump and pop, Beyoncé carries the minimal arrangement with her vocals, which shout, soar, swoop, and reach a peak in its final third that ranks among the most exciting sections of any song that I’ve heard in 2006. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site and it features selections from J Dilla, First Nation, and Jandek.

Scala and Kolacny Brothers “Heartbeats” – It’s not much of a secret that I believe The Knife’s “Heartbeats” to be the single greatest song of this decade to date, and so it genuinely warms my heart to hear new versions of it if just because it just brings the song that much closer to becoming the standard that it ought to be, and that even the least competent covers and remixes cannot drown out its essential beauty. Long term readers may remember the Scala choir for their gorgeous, heart-melting choral rendition of the Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself,” and they apply the same basic arrangement to this song. The piano parts more closely echo the hushed guitar of José González’s version, but the vocals err on the side of The Knife’s complicated and ethereal blend of melancholy and joy rather than González’s less nuanced sad sackery. It’s still not quite as sublime as The Knife’s original, but this is nevertheless an astonishing and incredibly beautiful recording. (Click here to buy it directly from the group.)

The following three songs are the centerpiece of a mix cd that I compiled over the course of the weekend. I’m a bit out of practice when it comes to creating mixes. I used to make them for people all the time, but this site has generally replaced/upgraded/expanded my impulse to select and share songs with people, and I now reserve carefully sequenced mix making for special occasions, and for special people. Don’t even bother to ask what the full tracklisting for the mix is, or for your own copy — though it’s not designed as one of those “every lyric is a secret code from me to you” things (in fact, I purposefully avoided that), it is intended to be at least somewhat intimate and private.

I’m rather pleased with this particular run of songs, partially because I think that in the context of the full sequence (just slightly over 60 minutes; I resisted the urge to totally fill the cd, which is very demanding of the listener’s time, but also a very common indulgence that I wanted to dodge in favor of a more deliberate form), the three songs form a bridge from one half of the set to the other, and take full advantage of the nature of the cd medium as opposed to aping the convention of vinyl/cassette side division.

In a way, I was mimicing the internal logic of Wowee Zowee, which is the only album in the Pavement/Malkmus catalog not to be obviously sequenced as an even set of sides. In its vinyl incarnation, Wowee Zowee is split over three sides, with side d left blank. The way the songs are divided over the sides do not make the same obvious, intuitive sense as the other LPs in Malkmus’ discography, and it’s not much more graceful on the cassette edition of the album, which breaks the sequence in two between “Best Friend’s Arm” and “Grave Architecture.” On cd, the record makes a great deal more sense. Rather than follow the conventional wisdom of George Martin and The Beatles (album sides should begin and end with key selections, weaker tracks should be shuffled between highlights) or the record industry (the most obviously likeable songs should be frontloaded and the lead single should be either the first or third song on the first side), Wowee Zowee places its emphasis on its sprawling center. If any point can be gleaned from the album at all, it may be in finding the beauty and pleasures of life’s lengthy, often mundane middle act.

Contrary to the claim of its initial detractors, Wowee Zowee is by no means shapeless. It has a brilliant, if fairly unconventional opening, and progresses toward dramatic heights in its final third (“Fight This Generation” –> “Kennel District” –> “Pueblo”) before reaching its climax (“OhhhmyyyyyygaaaaahdIcan’tbelieveI’mstillgoing!!!!”), and ends with a brief epilogue in the form of “Western Homes,” which is horribly underrated and totally necessary as a light-hearted postscript to the unhinged grand finale of “Half A Canyon.” Without the artificial structure of the vinyl lp, Wowee Zowee‘s flow is more cinematic, and that’s part of its nearly infinite charm.

Brush “To Reiko” – “To Reiko” is among the oldest songs in the running order of the mix cd, but the newest song to me, since I acquired Brush’s hopelessly obscure, newly reissued album at the end of last week. Its drowsy bass and easygoing, moderately melancholy keyboards were an ideal match to the rainy, quiet mood of this past Saturday. In spite of the incessant rain, it was sort of a perfect day, with a slow, gentle pace and cool, brisk air that signalled the imminent arrival of the autumn. At least for me, it was the sort of day that felt exactly right in its muted tone and lazy rhythm. I felt just a bit sleepy through most of the afternoon, but it wasn’t anything like fatigue so much as the sweet luxury of feeling as though I could drift off into a deep sleep at any moment, and it wouldn’t matter. (Click here to buy it from Ear Rational.)

Unrest “West Coast Love Affair” – I’ve listened to “West Coast Love Affair” at least twenty times over the course of this weekend, and I’m not even sure why. Somehow, some way I was inspired to consider this track when I composed the first draft of the mix on Friday afternoon, and it ended up becoming the center of the disc as well as the track that set the tone for every revision. The composition carries on the gentle, breezy tone of “To Reiko,” but there’s something deeper and darker in it. It’s shifty and moody, and seems to be transparently deceitful, as though we’re meant to read the whispered chorus as a hollow promise that the singer knows he will break, even if he doesn’t really want to. The song can’t make eye contact with you or anyone else, but you try to lock into its gaze regardless because it is just so beautiful and seductive. (Out of print, but there are definitely old copies of Perfect Teeth floating around, so look around. I assume that Teenbeat will be reissuing the album before too long, as they did with Imperial F.F.R.R.)

Royal Trux “Stop” – “Stop” starts slow but picks up the pace from the relative stillness of the previous two cuts, and serves as a crucial turning point for the rest of the disc. “To Reiko” seems adrift, and “West Coast Love Affair” is in a circular holding pattern, but “Stop” gently shuffles foward with a casual, cautious optimism. Don’t let the title mislead you, it’s not a song about the end of anything. It seems rather clear to me that it’s about making your way through a transition, both lyrically, and musically. Even if that doesn’t work for you, God help your soul if you can’t appreciate that brief guitar solo, with its warm notes and cool tone, and the way that it sounds as though it’s this especially touching and revelatory snippet of music that you’re accidentally overhearing from a neighbor’s room down the hall. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

2005 / 2004 / 2003 / 2002

8:00 The show begins with an overabundance of light piercing the New York City skyline. I thought that Tri-State Toyota was getting a jump on their Labor Day sales event, but as it turns out it’s just Jay-Z illuminated by dozens of spotlights powered by ten billion joules of energy and fueled entirely by his ego.

8:01 If sexy = singing as though you’ve just been kicked in the balls, looking like a skinhead stockbroker, and bringing out a chunky black guy dressed up as an undertaker, then Justin Timberlake has successfully brought it back.

8:08 Jack Black, in an outfit obviously designed by Kayne from Project Runway, is already on “silly rock song” autopilot less than ten minutes into this thing.

8:13 Black opts for plan B: Lou Reed performs “White Light/White Heat” with Jack White and The Raconteurs. The song is cruel, as it tempts poor ol’ Fergie to run out and score some meth in Bushwick.

8:15 Lil Kim thanks a number of people for “holding her down” while she was in jail, but unfortunately none of them was a stylist.

8:17 Look at all the cobras! I knew it, MTV are nothing but a bunch of Cobra sympathizers. The statuettes? Figurines of Destro.

8:25 Ciara and Andre 3000, who was once a rapper back in the 90s, present the best Hip Hop award to Black Eyed Peas for “My Humps.”

8:29 Shakira shakes her incredibly truthful hips, and the cobras fall under her spell. She is, if you will, the Cobra Commander.

8:32 Wyclef must wish that there was an MTV award analogue to “best supporting actor.” He’s the Phillip Seymour Hoffman of pop.

8:34 The cast of Jackass have filmed a touching PSA speaking out against the usage of homoerotic torture in Iraq.

8:36 Jack White jams a bit as though he’s G.E. Smith on a rerun of SNL from the early 90s.

8:42 We know that the guy on the left is 50 Cent because he has the number 50 written out on his chest with dimes. (Fiddy has trouble with currency.)

8:45 Lil Jon, arriving just in time from four zeitgeists ago, is here to introduce Ludacris and Pharrell.

8:57 Kyle Gass is part of Jack Black’s rider. You just have to deal with it.

8:59 Jessica Simpson is here! Let’s make rack jokes!

9:01 Judging by the nominated songs, Best Dance Video is the category that is apparently the easiest to get into bed.

9:02 The Pussycat Dolls give Snoop Dogg a shout out from the stage, and he responds with a look suggesting that performing on their single was like getting married in Vegas. You can see him trying to mentally erase himself from that video, but you know that he will be doing the walk of shame through Radio City for the rest of the night.

9:06 These OK Go guys suck. They aren’t even bothering to lip synch! They can’t even stay on their treadmills. They’re never going to burn any carbs like this.

9:13 The Jackass guys are here to warn us all of the devastating effects of red tide on the indigenous shellfish population.

9:16 Paris Hilton, who is apparently in no mood to lip synch any of her own songs, is here to introduce the All-American Rejects. I guess that this music is some kind of emo, but I’m not sure, and it barely even matters. They definitely spent more time on designing their logo than writing their song.

9:19 Nick Lachey, the Milhouse’s Dad of pop, is here to present Best Pop Video with a talking skeleton coated in paraffin.

9:20 Pink wins, and as she makes her acceptance speech it is difficult to tell whether she is channeling Courtney Love, Anna Nicole Smith, or Mike Tyson.

9:28 Wait, has anyone ever seen Vincent from Project Runway and MTV News’ John Norris in the same place?

9:29 Oh come on, who the hell would even turn on Brendan Benson’s microphone? Jack White is far too nice to his friends.

9:30 Snoop Dog, desperate to earn back some credibility after that Pussycats Dolls debacle, comes out with a gin and juice in an attempt to reminds us of one of the more respectable singles in his discography.

9:34 BEYONCE DESCENDS!

9:37 Beyonce is accosted by fashion police in riot gear who are apparently busting her for breaking a New York state law prohibiting back up dancers from wearing trenchcoats while cage dancing.

9:45 Diddy needs to change it up. He’s getting too complacent in his whole shtick. That’s a very serious comment, by the way.

9:51 Jack Black hasn’t even bothered to change his outfit in an hour. I guess they didn’t bother to prepare multiple ill-fitting suits for him to wear.

9:52 Jared Leto is just making me shudder with every word that he utters.

10:03 Fort Minor (aka a guy from Linkin Park) just won for Best Ringtone and I feel a bit disconcerted, as though they are running a clip from next year’s show.

10:05 Whoa! The bass player from Fall Out Boy just let the lead singer speak on camera!

10:06 Hey, Panic! At The Disco have seen some Tim Burton movies.

10:10 Fergie and the little girl from Little Miss Sunshine grind awkwardly for a few moments, and then present Best New Artist to Avenged Sevenfold, who are going to have a great story to tell the rest of their World of Warcraft guild this weekend.

10:20 How is it that Jack White is so great with Meg, but so awful with The Raconteurs? The man can apparently only thrive within strict limitations.

10:21 Wow, this Britney and K-Fed pilot looks great! That’s going to be on Fox, right?

10:23 Beyonce wins for “Check On It,” which is probably the single best song in this broadcast thus far, including “White Light/White Heat.”

10:25 Kanye West presents the Video Vanguard award to Hype Williams. I appreciate this choice, since his videos are arguably more crucial to the evolution of MTV’s visual aesthetic than the music of the artists he filmed.

10:29 Some iconic Williams videos are reenacted on stage, including Missy Elliott’s “The Rain.” Yes, this means Missy is back in that weird shiny garbage bag suit! She’s riding around in a miniature Escalade, but it stalls out and she’s pushed along to the edge of the stage.

10:32 Be honest. You didn’t expect Hype Williams to look like that, did you?

10:34 Why didn’t they just have Sarah Silverman host this thing? This is her third bit, and she’s been much better than Jack Black, who is totally phoning it in. This isn’t to say that she’s been incredibly funny, it’s just that she’s at least bringing her A game, such as it is.

10:42 Hey, Xtina! What are you gonna sing? Oh, not one of the good ones? Is this “Send In The Clowns”? Oh, I see. The boring, overwrought adult contemporary power ballad from the second disc. Really? Well, maybe another time. At least the dress is nice, dear.

10:47 Lou Reed is still here? He looks like he might be Pink’s pimp. He says that he wants to see more rock and roll on MTV, but I’m not sure if he counts shitty emo bands as rock since he seems deeply mortified when the winner of the Best Rock award (or, judging by the nominated clips, Best Straight Dudes With Mascara), AFI, gleefully acknowledge his presence on stage with them in their acceptance speech.

10:52 The guy from ZZ Top? Really?

11:01 Jack Black, I like you, but you need new jokes, man. Justin Timberlake assembling furniture in JB’s dressing room was pretty funny, though.

11:04 The Jackass guys are back with another PSA urging young men to examine their friends for testi

cular cancer.

11:05 If I was in Fall Out Boy, I’d be realllllly worried about going up to accept an award from the deranged fratboys of Jackass.

11:06 Yeah, my instincts were right on about that. Man, the bass player of Fall Out Boy just can’t stomach his leader singer at all, can he?

11:08 Al Gore’s looking a bit goth. He’s just doing a bunch of jokes about gas or something.

11:16 Yeah, that was Jim Jarmusch with the Raconteurs.

11:17 Wow, whoever designed J. Lo’s outfit is totally getting kicked off Project Runway this week.

11:19 Panic! At The Disco win Best Video of the Year, but some black dude called Six grabbed the mic and plugged something or other. It’s hard to care, though. These guys kids are just so dull.

11:22 Axl Rose, looking like Richard Branson in cornrows, screeches an expletive and introduces The Killers. But the thing is, he seems more like a guy who kinda looks like Axl than the guy who used to do snake dances and whatnot. Who are you now, Axl?

11:23 What’s with the Freddie Mercury look, Brandon Flowers? Are you trying to say something?

11:24 Something about your sexuality?

11:25 It’s okay, dude, you can tell us, and your drummer, who looks like Jason Lee on My Name Is Earl.

11:28 Mercifully, it finally ends.

Written with Todd Serencha of The Face Knife.

Masta Killa with GZA and Inspectah Deck “Street Corner” – Wu-Tang albums are never quite complete without a bleak street ballad in the mode of “Can It Be All So Simple?,” and this is the requisite number on perennial Wu-underdog Masta Killa’s second record. Masta Killa is a fine MC, but even on his own records, he’s reserved and understated. He always seems severe and focused, dropping slow, sharply enunciated lyrics that often eschew persona in favor of cerebral meditations, and emphasize subtle internal rhythms rather than straight rhymes. On this track, he’s paired up with the two MCs in the Clan who most obviously compliment his style — his mentor, the GZA, and the increasingly rugged-sounding Inspectah Deck, who turns in one of his best verses in years. Following a quote that trails off on the suggestion that a revolution is not coming, and that “the world is just going to drive on and on,” Deck begins his verse dreaming of going down in a blaze of glory fighting for a revolution that sounds more like a bloody end point before moving on to describe his life in a world that just keeps moving, and changes only in barely perceptable increments because in fact, a true revolution is a maddeningly slow, ongoing process. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Elsewhere: My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site. This week: Faunts, Bardo Pond, and The Pipettes.

Also: A very high quality recording (in spite of some mysterious fading midway through “Half A Canyon”) of a Wowee Zowee-era Pavement show is available in its entirety on Rbally.

The Rapture “Pieces of the People We Love” – The Rapture’s breakthrough album Echoes was dominated by a visceral sensation of desperation and panic which, in combination with the music’s strong house and disco influences, yielded a sound that closely approximated the inner workings of a neurotic introvert attempting to break free of their fears and become a dancing, romancing, fully functional party person. The long-delayed follow-up to that record is not nearly as full of angst, though its extroversion still seems forced, though not even remotely insincere. Part of the Rapture’s appeal, especially back in 2002/2003, came from the fact that they were quiet indie boys who were willfully surrendering to dance music, and the subtext of the album mirrored exactly what was going on with many indie-centric critics and fans at the time.

Pieces of the People We Love is a generally positive, upbeat set of songs, but its most interesting moments come when the group seems to be surveying a post-Echoes indie landscape packed with bored, arms-crossed fans with bad haircuts watching shitty “punk-funk” bands and wondering if they ever really made a difference at all. They initially come off like overbearing Dance Commanders on the brilliant “Whoo! Alright Yeah…Uh Huh,” but by the time the song reaches its singalong breakdown and “I used to think life was a bitter pill, but it’s a grand old time” postscript, it’s clear that they are only nagging you to get out there and live it up because they really, really care about you. The Motown-biting title track reinforces the impression that they’re all about the love; that they weren’t joking around when Luke Jenner was pleading “I need your love!,” but there’s something less needy in the song and on the album as a whole. It’s not quite confidence, but perhaps the realization that they aren’t going to wither and die alone and unloved if their short term gambits do not work out in their favor. (Click here to pre-order it from Insound, who have it on sale for $7.99.)

Elsewhere: My review of the Outkast film Idlewild is up on The Movie Binge.

Miho Hatori “Ecdysis” – Video treatment: At the start of the clip, Miho Hatori buries a bag of candies, but when they are put in the soil, a colorful stalk pops up from the ground. As the churning bassline enters the mix, the radiant, pastel-hued stalk grows higher and higher. At first, she goes about her business, but is distracted by its presence — she can see it everywhere she goes in her town. She decides to climb it, and as she does, she sees her home eventually disappear beneath her as she scales up the stalk and into the stratosphere. We see beautiful and strange things in the clouds, and eventually she leaves the earth behind, and travels through the cosmos on the stalk, science be damned! Right around the 3:34 mark, she reaches her final destination, a glorious city that appears to be entirely composed of an organic chitinous substance on a planet with a brilliant lavendar sky. (Click here to buy it on import from Amazon.)

NEU! “Für Immer” – NEU!’s “motorik” songs capture in song the feeling of passing through time and space, and hurtling at great speed toward an endless horizon. It is some of the most optimistic and peaceful music that I have ever heard; conveying this total absence of fear in what lies ahead, and this silent convinction that the future is a beautiful place. “Für Immer” ends at a point that sounds a little like bliss and a lot like oblivion, but the truly ecstatic part of the composition is the sensation of accrued velocity on the way to that destination. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Elsewhere: The Anchor Center presents a clever, thoughtful review of Au Revoir Simone‘s “Through The Backyards” in video form.