Shrag “Why Are You Here? – The sloooooow drip of new Shrag tunes continues with this forthcoming single on the Where It’s At Is Where You Are label. This time, team Shrag takes on dreary borecore audience members who come out to shows as if they were under duress, and drag down the mood of the entire room. Whereas a lot of bands seem to go for a “Why aren’t you dancing??? You should be dancing!!!” message regardless of whether their music is actually good enough for dancing, Shrag have a less entitled tone, opting to interrogate the motives of a disagreeable audience member in the hope of understanding why they would choose to come out if they were going to refuse to have a good time. (Click here for Shrag’s MySpace page.)

Lady Sovereign “Love Me or Hate Me” – I don’t see this burning up the American charts any time soon, but it’s got the makings of a great underground hit, and so can we just refrain from Arular-style hand-wringing about whether or not bloggish UK rap has any crossover potential for a little while? The fact that Jay-Z is putting this out as her lead single on Def Jam is a major vote of confidence, but more than that, it’s a progressive step away from the sort of insularity and conservatism of mainstream rap. This could be long game thinking — obviously there’s a decent market for artists like Lady Sov, M.I.A., and The Streets, and if those artists don’t score massive hits of their own in the short term, they make help usher in another wave of artists in the not-far-off-future who might score a really big hit on the foundation of a growing subculture. “Love Me or Hate Me” is definitely a step in the right direction for Lady Sov. The track is strong but not especially weird “Push It”/Arular-ish electro funk, and the focus is kept on the quirks of her voice and persona. She’s still pushing the “I’m so gross! Really!” thing a bit too hard, but whatever. It’s her thing — love her or hate her, you know? (Click here for the Lady Sov MySpace page.)

Andrew W.K. “Pushing Drugs” – After The Wolf, I wasn’t sure if Andrew W.K. had it in him to write more songs as mindblowingly great as “Party Hard” and “She Is Beautiful,” but now he’s gone and made a full album of them. He’s jumped right into the deep end, cycling through Meatloaf-ish power ballads, proggy metal, jock funk, and over the top rock opera theatrics that thoroughly destroys the efforts of virtually everyone who has tried on that style since that other Andrew wrote Jesus Christ Superstar. Nearly every track is a winner, with some highlights not straying too far away from the sound of I Get Wet (“One Brother,” “You Will Remember Tonight”), while “Las Vegas, Nevada” is like a rollicking casino blowout version of the AWK aesthetic, “Don’t Call Me Andy” is almost like the AWK version of a girl group song, and “Pushing Drugs” sounds like a showtune strolling through the rough part of town with its pumped up funk organ, horn stabs, and erstatz metal guitar. Unfortunately, Close Calls With Brick Walls is only slated to be released in Japan and parts of Asia, but with any luck, some smart label will pick this album up and run with it in the next year. Get on it, smart labels. (Click here to buy it from CD Japan.)

It has just been revealed to the press that Syd Barrett, the original leader of Pink Floyd and one of the most brilliant and tragic musicians of the late 60s, died on Friday. Of course, Syd had not been well for quite some time, and had essentially been a recluse for the past few decades following an apparent breakdown sometime in the early 70s.

Pink Floyd “Bike” – A lot of the cult of Syd Barrett is based on the mystique of his madness, and so it is very unfortunate that his genius and originality as a musician is overshadowed by his reputation as being rock and roll’s most famous acid casualty. It’s particularly troubling when the lyrical content of his songs is written off as the ramblings of a lunatic. True, the songs tend to include bizarre images and peculiar asides (“I know a mouse, and he hasn’t got a house / I don’t know why I call him Gerald / He’s getting rather old, but he’s a good mouse”), but it was always in the service of something rather raw, genuine, playful, and childlike in its humor and concerns. Not only that, but he would leap from oddball lines to lyrics so direct and perfect and honest that they would be especially disarming in context: “You’re the kind of girl who fits in with my world, I’d give you anything, everything if you want things.” “I really love you, and I mean you.” “I understand that you’re different from me. Yes, I can tell.” “Won’t you miss me? Wouldn’t you miss me at all?” (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Syd Barrett “Octopus” – My personal favorite Syd Barrett song has always been “Octopus,” with its churning, seasick guitar rhythms and manic melodies. It cycles between feelings of high adventure, anguish, frustration, and giddiness like nothing else I’ve ever heard, and it does it so gracefully that the transition between contrary emotions is fluid rather than jarring. Much of the unique sound of The Madcap Laughs album comes from the fact that Syd recorded his guitar and vocal parts live to tape before the rhythm tracks were added, basically the opposite of the way most rock music is recorded. Apparently this was done as a way of minimizing wasted time in the studio, since it was feared that Barrett would eat up hours of valuable time attempting to synch up with the session players. Barrett’s strange guitar rhythms are all over the place, changing up meters at unlikely intervals and arbitrarily speeding up or slowing down, but somehow it comes out sounding exactly right. “Octopus” may have been a headache to overdub, but the resulting composition is positively sublime. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Elsewhere: John Darnielle recently posted about Syd Barrett over on Last Plane to Jakarta, mostly commenting on this remarkable bit of footage of Pink Floyd performing “Astronomy Domine” on British television, followed by an interview with Roger Waters and Syd, who is surprisingly passionate, lucid, and articulate.

WFMU’s Beware of the Blog also has a small tribute to Syd, including a link to an old article about Barrett’s influence written for the long defunct WFMU magazine, LCD.

My DJ sets @ Blue State, the Black Cat, Washington DC

Set 1: Spank Rock “Sweet Talk” / Edu K “Bundalele Baile Jean” / Peaches “Two Guys” / Robyn “Konichiwa Bitches” / Junior Senior “Take My Time” / Prince “U Got The Look” / Maxi Geil & Playcolt “Makin’ Love in the Sunshine” / The Slits “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” / Girls Aloud “Models” / DAT Politics “Turn My Brain Off”

Set 2: The Silures “21 Ghosts” / The Knife “We Share Our Mothers’ Health” / CSS “Music Is My Hot Hot Sex” / Vanessinha & Alessandra “Gira” / Christina Aguilera “Ain’t No Other Man” / Ludus “Breaking The Rules” / Cristina “Mamma Mia” / Out Hud “It’s For You” / Gene Serene & John Downfall “U Want Me” / Scissor Sisters “Music Is The Victim” / The Make Up “Pow! To The People”

The Make Up “Pow! To The People” – Though I did not get to go on the full walking tour of my past that I had hoped I would have been able to make time for on my trip, my impression of Washington DC over this weekend was that it was exactly the same but totally different from how it was when I lived there about nine years ago. But then again, so am I, so who knows. Though I found out when I was there that this was not in fact the same Black Cat that I knew when I was there (they moved into a new building), it was still a bit of a weird thrill to get people to dance to Christina Aguilera and Girls Aloud in a venue which I remember as being a minefield of hyper-indie passive aggression. Of course, indie has changed so much from the 90s to now that it’s not exactly shocking that a lot of the old breed have either disappeared or changed over to some strain of 00s popism. Still, I had to pay my respect to that old scene by ending on The Make Up’s classic “Pow! To The People,” which got a pretty intense reaction from the dudes dancing up front. Other songs that went over well: “We Share Our Mothers’ Health” (big shout out to the smallish girl in the green t-shirt who totally flipped out when this came on, you totally made my day!), “Gira,” “Music Is The Victim,” “Grapevine.” I wasn’t super happy with my flow on these sets — I wasn’t able to use my laptop for this, and had to use cds, and on top of that, only one of the two cd decks played cd-rs, so I was under a lot of limitations. I would have followed up “Mothers’ Health” with something faster if it had been a real option for me. Anyway, thanks to Blue State and to everyone who came and danced, and especially to everyone who came over and said hi. It was very nice to meet you. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Also: If you live in NYC, you should come to the Insound Siren fest party at Supreme Trading on Thursday. I’ll be DJing with the Creature guys, and Oh No! Oh My!, The Big Sleep, and Professor Murder will be performing live.

Special Guest Post From Emily Ponder!

My very good friend Emily Ponder wrote this essay about A Hard Day’s Night as a guest post, and I’m very proud to share it with the rest of you today. If you enjoy this and would like to contact her, please email emily.ponder @ gmail

I’ve come down with a terrible case of Beatlemania recently. It was The Beatles that did it. Al Gore says with the current global warming conditions they’re coming out earlier every year now. Don’t ask me why that is, though; I didn’t hear because I had to duck out of the theater and run home to watch A Hard Day’s Night again. Al Gore, I’m sorry buddy, but I don’t need to hear the statistics. Ain’t nothing going on in your movie, or in any other movie, or on the whole globe, God love it, that’s hotter than A Hard Day’s Night.

Period.

A Hard Day’s Night is a brilliant film. It has everything. It has boys cute enough to drive boatloads of girls completely batshit insane, screaming till they get so hoarse that when they come home their parents are like, “Oh hey Otis Redding, what’s up? You haven’t seen Jenny, have you?” And I’ll just tell you now so you can stop wondering: Once our scientists get their priorities straight and finally build a goddamn time machine that can take me somewhere into the vicinity of the 1963-64 Beatles, if my striking good looks and trademark wit aren’t getting me any closer to what’s underneath those dashing round-collared suits, then flipping the hell out crying, running around, screaming, and generally acting like I’m on the way to the electric chair sounds like a decent Plan B to me. The movie is also is off-the-charts hilarious, just a goldmine of priceless one-liners and slapstick gags, drawn up and crafted on the shoulders of a kind of persistent subtextual melancholy, now mockingly contemptuous, now wistfully escapist, which lends a great complexity of tone to this star vehicle, and helps steer it safely past Charming Piece Of Merchandising and on towards Best Movie Of All Time.

But there are two other major factors nailing that gas pedal to the floor, which I want to say more about here:

1)It is masterfully directed by Richard Lester — innovatively, interestingly, stylishly, and beautifully shot and cut to do justice to its subject.
2)It features the greatest film music ever.

I hope #2 was already obvious to you all, but the two are so inseparably intertwined that I feel obliged to hammer it home. When The Beatles pulled up to the table, Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone, Elvis, and everyone else just threw down their cards and went home. Game the fuck over. Simple as that.

For me there is an ineffable but undeniable kind of spark, or charm, in the early Beatles, the kind that brings an instant grin to my face and an instant hand to the volume knob when I hear the opening of, say, “Please Please Me.” If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you may stop reading now and go stand with the others under the sign that says SORRY, AWESOMENESS IS LOST ON ME to receive your complimentary cup of prune juice and a Bright Eyes album. At the core of the movie’s instantaneous appeal is a similar feeling of exhilarating insubordination, a joyous middle finger held right up in the face of any and all forms of The Man (and in this film, they are legion) standing in the way of Pure Beatle Fun. And Lester’s direction has a beautiful spontaneity, joining the reckless innovation of 60’s New Wave and verite with the anarchy of silent slapstick and surrealist film, which is more than capable of carrying that feeling visually. The handheld camera movements, the bizarre angles, the aerial shots, the slow and fast motion, the animated proof sheet photos, the cuts in time with the music, the self-reflexive shots of the cameras and monitors, all of it. A Hard Day’s Night isn’t just colored by or about that spark, that spirit in the music. It is of a piece with it, stylistically as well as thematically.

Nowhere is that formal unity more evident, naturally, than in the song sequences. The whole film is full of musical scenes, all interestingly laid out and all, of course, featuring purely awesome music. But I’m talking about the six sequences (by my count) that showcase a particular song or songs and, with one crucial exception, show the Beatles performing – the numbers, you’d call them, if this musical were a Rogers & Hammerstein ordeal of the regular sort. In that genre, the numbers are the places where orderly, realistic narrative gives way to extravagant fantasy and spectacle – where Fred and Ginger spontaneously bust out a dance routine it would take you or me four years to learn and then bow to the camera in a romantic moment alone with each other, stuff like that.

Consider how they’re constructed in A Hard Day’s Night. The first begins almost imperceptibly: As they sit in the back train car playing cards to pass the time, the opening harmonica of “I Should Have Known Better” comes up on the soundtrack. They’re shown from several angles, all close, playing cards. John gets away with the most blatant cheating since 1359 because he’s so hot, everyone is like, “well, I guess we just let it go.” Then in straight cuts to the same close-ups, in the same positions, they’ve all traded their cards for their instruments by the second verse. The music grows organically, somehow, out of their group dynamic. They’re hanging out, and the song just happens, as part of that. The next one is the same; Ringo sulks as they play around on the stage set for their live TV performance, and John just walks over to him with an acoustic guitar and drops “If I Fell.” Lester shoots the official rehearsal and the final TV show – the only two performances that are scheduled to occur or motivated by the plot – much more rigidly, with fewer cuts, less camera movement, and from further away. Often, in the long final sequence, shots of girls freaking out in the audience with lots of dizzying quick pans through the crowd are juxtaposed with static shots of the Beatles playing at an extra meta-level of distance or mediation, through the camera viewfinders or on the playback monitors in the director’s booth. The coordination, the micro-management, the imposition of exterior authority that the boys have been trying so hard to escape from for the whole movie take this form – and persist, I think, in the final shot that I find so sad, as the Beatles are lifted off the earth in their helicopter, leaving behind only a shower of press photographs with forged signatures on them.

But I’m leaving out, of course, the most perfect of the musical sequences, the most experimental and radical, and the most joyous. If indeed something is lost in the closing scenes, it looks very small next to “Can’t Buy Me Love.” In that sequence, the Beatles win. They just win everything. They win so hard that they can just fall down right after the starting whistle and lie there in the grass and still make you feel like you’ve never had real fun in your whole life. “Can’t Buy Me Love” is the only complete song featured that the Beatles don’t play – they don’t hold instruments or lip-synch or even nod along with the beat. “WE’RE OUT!” Work, chores, rules, temporal sequence, the conventions of realistic narrative cinema, and everything else that is boring and sucky no longer applies. Watch them! They make the game up as they go. Th

is time we’re gonna each run to the center and then swing each other around and then run back to the corner, OK? On one of the Anthology tapes, John recalls that Lester told them that this scene, his favorite and George’s and most people’s, was “pure cinema.” And it is pure cinema, in my opinion, as much as anything Vertov or Brakhage or Epstein ever wrung their nervous hands over, and more. It’s pure joycore cinema. And indeed, you can’t buy it. You can only watch it, and feel it, and love it. Or you can be a dumbass. One or the other.

– Emily Ponder

Makes Me Feel Glad I’m Not Dead

My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site. This week: DraculaZombieUSA, Carbon Dating Service, and a selection from Sublime Frequencies’ Radio Algeria.

Harpers Bizarre “Witchi Tai To” – This is exactly the sort of thing that can make you stop for a moment and think “oh wow, these old hippies really had it figured out.” If this is not total bliss, it’s very close to it, to the point where they make the Beach Boys sound like a gang of rampaging thugs. Check out that lead guitar, by the way — it wouldn’t shock me if this was a cherished record in the Kaplan/Hubley home. (Click here for the compilation’s Discogs page.)

Mixel Pixel “You’re The Kind Of Girl” – The music has that sort of “sexy” “futuristic” sound that seems to be very popular among the type of urban folks who are maybe a bit more pretty and sexual than they are cool (i.e., all those people who have internet personals ads where they say that Massive Attack’s Mezzanine is their favorite thing to listen to while having sex), but the real appeal here is in the vocals, which play on the deadpan she said/she said dynamic of the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” to great effect. To make things even better, the girl sounds almost exactly like the lead singer from The Waitresses! (Click here to buy it from Kanine Records.)

Face It, It’s The Best

Marble Valley “Computer Man” – Westy, he cannot drum! And so he doesn’t anymore, as far as I can tell. It’s sorta weird to think about it, but Marble Valley has become a vehicle for Steve West as a frontman, with his band covering everything else. It’d be like the Pavement equivalent of the Foo Fighters, but Gary Young already beat him to the punch with “Plant Man.” If you’re very familiar with Pavement, and I mean super super super familiar, to the point that you’ve heard dozens of live bootlegs from over the course of their career, you’ll probably hear this as being sorta similar to the sort of on-the-spot chants and improvs that Westy and Bob Nastanovich would play here and there to get through lulls in the set, but developed and polished into a pretty sharp indie rock song. The track has a very odd mood – mellow and relaxed, but also a bit ominous, with silly lyrics like “everybody talk about CPU capacity!” delivered in a dry deadpan, with the song coming together to sound like the inner workings of a bored yet optimistic IT guy. (Click here to buy it from Ear Rational.)

Belle & Sebastian @ Castle Clinton, Battery Park 7/4/2006
I Fought In A War / Another Sunny Day / The Model / Sukie In The Graveyard / Don’t Leave The Light On, Baby / Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie / Jonathan David / If She Wants Me / Lord Anthony / If You’re Feeling Sinister / Funny Little Frog / Your Cover’s Blown / Dirty Dream Number Two / I’m A Cuckoo / The Wrong Girl / White Collar Boy / Sleep The Clock Around // (Stevie Jackson plays “The Star Spangled Banner” on his guitar) / The Boy With The Arab Strap

Hmm. Good show, but what a weird setlist! Some ideas:

1) A lot of the setlist was obviously influenced by the fact that they had four additional string players, so naturally the set was focused on songs from their middle period when they went a bit nuts for string arrangements.

2) Did they just get sick of playing The Life Pursuit songs all the time for the past several months? If so, that’s a shame. I don’t care what anyone thinks; it’s their best album. I was disappointed that they skimped on those songs, especially since I was so desperately hoping for “Song For Sunshine,” which wouldn’t have just made me happy, but would have fit perfectly on a day when the band was playing an outdoor show that was postponed slightly by a rain storm, and the sun was out by the middle of their set. Just sayin’, Belle & Sebastian!

3) Does anyone really like “Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie”? I mean, really like it, a lot? If so, would you care to explain yourself in the comments box? Thanks.

4) I wonder if they deliberately wrote this setlist to be as different from the other two NYC shows from this year as possible, or if it just sorta worked out that way.

5) “If She Wants Me”! Yes!!! Not just one of my favorites, but maybe the song in their catalog that has the greatest personal meaning for me. No, I’m not explaining – listen to the lyrics, it’s fairly literal.

6) Highlights, in addition to “If She Wants Me”: “Don’t Leave The Light On, Baby” (so so gorgeous!), “If You’re Feeling Sinister,” “Funny Little Frog,” “Dirty Dream Number Two,” “White Collar Boy” (always a winner!), “The Boy With The Arab Strap.” Also: Stuart Murdoch’s banter, especially when he launched into this bizarro motivational speach that boiled down to encouraging everyone in the park to rise up as one against the cops of New York City.

Elsewhere: If you were curious about what I thought of The Devil Wears Prada, you’re in luck.

The Girls Look Soooo Good

Gang Starr “Ex Girl To The Next Girl (Instrumental)” – The first time that I ever heard this song was on some college or public radio show late at night when I lived in Washington, DC back in 1998. I was instantly stunned, and dashed over to my stereo to tape as much of it as I could to the nearest blank cassette, but unfortunately, the DJ never back announced it, and only played this instrumental version of the song, so I had no lyrical reference except for the snippets of Guru going “next!” But oh my God, that horn sample! It completely owned me from the first moment that I ever heard it; it is without question one of my favorite bits of any song that I’ve ever heard. There’s just something so effortlessly cosmopolitan and romantic about it, it makes me wish that my life could someday feel just like that snippet of sound on loop.

I don’t remember exactly how I figured out what the song was, but I do remember being totally thrilled that one of my old roommates had a copy on vinyl when I lived in Brooklyn circa 2000, because it meant that I could record both versions of the song to my minidisc player. (Remember them? Awwww.) There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the vocal version, by the way — either way, “Ex Girl To The Next Girl” is a stone classic, but my sentimentality is wrapped up in the instrumental, which is for my money the single best thing ever produced by DJ Premier. (Click here to buy it from Underground Hip Hop.com)

Ease All Trouble Off My Mind

The Fiery Furnaces @ Webster Hall 6/29/2006
Rub Alcohol Blues / Chris Michaels / Crystal Clear / Straight Street / Police Sweater Blood Vow / My Dog Was Lost But Now He’s Found / Asthma Attack / Benton Harbor Blues / Quay Cur / The Garfield El / A Candy Maker’s Knife In My Handbag / Evergreen / Teach Me Sweetheart / I’m In No Mood / Black Hearted Boy / Leaky Tunnel – Tropical Iceland / Single Again / Blueberry Boat // Don’t Dance Her Down / Up In The North / Bitter Tea / Chief Inspector Blancheflower / Bow Wow / Rub Alcohol Blues

The Fiery Furnaces “Rub Alcohol Blues” – Check out that setlist! You would think that they were touring for Gallowsbird’s Bark! As much as I do love most everything that has followed, it’s sort of impossible for me to imagine the Friedbergers ever topping that first record in terms of sheer density of perfectly written songs or my own sentimental attachment. Unlike the last show that I saw them play at the Bowery Ballroom in April, the Furnaces wisely stuck to playing songs that worked well being played in a full-on classic rock band style, or reworked some selections into more effective arrangements. They had totally butchered “Teach Me Sweetheart” and “Bitter Tea” in April, but this time they took their time with the latter, and gave the former a spacey, art rock makeover that sounded like a melange of early 90s indie guitar textures. The band was tighter and more focused than I had ever seen them in this incarnation, and the Friedbergers both seemed to be in pretty high spirits over the course of the longest show that I’ve ever seen them play. “Don’t Dance Her Down” was a particular highlight for me, with Eleanor playing the song on guitar with Bob D’Amico and Jason Loewenstein more or less in exactly the same arrangement from the album until Matt returned to the stage and played the song out with a guitar solo. “Rub Alcohol Blues” began and ended the show in a radical new arrangement that broke at the end of each verse for Eleanor to shout “Tequila!”

I am happy to report that the band is taking baby steps toward production values — they came out to a pretty rad audio collage announcing that “the ceremony is about to begin” and that “The Fiery Furnaces are in the house!”, and as you may have noticed in my crappy camera phone photograph above, they had a specially made backdrop on the stage. As you can see in that image, there’s the bright “FF”, but what you probably can’t make out is that it is entirely made up of scrawled Furnaces lyrics in cyan, magenta, and yellow. (Click here to buy the best album of this decade to date from Insound.)

HEY! LOOK! WEEKEND EDIT!

NPR answered my prayers and provided the world with a high quality recording of this version of the Furnaces show. Here are three highlights from the 6/30 Washington DC show, which had a very similar setlist as this NYC set.

The Fiery Furnaces “Police Sweater Blood Vow (Live @ The 9:30 Club 6/30/06)”
The Fiery Furnaces “Bitter Tea (Live @ The 9:30 Club 6/30/06)”
The Fiery Furnaces “Teach Me Sweetheart (Live @ The 9:30 Club 6/30/06)”

(Click here to hear the rest of the show streaming on NPR’s site.)

Elsewhere: My review of the Strangers With Candy feature film is up on The Movie Binge.

Silent Invisible Conversation

My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site. This is probably my favorite one thus far, and it includes songs from Envelopes, Planning To Rock, and CSS. I can barely contain my enthusiasm for that CSS album, by the way. Sooooooo good.

Unrest “June” – Maybe it’s the suggestion from the lyric “the water that breathes on wet skin,” but I’ve never been able to hear this bassline without thinking of extreme, gross humidity. Also, I’ve never quite figured out how to map out the emotional twists and turns of this song, as it shifts from one subtly articulated mix of emotions to the next without telegraphing the changes or making a big fuss about them either. One thing that is certain: the “daddy” section of this song is almost too much to bear, every single time. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Can “Little Star of Bethlehem” – One of the things I really like about Malcolm Mooney’s lyrics and singing is the way that he adds more images and ideas over the course of a song, but he keeps reiterating his points for emphasis before cycling back to something else or adding a new line. It’s like watching photos develop in the dark room — you start with the basic blacks, and then the details gradually fill over the forms. We’re not left with the most coherent image at the end of “Little Star of Bethlehem,” but it is still quite vivid and involving in its slightly mad hippie-ish way. And of course, there’s the music, which is a fine example of the way Can could create these perfect grooves and make them seem totally tossed-off, casual, and even sort of simple. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

A Taste Of A Poison Paradise

Daniel Merriweather featuring Saigon “City Rules” / Mark Ronson “Toxic” (excerpt from Mark Ronson and Nick Catchdubs’ Radio Radio) – Mark Ronson and Nick Catchdubs new mix disc is intended to represent the aesthetic of Ronson’s East Village Radio show, and it most certainly is a success in capturing a specific breezy blend of hipster pop, hip hop, and modern soul that gels into something so slick, streamlined, and clean that it seems untouched by the earth. Ronson’s cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” picks up where his version of Radiohead’s “Just” leaves off, transforming the song into high-end drag cabaret, with its horns, beats, and Ol Dirty Bastard samples sounding like the audio equivalent of bright red lipstick on a dude decked out in Britney’s wardrobe. (Click here to buy it from Catchdubs.)

Elsewhere: My review of Larry Clark’s Wassup Rockers is up on The Movie Binge.

Every Time That I See You, Your Uniform Becomes See-Through

The Divine Comedy “To Die A Virgin” – The song starts off with a bit of dialogue from some old British film (anyone recognize it?) — a prim young woman tells her boyfriend that she will sleep with him before he gets killed in a hypothetical war — and Neil Hannon runs with the premise, playing the virginal lad’s sexual anxiety for laughs (larfs?), but keeping up an obvious sense of empathy for his dilemma. The music has a cheery early Elton John quality (think “Philadelphia Freedom”), but also the winky, playful tone of a screwball comedy. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Madder Rose “Car Song” – Slipping gracefully back and forth between slow, dreamy moments of reflection and small bursts of physical energy, “Car Song” evokes the feeling of having to force yourself to stay awake while nursing a hopeless crush. As the singer’s mind wanders, she confesses “I think of you all day long,” but it seems more like a personal admission rather than a declaration to that person. I found this early 90s gem via Maria Tessa Sciarrino’s Her Jazz show on WPRB, which you really ought to check out if you’re into this sort of thing. (Click here to buy it used for 20 cents on Amazon.)

Also, hey people in the Washington DC area!:

Even His Superficial Raps Are Super-Official

Kanye West “Gone (Live @ Abbey Road Studios)” – Aside from adjusting a couple arrangements and a few AWOL guests, the performances on Kanye West’s Late Orchestration live LP are remarkably true to the studio recordings on Late Registration and The College Dropout. However, it’s not exactly an inessential record. In a way, the near-flawless execution of the tracks by West’s orchestra and DJ is a small triumph over the low expectations of live hip hop. It’s a clear statement that West thinks too highly of the complexity of his own work to butcher it in a live setting. (Though he kinda sorta did when I saw him open for U2 in November, but that was mainly due to atrocious sound that wrecked his accompaniment – his performance was fine.) The same sort of ambition that fuels his occasionally embarassing public bravado is what pushes him to craft songs as elegantly composed as “Gone” and “Crack Music,” both of which outshine far bigger hits in a context which emphasizes their grace and grandiosity. When West claims that he’s ahead of his time after the instrumental section of “Gone,” I believe that he’s exactly right. He’s obviously not alone in his ability to compose sophisticated hip hop tracks, but at his best he simultaneously pushes at his formal boundaries while emphasizing emotional resonance. He’s not trying to freak us out with bizarre sounds or impress us with minimalism; he’s attemting to find more effective ways of expressing classic themes and hip hop tropes. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

You’re Just Exceptionally Good At Small Talk, Baby

Erase Errata “Rider” – Erase Errata make the transition from “pretty good and kinda interesting” to “very good and rather compelling” on Nightlife, which is due out late next month. They haven’t even changed that much in terms of sound, but the compositions are far more mature, consistent, and visceral than on previous releases. Many of the songs have an incredible momentum, with “Rider” and “Another Genius Idea From Our Government” in particular sounding like ideas careening towards inevitable conclusions, or colliding with dissent. Excellent work, and easily one of the best punk albums from 2006. (Click here to pre-order it from Smart Punk.)

Shimura Curves “Just Like Friends” – This song begins with the beat from “Just Like Honey” (or, really, “Be My Baby”), and it’s actually sort of misleading because the Shimura Curves take that familiar melancholy sound and use it is an emotional starting point for a song that eventually builds up into a bold and brutally honest post-mortem of a soured relationship. As the song reaches its crest, the Curves come off as empowered, resolute, and self-possessed as they quote Orange Juice’s “Rip It Up” and rock out with a fierce guitar vamp that sounds as though it’s being run through ten pedals at once. (Click here for the Shimura Curves’ MySpace page.)

Oh, It’s Just Your Precious American Underground

My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site, featuring songs by Alan Singley, Cadence Weapon, and Los Super Elegantes. Also, my review of the girls basketball documentary The Heart of the Game is up on The Movie Binge.

Casper & The Cookies “Krötenwanderung” – If you are curious, the title translates to “toad migration,” which makes some sense out of the opening line “I dream of tadpole life,” and goes to show that there is a German word for pretty much every concept imaginable. The music sets into an odd, loping groove that suits the pensive tone of the lyrics and vocals, and makes the bursts of compressed guitar and keyboard digressions sound like an illustration of a busy, creative mind at work. (Click here to buy it from Happy Happy Birthday To Me.)

Destroyer “Rubies (Live @ The Middle East, Cambridge 2006)” – The cd packaged along with The Believer‘s latest music issue is almost hilariously predictable in its song selection, but I suppose there’s no shame in being your own target audience. Much of the tracklisting’s Pitchforkisms are quite understandable given that the disc was co-curated by P-fork contributor Brandon Stosuy, but also in that, let’s face it, a lot of these artists — Juana Molina, Calexico, Marissa Nadler, Six Organs of Admittance — are ideally suited to being put on in the background while you’re reading something like The Believer. Perhaps in anticipation of the fact that many of the magazine’s subscribers would already be familiar with most of the artists, Stosuy and his partner Matthew Derby kindly included alternate versions of tracks as much as possible, and so the disc is filled with remixes, demos (Remember that solo Feist demo of “Mushaboom” that I posted here a couple years ago? It’s on this cd!), and live cuts. I’m particularly fond of this concert recording of Destroyer’s “Rubies” from earlier this year, which truncates the composition, and adds a bit of manic spark to a song that I felt was a little too fussy and overdone on the LP. (Click here to buy it from the McSweeney’s store.)

Cash Rules Everything Around Queens

Wu Latino “C.R.E.A.M. (Latino Remix)” – These little xeroxed flyers are all over this small stretch of Broadway in Astoria, and as far as I can tell given my walk around the neighborhood and on through Steinway Street, nowhere else. Either the Wu Latinos got carried away and ran out of flyers before making it past their second block, or they targeted this particular area because, um, maybe some high profile radio programmers from Clearchannel live on that block, or at least frequent the Dunkin’ Donuts or the florist between Crescent and 30th Street. (Actually, the most plausible reason I can think of is that there is some kind of rehearsal/studio space on that street, and maybe the Wu Latinos were working there and went on a mini-postering spree after an especially good session.)

Anyway, whether it was their goal or not, they got my attention. I’m a pretty big Wu-Tang Clan fan, so I’m kinda pre-sold on seeing things with the W logo. But Wu Latino? Huh? There’s been Wu-Tang affiliates of various quality (mostly awful, if we’re being honest) for years now, but this is the first time I’ve heard of the Clan licensing out their brand to an entirely different enthnicity. (Maybe this shouldn’t be a shock after that Chappelle’s Show “racial draft” skit with the RZA and the GZA getting traded to the Chinese.) It’s unclear if these guys have any meaningful connection to the actual Wu-Tang Clan, or if they are just canny dudes franchising the name and hoping to piggyback on the Wu’s credibility. Aside from a track featuring Raekwon and this remix of “C.R.E.A.M.,” the Wu Latinos sound almost nothing like the Clan, favoring super-clean reggaeton tracks to anything remotely grimy and bleak. Their version of “C.R.E.A.M.” works, but really how could it not? The track is a stone classic; that piano motif even sounds fantastic as a midi on my cell phone’s ringtone. The music remains exactly the same, and Method Man’s chorus has not been omitted. The Wu Latinos’ rapping sounds fine, though I don’t understand a word they are saying, and it doesn’t hold a candle to the original verses from Raekwon and Inspectah Deck. The idea of Latin hip hop with a Wu aesthetic is appealing, but even when they are jacking their biggest hit’s beat wholesale, the Wu Latinos are still shy of their mark. (Click here for the Wu Latino site.)

Elsewhere: The Fiery Furnaces interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air! Matthew completely nails exactly what it is that is great about his sister’s voice when he is asked about it by Terry Gross.

I’m Not Even Gonna Tell You Twice

Bugz In The Attic “Move Aside” – Maybe I’m misinterpreting the influence, but this certainly sounds as though they were going for a Rich Harrison sort of thing with the drum samples. It’s not nearly as bombastic and overflowing with lust as “Crazy In Love” or “1 Thing” (or DJ Premier’s Harrison-clone “Ain’t No Other Man” with Christina Aguilera), but that’s mainly due to the group’s European influences pulling the track in a tighter, more controlled direction. But close enough is good enough for me, and there’s a charm to this sort of simmering dynamic tension coming up against that kind of drum break. (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon UK.)

Edu K “Bundalele Baile Jean” – Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: Edu K does his chanty-rappy thing (which is nearly identical on every track of his that I’ve heard, but I love it every time) over a Baile funk version of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” I am consistently amazed by the mallaebility and shelf life of “Billie Jean,” a song that ought to be boring to everyone but the very young at this point, but it never stops proving itself to be compelling in all its permutations. (Click here to buy it from Man Recordings.)

Put Yourself Down, You Don’t Need Me

Dani Siciliano “Why Can’t I Make You High?” – Mixing sultry vocals, a minimal arrangement, and a strange country/folk-by-way-of-Prince-circa-“Kiss” aesthetic, “Why Can’t I Make You High?” is not far off from KT Tunstall’s excellent hit single “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree” (aka that kinda awesome song Katherine McPhee did a few times on American Idol), but there’s a certain slight bitterness to the flavor of this track that I prefer. The chorus is closer to the ground than Tunstall’s composition, and sounds almost like an attempt to find the spot exactly between the hooks of “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35” and “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” (Click here for Dani Siciliano’s MySpace page.)

Elsewhere: For the love of God, hurry up and get Casey Dienel’s live-in-session cover of Pavement’s “Cut Your Hair” while you still can – Daytrotter is placing a 1000 download limit on that track. The rest of the session is great too, but there’s no limit on those songs.

This is what I had to say about her version when I saw her play it live a few months ago:

As you can see above, Dienel actually did play a Pavement cover, and it kinda kills me that I can’t share a recording of it with you right now because it’s definitely the best non-instrumental cover of a Pavement song that I’ve ever heard. In some ways, it’s rather similar to that Mark Ronson cover of “Just” – it makes no attempt to ape Malkmus’ miles and miles of style, and simply aims to emphasize the timeless qualities of the song by putting it in the context of a genre that the original was referencing, however indirectly or sideways.

Drugged Out Sexed Up However You Fly

My DJ sets w/ The Creature @ Sapphire NYC 6/15/2006

Set #1: Spank Rock “Sweet Talk” / Vannesshina & Allesandra “Gira” / Christina Aguilera “Ain’t No Other Man” / Junior Senior “Take My Time” / CSS “Alala” / Christopher and Raphael Just featuring Fox N Wolf “Popper” / Goldfrapp “Ride A White Horse” / Christina Milian “So Amazing” / Out Hud “It’s For You” / Gene Serene & John Downfall “U Want Me” / Spektrum “Horny Pony (Ed Laliq’s Dressage Mix)” / Beyonce “Check On It” / Nelly Furtado “Maneater” / Cristina “What’s A Girl To Do?” / Peaches “Two Guys (For Every Girl)” / Andrew WK “Party Hard” / The Knife “We Share Our Mothers’ Health (Trentemoller Mix)”

Set #2: United State of Electronica “Emerald City” / The Pipettes “Pull Shapes” / Los Super Elegantes “Dance” / Marit Bergman vs. Justus Kohncke “Rentcode” / R. Kelly “Ignition (Remix)” / Robyn “Konichiwa Bitches” / Kylie Minogue “Sweet Music” / Basement Jaxx “Cish Cash”

The turnout for this party was kinda modest, but pretty much everyone who came was dancing the entire time, so as far as I’m concerned this was a big super fun success. The other Creature dudes totally brought it all night, especially Alex “Doorknobs” Naidus’ mindblowing all-electro mini-marathon immediately following my first set. If all goes well, we’re going to do this again soonish, and if you’re in NYC you really ought to come out. These people are nuts!

Peaches featuring Beth Ditto “Two Guys (For Every Girl)” – On a new album jam-packed with over-the-top sexual objectification of men, this particular cut is both the most audacious and successful of the bunch, with Peaches and Beth from the Gossip demanding men (straight or otherwise) to make out with each other and get into m/m/f three-ways with every woman in the club. Or is that in the world? It’s probably the latter. Though Fatherfucker was a let down, I’m glad to report that Peaches comes back strong on Impeach My Bush with at least four or five tracks that approach the greatness of “Lovertits” and “Fuck The Pain Away.” (Click here to pre-order it from Amazon.)

Step By Step They Walk Into The Discotheque

My new Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site. This week: Eagle & Talon, Mr. Lif, and an amazing pre-release jam from Viva Voce.

Annie “The Crush (And The Left Handed RICHARD X mix)” – Though I did immediately like the tune, the original mix of “The Crush” didn’t do too much for me, mainly because I didn’t feel as though I needed Annie to make straight-ahead indie rock records. Let’s be honest – there’s no shortage of rock bands in the world, but there’s only a handful of consistently good-to-great dance pop acts at any given time, and believe me, that’s a frustration I deal with every week doing this site. This mix by And The Left Handed Richard X is more like it, keeping up the spirit of the Anniemal album while doing justice to the song’s twee indie-isms, making the track more like an electro’d up approximation of Darla-ish indiepop rather than a straight-up pastiche. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)

Also: I am DJing tonight with The Creature. There is no cover charge if you mention The Creature at the door. They will be giving out free cans of Sparks (you know, the hipsterish drink that is one part energy drink, one part booze, one part flesh-searing chemicals) from 10-11 PM. The party starts at 10 PM at Sapphire, 249 Eldridge St., between Stanton and Houston. If everything goes according to plan, I will start around 11:30 or so.

Elsewhere: Thom Yorke in conversation with Jonny Greenwood at SF/J.