Rating: Awesome

The new Hit Refresh column is up, featuring songs by Ethan Lipton, Tiger Tunes, and thanks to Said The Gramophone, the Rappers Delight Club.

Prototypes “Je Ne Te Connais Pas” – My French is horrible, so I only comprehend bits and pieces of this, but it doesn’t matter. Today’s the sort of day when I need something that sounds really upbeat and vaguely badass and sorta triumphant, but I can’t be bothered with lyrics, because a lot of the time, words stimulate thoughts that get in the way of feeling. I really don’t feel much like thinking today. (Click here for the Prototypes’ MySpace page.)

For The Sake Of Ideals

Johnny Boy “War On Want” – I shouldn’t be so concerned with what other people think of records that I love, but I can’t help it – it just breaks my heart to see this Johnny Boy album get bad reviews, especially when they seem to miss the appeal of the record completely. I quite like Rob Mitchum personally, and he’s written some incredibly sharp and thoughtful reviews for Pitchfork over the past few years, but his review is particularly egregious. He was judging the album against The Go Team and USE, which is just all wrong. There’s definitely a few songs that could fit under the “indie dance” banner, but that’s not what the record is overall.

The album is essentially a pastiche of British pop from the past ten years, cutting and pasting bits from britpop, UK indie, and chart pop for specific ends. On one level, Johnny Boy are obviously just very big pop fans with a knack for songwriting and arrangement, and on another, they are intentionally detourning the signifiers of recent British pop with their sloganeering. I think that some of it is about setting a time and a place, but the styles they mimic are not accidental. They want the heady rush of impossibly anthemic choruses, and song structures that reach for the heavens while their feet stuck in Glastonbury mud. They steal the menace from late period Pulp, the spiteful grandeur of Manic Street Preachers, and appropriate the manic blitz of Girls Aloud. “War On Want” echoes The Verve at their soul-searing best with a track that sounds epic but feels entirely personal. Every rejection builds until the singer wants to completely negate herself, and as she comes up to that precipice, the bottom drops out beneath her. It’s desperate and angry, and strangely, very sexy. I don’t know if you’ve had moments in your life like this song, but I certainly have. It’s the sound of idealism getting swallowed by frustration, and resentment over one’s own perceived powerlessness brewing into full-on self-loathing. No, it’s not that fun, but it’s not really meant to be. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Like I’ve Got To Set You Free

Wolfmother “Woman (Avalanches Millstream Remix)” – I don’t have an enormous problem with people ripping off Robert Plant, or Jimmy Page, or John Bonham. It’s actually pretty understandable, if you’ve got the chops. However, I really can’t get behind a band full of members aping all three of them at the same time, especially if they don’t bother to mimic post-IV John Paul Jones while they are at it. So this is why I had to take a pass on Wolfmother the first seven or eight times I was sent their record. But oh, those damn Avalanches had to come along and break their song open and turn it into something pretty fantastic. Short of radical filtering in post-production, there’s not much you can do to take the Plant out of this guy’s voice, so the Avalanches don’t bother. They embrace it, and basically drop everything else from the arrangement except for a some Rick Rubenesque guitar chunks dropped in for isolated bursts of excitement. Avalanches, please – make more remixes, or another album, as soon as possible! This periodic teasing is driving me crazy. (Click here for the Avalanches’ site.)

The Hustle’s The Same No Matter What The Game

Anchors For Architects “Feelin’ Like Salieri” – Something seems to be happening in Los Angeles right now. I don’t think I’ve read anything about it anywhere, and but there seems to be quite a pile-up of quality indie rock acts coming out of L.A. in the past couple years. Interestingly, most of them have a musical kinship with the sort of 90s indie that I favor, dodging the sort of trends that I mentioned in the Carbon Dating Service entry from last week, and focusing instead on either a polished, stronger strain of melodic alt-rock (The Oohlas, Irving, Giant Drag, Eagle & Talon), or the sprawling sun-baked punk equivalent of jamming. Anchors For Architects exemplify the latter style, shifting from a loose, listless swing to moments of intensity like The Fall on “Hip Priest,” or Pavement on “Jam Kids.” (Click here to buy it from Papermade Records.)

Special Weekend Bonus For EW Readers!

Hello to everyone visiting this site after reading Entertainment Weekly’s list of the 25 best music sites. I’m very flattered to be on the list, much less place so highly. This isn’t the Robyn song that they mentioned in the blurb, but I think it’s actually a little better.

Robyn “Konichiwa Bitches” – One does not reasonably expect much from token hip hop tracks on the albums of Scandinavian pop stars, but with this song, Robyn defies the odds and makes me wonder if she ought to be doing this sort of thing on a full-time basis. The beats and keyboards are minimal and perfectly composed, flowing smoothly and changing up consistently throughout the song without distracting attention from her vocals, which sound like an adorable anime version of Missy Elliott. There’s a very delicate balance being maintained here, keeping it from tipping too far into tweeness, and I suspect that it is kept mainly because it’s so clear that Robyn isn’t totally kidding around. The lyrics are certainly meant to be humorous, but the love for hip hop is very earnest, and it’s clear that she has a musical understanding of the genre that many cutesy hip hop dilettantes lack. (Originally posted 5/25/05) (Click here to buy it on import from Amazon.)

When Tomorrow Becomes Today

Tacks the Boy Disaster “Forget-Me-Not” – Going on the records that I’ve been getting lately, it seems like there are a hell of a lot of indie rock dudes singing in what strikes me as a very Elephant Six sort of style. I’m just getting loads of records that sound like Of Montreal and Olivia Tremor Control outtakes. This guy from Tacks is most certainly doing that thing with his voice – it’s crisp and clean and pretty on harmonies, but also a bit pinched and nasal, like someone doing a “nerd voice.” The sudden ubiquity of this vocal style is a bit odd but it really suits this particular song, with its pleasant rainy-day piano and drum groove and vaguely old-timey melody. As the song moves along, it seems to rush forward in time, suddenly vanishing into the future as it comes to an abrupt, back-masked ending. (Click here for Tacks the Boy Disaster’s MySpace page.)

Pearl Jam “Lukin / Not For You –> Modern Girl / Grievance” (Live @ Curitiba, Brazil 11/30/2005) – For no particular reason other than that I had just listened to some of the songs from their new album, I revisited Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy on the train ride home on Wednesday. The record still sounds pretty great, and I maintain that it’s their best record by a considerable margin. I haven’t paid much attention to Eddie Vedder’s lyrics since I was sixteen, but in listening to the words now, I’ve noticed that the themes of Vitalogy are pretty much the same as the expected tropes of a rap record. I don’t mean to be glib, but the album finds Vedder concerned with repeatedly asserting his authenticity, raging against haters and fake friends, mourning the loss of deceased comrades, pondering his own mortality, and generally feeling paranoid and persecuted. He indulges in weird skits, chastises biters on “Corduroy,” and includes a sentimental song about his mother’s hard luck life. If only he had written one boasting about his vocal and/or sexual prowess! (Actually, no, I could really do without songs about Eddie Vedder having sex.) (Though maybe that’s what’s going on at the end of “Jeremy”?)

“Not For You” remains as a personal favorite, and features a line that is probably the best advice that I ever got from a song as a teenager: “If you hate something, don’t you do it too.” After all this time, that lyric still sticks with me, as if I’d written it on a post-it note tacked up to a wall in my mind. (Click here to buy it from Pearl Jam.)

If I Had The Chance, I’d Ask The World To Dance

This week’s Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site, and it includes three freakishly great songs from Spank Rock, A Sunny Day In Glasgow, and the Hank Collective. Also, at long last, MTV/Microsoft’s Urge digital download service has finally launched. I’ve been writing the Pop Informer blog for them, but unfortunately, I don’t know how to link directly to it, so you’ll have to go through the Urge interface to read the column. (Some of my reviews are scattered around – there should be a few in the rock area somewhere.) I’m pretty happy with a lot of what I’ve written for them, especially this one entry about Simple Plan’s “Untitled” and Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself.” I’m generally writing about mainstream acts, but for me, that’s part of the appeal. It doesn’t make sense to write about huge hits on this site or the AP column, and so this has been nice outlet for me. There are quite a few talented writers doing blogs for Urge, so even if you have no desire to purchase wma files (I totally understand!), it’s at least going to be a good read.

Nouvelle Vague “Dancing With Myself” – Nouvelle Vague’s gimmick hasn’t worn too thin as of yet, but their song selection is generally strong enough that even their least inspired bossa nova arrangements serve their basic function as fodder for the soundtrack of an I Love The 80s dinner party. The best cuts from their second album go in more of a cabaret direction, which works wonders for the likes of The Cramps’ “Human Fly.” However, the only selection that trumps the original is their take on Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself.” Removing Idol is enough to win some points with me (nothing against the songs, I just dislike his voice and persona), but the added jaunt and skip in Nouvelle Vague’s arrangement serves the song well, resulting in a track that is light and sexy rather than hopped-up and off-puttingly self-conscious. (Click here to buy it from Justin Time.)

The Walkmen “Another One Goes By” – Wait, what? Walkmen, wha’ happened? I wasn’t totally into that last album, but at least you still sounded like yourselves and included a few undeniably great tracks. What’s with the over the top Bob Dylan impression on more than half of the new songs? Is it a pre-emptive strike against fellow Jonathan Fire Eater alumnus Stewart Lupton’s Dylan-ish new band, The Childballads? And if so, why did you choose to emulate everything horrible about Dylan (shapeless melodies, the marble mouthed yowling) whereas Lupton absorbed everything great about him (the mystique, the poetry, the ragged grace) into his own persona? The music still has that lovely sepia-toned patina of artificial antiquity, but the singing throws everything off and makes some of the songs quite difficult to sit through. “Another One Goes By” gets it right, and is genuinely pretty and romantic, but I wish that I could hear it without thinking that Hamilton Leithauser was trying to crack me up with his Dylan impersonation on the chorus.(Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Spill Me Out On To The Floor

The Oohlas “Small Parts” – If you can imagine The Breeders, Veruca Salt, Lush, Dressy Bessy, and Throwing Muses as gigantic, brightly colored mechanical lions, the Oohlas would be like the Voltron that they would form when…um, assembled by little boys with generous parents in the mid-80s. I’m sorry, but this is just a horrible simile. Anyway, the band’s first record, and this song in particular, sounds like the revenge of a 90s alt-rock subgenre that is well-loved by many, given serious critical thought by very few, and cruely, has no name. If The Killers’ shtick was to revitalize glammy early 80s synthpop by beefing it up and writing choruses that demanded full-stadium singalongs, The Oohlas do the same for the likes of Belly, Letters to Cleo, and That Dog. Most of those bands never had a problem writing hooks or rocking out, but if only some of them had dropped a chorus as huge and heart-breaking as the one in “Small Parts” when they most needed a good follow-up hit back in the day. (Click here for the official Oohlas site.)

This Circuitry Is New To Me

Goldfrapp @ Irving Plaza 5/15/2006
Utopia / Lovely Head / Tip Toe / Train / Koko / Slide In / U Never Know / Deer Stop / Fly Me Away / Satin Chic / Beautiful / Ride A White Horse / Ooh La La // Black Cherry / Number 1 /// Strict Machine

Aside from two additional songs from Felt Mountain and a slightly shuffled running order, this was essentially the same show that I saw a few months ago. Of course, that exactly what I wanted – Goldfrapp obviously put quite a bit of thought into their spectacle, and to see them do anything less would be a shame. I had a very real fear that the dancers wouldn’t show up since they put off “Train” until the fourth song into the setlist! As with the visual representation, the band have honed their performance to the point of scary precision. They nail everything from the softest bits to the most intense vamps, and keep things consisently theatrical without veering into tedium or cheesiness. After seeing a show like this, it just makes most everyone else seem like such amateurs.

Goldfrapp “Satin Chic (Bombay Mix by The Shortwave Set)” – When I first read about this, I had hoped for something over the top and Bollywood, but The Shortwave Set go off in the other direction, slowing it down a bit and emphasizing the song’s cabaret roots. It’s quite good as a companion to the original version, though I do prefer the pep and skip of the album mix. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Carbon Dating Service “Lazerbear” – Layers of warm, gentle instrumentation piled on like blankets; a pretty tune with a pace in no hurry to get anywhere – this song sounds more or less exactly like what I would expect from a ten piece band of twentysomethings from Saskatoon. I’ve generally soured on indie’s trend toward sprawling over-arranged collectivism and quiet coziness, but this is the exception that proves the rule. For a composition with so many instruments, the song actually feels quite sparse and understated, nicely avoiding the clumsy bombast of Bright Eyes or the “HEY EVERYONE LOOK A STRING SECTION A STRING SECTION I’VE GOT HORNS AND A STRING SECTION!!! C’MON C’MON C’MON LOOOOOOOOOK!” vibe of Sufjan Stevens. (Click here for the Carbon Dating Service’s MySpace page.)

I Can’t Feed My Culture No Fallacy

Cam’ron “I.B.S.” – Stuck in the middle of an album otherwise concerned with his typical lyrical tropes (not exactly a complaint, mind you), Cam’ron Giles throws down the guantlet of “realness” hard on this track, which documents his struggles with Irrital Bowel Syndrome. Thankfully, the song generally avoids TMI territory and sticks to discussing the embarassment, stress, and paranoia brought on by his illness, and his efforts to lose weight and get healthy. Aside from the surprisingly private and vulnerable lyrical subject matter, the track is fantastic, an early RZA-ish composition built around a clinky piano figure played on either the highest notes on the far right of the keys, or pitched up significantly. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Mecca Normal “I’m Not Into Being the Woman You’re With While You’re Looking for the Woman You Want” – Alternately evoking sympathy and discomfort, the new Mecca Normal album mostly documents singer Jean Smith’s experiences with online dating as a woman in her 40s. Her lyrics are dry and matter of fact, so the awkward situations and most self-involved moments related in the songs are especially cringe-inducing, mainly because they are so mundane and depressing that you’re bound to either recognize them from your own life, or the lives of people you might know. Worst of all, you can get the gnawing fear that you might end up living some of this later on if you’re not lucky. (Click here to buy it from Buy Olympia.)

Any Day Or Three

Tender Trap “6 Billion People” – Wow, this is tuneful and fun and great, but most of all, it would make for an absolutely perfect jingle for an online dating service for hipsters. (The chorus goes “six billion people in the world / three billion boys, three billion girls / how to find the perfect one for you”) TweeHarmony.com, all the way! Someone out there, get that hooked up and get these people sorted out with their rent for a year or three. (Click here to buy it from Ear Rational.)

As you can tell from the previous few entries, my Mac account is maxed out once again and my other account will not be working properly until later on today. This is massively frustrating for me, so please do not pester me about it. The most recent tracks will be reposted, but not this evening. Today’s song will work, as will a few of the older tracks below. If you haven’t already, check out my ASAP column for this week. Those mp3s will be working just fine.

When The Sun Shines In Between The Blinds

My second Hit Refresh column is up on the ASAP site. This week’s column includes a Gene Serene & John Downfall song that will be familiar to regular readers of this site, and very good songs by The Coup and Bishop Allen that have never been featured here.

Irving @ The Knitting Factory 5/10/2006
Situation / I Want To Love You In My Room / She’s Not Shy / If You Say Jump, I Will Say No / I Can’t Fall In Love / Care, I Don’t Care / Jen, Nothing Matters To Me / Did I Ever Tell You I’m In Love With Your Girlfriend? / L-O-V-E / The Curious Thing About Leather

Irving “I Want To Love You In My Room” – I don’t know why I was even a little bit surprised to have so much fun at this show. Though Irving will not be winning any awards for pureness and originality of vision any time soon, they are a remarkably gifted indie pop band with a knack for stealing the best bits from classic (and not so classic) acts of the mid-60s, late 80s, and early 90s and filtering out the annoying or obvious tics that tend to be emulated most often by lesser bands. I knew all of that coming into the show, and yet they still impressed me, playing an extremely well planned and utterly dud-free setlist with an energy and charm that I hadn’t been anticipating. Strangely, I had not realized that there were actually three lead singers in the band until seeing them perform in person. This united front only makes me appreciate their commitment to writing lyrics that come off like episodes of a tongue-in-cheek indie soap opera that much more. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Bardo Pond “Moonshine” – Bardo Pond love the jams, and indeed, the jams run free once again on their forthcoming Ticket Crystals. Though the band had fallen into a textural rut on previous releases, this album is a revelation with its mix of shroomy psychedelic jammery and acoustic tunefulness. The album’s twin highlights are a woozy but gorgeous cover of The Beatles’ “Cry Baby Cry” and “Moonshine,” a pastoral epic with overdubbed layers of vocals from Isobel Sollenberger that fall out of phase for a lovely effect, and eventually disappear into a backmasked haze. (Click here to pre-order it from Ear Rational.)

The End Is Always Near

The Knife “We Share Our Mother’s Health (Trentemoller Remix)” – I must say that I was a bit nervous about the prospects of “We Share Our Mother’s Health” remixes. Though the album version is just about perfect (it’s my second favorite Knife song after “Heartbeats,” which is saying a lot), it did need at least an edit to make it work better in DJ set. There’s a tendency toward abstraction in a lot of dance remixes, and my fear was that we would end up with loads of nondescript mixes that would erase most of the song’s appeal. Thankfully, Trentemoller aims for function, embracing the song’s formidable hooks and amping everything up until it’s sort of ridiculous. It starts off a little slow, but stick with it – it seems as though it was designed so that people who already know and love the song would go bananas with every new dynamic shift. It’s pretty damn exciting, especially when he pitch-shifts the vocals even more on the breakdown, and then builds it to this ecstatic climax of snare hits before dropping back into the track’s signature groove. (Click here for The Knife’s official site.)

Paul Oakenfold featuring Brittany Murphy “Faster Kill Pussycat” – Yes, that Brittany Murphy. It turns out that she is actually a pretty solid vocalist, and a fairly distinct one at that. I mean, there’s a few songs from that last Lindsay Lohan album that I like a lot (I’ll link to something I wrote about them a few weeks ago when it finally comes online in a week or so), but Lohan has almost nothing to do with why those songs work – her persona as both an actress and as a celebrity is conspicuously absent from every vocal performance on that record. Murphy, however, sings exactly as you might imagine based on her trashed-up performances in movies like 8 Mile, Spun, and Sin City. She’s definitely going for the damaged sex kitten thing and she pulls it off rather well. Of course, most of the appeal here comes from Oakenfold’s track, which is a relentless Jaxx-ish dance-pop-rock beast that nearly outdoes the best songs from Cish Cash. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)

Happy Ending Or A Broken Heart

The Futureheads “Skip To The End” – The Futureheads still sound as though they’ve never heard any music written after 1982, but this time around they’re emulating The Clash rather than some other much less tuneful punk bands, and unsurprisingly, they’ve come up with a winner. As far as songs expressing indecision and caution go, this is quite fun, and is actually a strong contender in the stakes for the title of Summer Jam ’06 in the alt-rock bracket. (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

Oneida “History’s Great Navigators” – Much of Oneida’s forthcoming album admirably embraces the joys of burbling and bleeping electronic textures, but this track goes in more of a mid-period Can direction. Ordinarily a rapid one-note keyboard attack would seem quite anxious, but the calm vocals and mesmerizing beat transform it into more of a soothing drone. (Click here for Oneida’s official site.)

I Just Want You To Pop

Christopher and Raphael Just (featuring Fox N Wolf) “Popper” – The girl from Fox N Wolf has such a strange voice. The sound of it is almost cartoonishly childlike, but she’s always communicating sexuality and/or aggression in a way that seems to deliberately invite cognitive dissonance. In this collaboration with electro duo Christopher and Raphael Just, she practically throws a tantrum on the dancefloor between sweet Scissor Sisters-does-the-Beegees disco choruses and cut-up vocal fragments. The track is a relentless machine, building towards an intense peak so great that even a little bit of bad white rapping is excusable. (Click here to buy it from Rough Trade.)

Temposhark (featuring Imogen Heap) “Not That Big (Metronomy NotThatRemix)” – The best sort of minimalist pop accompaniment does not call attention to its starkness, but rather creates a musical illusion of fullness and depth. This track is a fine example, built mainly around a snakey keyboard part, simple percussion, sparing lead, and a stuttered vocal sample. The most exciting moment comes when the tempo of the keyboard part on the break suddenly speeds up for moment before settling into the second verse. Is this what it means to “temposhark”? (Click here to buy it from Amazon UK.)

It’s A Cruel Joke, A Cosmic Hoax

Gorillaz “Kids With Guns (Hot Chip Remix)” – I’m not sure if I’ve ever gone into it on this site, but back around the late 90s, I was a pretty hardcore Blur fan. I mean, technically, that has not changed – I still rate those albums very highly even if the only songs I’ve revisited with any frequency in the past few years have been my top favorites from the self-titled album. So, as you might imagine, the massive success of the Gorillaz in America is especially weird to me, since I think that Demon Days (though a pretty decent record on its own terms) is the second worst album of Damon Albarn’s career, following Liesure. (Let’s just ignore the soundtrack and that Democrazy thing.) Though the Gorillaz can knock out a gem as good as most any Blur classic (“19-2000,” “Dirty Harry,” “Dare,” “Every Planet We Reach Is Dead,” “Feel Good Inc.,” “Rehash,” “5/4,” “Slow Country”), both albums are largely comprised of tossed-off filler by a songwriter who definitely can do much better.

“Kids With Guns” falls on the line separating the hits from the misses – on the album, it’s a bit too leaden and directionless, but gets by on some clever production and some decent rhythmic hooks. Hot Chip improve on the track significantly, immediately dropping the claustrophobic quality of the original in favor of a spacious arrangement built around a simple melancholy keyboard figure that wouldn’t sound out of place on a post-Kid A Radiohead album. The vocal hooks don’t seem nearly as overbearing, and Neneh Cherry’s vocals are given some room to move and supply some degree of catharsis as the beat picks up in the second half of the track. (Click here to buy it from Juno.)

The Netherlands “Teenage Sun” – If you’re going to be a band that insists on putting all of its rock moves in aesthetic scare quotes, it’s absolutely necessary to bring some strong hooks to the table. The Netherlands tackle their big cheesy riffs with Weezer tactics, offering them up unapologetically while doing absolutely nothing to hide their dorky indie nature. Keyboards are prominent, the vocal melody sounds like it could have come off of a Folk Implosion record, and their sense of menace is closer to that of a Transformers cartoon than anything remotely macho or Satanic. This is about as close to metal as a bag of bbq potato chips tastes like a plate of ribs, but that’s not really a problem, is it? (Click here for the Netherlands’ MySpace page.)

Elsewhere:

Three great EMP papers: No Fat Chicks?: Weight and Rebellion During A Hard-Rock Adolescence by Maura Johnston, Lost In Translation: Musical Selection In Figure Skating by Maria Tessa Sciarrino, and A Double History of the Supremes’ “Love Child” by Michaelangelo Matos.

Can anyone comment on the soundtrack to United 93?

The Smartest Place You Can Get Naked

Jake & Jackie “Naked Girl” – Up until last week, Jake Fogelnest and Jackie Clarke had a radio show on the NYC station formerly known as K-Rock. Since Howard Stern left terrestrial radio for Sirius, the station dropped its rock format, went all talk, changed its call letters, and became Free FM. It seems rather counterintuitive to switch to all-talk after Stern left the station. It only serves to emphasize the lack of their former star player, and wouldn’t it have made more sense to be all-talk with Stern on board in order keep talk radio fans in one place rather than abruptly shifting into a generic rock format as soon as he left the airwaves every day?

Anyway, Jake and Jackie somehow scored a late night show on Free FM. I came to the show fairly late, but most recently, it could best be described as a couple of UCB comedy hipsters co-opting the style and rhythms of loudmouth talk radio without indulging in its creepiest impulses. Fogelnest is barely older than I am, but at this point, he’s a broadcasting veteran of over ten years, and it shows. He embraces his role as a radio crank so fully that he often seems about twenty years older on the air, sometimes even channeling the prickly, charmingly abrasive sensibilities of Bob Grant and Bob Lassiter. What comes through in Fogelnest’s show is a genuine love of talk radio’s energy and off-the-cuff candor, but also an obvious ambivalence about its lowest-common-denominator tendencies. The resulting program is an acquired taste for sure, but it is a gift to a person like me who has always enjoyed the banter of the Stern show but cannot tolerate its casual misogyny and homophobia.

In this clip from last month, Fogelnest and Clarke wrestle with the post-Stern cliche of bringing in a girl to get naked on the radio. After a cute Williamsburg girl offers to take her top off on the air, Jake attempts to rationalize going through with it because he thinks the fact that she is attractive in a way unlike that of the standard radio bimbo is enough to make it interesting. (Let’s call it the “Suicide Girl defense.”) Clarke, however, is not having it. She berates Fogelnest and several callers who attempt to justify what she considers to be an act of degradation. Rather than immediately discredit her feminist point of view, the show embraces that conflict and milks it for comedic effect while also facillitating a fairly thoughtful debate on the topic. Clarke ultimately gets her way, and successfully subverts her role as the sassy yet accomodating female sidekick.

From what I know now, the show has been cancelled by Free FM, and will return shortly, most likely on satellite radio. (Fogelnest and Clarke have made some very strong hints about their destination on their website, but have yet to make a formal announcement.) Archived clips are still available via their podcast on iTunes, and will be apparently be hosted on their website before too long.

(Click here for the Jake and Jackie MySpace page.)

Off White Is Now The New White

My new column for the asap debuts today. The first column is here, and includes a couple audio snippets of an interview with me as well as reviews and mp3s of songs by The Fiery Furnaces, A Frames, and Nouveau Riche.

The Coup featuring Silk E “BabyLet’sHaveABabyBeforeBushDoSomethin’Crazy” – In as much as it lacks rapping entirely, this is a very atypical track for The Coup, but in spite of some pretty solid hip hop tracks (I’ll be covering one of them in the next AP column, actually), it’s the most impressive and revealing song on their new album. It’s basically a paranoid slow jam, and though I can imagine a dozen ways a track like this could have gone wrong, Boots Riley basically came up with a dozen ways to make it exactly right. A lot of the quality comes down to the detail in the arrangement, especially the understated lead string melody that tugs at the heart like a nagging doubt, and the subtle woodwind notes that pop up momentarily when the lyrics shift into cautious optimism. This is a top drawer modern soul song that remains totally focused on the present tense and nearly devoid of musical nostalgia in spite of borrowing liberally from the past. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

Joan of Arc “Many Time I’ve Mistaken” – Despite what some haters may believe, Joan of Arc are not strangers to musical prettiness. Granted, their sprawling catalog contains far more than a few clunkers, but at their finest, Tim Kinsella and his collaborators are capable of some truly gorgeous high concept folk ballads. Live In Chicago 1999 has the highest hit to miss ratio, featuring the meandering “When The Parish School Dismisses And The Children Running Sing,” the vaguely jazzy “If It Feels Good/Do It,” and the moody identity crisis “Me (Plural),” but the grandest peaks tend to come on their most inconsistent albums. How Can Anything So Little Be Any More is virtually unlistenable aside from the stately, heartbreaking “Ne Mosquitos Pass,” and The Gap is redeemed by “As Black Pants Make Cat Hairs Appear” and “Me and America,” both of which seem to stumble drunkenly into, respectively, an anthemic rock chorus and an extended, breathtaking string coda. “Many Times I’ve Mistaken,” like most of the songs from the forthcoming Everything, All At Once is surprisingly straightforward for the band. There’s simply no catch here – it’s just Tim singing one of the best melodies of his career over a graceful arrangement of acoustic guitars and cello. (Click here for Record Label’s Joan of Arc page.)

The Vows That Went Up In The Air

Marit Larsen “Only A Fool” – After having already posted the obvious single “Don’t Save Me” a few months ago, trying to pick another song from Marit Larsen’s Under The Surface for your consideration proved to be a very difficult task. Lord, I don’t even know if I could pick a single favorite from the album at this point, it’s become some kind of brutal six-way tie. It’s just sort of aggravating to me to hear this record, knowing that there’s probably literally millions of people in America who would love it, and at the rate things are going, will not ever hear it. This isn’t some kind of quirky, indie, obscure thing – it’s an elegantly composed and immaculately produced middle-of-the-road pop album with sweeping fairytale power ballads and a highly ingratiating Scandinavian version of bluegrass, country, and general “Americana.” This is a record for everybody, but especially moms and little sisters. But please don’t let that put you off! (Click here to buy it from CDON.)

Catlow “Kiss The World (Cadence Weapon ‘Good Looks’ Remix)” – Catlow’s original mix was fine enough, but Cadence Weapon does a good job of roughing it up and upping the oomph level across the board. On Catlow’s intinerary in this song: Discos, rock shows, driving into the shadows. Godspeed! (Click here for Boompa’s Catlow site.)

She’s A Frozen Fire

Buffalo Daughter “Elephante Marinos” – The new Buffalo Daughter album finds the band trying on a number of grooves, from art-disco and hippie funk to stoned shoegazing and Red Hot Chili Peppers-esque bass slapping, but nothing suits them quite as well as this keyboard-centric neon-lit strut. As the singers discuss some super hot “beauty queen,” the music seems to either react or pretend not to react to this woman (represented in the arrangement as the drum beat) as she nonchalantly walks down a city street. Guitars wink, a high pitched tone whistles, an overheated keyboard does its best to look away, and the girl even stops traffic on the instrumental break. (Click here to buy it from Amazon Japan.)

Shapes and Sizes “Weekends At A Time” – Generally, I do not pay close attention to lyrics the first few times that I hear a song, and so I often find myself in a position where my initial impression of a song’s lyrical content is revealed to be hilariously off the mark. Until I actually paid full attention to the words, I’d somehow gotten the idea that this song was about this woman imagining weekend vacations as a sort of heroic expedition, and trying to convince her companion that going hiking in the mountains, exploring quaint towns, or renting out a beach house is some kind of noble calling. But no, that’s not it at all, and now my apparent desire for an art rock version of the New York Times travel section is revealed to you all. (Click here for Asthmatic Kitty’s official Shapes and Sizes page.)