OCTOBER 14 2010
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The Stone Roses: I Wanna Be Adored
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Depeche Mode: Everything Counts
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
OCTOBER 7 2010
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
In an attempt to spruce up my cubicle, I bought a Judas Priest, Screaming for Vengeance poster. And let me tell you, it did the trick. The blue robotic eagle, the warm yellow and orange background… Yes, my cubicle is now spruced to the tits. Some people, however, have been getting the wrong idea. One colleague even had the nerve to ask me if I put it up “for irony.” For irony, forsooth! Of course, I responded curtly to this accusation, saying that there wasn’t the merest trace of irony in my decision to post this poster and to suggest that there might be is an insult, not only to me, but to Judas Priest and the contributions they’ve made to heavy metal specifically and music generally. That’ll teach ‘em to try and make conversation with the likes of me.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
One of my most foul-mouthed and dirty-minded friends of my high school years had an equally foul-mouthed and dirty-minded grandmother. Let’s call her Nancy, since that was her name. Nancy didn’t like to say “panties”, preferring instead to call them “squirrel covers.” She didn’t know how to say “please”, opting to conclude all requests with a “for fuck sakes, would ya?!” Needless to say, from the moment I met this dear old woman, I was in love. My infatuation led to frequent visits to her seniors’ residence, often resulting in a quick trip to the liquor store to feed her 12-beer-a-day habit (a habit which, I think, goes a long way to explaining her excessively salty language). On these trips, with Nancy riding shotgun, she would have something nasty to say about every single person we drove by: “Look at the fuckin’ rat’s nest on that one’s head”, “Check out cocksuckin’ Johnny Splashpants here”, and, whenever she saw a bow-legged woman, “The motherfuckin’ gap on this little ditchpig!”. For some unknown reason, Nancy had it out for the bow-legged female. Well, she had it out for everyone, but this particular population received the harshest treatment. In her mind, bow-leggedness was not due to heredity or disease, but promiscuous behavior starting in the early stages of puberty; the “gap” to which she referred could only have come from too many weekends spent with the knees by the ears while several of the local boys had a go. So when a band comes up with a song titled My Gap Feels Weird, I can only think back to how Nancy would have interpreted it: “Of course your goddamn gap feels weird! You’ve been letting the whole motherfuckin’ town in there!”
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Um. Yes. This is a little embarrassing, but fuck it. I like this catty, pop hit and I don’t give two sweet fucks who knows. Plus, I’m the type of person who sharts herself and then tells everybody, so it’s not really a surprise that I’m publishing my humiliating musical indulgences.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The Thermals released a new album, Personal Life, on September 7, and my sources tell me this tune is the first single. It’s probably worth checking out the video since it features Carrie Brownstein of (now defunct) Sleater-Kinney and Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse. It’s not often you get to see a pioneer of feminist rock bumping elbows with someone who was accused of rape. Perhaps this is Isaac’s way of really showing the world that he didn’t do it. More than the accuser withdrawing her claims, this method might actually convince people. Carrie Brownstein, after all, doesn’t fuck around.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
I start with metal. I end with metal. That’s how I do these days.
SEPTEMBER 30 2010
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Danger Mouse & Jemini: Born a MC
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
SEPTEMBER 23 2010
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
If Dawson’s Creek were still on the air, this song would surely make an appearance, especially given the way that indie bands these days are horning their way into entertainment targeting teenaged girls (I’m looking at you, Twilight soundtrack contributors). Picturing Joey and Dawson or Joey and Pacey or Dawson and Pacy or whoever about to tongue-battle will either make or break this song for you depending, of course, on your feelings toward the heartthrob-filled television drama. If you were friends with me in ’99, you’ll know where I stand. I’ll leave it at that.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Am I the only one who thought Superchunk had gone the way of the Tasmanian wolf, the Caspian tiger, and the Carribean monk seal? Like these extinct animals, I thought of Superchunk that we would see and hear no more. The end of a band, like the end of a species, is a terribly sad thing. So when they released their first album in over 9 years on September 14th, it was like walking in the woods and bumping into an Irish deer. In other words, it was fucking awesome and more than a little surprising. Here is the first track from Majesty Shredding, the latest album from the resurrected Superchunk.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Just like my stomach can’t get enough pizza, my ears can’t get enough of Nika Roza Danilova’s voice, forcing me to look beyond the limited offerings of Zola Jesus to meet my NRD quota. In my pursuit I discovered this track by Former Ghosts, a get-up I think fitting for her to be involved with, as her pallour gives the impression that she herself may have once been, or even still is, a member of the spirit world.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
This track in which Chromeo beseeches their fans to conserve energy (or so it seems – I haven’t really paid much attention to the lyrics beyond the song title) is from their latest album, released just last week. Entitled Business Casual, I can only assume the album name was inspired by the wardrobe of the typical, not-so-fashionable, Ottawa public servant. Accordingly, I dedicate this one to my fellow bureaucrats, as over-paid as they are under-adorned.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
In honour of metal and alcohol, I present to you a song by the only band I’ve ever known to have a single-malt Scotch made in their name. The band’s vocalist, Anders Fridénis, is a connoisseur of the gold ‘n’ delicious, leading the band to team up with Scotch-producer Glenfarclas to create In Flames’ very own single malt. Check it out here.
SEPTEMBER 16 2010 – The Neurologically Atypical Top 5*
They say profanity is softening the moral fiber of our society like bones when you leave them in bleach for too long. However, unlike having your perfectly non-psychotic collection of animal skulls ruined in a rubbery mass, profanity takes a good thing and makes it even better. But I can see how you might get the impression that profanity is an overused and uncouth commodity that says more about your poor moral character than your FUBAR moustache whipping in the wind while you balance a two-four of 50 on your bicycle handlebars.
In those glorious and carefree days of the 80s and early 90s profanity really edged its way into the mainstream when words such as fuck, motherfucker, dickfuck, and bitchmotherfuck were used in a careless and awesome storm of freedom of expression. In those heady days where anything went and the appetite for R-rated movies increased, you couldn’t swing a teenage coming-of age boner without tripping over some goddam mother-shitting profanity. It was those days that famously prompted Douglas Adams to write a minor character in a novel who proudly carries his Oscar for Most Original Use of the Word Fuck in a Motion Picture Screenplay.
However in these dark and dismal times the use of profanity has begun to starve like a college freshman in an art-school dance program. Yes, sadly, it’s possible to shock people with the f-bomb or the c-grenade these days and who do we have to blame? The right-wing moral majority? They wish. No, the real culprit is Hollywood who, in their quest to squeeze every movie-going demographic into every picture, have begun making PG-13 movies out of films that have no right to be. Don’t believe me? Alien vs Predator, which should have been the orgiastic culmination of violence spawned from two of the goriest film franchises ever made was instead a castrated soprano of a movie. Die Hard 1 through 3, John Maclean ‘motherfuckers’ his way through dozens of criminals and terrorists and suddenly Die Hard 4 he’s all like ‘Oh shoot, I burned the darn muffins!’. Why? All in the name of keeping the PG 13 rating and making more money.
So this week I’m celebrating the top 5 songs that manage to storm the trenches of words used to describe dicks, fight their way through the barrage of pussy jokes and take the high ground of Fuck You mountain. These are five songs that have prominently and valorously used the word Fuck to shocking effect. And we’re not talking about some soft-focus harlequin romance ‘fuck’, where they throw the word in once to piss off the record company. No we’re talking about repetitively and constantly shouting the word fuck throughout every verse of the chorus; the music lyric version of a repeated anal penetration. So much glorious and unrestrained fuckness that making a clean version for the radio leaves behind more dead air than song.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The obvious choice, really, and therefore best gotten through quickly. Cee Lo Green’s obsessive stalker anthem is the closest thing to a 2010 summer breakout hit that everyone can feel good about. I personally would rather have Cee Lo get the credit instead of Katy Perry’s saccharine shit-sandwich California Gurls. Katy Perry is the musical equivalent of those insecure Lohan wannabes posting Facebook pictures of themselves pretending to make out with other girls. Yeah, Katy, you claim to have kissed a girl; nice job boarding the lesbian-chic train that left the station in 1992 when KD Lang and Claudia Shiffer were on the cover of Vanity Fair. If it were not for her single redeeming quality (mainly she looks like they cloned Zoey Deschanel’s head and grafted it to a porn star’s body) I would happily throw Katy Perry into a cage full of rabid, beer-goggled bonobo chimpanzees who were fed Cialis and hadn’t seen a female bonobo in six months. Let’s see her write a catchy pop tune about rabid ape gang-bang.
Getting back to Cee Lo, sure it’s a catchy tune with some interesting motown inspirations but could the man get a little more dark? Based on his lyrics I get the feeling his hobbies include brooding over perceived slights, parking outside his ex-girlfriend’s house and staring into the abyss. With Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy he already taught us the thin line that separates pop-genius from soul-destroying mental illness is not so much the US-Mexico border as it is the Canada-US border. But his ability to take the snarling, angry ‘fuck-you’ conversation he practices in his head while he lies awake at night and churn out yet another top ten hit with it makes me think Cee Lo’s obituary will feature either his murder-suicide or his suicide-murder.
NOTE: apparently having put all sorts of thought into my top 5 list allowed someone to shovel together a list with the care of an octopus trying to tentacle-rape a coma patient that already includes Cee Lo’s Fuck You. Setting aside the appropriate nature of this song selection for me right now I am forced to add another song. Please enjoy Lily Allen’s Fuck you (Very Much) instead as a kind of consolation prize that in no way consoles me whatsoever (flips bird at last week’s list).
Lily Allen: Fuck You (Very Much)
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
If there’s anyone who could clearly give a flying monkey fuck about whether her music gets top 40 airtime it’s got to be Peaches. In what we are now describing as a typical Canadian success story Peaches only really became famous once she left Canada and started making aggressive dance fuck-rock that became instant hits in Europe. There’s no evidence whether she was a sexually jaded gender-bending-over deviant before she moved to Berlin but hey, we’re talking about Germany. In what is universally cited as the biggest dick-move in western history Hitler tried to incinerate every sexual miscreant, gypsy and Indiana-fucking-Jones he could lay his hands on during WWII and to this day the place is still populated solely by S&M sex club members and David Hasselhoff fans. This is a country that could have Stephen Harper in a pride parade wearing a leather mask with a zipper given a very short x-axis of time.
What puts Peaches on the list is the brutal non-sequitur of her shouting ‘fuck the pain away’ loudly and repeatedly until the listener becomes first uncomfortable, then frightened, then back to uncomfortable and finally slightly aroused by the same gender. The song is a masterpiece of multileveled meaning. What exactly is the pain she is fucking away? Merely the physical pain of bad menstrual cramps, conjuring up an image of squishing genitals coated in a gore of red tide. Or perhaps the more complex emotional pain of heartache, inadequacy or guilt that your grandparents tried to commit genocide? We don’t know and we may never know because we’re not given the time to think between the gyrating pelvic thrusts that Peaches is kicking your cerebellum with. An aggressive pelvis with an untamed bush that she has just finished using to skullfuck your girlfriend, your grandma and then you, until you’re a girly-man.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
How, you may ask, does indy darling and tampon-rocker Ani DiFranco make it to a list about fuck fuck fuckfuckfuck fucking fuuuuuuuuuuuck! It’s true, Ani (pronounced ‘Aw-knee’ you patriarchal oppressor!) kindof represents all that is hairy-legged, anti-corporate, political and potentially lesbian-friendly. Playing any one of her dozens of non-commercial, politically conscious albums will instantly cause the testicles of any male in range to spontaneously castrate themselves. And yet nestled in between these like an emasculation sandwich is Dilate. By her own admission the album is a huge departure into the painfully overwhelming world of love and loss where she focused that immense skybolt scrutiny usually leveled at ‘the Man’ and instead turned it to ‘the man’, or possibly ‘the woman’ depending on her sexual orientation that day. The wonderful thing about this album is it kicks the soapbox from under her until she’s down here with the rest of us. What’s that Ani? You had a bad breakup and now you don’t have the energy to make the rest of us feel bad? And you immortalized it forever in song? (pause to wipe away tears from laughing so hard)
Nothing captures this entire sad escapade more acutely than Untouchable Face. Beginning with a quiet, almost whispered confession that her heart can be broken just like a normal womyn the song suddenly rises into the almost upbeat double entendre ‘tell you the truth I prefer the worst of you/ too bad you had to have a better half’ that clues us into the fact not only is she human but she’s also a homewrecker. We are just about getting ready to settle into a pop-tune when out of no-where she barfs up a nugget of bile and hatred you’d expect it to be uttered by Charles Bronson in Mr Majestik. There’s a sheer, gut-wrenching intensity to the ‘Fuck you!’ like she’s dragged up a chunk of her soul, doused it in 5-star and sent it on a zippo to hell. The combined loathing and hatred detonated out of what is essentially a peacenik folky is so shocking it kindof makes your hair stand on end.
I admit, somewhere in the mid-90s due to what was (in hindsight) an unavoidable romantic complication I had two women listening to this song daily and cursing my memory. It was, I shit you not, the most terrified I have ever been. Ani’s revolutionista cult following combined with her alarming heartbroken ferver was like irradiating maxi pads with the Hulk’s gamma rays and waiting for feminist bob-ombs to go off. I slept with one hand cupped protectively over my balls. Any song inspiring this level of rage-fueled misandry has fought its way onto the list.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Part of me really hates whimsy. Something about the sly wink to the audience makes me want to smack someone. Think Jar Jar Binks. Think Barenaked Ladies. It’s like the artist can’t be bothered to put themselves out there by making a serious attempt and instead makes a self-conscious parody as a way of copping out. Self-proclaimed Rappist Schaffer the Darklord (or STD, the abbreviation for ‘standard’) initially sets off those same alarm bells but give him a chance and you’ll hear that just because he’s nerdcore doesn’t mean he isn’t dead serious. Your Band is the track that cemented this for me; he might be a white nerd who raps about Star Wars and Evil Dead but the inventiveness and venom with which he spits out a rapid-fire hurricane of profanities would blister the ears on a sailor.
Your Band explodes on the list simply for the extended and elaborate set-up STD goes through before cutting loose with the fuck-word. He spends two minutes and fourteen seconds on a three minute and forty-seven second track bitch slapping his hated enemy with his dick before even getting to the first chorus. The point is absolute evisceration of the object of his hate, some grunge band from a little suburb of Seattle. At no point are we left wondering why, exactly, STD has a problem with this band and his public gutting like Jack the Ripper on a London whore is done with excruciating detail. The listener suffers through the douchiness of the object of his derision for so long that by the time STD arrives at the first chorus you’re begging for him to finally unload. The catharsis of that first, shouted ‘fuck you and your band’ is like a pocket-nuke of the profane, delivering more mega tonnage of hate than an entire Slipknot concert.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Opposed to the premeditated, almost surgical usage of the word fuck that STD displays in Your Band Rachel Bloomberg’s Fuck me Ray Bradbury is a continual and relentless invitation to dirty, dirty sexual penetration by one of our most respected and elderly sci-fi writers. There are very few sci-fi sex memes that can shock me anymore; it’s all slave Leia’s and Felicia Day. But listen to Rachel Bloomberg ejaculating onto a copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes and try not blush a little. A conscious antidote to the pretend-coy jail-baiting of virtually every pop starlet with a ‘property of Disney’ branded into her ass-cheek from the last ten years, Rachel Bloomberg takes the simple pop formula of disguising innuendo with innocence and strips away the pretense. And replaces it. With humping. On octogenarian cock.
This girl straight up wants to be violated by Ray Bradbury. And how! Part of the joke, of course, is Ray Bradbury’s legendary cantankerousness. As one of the fathers of contemporary science fiction, a living icon if you will, he has publicly and crazily denounced the ‘internets’ and technology in general. You can rest assured his last brush with technology was buying a VCR and if you visited his home it would almost certainly still be flashing 12:00. His Grandpa Simpsonism may seem at odds with his career but anyone who’s read Fahrenheit 451 should probably have seen this coming. At any rate, the thought of any girl wanting to go down on him in her car marks a level of creepy devotion that erodes any last semblance of pretend innocence.
And that is, of course, the point. Boning. Putting the cranny-axe into the bitch-wrinkle. Deep-throating the withered pork steeple of the man who wrote The Martian Chronicles. And swallowing. All set to a 60’s era inspired pop jingle that owes more to the Supremes than Miley Cyrus. The fact that she wants to bury the spice-weasel with something as uncool as a science fiction writer instead of, say, some rapper or Zac Effron (that’s a real person, right?) is kindof refreshing. She wants Bradbury so bad I actually start to want her a little. At the same time. Then I could brag to all my friends I’d been in a threesome with the author of The Illustrated Man. Take that, Harlan Ellison.
For the full effect take a gander at Rachel’s Ray Bradbury video.
SEPTEMBER 9 2010 – The Quit Flappin’ Your Gums While I’m Gummin’ Your Flaps Top 5
Post-dripping syringe fellatio, I came home and promptly slept the humiliation away. Now it’s 4:00 and that wave I mentioned has crashed into a rocky shore, leaving my twisted, loveless (though featuring gorgeous dental work) carcass for seafaring organisms to rest atop, feast upon, and generally mistreat. It is my newfound opinion that favours are highly overrated, especially when being performed for someone other than myself.
That being said, a commitment to a scary woman is a commitment to a scary woman, and a man without his word and his balls is, according to Tony Montana… well, he never said what such a man would be, but he sure as hell would not be Tony Montana, and if there is one thing I am most definitely not, it is not trying to not be just like Tony Montana isn’t.
Here, then, are five songs not chosen quickly and mindlessly as the oral pain throbs relentlessly and the reflexes launch a grown man’s body off the couch every time it hears a sound that could be this blog’s owner returning from work.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Big Boi: Lookin’ 4 Ya (Jedi Remix ft. Andre 3000)
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
SEPTEMBER 2 2010
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
These lovely gents hail from London, England, the city from which the preponderance of lovely gents hail. This particular number is from their latest album, Surfing the Void, which features cover art as confounding as it is comical. If you’re as tickled as I am by space-themed anthropomorphisms, waste no time in clicking here.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Given the upcoming release of their new album on September 7, I thought it appropriate to get some Interpol up in here. If you’re keen, you can pre-order the album through Matador Records and they’ll pad your purchase with a poster, a 45 adapter (finally you can play that Luba 45 you picked up at the neighbourhood garage sale!), and a chance to win a Shepard Fairey print. Not bad, Interpol. Not bad. I commend your efforts to make the legitimate acquisition of your album more appealilg than the typical approach of this internet swashbuckler.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
I’ve yet to bestow upon this band the crookedmouth stamp of approval, but I have been giving the new album, The Orchard, a bit of a listen. At this point, my brain is still blending all the tracks into one mega-song but, according to the information superhighway, this is supposed to be The Hit. Accordingly, if it is not to your satisfaction, please direct your anger away from your dear, slanty-faced friend and toward the true guilty party: the internet.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
It would be quite the stretch to say I’m a Timbaland fan. The same goes for my feelings about Justin Timberlake. However, it seems that when these two team up, the effect is rather like the coming together of acetic acid and sodium bicarbonate. On their own, they’re humdrum, unremarkable, no more interesting than vinegar and baking soda. When combined, however, the result is explosive. Timbaland and JT are like the resulting carbonic acid: unstable, but highly entertaining. This song may not be able to unclog a drain or serve as an elementary school science experiment, but the chemical reaction between Timbo and Mr. Sexy Back is definitely worth paying attention to.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
There hasn’t been a remix on here in a while (since June 17, to be exact) and I figure it’s high time. And in case you’re one for music trivia, this remix is by one-half of the Swedish electro-pop duo, the Tough Alliance, Henning Fürst; also, the co-founder of the independent Gothenburg-based label, Sincerely Yours. It may be interesting to point out as well that this fellow’s partner in both the abovementioned ventures is Eric Berglund, also known as Ceo, who should be familiar to you from August 12′s top 5. Aren’t I informative?
Here’s the original, too. I can’t leave you without a point of reference.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
AUGUST 26 2010
I’m feeling a little inadequate after Adam’s superb top 5 of last week. This is largely due to his focus on my failings as a music blogger. But also, I just can’t compete with someone who drops shit like “critically fellated” and can use “moribund” in a sentence.
Despite my shaken self-esteem, I’ll carry on with this cmt5 business. Unfortuntately for you, dear readers, you’re stuck with the shoddy writing, juvenile humour, and limited vocabulary of this Woody Allen-hating gal. Take it or leave it. (And by leave it, I mean shove it up your arsehole so far you can taste it.)
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
When I first came across this band, I’d thought I’d found another jj – the angelic lady voices, the lofty sounds emanating from various electronic devices… You get the idea. However, it turns out that the School doesn’t quite have the chops to replace my beloved Swedish songsters. While their latest album, Disconnect from Desire, will fill the void that jj left behind when they decided that doing drugs was more important than making a decent album, I can’t see us going anywhere in the long term. They’re certainly worthy of fooling around with for a while, but I remain committed elsewhere. The moment jj gets their shit together and produces more of that celestial loveliness that stole my heart, the School will be history. For now though, you should give ‘em a listen.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
I was convinced that Jónsi and I were enemies. As the frontman of the Icelandic whine-rockers Sigur Rós, his voice sounded as though he’d had a laryngectomy and replaced his voicebox with an ambulance siren. Jónsi’s vocals à la Sigur Rós were simply too shrill to be enjoyed by my delicate ears and I hated him for it. With the debut of his solo album, Go, however, I’ve been forced to reevaluate my stance. I’ve come to believe that Sigur Rós simply made poor use of Jónsi’s falsetto; his solo work proves that he doesn’t have to sound like he’s been prebuscently castrated. A man singing like a girl can actually be a beautiful thing, as you’ll find out when you listen to this song.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
When a band names itself something as disgusting as Gauntlet Hair, you have to figure the music is probably pretty good. After all, they won’t be attracting any fans with a name like that. The worst part is that I’m not really sure why it’s gross. All I know is that it conjures up images of pubic hair in places that pubic hair shouldn’t be. Ah well. I can appreciate a desire to creep people out. Plus, the song’s rockin’. Give ‘er, Gauntlet Hair. Give ‘er.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The thing about being a stepmom is that you’re not the only mom in the picture. The child has a real mom whose house he goes to regularly, resulting in me being unable to exercise complete control over the music he is exposed to. This situation has resulted in, for example, Jack Johnson and Ben Harper soiling the airwaves in my home. (While I give credit to these men for hiding their attempts to get laid under several layers of cheesy lyrics, activism, and uninspired guitar-diddling, I can’t condone their particular brand of singer-songwriter bullshit.) This Taio Cruz hit is the latest musical disgrace he’s brought back from The Other Side. I must admit, however, that this is far better than anything ever made by likes of Jack or Ben. At least Taio is honest. He’s not looking for love; he’s looking for ass. Although he doesn’t say it in so many words, he’s all about the “find ‘em, fuck ‘em and flee” strategy. I can respect that. Plus, you can dance to it and any song that permits me to dance up a storm with my stepson is a good one.
*I actually had a hard time believing that Jack Johnson made music for adults. I figured he was a modern day Raffi with a target audience of glue-eating preschoolers.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
I don’t know what this song is supposed to be about, but I’m pretty sure it’s not about the loss of one’s cherished pet. For me, however, that’s exactly what it’s about. In fact, the entire Bon Iver album, For Emma, Forever Ago, has become the soundtrack to my grief after losing my dog, Molly, the morning of August 21. After almost 17 years of making the McPhersons the luckiest familly on earth, she succumbed to a stroke in her sleep, leaving us devastated and significantly more in touch with our emotions than we are comfortable with.
For those of you who knew Molly, you’ll remember an excessively stinky and obscenely loveable mutt. She was proud like a beagle, smart like a shepherd, and loved water like a lab. She fetched our sticks, kept our secrets, and grew our hearts. A finer dog this world will never know.
Before I start to hyperventilate, I must conclude this heartwrenching write-up and will do so by paraphrasing Tennyson. Although it breaks my heart in the worst kind of way to know that I’ll never have another Molly-induced allergy attack, I wouldn’t trade this pain for anything because it would mean not having had her in my life. Wherever you are, Molly, I hope the hot dogs are plentiful and the carrots are scarce. You’ll be sorely missed, never replaced, and always loved. Rest in peace, Stinker. I’ll see you on the flipside.*
*For the record, I don’t believe there is a flipside. But saying things like that comforts me during my time of mourning.
AUGUST 19 2010 – The Quietly Aggrieved Top 5
Amanda’s sitting out this week, presumably still nursing a Nova Scotia-sized hangover and a newly developed fear of automobiles and Steve’s company. This has fortunately given me the opportunity to step in, and in so doing to redress what I feel are past wrongs within this column.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Having been too busy listening to The Rankin Family and Big Boi on repeat, the cmt5′s author amazingly missed the fact that the Roots let loose a new album and it’s the best thing they’ve recorded since the hidden track on “Things Fall Apart,” in which ?uestlove just talks about how hidden tracks are stupid. (Metacomedy or pot use? The listener is the jury.) “How I Got Over,” the album’s title track, is soul-infused posi-hop of the highest order and makes me want to dance. Given the fact that I’m a lumbering white male, that’s no small feat.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
I am aggrieved that Amanda has, in this column, trumpeted (ha!) the work of Beirut and Fanfarlo, but failed to draw our attention to this band. Though their name (they have trumpets; they would like you to know this) and many of their lyrics are a tad too sincere for we of the ironic generation, the fact is this band knows exactly where my emotions are and it plays them like a … I don’t know, an accordion I guess? Also they’re an indie-pop band with jazz breaks, which can best be described as the greatest thing possible.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Perhaps it just isn’t possible to like both Raekwon and roots country, but I remain disappointed that this genre has been totally ignored in these e-pages. I’m also righteously indignant that she’s not highlighted anything from the fantastic Daytrotter sessions (Daytrotter.com — look it up). The hasty, raw nature of the sessions perfectly matches the work of Justin Townes Earle (son of the fairly good Steve Earle, namesake of the much greater Townes Van Zandt — a savvy publicist might suggest he swap his latter names and claim it’s the other way around). This is the best cut from the session at The Horseshack in Rock Island, Ill., striking a nice balance between the vaguely threatening love song and the one where he compares his gal’s tits to a pair of perfectly leavened biscuits.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Released earlier this year, more than a year after a critically fellated debut EP, Toro Y Moi’s “Causers of This” was touted by those same deep-throated critics as the approaching saviour of the already moribund glo-fi sub-subgenre. Despite arriving on this gale-force wind of pompous hot air, and the fact that his name seems like a trap laid by douchebags (and which easily ensnared me — it’s pronounced “mwah” like in French but I was saying “moy” and sounding like some kind of philistine), the album is actually pretty fantastic. It’s playful and joyful and gentle and all kinds of other things Pitchfork readers are supposed to detest. As an edgy and interesting new artist, he’s exactly the sort of thing I count on the cmt5 to find for me; I’m aggrieved that I had to dig it up for myself.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
This little blog has been going on for how many months now and still no Woody Allen show-tune standards? What the dick?
AUGUST 12 2010
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Snoop has sunk to a new low. First of all, he’s playing a show in Cape Breton. (I think the last, and perhaps only, rap act to come to the island was Vanilla Ice in 1992). Secondly, the posters advertising the event show him with a humiliating speech balloon saying “Big fiddle, for shizzle. Rain, shine, or drizzle.” That’s right. The concert is taking place at Cape Breton’s most gawdy and semantically irritating tourist attraction: the world’s largest fiddle. Apparently the stunning natural beauty of the Cabot Trail, the magnificence of the Atlantic ocean, and the pathological friendliness of the island’s inhabitants were not sufficient to draw visitors. Cape Breton’s attractiveness to tourists needed to be enhanced through the creation of a ten tonne unplayable musical instrument. (Although I question the legitimacy of calling something incapable of producing sound a musical instrument, I’m relieved that this giant fiddle is non-functional. Given the horrific sounds emitted by regular-sized fiddles, I shudder to think what this one would be capable of.) And I guess it worked. It got Snoop Dogg to the island, after all. What more could we really ask for?
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
This guy is underground. Big time underground. He’s, like, beyond the earth’s crust, beyond the asthenosphere; probably residing somewhere between the liquid iron core and the lower mantle. He doesn’t even have a website (a MySpace page does not count as a wesbite)! He doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page (which, to me, is a key indicator of undergroundness)! So, while I’m unable to tell you anything about Ceo, you can congratulate yourself for being one step ahead of the internet – sort of like that time you BDSM-themed group sex with transsexual farm animals.
This is a tribute to my sister, who rocked the Port Morien firehall by singing this at karaoke last week. Given how much I loathe the Rankins (even quietly rejoicing when one of them bit the dust in a car accident, thankful to have one less fiddler to rage at), this dedication is a clear indication of how much I love my sister. But how could you not love someone who sings so enthusiastically with a voice resembling that of a terminally ill seagull? My sister’s voice, in fact, is quite possibly the only sound more grating than fiddle music. A song by the Rankins almost becomes bearable when the focus is on the atonal, rhymeless vocal stylings of my cherished sibling, instead of the eardrum-sodomizing twang of the fiddle. Well, perhaps bearable is a stretch. In any case, I owe my sister both a big “Thank You” and an even bigger “Fuck you.” Thank you for the memorable karaoke performance. And fuck you for getting this musical atrocity stuck in my head.
* I could not track down a free mp3 of this travesty. Just like I would not pay for a piece of dog shit, I will not pay for a song by the Rankins. So, you’re stuck with a YouTube video.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
It seems as if my ass is permanently stuck to the seat on the Big Boi train. And I don’t think I’ll be prying it loose any time soon (who wants a loose ass anyway?). Currently, this is my favourite tune on the masterpiece that is Sir Luscious Left Foot. Not only is this song a dance machine’s dream, but it demonstrates that Big Boi recognizes the importance of contingency planning. As any project manager worthy of managing a project knows, one must consider that things don’t always go as expected. But whereas most people would simply have a Plan B, Big Boi has a Plan B and a Plan C! This motherfucker is prepared for everything. He’s like a Boy Scout on steroids (but without the risk of getting diddled at camp). If Big Boi’s rap career falls through, he’s definitely got potential for a career in project management. One could even say he’s got a back up plan.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
The other day, my infinitely awesome seven year-old stepson asked if he could play some records (“Daddy, can I drop the needle?”). Because we are infinitely awesome parents we, of course, said yes. We expected him to put on Survivor or Journey or another one of his all time favourites. But no. He chose Maiden; specifically, Killers. More than his superior academic achievement, more than his over-sized heart, more than his impeccable manners, this confirmed that we were raising him right. And as if we weren’t proud enough, the moment Wrathchild came on, he says “They played this at the concert.” Not only is this kid down with Maiden, but he has an audio recording of the concert he attended imprinted on his brain! I couldn’t have asked for a cooler kid if I crapped one out myself.
){kind=link}