track review 2012

An African singer who took the UK, followed it with the US and died in an air raid in 1941 at the age of 43. This dates from 1932 and with a minute i and a minute in, all instrumental, was written to be danced to.

Why a solo tune? I’m worried. I don’t want ETF to end and I certainly hope they have no intention of taking Radke back once his little ‘Falling In Reverse’ bit comes crashing down.

An energetic call to worldwide lethargy, which seems to define 20 somethings shrugging their way through a downsized life in industrial Allentown. The sort of place that sucks so bad, Billy Joel used it as a metaphor for blue collar workers.

Grooveallegiance -Funadelica – I am so excited to be seeing the great man on Wednesday and it gives me the perfect excuse to blast Funkadelica and Parliament for days on end. To be reasonable about it, what else could I want?

They’re one of the bands I love but that simply don’t stick in my iPod. Very good but never great enough. This song could well change that. The vocals are gorgeous, and the music is a calliope of twenty million rhythms.

These guys can get too far out their even for my tastes, a rambunctious, beat heavy slam. And this is more of the same, but at least the drum triplicates are a nice hook and the words are chanted but not so harsh you want to run away and hide.

Play “Electric Feel” by MGMT at the same time as “Le Disko” by Shiny Toy Guns and you’d get a song combination that sounds similar to Sleigh Bells’ new single “Comeback Kid”.

Never before has a band been so aptly named. In business since the 1990s, they have a spritely power pop sound that exudes youthfulness and high spirits and fervor and this, from their first album in five years, has lost nothing. Eager and able to please, it is just terrific.

Around the time Usher released this huge hit, he was well on his way to becoming what he claimed he most wanted to: the next Michael jackson. But the problem with being the next MJ is not black, it’s white. Usher couldn’t crossover all the way, he wasn’t quite poppy enough and there was an edge of sexual intimidation with him.

Rendezvous – the dB’s – In which Pete Holsapple goes to Graceland and has an epiphany of sorts, though not the Pilgrimage Paul Simon did. Instead he wanders around Graceland and calls out the King: “Taking Care Of Business” doesn’t mean a thing”.

Here is where the song is very different from Dylan’s original: by the end of the original, there is no doubt that Dylan is the man, in Krall’s version, there is no doubt that she isn’t the hooker but a third party and the gender switches at the end confuse the story. It is a beautiful take so why Krall won’t get her hands dirty, I have no idea.

As nasty a piece of misogyny as rock and roll ever manages, as he warns his woman to stop that “Yakkety yak” because he’s “holding a baseball bat” before he hits the road with Tonto. Makes you wonder exactly why he is in such a hurry to leave.

Photovoltaic – Jump Into The Gospel – This is about as glam rock as indie pop is gonna get, the lead singer prints his presence on it, and it is subtler than it first sounds, the keyboards emerging as a major player.

Miley is unbelievably beautiful on this song off Blood On The Tracks. She gets that it is country and not folk and she is not so young that she can’t grasp the sentiments. Miley takes it easy, undersings it a touch, and lets the melody play itself out.

Lines about “when Giants played the game” are beyond asinine. It isn’t even a pun or a metaphor, it is the equivalent of “Good evening, Cleveland”. So is the Meadowland reference. Listen to it on this live version. HE WAITS FOR THE APPLAUSE!!

Desolation – Lamb Of God – Harder then their last album, the fans claim. But what does that mean? The most ferocious band in the business nail it again, that’s what that means

extremely well, like a real clean and powerful E Street Band, performed. A streamlined condemnation, the back up singers sound like doo wop and Bruce… Bruce is a touch too emotional but he isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever heard.

“Fuddum fuddum” -what the heck does that mean? Barclay’s mix tape as excerpted here for over four minutes is a thing of beauty and wonder. It isn’t seamless, indeed, it insists upon you noticing the seams but from an inspired use of the ittitular note on a Buzzcocks to the end it is an amazing achievement.

This is my big, big, big song at the moment Nothing else has the happiness of this song and happiness is catchy. Incidentally, if writing about happiness is easy, why can’t Kathleen do it more often? Don’t bother, it was a rhetorical.questio

seems to jump upwards with a discovery of a new love and the thrill of discovery. The melody is just lovely, “Wake up, wake up, wake up, I want to take you…” is the sound of a woman on the first day of love.

great song no doubt, but man, all these years later it sounds like reprocessed cheese: the drums are tinny, the synth an irritant and no, Sir, it does not rock. Ripe for a remake. I recommend Swift kickstarts it.

I don’t remember it from “Shrek 4” at all -of course, the last of the series was such a dog, most of it has drifted out of my memory files. Lucy sang a lovely version of this Tuesday night and all I can add is, the recorded version of the pas de deuz is quite its equals.

I was surprised to hear Bon Iver produced this, proving that everybody was born for a reason, and his was his spare beautiful work with Edwards, who finds the best use for punchline as a punchline since “B Movie”.

I saw Trina on TMZ the other night and she was so, no, really, demure, I could have sworn it was joke. Here, she gives LIl Kim and Nicki Minaj a run for their nasty. This is blessed profanity indeed. Trina is awesome.

By the 21st century we should be immune to concepts of national identity. I mean, McDonalds is McDonalds is McDonalds, right? But in the 20th Century, the particularness of an Englishman was legion and Coward, playwright, actor, composer, and linchpin of a century that feels like another millennium, still walked the earth on this ode to eccentricity as defining rod. After, they saved the world during WWII

In the latest of a long list of bands I missed, meet Felt. Real Estate covered em Saturday night and I think thet were awesome though long gone. Produced by a Cocteau with an English Lou Reed for a lead vocalist this is an epic indie UK style from around 1990 and is simply a great lost track you need to find.

Rap rocker, rocks instead of raps and comes uop with the best rock song so far this year. The weakness is the average new rock problem, the song isn’t all there. But the performance is invigorating and the vocal is all that.

Beside the fact that the video is ridiculous and only exists to remind us that the song has really nothing to say, the falsetto gushy chorus wants to hook the listener up like a sticky donut he or she absolutely wants to resist to.