22 (Autumn '06)
What? You think because I moved out to the suburbs, got fat, and settled into a life of minor home repair that I don't still rawk? You think I've hung up my needles and left the rest of youz to wallow in Mariah Carey's discharge? You think my own staggering sojourn toward erectile dysfunction has overwhelmed my pathetic need to appear hip?
No.
No, I've just been waiting for the undergrad locust to descend on Boston, so I can suck down their cig fumes and listen to their fascinating like-studded soliloquies and be made to feel (in general) like a park ranger with a colostomy bag. That's what really turns me on. That and the foliage.
Also:
I missed you. I missed that moment when a new hook first takes root, when the heart locks onto the groove and the world stops, for three lousy minutes, beating the shit out of your unreasonable hope.
- Under the Influence of Giants
- Under the Influence of Giants
- (Island, 2006)
- You ever done a mondo bump then dressed up in a real tight James Brown jumpsuit and rubbed yourself up against Chaka Khan with the entire rest of the disco watching you? You have now.
- The Kooks
- Inside In Inside Out
- (Virgin, 2006)
- Take the Strokes and round up to the Beatles. This scruffy Brighton quartet blew up last year in the UK, because every single song they write is a hit single. "Naïve" will burn through your grief in two seconds flat. Import only at the moment, but it's just a matter of time.
- Jon Auer
- Songs from the Year of Our Demise
- Head Like a Kite
- Random Portraits of the Home Movie
- (Pattern 25, 2006)
- Auer, worshipped for his turns in Big Star and the Posies, offers an hour of transcendent heartbreak, brimming with cellos, organs, chimes, and the tenor of a battered angel. Head Like a Kite makes funk music for haunted houses. Are you ready to stretch the limits of irresistible pop?
- Smoosh
- Free to Stay
- (Barsuk, 2006)
- I know, I know. Smoosh was supposed to be a flash in the Teflon. A couple of wee punkets from Seattle with a one-way ticket to Flukesville. Nope. Aysa (now thirteen) and Chloe (eleven) have ass-knocked their debut. Exquisite melodies, keyboard loops, an occasional wallop of drums. At last, the fine sorrow of adolescence has been made danceable.
- Guest Tip from maestro Paul Delan
- Vetiver
- To Find Me Gone
- (Discritina, 2006)
- Often called neo-folk and I suppose the moniker fits. But these are not trust fund hippies pretending it's 1969, and this is not your parent's folk. Lovely yet a little weary. They're clearly not afraid of beauty and have zero interest in irony or popular culture. Listen to them and it suddenly feels 10 degrees cooler.
- Dayna Kurtz
- Another Black Feather
- (Kismet, 2006)
- Another stunner from America's premier torch singer. She rocks ("From the Bottom Up"), she shocks ("Showdown"), she defrocks ("Nola"). She sings from inside a dream ("Venezuela") and produces the most lucid response yet heard to the emotional pornography of 9/11 ("Day of Atonement"). For chrissake, people: she even plays the fuuking banjo ("Banks of the Edisto"). Shut up and buy it.
- Bob Schneider
- The Californian
- (Shockarama, 2006)
- An album of unbridled party stomp from the only musician ever to bring me to climax during a live show. To quote the bard: "We put some hits on the hi-fi and mixed up some mai-tais, for the rest of the night everybody got so high." There's a reason four out of five pharmacologists surveyed recommend Bob for your next tropical depression.
And now, in a bow to what I've been instructed to call the digital revolution, we offer the first (and perhaps last) edition of The I-Tip. All singles, all the time.
Hey, we gotta keep the sponsors happy somehow....
- Eddie Harris: Listen Here
- (From the album The Best of Eddie Harris, Atlantic, 1991)
- The OG sax of late-cool produces an eight-minute jazz blues masterpiece. I know you don't need this image in your head, but I actually tried to hump my speaker the first time I heard this song.
- Dolly Parton: Jolene
- (From the album Best of Dolly Parton, RCA 1990)
- A haunting anthem of jealousy in Appalachian blue. This is classic Dolly, back before she let her knockers do the talking, before country music devolved into hick propaganda, when it was still articulating the unbearable truths of poor people.
- Special Guest I-Tip from DJ Mazz Attack
- Chromeo: Needy Girl
- (From the album She's in Control, Vice, 2004)
- The hit you'll sing along to while riding "post" on your guy's jock. (That's Brit equestrian slang for N-A-S-T-Y.) Giddyup.
- Antony & the Johnsons: Fistful of Love
- (From the album I Am a Bird, Secretly Canadian, 2005)
- Antony sounds enough like a castrata to arouse suspicion among the cockarrati, but the point is his pipes, not his joint. This song is high-grade soul, like early Hothouse Flowers with the late Jeff Buckley on the mic.
- Blue Scholars: No Rest for the Weary
- (From the excellent self-title debut, Blue Scholar Records, 2006)
- A rap track with a lush melody and words that explain what it's like to be a young man of color in the age of Iraq. No bling. No shiny self-immolation. Revolutionary.