Battles - Race In (mp3)

When Ahdrew was here last week he turned me on to the Battles album Mirrored, which I can not get enough of. It is simply amazing.

The album, but this song in particular, reminds me of my friend Ahdrew. It is intelligent, fun, passionate, interesting, complicated, very very modern, and drums like a manafire.

He is gone now, back to Idaho to spend his time being cute with Esly, and I miss him very much. But when I listen to this I feel like he's here, and that will just have to suffice for the time being.


Love you Drew. Thanks for being a good friend. Rock and Roll.

Labels: Life, Tunesday

Jack White's Southwest Huevos Rancheros Recipe

Six Fresh eggs
2 cans Chunky Guitars
1 cup Patty Page
5 Parts Trumpet
One canned jalapeño pepper, sliced
2 Tbsp Olive oil
Enough Salt to make you salivate
Cilantro

Heat oil in a large cast iron frying pan on medium high heat until it's popping into your eyes.

Fill the whole pan full of trumpets and sauteè for a minute or two. A few might spill out. That's okay. They should be golden brown, clear, strong, and delicious.

Add the guitars and let cook for a few minutes on medium high heat until they're are somewhat mushy and some of the moisture has evaporated. Don't worry if the guitars brown a bit. It will all turn out okay. Trust me. Have I ever led you astray before?

Add the jalapeño pepper. Crack eggs directly into the pan with the cooking sauce. Add salt.

Stir with a spatula to mix everything together. You know what? Add a few more trumpets while you're at it. You should be having a hard time sitting still. Remove from heat when the eggs are cooked to your liking and you start to raise your fist in the air.

Sprinkle with cilantro. Serve. Enjoy.

Conquest - The White Stripes (mp3)

Labels: Tunesday

I know. I know. It's Wednesday. but let's pretend.

So the plans for NYC are getting more solidified every day. Moving across the country is a scary proposition. We're about to set out in to the unknown - away from all our friends, families, favorite restaurants, bars and hotspots. What's it going to be like when we get there? What if we don't make any new friends? Will we find pizza as good as Casa Bianca? Does anyone there know how to make a decent taco? Where are we going to get tasty onion rings?

All of this will be figured out. It is an exciting move to undertake, and, as Will Oldham helps me remember, there's peace, love, and wonderful things everywhere you look.

Minor Place - Bonnie Prince Billy (mp3)

Labels: Life, Tunesday

Tunesday is back. Thanks for waiting.

I am on a giant Led Zeppelin kick this month. Nothing more really needs to be said. This song kills. I feel like I'm hearing it again for the first time. Poolie recently said he loved Lindsay Buckingham and Mick Fleetwood because, when they play, it sounds like two kids who are picking up their instruments and discovering what sounds they can make. I feel the same way about this song.

So why not wash out your ears a bit, and let Jimmy, Robert, and the two Johns remind you what it's all about?

Ramble On - Led Zeppelin (mp3)

Labels: Tunesday

New York’s my Home - Ray Charles mp3

Labels: Tunesday

I got this song from the behemoth 700 song South by Southwest mp3 torrent. I’ve been listening to iTunes on random at work and deciding which songs stay and which songs go. This is a song that is really on the fence. I tried to delete it a few times while initially listening, but was so transfixed that I couldn’t bring myself to do it because:

a. It is a lullaby to Suri Cruise.
b. It is an honest-to-goodness space-oddity.
c. It sounds exactly like something that DMH would make.

Give it a listen. You be the judge.

Funny Money - Cry Blood Apache mp3

Cry Blood Apache’s Official Myspace

Labels: Tunesday

I was running late to work the other day and caught the beginning of Nic Harcourt’s Morning Becomes Eclectic. Now, I don’t normally listen to it (and I’ll be honest with you, when I do I’m usually not impressed), but that day something magical happened.

Thanks to a little man who likes to call himself Richard Swift and a song he likes to call Dressed up for the Letdown, I was catapulted out of my morning fog and musical dry spell into profound joy.

This is what Richard Swift does best. This is why, when we saw him perform for the first time a few years ago, our mouths dropped open. We set out to make music like this; subtle, classic, interesting, beautiful, and fail. Where we unsuccessfully attempt to clutch the sounds we hear out of the ether, Swift lets them alight on his shoulder and twitter their memories in to his hear.

The Buddy Holly influenced knee slapping percussion. The magnificently muted trumpet. The haunted pirate ship choir, swaying, groaning and rattling their chains to the beat.

This is magic.

Richard Swift - Dressed up for the Letdown mp3

Labels: Tunesday

This really has to be heard to be believed.

Clearly Bardot’s strangest collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, the droning zither/harp from space sounds like it is being strummed with the business end of a hammer. The chorus vocal seems to exist merely as an afterthought, with Bardot yelping the title of the song, placing a distinct emphasis on "tact!" for the benefit of Mr. Echo Chamber.

Close you eyes. Can you see Serge stalking around the room, his feet reaching high over his head with each step, poking and prodding the musicians as they bang on ridiculous instruments from 50s space movies, trying to communicate with "groovy" beings from other worlds? Far out man. Far. Out.

Contact - Brigitte Bardot mp3

Labels: Tunesday

Recently, I got to thinking about all of the great discussions I used to have sitting around various bottles of wine on various porches around (and sometimes outside of) the country. As the candlelight dimmed and the level of wine got lower and lower we would take turns playing songs on the stereo, choosing our favorite new songs or old ones that had moved us, explaining why they mattered. I don’t get to talk music criticism as much any more, but all that’s about to change.

I hereby christen every Tuesday for the foreseeable future "Tunesday," where I will discuss a song that I have been digging on recently. This isn’t Pitchfork or Rolling Stone. This is just one man and his fluid and often-quickly-reversed opinions on music who promises to never use the words "angsty" or "vibe." Enjoy.

Up first: Livin' Thing - Electric Light Orchestra

L is already extremely sick of this song. In fact, there was no point when she found it enjoyable. But I love it. I forced her to listen to it on the way to church this last week because it had been in my head for days, pounding away, reminding me of all that was good in the 70s. (In 1976 it became ELO's 4th top forty hit in two years.) The pop sensibilities, the phenomenal intertwining vocals, the catchy hooks. That singularly great slapback vocal echo on "I'm Taking a Dive" in the bridge. Pure joy.

It was only halfway though the last chorus when I realized she wasn’t bobbing her head and singing in a sexy falsetto like me and Jeff Lynne. No. She looked at me and shrugged her shoulders. No? I tried to extol the virtues of the orchestration, it’s obvious influence on current favorite, Of Montreal, the perfect ending-credits-of-a-movie quality to it, but she was having none of it.

We came to an agreement. She doesn’t have to love ELO like I do, and I don’t have to love Blondie like she does, but there’s still a little part of me that wishes we could drive off in to the Arizona desert on our adventure to discover the world, hand in hand, a St. Christopher hanging from the rear view mirror, and, as we drive out of sight, a chorus of voices grows softer and softer patiently reminding us

Its a livin thing,
Its a terrible thing to lose
Its a given thing
What a terrible thing to lose.

A man can dream.

Labels: Life, Tunesday