Apropos of nothing whatsoever... a helter-skelter smattering of TOM WAITS, whose rusty croak of a voice all-but-implores me to drink whiskey and smoke. Except I'm not a smoker. And I haven't had a drink since August. (Let me assure you: Diet Coke and sugarless gum are pale, pale substitutes....)
Not all that many hours ago, I wrote about the boy/girl pop duo LOVERS ELECTRIC. The "girl" was EDEN BOUCHER. Turns out, Ms. Boucher has six sisters, one of whom is BUTTERFLY BOUCHER -- a singer & musician in her own right.
THE ENVY CORPS. A band. Purveyors of indie-pop. Ames. Iowa. USA.
THE DUKE SPIRIT. A band. Garage-y indie rock. London by way of Cheltenham. UK.
A six-pack of b-sides/rarities from R.E.M., whose new LP, ACCELERATE, will drop April 1. Let's hope the joke's not on us. They are, after all, loooooong overdue for a solid song-cycle....
Please left-click [HERE] to download the concluding volume of 2002.
Once the third-man-in on the short-lived TEST ICICLES, DEVONTE HYNES has now dubbed himself LIGHTSPEED CHAMPION and is just on the cusp of releasing his first album under that moniker -- FALLING OFF THE LAVENDER BRIDGE.
A few days ago, somebody asked me to post THE KNACK's "My Sharona." I don't often get requests for individual songs, but this seemed an easy enough one to comply with. Nearly 30 years after its release, the tune is still top-notch.
MATT COSTA is a 25-year-old singer-songwriter from Huntington Beach, CA. He started playing music after shattering his leg in a skateboarding accident, and was helped along at the start by NO DOUBT guitarist TOM DUMONT. He has since opened for the likes of JACK JOHNSON, BUILT TO SPILL, and GOMEZ. His second full-length release, UNFAMILIAR FACES, comes out today. 
Okay, so this is going to be a periodic, grab-bag sort of thing -- semi-random songs that don't quite fit anywhere else but are still worthy of note (and download). Maybe they're a little too long or a little too short or are entirely exemplary but for a boring bridge or a clumsy chorus. Maybe the music's great but the lyrics blow. Maybe the lyrics rock but the music's a snooze. Maybe the sound quality's not quite up to snuff. Maybe the tracks fall outside of this blog's usual parameters yet steadfastly insist on having their say. Well, this is the space in which they'll say it....
This Sunday's post flows altogether organically from last Sunday's post. Sorta-kinda. If you look at it sideways. And squint.
No doubt this post is going to seem a bit out of place. "Out of time," at the very least.
Sticking with the "music-centric movie" thing....
What with the writers' strike and all, I barely noticed that Golden Globes were bestowed this year. How this will affect the upcoming Oscars remains to be seen, but some much buzzed-about, music-centric movies -- namely, "Sweeney Todd," "I'm Not There," and the EDITH PIAF biopic "La Vie en Rose" -- may get lost in the ongoing, empty-teleprompter limbo.
2008 is but a couple weeks old, but I've already managed to be disappointed by a number of new releases. GOLDFRAPP, BRITISH SEA POWER, NADA SURF, HOT CHIP, LOS CAMPESINOS!, CAT POWER, BOB MOULD... all have fallen short. Sometimes, miserably so.
In which we conclude our tiptoe through THE CARS' tulips....
"Physical" represented her commercial peak. "Xanadu" was a bomb before becoming "da bomb" (in certain cult circles). But "Grease" is, was, and always will be The Word. All hail OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN -- this Sunday's '70s songstress.
I have admitted on this blog in the past that THE CARS were my favorite group in the 1980s and that their 1983 release, HEARTBEAT CITY, was the first LP I ever purchased (on vinyl, no less).
We seem to have a bit of an "animal"-theme thing going on lately. No bears or wolves, thankfully, but plenty of wombats, monkeys, and goats. THE MOUNTAIN GOATS, that is. Which is to say: JOHN DARNIELLE & friends.
