Marden Hill : Slalom

There is a weird subset of songs that are from Christmas albums but that aren't per se about Christmas or even winter. Sometimes they don't even have jingle bells. Vince Guaraldi's "Linus and Lucy" is probably the most famous example, inextricably linked to Christmas via A Charlie Brown Christmas for the rest of time.

"Slalom" is from a band called Marden Hill. I couldn't find much out about them, except that they are apparently Él label stalwarts. It sounds like these guys did Shibuya-kei influenced easy listening. As I do research for this essay, I realize, I need to learn way more about these guys and this label.

Regardless, the piece is a bright piece of vocal fluff, along the lines of the Manhattan Transfer, the Swingle Singers or Anita Kerr at her best. The harmonies are sweet and pretty, like a high school crush, and the song does somehow invoke a wintery feel. There are jingle bells in the first few seconds, and an occasional high piano trill to help you imagine falling snow, so it'd probably make a good soundtrack for a romantic evening sleigh ride.

The piece can be found on the Él Records winter compilation, Él Christmas: The World in Winter. You can grab it from Amazon, or directly from the label (scroll down), although I think the "9.95" might be pounds, not dollars.

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Foals : Mathletics

This was a tough one. One of the problems with these posts is that often there are so many good songs on an album, it's tough to pick just one. You want it to be one of the better ones, but not one that maybe lots of people have heard, assuming they've heard of the band at all.

The members of Foals (not The Foals; try not to be so gauche...) all previously members of obscure British math-rock bands before they decided to "have more fun" and put this record together. And that's exactly what it sounds like: a couple of angry prog-loving musicians who decided to cut a dance-rock album. It's something along the lines of Talking Heads meet King Crimson, if you can imagine that.

"Mathletics" (the other songs up for consideration were "Hummer" and "Red Socks Pugie") is probably the strongest rocker of the bunch. It's got a driving rock backbeat that's just littered with the Frippiest guitars you've ever heard this side of, well, Robert Fripp. It hammers along through verse and chorus until it can barely stand, groaning under the collected weight of all those notes, and it crashes into a cathartic, pounding bridge with no fewer than three guitars (plus bass) noising it up. It's like a rock reduction, with all the rest of the crap boiled away, leaving just the pure thick essence of rock. Delicious!

"Mathletics" comes from Foals' first album, Antidotes. It's listed as a 'bonus track', except it seems to be on every version of the album. I guess it was originally a non-album single. Regardless, the album is great, if you like this stuff, but it is not particularly varied, so you need to really like it. I do. One of my favorite albums last year.

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Si Zentner : The Man with the Golden Arm

"The Man with the Golden Arm" is one of those themes, like "The Third Man Theme" or anything by Henry Mancini, that turns up on hundreds of easy listening LPs. This is primarily because it's an awesome tune, one of the many classic themes penned by Elmer Bernstein (some others being "The Magnificent Seven" and "Gunsmoke"). It's a spy-jazz masterpiece, although it wasn't written for a spy movie. The Man with the Golden Arm is about a heroin-addicted drummer who tries to stay clean after being released from prison. It starred Frank Sinatra as Frankie Machine, the drummer, and apparently was one of the first films to deal seriously with the taboo issue of heroin addiction.

Si Zentner was a trombonist and a big band leader in the early sixties and released a couple of albums before rock & roll put him out of business. From Russia with Love is one of my favorites because it's chock full of "crime jazz"; that is, big band tunes with a driving bass, a touch of swing and a horn section that just chugs along. Think "The James Bond Theme" or "Peter Gunn" (both of which are on this album, as is "The Third Man Theme," oddly enough). Or this tune.

The tune kicks off with a sneaky little riff, a baritone sax over a shuffling back beat. Then a horn kicks in and lays the initial groundwork. Pretty soon though, all the horns are chiming in, punching in loud and proud, playing off each other and tearing it up. It rocks.

Unfortunately, this album isn't available on CD as far as I can tell. The Swingin' Eye!!!!!!!! is on a double CD with another album of his, but even though the title implies otherwise, I don't see a single P.I. theme on there. It may be a great album, but I haven't heard it yet, so I can't say. If you're ever in a thrift store and see From Russia with Love though, grab it and wow your friends at your next swank cocktail soirée.

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Mirrorkicks : Bleeding Love

Don't know much about Mirrorkicks, except they are from Britain (I think) and they have a website and a myspace page and a facebook page and a youtube channel and all the accoutrements of a new millennium band trying to make it these days. What they don't have is an album in the stores. I think they've released a single, but that's not this.

This is a cover of "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis. It's from CokeMachineGlow's Fantasy Covers of 2008. Apparently this site rounds up a bunch of up-and-coming indie bands and gets them to cover popular songs from that year. Somehow Mirrorkick ended up with this one.

The song itself is interesting to parse. At first it sounds like a paean to the self-sacrifice sometimes necessary for true love: I'm so in love, it just bleeds out of me, I can't even help it. But on further reads, you notice the singer's friends are trying to pull these two lovers apart, and you realize that maybe the cuts and bleeding might not be metaphorical. There's definitely a "He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss)" vibe going on here.

Did I mention it was co-written by Jesse McCartney? Weird.

Madam Leona's version is somewhat plaintive. It's got a nice modern soul vibe to it, but it's wrapped in a swath of modern production and it ends up being a little glisteny, a bitter pill, but sugar-coated.

Mirrorkicks grabs hold of the song though and bruises it up, dragging it back into the real-life grimy world we all live in. Their track is heavy, loaded down with thick guitar and a loping, tom-heavy 6/8 drum beat. The singer nails the vocal: ragged, raw, pleading, but hopeful. They do such an amazing job, they actually made me like the original more. Give it a listen.

It's not available on any album that I know of, but you can grab it from the CokeMachineGlow website, along with some other great covers. There's a good cover of MIA's "Paper Planes" up there too.

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The 4 Seasons : C'mon Marianne

There's just nobody who can scream a rock & roll falsetto like Frankie Valli. We've all heard his plaintive howl on classics like "Sherry", "Walk Like a Man" and "Big Girls Don't Cry". There's something about a guy nailing that upper register that really helps crank a rock song. (Right, Robert Plant?)

Anyway, in listening to a bunch of 4 Seasons tunes I realized that, while they seem like a happy sunny summertime band, a majority of the tunes are about the lead singer losing his love and a majority of those are about his losing his love because he's actually a cheating fuck. This is one of those songs. Bob Crewe, who co-wrote "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" and "Lady Marmalade", as well as the soundtrack to Barbarella, also helped pen a number of their hits, but this wasn't one of them. That is it wasn't penned by Bob, although it arguably also wasn't that much of a hit, considering it only rose to number nine on the Billboard Pop charts in '67.

Still, it's a bit of a rocker. The rhythm section chugs along nicely underneath as Frankie uses his fabulous upper register to bemoan his tales of woe. Apparently he dabbled a bit on the side and lost his lady, even though this other chick was "a passing fling, and not a permanent thing." But if you were thinking about feeling bad for this guy, realize he starts the song with "Here I am on my knees again," so he's been here before. I really dig how, as the second verse starts, a touch of strings drops in right as Frankie bemoans the fact that her big brown eyes are all full of tears. It's a nice touch. Most of the song is just Frankie crying "Marianne" over and over, but it really works. It's definitely one of my favorites.

You can find this tune on any number of Frankie Valli & the 4 Seasons compilations, including this swell looking number from Rhino records. It's got the big name songs, plus a couple other of my favorites, like "Dawn (Go Away)" which I almost posted instead, and some of Frankie's solo stuff which is great too. It's missing "Alone" though, which is a fantastic song. You'll have to grab that one from iTunes or something.

[You can listen to The 4 Seasons' "C'mon Marianne" by navigating to the post "Song016" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Jack Jones : Wives and Lovers

My wife and I have started watching Mad Men (season one: don't spoil it!), and we've often wondered how 'true-to-life' the characters are. Were folks really that blunt back then about their feelings towards women and minorities? Burt Bacharach, or probably more accurately Hal David, don't really chime in on the second count, but this song clearly weighs in on the first.

The lyrics are quaint, although somewhat chauvinist in their delivery. I mean, the song opens with "Hey, little girl, comb your hair, fix your make-up," and goes on to exhort us that wives should always be lovers too, because, you know, there are "girls at the office, and men will always be men." The whole song is directed at the lady of the house, assuming, I suppose, that the man is king of the house and beyond reproach and whatnot. Either that, or he's just a hopeless cause.

This Grammy-award winning version is crooned by Jack Jones, who also sang the theme to "The Love Boat", among, I'm sure, more stellar offerings. The music is nice but standard swinging pop orchestra with horns and strings. The song was originally from his 1963 outing fittingly titled Wives and Lovers, but I found my copy on my Burt Bacharach box set, The Look of Love.

[You can listen to Jack Jones' "Wives and Lovers" by navigating to the post "Song015" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Tilly and the Wall : Pot Kettle Black

I have no idea who Tilly and the Wall are, but they seem sufficiently angry. From their 2008 album awesomely titled, O. This is a rockin' stomper, borrowing somewhat from the White Stripes, until the chorus hits and it breaks into a straightforward very pleasant pop-based hook. All is cruising along just fine, it's a fine song, and then...

Then they break into a funky clap-stomp breakdown that gives me butterflies and puts a smile onto my face every time. Oh yeah ... Clap it up, baby.

Anyway, as I said, I don't know anything about the band, or what their other stuff sounds like. But if you like it, grab a copy for your mom.

[You can listen to Tilly and the Wall's "Pot Kettle Black" by navigating to the post "Song014" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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David Bowie : Good Morning Girl

Well, well, well. Originally I thought this would be a stumper, since I thought this tune had been issued under Bowie's real name, David Jones. Turns out I was wrong. A couple of early singles were issued under variations of his birthname, but by the time this one arrived, he was officially David Bowie, and so began his stellar career.

"Good Morning Girl" finds Bowie at his swingin'est. Brian Eno once called him a musical chameleon, in that he could sing in any style you please. Here, he seems to be channeling Georgie Fame, another Brit swinger from the mid-to-late sixties, or maybe one of the more frenetic Dolenz-penned-and-sung Monkees singles, like "Randy Scouse Git", although they didn't really crest until '67.

The song pops along with an upbeat rock swing and a great hook. Bowie's delivery is quick, almost manic (for him anyway), but the best part is when Bowie drops in some passages of groovy scat. It's a gas, baby!

"Good Morning Girl" is the B-side of the 1966 Pye single "Do Anything You Say", which I've never had the pleasure of hearing, and is available on several Early Bowie packages.

[You can listen to David Bowie's "Good Morning Girl" by navigating to the post "Song013" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Can : Halleluhwah

Most folks, when they think of the prototypical German music, they imagine Kraftwerk, pristine, precise and mechanical, with neither a hair or a note out of place. But for me, the kings of the German rock scene are Can. They are the anti-Kraftwerk. They are dirty and funky, they improvise, they experiment, they rock.
Can started out in '68 as a bunch of German musicians, rooted in avantgarde classical and jazz music, and an African-American poet & singer named Malcolm Mooney. Malcolm only made it about an album and a half before he suffered a nervous breakdown and had to quit the band. After he left, they drafted Damo Suzuki, a wandering Japanese busker, who stayed with them through the rest of the second album and proceeded to record three seminal albums with the band. Damo's vocals are... unique. Sometimes he sings in English (I'm pretty sure) and sometimes in Japanese (I think). And sometimes I think he just makes shit up. But it doesn't matter, because, like the improvisation from the rest of the band, it always fits the song exactly right.

Can was equally inspired by the avantgarde and experimental movements sweeping through Europe in the 60's, by the progressive rock movement, also sweeping the continent in the 60's, and by funk, which might have made it to the continent, but not so you could really tell. If you ask me who my favorite drummers are, number one is John Bonham and number two would be Jaki Liebezeit. He could bring the funk like nobody's business. He had this amazing way of skittering across the drum set, performing what sometimes amounts to one giant drum solo, while keeping a funk groove going non-stop. He was as funky as Clyde Stubblefield or Zigaboo Modeliste and he was German.

Tago Mago was Can's first full outing with Damo and it has the rawness of the first album, but pulled in jazzier direction with more open structures. To me, "Halleluhwah" (not Hallelujah mind you) epitomizes all that is Can. It's raw, open and funky. On top of the funk, there's guitar riffage, electronic noodling, a violin solo and whatever else the boys can think to bring to the table. And of course, there's Damo's near-brilliant vocals. I'm not exactly sure what he's saying, something about his brother, I'm pretty sure, but he means it. And it's long; it clocks in at over 18 minutes of awesome and never dulls. And did I mention it's funky? Jaki and Holger Czukay rock that rhythm hard for the entire song. A brilliant song off a brilliant album from a brilliant band.

My personal mp3 of this song is over 26mb, so I had to scale it back to mono (you don't lose much) and resample it to 56kbps, which is the equivalent of 112kbps stereo. That still puts it at nearly 8mb, but I listened to it and I think it sounds fine. So, enjoy this truly epic piece. As I mentioned before you can find it on their 1971 release, Tago Mago. Although if you are just starting out with Can, I'd probably recommend Ege Bamyasi as a better LP to start with, then work forward and backward from there.

[You can listen to Can's "Halleluhwah" by navigating to the post "Song012" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Jake Holmes : Dazed and Confused

This one might sound a little familiar. It's a killer tune that Jake Holmes lays down; a dark psychedelic folk jam with a middle-eastern vibe about a woman who won't do right. It's got a mean descending bass riff and there's a fantastic breakdown in the middle where he taps a voodoo rhythm out on the guitar body. The whole thing culminates in a frenzy of strumming that stops so dead, you'd think they accidentally pulled the plug on the four-track.

Well, maybe they did. I wasn't there.

But, aside from being an amazing song in its own right, the song's got a history (which you've already realized, if you're listening to it). Yes, Jake came first and Jimmy came second. It's another in the long line of tunes that, er... shall we say "inspired" Led Zeppelin.

This one's available on his self-aggrandizing album "The Above Ground Sound of Jake Holmes", which I haven't heard, and also on the nifty compilation "The Roots of Led Zeppelin".

[You can listen to Jake Holmes' "Dazed and Confused" by navigating to the post "Song011" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Ralph Font : Cosita Linda

"Ay, Cosita Linda" (which I think means "Hey, pretty little thing") was written by Pacho Galan, a Columbian composer, and was made somewhat popular by a recording of the song by Nat "King" Cole on 1959's A Mis Amigos LP. I can't tell for sure, but I think this recording came out before that, most likely in the early fifties.

Ralph Font was a New York jazzster put out a couple of latin-themed albums. The music on his album Tabu is relatively generic small-combo latin jazz, and there are (literally) a thousand records that sound just like this one. But it's a peppy little record and fun listening, chock full of latin standards, like "Bésame Mucho", "The Peanut Vendor" and "Tabu", with "Cosita Linda" being my favorite.

Font kicks off his take with a nifty little piano run, into a snare hit, and then the vocals. Now the vocals (in what seems to be a running theme here) are what makes the song for me. The combo is solid. It's a fine latin-tinged cocktail-jazz workout, led by the piano and backed by a plethora of percussion instruments. There's some good horn work and a nifty trumpet solo, but what truly puts it over the top are the vocals. Every time the singers pipe in with a line, everything else stops and drops out. The vocals themselves are relatively quiet next to the bustle of the rest of the tune and they're sung in an oddly low-register falsetto. They're almost... cute. As if some shy hispanic guy just tapped a pretty lady on the shoulder and is politely asking her to dance.

As I mentioned before, this fun little ditty can be found on Font's album Tabu. If you see it in a thrift store (it's not on CD), it's definitely worth a buck. You'll at least have something fab to drop the needle on the next time you're making margaritas. And as for the cover art, well, we'll just say it's clearly the product of a bygone era, and leave it at that.

[You can listen to Ralph Font's "Cosita Linda" by navigating to the post "Song010" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Sir Julian : Caravan

Man, I love "Caravan". It's quite possibly my favorite tune ever, with the possible exception of "Brazil". You can't go wrong with a version of "Caravan". And the organ. I love the home entertainment organ. Maybe it's because my gram had one for a while, and she knew how to play it. That and it reminds me of trips we used to take to the shopping mall, on 9th and 77th, with it's 50's green and white marble-pebble facade... what do they call that stuff? You know what I'm talking about, it's in old elementary schools and post offices everywhere... Anyway...

Along with Lenny Dee, who is probably the undisputed master of the home entertainment organ, and Glenn Derringer, who no-one has heard of, but who's another of my favorites, Sir Julian could seriously rock the organ, while never leaving that safe haven of easy listening.


This is quite possibly the definitive "Caravan" for me, even more so than any version by the Duke himself. It starts with a low groove with a swinging bass line, shuffle drums and the organ dropping the main theme and punching its own accompaniment. The organ has that gorgeous fat round analog sound you just can't get from a chip. The tune slinks along for a bit, and then, around the two-minute mark, BANG! Sir Julian lets loose with a high-energy full-bore attack on the keys that makes you go weak in the knees; an organ-asm if you will.

To be fair, Sir Julian uses this trick on about a third of the tunes on the album, but it's still a suave move, and the tune seriously rocks.

"Caravan" can be found on The 13 Fingers of Sir Julian which isn't in print. It's also on RCA's History of Space Age Pop, vol. 1: Melodies and Mischief, which also isn't in print, but can be found. The History of Space Age Pop series from RCA is a fantastic compilation, and should be on any discerning music lover's shelf.

[You can listen to Sir Julian's "Caravan" by navigating to the post "Song009" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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Jimmy Smith : I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Babe

"Well, I got ...
More bounce to the fuckin' bump
And if you want to know why,
It's 'cause I'm motherfuckin' truckin' ..."

I gotta admit, what first excited me about this tune was the opening bars which are sampled pretty plainly by the Beastie Boys on "Professor Booty" from their Check Your Head album. Very few things get me more excited (musically) than catching a sample reference I've never heard before, even one so gratuitous. After that second tom fill, my brain immediately jumps to the Beastie's ingenious lyrics.

From there though, the song opens up into those gorgeous ringing female vocals. With only a hint of lyrics around the the chorus, they carry that sparkly 70's vibe that makes you feel like you've just been swept aboard the Mothership on its way to Studio 54 for some seriously laid back funking. You can just imagine the afro-sporting, rhinestone-jumpsuit-clad backup singers "oooh-ing" and "ahhh-ing" their way through the sessions with the sweeping hand gestures and slow camera pans.

You know what else those vocals remind me of? That Eastern Airlines ride at Disney World back in the 70's, where they showed movies of folks singing and celebrating all around the world over a super-groovy soundtrack. There's something about some of the music from that era that for some reason really brings me back to that ride, ostensibly one of the more boring rides for kids, but I just lo-o-o-oved it. Now we know why.

The track itself is a relaxed, sexy groove, and who would expect anything less from a Barry White cover? The song really belongs to the vocals and the rhythm section, who lay down a nice sustained rolling funk shuffle throughout. Jimmy Smith jazzes around the organ pretty well, though he's buried down in the mix a bit, so you have to really listen carefully to catch his far-out solos.

This tune was featured as a rip from a 45 back in November 2009 at the always great Funky16corners blog, in case you missed it. It's also available on Jimmy Smith's 1974 LP, Black Smith.

[You can listen to Jimmy Smith's "I'm Gonna Love You Just a Little More Babe" by navigating to the post "Song008" and clicking or right-clicking on the title or the link.]

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The Mae Shi - Summer in Gommorah

Who the hell are the Mae Shi? I've barely heard of them, but I love 'em. They do really noisy pop-inflected rock. But really, really noisy. And broken.

I'm a sucker for deconstructed pop-rock. That is, you take a normal pop/rock structure, you know, bands and a songs with verses and choruses and hooks and melodies, and you break it up and break it down. You do whatever you want inside that structure, as long as it's still recognizable as a pop/rock structure. Mainly, that you're a band and the piece is a "song" and has a hook. For some reason, I really dig that. So bands like the Mae Shi and U.S. Maple and some of John Zorn's side projects really appeal to me.

This song is a straight ahead rocker, not too far from something a late 60's garage band might have produced, but it's chock full of overdriven guitar, electronic noises, whoops and hollers, and just basically the noise of people rocking out and having a great time. Some of Mae Shi's stuff is far more experimental, but I went with something more straightforward cuz I didn't want to scare y'all.

This tune, "Summer in Gommorah" is off an EP of theirs called To Hit Armor Class Zero. (Yes, I believe that's a D&D reference.) The only thing I don't like about this EP is that the 5th song is a 50-minute-long noise goof-off. Sometimes I like that sort of thing, if it's done well, but this one is pretty boring. The first four songs are great though and their other LPs are all damn good too, with Hillyh and Heartbeeps topping the list.

(No post yesterday, because I was out sick. Soon, I hope to have some back-ups posts to cover spots like that, but I don't have enough yet that I feel comfortable posting them out.)

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Propellerheads : History Repeating (ft. Shirley Bassey)

For some reason, the Propellerheads only put out one album, but it's a great one. Arriving on the scene in the middle of the 90's lounge resurgence and around the same time as Austin Powers, the album is acid-jazz-soaked electronica, chock full of bass and horn-driven funk riffs with a twist of 60's spy themes. In all, it's a potent cocktail that should get your bootie shaking regardless of what sort of mood you're in.

Highlighting the set is "History Repeating", which features the astoundingly dynamic vocal talents of Shirley Bassey. You might remember her from such incredible numbers like "Goldfinger", "Moonraker" and the almighty "Diamonds Are Forever". The old dame still has it, and she belts the tune like it's the theme to a long lost Sean Connery-era James Bond flick. The song has it all, a shag-worthy rhythm section, a funky organ groove, a killer horn line, and of course Shirley's sterling vocals. Gotta love it.

If you're interested, and you should be, you can find "History Repeating" on the awkwardly titled Decksandrumsandrockandroll. (When I wrote this, Amazon had it for 2 bucks, plus shipping and handling. Delivered to your door for five bucks? Sold!)

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Follow-Up: Vampire Weekend

Sigh. All that talk about Vampire Weekend bashing and I totally forgot to talk about the music. So here's a paragraph that belongs somewhere in the middle of that article.

The nice thing about Vampire Weekend is that they have a great pop sense and sound a little like a South African version of Lincoln-era They Might Be Giants. By South African, I mean there's definitely a Bert Kaempfert bouncy feel to the music. Listen to "Holiday for Bells" or "Swingin' Safari" to get an idea of what I mean. It also rings a little of Paul Simon's Graceland, which is quite possibly my favorite album of all time. So it's no wonder I like Vampire Weekend. Check it out.

Bongwater : Nick Cave Dolls

"They call them Bongwater, that's the name of it? I never heard of that, I never heard of a band with that name."

Ahhhh, Bongwater. The artsy duo consisted of performance artist Ann Magnuson and weird-record-impresario Kramer, who founded Shimmy-Disc records which hosted such classic acts as Ruins, King Missile, Boredoms, Daniel Johnston, Naked City and the astoundingly-named When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water. He was King of the Weird in the '90s and produced some of the most mind-bending music around.

Bongwater is notorious for full-on kaleidoscopic freak-show psychedelia, and this is a prime example. The piece starts out with a pastiche of found samples, including a stuttering pontification on Bongwater as a band name and someone abusing a telephone. After a minute and a half of psychotropic randomness, the actual song kicks in. The tune itself is a journey through classic psychedelic territory, with hazy guitars and a martial snare pattern laying down the backdrop for Ann's spoken word performance. Somehow she manages to be both sexy and bizarre, tripping her way through double entendres and references to funnel clouds, chocolate cake, lingerie pose-a-thons, balding actors, Dorothy Stratten, and of course, Nick Cave dolls. I want one.

This tune is a little on the adult-oriented side, with some salty language and vaguely risque situations. I mean, the album is called The Power of Pussy.

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I Missed a Day

Rats.

Linda Draper : Mother's Little Helper

I said at the beginning, "The music should just be really good, or at least interesting." This one falls into the latter category. Don't get me wrong. It is good. I enjoy it, and I wouldn't put anything up here that I didn't like. But posting this song is more about giving you something different than giving you something great. I don't think this song rings with the same universal appeal that the previous posts might have had, so if you don't like it, I won't think any less of you. But you should still hear it, because it's cool.

I couldn't find much about Linda Draper. She's apparently a folk/indie singer, which means she's probably a singer-songwriter who either wants to be Tori Amos or Norah Jones. I haven't heard anything else she's done, as is the case with many of the covers I've heard, but I'm sure she's wonderful if you like that sort of thing.

Here though she provides a stripped-down take on the Rolling Stones' Mother's Little Helper. Draper lilts her way through the song with nothing but a little bit of double-tracking and a tambourine. Where the original rocks, this version sort of ... floats. The weird thing is, it doesn't really sound full enough to have originally been imagined as an a cappella recording. Even most solo vocals have a sort of weight that seems to be missing here. It's almost as if they instead took a song that originally had all the parts, bass, drums, guitar and whatnot, and stripped them out, leaving only the backing percussion and the voice. Or maybe it's just a matter of some weird equalization. Either way, the result is a flat, dark, empty take on the song, which resounds with the subject matter quite nicely and makes for a vaguely unsettling experience, like driving down your neighborhood street in a light snow at three in the morning: familiar, yet eerie.

Mother's Little Helper can be found on Linda's 2009 album Bridge and Tunnel.

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Vampire Weekend : Campus

Yeah, I'm gonna kick this thing off with Vampire Weekend. "Vampire Weekend?!" I hear you say, assuming you are a follower of the indie scene and read Blender or AP or Pitchfork or whatever else the hip kids are reading these days to get their musical views. "They totally suck, because they're, like, indie wannabes and posers and everybody who likes cool music hates them."

Or, maybe you have no idea who they are and actually what I heard you say was, "What?"

Vampire Weekend has this weird cachet as the indie band that everyone loves to hate. See, if you like "indie" music, then you're not allowed to like this band. I'm not sure why. I think because they are from well-off New England families. Or maybe it's because your mom and little sister can stand them. Or maybe it's because you should hate everything that even remotely smacks of potentially being related to Twilight. Or maybe it's because they were in an Apple commercial... No wait, not an Apple commercial, but a Verizon commercial mocking iPhones... even worse.

But the problem with this whole "sell-out" line of thinking is that it completely ignores the music. How can you say a band sucks just because they were used in the credits for Step Brothers? How does that change the quality of the music? I mean, if they were good before, then they end up on the cover of Rolling Stone, how can they suddenly be bad?

That's stupid. Almost as stupid as the whole concept of "Indie" music. I mean, if it's coming out on a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Sony Megacorp, it's still not really 'independent' is it?

Regardless, the entire album is excellent, and finding a single representative song is an impossible task. I picked "Campus" because it's a great song, it sounds like them, and it's in the middle of the album. So if you've heard them, you've probably heard "Mansard Roof" and "Oxford Comma" and "A-Punk" and "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa". If not, go buy the album, or maybe borrow it from your indie-music-loving friend who has a copy, whether or not they claim to despise the band, because frankly, it's just a great album.

"Campus" can be found on their first, eponymous album. They've got another album coming out in a week too. How serendipitous! (No, really, it was. I only learned about it today!)

* For the record, I prefer the oxford comma in lists of phrases (see above), but I dislike it in simple lists. Just so you know where I stand.

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