Happy Monday!
Neva Dinova - "Poison". From Neva Dinova's split EP with Bright Eyes, here's a charming three-minutes-forty of poppy, sleepy alt.country. Xylophone and mandolin tiptoe over a fog of feedback and pedal steel. The singer's got a drawling voice I find it very hard not to like, especially with such a simple and pure melody, such long strips of blue. M. Ward at a sleepover with Wilco, and there are lights hung up in the trees.
Garmarna - "Greenest Branch (Viridissima Virga)". Sweden's Garmarna presents a skittering, minty interpretation of Hildegard Von Bingen's medieval lyric. Emma Hardelin's vocals are light but forceful; they push forward like a cold wind over the Atlantic, even as nordic strings saw, synthesizers blend, and a glitchy beat starts, stops, and starts anew. It's a rave for elves, music for the cyber-fjords (i can't believe i just wrote that).
William Hung - "I Believe I Can Fly". An extra-special third song, today - it's the third because I didn't feel right posting this at the expense of something genuinely good. No, this is for those who relish the truly terrible - taken from William Hung's new single, it's the American Idol reject in all his glory, raping and pillaging the R. Kelly original with shameless abandon. It keeps getting worse and worse, like an endless dinner with in-laws, where dinner-guest after dinner-guest admits responsibility for one genocide or another. It leaves me breathless, flabbergasted, awe-struck. In short, it's beautiful.
You owe it to yourself to download the astonishingly yay "Merengue," over at tofu hut. Franco and OK Jazz seem to have bottled Sunday morning fun, and this is just about the only thing that got me through the daylight savings time-change. (Obviously, you should be reading Tofu Hut every single day.)
Someone named Bumble has made a wonderful, silly track combining Nickelback's "Someday" and "How You Remind Me". He calls it "How You Remind Me of Someday" and it's not a mash-up or anything hip like that. No, Bumble's simply put "Someday" in one channel and "HYRM" in the other, made a few little edits, and revealed to us all the ridiculous (and almost masterful) symmetry of the two songs. Yes, if you ever had the inkling that Nickelback's songs "sound the same," here's your proof. And it's catchy.
Hunter pointed me to Bishop Allen, the very finest Brooklyn band that I had (almost) never heard of. "Little Black Ache" (previously seen at Fingertips) and "Busted Heart" are out-fucking-standing pieces of guitar pop, brave and catchy and good good good.
Sincere thanks to all those who followed-through on my request for some new music. Some of the stuff that's been recommended is truly fantastic, and I'll be putting up some of these tracks later this week. I'm still looking, however, so if you think there's a song (or band) I simply need to hear, I'd appreciate it (a lot!) if you emailed me about it, or droploaded me a file. (An extra special thanks to Hunter, Kieran, quasimodern, Dave, Tuwa and, uh, Pog Smuggler.)