Theme Week - Glam, no Bowie (5/5)

Before David Sylvian developed into one of the most overwrought voices in rock, there was Japan. And before they became a flagship New Romantic outfit, Japan carried the Glam flag into some very hostile, late-'70s territory. You can hear the transition happening. Marc Bolan was dead and Margaret Thatcher was in charge. But Japan still exuded some of that futuristic glamour. This song barrels forward with a pounding dread and maybe something more ominous. Fall in love with me or else.

Japan - Fall In Love With Me

Theme Week - Glam, no Bowie (4/5)

A fair amount of critical ink has been spilled about how Metro were robbed of their rightful adulation and how bad timing is a cruel saboteur. I say it's true. There's a rare and sleazy elegance to their debut that suggests the next day aftermath of Glam's excess and also points ahead to the more cynical New Wavers. This track, however, is a straight up rocker and features some of the best ah ah ah's I've heard in a long time. Like a roller coaster heading into the drop.

Metro - Mono Messiah

Theme Week - Glam, no Bowie (3/5)

Music aside, it's the fantastic escapism and the self-reinvention it implies that I like best about Glam. It doesn't really matter whether the flights are interstellar or just international. Which is maybe why I'm so fond of the stuff made by Americans copping absurd English accents. I'd guess their disco/new wave incarnation is how most people would know Sparks, who have been canny enough to hang around for nearly 40 years. I'm no expert on their vast catalog, but this track is a damn fun time.

Sparks - Happy Hunting Ground

Theme Week - Glam, no Bowie (2/5)

If T. Rex was a shooting star, Brett Smiley was the Challenger. His career may have burst into flames before he got out of the atmosphere, but as disasters go, at least this one was fabulous. Under different circumstances, this Brett would have ruled heaven and earth.

Brett Smiley - Space Ace

Theme Week - Glam, no Bowie (1/5)

When Songblague started, I had high hopes for putting together lots of weeklong narratives. Lamely, I've only gotten around to doing one so far (which I recommend you revisit sometime). I think it's high time for a new theme week. I think it's time for some glam this mid-November!

Great as they are, it's a shame that David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust albums have all but cornered the market on the genre. Anyone who saw Velvet Goldmine knows there's a whole lot of magic in the short-lived glam heyday, and I think Bowie did us a favor by refusing permission to use his songs in the movie.

Let's start in with a man who was king of the hill for a short while and surely had Bowie beat in the hair department. Mr. Marc Bolan comes crashing through the wall with this sexy, cosmic, menacing piece of rock & roll wonderment. Baby, you know who you are.

T. Rex - Chariot Choogle

Deeper into movies

I can't believe it took this long to get ahold of Holger Czukay's Movies album! Released around the time Can was grinding to a halt, the album sounds as fresh as the band's early-'70s heyday, though with that faux-reggae lilt they got into in the latter part of the decade.

Obviously, something was in the air in 1980, because Czukay was dealing in the same proto-sampling radio captures that Byrne/Eno were up to. Oh yeah, rap was getting born too. In this case, the music is wrapped around a Iranian radio snippet (that would be the Persian love, I presume). Miles away from the dark clouds above B&E's bush of ghosts, this tune cruises through some pleasantly soft dreamscapes. It's almost new age-y, which might be a turnoff if I weren't so damned charmed by it all. Hell, the whole record's pretty dynamite too.

Holger Czukay - Persian Love

Out on the town, armed with tambourines

I guess one Concrete band deserves another. This song gets it just right, with a visceral urgency that makes the title seem a little ironic. It may be the best thing to have on repeat as you get ready to go out—the music is all brilliant lights filling your eyes, lyrics sharpened to a deadly point. It could run you over if you stand in its way.

The Concretes - You Can't Hurry Love

They say goodbye

Something about November throws a shot of old time angst down my throat. Actually, it's not real angst, just some very close sensory approximations and a desire to hear songs that unabashedly tug on the threads. The feeling pleases me, though I'm not sure why. Someone put this on a mix tape for me in late 1991, more than half my life ago. There's a thought to make one a little angsty.

Concrete Blonde - Tomorrow, Wendy

Wild visions at first light

OK, I admit I'm much more jetlagged than I thought yesterday. Or maybe actually getting some sleep was the worst thing for me. My brain isn't so much taking in sensory information as getting bits of data smeared all across it. Here's a song for such a state. I'm not usually the biggest Karen O fan, but, like the movie it soundtracks, this little tune captures the feral dreamlife of the mind when it goes away for a while.

Karen O and The Kids - Rumpus

Back in session

Home at last. And not nearly as jetlagged as I expected, though I suspect my brain has been scrambled in more subtle ways. Lots of travel impressions to parse. First that comes to mind is the absence of live music. Sad to say, we failed to find anything resembling a band playing any place we passed through. The car stereo was ruled by Arab pop stations and opera, which was surprisingly appropriate for driving through the maze of Jerusalem streets.

I got this tune into my head shortly before we headed out. And it stayed there for the entirety of our travels. If all you knew about Robert Palmer was "Addicted to Love" and his harem of blank-faced video models, you'd probably never get around to hearing this gem. A real shame that would be. This one's just, uh, addictive. I love how the subdued vox cut against the beat and hook. Dude plays it distant and moody, in the vaguely imperial English gentleman expat role he enacted quite convincingly before stumbling into MTV stardom.

Maybe that distance is what resonated with me over the last two weeks. It was fascinating to be surrounded by Jews at levels of society not commonly seen in America (gas station attendants, beach bums, soldiers, etc). And yet, I felt little sense of belonging to the citizenry, certainly no sense of being in a land that was particularly "holy." Most of the time, and in just about every place, I felt overwhelmed by the weight of history - say a town built by Jews, captured by Romans, repurposed by waves of Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, now dressed up for tourists. Then there's the crippling debate over who gets to claim spiritual dibs, which, happily, most folks in Tel Aviv would rather ignore in favor of playing matkot on the Mediterranean shore.

Anyway, dig the song. And if you think it needs some more hip cred, note that it's Chris Frantz keeping it nice and tasteful on the traps.

Robert Palmer - Johnny and Mary

Taking leave

Music often reminds me that words are inadequate. Or at least irrelevant. Or at least fail thoroughly in my exhausted, totally-vacation-ready state of mind and nervous system.

This song is just beyond. Beyond the words I can find and the material conditions of my overextended time. I'm digging it because it perfectly suits the visions of a desert I'll soon be cruising through. And because its construction seems so magical that I can't feel any association with its components, and so it is a true escape.

Fennesz is good like that. All Music Guide talks about haunting melodies and washes of granular noise, and I guess that's a pretty good approximation. But there are always colors without names, and numbers hiding between numbers, and sounds that will not be organized into language.

Peace out, friends. Songblague will be back on 11/9.

Fennesz - Rivers of Sand

Aww man, I can't leave things all heavy and serious. Life is a dream. Here's the first thing that comes up when you type "vacation" into Google images. Alright!

Power pop on draught

There are plenty of rock dudes you'd love to go out drinking with. Bob Dylan. Thin Lizzy. Tom Waits + whoever he would've brought along in 1978. I'd even add Belle & Sebastian, because you know those little Glaswegians could probably drink you under the table and smash your smug face if you even mumbled the word "twee."

Then there's Artful Dodger, in whose sweaty company I'm sure you would've had a rollicking, all-American time throwing back cans of crappy beer and enjoying the most indistinct burgers in Wisconsin. Even if you were in Virginia. The boys are long gone and forgotten, but you can conjure the magic with their utterly addictive masterpiece.

Artful Dodger - Wayside

Decadence Europa

From the sublime to the profane. Giorgio Moroder does it without even a word spoken. He's got it all smoke machine disco like. Then the cop show guitars blast in, and you know you're in the presence of divine grace. You could probably catch an STD just listening to this.

Munich Machine - Space Warrior

Pärt apart

From art-damaged Judaica to modern minimalist sacred music. Guess the train of thought got derailed. I actually had this playing on the subway the other day. Rainy, a littled dazed, Saturday afternoon. Just the thing. Give this a minute to get going and it will fill you up with a glow.

Arvo Pärt - Cantus In Memory Of Benjamin Britten

Diasporovisation

Every time I try to think about the music I'll be hearing in Israel, I end up putting on something made by Jews in America. This track goes back to the fertile downtown improv scene of a few years back, now scattered around the city, and probably several others. A diaspora by any other name.

Roy Nathanson & Anthony Coleman - Ija Mia

Hot ticket

OK, I really need a vacation. Right. Now.

Cristina - Ticket To The Tropics

Move with the movement

I'm all heart for the Gabester. Albums 3 and 4 especially, and I feel it most when he's been off the stereo for so long that memory does its monument-building magic. Which is understandable; he's got his name on several seminal records of my early listening years.

Then I go and listen again and hear all the problems in execution that obscure the brilliant ideas. So I end up having to enjoy him almost academically, because I can hear what he's aiming for (say, modern isolation and paranoia), and it's obvious that the art is more in the process than the product.

Here's a good example. The ingredients are awesome, and so is the groove, but there's something so stiflingly early-'80s about the production. Maybe it was deliberate; given that the song's all about getting off on the crush of population density. I don't know if I'm necessarily in tune with that on my morning commute, but the energy does seem to make the train kick it up a notch.

Peter Gabriel - I Have The Touch

Øye vay

Autumn sounds remain the order of the day. Maybe it's because I've gotten to see so little of the autumn daylight lately that I've got to feel it by proxy. This one's funky and minimal. Up close and personal. Feels like it should soundtrack slow dancing in the living room. Or a slow evening walk in someone else's city. Too bad the song's all about possessiveness and jealousy. Hit me, Erlend!

The Whitest Boy Alive - Gravity

Mars on life

Time for some '90s digital warmth. I'm talking about the friendly, textural stuff, not the hamfisted fin-de-siècle aggro junk people used to writhe around to so goofily. I put on Autoditacker the other day because a) it was starting to feel autumny and b) I have good memories of washing dishes to it. Now I have good memories of cutting vegetables to it. And it still feels like a comfy sweater of sound in the crisp air of early autumn.

Mouse On Mars - Juju

There is no pilot

I am amazed and grateful that someone actually took me up on my crazy request! So now I've got vocoders running all through my brain. Which first took me me here. Which then took me to Big Science proper. Which reminded me how much I love this opening track—the funk almost surgically removed from the saxophone riff, the lyrical dread transmuted into playful, detached bemusement.

I am totally with Mrs. Lou Reed on planes going down as an archetypal site for the absurdity of modern life. But more than that—and call me a Luddite—but I still can't find my way to seeing air travel as something normal, however much the everydayness of it creates the impression of normality. Feels like a human offense worse than oil rigs or power plants. And yet so bureaucratic that it's almost entirely without style. So when it goes wrong, you may as well accent the ridiculousness of everyone involved. And with that, T-minus 2 weeks to liftoff.

Laurie Anderson - From The Air

I am older than ever before

Songblague quietly hit the 6-month mark last month. Cool, cool. But my birthday is tomorrow, and I'll ask you to indulge me a moment to make this space a little self-serving on that occasion.

It's not much of a milestone...cough...32, and I've been too busy to plan anything social. Instead, I'd like to celebrate it with a track from my band's forthcoming album, which I am very very very excited about. We're looking at a Halloween time release, so look out for it. This track is one of my favorites. It's about the textile workers' strike at the Lowell Mill way back in the American day, and it features the excellent voice of our friend Ali Hammer. Enjoy the sweet harmony and my attempt at appropriating the Purdie Shuffle. Cheers!

The Deedle Deedle Dees - Do The Turn Out

Let me jump and shout, alright!

Brilliant power pop doesn't need much by way of commentary. Which is good, because my synapses are quite fried. And not even from drugs. These guys sound pretty hopped up though. They're practically tearing through the tape. OK, enough out of me.

20/20 - Giving It All

Yacht rock strutters' ball

Steely Dan, Toto, and Chicago went out for a night on the town and ended up in a tangle of squalid love. Several months later, this little baby was spotted floating down the river. It's best to not ask questions. But if you've set your yacht upon the oily seas and want to keep the dancing going, it couldn't hurt to have this tune playing on deck. Maybe segue into it from this.

Larsen/Feiten Band - Make It

Preparing for liftoff

The plan is starting to come together. Hotels are getting booked, supplies procured, all that. B and I head out for our mad dash across Israel in less than 3 weeks. It's soon enough that loose ends are starting to make me nervous, but far enough away to still feel like a dream. I'm trying to heed the lessons of Chevy Chase and let spontaneity upset our best-laid plans. But I suspect I'll still find a way to drive around with someone's deceased grandmother in the rental car. That's how Songblague conducts its international busines. Anyway, here's a song to accompany thoughts of liftoff.

Sun Ra - Rocket Number 9

Hey, you can never have enough of the Sun One! Two for Tuesday, babies. This is what the pianist is playing at the hotel bar on Venus.

Sun Ra - Quest

Go have a laugh on me

Marshall Crenshaw got a raw deal. His self-titled debut is a parade of great pop songs. The influences are obvious, but he executes brilliantly. And it's got that bright eyed ambition that makes first albums special. But he was done in by unfortunate timing. Snappy, traditional-minded rock n' roll didn't stand a chance in '82. Not much room for poor Marshall between Eye of the Tiger and Thriller. So it goes. But the record has aged very nicely. And this is a song to help you get up and going on a Monday. Or at least one I can sing along with in the morning while half-asleep and trying to get my act together.

Marshall Crenshaw - Mary Anne