Now here's someone who understands essentials. Insular, interior, one-man music is not the sole province of keyboard tappers. The bass is a simple pulse, but this quietly sturdy backbone opens the world wide. Every element on top is just the right sized presence. It may have been made in a room, but it feels as vast as the ocean. 
You watch enough Mad Men, you start to break down the wall between daylight and alcohol. Inevitably you get around to digging up your '50s Lounge compilations. The world goes soft focus. A part of me wants to have seen the days when the Third World looked more like a playland than a wasteland. The lucky American Space Age fantasy, sleazy and disease-free. Is it happy hour yet?
What if you woke up with the inescapable sense that you've been living the wrong life? Or that you've built up a world of familiarities in the hope that they would really belong to you? There's a special type of vertigo for that moment. This tune may do the Twin Peaks-ish noir jazz thing to the point of near-parody, but it's good for slowing things down long enough to get a true look at yourself.
Sometimes the song of the day mirrors my state of mind and sometimes it's a way to get far away from it. This is the latter. In 1968, these guys probably thought they were making a pretty profound comment on the direction of humanity. Today it's hard to hear beyond the kitsch, though there's a pretty great, proto-Devo vibe happening. I like the pure resignation in the lyrics. The world is gonna defeat you and there's nothing your hair can do about it.
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 banner 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Something about November throws a shot of old time angst down my throat. 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.
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.
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.
