Put your face on

Music for getting ready is important. And not just because it makes for a good montage in movies. Often, the anticipation of preparation is better than the thing you're getting ready for. I used to spend way too long choosing music to tie my shoes to, to say nothing of more fashionable matters. I regret none of it. And with the weekend arrived, feel free to crank this one as you put on lipstick or tie windsor knots or get the clown suit on. Whatever you get up for.

Paintbox - Getting Ready For Love

Dream procession

Continuing a week of mental haze, I recall an old dream. It involved walking slowly through an airplane hangar with clowns very very slowly waiving Queen Elizabeth-style style left and right as the planes lazily took off. It wasn't clear if they were humans dressed as clowns or animatronic robots. I'm not sure if it was an anxiety dream or a reflection of strange, yet complete contentment, but this song was surely playing on repeat.

Future World Orchestra - Airborne

Gentle marching

Another side of moodiness. I love the sound of pianos more and more, especially when they feel like they're carrying me across long shapeless fields in late afternoon. Which is what I'm hearing here. Much more than anything to do with Paris.

Tacks, The Boy Disaster - Paris

Pale boys approaching

I know it feels like a lingering summer out there, but I'm anticipating the upcoming chill and crunchy leaves that so often brings vaguely gothy new wavey stuff like this to mind. Is it overwrought? Will I ever outgrow it? Listening to these tracks back-to-back, gotta say no and no. I don't even care if the second one is double its appropriate length, that chorus is just tasty.

Sad Lovers and Giants - Vendetta

Sad Lovers and Giants - Man of Straw

Dancing and dreaming pleasure

When I was a kid, I secretly liked my many allergies and occasional colds because it meant I got to have cold medicine. The ensuing loopiness was at once a dry run for the pharmacopeian dimension of early adulthood and also a weirdly satisfying recline into level of consciousness untroubled by neurosis or hurry. Battling this last weekend of heavy allergies (I blame that damn Irene for putting all kinds of subterranean gunk into the air) brought me back to that state. Here's a tune for that kind of dreaminess. Don't even think of hating on that saxophone!

Tuxedomoon - Atlantis

Fashionably late

I try not to post too much music that's readily available at other Internetly places, especially when it comes to "hot new releases". But the new Rapture album came across my radar, and hearing this comeback effort, I couldn't help but remember the music climate of the early 'aughts, when you couldn't throw a stone in New York and not hit a dancepunk band of variable cruddiness.

It was a nice triumph of the erudite music nerds taking over the dance floor and dictating the soundtrack. But at the same time, this band kinda sucked. In ways I found hard to articulate. Partly, it was the blatant rip-offs — I'm all for artless vocalizing if it's your own artifice at least (cough, John Lydon, cough). But mostly it was the slicking up of a band that was frankly neither very tight nor had much to say. The sight of gyrating indie kids was an interesting novelty, but could you really call the music "infectious" in itself? The labored danceability seemed like a stumbling mile from the silky ease of tracks like any of these, to pick examples right off the top off this 'blague. As for lyrical content, some things are best not recalled.

I'm sure they're nice guys, with good influences and intentions. But as ubiquitous carriers of the new thing, they underwhelmed. Which made the cultural noise around them both irritating and disappointing. And so the bits I liked (and there were) caused a strange cycle of aesthetic pleasure, guilt, and anxiety. A little like the kid compelled toward a crush and yet finding everyone reason to be repulsed and then turning that tension inward.

Anyway, this new album has them all growed up and yet seeming quite lost. They try lots of styles, which are adequately, if unconvincingly, executed. So why am I posting the title track. Hmmm. Empathy? Mr. Once Popular trolling for new friends in the cafeteria? Not to diminish the strengths at work. The song's catchy, triumphantly hypnotic, the caterwauling seemingly inspired, and maybe that's enough. Maybe I'm still trying to fall for them.

The Rapture - In The Grace Of Your Love

Wild about Harry

It takes a special bass player to get a solo perch up on the 'blague. Or in this case, a visionary who happened to work the low side. I suppose this could be considered a curiosity for those who know Haruomi "Harry" Hosono mainly from his pioneering electronic work. But this is quite the classy groover, which goes to show that 1973 was 1973 just about anywhere.

Haruomi Hosono - Rose & Beast

Jangle in the attic

What is it about slightly maudlin jangle pop that sounds so good when captured on cheap cassettes? It's like jewels found in the attic, covered in dust and neglect, and all the more precious for it. At least dudes like Ariel Pink were paying attention. Martin Newell went on to form the Cleaners From Venus, who were just about as unheard as these early recordings. Another nice Internet rescue from the out-of-printdom.

Martin Newell - Julie Profumo
Martin Newell - Winter Palace 2

You f--- up my censor

Maybe I'm a little immature, but 5 years after hearing this, it still cracks me up. Or maybe there's just something timeless about demonstrating the mind's natural dirtiness via pretend-censoring the squeaky-cleanest things. Either way, it reaffirms the power of an overarching authorial voice and its godlike ability to bend any text to its will.

John Denver- Annie's Song (WFMU edit)

Music for babies' expanding minds

From the minimalist tension of Friday's track to the wide-eyed wonder of these Japanese new agers. I don't know why I have a near-endless attention span for this kind of stuff. Maybe it's because I can imagine a 2-year-old version of myself looping it in his head while making all kinds of discoveries about water and clouds. At any rate, Yellow Magic Orchestra's Haruomi Hosano produced this, and that alone can be your official seal of quality.

Inoyama Land - Glass Chaim

Coiled

Who needs drums! Aided by their fabulously toy-like drum machine, Young Marble Giants fashioned the basic rock essentials and tied it together with the taut wire of understatement. There's so much fury just waiting to escape those muted 8th notes and library vocals, and the band smartly kept it below the surface, forcing us listeners to supply the mental catharsis and aftermath our damn selves.

Young Marble Giants - Music For Evenings

Crepuscular activity

Keeping with the strange fusions. It took an odd set of post-punkers to hitch their wagon to samba styles that must've seemed a million miles from their time. But these juxtapositions just remind us how arbitrary any time is and how many different versions could exist. Taking a cue from the cover, I prefer to imagine these streams flowing into a future I may be brave enough to inhabit. Or at least an apartment I might rent. Here are two songs from that world — one coldly wacked-out cover, the other a warm bolus of mechanical sunshine.

Antena - The Boy From Ipanema

Antena - Camino Del Sol

Digital fusion

Like the proverbial monkey clacking out Hamlet on a typewriter, I guess it was inevitable that we'd get an electronic dude with a hankering for the fusion stylings of George Duke. As time wears on, I have less and less interest in "this music sounds like X artist meets Y artist" blather, but this one is worth noting if only because it tickles me. Talking about literal tickling here. Also, those dew-on-the-morning-leaves notes are so incongruous with the bass drum 4-count that I'm not sure it's not a joke. And jokes are our friends, friends.

Thundercat - Daylight

Sound dust

I didn't want to dwell on 9/11. But much like those days held onto me in various psychological ways, I'm compelled to dig up a tune from from the aftermath. I realize this is a pretty minor one in the Stereolab canon. And yet, it served as an especially soft audio blanket pretty deep into that October, albeit one you wrestle with through restless nights, never really comforting you.

Stereolab - Baby Lulu

Skylines

I avoided 9/11 memories for most of the weekend, instead focusing on happier personal anniversaries. But then, big consciousness shifters have a way of bringing a dimension of themselves back to the forefront. Lots of images settle back on calamity, collapse, smoke, and diving bodies. But after that burns itself out, I go back to our untouched skyline and earlier feelings of its vertiginous enormity and my eager search for a place in it. Music like this almost puts it into frame.

Mouse On Mars - Paradical

Shins kick in

Continuing a look back to pop of the early 'aughts. I admit I loved that first Shins record, then gradually tired of the preciousness. Which is not to say I want any kicking to come their way. They actually could rock it out in their fashion. Not on this one though. Pure melodic gracefulness and an angelic swirling outro. Such a pretty way to endure a weekend of 9/11 memorial saccharine.

The Shins - Saint Simon

Women made the electric light

Electrelane. Such a fun band name to say out loud. It reminds me of when James Brown sang "man made the electric light!" and it sounded like "electrolyte". It may be a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothin' without the ladies of Electrelane. Or so I might say by way of clumsy segue. At any rate, here's a peppy little groover.

Electrelane - On Parade

Dream of sorcery

Summer takes a sudden fall. It may get back up, or maybe not. Having un-closeted my jacket, flipped open the umbrella, and drawn arms in to hold warmth, I abscond to the imaginary sunshine. What better audio companion for this escape than the Sorcerer, who again proves that he needs no apprentice.

Sorcerer - The Dream

Gone places

Most city dwellers reacted to the dodged hurricane bullet with a mix of joy and snark. Having spent a weekend in an upstate transformed by the devastation, a more somber attitude is called for, especially given the randomness — one house literally crushed while a neighbor got away with a blow-dried lawn. All the more sad to then read front page stories about the possible abandonment of beloved Catskills hamlets. I wouldn't say this song is a lament to gone places, but driving home on roads lined with aftermath brought its doleful notes to mind.

Sparrow House - When I Am Gone

See me ride into the sun

Eighth-note piano pounding. It's in my head almost all the time these days. I wanna hear it coming from headphones and from my own fingers when I sit down at the keys. Sometimes I like it stately and steady, like John Cale. Sometimes I like it all frantic, like on this one. Workin' it. And speaking of work, happy Labor Day. Back Tuesday.

Tall Dwarfs - Starry Eyed & Wooly Brained

I hate your answering machine

Let's stick with angsty rockers, the American variety today. It's a bummer that people of a certain age will never truly emotionally connect with this song. Directing the full weight of pain and anger at, say, voicemail, just wouldn't capture the sense of distance or demonize the machines that emphasize it. And maybe it's me being curmudgeonly, but I think a kid covering this today would sound like a petulant brat. Paul Westerberg got away with it because he's Paul Westerberg.

The Replacements - Answering Machine