Evening shadows

A national freakout comes to something like resolution. And while I suspect the collective tweakage will more likely find a new expression than just dissolve, a nice healthy exhalation is in order. I offer this tune to color in that mood. Also good for arriving at the street you call home, preferably if you have a vehicle to cruise onto it with.

Meanwhile, does this guy look like a young James Caan or what?

Javier Bergia - Midnight Round Mekines

Tell a soul

The sweet spring air brings the sweet rock. Somehow, Westerberg and gang were never too addled to lace their meat n' potatoes rock n' roll with a swooning hook. Perfectly suited to bodies gathering motion and heat. It may be a truncated season, but I'll amble my way down the street with this tune in my head for as long as I can.

The Replacements - Back To Back

Murderously catchy

I think I've fully expressed my affection for C86 pop. But it's been a while since I got smacked upside the head with such a jangling gob of the stuff. So when it happens, I have to go all bobble-headed, and not utter the slightest complaint about how much like a singsong (albeit childishly vindictive) Morrissey the singer is trying to posture himself. It's important to get past these things.

Another Sunny Day - You Should All Be Murdered

Cruisin'

Feeling the atmospheric pop puts you on a short path to the likes of Julee Cruise. I know it's a bit cliche, but the textured space-out via skewed '50s romance was and still remains a clear winner. Appreciation of David Lynch is not even necessary to enjoy.

Julee Cruise - Floating

Odd time in no time

I never understood why avant garde rock bands are called "ahead of their time". Time will literally never catch up with them, and their music has nothing to do with anyone's time, now or in the future. Those fancy chops, odd meters, and semi-discordant jazz horns will never blare out of cars speakers or function as the soundtrack to any mass activity of daily life. Band members will never taste the sweet n' stinky pleasures of rock hedonism. They will, in fact, always make music for small rooms of dedicated head nodders. Their albums will bob in and out of print. Sometimes they will be blogged.

Interesting fact about these guys — their drummer was also in Soundgarden. How's that for making a shitty concession to getting with the times?

Tone Dogs - No Cry

Tone Dogs - Secret Crush

Devotion knows no boundaries

I dislike Interpol. Always did. Which is not to say I didn't like some of their songs. Hard to resist, the first album anyway. They stole directly from good sources and executed with studied competence. I guess it was the suits and haircuts and smug, self-serious posturing that put me off. Seemed a little heavy-handed for what was essentially a covers band. Then they went away.

And then I hear a band like this and those guys bug me all over again. Though unfortunately-named, this long-running Cleveland act spent a bunch of unheralded years doing solid, angsty basement indie rock, peppered with a Rust Belt take on Ian Curtis's low intonations. Not to get caught up debating whether it matters which wanna-bes came first, but I have to go with the guys who spent a lot less time admiring themselves in the mirror.

My Dad Is Dead - Boundaries

Women who dream don't stay too long

Talk about unlikely pairings. This one seems almost too weird/good to be true — under-appreciated rock/r&b vocalist par excellence meets dude from Tangerine Dream to make a new age pop soul album!? Yup. And it's a pretty fine offering too. There was a time when I'd call a song like this cheesy. There was also a time a lot of great things were lost on me. Hopefully, you will fly over such traps.

Nona Hendryx - Women Who Fly

Give the drummers some

Moving from grainy Euro/African fusions to a more wide-screen form of exotica. Via a pair of drummers doing it all with electronic percussion and sampling. I give a big thumbs-up to my fellow stickmen getting their melody on. Strangely, I love those new agey '80s synth drums more and more. Maybe it's something about the charm of limitation.

Michael Shrieve & David Beal - Mon Amie

I looked so pretty

Here's something of a curiosity — a prickly/precious Anglo-indie '80s staple finishing off their career with a foray into rootsy vibes. And damned if those chorus pedal-heavy guitar bends don't make me all squinty and dopey-happy. And then I look up the lyrics and they seem to be about child molesting. Sigh.

Felt - Budgie Jacket

Sang froid

Speaking of buried treasure from the 1980s, I can't recommend the Femmes Sous Cellophane comp highly enough. If you like your pop continental cool, female-fronted, and artastic, there are 21 choice cuts to keep you in a Francophilic state of mind. I'm pretty sure it's out of print, but, you know, the Internet. Here are two of my favorites tracks, more material to soundtrack your alternate mental re-creation of that decade.

Juliette et les Indépendants - Un Jour Anglais
Première Classe - La Fille Qui Rit

(FYI — I'll most likely be laying low next week, or most of it, at least. Sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day/night.)

Tweedom rock

Yesterday's menace gives way to the poster children of tweedom. But Songblague has the gentleness of a true tough guy. Which allows us to smile on this song, pet its tender head, and take it by the sweatered arm into our warm home. The lyrics are a crock of shit (go find anyone with such a sanguine view of breakups), but the lilt makes me go along with it. Tease me and I'll rip your arm off.

The Field Mice - When Morning Comes To Town

OK alright OK

In the past, Songblague has taken issue with the insistent lyrical canard about how everything's gonna be alright. We have much more love for songs that evoke the feeling itself, offering an existential lift which, in its disarming breeziness, inherently suggests an aftermath from something traumatic and maybe best not looked back on. The ones that are free of new age mumbo jumbo are especially sweet. And that's what we've got here—a wide open sky of a song, charmingly dorky, like the face you make when you acknowledge a fondness that's less than love but equally magnetic.

As a side note, I keep imagining that this is what the Weekend At Bernie's soundtrack would've been like if David Byrne had scored it. Maybe this would've appeared during the end credits. Meanwhile, Happy Fourth to everyone. Back at you next Wednesday.

David Van Tieghem - Flying Hearts

King of the bongo

In the hot summer of 1999, my first in New York, my friend Peter came to visit, armed with a bunch of records I've since forgotten. The one I remember was Manu Chao's solo debut Clandestino, which had yet to invade lefty coffee shops and dinner parties everywhere. It suited the heat perfectly and we left it on repeat hanging out in my smoky, shabby living room, friends coming and going, as often happened in those days. A bunch of us took it to the roof and eventually fell asleep up there. I remember the precise discomfort of waking up on the hot tar. Nothing extraordinary about any of that, but the memory has burned itself in my brain as a snapshot of those first days in the city.

A while later, I stumbled onto Mano Negra—Manu Chao's multi-culti, Clash-inspired, righteous punk band (album cover notwithstanding). Aside from soundtracking whatever political rally you've got planned, it's great for keeping awake when you're bleary-eyed on the highway at night. I think he's singing in Arabic here. Translation anyone?

Mano Negra - Sidi H'bibi

Gonna set myself on fire

As part of Operation 'Relax, But Don't Let Your Brain Go To Mush' during the holiday deadweek, I found myself digging up old mixtapes, specifically the ones from old Decembers. The one I made around Christmas of my sophomore year in college saw me in an especially Lounge-y mood (I sometimes forget about that fascination). And yet tucked into the schmaltz was this old chestnut. I jumped around the room from muscle memory, reminding myself that Fugazi is awesome at any age. And today, it's invaluable in helping me jump back onto the work merry-go-round.

Fugazi - Margin Walker

Mad wasps

Leave it to Robyn Hitchcock to open his "hit" single with a monk-like chant and a buildup that dares the payoff to fall flat. He's leading with his chin, but comes back with a knockout—three minutes of vintage Hitchock jangle perfection, with lyrics as poignant as they are surreal. As always, you wonder if he's bullshitting. And as always, it doesn't matter.

Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians - Madonna of the Wasps

Shaking the twee

Started the week with a soundalike; may as well end it with one too. I was vaguely into this group in 9th grade and forgot about them pretty quickly. I heard their debut again a couple years ago, and this track got deep in my ear. If the Smiths were from Hershey, PA and born a few years later, they would've recorded this. Can you imagine the kind of abuse these guys must've taken from the high school football team?

The Ocean Blue - Vanity Fair