Smooth(ish) operator

German synthy songstress Barbara Morgenstern is one of those musicians who hits the balance between catchy and inventive so frequently that you forget how hard that feat is. Sorta like the perennial All-Star who only attracts attention when the knees start to go. I'm lost in her world right about now, and quite happy about it.  

"The Operator" was her hit from a few years ago. Here's a version that sets the song's lurching/spooky notes stomping around the creaky floor, and then brings them slowly down the stairs in sparkly evening dress.

Barbara Morgenstern — The Operator (piano version)

She's alone, he's alone

I had high hopes for the Futureheads. Their debut crashed into the post-punk obsessed mid-00s with rocking out and harmony in equal measure, and was a catchy ride all the way through. I remember seeing them live and loving their jumping around with guitars that seemed too small for their bodies. I lost the thread after their sophomore slump, which probably says more about my own attention deficit than their failings. But this track from that second album has something interesting about it — going all underwater and spacious and adding some unexpected mystery, without sacrificing their best and hookiest instincts.

The Futureheads - Burnt

Get going

Mornings need a jolt. In a cup or on the stereo. It's never easy shifting from the casual Sunday slide into consciousness to Monday's starched routine. I'll take whatever help I can get. This song seems to about snoozing into the afternoon, but does a fine job moving me into the machinery of the workweek.

The Changes - When I Wake

Strung up

Cold times. And some of these days you have to let your headphones double as earmuffs, press them close, and tap into Bishop's vibrations. That guitar contains a world worth escaping to.

Sir Richard Bishop - Dream Of The Lotus Eaters

I dance like a furry phantom

When it comes to a tight pop song, it's hard to fret over a lack of originality. There's a place for pioneers and a place for craftsmen, and it's good spend quality time with both. These Danish lads bring a lot of spunk to their '90s orthodoxy. And the singer's barely controlled caterwaul helps me keep in touch my inner angsty teen.

Figurines - All Night

French re-fried

Gonna keep it going with French dudes and their audio bong hits. This tune comes from a more hip/less fantastical source — Jean-Benoit Dunckel, taking a little solo break from Air. All Music Guide characterizes this one as a "cybernetically enhanced George Harrison song," and I'd say that's about right. Except that George's voice never sounded so noncommittal about its gender.

Darkel - At The End Of The Sky

Metamorphoses

Nick Cave has done a lot to mellow over the hellfire punk image of his raucous youth in recent ears. To me, a lot of the "mature" work has been a yawn. But his soundtracks with late-arriving Bad Seed Warren Ellis (The Assassination of Jesse James, The Proposition, The Road) have been just stunning.

For some reason, the duo's excellent score for the equally excellent recent (and surprisingly acrobatic) staging of The Metamorphosis has not been given a proper release. But fear not, for Songblague has done the legwork and tracked down these beautiful cues, which open and close the show. If you don't get a bit misty-eyed, you may not be a real human being.

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - Marty's Song
Nick Cave and Warren Ellis - The Water Song

Tom Waits for no man

I've enjoyed Tom Waits's gallery of carnival characters and multi-lensed channeling of American lore for many years now. In a petty sense, it's been disappointing to hear it mostly rehashed over the last few albums, but then, I'd be a total ass to view that as anything resembling a tatter on his many accomplishments. Which is why when I put the Orphans album the other day, it was so pleasing to hear this weird '50s hiccuping rocker kicking it all off. Could old Tom be hearing new voices in his head? Things settled into familiar territory afterward, but it goes to show how a good opening can cast a glow that sustains.

Tom Waits - Lie To Me

And here's a two-fer-Tuesday to give this triple disc set its proper due. A little on the nose, but what heartless bastard wouldn't drop a tear in his beer as his barmates rouse themselves to belt this one skyward.

Tom Waits - Never Let Go

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

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)

I'm looking for a place where I can get lost

It's no news flash to note that Hot Chip's The Warning album is one of those Thriller/Hysteria/Purple Rain-style classics, where every track is nothing but net. Which is why I wouldn't normally try to extract one for my purposes here. So imagine my surprise as I sat relaxing with a nice glass of Elijah Craig in a Catksills living room after a long week and long drive and this track came to the forefront to put the soothe all over me. Weird lyrical violence notwithstanding, it's tender, somber butter. And the little keyboard solo follows the whiskey right down your throat.

Hot Chip - The Warning

11

Happy Nigel Tufnel Day! (11/11, nudge nudge.) Technically, the full-on 11/11/11 won't come around until next year, but I see no reason not to get in the spirit now. And who better to take us there than a band that has been unleashing beautiful audio damage for years. Pink showed Boris to be a lot more than just masters of monolithic slabs of intense noise. There are a number of ways to make your ears bleed, and there's nothing wrong with getting a little sexier about it. This one sounds like a car on fire that's speeding down the highway with the brick on gas pedal. The driver is either a bloody pulp on the roadside or ingesting massive quantities of speed in the back seat (my vision is a little hazy on that part).

Boris - Woman On The Screen

Four more years

I'm gonna assume most of you are joining me in a shake of the head about the American electorate's collective crap-out last night. Some of you might see this is a sign of maturity, that we're embracing our descent into Third World-ness, with the likes of the new junior Senator from Kentucky stepping on the gas while fueled by an amphetamine rush of moron ideology. Maybe we are. I was hoping we had found another route though. Remember 2 years ago? Yeah, that was a much better party.

But my mind drifts back a little further to election night 4 years ago. I was at a Voxtrot concert and was pretty psyched about it. They were still an it band, still deserving of their hype. It was a good show - pop music with good genes and a crowd of tolerable hipsters who were in good spirits because America was actually throwing the bums out. Between songs, the singer called out the name of yet another Republican reptile who had gone down to defeat. Even in the absence of good guys to cheer for, it was nice to watch the bad ones fall. And now we have new bad ones. Meanwhile, nobody talks about Voxtrot much these days. But they had a good little run too.

Voxtrot - Trouble

At your fingertips, out of reach

I'm a pepper. This weekend, I finally broke down and got an iPhone. "Broke down" is of course all wrong, since this is clearly an upgrade on every level of my being. Now I am whole. Not to be too sarcastic about it, but I've always been ambivalent about early adoptership of new gadgets, even ones that do revolutionize your daily life. My professional life aside (bloody hypocrite), my instinct is to pause indefinitely when it becomes de rigueur to own a thing and when not owning it consigns you to a sort of second-class citizenship, especially if...gasp...if you're not broke enough to be priced out. Especially when said gadget does present a new platform for social exchange. The fetishized commodity...blah blah. Well, it's true. Aren't there more interesting things to fetishize? And I'm not even one of those paranoid types who's weirded out by GPS knowing where I am at every moment. Maybe a little.

The main thing is that the more you have, the more you have to lose. The iPhone's ability to consolidate the components of your life is astounding, and getting used to that does put you in a certain servitude to the new normal. I'm not a live-by-your-wits-in-the-woods type, but I try to maintain some sense that I can exist a little outside the cradle of our loving machines. Yes, I'm aware that I'm saying this on a blog that is fully a part of that network. And now I've nestled even deeper into my place on the grid, marveling at my new toy's ability to put so many of my world's levers into my tingling hands as to convince me that is really can be that small.

Which is a long wind-up for a tune that does just the opposite — pushing and flowing, expanding, dissolving, coyly luring you in and then escaping your grasp.

Woolfy - The Warehouse (Project Sandro's Wall To Wall Mix)

Clear as a belle

I've never been good at having easy Sundays. I have a hard time letting time ebb and flow. It either needs to carry cargo or justify its accumulation in any one place. There's probably some correlation between playing drums and tending to keep your own time measured within bar lines. I'm working on it. Meanwhile, here's a song that has those long exhalations I'm trying to master. And also Neko Case's voice, always a beautiful bell.

Neko Case - Star Witness

Hits of sunshine

Is it trite to get all summer song-y when the heat comes to town? And woodland-y on top of that? Maybe, and who cares. Here's some music for romping around under canopies of leaves, sunlight flickering between the sturdy trees, a little stain on the brain. How about a double shot?

The Impossible Shapes - Florida Silver Springs
The Impossible Shapes - Fulgent Fields

American gothic

Sunday evening on the Northeast Corridor line back home. Foggy gray landscape. The view steadily turns opaque. Rain comes down like salt from a shaker. Powerlines. Ominous hum of regular motion between stations. Sudden lightning. An equally sudden train thunders by on the parallel track. This song.

Carla Bozulich - Evangelista I

Faking teenage places

What is it they say...the older you get, the more you get compelled to rock out at random moments. Is it like the twitch of a phantom limb? Some nerve that suddenly got nostalgic? Funny, because I didn't spend too much time acting the garage/punk rocker in my youth, and yet sometimes I feel a very real nostalgia for music that didn't quite belong to me. Let me turn up my hearing aid now.

The Exploding Hearts - Making Teenage Faces

Sandpaperscapes

So many ways to do it moody. This one fits into Songblague's growing tradition of ambient goodness of a decidedly desolate variety. Tim Hecker is a master of texture, and he keeps getting better. Which makes it even harder to find a language to talk about it. This track makes me feel like I'm taking a microscope to the album cover and tracing strange topographies in equally strange shades of gray. Mang.

Tim Hecker - Chimeras

Slow and whoa

More mellowness required. May as well go full on ridiculous with it. I saw these guys play once, and they enacted every zonked-out visual signifier the music suggests. Including actual rose-tinted sunglasses. At night. Still, give 'em respect. They have their thing, and they're sticking to it. Forget sleeping under the stars. This is music to evaporate or decompose to.

Brightblack Morning Light - All We Have Broken Shines