Studio tan

Wow, could the emergence of "balearic" music really be more than 5 years old already?! Somehow, the sounds of this Studio escaped my ears while I was getting floated on all that ambient, propulsive, hummy groove stuff. I'm happy to report that jams like this have not aged nearly as badly as some other trends from just a few years ago. The band may be blandly named, but the beachy escape is sweet and succulent.

Studio - Origin

Winter dream

In these cold days, you need some insulation — whether it's warm socks or pillowy ambient comfort. This pairing of minimalist composer and Cocteau Twins' guitarist is literally a dream project, and I'm happy to nestle into its textures until I am evicted.

Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd - How Distant Your Heart

Hummingbirds

It's amazing how much mileage certain dance musics get out of basic elements — four on the floor beats, a couple notes in a vocal sample, etc. And it's harder to build to an ecstatic state than it seems. Personally, I've always been more of a fan at a distance. I admire the aesthetics behind dance floor cues more than I throw myself into them, mostly because my own dance moves are too goofy to be let outside the house. So cheers to Axel Willner, who helps realize the dream of utopian repetition, even if it leans a little hard on sharp angles of our copy/paste age. This tune sets my little heart pumping like a humingbird.

The Field - The Little Heart Beats So Fast

Spirited

There's been a lot of talk about "the new normal" for life in a post-Sandy world. Maybe we can expect killer storms every year or two, landscapes reshaped, and all modern comforts exposed for how fragile they are. Scary obviously, but also a little bit liberating if you're inclined to fall into ruts. And on the positive side, maybe it's also a world where volunteers wrap around the block and you don't honestly consider yourself satisfied unless you've done something for someone who has lost more than you. On the musical front, it seems I've entered a world where this song has suddenly become appealing.

Patti Smith - Smells Like Teen Spirit

Great lakes

The thing about big anthemic music is that lyrics are really secondary. For me, they function mostly as sound. The voice is such an amazing instrument, it often seems a waste to distract with making an audience press close to make out the words, which often are not worth the effort. These mush-mouthed indie rockers illustrate the point nicely with this ocean-sized song.

The Besnard Lakes - For Agent 13

Out on a limb

It seems the most important aspect of experimentation is the risk involved. Musicians are generally applauded for going out on a limb, but I can say from experience that it can be damn scary when you're actually out there. But anyone who tries new things balances the threat of artistic free fall with the prospect of magical breakthough. Which allows me to be very forgiving of experimental sounds that try and maybe don't succeed as well as they might. At least they're stretching people's ears.

Zs are a new music outfit that works its way through a Bang On A Can-inspired world, but are legitimately trying to carve out a landscape of their own. Every time I hear this tune, I revise my opinion of it, which I take to be a good thing. The pounding regularity of its eight-notes would be too much if they drums didn't keep upending the flow and flipping the usual expectations of melody and rhythm duties. It's a kind of mischief I can't help but smile at right about now. Tomorrow, who knows?

Zs - B Is For Burning

Battles lost

Time to party like it's 2007. I remember being so excited that the dorky dudes of Battles might be actual rock stars as they rode the wave of their supremely confident and accomplished debut album. What's more, that album seemed to point the way to an ascendance of adventurous "music-music" as a legit pop paradigm. Alas, time passed. The air leaked out of the tires, Ty Braxton left the band, and their follow-up album passed in my rearview without much notice. Having done a recent fly-through, I don't regret not paying attention.

I know that the unstoppable "Atlas" track mostly made their reputation, but this one seemed like the electrifying radio hit in the aforementioned alt reality of an experimental rock world takeover. Hopefully, they will live to fight more battles.

Battles - Snare Hanger

Happy mutations

Mass audience rock n' roll has been stagnant and mostly irrelevant for so long that one can easily forget to appreciate the many mutant strains that dot the landscape these days. I find myself surprised at how unsurprising the field of possible fusions has become. If everything is possible, nothing really shocks.

So when these Chicago sprites came up on the stereo, my first thought was to tick off the points of reference — Hella's spastic rhythmic restlessness, Don Caballero's mathy, guitar-tapping antics, Dirty Projectors' vocal rubberbanding — without too much excitement. Trainspotting is usually a dead end for enjoyment. But enjoy these guys, I do. And it's a very undramatic pleasure. No fist-pumping rebellion against faded forms or panting inability to get my mind around a whole new sound. Just happy that some super-competent kids are putting things together as they please and making a nice noise in the process. Hope you enjoy this little shot of youthful exuberance on this March Monday.

Maps & Atlases - The Most Trustworthy Tin Cans

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

Great shakes

OK, sure, earthquakes on the East Coast. Why not? Minimal damage = license to snark. Nevermind that the first few moments of fear are about as real a glimpse into our disaster instincts as you could hope to get. Unfortunately, I can imagine my last frantic hours played out inside a Sci-Fi channel disaster movie. As chance would have it, the song I had intended to post actually fits into this new context.

So here's the thing about monster rock. Usually, it's some big bloozy dinosaur-type thing that stomps onto the scene and destroys your mental skyline while emitting smoky roars that mask the fact that it's completely strung-out. But sometimes it's a creature in a shape you've never seen. Like this song, creeping in all insect-like, and then spending a couple solid minutes smashing you upside the head like an anthem from a nation of amped-up beasts. It's a sweet rumbling.

Parts & Labor - New Crimes

Breathing room

I wonder if there's an arc of tension in life. You hold more and more of it until the absurdity of worry overwhelms that instinct. I hope so. And I hope it's before I'm 60. I need to get better at letting things roll off me. Or at least learn to physically disconnect from the tensing pulse of the cell phone vibrations and false-bright tones of incoming email. At work anyway. Time to think used to easier to come by. Does music help clear a space? Songs like this sure do.

Michio Kurihara - Wind Waltzes

I got a bad desire

Another one near and dear to me. Everyone likes the Springsteen fist-pumpers, but this one has a quiet intensity that can burn holes through iron. Talk about anguish. And a bit creepy — exactly how little is this little girl? Are we talking "daddy" as in actual father? The warm keys can't soften these questions. But I'm gonna have to drop a curveball version, approaching dance mix territory, which works better than you'd think.

Bruce Springsteen - I'm On Fire (Cousin Cole's Bad Desire Mix)

And for a screwball, the Chromatics version, working the "Every Breath You Take" style guitar. It's blank and ghostly, almost dubby. Points for not changing gender in the lyrics.

The Chromatics - I'm On Fire

Music for holding hands

Inching towards actual Springtime, my head jumps ahead into a landscape of sunny and starry-eyed psych-pop. Like this track. Caribou's music puts a beautiful melodic haze at the core of whatever milieu he's working in, and the Andorra album conjures a very attractive version of the '60s. Which wisely involves a liberal dose of flutes and swirling things.

Caribou - She's The One

One for the road

I'm not sure why I'm often compelled to post a piece of avant Judaica just before heading out of town on a road trip. I'm pretty sure it's not a one-way exodus, but I guess you never really know. Anyway, here are San Francisco's Secret Chiefs 3 rocking up a tune from John Zorn's Masada songbook. Having visions of a tallis draped across the rental sedan. A good way to get pulled over.

Secret Chiefs 3 - Akramachamarei

Smile with such good grace

I suppose this one would've made a better segue from Friday's track, but it's a pretty one on any day. It takes me back to those years in the '00s where doing a half decent Morrissey impression was enough to get you a gig at a respectable venue and maybe even a little East Coast tour. But these guys are better than that, even on this number that seems to wistfully recall Belle & Sebastian's now-classic chamber pop records. I'm inclined to nod approvingly at the whole arrangement, but I find myself oddly focused on the bass, which motors along dashingly without ever preening too much for your ears.

Butcher Boy - Keep Your Powder Dry

Disarmed

Those of you who are familiar with the Sun City Girls would not surprised by many of the noises emanating from (Sir) Richard Bishop's guitar. His stylistic range is intimidatingly broad, exotic in a very real way, but he pulls it off without it sounding like musical tourism. Driving through Maryland, alternating between stretches of ugliness and woodsiness, his Polytheistic Fragments album felt as foreign as yesterday's jam. But then this piece came on, and it seemed that beauty finds itself at home just about anywhere.

Sir Richard Bishop - Quiescent Return

Gimme ah-ooh in your chorus

It always gets me how anything Steve Albini touches sounds like Steve Albini, no matter what the band has to say about it. I'm not a huge fan of his leaden style. Or his killjoyness, which is probably not unrelated. The drums always seem to drag. The music makes me visualize a recording studio, rather than the bands' own sound pictures. But this one defies that gravity. It glides and shimmers. And in 7/8 time, no less!

The Forms - Bones

Maps won't show us where we're going

Tell it, indie kids! Tell it all day long, with your shower-trained voices and your power-pop gallop. There are some days when you're perfectly content with catchy, cryptically literate tunes from the New Pornographers extended family of pop groups. Today is one such day.

Immaculate Machine - Dear Confessor

Sunny daze

Woke up on the 5th of July with a head full of plans. I made it through a post barbecue roof cleanup and then decided to cool out and let the day drift. It was one of the best ideas I've had in a while. Here's a song that takes a similar course. Starts off in 5th gear, then gets a little lost in the blissout. Luckily, it's short enough that you don't feel too much of a drag. A little like life.

A Sunny Day in Glasgow - Laughter (Victims)

Naked hippie highway car chase scene

If I can overgeneralize for a minute, what is it with Frenchmen and their synthesizers? The stuff's great, but it's never exactly subtle. The gamut seems to run from cinematic to full-on melodramatic. It always feels so epic and free of irony.

Here are some lesser-known Gallic synthmen, who I discovered via a mix they made for Allez-Allez. I'm liking these cats a lot, but the album cover confuses me. For me, this wants to be music for a tweaked-out car chase through the neon streets. I'm not really hearing naked women and children in the forest. Not highways so much either. Now if you put them all together...there's a movie I'd see.

Unrelatedly, Happy Birthday Jess!!

Principles of Geometry - Interstate Highway System