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Haven’t done one of these in a while, and this is as good as anything I’ve heard lately, so without further ado:

Grizzly Bear just posted the last track from Animal Collective’s upcoming Merriweather Post Pavilion album:

SONG REMOVED BY REQUEST

I don’t know which excites me more: hearing the new album or seeing them live again. I can’t wait for either one.

Late update: I found a live performance of this song from last summer and a download of the entire set too.

I have been waiting for the new Max Tundra album, Parallax Error Beheads You, especially since it’s been six years since his previous full-length. It wasn’t easy to find, especially since the US version hasn’t been released yet, but I found it and love it, so now I’m sharing it with you.

The entire album is a manwich of a meal, but my favorite has to be the finale, “Until We Die.” It’s an epic stomper of a track, clocking in at just a hair over 11 minutes long. At times it sounds like an 80’s sitcom theme song on acid, or maybe an Alvin and the Chipmucks album flipped on 45rpm, but I can’t get enough of how effortlessly it flows from soft and restrained to over-the-top insane.

If you’re impatient or just overwhelmed by the sheer volume of sound, the lyrics are well worth a listen, and they kick in just after 2:45. I haven’t been able to find them anywhere else, so here’s my best guess:

Did you ever see the holy mountain on ice
30 tons of frogs and blood cascading like dice
The decoration painting was inhibited by fainting
And the clean up operation wasn’t nice

So you did some work for me and you didn’t get paid
Think of all the songs you sang and the love that you made
While Mr. Mend his kisses gate, and in my kitchen break a plate ???
And sweep it up and dream of getting laid

I don’t know if you got my letter
But everyone thinks you’re great
If you come home it will be much better
And I will your mate until we die

If you tried to do the cube and it doesn’t work out
Don’t peel the stickers off or move the pieces about
Just turn it in to this address, my underlings will do the rest
Unless you fill the envelope with doubt

As a child I used to be obsessed with pale saints
In a shop of art supplies, among the sale paints
I thought this girl was Maryam, and I asked if she’d tell me about barium.
That isn’t me she said with some restraint

I don’t know if you got my letter
It should have arrived by now
When you come home it will be much better
I’m longing to show you how until we die

I know it’s not the most accessible song around, but its charms are many, especially that impossibly high falsetto. If you’re willing to take the plunge I promise at least a smile and maybe even an extra bounce in your step; it’s impossible not to be swept up in its euphoria.

I heard The Smiths’ “Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others” on Abby’s iPod last week, and it sent me scurrying through her computer (I had long since deleted them from mine) to snag a few albums to listen to at work. I didn’t need more than a few songs to “satiate the need” but I was reminded of Schneider TM’s brilliant cover of “There is a Light that Never Goes Out.”

I first heard The Smiths in my senior year of high school and immediately adopted their music as the soundtrack to my life. I pretty much gained entrance to my fraternity on the strength of my knowledge and collection of The Smiths releases, narrowly escaping disqualification for not knowing about The Stone Roses (more on them soon).

By the time I left Miami University, most of those (now no doubt extremely valuable first edition) releases had disappeared (one of the many prices I paid for living in one of two rooms on the front balcony). Truth be told, I didn’t miss them one bit. I had long since outgrown their sappy sentimentality, and was ready to move on to something decidedly less contrived and much more my own.

As I continue to reconnect (and in some cases have meaningful conversations for the first time) with friends from high school and college on Facebook, it’s both amusing and instructive to look back on the music of that era. I find myself all-too-aware of that same trap of idealism and false hope: wanting to be adored but completely unwilling or unable to return it without strings attached. I suppose that’s part of growing up, learning to give without conditions, love without fear, and be nothing more and nothing less than authentically me.

It’s true that I am a sucker for anything with a vocoder in it, but Dirk Dresselhaus’s much more modern version is an absolute classic (various outfits far more respectable than me have ranked it as one of the finest covers of all time). Most of all, I love the fact that an entirely new generation now has a bit of The Smiths to guide them along their own path of discovery. Truly the circle of life never ends.

Here’s the original:

And the cover:

While your here, have a look at Radiohead’s cover of one of my other all-time favorites, The Smiths’ “The Headmaster Ritual.”

I am so ridiculously happy I can barely type, let alone think, but for some reason these lyrics popped into my head:

And we can do the zarathustra
We can do the broken fist
We can tear down all the borders
Or abbreviate the list
And when finally the finish line
Emerges from the mist we’ll sound
A soft alarm

I have no idea if it’s appropriate or even remotely relevant, but the euphoria of this song perfectly reflects the jubilation of this moment we now share with the world. No matter how much I wished it would happen, I never once allowed myself to believe it could, and now that we have elected Barack Obama to be our President I am truly at a loss for words.

If you missed it, yesterday’s post has much more.

As you may know, I am deeply interested in politics, in particular the subtle art of crafting imagery, shaping narratives, and building harmony to create something much larger than a moment’s victory. Yes, I want a movement. Oddly enough, these past few of weeks of writing about music have taught me more about love than anything else — I believe love it is what is uniting us at this moment and that is precisely why hatred can no longer win in America.

In 2003, I was drawn back into politics by Howard Dean, the man who gave voice to a dormant and disillusioned left, and in turn tasked me to use my newfound passion to participate in the political process. I genuinely loved what Dean stood for, and under his leadership I was never completely ruled by my growing distaste for George W. Bush, but that is precisely what the election became under John Kerry: a referendum on Bush’s first term, an outlet for my contempt, and a battle against those who absolutely loved him. We all know how that turned out.

Leap forward to 2008 and our present nominee, Barack Obama. Much has been written about his ability to unite us and even more will be said if he emerges victorious, but the one thing that’s missing from the conversation is love. Let me define it: it’s a deep affection for him and each other, an openness to the moment and the opportunity, a hope and hunger for something more meaningful, and most of all a sense of wonder that this is even possible. Here we are on the verge of electing an African-American man with a decidedly foreign name to succeed the most culturally divisive and thoroughly destructive Presidency in our brief history!

Is it any wonder that these stories like Charles meets Barack and Michael Shaw’s incredible post about James Armstrong, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s one-time barber seen in the photo above, are floating to the surface? Just look at the history on that wall, and look at that smile — it’s not smug or self-satisfied, it’s genuinely composed and content that each and every struggle has been worth it.

I can think of no better song than “Damn” to sum up the confluence of their dreams and aspirations, our shared trials and tribulations, and America’s chance to make history tomorrow. This track from George Evelyn, aka DJ E.A.S.E., aka Nightmares on Wax, and vocalist Chyna B. is dripping with funk, soaring with soul, and absolutely bouncing with the energy of new life:

Damn, indeed.

Though brief, this post might be the meatiest of all my song of the day posts, especially since I have three excellent tracks to share, and each more than stands on its own. Nonetheless, they all fit together, albeit in a somewhat circuitous way, so please bear with me.

As I alluded to before when discussing Busdriver, I am frequently bored by hiphop, both lyrically and musically. With so much experimentation and innovation elsewhere in modern electronic music, I am continually surprised to see so little of it crossover. APC, however, not only embraces it, they take it in a completely new direction too. I didn’t immediately get this particular song, and I recall it was the feature track on Warp’s website for a number of weeks to my then dismay, but I quickly warmed up to it. In fact, the only thing I love more than this track itself now is the video for it:

I think seeing the way they move makes the music even more accessible. Here’s the track again:

There is no way I cannot share LFO’s superb remix of “Ghostlawns”:

And no mention of LFO can go without playing his epic remix of “Me and Guiliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story)” — see yesterday’s post on !!! for the original):

APC broke up several years ago shortly after touring with Radiohead in Europe, but have recently begun recording together again. While Beans more than kept it interesting in APC’s absence, I can’t wait to hear all of them on their new album Fluorescent Black when it comes out in 2009.

Completely ungoogleable by their proper spelling, !!! is more often both printed and pronounced Chk Chk Chk, but any other three monosyllabic grunts will suffice in a pinch. Like Brooklyn’s Gang Gang Dance, !!! is another New York band (with some from Sacramento, CA and Portland, OR too), and I thought their epic “Me and Guiliani Down by the School Yard (A True Story)” track would be an excellent followup to Monday’s GGD Song of the Day.

It’s difficult to escape the reality of our current situation in America: our economy is crumbling under the weight of its own inequity; our government is in crisis-mode with the Bush administration trying desperately to conceal the true extent of the damage they have done; our environment is changing, rapidly, perhaps beyond the point of no return; our human race is at war with one another over the last remaining drops of oil, soon to be water and food as well; and the list goes on and on. Yet through it all, there is an unmistakeable sense of hope, and a deep desire to find another way forward in the world.

People always ask me, “What’s so fucking great about dancing?”
How the fuck should I know? Yeah, even I can barely understand it
But when the music takes over, the music takes control
Here’s a message to you, Rudy and you, sir, Mr. Bloomberg
And the rest of you ties-too-tight dudes
Y’all could learn a lesson, by losing inhibitions, yeah
Losing yourself in the music, losing yourself in the moment
Because we have nothing more than this very second
You can’t count on the one coming after, no one’s sure about the one before

At the risk of getting all raved out on you, and believe me I was only barely on the periphery of that mindset in the mid 90s, what can and will unite us is love, and dancing, and living each and every moment to the fullest. I truly believe a singular focus on the here and now, with an eye toward our comparable struggles and common dreams in life, can bridge our most historic gaps.

My generation is on the cusp of taking control of our country, and all involved deserve a little dancing in the streets. Our work to end oppression and discrimination may be difficult, but it need not be drudgery, and I for one plan to keep on dancing, laughing, and loving for the next four years and well beyond.

Edited slightly after posting.

After reading nothing but rave reviews, not just of their new release but pretty much of their entire being, I finally bought Gang Gang Dance’s Saint Dymphna. To be fair, I have only listened to it twice with headphones and just put it up for Fly Lo’s patented whip test last Friday night, so a more thorough review will have to wait a bit longer.

What’s most interesting to me now is the way GGD feels both wholly of the moment and completely timeless as well. There’s something very current about their sound, something that can only be made in this modern era, yet it so clearly encompasses the energies and eccentricities of another era. Many other eras, in fact.

I love to find myself aware of both an instant and the infinite, and I can think of no better way to access that feeling than through music. “Princes feat. Tinchy Stryder” immediately takes me there and definitely keeps me coming back for more, I just can’t get enough of it:

“Oh shit, Gang Gang.”

I look forward to learning more about this Brooklyn band, and hope to see them live next month in San Francisco. If you’re thinking about going, please let me know, I would love to meet up.

I have been itching for some new hiphop lately, but I long ago stopped actively looking for it, and instead rely on serendipity. Prior to today, I only knew of Busdriver by his association with two other Los Angeles based luminaries Flying Lotus and Pigeon John, as well as the incomparable Beans.

I was browsing bleep today, and came across Busdriver’s Cosmic Cleavage release on Big Dada. Since it wasn’t licensed for sale in North America, I went searching for more, ended up on his myspace page, and discovered a gem in “Imaginary Places” from his 2001 album Temporary Forever.

You can imagine my delight in hearing this Busdriver track, with its stripped down sound, breakneck beats, massively deep bass, and one seriously spastic flute. I can’t even read the lyrics as fast as he can speak them:

She doesn’t love me cause I don’t have the right hair cut
I’m misunderstood, I just face it, I’m no good
but I will not appologize for anything that I say
My name is Mr. Busdriver
this is the producer Paris
we did not embarass to admit that we were purchasing a bit
of our own imaginary place

I have only bought this and one other song so far, but you can bet that I’ll look for more from Busdriver, and I will definitely have to catch his show the next time he comes through town. I know he toured with Beans the last time around, how did I miss that show?