Musical Zakuski: UnClub Selections

Your author, on the right, in pajamas...

Royksopp Happy Up Here
Camera Obscura French Navy
The Paper Cuts The Machine Will Tell Us So
Beach House Walk in the Park
Chairlift Planet Health
Julian Casablancas 11th Dimension
The Raveonettes Gone Forever
Maps Turning The Mind
Atlas Sound Walkabout
Plaza Musique Magazine
Small Black Despicable Dogs (Washed Out Remix)
Toro y Moi Human Nature (Michael Jackson cover)
Washed Out Belong

I've pretty much abandoned the album as a medium for my enjoyment of music - not because I'm staking out a principled stand against concept albums (carry on, Alan Wakeman), but mostly out of convenience... I listen to most of my music either at work or when I'm DJing - songs are the. You could argue I'm living on a diet of hors d'oeuvres and by-the-glass wine (like tapas or zakuski), but I like to think it keeps me spry, light on my feet. Because of that, I'm not really qualified to give a list of my top albums for 2010. And all the better, too, because I'm sure you're sick of reading about them and the albums I did pay attention to (Junior Boys, Royksopp, Sebastien Tellier, Beach House, Phoenix, a smattering of others) are accounted for on many, many other people's lists. One much-loved album that by all accounts I should have been slobbering over, given how much I love(d) The Knife, was the Fever Ray album, but truthfully, it bored me so much that I can barely recall what it sounds like, other than a bit dour and a line about walking a dog home from school or something. Oh well.

If you've paid any attention to this blog at all, my method of discovering music tends to be about as haphazard, scatter-brained and ADD as my tastes have become. So that's a lengthy pre-amble to some songs from 2009 that I like and have at hand. Some of them I've already posted about, the ones at the top are new, and most of them sound like Cass McCombs.

Studio Alchemy

Andy Kim Rock Me Gently
Tommy Sparks Miracle
Tommy Sparks Miracle (Grum Remix)

Andy Kim, the pride of Montreal's Little Lebanon*, co-wrote the Archies' Sugar Sugar, cementing his legacy in the annals of pop music. Not content to bask in the glory of a pitch-perfect pop music concoction, he shot to number one on the charts with 1974's Rock Me Gently, a Neil Diamond-ish pop ditty that I've got a soft spot for.

Tommy Sparks, a Swedish song-writer, is familiar to anybody with a TV, as being responsible for the song She's Got Me Dancing, currently featured in an Apple iPhone television spot. The song's actually a two-headed monster - one, the guitar line cribbed from The Ohio Player's Love Rollercoaster, and the other the bastardized over-produced post-punk shimmy and shake of Franz Ferdinand. But, like Chairlift, don't hold that against him.

Let's leave Tommy's paycheque alone, and discuss a better song - Miracle. Being Swedish, Tommy Sparks is well-versed in studio alchemy - the myriad of tricks and techniques from which pure pop gold is made. In this case, it's the strummed acoustic guitar over-top a traditional rock band set-up. (Could this explain a weakness for OMC's How Bizarre?) The Embassy, also Swedish, are perfect masters of this trick, but I also think it was employed quite handily (and best) by Tony Visconti in his production work in the 70's with David Bowie and T. Rex.

* There's no Little Lebanon.

Mood Music

Ennio Morricone Chi Mai

from the soundtrack to Le Professionnel
Sebastien Tellier Gus Gracie
from the soundtrack to Narco
Duran Duran The Chauffeur
Watch the video, directed by Ian Emes, inspired by The Night Porter & Helmut Newton
Chairlift Planet Health