Humanizing The Vacuum

This week’s reviews (click on the blurb). Ne-Yo keeps racking’em in.

Ne-Yo – Beautiful Monster (8)

The-Dream ft. T.I. – Make-Up Bag (7)

Sleigh Bells – Tell’em (7)

Alphabeat – DJ (6)

Mark Ronson & Business Int’ – Bang Bang Bang (4)

Diane Vickers – The Boy Who Murdered Love (4)

Lil Jon ft. 3OH!3 – Hey! (3)

After a slow week, we return. A week later I’m prepared to say I overrated Angie Stone’s single, but am still very high on “Shine Blockas” and might have spoken too soon on Adam Lambert now that I’ve heard it on Top 40 radio.

The hyperlinks go to my reviews.

Lil Wayne – On Fire (5 out of 10).

Jay Sean ft. Lil Jon and Sean Paul – Do You Remember? (6)

Angie Stone – I Ain’t Hearing U (7)

Big Boi ft. Gucci Mane – Shine Blockas (8)

Adam Lambert - Whataya Want From Me (4)

The Raveonettes – Bang (5)

The Knife – Colouring of Pigeons (5)

Hurts – Blood, Tears, and Gold (5)

My single of the week, Hurts’ “Wonderful Life” applies a DFA-esque production to Johnny Hates Jazz: it’s as spacious and uncluttered as a modern loft, but with walls painted orange and gold. Listen to Arthur Baker’s (!) retro-nuevo madness on the remix.

The last round of Singles Jukebox stand-offs before we start a new year this week: Yeah Yeah Yeahs vs Dirty Projectors and Electrik Red vs DJ Quik and Kurupt.

My Pazz and Jop ballot:

1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Heads Will Roll

2. Natalie Imbruglia – Want

3. Walter Jones – Living Without Your Love

4. Lady Antebellum – Need You Now

5. Pains of  Being Pure at Heart – Higher Than the Stars (Saint Etienne Visits Lord Spank Mix)

6. Taylor Swift – You Belong with Me

7. Ghostface Killah ft. Fabolous & Shareefa – Guest House

8. Pet Shop Boys – Love, Etc

9. Burial & Four Tet – Moth

10. Arctic Monkeys – Cornerstone

11. Rosanne Cash – Girl From the North Country

12. Julian Casablancas – 11th Dimension

13. Bob Dylan – Beyond Here Lies Nothin’

14. Animal Collective – What Would I Want? Sky

15. Lady Gaga – Dancer in the Dark

16. Dizzee Rascal – Dance Wit’ me

17. Neil Young – Fork in the Road

18. The National – So Far Around the Bend

19. Maxwell – Bad Habits

20. DJ Quik & Kurupt – Hey Playa (Moroccan Blues)

In The Singles Jukebox’s series of year-end group match-offs, I ranked these songs:

1. Busy Signal, “Da Style Deh”
2. Pill, “Trap Goin’ Ham”
3. Ne-Yo, “Part of the List”
4. Calle 13 ft. Cuci Amador, “Electro Movimiento”
5. The Lonely Island ft. T-Pain, “I’m On a Boat”

That’s the order in which they won too. Except for the Pill track, whose video consistently amazes me, the rest run from okay to whatever.

We played catch-up in this week’s Jukebox. This week we provoked the most comments (and discussion) over our, shall we say, lukewarm response to Animal Collective’s “My Girls,” theoretically the highlight from a parent album beloved our Pitchfork brethren. The review provoked two familiar voices to come out of the shadows: a perplexed Matthew Perpetua (I guess I didn’t know that Animal Collective were recording Sonic Youth-level shit), and, my favorite,  once and future Stylus gadfly Dom Passantino.

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I wish I’d sunk my teeth into Walter Jones’ “Living Without Your Love,” which is now easily in my top fifteen tracks of the night. It’s like the Escort of “Starlight” spun by Larry Levan. Ideal Saturday night fare, but closer to the mirror-in-the-bathroom side of things.

An appropriate poem, now that we’re gettin’ war fever all over again…

He sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark,
And shivered in his ghastly suit of grey,
Legless, sewn short at elbow. Through the park
Voices of boys rang saddening like a hymn,
Voices of play and pleasure after day,
Till gathering sleep had mothered them from him.

*            *            *

About this time Town used to swing so gay
When glow-lamps budded in the light blue trees,
And girls glanced lovelier as the air grew dim, -
In the old times, before he threw away his knees.
Now he will never feel again how slim
Girls’ waists are, or how warm their subtle hands;
All of them touch him like some queer disease.

*            *            *

There was an artist silly for his face,
For it was younger than his youth, last year.
Now, he is old; his back will never brace;
He’s lost his colour very far from here,
Poured it down shell-holes till the veins ran dry,
And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race
And leap of purple spurted from his thigh.

*            *            *

One time he liked a blood-smear down his leg,
After the matches, carried shoulder-high.
It was after football, when he’d drunk a peg,
He thought he’d better join. – He wonders why.
Someone had said he’d look a god in kilts,
That’s why; and may be, too, to please his Meg;
Aye, that was it, to please the giddy jilts
He asked to join. He didn’t have to beg;
Smiling they wrote his lie; aged nineteen years.
Germans he scarcely thought of; all their guilt,
And Austria’s, did not move him. And no fears
Of Fear came yet. He thought of jewelled hilts
For daggers in plaid socks; of smart salutes;
And care of arms; and leave; and pay arrears;
Esprit de corps; and hints for young recruits.
And soon, he was drafted out with drums and cheers.

*            *            *

Some cheered him home, but not as crowds cheer Goal.
Only a solemn man who brought him fruits
Thanked him; and then inquired about his soul.

*            *            *

Now, he will spend a few sick years in institutes,
And do what things the rules consider wise,
And take whatever pity they may dole.
To-night he noticed how the women’s eyes
Passed from him to the strong men that were whole.
How cold and late it is! Why don’t they come
And put him into bed? Why don’t they come?

– Wilfred Owen

“Disabled”

The last new batch of the year before we roll out best-ofs. Most of these personally disappointed me. Swift was due for a fall, fine, but I shouldn’t have been so surprised that Adam Lambert would reveal so quickly his origins as a wish fulfillment of Rob Sheffield’s if he’d been asked to produce “American Idol.” Meanwhile Rihanna remains a dream The-Dream had.

Score out of ten in parentheses:

Taylor Swift – Jump and Fall (6)

Adam Lambert -Time For Miracles (3)

Mina Viva – I Wish (4)

Rihanna – Wait Your Turn (5)

As we approach the end of the year, we review fewer singles. The last batch, I presume:

Lady Gaga – Dancer in the Dark (8)

DJ  Khaled ft. Usher, Young Jeezy, Rick Ross, Drake - Fed Up (4)

Roisin Murphy – Orally Fixated (8)

I still stand by what I wrote a couple of months ago about Natalie Imbruglia’s “Want,” except now I love it love it love it. It really does remind me a lot of a track like “The Beginning,” a dance club hit in late ’91 for Seal: disco-inflected house, creamy, with a chalky aftertaste. I still love “Torn,” but “Want” is even more affecting: cooler, because the situation it limns hurts that much more.

Although embedding is disabled for the video, check it out anyway.

With the Singles Jukebox down for a week, we only posted one single: Lady GaGa’s “Bad Romance,” which swiftly became the most played song in the newsroom last week.