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Singling Out 2008: The Raveonettes, Lykke Li, Busta Rhymes, Jessica Simpson, more

More 2008 singles that other people of wealth and taste think are great, and maybe I'll agree or maybe or I won't  (see also these two previous posts). This time, from the running best-of-the-year list on New Yorker critic Sasha Frere-Jones' blog. Here goes:

Gang Gang Dance, TV on the Radio Wear Indie Emperor's New Clothes

I’m a pretty open-minded guy when it comes to music – sometimes probably too open-minded. But there’s a certain alt-rock sensibility that I feel like I’m largely immune to. I’m not sure what you’d call it; “middle alternative” (as in “middle of the road”) might work. Basically, I’m talking music that’s removed enough from pop pleasure or rock propulsion or metal vulgarity to seem extremely avant-garde to casual fans who’ve never delved deeper than commercial radio (a demographic that continues to shrink), but not so weird that you’d expect people who actually listen to music for a living to be all that impressed by it – confounding thing is, they regularly are anyway. It’s not too hooky, but not too crazy, in other words, and preferably vague and unformed and tentatively artsy enough that professional tastemakers can project any zeitgeist they pull out of their hat at it. At the moment, the two mildly interesting but widely acclaimed bands that seem to be benefiting most from this tendency – both from hipster central in Brooklyn, both touting their second-or-third-or-fourth album depending which demos and EPs you count, and both allegedly now incorporating all sorts of dance-music influences that somehow manage not to translate as tangible rhythm – are Gang Gang Dance and TV on the Radio.

Heavy Metal Ketchup #11: Korpiklaani, Kosmos, Khold, more

Not all four of the fine bands below come from Europe, but the one that doesn't still comes from a place where people talk French a lot -- and you can tell. I'm not gonna say metal is only any fun these days outside the United States. But it sure does seem that way sometimes.

Fallen Through the Cracks: Chilliwack to Clouddead

The noisiest artists below are the ones that may well make for the best background music, at least if you've been taking lots of antihistamines due to flu season. The most comical artists below make Latin music, not that Latin radio will ever be brave enough to admit it. Plus: Two one-hit-wonder rock bands who had very long careers! What'll they think of next?

Black Diamond Heavies and Mississippi Mudsharks Stomp All Over You

So maybe this is what Blue Öyster Cult meant by the red and the black. Mississippi Mudsharks’ Train Rolls On and Black Diamond Heavies' A Touch of Someone Else’s Class are both beat-your-face-in albums of the belligerent he-man blues-rock persuasion, and they also both sort of look alike! Red lettering on a black background -- especially on the album back covers, each of which is a top-to-bottom list of 11 songs. The Mudsharks’ front has a locomotive and the Heavies’ a drum set, but hey, let’s not quibble, folks.

Mississippi Mudsharks are three hefty dudes from, well, San Diego, actually; their frontman Scottie Blinn calls himself “Mad Dog.” Guests help out on pedal steel (two songs) and “chain” (one). Their album-opening title track ain’t quite the “Train Kept a Rollin’” it wishes it was, and neither is the bleh ballad called “Slow Rollin’” they close with. But in between, they’ve got shuffles evolving into badass boogie (“30 Weight Shuffle”), bike-leather rockabilly (“Crimson Sky” and “Devil’s Road”), and some gratifying Black Oak Arkansas and ZZ Top tendencies, the latter most notably in “Throw It in the Hole.” Best song titles: “Lakeside Redneck Shindig,” “Zombie Whip,” “Can’t Put Down the Drink.”

Heavy Metal Ketchup #10: Kampfar, Into Eternity, Intronaut, Kayo Dot, more

Oh well, guess we don't get a metalhead for a Vice President after all. But hey, you can only break so many barriers at once, right?  And it's not like Caribou Barbie named her kid after Voivod. So stop whining (unless you're dancing in the streets like me), and check these:

The Veronicas and Dragonette Get Lucky

One encouraging musical development in this often depressing decade, which I wouldn’t have much expected 10 or 15 years ago, is that it’s no longer so easy to pinpoint where exactly “pop” lets off and “rock” begins. Partly, this is probably just a byproduct of Radio Disney-boosted pop stars from Avril Lavigne to Kelly Clarkson to Miley Cyrus to Jonas Brothers incorporating guitar-rock elements, but outside of the U.S., distinctions seem even more murky. In fact, the two finest examples of the principle I’ve come across lately – new albums by the Veronicas, from Australia, and Dragonette, from Canada by way of the U.K. – both finally got their U.S. release this fall, a year after they’d appeared overseas. Which might just mean the industry here is still confused by them.

Heavy Metal Ketchup #9: Iced Earth, Hollowpoint, Holy Moses, more

What does it mean that, of the five ear-bleeding albums accounted for below, the two I get long-winded about are both by bands of manly men from Tampa, Florida -- neither playing especially sun-shiney music? Yes, it's a major swing state. No, I won't get superstitious.

Singling Out 2008: Cyndi Lauper, CSS, Menudo & more

Time for more 2008 singles that it's my professional responsibility to have an opinion about, seeing how Frank Kogan listed them among his 42 favorites of the year so far -- a list I'd started to pick through in a previous post, though "We Break the Dawn" by Michelle Williams and "Energy" by Keri Hilson have grown on me since then. In this far less cynical round, I actually already like a bunch of the tracks I wrote about! Here they are:

Funny Money Kix-Starts Your Heart

It’s been well-documented, most notably in a couple books I wrote a few years back, that perennial Hagerstown, Maryland Nerf-metal also-rans Kix were my favorite (which is a polite way of saying “the best”) rock band of the ‘80s and early ‘90s. I believed that then, I believe it now, and I’m still waiting for somebody to prove me wrong. (Explanation? Let’s just say crossing AC/DC with the Cars and shouting dirty jokes about explosions on top was an awesome idea. Plus, their tunes rocked.) Anyway, Steve Whiteman, who used to sing like the most snot-nosed clown in your 8th grade class for Kix, has for the past several years been fronting a somewhat less visible act called Funny Money. (Not that Kix were super visible in the first place, but they did put out six albums on Atlantic Records rather than Fizz Donkey, after all.) Funny Money’s third, best, and most recent album, it turns out, is available on Rhapsody. So you wouldn’t expect me to ignore it, would you?