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There are three really cool things about my job. One of them is getting to turn people on to the music I'm most jazzed about: it's a license to pontificate, really -- a pulpit for strictly musical evangelism. But, recognizing that my own tastes can be, shall we say, peculiar, I also try to listen with open ears and the humble reminder that what doesn't float my boat (a rather cramped dinghy, it sometimes appears) may carry another listener's craft all the way to shore. They talk about the critic's role as a "filter," but I'm really more like a theater usher, lighting your way to the appropriate aisle.

Blister Pop is the name of an album from the Embarrassment, this wonderful little band that has become something of a cult legend over the last two decades. The Kansas-based group crafted a shambolic -- and really quite nervy -- brand of underground awesomeness that fell in the cracks between post-punk, hardcore, power pop and Attractions-style pub rock. Nowadays, the Embarrassment would be considered indie rock or quite possibly pop-punk, but back in the 1980s there wasn't a quality name for what they were doing.

The likely pick for my favorite album of 2009 is looking to be the self-titled debut from the xx, a co-ed London quartet of 20-year-olds whose self-produced album is a masterpiece of sensuality and restraint. Even I'm surprised at my enthusiasm for the record: it doesn't necessarily reach out and grab you on first listen, favoring atmospheres over hooks and suggestion over immediacy. Still, I have a hard time listening to it only once in a given sitting (one of the pleasures of a 39-minute album).

One of the things I like about the record is how it distills so many influences into such a simple, unassuming form: there's a vintage rock 'n' roll patina borrowed from Sun Studios-era Elvis and, less authentically vintage, Chris Isaak's "Wicked Games" (which serves as the barely disguised foundation for the xx's "Infinity"). The welling bass is reminiscent of dubstep and UK garage, and the sullen ambiance recalls post-punk and early goth; the song structures suggest the molasses Americana of Galaxie 500 and their protégés, like Low, Yo La Tengo and Mazzy Star.

The more you listen, the more references you can spot, floating like drops of oil on the surface of the xx's inky, glistening infusion. Since I can't just keep listening to their album on a constant loop (can I?), I put together a playlist that pulls together a number of possible xx influences—as well as a few contemporaries who achieve a similarly dark, viscous bliss in their music—including all the above plus Slowdive, Hugo Largo, David Bowie, Massive Attack, David Sylvian, Cocteau Twins, Seefeel, Brian Eno and many, many more. Listen to a sampling below, and check out the whole playlist here at Rhapsody's Playlist Central.

The fall release schedule has kicked in, in earnest, and the electronic-music world is humming like an overheated Theremin. From Basement Jaxx' cyborg pop to the nether reaches of the underground, here's a selection of recent records that don't require a PhD in electronic subgenres to appreciate.

The era of the celebrity DJ is on the wane. These days, the real big-tent tastemakers are music supervisors: the behind-the-scenes types with the knack for administering just the right dose of Snow Patrol at the tear-jerking climax of a Grey's Anatomy episode. And no one does that better than Alex Patsavas, whose keen ears and bursting Rolodex have put their sonic stamp on Grey's Anatomy, The O.C., Gossip Girl, and a little yarn about vampires called Twilight, whose soundtrack went on to sell 2.2 million copies.

From left: Mike Mogis, M. Ward, Jim James, Conor Oberst

The concept of the supergroup is older than fishing -- literally! Jesus and his Disciples were certainly a supergroup, and we're pretty sure Jesus invented fishing. Yes, bands of preternaturally talented brothers (and sisters) have been joining forces for millennia. With this week's debut from Monsters of Folk -- a supergroup comprised of Mike Mogis, M. Ward, My Morning Jacket's Jim James and Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst -- we thought we'd reflect upon some of our favorite supergroups of years past. Was the whole greater than the sum of the parts? Read on to find out, and don't forget: if you dig supergroups, regular groups or anything in between, Rhapsody has you covered. Take a free spin to see what unlimited, unfettered music access tastes like (surprisingly unlike chicken, we think you'll be pleased to discover).

You have to give DFA credit for not resting on their laurels. The label's a figurehead of this decade's indie-dance scene, with an almost unnervingly astute sense for the nuances of 21st-century cool. And yet, aside from certain hallmarks of the DFA style -- ropy bass lines, disaffected vocals, judicious use of cowbell -- they have yet to settle into a pattern. (Black Meteoric Star's psychedelic, home-soldered acid house isn't exactly par for the indie course.)

Their habit of reaching outside their own scene when commissioning remixes is equally commendable. In addition to marquis names like Soulwax and Franz Ferdinand, DFA also tap artists -- like Carl Craig, Baby Ford and Luomo -- who resonate with house and techno die-hards, but have little foothold in American indie circles. It's not just a question of credibility; the stream of new input keeps DFA's mutable sound continually refreshed.

A stellar new collection of remixes of LCD Soundsystem's 45:33, James Murphy's Nike-sponsored album from 2006, is a case in point. Theo Parrish, Prins Thomas, Runaway, Trus'Me, Prince Language, Padded Cell, Pilooski and Riley Reinhold all take the ball and run as far as they can, touching down everywhere from Detroit downbeat to Norwegian disco. Read on for a rundown of the parties involved, with recommendations for further listening from each.

 

I’m no Perez Hilton, or even a young Joan Rivers for that matter, but I think I’ve spotted a pop trend -- albeit a minor one. It dawned on me when I recently stumbled across the video for Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat's “Lucky.” (Nine months behind schedule, I know.) It was the same day I read about Break Up, the new album from Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansson. I'm talking about this whole he/she retro-pop duo thingy. I’m calling it a trend because I can name four additional examples. There’s She & Him (M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel); Wilco and Feist; Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell; and Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs. Without sounding too reductive, all these acts are variations on a theme: take a little Lee and Nancy and some Serge and Brigitte and filter them through a modern alt-pop sensibility (with a dash of Americana thrown in for good measure, of course).

El Guincho (photo: Oliver Faig)

This week's column has no explicit theme, but there might be an implicit one: all five of these albums explore what happens when you combine traditional acoustic and electric instruments with electronic processing and production. Three of them make heavy use of vocals. Four are new, another is a decade old, and one of them sounds way older -- in a good way.

El Guincho, "Antillas" remixes: EP1 and EP2

El Guincho's music is so full of energy and ideas, it's often hard to believe that it's the work of a single artist: listening to his 2008 debut, Alegranza, feels like standing on a hilltop equidistant from three or four different stages at a world music fest, with soca, Afropop, tropicalia and psychedelic rock swirling in the air and shifting with the winds. Now the Spanish musician has reissued "Antillas," one of the album's standout tracks, to a diverse crew of remixers who take his ideas even farther afield. Most of them stay true to the sunny-day spirit of the original, homing in on Highlife-inspired guitars and delirious, Animal Collective-styled chants. Spank Rock's XXXchange comes up with a dazzling slab of Technicolor exuberance in the spirit of DFA or Carl Craig. Norway's Prins Thomas, a master of hypnotic disco, seems to have come across a few of the helium-fueled balloons that once floated above the floor of David Mancuso's Loft; full of bluegrass guitar and manic hand claps, it's as unstoppable as a five-year-old's birthday party. Cee, of Germany's dub outfit Al-Haca, takes the opposite approach, layering atonal voices over quavering bass and stripped-down percussion halfway between dubstep and the bleakest techno: it's "Antillas" all right, but as heard from the other end of a black hole.

 

Owl City (photo: Pamela Littky)

While Gawker reports that Michael Cera is losing his cool, there arrives a new torchbearer for gangly teenaged sincerity. Minnesota's Adam Young launched his electronic-pop project, Owl City, while passing the time in his parents' basement; his MySpace page lists "God," "optimism," "foreign accents" and "G-rated movies" as influences. Taking cues from the Postal Service's fusion of skittery digital rhythms and unabashedly emo melodies, Owl City's new album, Ocean Eyes, channels the bright-eyed rush of the teenage sublime into the sweetest -- well, bittersweetest -- sound possible. With the album casting its rosy glow over the electronic and rock charts, the daydreaming insomniac found the time to share with us an exclusive playlist: Owl City's Pajama Party Songs, complete with his own track-by-track commentary. With a surprisingly ambitious selection running from Hella through Boards of Canada and the experimental computer musician Alva Noto -- and, uh, Shaquille O'Neal -- even die-hard cynics will find it hard not to open up to Mr. Young-at-Heart.

Hella, "Welcome to the Jungle Baby, Your Gonna Live!"
"This song makes me wanna throw a huge pizza party with the Chicago Bulls."
Alva Noto, "jr: for katsushika hokusai"
"I wake up every morning and brush my teeth to this song. My pearly whites are incredibly clean."
Boards of Canada, "Dayvan Cowboy"
"Of dusk and dust and dreams."
Shaquille O'Neal, "My Dear"
"Best song in the history of recorded music. Ever."
Pelican, "Last Day of Winter"
"Indoor swimming music."
The Field, "I Have the Moon, You Have the Internet"
"Brilliant minimalist house."
Taylor Swift, "Love Story"
"Sigh."
Botch, "To Our Friends in the Great White North"
"Go-cart music."
Amon Tobin, "Get Your Snack On"
"This song makes me wanna hang out with my mailman."
Hammock, "When the Sky Pours Down Like a Fountain"
"Snuggle music."
 

Sally Shapiro

Summer's all but officially over, and boy does it feel like it. These three albums may be grounded in libidinal sounds like disco and punk, but there's nevertheless something coolly distant, even alienating about them. (That's part of their charm.) They might make for an entirely unscientific sampling of the current indie dance landscape, but from their heightened affect to their stylistic feints, I think all three speak to a creeping sense of anxiety in the pop underground, both explicit and unconscious.

Sally Shapiro, My Guilty Pleasure

If the term "ice princess" wasn't invented for Sally Shapiro, it's entirely possible she was invented for it. (And she is, let's not forget, an invention: Sally Shapiro is only the nom de microfon of a Swedish shrinking violet whose real name, she demurs, is "something else.") Even singing songs like "Love in July," she sounds about as summery as a steel-blue shock of glacier: her breathy, oddly translucent voice rises up from the mix like the vapors from a frostbitten kiss. Of course, much of the credit for My Guilty Pleasure's deep-freeze aesthetic goes to producer Johan Agebjörn, whose Italo-disco-inspired arpeggios feel as sharply limned as the edges of a snowflake. All the gleaming surfaces can get a bit dizzying after a while -- Royksopp's Junior, a similar attempt at cryogenic disco, sounds positively tropical in comparison -- but there's a thawing respite in the trance-tossed "Dying in Africa," which summons visions of the Field's disappearing horizons.

YACHT, See Mystery Lights

YACHT's full-length DFA debut sounds almost like the work of a different band than the one responsible for I Believe in You. Your Magic Is Real. On the Portland, Ore., band's new album Psychic City, the skittery electronic touches of earlier albums cede the center ground to more muscular guitar-drums-and-bass arrangements. Instead of sketching around the outlines of pop, Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans now home in on the shape of their songs in bold strokes. YACHT aren't shy about their magpie tendencies: "Pyschic City" and "It's Boring" take cues from the Pixies and Pylon, while more futuristic joints like "I'm in Love with a Ripper" open their arms wide to encompass '80s synth-pop and '00s R&B, via ZTT-inspired sampling and delirious flights of Auto-Tune. (There's even a trace of the Durutti Column in the limpid guitars of the opening "Ring the Bell.") It's far more engaging than fellow Portlanders Glass Candy, whose No Wave disco wants for YACHT's irreverent, inquisitive spirit. From the low-slung bass to Evans' slouchy delivery, the album's a no-brainer fit for DFA, currently running this corner of the indie dance scene. But despite the obligatory grounding in the punkier side of disco, it still sounds unlike anything else on the label.

Health, Get Color

Health's machinic rhythms and queasy oscillators, laced with digital tics and freaky effects, draw an imaginary line from Sonic Youth's swollen amplifiers to the nether space of the motherboard. Like Liars, Animal Collective and Battles, the L.A. band pulls at rock's ragged edges in both style and sonics. The new album, Get Color, is both heavier and trickier than their debut: songs like "Death+" sound like a cross between Helmet and Aphex Twin -- part death march, part angels' chorus. The band's tendency to lock into a trance-inducing churn sometimes leaves you wishing for more in the way of songwriting; maybe that last, as-yet-untaken leap is what gives the music such a palpable sense of struggle -- witness the fiery permutations of "We Are Water," where the band wrestles with the ghosts of prog rock, hardcore and techno; the song's imbued with a sense of almost incendiary frustration as it twists and turns.

Gorgeous Johnny is finally out. Sweet. I’ve been waiting three years for a new album from the Skygreen Leopards. Their last, 2006’s Disciples of California, is so good it had me writing all kinds of wacky copy about Jerry Garcia fronting Television Personalities in a dive bar in Santa Cruz. (Oh, wait a minute. Maybe that was Mickey Dolenz and the Go-Betweens?)

Disciples strikes the perfect balance between 1980s twee and rootsy, West Coast folk-pop. Since its release I’ve stumbled across more than a few indie bands exploring similar turf. I dig a lot of them, particularly San Diego’s Donkeys, whose Living on the Other Side is just splendid. But for the most part very few of them can do what the Leopards do. Even with the Donkeys, you can point to a specific guitar lick or riff and say “That’s so Neil Young” or “Man, that sounds a lot like ‘Ripple.’” What makes Disciples special, in contrast, is how the album channels the golden age of California pop, folk and country without ever aping it, without ever sounding like a Monkees tribute band or the Grateful Dead, Jr. Ultimately, the Leopards are more about capturing the feeling of that era rather than its actual sound.

Now having said all that, Gorgeous Johnny finds the Skygreen Leopards backing away from their love of classic California. I mean, it does have its moments, like the Smile-inspired vocal magic of “Goodnight Anna” (the album’s third best song after (1) “Can Go Back” and (2) the title track). But overall, Gorgeous Johnny is way less pastoral, way less wandering-the-countryside-on-a-Saturday-afternoon music. In fact, it’s really kind of urban. Like one of America’s half-dozen classic flatiron buildings, it’s lined with finely detailed ornamentation. The album’s artwork gives all this away. Where Disciples’ cover is a dusty country road (albeit one with a gigantic skull hovering at its end), this new record sports a colorful painting of a city block full of towering apartment buildings.

Though the Leopards’ artistic core are singer-songwriters Glenn Donaldson and Donovan Quinn, the recent addition of multi-instrumentalist Jason Quever helps explain the sound of the new album. This dude is the brains behind Papercuts. If you dig richly textured dream pop, then check out their latest release You Can Have What You Want, released this past spring. Quever, unlike Quinn and Donaldson, doesn’t sound as if he writes songs while strumming a guitar underneath the protective canopy of a redwood forest. He’s more of a composer-type, one who probably develops ideas on the piano. Of course, I’m just guessing here, but I think I’m on to something. A good chunk of Gorgeous Johnny feels more composed, more baroque -- more rococo. (Ha! That word rules.) Several songs unfold like mini-suites stitched together from two or three song fragments. The most striking just might be the oddly titled “SGL’s et al.” It opens with piano and handclaps drowning in echo, that whole recorded-down-the-hall effect. This ends abruptly, giving way to Quinn mumbling like Lou Reed after staying awake for 36 straight hours. He’s saying something about the band getting in the van and driving to the sea. Gradually, Quinn melts into a hazy, droning chant involving a little strummed guitar and about three or four hushed voices. It’s really quite... gorgeous.

Then again, so is the rest of this more-than-worthy follow-up.

PS - You in need of even more Skygreen Leopards? Then check out their Rhapsody celebrity playlist! It’s packed with all kinds of good stuff: The Kinks, Jerry Jeff Walker, The Clientele, Lou Reed, Outrageous Cherry and more.

Mocky's new album, Saskamodie, makes great use of the Paris studio in which it was recorded, channeling the spirit of artists who have previously recorded there -- Nina Simone, Serge Gainsbourg -- into a wonderfully warm and intimate take on '60s lounge pop. The presence of friends and co-conspirators like Jamie Lidell and Feist only enhances the Canadian musician's ample, obvious talents as a songwriter, arranger and multi-instrumentalist.

Mocky's recent performance in his current hometown, Berlin, didn't feature any of those names, and the setting couldn't have been more different from the celebrated Paris studio. The show took place at Badeschiff, an artificial beach along the banks of the Spree river, where the band performed beneath a plastic tarp while the crowd sat in folding hammock chairs or sprawled on damp sand. Berlin's clockwork summer showers had begun shortly after soundcheck and let up, more or less, right about the time the band came on stage. (Serendipity, or something more?)

Grizzly Bear by Tom Hines

As you may have noticed, I've been on something of a Warp kick lately. To me, Warp will always be first and foremost an "electronic" imprint -- after all, the label served as my main introduction to contemporary electronic music 15 years ago, via Autechre's Amber and then other Warp artists like Aphex Twin. (I wrote at some length about my first encounter with Warp eight years ago, when the label's cofounder Rob Mitchell passed away; you can read that piece here.)

But in recent years, Warp has arguably had its most surprising successes outside electronica, in hip-hop, avant-pop and indie rock. I've already talked about Jamie Lidell, Battles and Flying Lotus. Here are a few more crucial albums from the guitar-wielding weirdos warping Warp's aesthetic in wild, white-knuckled ways.

In 1978, a British New Waver calling himself Elton Motello had a supremely sleazy punk-disco dance club hit called "Jet Boy Jet Girl." Almost immediately, a Belgian New Wave singer calling himself Plastic Bertrand, using both the same studio musicians and same backing music as "Jet Boy Jet Girl," turned the song into a French song called "Ca Plane Pour Moi," one of punk's greatest and silliest novelty hits. Both songs have been covered countless times over the years, sometimes by far more famous bands. The playlist below provides an overview, and tosses in other rock classics about jets and by people named JET and Jett and Jetboy that somehow, in this context, totally fit.