yet another great album to come out this year without me knowing it. and from someone i dig so deeply. so disappointing. unlike the album, which takes his r&b groove and expands it into all sorts of neo-retro genres. and this track - a sort of bo diddly homage with a nashville edge - is by far my favorite. -d

heard another incredible song off that incredible black keys album on the way to work this morning. and as the highest compliment i can offer it, it reminded me of this song. -d

gt has been playing this into the ground on kcrw, and for good reason. for years jamie lidell has had this split personality. on the one hand he would release these albums full of peppy neo-motown jams and amazing whiteboy r&b crooning. but anybody who’s seen him in concert knows that behind the sweet, smooth singles is an experimental and pretty hardcore mc who spins one of the edgiest, avant garde-iest live sets i’ve ever seen. but the two sides finally start to come together on this album. the groove is still there, but now there’s a dark, crunchy fuzz behind it, and the result is pretty rad. -d

was cutting clips from ‘an education’ at work yesterday morning. (great show, btw, if you haven’t seen it. great writing, great acting, lots of style. and the soundtrack is swinging.) anyway, i was mixing the audio from this one scene set at this hip little party. this song is playing, and everybody’s dressed real snazzy, sipping from lowballs, dancing all groovy-like. cool scene, and a great song. so great, in fact, that even after doing the mix, a task i despise which requires me to listen to the audio like 20 times in a row, not only did i not hate the song, i kinda dug it even more. which means it’s literally like one in a million. -d

i’m a man who loves his covers. as luck would have it, i’m also rather fond of grapefruit, french and mooses, making this prolly the most fitting sotd ever. honestly, i think covering a song well is one of the hardest things you can do. done poorly, it’s embarrassing for everyone. but done right, it’s so right. it’s like adapting a book into a movie. striking a balance between respecting the original material and finding your own voice and all that. a good cover of a good song is usually a sign of a good musician. the sign of a great musician, however, is when you can take a song that maybe wasn’t so great originally and turn it into something spectacular. case in point. these guys are nuts. girlfriend + boyfriend + room full of instruments = righteousness. to really do the song justice, tho, you owe it to yourself to go to their youtube page and watch the VideoSong that accompanies the track. (VideoSongs are little music videos/pieces of performance art that accompany their tracks. they follow 2 rules: what you see is what you hear [no lip-syncing for instruments or voice], and if you hear it, at some point you see it [no hidden sounds].) pretty sweet stuff. -d

incidentally, this isn’t my favorite pomplamoose song. it’s this one. but i didn’t post it here b/c it’s for sale on their myspace page and these guys are talentatious and very deserving of your money and mine. (i think maybe they can’t sell the beyonce one cause they didn’t write it. or maybe cause they left out the unbearable bits.)

in light of her lovely performance at the Vancouver opening ceremonies and her appearances in those attractive if homogenous british columbia ads, and in light of everything canadian being very de mode right now, and in light of me discovering recently how many of my favorite songs from high school were actually pretty creepy stalker anthems (think morrissey, dmb, alanis, barenaked ladies, stabbing westward), ‘possession’ popping up on the shuffle this morning seemed more than fortuitous. -d

2009 was a crap year for movies. great year for music tho. where in most years you’d be lucky to get one, i can think of any number of ‘09 albums that were brilliant from start to finish — this among them. it’s just one more masterpiece from what’s becoming something of a UK groove renaissance. so unbelievably smooth. and ‘maker’ sets the perfect tone for a night like tonight - that kind of friday that feels like it could end up completely chilled out in my room alone. or, you know, not alone. -d