Everything Seems To Work Fine

First things first: THE LUOMO REMIX OF THAT BLACK DICE SONG HAS FINALLY HIT THE INTERNET, and I have listened to it three times already and until the goddamn Richard X remix of that Freeform Five song finally hits the aforementioned internet, this is undoubtedly going to monopolize my iPod for a minute. Jesus, between this and the Delia & Gavin album (my album of the year at the moment), it ain't yer father's DFA.

Now where was I.

Soulwax, "Compute" (Nite version) - The further I get from 2004, the clearer I can see that most of it was really a lot of bullshit, and I say that as someone who went around braying like a jackass about how lucky we were to be Living In An Age where you could pick up that Les Savy Fav comp and Anniemal in one fell swoop. Of course, the flipside to that is that it's getting easier to pick out the gems, and I'm more and more inclined to view Soulwax' inexplicably-unreleased-in-America Any Minute Now as one with every random appearance of a song from it over my headphones. The dance stuff is, of course, immaculate; by now you've had a chance to hear four different versions of "NY Excuse" and it's still the best song not on LCD Soundsystem. But then there's the rest of it: the rock tracks are uncompromisingly loud and driven, the ballads are uncompromisingly wry and uninvolved - fuck, unless Chuck Klosterman hates ProTools with a firey passion, this may well have been his favorite album from last year if someone had bothered to clue him in.

Well, good news: now we have the Nite Versions disc to look forward to. "Nite" versions, for those of you not frittering yr lives away riding slsk breakers and jamming gnarly Oink pipes, are basically Soulwax' attempts at screwing and chopping their music, except that the Dewaele brothers are Belgian and take aim at kids on e rather than kids sippin' on drank. It's admittedly hit-or-miss, since frequently Nite versions involve gutting a song's lyrics in favor of overpowering you with bass kicks and into-the-red guitar textures, but holy mother of God, this is absolutely not one of those moments. I mean, the original version of "Compute" was one of my favorite songs off Any Minute Now, but that was more because flawless schaeffel-pop seems to have this eternal grip on my attention (ask me about Rachel Stevens' "Some Girls" sometime if you want to see me froth at the mouth). The Nite version, on the other hand, is flawed and imperfect, but it's flawed and imperfect for a friggin' reason - the song can't possibly live up to That Breakdown in the middle, but fuck, any time you've got Soulwax banging out something that sounds like a Mega Man cartridge in a state of active revolt and they're doing it to get you to jump around like an idiot a lot, well, I pay attention. (Click here to pre-order Nite Versions from Amazon.co.uk)

The Cranebuilders, "Trouble Is" - I always thought AOR got a bad rap, but then again I own multiple albums by both Billy Joel and Fleetwood Mac, so my judgement is suspect. I speak from experience when I say that it's next to impossible to get an angle on any of this stuff, mostly because a lot of it (this song, and more generally this band, included) seems to be engineered from the ground floor on up to retouch the watercolors in the background of your life rather than actually engage it directly. But the hell with it; some of it's still spectacularly pretty, and the chorus in this song more than pays that debt back. (Click here to buy Sometimes You Hear Through Someone Else from Amazon.co.uk)