In which I am the most predictable motherfucker on earth

The Long Blondes, "Separated By Motorways" - Yeah yeah yeah, get it out of your system; why on earth would James ever settle on this particular Long Blondes single as a jumping-off point for self-up-hyping instead of any of their previous (and generally worthy) material. I mean, of course it's more than a little embarassing to be forever nakedly laying my fandom for Paul Epworth out in front of the world, and I have to admit that I kinda feel like I'm taking money out of his pocket whenever I ruin one of his songs on this blog with my fetishistic overexplaining rather than letting them speak for themselves (not that I've ever been shy about overestimating my own impact on the world's buying habits, of course), and as someone who narrowly escaped being a painfully sinciere devotee of ska music in high school (sing it, kids: "Yum yum bumblebee, bumblebee tuna...") I really ought to know better. It's just that there is also the not-insignificant matter of this song really being kinda great.

When I refer to the Long Blondes' previous singles, I might as well only be referring to "Giddy Stratospheres", their most recent single prior to "Separated By Motorways" and as far as I can tell the single that set the wheels on their British-music-press-driven juggernaut of hype a-spinnin'. It's not hard to see why, of course; "Giddy Stratospheres" is at the very least a a charmingly ramshackle skittery indie-disco affair which probably gets more appealing as your willingness to think of them as a more nakedly pop-oriented Le Tigre increases. Speaking for myself, however, I tend to prefer songs about making a hellacious racket to songs about actual stuff, and in that respect "Giddy Stratospheres" ain't got shit on "Separated By Motorways", which actually took me an embarassing number of listens before I realized that it was not, in fact, some preposterous art-punk joke at the expense of anyone "smart" enough to listen to disorganized noise like this. As it turns out, the trick is to go visit your mom in Louisiana for a week and have your entertainment options limited to (1) "whipping around streets you don't know blasting your iPod through your mom's car's shockingly awesome speakers" and (2) "self-martyringly resisting the urge to sneak away and dip into your grandmother's pain medication"; when you are stranded out in the middle of the ass-crack of nowhere with literally nobody around with any idea of whether or not you're making a tragic ass of yourself, it gets incredibly easy to sort out what's essential and what's a Franz Ferdinand album track. I am of course also well aware that this is exactly the kind of situation that leads me to hoist myself by my own petard with the frequency of a debuting Pitchfork writer, but fuck it - I know better than to pass up the chance than to freak appropriately out at my generation's "Oh Bondage! Up Yours".

The song is, of course, just as much of a glorious spit-and-polish mess as "Giddy Stratospheres" - it's very clear that the Blondes' appeal is significantly rooted in seeing the stitching - only this time it's pushed to levels of near-abstraction thanks to Paul Epworth And His Mother Fucking Layers Upon Layers Of Cleanly Separated Instruments. Of course, everyone on earth (or at least everyone who reads my deluded ramblings) is probably intimately familiar with the way this usually works out: four or five lithe Brits assemble a super-cool band, hire Epworth to produce their two or three best songs (which are invariably super-propulsive indie-disco numbers), I freak out and start making volcanic proclamations about their looming dominion over the whole of the musical earth, and then two weeks later the cycle repeats and I'm off again. This is of course perfectly fine; I suppose there are worse things on this earth than being the Martin Hannett to the DFA's Arthur Russell. It's just that, like the DFA actually, every so often something emerges from his studio that so aggressively Does Not Fit That Mold that I kinda wonder if that's not the point (or have we already forgotten how huge a departure that Jon Spencer Blues Exploskion remix was when we all copped it from Fluxblog back in March?). I mean, "Separated By Motorways" actually has all the Epworth hallmarks completely within arm's reach, starting with those scorching hi-hats (truly the cowbell of 2005) and radiating outwards; it's just that the song barely gives you a split second to revel in it between keeping up with the Animal-level ferocity of the drumming and the artfully spontaneous backup howling and oh sweet Jesus Christ light of the world lamb of God shepherd of the weak that chorus. I mean, I was even kind of let down by the chorus until I woke up and started liking the song (this is what happens when a single's sales blurb waxes rhapsodic about how the Long Blondes finally have a chorus fit for the non-cokenailed, and doubly so when I was only just getting "Giddy Stratospheres" out of my head); I had apparently somehow forgotten that Paul Epworth can go supernova in ways that don't manifest themselves on Silent Alarm or "Love Is A Number", and paid in flesh at the alter of the single most charmingly, nakedly direct bit in a Song For The Whole Non-Retarded World since the Rapture decided to sing about a certain house.

So uh yeah. This is the kind of preposterously fun song that has made me delete the word "great" and replace it with the word "fun" a thousand times while writing this overlong ramble, a tangibly in-the-now polar opposite of all the impeccably-groomed painstakingly-refined you-realize-you're-trying-to-compete-with-Remain In Light-don't-you stuff that soundtracks the lives of the well-spring-heeled in the Oh Five and Boogie-On Six. I'm not necessarily sure that that makes it great or even substantial, of course, but then again the people who actually care about that kind of thing don't listen to irascible fat unemployable record dorks like me in the first place. All I'm saying is that if you're aware of the indie divide this song exploits - I wouldn't even restrict it to people who participate in the divide, which is probably the strongest endorsement of this song I can come up with - you might want to check it out. Apparently there's stuff like this going on too. (Click here to buy the "Separated By Motorways" single used from a GEMM merchant)

Babyshambles, "Killamangiro" (single mix) - As long as I was going to be fulminating about Paul E., I figured I might as well go ahead and post this, my hands-down favorite single of 2004 in the same way that Guillemots track yesterday is my hands-down favorite from 2005. I'm pretty much willing to argue that it's pretty much the alpha and omega of the Paul Epworth Songs About Bashing Shit Together Really Loudly aesthetic described above; it is at the very least so loud and unignorable that up until recently, I only ever saw it through the same filter that I picked up from all those unironically classic (note that this is not up for debate) nuggets of ferocity on the Libertines' unimaginably classic debut (also not up for debate). Actually, if we're going to get into discussing our (my) shame at the things that come out of our (my) mouth in front of decent company, I'll even go so far as to admit that "Killamangiro" sold me on the Myth of Pete Doherty more than anything else - seriously, I was completely on board the Babyshambles album until I actually heard it and realized that, while it's actually quite a good little album, at the end of the day I am left holding a bill of goods on the order of Sea Change. But oh well; I came out the other end still clutching the "Killamangiro" single close to my heart and I doubt that I'm ever going to let it go - it is as surgically catchy as it is loud, and it is loud as fuck, and in the end it's not like I'm a complicated guy. I suppose there is also the matter of Doherty directly calling his audience on the carpet to reap the harvest of their idolatry ("Why would you pay/To see me in a cage/Some men call the stage") with all the glib "poetics" that make Mickey Dolenz a forgotten genius as opposed to a genius, but let's not kid ourselves in the face of WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP. (Click here to buy the "Killamangiro" single used from a GEMM merchant)