Terrible Fingers Are Snapping All The Time

Bodies of Water, "Here Comes My Hand" (link fixed) - Maybe it's a little obvious, but it seems worth pointing out that when you get into buying singles and EPs and "just starting out"-type music, your expectations go through a little bit of a shift. It's not, for instance, that Bodies of Water went and put out a bad EP - in fact, very much the opposite, considering how little I'd have ever expected to enjoy the marriage of Arcade Fire musical sturm und drang with riot grrrl shrieking. It's just that with first-outing music, that's not really what gets my attention; I'm way more interested in things like polish and potential than I am in whether or not a band manages to knock one out of the park with their first swing. And that is what makes this EP so instantly satisfying; I may not be listening to it in three months time, but I'll sure be interested in whatever else they're doing. So yeah, five bucks well spent. (Click here to visit the band's webpage and buy a copy of their self-titled debut EP via email, or, if you live in LA, pick it up at Amoeba or Sea Level)

Margueritas, "Margherita" (Hot edit) - So I've been putting together my (lovely lady) lists for the year recently, which means I've been thinking about Kelley Polar's unbelievable album slightly more often than usual lately, and more specifically the Metro Area album I now own as a direct consequence of it. I think it's a pretty safe bet that the next time I take a grip of CDs to sell back to Amoeba, Metro Area's going to be one of them; I realize that that makes me sound like I'm slagging off one of the most significant dance music touchstones of recent years, but I've learned from experience not to argue with that world-beaten voice in the back of my head that tells me when I'm never going to play a CD again as long as I own it. In retrospect, if I was going to go out and buy a Morgan Geist record in the wake of Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens, it really probably should have been the Unclassics mix, which takes the idea of a really infectious record that makes you ask "This is dance music?" to an exponentially further-out place than the indisputably disco-as-fuck Metro Area. I suppose it helps that I like a couple of songs on Unclassics more than anything on Metro Area, not least among them this edit of "Margherita"; there's just nothing in "Orange Alert" or "Miura", good as they may be, that's got half a chance against those featherweight keyboards belting out the catchiest synth hook since "Popcorn". Oh well, live and learn - at least Unclassics should be relatively cheap now that all the hipsters seem to have moved on to Lindstrom & Prins Thomas. (Click here to buy Unclassics, or click here to buy Kelley Polar's Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens, from Amazon.com)