James vs. The Hobgoblin Of Little Minds

Shaznay Lewis, "Never Felt Like This Before" (Phones Volt version) - Seeing as how yesterday was the day I found out that one of my very-most anticipated albums of 2006 hit the internet, it probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise that I've spent a fair bit of time today catching up with Good Old Paul E. (I'm not going to post anything from Kick just yet - it comes out in two months, and I want to try to wait until my efforts to hype it might actually do some good, although I really do like it so far and have a standing preorder with Amazon. However, those interested in a preview of the album might do well to visit I Guess I'm Floating to cop "Kick" and "Pig Heil Jam", both of which forced me to sit right the fuck up during my first tour through the album.) I realize, of course, that this directly contradicts significant portions of yesterday's post, but it seems worth making the point that I've mostly been revisiting his Phones remixes, all of which tend to be maximalist in terms of volume and stripped to the bone in terms of everything else. Obviously, this is at least partially due to the aescetic aesthetic of the whole Phones project - it's pretty hard to sound all maximalist and headrushy when you're mixing everything on your laptop and putting in, at most, eight hours of work per song, but if you can ferret out the bits of the song that Work and make the song all about them instead of the artist, then baby, you've got a stew going (which is why the album mix of "Banquet" sounds like Yet Another Nicely-Arranged Modern Rock Song while the Phones version sounds like awesomeness wrapped up in a thumping kick drum). However, any time you've got a theory, there's always an exception waiting to screw it up, and yesterday I found the exception, and it's probably one of my four or five favorite things he's ever done.

Being American, I had no idea who Shaznay Lewis was until I googled her after being blown the motherfuck away by Epworth's fiddling - all I knew was that "Never Felt Like This Before" was hitting the same neurotransmitters that hadn't been touched since MIA's "Galang" and Jacques Lu Cont/Ce'cile's "Na Na Na Na" got together and decided that I didn't really need to be listening to much else. It's kinda funny; even though you might expect someone as mesmerized by production as me to be all about dancehall, apart from a few singles I really only tend to consume it in volcanic bursts of activity - but hoo boy, pass me a song that sounds basically just enough to let me use the term and I'm in heaven. I would, of course, not hesitate to describe "Never Felt Like This Before" as such; in reality it probably has less to do with dancehall than "Pon De Replay", but five seconds alone with that slumping, neck-whipping beat and I would have hurtled to my feet to brain the majestic Dave Stelfox with the golden calf. But the more I listen to it - and believe you me, thanks to this song I've seen more of my racist neighbor bitching about how he can't hear himself think from all that racket (at three thirty in the afternoon, even!) than I'd prefer - the more it occurs to me that the thing that makes it remarkable is probably the fact that it's arguably Epworth's best pop song, and as one of the foremost producers of the day, for better or worse, that makes it worthy of study.

Of course, I don't want to make it sound like the sky opened just enough for this song to spill off of God's iPod; it really is quite good and catchy and I really do like it a lot, but it's not "Big Pimpin'" or "Toxic" or even "Southern Hospitality" - in other words, unlike the Shins, it probably won't change your life. But keep in mind that Epworth made his name on indie-cred supremo; a few weeks ago, in one of the most profoundly trivial lightbulb moments of all time, I heard he used to work with the DFA doing live sound stuff back in the early part of the decade. Obviously, this makes complete and utter sense, if only because there's at least as much panicky fury in Negative For Francis' hi-hats as there was in That Oh-So-Jealous Cowbell. But it's one thing to make records for a school of dorxxx perfectly conscious of how music can whoop their asses and constantly on the lookout for the next big endorphin rush; it's something else entirely to make a record for people who buy All Saints records, and I have to believe that part of the hold "Never Felt Like This Before"'s been exercising on my consciousness has to have something to do with that. I mean, fuck - I make it my business to track down everything Epworth touches, but I can't ever recall him using synths this warm, and I can't believe that's an accident; at the risk of being obvious, it sounds friendlier, less strident, less aggressive - basically, less Maximo Park (who I seem to be unfairly picking on a lot these days). And while I wouldn't say that that necessarily makes it "better" than, say, "Graffiti" or "Once A Glimpse" (or any of the other Maximo Park songs which, in the interest of fair play, I genuinely like), it certainly makes it more interesting than it might otherwise be, the pop-song equivalent of Al Pacino actually acting in a movie instead of running through yet another incarnation of the Al Pacino Gets Angry And Repentant In Equal Measure Show. Which is, of course, a fine show - it's just interesting to see what else he can do.

I do want to say for the record that it's absolutely just a happy coincidence that this mix would show up right now; I swear I haven't been sitting on it for two years (like the rest of the internet, apparently) and waiting for the right time to spring it - believe you me when I say that I'm posting it because it sounds incredibly great to my ears Right Now. But I do have to say that unearthing it on Kick Day helped me like it, mostly because, if my tours through the album have any bearing on reality, Kick is easily the most pop thing to come out of Epworth's studio since "Never Felt Like This Before" - above and beyond anything else, Kick is about making the listener excited by how fucking cool everything sounds (which is why there's a Rock Song and a Dance Song and so on), and it's just as overt about it as Gwen Stefani's corn-spackled turd of a solo album (search: "What You Waiting For", "Hollaback Girl"; destroy: EVERYTHING ELSE), except it manages to not suck. And I dunno, I just kinda find it fascinating that Kick, arguably the most nakedly synthetic project since Dolly the Sheep, takes so many of its cues from such an impeccable slice of warm chart-pop. I guess "Never Felt Like This Before" sounds like Epworth's first steps towards interacting with a wide audience - maybe it's the "Video Killed The Radio Star" to Kick's Lexicon of Love. Or something. (Click here to buy the "Never Felt Like This Before" used from a GEMM merchant, although as always with GEMM, buyer beware. Also, click here to preorder White Rose Movement's Kick from Amazon.co.uk)

The Kooks, "Eddie's Gun" - It's entirely possible, I guess, that I just have a higher tolerance for British indie pop than, say, sane people, but I can't help it; I like big jangly hooks and power-pop and all that shit you got sick of back in middle school when you started listening to My Bloody Valentine just like all the rest of the individuals, and I've made my peace with where I choose to get my fix. Consequently, I keep stumbling over albums which I know in my black little heart aren't going to sell four copies outside of the British Isles, most recently the Kooks' freshly-released Inside In Inside Out, as compellingly catchy a way to spend forty minutes as I've stumbled across this year. I'd love to be wrong, of course; I'm sure I'd be singing a different tune if I lived in England and had less control over the intensity with which I apply myself to wearing this record out, but speaking as someone who only hears this album when he wants to, all it makes me think about are the first couple of Supergrass records - y'know, the ones before they realized that they "could" sell to Americans and got all shitty, back when they were making blistering fuzzrock gems like "Caught By The Fuzz" (my personal referent for "Eddie's Gun", although of course "Fuzz" is one of my favorite singles from the '90s and "Eddie's Gun" probably doesn't really have shit on it if I make myself be honest). At least it sounds like they're getting an awful lot of hype in the motherland ("Sofa Song" in particular seems to have caught a segment of the public's ear, and not without good reason); hopefully that's enough to lead to more stuff as promising and catchy as this - who gives a fuck if the only two people buying it over here are me and Jen Murse? (Click here to order Inside In/Inside Out from Amazon.co.uk)