The Comedown

Gal Costa, "Tuareg" - Anyone else feeling a little burned out by all the fast-n-furious Hott Leak Action from the last few weeks? I mean, of course it's always cool to see crazy new shit popping up all over the place, but it's awfully hard to cultivate the smug sense of self-satisfaction that powers every mp3 blog ever started when the front keeps getting moved back. Fortunately, there's also a bunch of music worth covering for reasons unrelated to the hype (not that Loose doesn't deserve all the hype it's getting, mind you) - not that Tropicalia: A Brazilian Revolution in Sound, Soul Jazz' unfuckwithable compilation of what might be best described as Brazilian garage rock, hasn't been getting dapped off the planet by anyone who happens to have heard it since it came out last year, of course, but that's all due to factors that have nothing to do with its (admittedly fierce) hipster cache. I mean, fuck, it's pretty much the most compulsively shareable CD on the planet - everyone knows at least one person who's always down for a dose of Latin-tinged exoticism or, failing that, outright outrocking, and Tropicalia brings both in almost comically generous doses; it's practically a Beck album with actual roots. It's also an incredibly wide-ranging CD - the exhaustive and excellent liner notes do an outstanding job of characterizing the Tropicalia sound as being very much a product of its time, but nowhere near as good a job as the music itself does of showing how volatile and in-flux those times were simply through the diversity of the tunes. Picking one song, then, is kind of a sucker's bet; I went with Gal Costa's "Tuareg" mostly out of a blind loyalty to that snake-charming flute, but I could have pretty much set my CD player on random and come up with something equally worthy of acting as a loss leader. But really, that's the Soul Jazz mystique in a nutshell - they give you whole worlds (or at least the illusion of whole worlds), eighty minutes at a time. (Click here to buy Tropicalia: A Brazilian Revolution in Sound from Amazon.co.uk)

Otis Redding, "You Left The Water Running" - Say what you will about Nick Hornby - and after his last couple of books, I bet I could probably cut even deeper than you - but if it weren't for a throwaway mention in High Fidelity, I'm not sure that I would have ever heard this song. "You Left The Water Running" isn't exactly one of Otis' better-known songs - unless of course you happen to know anyone who loves boring people to death with stories about why certain records don't conquer the world (quick version: his wife demanded it be deleted after his death) - but I'd put it up there with his omnipresent stone-cold classics any day; that slightly out-of-tune guitar makes for the kind of compelling effect most artists can only pay through the nose to get. Oh, and then of course there's the not-insignificant Otis factor - seriously, if you've forgotten just how far above everyone else, like, ever when it comes to soul-howling, now's your chance to reacquaint yourself with the notion. It's really just a retardedly, unyieldingly great song - hell, it's good enough to keep me overlooking Hornby's fascination with utter dogshit like Marah, and that takes some doing. (Click here to buy Dreams To Remember: The Otis Redding Anthology from Amazon.com)

Colored Shadows, "July" - This site's seen something of a traffic spike courtesy of "Say It Right", so I figured I'd do what I always do and try to make people pay attention to Colored Shadows while my my voice can still carry. To be certain, the worm finally seems to be turning somewhat, but most of the attention seems to be focused on their second EP - not that I can't understand the impulse, mind you, since the musical leap they took from their first EP to the second really is something remarkable, but it's a pretty big shame to see the first EP fall by the wayside when it really is quite a good little block of music. "July", for instance, has all the swirling synths and pounding drums that make the second EP so much fun, only you get six and a half minutes worth' instead of a paltry three or four. I mean, I realize that the trick with tragically un-covered bands like
this is to roll off a long list of all the other, more famous bands that they sound like, but hell, I bought this EP blind and it worked on me - no reason to think its merits can't be transmitted over the internet. Well, that and Kevin Shields was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me. (Click here to visit the band's homepage and buy either the self-titled debut EP or the more recent Tiger Mask EP)

ELSEWHERE
- A whole bunch of sites got added to the sidebar over the weekend - to single out two, you definitely don't want to miss Dispatches from the Dancefloor if peoples be needing more leftfield disco music, and you really might as well go ahead and set Classical Connection as your homepage if very non-traditional classical music is your sort of thing (and if you don't like that Jon Hassell album, it probably isn't).

- YOUR MAMA'S ON CRACK ROCK

- Holy fuck - I'm actually jumping back on to edit this again, as I am only now listening to the Shit Robot mix of Dondolo's "Dragon up over at The Prettiest Pony and WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW WOW. I mean, I liked both sides of their single just fine but this remix makes them both sound like Sandi fucking Thom by comparison. Just a fucking behemoth of a track. Also possibly the best vocals of the year. Go. Now. NOW.