oh right, this thing

Primal Scream, "Country Girl" - Is it even news anymore when music writers (1) start getting promo CDs sent to them by enterprising bands, and (2) discover that even though ninety-nine and nine-tenths of these CDs may be only slightly less interesting than your average WNBA regular-season game, every so often one of them just works? I mean, isn't that pretty much the way modern music consumption works in general - people judging records on the basis of uninformed approximations of their content before actually spending with 'em? Would anybody have ever bought that Antony and the Johnsons monstrosity if things were any different?

I ask, of course, because there's no way in hell that I would have ever even downloaded Riot City Blues, the most recent LP from Primal Scream; some music simply won't settle for any less than all your attention, even the amount that you'd have saved just by clicking the left mouse button instead of actually getting up and walking over to the CD player and pressing the eject button and waiting for the tray to slide out and popping the CD off the spine and fitting it into the tray and closing the tray and making sure your receiver is set to the right input and walking back over to your chair and sitting down and rewarding yourself for your ceaseless, uncelebrated toil with a bong-swat of epic proportions just as the first chords jump out of your speakers. In other words, Riot City Blues is basically no different than any other Primal Scream record out there; the degree to which this might attract you probably keys on your attitude towards Primal Scream and/or the musical idiom to which they lay waste over the course of the LP's running time, and given that my attitudes might best be summed up as "eh" and "Stones-inspired bluesy buttrock? Eh.", you can probably understand my ennui.

What I hadn't remembered, of course, is that even if Primal Scream are due for absolutely nothing else, they're always good for at least one worthwhile song per album; more often than not, these songs tend to both open the album on which they appear up and loom over every song misfortunate enough to follow it like a colossus (which, I would guess, is probably why I've never been able to get into Primal Scream's singles as such - I mean, doesn't "Come Together" lose a little bit of its luster when it's not towering over every other song on a record some people deeply can't shut up about?). In both cases, "Country Girl" is a stellar example of this kind of song; maybe it's simply the quirk of its positioning as standard-bearer (it's both the lead single and first track on Riot City Blues) or maybe it's the incessant insistence of that Wall Of String Pickin' going on in the background, but I get a sentiment of commitment from it which, as perfectly fine or better as the rest of the album is, simply makes everything else on the record sound like so many Blueshammer b-sides. The question, then, is how true this actually is - is Riot City Blues just a lame-ass one-off from a band taking aim at the lamentable domain of the Drive-By Truckers, or is this actually a good album. The answer, of course, can only come from listening to the album and trying to decide from yourself, and any time you run into an album that actually encourages that kind of active listening, you can pretty much go ahead and chalk that up as a win for you, regardless of whether the album ends up on your year-end top ten. Not everything can be the Long Blondes' debut, after all - now that one, I fully expect to buy for myself. (Click here to buy Riot City Blues from Amazon.com)

The Long Weekend, "Medway Is The Difference (Between My Town And Yours)" - Say what you will about the Strokes - and then turn off all the lights in your house in an effort to trick me into thinking you're not home when I stop by to casually murder you - but even the haterest of haters has to admit that the Strokes deserve a medal for the way they almost single-handedly put a stop to That Awful Part In Indie-Rock Songs Where They Go All Ska For A Verse. There's really nothing more disheartening than to be sitting there, spending a pleasant idle moment with a kickass, non-torpid rock song and then all of a sudden find yourself picking the pieces of the song up off the floor as it drops almost entirely away simply to give a couple of dudes with either white-boy dreads or baseball caps reading COCKS a chance to go "WOOO" and extend and retract their necks in time to the beat; I've literally seen songs go from four stars to off my iPod entirely in the blink of an eye. Calling a song "Strokes-esque" (ugh), then, means something specific to me - not that it sounds like a Strokes song, of course (unless of course you enjoy visions of ouroboruses), but rather that it actually manages to preserve its energy, to distribute it effectively enough that the song doesn't need to be violently changed up in order to "stay interesting". All of which is to say that the Long Weekend's "Medway Is The Difference" is hands-down one of the Strokes-ier songs I've heard recently; in fact, a more accurate reference point might be the Jam thanks to the lead singer's Welleresque vocals and the flawless indie classicism of all those guitars, but then again it's not Albert Hammond ever leaves the house without a copy of Perfect Snap! somewhere on his person. It is also, and this is important, incredibly catchy, with like eight different hooks infectious enough to be passed off credibly as having been smuggled out of the former Soviet Union in 1991 and kept on dry ice ever since. It is, in short, almost enough to forgive the Vines, and that is one hell of a long row to hoe. (Click here to buy the "Medway Is The Difference (Between My Town And Yours)" single from Rough Trade)

Midnight Juggernauts, "Shadows" - I'm sure that there will be people out there who assume that I'm posting this track by Australia's Midnight Juggernauts as some sort of tribute to Steve Irwin, if only for the reason that I've grown accustomed to the world practically beating down my door with the overpowering stupidity of its collective citizenry. Just consider the following: (1) I never really watched Irwin's show (not that there's anything wrong with it, of course; I'd just rather watch documentaries about 9/11 conspiracy theories or the Rape of Nanking or any number of other subjects lying somewhat outside of Irwin's wheelhouse), and (2), seriously - would anyone on earth actually consider it appropriate to memorialize someone getting stingrayed through the heart by going OMG STEEV IWRINS DED HERRES A SONG FORM OSTRALIRA? I mean, seriously, when I kick the bucket, I hope to God that the mp719 bloggers of tomorrows aren't running around going OMG HIE DYDE AND HERES SOM MERGE RECRORDS BANDS, although of course by saying that I've now effectively guaranteed that it'll happen.

ANYWAY: My point in posting this song is, in the end, that it is FUCKING AWESOME. MOTHERFUCKING AWESOME. I have no idea what could be in Australia's waters, but somehow they and they alone (well, okay, them and Soulwax) have found the perfect balance between rock and dance music; first it was Cut Copy, then it was Van She, and now it's the Midnight Juggernauts who've stumbled onto the secret formula for Stuff That's Fun To Move Around To with Stuff That's Fun To Make For Other People. Oddly enough - or, considering that we're at least half-talking about rock music here, predictably enough - the trick seems to be keeping it simple; like most of the best songs of its family ("Going Nowhere" and "Kelly", for instance), there's not really anything complex about "Shadows", from the beat to the lyrics even to the little flourishes that give the track an identity. And yet "Shadows" totally works in a way that even the other tracks on the Secrets of the Universe EP just flat-out don't (and I say that as someone who actually likes the EP a fair bit) - could they have just gotten it right? Are we hearing the first step or the lingering traces of the effects of good luck? Well, I can't say for sure; all I know is that it's a damn fine little dance-rock track, and for damn sure deserving of a better reason to be stolen from the band than Steve Irwin hugging a stingray. I mean, that train definitely runs both ways, but let's not kid ourselves when we're riding in either direction, okay? (Click here to order the Secrets of the Universe EP from Inertia)