Stylus editor Todd Burns presents a mix of gypsy music, new and old…

Tracklist
01: Devotchka - You Love Me [buy]
02: Django Reinhardt - The Peanut Vendor [buy]
03: The Ukrainians - Hopak [buy]
04: Fanfare Ciocarlia - Caravan [buy]
05: Taraf de Haidouks - Spune, Spune, Mos Batrin [buy]
06: Boban Markovic Orkestar - Otpisani [buy]
07: Balkan Beat Box - Bulgarian Chicks [buy]
08: Gogol Bordello - Underdog World Strike [buy]
09: A Hawk And A Hacksaw - God Bless The Ottoman Empire [buy]
10: Beirut - Carousels [buy]

Recent tussles in my interior monologue with floating head philosopher/Dualism jockey Ren� Descartes have only brought me closer to the anarchic side of my record collection. Descartes (the guy who coined Phil. 101 firestarter �I think therefore, I am�) was a serial rationalist and overclocked brain who provided the world with (a false sense of) critical detachment. I�m under the impression he never got much recourse from the hours he spent cooped up working out proofs of existence. And to this end, I always pictured him listening to something equally devoid of humanity, like Steely Dan (Gaucho, probably). My own playlist contra Descartes consists of a couple lovingly reckless tracks that defy logic and bask in knuckle-dragging brilliance.

Treading a fine line of cock rock revival, and surrounded on all sides by gain, Royal Trux�s �I�m Ready� embraces hedonistic imperatives with legs splayed, Skittle vomit everywhere. From 1998�s genre-pastiche Accelerator, �I�m Ready� is a swaggering, four minute chorus from the ex-noiserockers/junkies. Trux crisscrosses sinewy guitar lines with trickles of bar piano and canned drums, finally dousing it all in a proto-Casblancas fuzz. Frankly, the whole thing sounds like it was recorded on an answering machine. And in a case of minimalist diction, Trux uses a grand total of 16 words in the entirety of the song, which might just be 14 too many.

From their eponymous 1979 debut, The Raincoats� �Fairytale in the Supermarket� is that paragon of focused confusion. The lyrics follow a narrative of deconstruction, which is to say no narrative at all. But, as they bark reassuringly, �Don�t worry!�, you�re ostensibly supposed to get tied up in Ana da Silva�s sneer and stutter delivery or the manic violin scrapes�which tend towards wailing and, I think, bleating. Ex-Slit Palmolive functions in a perfect drumming binary: standard rock/apeshit drum circle. And when it all comes together, the tenebrist dynamics and musical non-sequiturs, it makes more sense than the dissonant hellfire it should be.

[buy stuff here / here]

Mike Cooley is one of three guitarists in the Athens, Georgia-based, Alabama born-and-bred rock band Drive-By Truckers. All three guitarists (Patterson Hood and Jason Isbell are the other two) have penned and sung the tracks for the last three records, starting with Decoration Day. While Hood is the primary songwriter, Isbell, who didn�t join until Day, seems to get just as much attention from reviews, while Cooley, who usually provides two or three tracks each record, never seems to get the praise he deserves, despite the fact that he�s the best songwriter of the bunch.

He doesn�t take on the same type of �mythology of the South� type issues that make up the songs of both Hood and Isbell. He doesn�t write about Buford Pusser or the Hatfields and the McCoys, nor does he try to make you relate to a girl who just wants to have sex with her ex-con brother (sorry Pat, just ain�t happenin�). Cooley�s tracks tend to be the most personal and affecting songs on the Truckers� albums.

�Marry Me� from 2001�s Decoration Day is a perfect primer for Cooley�s style. Without doing any beating around the bush, he comes out of the gates at full speed with the first verse, �Well, my daddy didn�t pull out, but he never apologized / Rock&roll means well, but it can�t help tellin� young boys lies / A baby on the way�s a good enough reason to get you out alive / Get you out without having to swallow any pride.� Clearly, the author is not talking about the happiest of circumstances�but with its Stones-y riff, barroom piano and all around guys� night out feel, one wouldn�t realize that there�s a snake in the grass here�that Cooley�s lyrics are telling a tale that�s a few shades darker than its title might suggest.

Cooley continues his brand of playfully sardonic lyrics over a killer hook and greasy slide guitar lick with �Gravity�s Gone,� from the mostly disappointing 2006 release A Blessing and a Curse. With prime Cooley wit and blunt honesty, he ruminates on the entertainment industry, offering, �Cocaine rich comes quick and that’s why the small dicks have it all.� His tricky wordplay continues with the lines �So I�ll meet you at the bottom if there really is one / They always told me when you hit it that you�ll know it / But I�ve been falling so long it�s like gravity�s gone and I�m just floating.� It�s the best and most effortless song on an album trying way too hard to be easy and fun.

On the flipside, Cooley shows an unexpected restraint and an affecting subtlety with the spare �Sounds Better in the Song� from Decoration Day. Few songs these days seem to give the listener an actual picture of the desperation and heartbreak the singer is feeling while they�re actually recording the song. The song�s production makes Cooley�s voice and steadily finger-picked acoustic guitar sound as if he�s squatting in the corner of a not-exactly-soundproofed room, too depressed to even move towards the mic that sits on the other side of the room. If there�s a 21st century equivalent of the scratchy, raw Delta blues recordings of the 1930s, it probably sounds a lot like this.

[buy stuff here]

Amps For Christ � Old Palm Tree

I like to think L.A. and Miami Beach (my home town) have little in common aside from pleasant weather and an annoying abundance of palm trees. Also attractive people; there�s an annoying abundance of those as well. After two decades ensconced in each of the aforementioned, I decided it was time for change. So: how better to ditch sunshine, pointy foliage, and a plethora of sexiness than spending Christmas in merry olde England?

Now that I�m back so are the palm trees, and so is this song. It�s not hard to deduce its appeal. Staccato strumming and acoustic riffs rife with pull-offs make fine beds for lazy, undistorted electric noodling. This is a sunset song, a track for pi�a coladas�not mimosas. Every instrument drips and descends into an occasional wink at the now sunburned man who fell asleep in the hammock. The tiki torches are lit, and the skies bleed red and bruise purple. No one cares about the sand in his or her hair as the track comes to a close; they�re laughing and counting the stars as note blends into note upon the balmy breeze.

I don�t know what I was thinking when I left. Palm trees mean home. Here I�d wanted to run away, and for what? To see whether the grass was greener on the other side (which, for the record, it literally was)? I wanted to escape from my reflection, from flora that didn�t change color, whose only shades were green and dead. But that�s not home, and that�s not me. There�s more to this place than binaries, enjoyable weather and physically stunning people aside. There�s no word for it, but with this song Amps For Christ ringleader Henry Barnes is kind enough to give it a sound.

[buy stuff here]

Stylus editor Todd Burns presents a mix of (mostly) instrumental post-rock…

Tracklist
01: This Will Destroy You - Quiet [buy]
02: Saxon Shore - The Revolution Will Be Streaming [buy]
03: Joy Wants Eternity - h.l. mencken [buy]
04: Sparrows Swarm and Sing - Father Death/Mother Nature [buy]
05: Aereogramme - Conscious Life for Coma Boy [buy]
06: Foxhole - Wake Up, Get Dressed, We’re Sinking [buy]
07: Magyar Posse - Intercontinental Hustle [buy]
08: Laura - I Hope [buy]

I first heard Peter Salett, the N.Y.C. abounding rock/country fusionist (without any of the fusionist ballyhoo), upon a recommendation from my friend Ed Norton. And when I say �friend� I mean the actor recommended it on his iTunes Celebrity Playlist, which basically, in this technological age of random MySpace friending and global Last.FM �neighbors� encourages a friendship of some ilk. Naturally, I took his bait, as he candidly spoke of an anxiety in following pop music curve propinquitous to my own experiences, as he dropped his daunting, actorly cadence and assumed a more older-brother-that-I-never-had voice. And aside all this, I was satisfied with his recommendation.

�Satisfied� could be misleading, though. Like a brief elevator conversation with a pretty girl, I liked Salett. But I didn�t love him and I distrusted the legitimacy of my affinity. Did I like Salett because of his warm, New Mexico meets New York City croons and tunes? Or did I like him because my favorite actor basically told me to like him? After all, I had seen Norton�s Keeping the Faith, in which Salett�s �Heart of Mine� was supposedly featured, and I, well, didn�t really remember the song at all. When months passed without giving Salett much notice, I figured this was the case.

The foliage fell, the children cried, the sun rose tirelessly, and about a year later, I happened upon Salett in my labyrinthine playlist. To my surprise, any Norton connection was quickly trumped by how much I actually enjoyed Salett. There�s something innately welcoming and genuine about Salett�s lyrics, how they�ll never be confused with a David Foster Wallace story yet how they loll and lumber about like a bunch of drunken happy couples on a cruise ship dance floor. On his first true single, �Heart of Mine,� Salett opens asking, �Do you want to know / If everything glittering / Will turn into the gold?� Salett continues this unsexy, everyman pursuit of love over a polite potpourri of acoustic guitar, piano, and lazy-river drums. What�s conceived is not something unique or jolting, but rather something relatable and pleasant.

In �Hey Susan,� Salett warmly greets us before moseying into some polite pleading, not just for a girl but a time and a place lost in the distant peals of yesterday, acutely set up by the juxtaposition of the present in New York City and the past in Los Angeles, two urban opposites. However, the real essence of the song, and in fact most of Salett�s words, is his controlled passion, often evoking an everyman realism to the story. �Am I Still in Love You,� a kind of last song at a southwestern high school dance, evidences this sort of everyman realism when Salett croons, �I don�t cry myself to sleep but I still lie in these empty sheets,� and later, submitting to the inexorable bemusement of love with two simple lines: �I don�t know / I wish I knew.�

There�s a lesson here. Quoting Ben Carruthers in John Cassavetes Shadows, �You think it�s corny, okay it�s corny.� We�d all like to be at that show with that band that we�ll fall in love with, simply, plainly, forever making sure that everyone knows that we were the first. Or we�d like to pick that one opulent album from the weekly horde that we attribute to our ineffable perspicacity rather than any sort of cosmic luck. But sometimes, we just need to acknowledge the hand-me-down procurement of our music, then move on and enjoy the music. Without any pretensions.

[buy stuff here]

In lieu of Beatz By The Pound this week, Stylus presents Beatz’ editor Michael F. Gill’s mix “Dancing Therapy.”

Tracklist
This mix started off as a sort of self-help mixtape for myself, but later evolved into a generally uplifting set of vocal oriented italo/synth-pop hits….

These are all bands I know. And when I say, �know,� I mean �recorded their EP� and �they were best-men at my wedding� kinda know. All, that is, except for one, who I�d say were acquaintances, and at the time of writing, email ones at that. So doubt my credibility if you will, but don�t shoot the message just �cause the messenger gets into all their gigs for free.

To be honest though, I�ve never actually gotten to see Murder Mystery in the flesh. (I have seen photos from their EP and website, but I think they�ve been generously Photoshopped.) You can see them though, should you be in NYC on the 20th of Feb, playing at Pianos with Sono Oto, where it�s likely you�ll get to hear �Love Astronaut.� The clean guitar melody preceding the verse and the chunky rhythm laid down by the rhythm section provide the impetus�the keyboard arpeggio provides the levity, the �bah bah baahs� joyously fortifying the point. Recorded in high-definition black and white by JP Bowersock (Ryan Adams, The Strokes first EP), �Love Astronaut� has the distinction of being unavailable for purchase by nature of the fact it�s the first track completed from their still-in-progress debut album. And keeping it in the family, I thought I�d let you hear it here first.

Pine�s �Hosanna� isn�t available yet either. It will be though, on the Twelve Hour Collision EP due for release this month. Pine�s M.O. is distilled indie-pop delivered intravenously via three-piece sans bass. It takes effect pretty much from the first hit, but unlike, I don�t know, say, heroin, the lifestyle repercussions are far less serious. In fact, �serious� is the last thing you could accuse Pine of being. Sure, the fuzzy 6/4-guitar riff and multi-tracked vocal layers through the chorus and outro could be considered arch attempts at cerebral posturing by those of a cynical disposition. However such heady thoughts are easily proscribed, and if Hannah Beehre�s beaut� minimize vocals don�t do that, if anything, �Hosanna� asks only for two minutes of your attention and rewards you with endorphins that last much longer.

Minuit, on the other hand, expect you to work for your natural high. Which is not to say the music they make is inaccessible in any way, just that their preferred delivery device is the club floor rather than the speakers on your iBook. Having just completed a breviloquent tour of Europe, during which Adam Freeland proclaimed them to be �utter genius� (or something like that, I forget), Minuit�s double sampler and cantatrice approach apparently had Berliner audiences dancing throughout the night with only severe hangovers as collateral damage. But if the thought of outing yourself as rhythmically inept in public proves unpalatable, �Fuji� (taken from The Guards Themselves), with its sonic weave of incursive bass, continental breakbeats and Ruth Carr�s didactic vocal inflections, will have those in the post-Maxinquaye bracket discovering visceral gratification really is achievable from the comfort and anonymity of your own home. Oh, and by the way, it�s pronounced �Min-wee.�

[buy stuff here / here / here]

Apropos of �SNL��s latest triumph �Dick in a Box,� whatever happened to the slow jam? Say goodbye to the days when K-Ci and JoJo ruled high school PA systems and enter the era of Time-Life box set extinction. One could very easily point to Kanye�s meta-slow jam, �Slow Jamz,� as the postmodern death knell that sent the R&B world reeling. But it would seem that cynicism has creeped in: Ne-Yo is sick of love songs, Beyonce�s ex is replaceable, etc. Anything else remotely slow is just incredibly weird, � la Cassie�s �Me and U,� the world�s most circuitous, extended non-metaphor about oral sex. And as much as we love Timbaland, all those hyperkinetic beeps and whirls only result in gratuitous popping and locking, rather than the dedicated half-grinds that Brian McKnight and Blackstreet inspired.

All hyperbolic, R&B-inflected rockism notwithstanding, I�ve held on to hope and for good reason: we�re always in need of a good reason to blindly writhe against each other. Vindication is Jovan Dais� �Gotta� Get to My Baby,� a track chock full of prima facie, Slow Jam brilliance. Enlisting T.I./Jeezy favorite DJ Toomp, the track shimmers with his trademark thump, ersatz brass and celestial chirp. And, like everything else he does, it�s unfuckwithable. Jovan plays man-in-the-club and would-be philanderer, but rather than scoring with Sydney, Lisa, Tiffany et al. he remains faithful to the woman at home. Of course, that doesn�t stop him from being a man-tease. All the faux polygamy is not for broke: the scores of ogling women play Crock Pot to Jovan�s libido and the slow simmer always results in good lovin� for the lady (and listeners) at home.

[buy stuff here]

I’m tired.

Sure, I’ve been on a month-long holiday, caught up on my sleep, taken it easy. But there’s a real lethargy that’s come over my music appreciation of late.

I shouldn’t be surprised. 2006 was the year I started taking music writing seriously and probably the year that my music consumption reached its peak. I downloaded dozens of albums a month, bought up big on classics and new contenders and made time in my busy life for digesting, appreciating, and analyzing a constant stream of tracks.

And then some time in November, I noticed that I was slowing down. Sure, I had an iPod full of new albums to listen to over my holidays and any number of new contenders for ‘album of the year’, but I was spending more time listening to albums I’d owned for ages, just spinning them on repeat and letting the familiar and the previously-missed nuances float around me.

I suppose you can�t sustain the music gorging indefinitely. At some point you have to stop and take stock. I haven’t bought a CD in months and I can’t help feeling I’m slipping�like if I stand still long enough I’ll start listening to Phil Collins and someone is going to come and take my crit pass away from me. But I don’t really care�I need to recuperate.

So: what do you listen to when everything else stops and all you need is comfort food?

For me, there are any number of easy choices including mixtape perennials like Belle and Sebastian or New Order, but here are a few of the slightly more left-field tracks that get me through the holiday blues.

Grand National � Litter Bin

This track gives me an irresistible feeling of warmth, making it the perfect prescription under almost any circumstances. It has familiar elements from so many of my favourite songs (echoed guitar arpeggios, hushed vocals, stabby chords, slightly crackly production, slow build dynamics) but never feels cheap or derivative.

In a way, these Police-aping Brits managed to produce something as bittersweet and timeless as anything their idols produced�only with far less recognition. Of course, as something of an elitist, it�s nice to know that your feel-good tunes are still the domain of only a select few.

Laura Veirs � Secret Someones

I�ve never quite established how I feel about Laura Veirs. At some level, she�s entirely the kind of artist I would have little time for. She�s a self-consciously arty and wordy folk-singer. But in spite of my reservations about her voice and her lyrics and the general preciousness of it all, I love her Year of Meteors album and this song in particular.

Why? Well it has an irresistible chorus for one thing. The run-on, alliteration of the lyrics makes the best use of Veirs� wordsmith skills I�ve seen. Backing-band the Tortured Souls is given the freedom to create a hypnotic, swirling atmosphere throughout the track�including a sputtering drumbeat like no other. And even the slightly-flat vocals bring an aching honesty and desire to the song. One for those lonely nights.

The Egg � Port Meadow

A perpetually underachieving Big Beat group might be an interesting choice for comfort consumption, but this song is in a league of its own. To my ears, �Port Meadow� is a bona fide classic of electronic music. It has the rhythmic looseness of prime-era Can. It has the atmospheric junglist beats of Goldie�s creative peak. And it has whiptight guitar work stolen from the best disco tracks you ever heard. The rest of the album has its moments of musical gold, but few can thrill me even at my most jaded and weary.

I�m sure the time will come soon when I�m ready to dive back into the waters of timeliness and topicality. But for now, I�ve got a full cupboard of familiar tunes.

Happy New Year Stypod readers.

[buy stuff here / here / here]