Canadians and K-Pop
This week's soundtrack also spins through France, Nigeria, Jamaica, Australia and Mississippi.
Almost every time someone came to me with new music last week, it was international, which shaped this week's soundtrack:
1. "A Lie" - The Eastern Sea: I really enjoyed my conversation with Matt Hines of The Eastern Sea, who played in town Saturday. Fortunately, I also like his music.
2. "I Hate MIlk" - Air Miami: Two former members of Unrest formed this short-lived and ridiculously catchy band from Washington, D.C.
3. "Your Neck Around Mine" - Milk Maid: How can I resist a new milk-themed band, this one making psychedelic pop/rock.
4. "Two Feet Stand Up" - Cookie Duster: My friend Emmett Pearce is still doing campus radio at CFMU in Hamilton, Ontario and has started sending me links to his playlists, presumably to catch me up on CanCon. This spin-off from Broken Social Scene qualifies.
5. "Box Elder" - Pavement: This just seemed like it was next.
6. "Can't Figure it Out" - AM and Shawn Lee: Last year's Celestial Electric featured retro beats and solid late '70s songcraft and instrumentation, but it sounded current anyway. They're trying to raise money to fund its follow-up here.
7. "Seafaring Well" - Blackbird Hour: These grads from Mississippi's Kudzu Kings play the Ogden's "Ogden After Hours" Thursday at 6 p.m.
8. "Glitter and Glue" - the Honeypots: The Honeypots are Lynn Drury, Margie Perez and Monica McIntyre, and this track comes from their debut album, Something Sweet.
9. "Count Everything" - Timi Yuro: Listen to the way her voice rolls up to the start of this song like a wave that crests on the first word.
10. "Goodbye Baby" - Jack Scott: More CanCon - a rockabilly singer from Windsor, Ontario whose best songs rarely swing and jump the way you expect rockabilly to.
11. "Black Man's Stories" - Roger Knox: The Mekons' Jon Langford played a song by Roger Knox - "The Koori King of Country" in Australia - last time he was in town. Here's Knox.
12. "The Same Love That Made Me Laugh" - Bill Withers: I love Irma Thomas' cover of this.
13. "Gimme Little Sign" - Brenton Wood: I got to interview Brenton Wood before he appeared one year at the Ponderosa Stomp. I'm disappointed that I can't find "Oogum Boogum" on Spotify, but this will more than do.
14. "Ali Baba" - John Holt: This cool rock steady track introduced me to John Holt apart from the Paragons, though I haven't found anything I've liked quite as much.
15. "Fu Man Chu" - Desmond Dekker: Desmond Dekker's voice was too sweet to make anything sound dangerous or mysterious, but he did what he could in this case.
16. "Lagos City" - Asiko Rock Group: Nigeria Disco Funk Special: The Sound of the Underground Lagos Dancefloor 1974-1979 is one of those comps that always pays off with great grooves with sonic references to American disco and indigenous elements that keep it from seeming too familiar.
17. "Run Myself Out of Town" - The Holmes Brothers: I was pulling tracks for this and saw that Papa Mali was out of the hospital and listening to The Holmes Brothers, which seemed like as good a reason as any to visit them today.
18. "Britches" - George Porter, Jr. and Runnin' Pardners: From last year's Can't Beat the Funk, a successful revisit to The Meters' songbook.
19. "Ape Is High" - Mandrill: Ivan Neville once told me he thought Mandrill's "Fencewalk" is the heaviest, funkiest song he could think of. That turned me on that song; now I'm branching out.
20. "GB City" - Bass Drum of Death: They play One Eyed Jacks Friday night.
21. "Distorsion" - Philippe Laurent: Alex Cook turned me on to The Minimal Wave Tapes, Vol. 2, a collection of largely foreign and obscure electronic recordings that rely heavily on analog technology from the '70s and '80s.
22. "The Boys" - Girls Generation: On the weekend, my wife and I drove to Florida, and part of the discussion was why we both found K-Pop preferrable (for at least awhile) to American pop. One theory is that because we don't know Girls Generation, we don't have to hear E!TV or read other pop-oriented magazines fit them into a pop narrative. We're not buying into the Girls Generation story the way we're buying into the Bieber story/mythology; we're just getting a song, much the same way at the moment we just get "Call Me Maybe" when we hear Carly Rae Jepsen.
23. "Sherlock" - SHINee: Our other theory is that in the case of songs that are sung in Korean like "Sherlock," we don't have to hear all the lyrical cliches that make so much contemporary American hard to enjoy. Not saying the words are cliches, but odds are ....
As a bonus, here's one of our current favorite K-Pop tracks, "Sorry, Sorry" by Super Junior. Unfortunately, it's not on Spotify, but the video's worthwhile.
