Hypothetical mixtape: March 2013

Done in some haste. Please be gentle.

"Mind Mischief (The Field Remix)", by Tame Impala. Tame Impala take sixties psychedelia and play it through a filter of the blazing Perth summer sun. (I have never been to Perth, so I don't know if that is even true; this past summer the temperatures in Canberra seem to have been much higher. Perhaps Tame Impala should move here for maximum effect.) The Field take "minimal techno" of the Kompakt variety and leave it out in the weather for what sounds like years, until everything that caused the music to be in any way recognisable has been weathered away, leaving just the barest outline. (This may not sound like a compliment, but give him a listen and you'll see that it might be.) This ten-minute remix pitches the two of them against each other. Music is the winner.

"You Are My Destiny", by The Juan Maclean. It's been a while between drinks for our old pals The Juan Maclean. So what if this sounds like the second cousin twice removed of "Happy House"? It's a strong blood line.

"Outside Amore", by Man Tear. This is a strange one. It is naggingly familiar, but I can't for the life of me figure out why. I hate that. It's on DFA, but doesn't really sound like it. From Sweden, but doesn't really sound like that, either.

"King of Hearts (Richard X Remix Edit)", by Cassie. Clearly, Richard X still has whatever he had in the mid-00s that got me fired up about music again after so many years in the wilderness.

"Beautiful Son", by Peaking Lights. This song is equal parts mystery and beauty. That seems to be a perfect ratio. Is it too late to declare this one of the best songs of 2013?

"Entertainment (Dinosaur Jr Remix)", by Phoenix. That might be what the label says, but what it really is is Dinosaur Jr covering a Phoenix song. Which is a pretty funny thing to imagine, but in practice it is a triumph: J Mascis & Co ratchet down the pop intensity of the original, in the way that really only they, the Original Slackers, can; and in doing so they get to the heart of the song in a way that the original actually doesn't. Well, that's what I think.

"Journey From Eden", by The Steve Miller Band. You probably know The Steve Miller Band from mid-seventies radio staples "The Joker" and "Fly Like An Eagle". But sniffing around the internet reveals that they are a band with a rich history (former members included Jim Keltner, Ben Sidran and one Boz Scaggs) and no shortage of drama. This is the last long on their seventh (!) album, and their last before a serious accident, and perhaps a few moments of contemplation, saw Miller move in the direction of more immediate thrills and, at least from this vantage point, significantly more radio play. Good as those hits are, it is possible to argue that they never got better than this.

"Aegean Sea", by Abel. This turns out to be an "edit" (remember what I taught you?) of a track of Smokie's very first album, from 1975. The edit rocks. Which is not something I would usually find myself saying about Smokie. ("Alice! Alice! Who the %$#@ is Alice?")

"Up In a Puff of Smoke", by Polly Brown. Many of you will not remember this song, as it wasn't particularly successful as a single. But it is firmly imprinted on my own memory on account of its having appeared on "Whopper", a 1975 Australian Polydor "original hits original artists" compilation that I played to death. (Not to be confused with "Ripper".) Looking through the track listing today is a bit deflating, although it does have a run of highly listenable songs that cover much of its second side. (It also, I suspect, would have been my first introduction to Kraftwerk, so I owe it an enormous debt on that score.) If you had a hankering to listen to The Supremes you would probably be better off listening to The Supremes, but I have a soft spot for this song, and it brings an ever-so-gentle hint of glam rock into the mix.

"Tell Me What You See In Me", by Sandy Denny and The Strawbs. The Strawbs had so many line-up changes over the years that their Wikipedia entry contains a diagram that is so complicated that it is fathomable only by academics and superior alien life forms. Another of the long, long list of things I didn't know was that amongst the many members of The Strawbs (aside from Rick Wakeman) was Sandy Denny -- evidently for a brief period in early 1968. But not so brief that they didn't have time to record an album (in Denmark!), an album that wasn't released until 1973, by which time The Strawbs had well and truly moved on (and Sandy Denny, of course, had made a name of her own with Fairport Convention and Fotheringay). I have never heard a Sandy Denny song that I didn't immediately love, and this is no exception. They also do "Who Knows Where The Time Goes", but the Fairport version of that song is so ingrained on my consciousness that I can't really entertain any other version, even if Sandy herself is singing it.

"95c", by Valerie Lemercier. By approximately 10 seconds into this song, you will be convinced that the ghost of el records hangs over it. And you will be right: the credits reveal that el mainstay Louis Philippe appears here on the guitar. Meanwhile production duties are by the seemingly ubiquitous (at least in France) Bertrand Burgalat. It's very sweet: ye ye pop in the late 20th century.

"Idle I'm (Colorama Coloured In Remix)", by John Stammers. There's no words I can type that would in any way add to your enjoyment or understanding of this song. The download link may still be up: try it for yourself.

"The Captain of Her Heart", by Double. It may be because I am one quarter Swiss that this song hits me where I live. Ostensibly garden variety mid-80s pop, there is something slightly mysterious lurking behind its surface sheen that I find attractive. (Also, the opening couple of bars put me in mind of the underrated work Chris Abrahams did with Melanie Oxley a few years back.) Curiously, this song was mentioned in this seemingly unrelated article on Pitchfork just the other day.

"Letter of Intent (Mark McGuire Road Chief Remix)", by Ducktails. My take on it is that Mark McGuire dons his Road Chief hat whenever he wants to venture down the highway of seventies/eighties FM radio. Thus he drives what was, in its original form, a perfectly good if rudimentary fragile pop song out into the land of lush arrangements and a particular kind of tone such as you might (hope to) find over the closing credits of a particular type of American independent film. A road movie, maybe.

Recipe of the day

Take one part Gun Club:



Add one part Cocteau Twins:



And, hey presto, you get "Yellow Eyes":



Way back in the mid-1980s, I listened to a lot of Gun Club, and I also had a possibly unhealthy obsession with Cocteau Twins, in particular the "Treasure" LP. But those were two worlds that I would never have imagined might one day collide. I mean, come on. Southern gothic screech-and-wail versus ethereal English gothic? (Okay, so they had "gothic" in common, but those days who didn't?)

Hence, to say that the news that one day filtered through that Robin Guthrie would be producing what was to become the fourth Gun Club album, "Mother Juno", took me by surprise has an element of understatement to it. I had a moment of cognitive dissonance. To be honest, I wasn't even sure I was looking forward to the result; I kind of liked them both the way they were (although by 1987 I was forming the view that both of their best days may have been behind them).

The resultant album, while patchy, had high points that were higher than I could ever have imagined. "Yellow Eyes" was undoubtedly the centrepiece, and if you had taken the time to imagine what a mash-up of The Gun Club and Cocteau Twins might sound like, "Yellow Eyes" is what you would have come up with. It is uncanny. I swear that it isn't only my imagination that leads me to think that at various points Jeffrey Lee Pierce even sings like Elizabeth Fraser. (Of course, it is also possible that I have taken leave of my senses.)

And to top it all off, Blixa Bargeld, then of the Bad Seeds (another of my mid-80s obsessions), floats some unworldly guitar across the surface of the thing.

Song of the day

"New Puritan (Peel Session)", by The Fall.

(It may be that I am the sole surviving Australian subscriber to eMusic. (I keep hanging on, waiting to see if they offer me a tidy sum to get me off their books.) I mention the following on the off chance that there are others out there, stranded on this antipodean desert island.)

Occasionally real bargains can be found on eMusic. John Coltrane's European Tours box set cost me practically nothing. The Tindersticks box of Claire Denis film scores likewise. (I could once have picked up Gas's "Nah Und Fern" for not much more, but it slipped through my fingers.)

As of right now, you can pick up The Fall's "Complete Peel Sessions" for $2.99. That is not a typo. Six discs' worth of music, seven hours of Mark E Smith in your face. It's a lot less than the sixty-odd I paid for the box itself, and the booklet you can probably find scanned somewhere on the internet anyway. You should, of course, go for this with your Ears Pinned Back.

The box set as a whole is like an alternative history of The Fall. In fact, if you didn't have the albums you may well be better off with the Peel Sessions alone. The chronology was unfortunately truncated by the loss of Peel himself, but it gets you through to 2004, which ends a pretty fair run. What I find fascinating about these (also the Magazine Peel Sessions, as I'm sure I've said before) is that they capture the band in a different way from the records: in The Fall's case, live and direct, without the audio smudging and deliberate sabotage to which Smith has always been prone. This makes the records fun, of course, but often at the expense of the music, so it's nice to be able to hear what was -- is -- underneath it all one of the great rock bands, and a band that, notwithstanding its countless lineup changes, never sounded like anything but itself.

"New Puritan" a la Peel has fascinated me ever since I first heard it on the "Kicker Conspiracy" double seven-inch. Mark E Smith here is biliously spitting the words out, as if they are a cancer in his mouth that he has to get rid of. Meanwhile behind him that juggernaut of a riff rolls on, and on, and on. Seven minutes is both too much to bear and barely enough.



Bonus beats: the video for "Wings". It never gets old. Phew, rock 'n' roll.



More bonus beats: Donnie Sutherland interviews Mark E Smith and Marc Riley. Really.

Song of the day

"Green, Green Rocky Road", by Dave Van Ronk.

If you had gone to see "Inside Llewyn Davis" expecting something along the lines of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?", you would have soon been somewhat perplexed. Notwithstanding its musical substructure, this is not that kind of Coen Brothers film. Rather, it's another of their somewhat abstracted time-and-place-rooted character studies, along the lines of "The Man Who Wasn't There" and "A Serious Man" (and, let's suggest, "Barton Fink" -- you could probably add "No Country For Old Men" in there, too, although it bleeds heavily into another type of Coen Brothers film entirely): character studies in which the leading character is not particularly likeable, or charismatic, or even interesting, and in which therefore the life of the film occurs in the characters and situations that the leading character walks through (or into) or bounces off. And those characters and situations, this being the Coen Brothers and all, are exceedingly rich. (Two words: John Goodman.)

The early 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene plays the role that late 1960s Jewish Minnesota played in "A Serious Man". It's a fascinating world to be sucked into, with its curious mixture of idealism, opportunism, hucksterism, patronage and abject poverty. Underneath it all is the music: "traditional" folk music circa 1960 isn't something I generally turn to for pleasure -- it seems too earnest, colourless and worthy in the light of what Bob Dylan (who "appears", inevitably, at the end of this film) was soon to do to it -- but there is a lot to enjoy about it here, not least Oscar Isaac's golden voice.

But the best part of the film for me, musically speaking, comes during the closing credits, when we get Dave Van Ronk playing and rasping his way, exquisitely, through "Green, Green Rocky Road" (a song which Oscar Isaac turns his hand to earlier in the film, as if to further cement the already fairly firm connection between the fictional Llewyn Davis and the real-life Van Ronk (the existence of this album, and the prominent appearance of a cat on its cover, are not likely to be coincidences)).

Hypothetical mixtape: February 2013

Well, aside from starting with a song called "Sunrise" and ending with a song called "Ending", this playlist, in accordance with usual practice, comes to you with absolutely no rhyme or reason. And it is a year old. 

"Sunrise", by Cherubin. Now is probably the right time to mention that, for the whole of 2013, the dj/crate digger known as Turquoise Wisdom blogged one song each weekday, and given the excellence of many of his choices you will see an unhealthy number of those songs in these playlists until we get to 2014. (I'm feeling its loss already.) (He did it as a New Year's Eve resolution, which is silly enough; that he pulled it off without faltering is just insane. We are grateful for his efforts. And his good taste.) This is one of those songs. It's from 1974, the year that just keeps on sounding better and better.

"Houses", by Elyse. What do the words "guitar by Neil Young" mean to you? To me they mean "listen up". The song itself is otherwise perfectly fine but not shout-from-the-rooftops-great hippy-trippy folk rock, typical of its vintage (1968), but it is certainly livened up by the short blasts of "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere" Youngian electric-guitar splendour.

"L'Espace D'Une Fille", by Jacques Dutronc. This is like listening to Serge Gainsbourg's slightly more burnished, slightly less nicotine-stained, cousin. The echoes of this song in Serge's own "Harley Davidson", recorded and released as a single by Brigitte Bardot only a year later, are either coincidental or not. And Serge isn't saying.

"Hesitation", by Honk. The way this song starts, you think you are in for another unwanted jazz-lite-fusion outing. And that sax line does reappear throughout the song, but elsewhere it's a kind of Doobie / Alessi Brothers vocal harmony extravaganza (from 1974, as if you hadn't guessed) and the world and its hard drives have always got room for one more of those.

"The Good, The Bad and The Ugly", by Llans Thelwell and His Celestials. True story: In olden times, when my associate and I spent unhealthy amounts of time digging through piles of other people's discarded vinyl in search of Arthur Lyman, Martin Denny and Manuel records (and the elusive V Balsara), we took home more than enough Klaus Wunderlich albums to last any normal person a lifetime. (We still have them all.) The back covers of some of these records gave, tantalisingly, the track listings on other of his records, and we were particularly intrigued that one of the "Hammond Pops" series that we didn't have (No. 3, to be precise) included Klaus's take on "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". (You can see how that would get us excited.) Thus, we were beside ourselves when, one day, "Hammond Pops 3", with its typically alluring cover photo, appeared, like a miracle, before our very eyes. It seemed too good to be true. And it was. Foolishly not checking the record itself before rushing it home, we discovered to our disappointment that someone had put a different "Hammond Pops" volume in the wrong sleeve. And so our search continues. In the meantime, it is nice to have this ska/bluebeat version to get us through the lean times.

"Love Can Run Faster", by Robert Palmer. I don't even like this. So what is it doing here? Because I have been searching for a long time for the reputed song that Robert Palmer recorded with Lee "Scratch" Perry at the Black Ark. And this is it. Musically, it is a typical Black Ark production. There is nothing wrong with that. But Palmer's white-boy soul shtick over the top of it isn't a good fit. I much prefer Perry in an all-Jamaican context and I much prefer Palmer on his album of the following year, "Clues". C'est la vie.

"Fool for a Valentine", by The Gist. Following the demise of Young Marble Giants after one (perfect) album, Stuart and Philip Moxham re-emerged as The Gist. They released one album, and it seems that Philip then went off on his own to do a number of different things, some surprising (David Thomas and the Passengers, in the company of one Richard Thompson) and some not so surprising (Weekend; a stint with Everything But the Girl), leaving Stuart as the gist of The Gist (ahem). This song, the A side of a Rough Trade single (of course), is, therefore, Stuart Moxham's baby. It is also the final Gist record. It is, too, an example of white-boy reggae done right, perhaps because its gentle lilt doesn't seek to draw too much attention to itself.

"Trees and Flowers", by Dum Dum Girls. Generally speaking, I ain't got time for cover versions of the songs that mean the most to me. "Trees and Flowers", by Strawberry Switchblade, is one of those songs. Hence, I listened to this cover through gritted teeth. I got to the end, listened again, and then again. The world didn't end. Maybe it began again. This is a very different take from the original: it is a bit like being submerged in an densely glooping sonic bath. (If that could be a good thing.) Following on from their take on The Smiths' "There is a Light That Never Goes Out", one can only conclude that Dum Dum Girls have a way with other people's songs.

"Blind Myself", by Rosemary. And so we find ourselves back in the wondrous days of do-it-yourself bands playing untameable analogue synths and rogue drum machines, a lone female vocalist shining a beam of light into the darkness. Except this song is from 2013. Incidentally, it reminds me of what I loved so much about the early Nite Jewel records.

"(Don't) Turn Me Away", by Rexy. And speaking, as we were, of Young Marble Giants, this might be what YMG would have sounded like had they used electronic instruments rather than, y'know, like, guitars and stuff. (Okay, they did use a drum machine.) This, like all of the best records, is from 1980. I wish I had known about it at the time, but better late than never I guess.

"Fingers", by Cyclopean. This is on the Spoon label, the home of your Can records. Which isn't so surprising, because, as well as Burnt Friedman, Cyclopean features Jaki Liebezeit and Irmin Schmidt, names you might know. "Fingers" is a lovely piece of music in its own right; but it also puts me in mind of a couple of things: (1) not surprisingly, the "Snake Charmer" EP, from 1983, which also featured Liebezeit along with Holger Czukay (another member of the Can axis); and (2) surprisingly, last year's album by Dawn of Midi (I am thinking in particular of the attenuated string sound -- superficially tagged as "Eastern" -- that is common to both records).

"Modern Driveway", by Luke Abbott. Come for the gorgeous chord sequences. Stay for the, um, gorgeous chord sequences. This knocks me over in a similar way to the way Caribou's "Swim" album knocks me over. I probably could have expressed that better.

"White Noise", by Disclosure. By the end of 2013 Disclosure had acquired ubiquity. But back in March, not so much. See how hip we are? (After the event ...)

"Magnifique", by Jersey Devil Social Club. AKA Morgan Geist, of whom we haven't seen so much lately. "Magnifique" was a disco burner from 1979. Is this a cover? An edit? Part of me has to know; the rest of me just wants to dance.

"Pearly Dew", by Lena Hughes. Queen of the flat top guitar, apparently. Reissued on the Tompkins Square label, so you know it's good.

"Wakin on a Pretty Day", by Kurt Vile. "Kurt Vile", it seems, is his real name. That may well be all you need to know. ("Wakin" does not have an apostrophe on the record cover. You probably don't need to know that.) This song, which stretches out over ten minutes on a laid-back yet industrious bed of electric guitars, seems to have no tickets on itself. It exists for its own sake. I don't know if I've heard a better song in a long while. 

"Ending", by Bruce Langhorne. Langhorne, I discovered when looking into who the hell he is, seems to have worked with Pete Seeger, so it's timely, if coincidental, that this list goes up in the same week that Seeger left us. This haunting piece is from the soundtrack to Peter Fonda's 1971 film "The Hired Hand", although the soundtrack seems not to have been released until the early oughts, courtesy of Blast First records (another label to which we owe so much). It would be perfect for a warm night around an open campfire, although it might scare the children.

Song of the day

"The Philosophers Trap", by Marsen Jules.

Every year around this time, a new volume in Kompakt's "Pop Ambient" series of compilation albums appears. This year's is hot off the presses (or digital simulacrum) and contains the usual mix of familiar and unfamiliar names. Most likely the track that will be of most interest to the curious is the Gas remix of a piece from the most recent album by The Field. Good (perhaps surprisingly so) as that is, though, the one that has caught my ear is "The Philosophers Trap", by Marsen Jules. There's not much to say about it other than that it is strongly evocative of the instrumental half of David Sylvian's "Gone To Earth", a place that it is always nice to visit. So this is like looking at your old holiday snaps. Maybe.

It doesn't seem to be on the internet (yet), but you can listen to a fragment of it over at Kompakt's Soundcloud page.

Song of the day

"Spring Rain", by The Go-Betweens.

So anyway, when I mentioned Jonathan Demme's "Married to the Mob" while discussing Scorsesean uses of music in film it is quite possible that what I actually had in mind was "Something Wild", Demme's previous film, and in particular its use, at a perfect moment, of the exhilarating strains of "Spring Rain". The song then was brand new, so there was also a major element of surprise in hearing it used by a Hollywood director, at a time when The Go-Betweens where critics' darlings but commercial nobodies.

I must confess, I haven't followed Demme's career beyond "Married to the Mob". But I stuck with The Go-Betweens, like glue, until the (tragic) end. Come to think of it, there is probably a Hollywood narrative arc that could be teased out of the story of The Go-Betweens. Or at least Sundance. (Any happy ending would have to be invented.)

This song came out in 1986 (as did the film). But watching this video it seems like yesterday.

*Sigh*



Bonus beats: Jonathan Demme directed this video of New Order's "Perfect Kiss". There is nothing particularly "arty" about it, but it is, in its own modest way, perfect. (It also has its own catalogue number. How Factory is that?)

Song of the day

"10538 Overture", by The Electric Light Orchestra.

So I went to see "American Hustle", the new film by David O. Russell. You have probably seen it already, or heard so much about it that you may feel you don't even need to. (You should override such feelings. You do need to.) It's easy, when watching a movie that flows along so effortlessly, to overlook the effort that is actually involved. To convincingly recreate an entire world, to make characters that are sufficiently real that you care about them, and their all-too-human weaknesses/unpredictability/inconsistencies, to construct a story that, even though it is close enough to a true story that we probably know how it ends up, nevertheless has us sitting on the edge of our seats for two-and-a-quarter hours, well, I was in awe from the very first shot. How did he do that?

I'm no film critic. But I do like to slot things into little boxes. And this one, I would process as follows: it's like a mashup between Martin Scorsese's mobsters and David Mamet's con artists. In fact, I found myself thinking one thing more than any other throughout the film: that we don't really need Scorsese any more. This film is like his greatest movies, let's say "Goodfellas", "Raging Bull", maybe "Casino", but without the Joe Pesci character, so that those of us of squeamish dispositions don't have to spend much of the film either gripping the arms of our chairs or peeking through our fingers as somebody, y'know, gets their head stuck in a vice or their eyes poked out by a sharp pencil. (Purists may thus say the film doesn't go far enough, but they still have the Man Himself.)

The other thing Scorsesean about this movie is its use of music. (See also Jonathan Demme's "Married to the Mob".) Okay, mining the seventies you could hardly go wrong, but nevertheless you probably could. They don't. (There should be an Oscar category for Best Use of "I Feel Love" in a Motion Picture. This film is a shoe-in.) Case in point: "10538 Overture" (not, as my retarded brain insists on typing, "90210 Overture"), which appears just when you needed it to, even though you didn't realise that you needed it to.

Song of the day

"Heatwave", by The Jam.

It turns out that this year's annual visit to Melbourne and Geelong has fallen during a week that seems intent on breaking all kinds of temperature records. Where we stay in Geelong has air conditioning downstairs, which of course is a blessing (and a luxury we wouldn't have had if we were at home, where 40 degrees seems to be the baseline maximum temperature at the moment), but there is nothing upstairs except a few small windows (and no insulation either) and upstairs is where we are sleeping, or, rather, trying to. If I said it was like lying in a furnace you would think I was exaggerating. You would be wrong.

There are countless versions of this Holland-Dozier-Holland song out there. This one will always be the one for me.

YouTube of the day

"Yesterday", as performed by Pan's People and Jose Feliciano.



Because what else are you going to do in Geelong on a 40-degree day but watch old episodes of The Two Ronnies?

Song of the day

"The Fate of the Human Carbine", by Peter Jefferies and Robbie Muir.

This song is the sound of cassette tapes in padded postbags being stuffed into letter boxes in country towns in the late 1980s. It is the sound of that brief moment in time when I had disposable income and no responsibilities, and before both of my parents died, the family farm vanished from beneath my feet, and the Leongatha "scene" (all four of it!) fragmented, for various necessary reasons. (It was also before Adrienne wandered into the room, so the associations are not all one way.)

It is also, of course, one aspect of the sound of Dunedin. Peter Jefferies launched his solo career* (he had previously been in a band called This Kind of Punishment with his brother Graeme, who went on to his own solo career as The Cakekitchen) with an Xpressway cassette release, "The Last Great Challenge in a Dull World", which was accompanied by a seven-inch single that he did with Robbie Muir, of which this is the B side. The two releases were repackaged as one record, for the CD era, by Ajax Records, and have now been subject to the reissue treatment again, in the same iteration. It is well worth your time, especially if you have worn out the copy of X/WAY 16 that was lovingly packaged up, addressed, and mailed to you by the incomparable Bruce Russell.

Jefferies does loud and quiet. This is him doing quiet, but with an edge.



* This statement may be debatable; he released, with Jono Lonie, a vinyl LP, with paint-splattered cover, on the Flying Nun label, called "At Swim 2 Birds" (although its connection with the Flann O'Brien novel is unclear), in 1987, of which I was lucky enough to find a copy at the long-forgotten Exposure Records, which resided somewhat incongruously on Cotham Road in Kew, during the same brief idyllic time period. Or maybe his solo career can be traced back to the single he released with Shayne (Straitjacket Fits) Carter, "Randolph's Going Home", in 1986, also on Flying Nun (although Carter got top billing there). Really, it does your head in.

Hypothetical mixtape: January 2013

So, I had my chance to -- at last -- construct a 2013 playlist while it was still 2013. Seems like I missed it. Does that make this "nostalgia"? Happy New Year everyone.

"Dans Quelques Minutes", by Les Garcons. G'day Les. No, wait a minute, it's not that kind of Les: this is genuine French post-punk, so it must be something like "The Boys". Once again, I am amazed by how resonant the various guitar sounds of that era remain. I particularly love what this song does at around the 45-second mark, and regularly thereafter. Also notable for its largely instrumental "chorus". You don't hear many of those.

"Tomorrow (DFA Remix)", by Clinic. So this is five years old (and almost sounds as if it could have been 35). I was absorbing everything that bore the stamp of "DFA" at that time, so I don't quite know how this one got away from me. It's never too late, though, and, because DFA productions are an approximation of every record you have ever owned, they never sound dated. Note in particular the unexpected Sgt Pepper strings half way through.

"After You", by Pulp. And speaking of DFA, James Murphy had his hands all over the controls of this one, the welcome but unexpected return of Pulp, the thinking introvert's Britpop combo. At this point I feel the need to mention that Jarvis Cocker is best known in our household for his performance as Petey in Wes Anderson's "Fantastic Mr Fox".

"Second Summer", by YACHT. Our third and final DFA-related track for this month. I haven't ever really been grabbed by YACHT, partly, I must admit, because of the unnecessarily in-your-face ALL CAPITALS of their name, but I quite like this; it's a bit like the best bits of Hot Chip conjoined with a singer who shares the best bits of The Juan Maclean's Nancy Whang. Well, that's what I'm hearing.

"Flutes (A JD Twitch Optimo Remix)", by Hot Chip. In another month this may not have made the cut. But it seems to fit well with those other songs up there (and the one below), it is never less than listenable, and it is a song, or a piece of music, that allows you to nod your head while at the same time, if you focus closely, being impressed by the number of twists and turns it takes while remaining, at all times, manifestly the same song.

"Gun-Shy (Lindstrom Remix)", by Grizzly Bear. So anyway, I don't know anything about Grizzly Bear. But I think I know a bit about Lindstrom (given that he appears here probably two out of every three months). And this fits neatly, albeit in a curious way, into the Lindstrom storyline. Viz., a year or so back he put out an album called "Six Cups of Rebel", which appears to have been almost universally hated by Lindstrom fans. Not quite universally: I thought its combination of "I Feel Space" energy and prog rock excess suited him perfectly, and I still listen to it almost obsessively. (Almost?) He then put out (maybe as apology, maybe it was where he was going anyway) a short album (or long EP) which was mostly hailed as a relief, or a Stunning Return to Form, but which sounded to these ears ever so slightly like a backward step. So it was refreshing to pick up on this remix, which, in its rapid-fire chord changes, should serve as a signal for the haters to return to "Six Cups of Rebel" again: it might be the key that unlocks the mystery. (That there is no mystery.) Also, to the extent that "Six Cups" drew from the lessons of Todd Rundgren (which I think we can assume from the fact that he got Saint Todd to work a remix of one of its tracks), I am sensing a bit of the old Rundgren magic lurking in here, too.

"Everything Is Embarrassing", by Sky Ferreira. This is a fine pop song, structurally and emotionally strong enough to hold up the very heavy synths that might have caused a lesser song to collapse under their weight. The ghost of Lana del Rey (or is that Laura Palmer?) might be hiding in the shadows, but that's no bad thing.

"Closer", by Tegan & Sara. Whereas this one is more in the nature of pure ear candy. Which, of course, is no bad thing; and the chorus will have you doing windmills with your arms.

"In The Wild", by Alpine. Cowbells. Spanish guitars. Piano. A sprightly gait. Some vocal work of the highest order. Pop music can be simple, but it can also be inordinately complex, and just occasionally so complex that the fun is in hearing it all fuse together like an unexpectedly successful science experiment. And look, they're from Melbourne! Bonus points!

"Sleepover", by Hospitality. A pop song can also hit you with an emotional force so overwhelming you are left curled up in the corner, whimpering.

"Belinda", by Eurythmics. It wasn't until their second album, in 1983, that Eurythmics marched into Australia, burning everything in their path (in my head I can hear Gavin Wood on "Countdown" calling them "the Eurythmics", although there was never any "the" there), but their first album, from 1981, is a fascinating listen, with some surprising names in the credits, e.g. one half of Can; Robert Gorl, from DAF. "Belinda" is more straightforward post-U2 guitar pop/rock than, say, "Never Gonna Cry Again", but it has its own charm, which is not a word I would imagine I would ever feel tempted to use in relation to Bono. (Sorry, that slipped out.)

"Any Way That You Want Me", by Evie Sands. Gold-plated 1960s pop from the "Dusty In Memphis" / "Angel of the Morning" school. (Also recorded by The Troggs.) Is it just me, or does the photo on her Discogs page look uncannily like Hope Sandoval?

"Blue Flower", by Slapp Happy. And speaking of Hope Sandoval, general ignorance and specific failure to read and/or absorb liner notes led me to believe, until putting this playlist together, that "Blue Flower" was a Mazzy Star original. Not so. Now I'm not sure if it's only conditioning that leads me to prefer the Mazzy Star version or whether the slightly plodding nature of the original, and the singer's failure to be Hope Sandoval (not her fault!), would otherwise have caused me to give it not a second glance. So what is it doing here? Don't ask me!

"Longanisse", by The Liminanas. (Typography alert: there should be a tilde above the first "n" of "Liminanas".) Serge Gainsbourg's cigarette smoke hangs heavily over this song. On the one hand, that's a pretty brave thing for a French band to do. On the other hand, why the hell not?

"Paradise", by Crystal Syphon. This purports to be a reissue of an obscure record from the late sixties, by a band who otherwise disappeared without trace. But these days, who knows? It's hard to believe that a band with the word "Crystal" in the title could have been formed other than within the most recent band-name cycle. But this certainly sounds true to the Californian dream-psych sound of those long-ago days, so I am inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. More fool me?

"Sommarlaten", by International Harvester. Swedish psychedelic rock from 1968. The electric guitar and saxophone parts (at least I think it's a saxophone, it's really quite difficult to tell) sound like they were recorded on "vintage" (= "old") equipment set up two rooms away from where they were played, via a echo-y linoleum-covered hallway, or maybe a disused water pipe. Needless to say, I love it. (Also kudos for having named -- technically, renamed -- themselves after a tractor manufacturer.)

"Grand Ma", by Tonic. A re-edit of a Grand Funk Railroad song, with only the best bits left in. Southern guitar boogie DNA.

Wes Anderson short film of the day

"Castello Cavalcanti".

Directed by Wes Anderson. (He has a new film out next year. I am very happy to be typing those words.)

The best Christmas present I could have received this year was to find out that this existed. Who knew?

Go with the full screen option. It's almost as good as being there.

Addendum of the year

"Rival Dealer", by Burial.

It has become necessary for us to tack an additional record onto our recent list of "albums of the year". A couple of days ago a new Burial record appeared out of nowhere (as has also occurred this year with Bowie and Beyonce -- hey, it's the "B" List), the lastest in an astounding sequence of annual thirty-minute "EPs" and if not the best of them (not saying it's not, only that it's too early to tell) certainly the most surprising. The final of its three songs, "Come Down To Us", the title of which may or may not allude to a Christmas story (Jesus or Santa, take your pick), does things that no Burial song has ever done before, while still managing to sound like nobody else.

"Come Down To Us": all thirteen minutes of it; stick it out.

Addams Family Christmas

Charles Addams gets into the spirit of the season. From the New Yorker, December 21, 1946.

(Quality here was limited by the original scan, from the "Complete New Yorker" DVDs. But I hope you can see what is going on. Click to open an enlargeable version. (I think.))

YouTube(s) of the day

"With You There To Help Me", by Jethro Tull.

Having a bit of a Tull obsession at the moment, which, well, is kind of difficult to explain, and not something most people would choose to talk about in public. This may be the difference between you and me.

Notable for its use, in a popular song lyric, of the construction "with whom": clearly, Ian Anderson went to a good school.

Two clips here, both pushing the song out beyond nine minutes, both from 1970. The provenance of one is uncredited but it looks like it's from the telly. (It's the better quality one). One allows you to hear the song; the other captures the insanity. And the hair. You choose.

Song of the day

"I Got A Boy", by Girls' Generation.

OMG it's the K-Pop "Bohemian Rhapsody".



(Thanks to Douglas Wolk for the tip.)

1962 New Yorker advertisement of the day

That "switchboard operator" is straight out of Central Casting.

Obligatory "records of the year" post because the world absolutely needs one more of those

It would appear to be that time of the year.

There were two important albums released in 2013. (There may have been three, but I don't feel qualified to comment on the Bowie album, on account of having largely ignored his output since the early 1980s.) Obviously the Daft Punk is my favourite album of the year. I just love it so much (apologies to the many who don't). But why is it important? I think because it serves as a timely reminder of how a record can be made, and what a record can sound like, and stand for. It's all about the music. (And yet the music is frequently insane, some of it may not even, as Sasha Frere-Jones pointed out when it came out, be any good, but nevertheless the entirety of it is magnificent.)

The other important album this year is the 10th entry in Dylan's "Bootleg Series": important because the armchair Dylanologists (those of us with -- ahem -- some semblance of a life outside of the pursuit of Bob) had long sensed that the "Self Portrait" era could not possibly have been as awful as it seemed to be. And here, 40-some years later, is the proof that in fact Dylan was making music as alive and meaningful as any he had made up to then, and any he would make after. You could listen to this music forever, and dream about what might still be lurking in the archives.

Even in the absence of those two signifiers, though, this has been a bloody good year for recorded music. There is a long list, if only I could remember them all, of albums that have advanced, even if ever so slightly, what music can be. In no particular order:

"Psychic", by Darkside.

"News From Nowhere", by Darkstar.

"Lux", by Brian Eno. (Technically late 2012, but took time to absorb.)

"Immunity", by Jon Hopkins.

"Beautiful Rewind", by Four Tet.

"World Psychedelic Classics 5: Who Is William Onyeabor?", by William Onyeabor.

"Push The Sky Away", by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. (I know I haven't written anything about this record; I'm not sure I have the words to do it justice, also my take on it is even more than usually personal. In short, it's a big one.)

"Four: Acts Of Love", by Mick Harvey. (That colon is important.)

"Chance Of Rain", by Laurel Halo.

"R Plus Seven", by Oneohtrix Point Never.

"Cupid's Head", by The Field.

"m b v", by My Bloody Valentine.

"Seasons Of Your Day", by Mazzy Star.

"Dysnomia", by Dawn Of Midi.

"Pull My Hair Back", by Jessy Lanza.

"Empty Avenues", by John Foxx And The Belbury Circle.

"Engravings", by Forest Swords.

"Nepenthe", by Julianna Barwick.

"The Weighing Of The Heart", by Colleen.

"Roaring Lion", by Lee Perry & His Upsetters.

"Joy One Mile", by Stellar Om Source.

"Open", by The Necks.

"Tomorrow's Harvest", by Boards Of Canada.

"She Beats", by Beaches.

"Box Set, Volume 2", by Cleaners From Venus.

"The Next Day", by David Bowie. (Because, "important" or not, it is still one of the year's best.)

"The Elektrik Karousel", by Focus Group.

"Overgrown", by James Blake.

"Evidence", by John Foxx & The Maths.

"Change The Beat: The Celluloid Records Story 1979-1987".

"Afrobeat Airways, Vol 2: Return Flight To Ghana 1974-1983".

"Sweet Sensation", by Embassy.

"Fade", by Yo La Tengo.

"Berberian Sound Studio", by Broadcast.

"Across Six Leap Years", by Tindersticks. (Old songs done in new ways; wonderful stuff whichever way you cut it.)

"The Skeletal Essences Of Afro Funk, Vol 3 (1969-1980)", by Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou.

Not to mention the countless other I have no doubt forgotten.

That is rather a long list, isn't it? (In almost any other year "Engravings" would loom very large. Actually, it still does.)

And the song of the year? Well, if it wasn't for "Get Lucky", that would be "Love Is Lost (Hello Steve Reich Mix by James Murphy for the DFA)", by David Bowie. 

Hypothetical mixtape: December 2012

1. "Cafe Rock", by Mikis Theodorakis. We begin this month's trudge through the detritus of my hard drive with a slice of fuzz-laden sixties psychedelic soundtrack music. This one is from "Z", a film that was a pretty big thing back when it was a pretty big thing.

2. "Garsore Waa Ilaah", by Dur-Dur Band. Students at Foster High School circa 1978 would have found the name "Dur-Dur Band" the cause of much childish amusement. But the plight of African musicians in that decade was frequently no laughing matter. And while I am not sure of the provenance of Dur-Dur Band (I believe they are from slightly later), I am very confident about the sound they made, even if it is filtered through the lo-fi, uh, "stylings" of what sounds like several generations of cassette dubbing. If you wanted to rob me of all my possessions, I suspect you would just have to sit me in front of African rhythms like these and you would be able to go about your evil business unhindered, as I sat there mesmerised by the sounds going on around me. (The curious thing about this song is how closely the vocals hew to the kind of singing you hear in the kind of pop music played in Chinese restaurants.)

3. "The Ego", by Nicolas Jaar and Theatre Roosevelt. Ah, I see, "Theatre": for a minute there I thought the old fellow had overcome death in the pursuit of one more moment in the spotlight. But, no. It's some other dude. Fans/devotees/worshippers of Nicolas Jaar continue to wait for the follow-up album to "Space Is Only Noise". 2013 has nevertheless been a busy year for him, with the Darkside project coming up not only with one of the albums of the year, but also with one of the maddest projects imaginable, a full-scale deconstruction of "Random Access Memories". Plus a remix of Brian Eno, which must be one of the bravest things a musician working in the (rather large) field of "electronic music" could take on. (I think he got away with it, too.) But this time last year, the pickings were slim -- in terms of quantity, not in terms of quality. This is good.

4. "Please Don't Turn On Me (Disclosure Remix)", by Artful Dodger. These are just names to me, although I believe Disclosure made something of a name for themselves over the course of this year. (I could be confused.) This slips down the throat like warm honey on a summer evening.

5. "Tusk", by The Crystal Ark. Gavin Russom is something of a regular in these lists. Yes, this is the Fleetwood Mac song. No, nothing will ever better the original. But well done Gavin for having a go. In the absence of new material from Black Leotard Front (I know, I know) this will do for now.

6. "I Love It", by Icona Pop. Ah, pop music circa 2012. It was a very good year.

7. "110%", by Jessie Ware. Like, ditto, man.

8. "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)", by Nite Jewel. I used to be able to say I never met a Nite Jewel song I didn't love. That is no longer the case, but her understated, homespun (but in no ways disrespectful or irreverent) take on this Michael Jackson song is certainly easy to like.

9. "When I See You", by Magic Touch and Sapphire Slows. Likewise, I used to be able to say I never met a 100% Silk release I didn't love. That love affair went sour some time ago (hey, it wasn't you, it was me) but I can't say the pilot light doesn't flicker into life whenever I hear this. That piano line must have been used a thousand times, but it never grows old.

10. "The Same Love That Made You Laugh", by Margie Joseph. On the other hand, I never met a Bill Withers song I didn't like, and this is one that has just recently made my aquaintance.

11. "Bad To Me", by Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas. Rolling with a dubious piece of repetition for a bit longer, I never met a Lennon/McCartney song I didn't like. (Well, I'm not so sure about "Good Day Sunshine".) Once upon a time the Dynamic Duo gave away their songs to other people, and this is one of them. It's not hard to imagine it being on "With The Beatles". (Historical note: "Dakotas" turns out to have been an unfortunate name for something concerning John Lennon.)

12. "Pretend You Love Me", by Sonny and the Sunsets. Let’s see now: I never met a Sonny and the Sunsets song I didn’t like -- even if that’s only because I have only ever met this one. Gently rolling proto-West Coast pop with a slight "Astral Weeks" tinge. A winner.

13. "Headsore", by Gramme. Herky-jerky proto-New Wave, of the type that might have been found on an early DFA side. Could perhaps be compared to Factory Floor -- although Gramme's modus operandi seems to be of a much simpler nature than that of those dudes, who frequently do my head in. This doesn't.

14. "That's Siberia", by Blanche Blanche Blanche. Oh, this is clever. I instantly picked it as being the well (or part of the water in the well) from which the previous song drew. But no, it isn't from 1983, it's from 2012. Could have fooled me (read: did).

15. "Corn", by Seiichi Yamamoto. Could soothing-but-not-ambient noodling from Japan be your thing? If so, go here. There is something of a "Tago Mago" vibe going, maybe, and they make it work.

16. "Blue Drive", by Oneohtrix Point Never. Drift off into the sunset with this nine-minute bliss-out (although, this being Daniel Lopatin at work, the bliss is less than pure: these synths have been given the slightest of sharp edges, to catch the unwary). Having bought the original version of "Rifts", I am grateful to Mr Lopatin for throwing this additional track, from the 2012 reissue, in my (and your) direction, gratis. You see, Virginia? There is a Santa Claus.