The Wily Filipino

My Bloody Valentine, The Concourse, San Francisco, 9/30/2009.

My Bloody Valentine was punishingly loud -- louder, perhaps, than the SUNN O)))) or Merzbow concerts I've attended. This isn't necessarily a good thing, even if I do enjoy the sensation of my ribcage and my nasal bone rattling the entire length of the concert; inevitably you'll have to wear earplugs, and if they're cheap Flents like mine, you run the risk of submerging MBV murk into non-trebly murk.

And at a venue much like an airplane hangar like the SF Design Center Concourse, it's diffused non-trebly murk, but Jane and Xochitl and Jens and I were about a fifth of the way up front, so it probably sounded better for us. And it then becomes hard to make out the thick layers of guitar, like the wobbly choral ocean bed to which "To Here Knows When" is anchored. (On the other hand, the guitar motifs are practically burned into your head: I woke up this morning and could still hear that ten-note riff from "When You Sleep" ringing somewhere back there.)

But nonetheless, this means that one could still enjoy the live My Bloody Valentine experience on a purely somatic level, your body vibrating in sympathy to the speakers and to everyone else. Add to this a whole array of flash strobes so bright you can see where the lights are attached to the ceiling through your closed eyelids -- well, you can see what I mean by "somatic". You could have been asleep and the music would have still burrowed through you.

I can't really provide a setlist -- Jens said he recognized songs from both albums and both EPs -- but as one can imagine, most of "Loveless" made an appearance. ("Loomer" was fantastic; MBV opened the set with "I Only Said" -- you know, it's the one with that repeating chirp -- went on for what felt like a blissful ten minutes.) They came on a little after 10:30, and finished right at midnight -- and as expected, around 11:35, "You Made Me Realise" began, culminating in 20-odd minutes of a tsunami of churning guitar feedback. One of my best concert experiences of 2008, in a year filled with them.

The Police / Elvis Costello and The Imposters, Shoreline, Mountain View, 7/14/2008.

At some point in your life, Dear Reader, you must have said to yourself -- and you probably wouldn't be reading this blog if you didn't -- you must have said to yourself, This is my favorite band. That band was The Police, back in 1983, at the tender age of [don't even ask], when I saved up my allowance to buy my very first album on cassette, Synchronicity, which was followed by a voracious rifling through their back catalog, beginning with Outlandos d'Amour. In hindsight I can see, even back then, the obsessive quality of my consumption: it wasn't enough to get the five studio albums; I had to go buy a bootleg Synchronicity T-shirt, and even that volume of The Secret Policemen's Ball, on vinyl for crying out loud, where a solitary Sting sings "Roxanne" without his fellow band members. (But my incipient critical faculties didn't cling to The Police for too long, fickle as they were; they were supplanted, in too-quick succession, by Talking Heads, U2, and The Cure (1984, 1985, and 1986 respectively) as my Favorite Band Of All Time, but no matter: The Police were the very first.

Just a few hours ago, with Son and Eloise, I finally fulfilled something of a lifelong and impossible dream of mine: to see The Police in concert. It feels odd to report that the highlight of the concert was Sting making a surprise appearance to sing a duet with Elvis Costello on "Alison", but the element of surprise gets me every time. (Costello also played "Pump It Up", "Radio Radio", "Watching the Detectives", "Everyday I Write The Book", "Clubland", "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding", and I swear they were playing "Accidents Will Happen" during the soundcheck, but he didn't play it.) But again, no matter: The Police gave a fantastic concert from start to finish, with my brain completely fried from what was technically 25 full years of waiting.

So, the setlist, as far as I can remember, below:

1. "A hundred billion bottles washed up on the shore."
2. "I hope my legs don't break."
3. "I'm a walking disaster."
4. "Echoes things that you said." / "Same tape I've had for years."
5. "Just like that old man in that book by Nabokov."
6. "Shame wells in my throat."
7. "I shake like an incurable."
8. "I resolved to call her up a thousand times a day."
9. "I will turn your face to alabaster."
10. "And no one's jamming their transmission."
11. "Looking like something that the cat brought in."
12. "And my LP records and they're all scratched." / "Rio riay riayo."


13. "I won't share you with another boy."
14. "There's a skeleton choking on a crust of bread."
15. "I always play the starring role."
16. "I keep crying baby baby please."


17. "I sold my house I sold my motor too."

Stevie Wonder, Shoreline Amphitheater, Mountain View, 7/6/08.

One of my earliest childhood memories ever -- come to think of it, this is the first time I've seen this clip from Sesame Street in color, since I watched it back in the day on a small black-and-white TV. I don't think it gets any funkier than this.

Three decades later, I finally saw him live for the first time at the Shoreline, just over the weekend with Joannie and Luna. An amazing concert all around -- not quite as tight a band as in the vintage video above, and with an audience a little more sedate than the kid in the red shirt, but with massive amounts of goodwill radiating outward from the stage, it wasn't hard to be swept up and feel overjoyed. (Despite the odd sequencing, at times: the crowd on their feet with "Higher Ground", only to sit back down with an extended jam on Chick Corea's "Spain". A great reminder, nonetheless, of Wonder's place as a titan of American popular music, one not "limited" to funk and soul.)

And I can't pick from my favorite 1-2-3 combos: was it the "Isn't She Lovely / Ribbon in the Sky / Overjoyed" combination halfway through, or "Signed Sealed Delivered / Sir Duke / I Wish" two hours in? Nevertheless: an unassailable selection of songs, a fantastic concert.

New American Pop Entry: Tongues Like Parrots.

A new entry, on Filipino musicians, on my American Pop blog, called Tongues Like Parrots.

You Wouldn't Get This From Any Other Guy.

Either Manila is the greatest concert city ever...

...or the most cursed.

Still: Rick!

When Did I Become Such A Music Fanboy?

A Musical Exercise: 6 from the '60s.

The rationale behind all this.

5 songs from the '50s.

And now 6 songs from the '60s, in chronological order:

1. Irma Thomas, "It's Raining"
1962

This is the second-greatest slow-dance song ever – second only to "Sabor a Mi" (also from a great movie, Wayne Wang's Chan Is Missing, and a decade later, John Sayles' Lone Star). Real-life spouses Roberto Benigni and Nicoletta Braschi danced to "It's Raining" at the end of Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law, and it was my first time to hear it.

I call it only the second-greatest because it's not really a slow-dance song. Irma Thomas is very much alone; if she's dancing at all, it's with herself. But you at least expect the song to end -- especially with the cheerful "drip drop" refrain echoing throughout -- with a knock on the door, or a sweep of the headlights across the window. Instead, there's a slight emotional shift -- just a little one, but it means everything -- in the third stanza: you think she's just waiting for an absent lover, but you realize the lover has left for good. And so she's left (and so are we) with a silent resignation, a surrender to the raindrops. "I guess I'll just go crazy tonight." What a last line.

Amazon link to the compilation Sweet Soul Queen of New Orleans

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2. The Spencer Davis Group, "Every Little Bit Hurts (Live)"
1965

I don't know the circumstances of this recording – probably a small club, people not paying much attention. And everyone messes up a bit, actually: Steve Winwood simply repeats the same stanza he sang earlier, the piano comes in a little late, the guitar plays the wrong chord at some point, an amp or speaker or something falls to the stage floor at 1:35. I have this image of Winwood singing his heart out while everything collapses around him.

The song -- a Brenda Holloway hit in 1964 written by Ed Cobb (who also wrote Gloria Jones' "Tainted Love") -- is anchored by a crystalline agony in Winwood's voice. He cries, he sighs, "yet you won't let me go," he sings, but we wonder who really keeps holding on.

Amazon link to the compilation Live Anthology 1965-1968

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3. The Beach Boys, "Wouldn't It Be Nice"
from the 1966 album Pet Sounds

It starts with a melody taken straight from a carnival roundabout, with an accordion thrown in. I've always wondered whether it was meant to sound parodic. But no, it's pure innocence, bursting with the thrill of youth and the wishful dreams of adulthood; divorced, no pun intended, from reality, the natural bloom of an endless summer. The song finally peaks with a crescendo of professions of love, and the romantic sweep makes you almost forget that the song ends with a parting ("Good night my baby / Sleep tight my baby").

Indeed, the song is driven by a simple, almost unassailable logic:

We could be married,
And then we'd be happy,

perhaps an equation that only young people in love could truly believe, and it's a testament to the Beach Boys' wide-eyed, eternal youth that you, jaded and older and carrying more baggage than you'd like to admit, even while you're listening to the overplayed song on the supermarket speakers as you pay for your groceries, can have faith in this if only for a moment.

Amazon link.

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4. The Beatles, "And Your Bird Can Sing"
from the 1966 album Revolver

When I was nine or ten the Beatles stole into my life. (Even before that, when I was three or four, apparently I used to dance to these four musical thieves, boogying down in the living room while my mom put "Taxman" on the turntable, my toes digging into the green carpet.)

But that year I was nine, an entirely new universe burst open from the speakers, a moptopped riot in my ear. Issuing forth from the hi-fi was this magic, the way colonial officials would enchant natives with phonographs, transfixing them with the ghost of the machine inside.

It was at that age that I was turned on -- not in the late '60s sense, for this was 1980 and I was too young and barely conscious of drugs -- but miraculously electrified, jolted, opened to a new magical sphere of listening and hearing and comprehending, as if my nine-year old skinny self had waited all that time for "Nowhere Man" or "Girl" or "A Hard Day's Night". Of course I understood none of it, and its relative emotional simplicities were still lost on a kid who was still deep into "The Electric Company" or Saturday-morning cartoons.

It was the young Beatles -- the baby-faced Paul McCartney -- that my mother adored. So did I, really -- singing along to "Yesterday", though I can't stand it now. My mother dismissed everything after Revolver – even Sgt. Pepper's was too noisy, too chaotic -- and it was more than a decade later that I really began to appreciate the joy of the White Album, of Lennon's acid tenor keening through the grooves. But Revolver was (and is) the touchstone, something my mother and I still share. I think she would pick "Here There and Everywhere" as her favorite; for me though, it's "And Your Bird Can Sing."

The lyrics, whatever they may mean, hover around the edge of comprehension and unattainability ("you can't see me", "you can't hear me"), but the guitar is not beseeching; it soars and dips in and out of the song with utter delight. "And Your Bird Can Sing" has a guitar solo that would be prolonged in other people's hands, but here it's cut deliciously short to fit the strictures of a pop single, with an insistent guitar riff sneaking through the bridge and chorus, running through my blood.

Twenty years later it is still Revolver that reaches out to a much older self. But in the car when I'm singing along to "And Your Bird Can Sing", it still feels like I'm nine years old.

Amazon link.

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5. Van Morrison, "Sweet Thing"
from the 1968 album Astral Weeks

There is a kind of corniness in the jarringly dated slang ("Hey it's me, I'm dynamite", "just to dig it all") that shakes you out of its timelessness -- Edenic images, promises of eternal youth, all the flutes and plucked strings and guitars, but it reminds the listener, who may look at Big Ivan now and see what looks like a portly, perhaps crotchety, old man, that he was once a wavy-haired hippie troubadour poet, dappled with freckles and spring foliage, the musical descendant of Yeats. It's the words that makes the song slip back and forth from 1968 to an eternal present, where Morrison continues to murmur to his "sugar baby." I don't know what everything in the song means, if not a song of praise to the gift of a woman's arms, but, as Morrison sings, "I'll be satisfied not to read in between the lines."

Amazon link.

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6. The Beatles, "Here Comes The Sun"
from the 1969 album Abbey Road

If you ask me, the utter beauty of this song alone (okay, this and "Something") almost solidifies an argument for George Harrison as the coolest Beatle. (Plus he was in Monty Python's Life of Brian.)

This is the saddest happy song ever, lighter than all your melancholies, radiantly lit from within.

Amazon link.

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The Spring 2008 Mix.

I haven't done this in ages, and I thought I'd try a simpler and more user-friendly, if somewhat less elegant, interface than Box.net for the music. No, you can't download these anymore either, but that keeps me off the hook.

And so: twelve songs, in no order except for a vague mixtape-y flow between them, that I loved in the first four months of 2008, at thewilyfilipino.muxtape.com:

1. Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, "Bag of Hammers"

- From the 2008 album We Brave Bee Stings And All.
- Official website.

"The trick is / You do not get on that interstate bus / The catch is / You stay and see what becomes of us." (I really will be writing a review of this album, I promise.)

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2. Donovan, "Get Thy Bearings"

- From the 1968 album The Hurdy Gurdy Man.
- Official website.

Donovan gets funky. And yes, that's also Biz Markie's "I Told You."

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3. The Budos Band, "Origin Of Man"

- From the 2007 album The Budos Band II.
- Official website.

This is what I imagine: Mahmoud Ahmed by way of Staten Island, to accompany the very beginning of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, but all the apes start dancing instead.

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4. Radiohead, "All I Need"

- From the 2007 album In Rainbows.
- Official website.

"I'm the next act / Waiting in the wings / I'm an animal / Trapped in your hot car."

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5. Taken by Cars, "Uh Oh"

- From the 2008 album Endings of a New Kind.
- Myspace page.

Quoting myself here: "The second track, "Uh Oh" (the album's real beginning) has a perfect opening, as instruments fall rapidly into formation: drum heartbeat, stabbing guitar riff, and suddenly, best of all, a synth refrain parachuted in from 1982."

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6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Maps"

- From the 2003 album Fever to Tell.
- Official website.

I hadn't heard this song before until Rock Band, to tell you the truth. I love the way the notes cut diagonally across the frets: red red red red, yellow yellow yellow yellow, or something like that.

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7. The Cool Kids, "A Little Bit Cooler"

- From the 2007 album The Bake Sale.
- Myspace page.

"Does that belt say 'Star Wars'?" An ode to being a nerd: "I'm in the crib Saturday night with my Sega that's right / Playing a game of that Street Fighter, Street Fighter, Street Fighter / I guess that makes you think you cooler than me / But any girl you can pull I can pull 'em with ease."

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8. Fujiya & Miyagi, "Ankle Injuries"

- From the 2007 album Transparent Things.
- Official website.

I drove up and down from Oakland to Davis and back twice a week, and this song -- plus Can's "Uphill" -- provided the perfect driving soundtrack.

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9. m-flo, "Hands"

- From the 2000 album Planet Shining.
- Official website.

You'll be hearing that piano riff in your dreams, I swear.

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10. Little Dragon, "Test"

- From the 2007 album Little Dragon.
- Official website.

"A test, a test, a test. No rest, no rest, no rest."

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11. Captain Audio, "Lemon"

- From the 2000 album Luxury or Whether It Is Better To Be Loved Than Feared.
- Myspace page.

I heard this on UT Austin's college radio one morning: at first I thought it was some long-lost Liz Phair track, with wah-wah guitar and ragged "We Will Rock You" handclaps and footstomps thrown in.

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12. Led Zeppelin, "The Ocean"

- From the 1973 album Houses of the Holy.
- Official website.

"Now i'm singin all my songs to the girl who won my heart / She is only three six years old / now that's a real fine way to start."

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Again, the songs are here: thewilyfilipino.muxtape.com.

Thao with The Get Down Stay Down, Rasputin, Berkeley, 4/12/2008.

Thao with The Get Down Stay Down played for about 30 adults -- and one little girl dancing -- at Rasputin Records earlier this afternoon, and I hope you were there because it was fantastic. "I've never played at this level of heat before," Thao Nguyen told the audience. It was 74 degrees out on Telegraph this afternoon and possibly just a little hotter inside. But no matter -- their particular brand of witty, literate folk-pop, beatboxing and all, was perfect for an afternoon that felt an awful lot like summer.

The setlist, I think:

1. ? [new song, maybe, or something from Like the Linen?]
2. Big Kid Table
3. Swimming Pools
4. Beat (Health, Life and Fire)
5. Feet Asleep
6. Bag of Hammers
7. Violet
8. Fear and Convenience

Full album review of the band's Kill Rock Stars album We Brave Bee Stings And All coming soon on this blog, but if they're ever in your neighborhood (though the last show of their tour with Xiu Xiu is tonight at the Bottom of the Hill) do check them out.

Taken By Cars Interview.

Image swiped without permission from MTV Philippines.

This is my third Taken By Cars-related blog post -- the first was about a June 2007 concert of theirs, the second was a review of their superb debut album, Endings of a New Kind, my favorite album released in 2008 so far -- and this third post, I am thrilled to write, is an actual e-mail interview with the band!

The "interview" -- I'm hoping to actually see them in the flesh this summer -- took place over email in March 2008. The questions were answered collaboratively by all the members of the band.

And here we go:

1. Where does the name come from?

We wanted to use a name that will stick with us for the long term. So we were thinking of mixing and matching some terms, then Kong came up with 'Taken by Cars'. According to him, this was simply based on the fact that we all spend most of our time listening to music in our cars. We all thought that the name connotes movement and a certain sense of mystery so it was a perfect fit for the sound that we play.

2. How did you folks meet? Were you in high school bands, were you classically trained, that sort of thing?

The boys all went to the same high school and were in a band ever since. Back then we were covering 90's alternative rock and even classic rock. Then we met Sarah along the way and continued our stint as a cover band. None of us thought of breaking out really, we were just side entertainment in friends' parties or school events and such. Then by mid-2006, we decided to start writing our own stuff and taking the next step.

3. I really like these lines from "Logistical Nightmare": "Hands to the sky / We're gods tonight / A million songs to listen to / Thank the letters / I thank you." I'm thinking they're about the music writing process, or the act of performing on stage -- but what *is* the song about?

It's actually one of the happier songs in the album. It's dedicated to the promise that life should be about being grateful (thus the words "thank the letters, i thank you"), about making mistakes and learning from them (thus the words "kiss the ground where I fall"), about not taking yourself or other people too seriously and acknowledging that life is about the little things that move us sometimes ("out of breath, whispering a letdown, moving smile, signaling a turnaround, candid shot, a face to launch a thousand pieces of a dream").

4. What were you listening to while composing / recording the tracks? (I'm hearing Bloc Party, Interpol -- maybe some early-80s stuff?) Was there a particular sound you were shooting for on the record? (I'm thinking as well of the lead vocals, and the synthesizer riff on "Uh Oh".)

We were listening to a lot of Bloc Party and Interpol prior to making the album and during recording also..but we were listening to a lot of other things as well. The energy and the vibe of those two bands inspired us no doubt. But then we all have our individual influences too. The things we listen to change constantly. We never really want to rely on a fixed peg for the sound we're trying to achieve.

5. I've always been interested in musical histories, in formative listening experiences -- what were yours? Were you folks listening to Nirvana and Pearl Jam like everyone else back in the '90s, or did you have different musical backgrounds? Were there bands you wanted to emulate?

Ya, we were definitely listening to Nirvana and Pearl Jam back in the 90's. But, I think there was more to the 90's than grunge..it was also the era of ethereal, dream pop, and shoegaze. Bands like Lush, My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Chapterhouse, and Slowdive, among many others, were around at that time. Other than that there's always been the 80's - new wave, dark wave stuff like Depeche Mode and Tears for Fears and Duran Duran. There's so much more to that too though. There were bands like The Ocean Blue, The Bible, The Railway Children... Presently we like the dance rock, electro stuff..that of bands like CSS, Digitalism, LCD Soundsystem and many other things. Some pop ( Madonna) and trance (Tiesto, ATB) and house as well. We could go on and on!

6. What's the next project? Are you working on any new songs and trying them out in concert yet?

We're looking to come up with new songs very soon and hopefully be able to play them at gigs already.

7. And finally, the proverbial desert island disc question: If you had to be stuck on a desert island with just one album / CD, what would that be?

If you put a gun to my head and asked me that question I still would not be able to give an answer. A compilation maybe! A cd containing one song from all the bands/singers I just mentioned! haha

Little Dragon, Elbo Room, San Francisco, 4/1/08.

Image swiped from Last.fm, in turn swiped from their CD.

For an hour last night at the Elbo Room, Little Dragon was the greatest band in the world.

Well, my new favorite band right now, at least. Their 2007 debut album on Peacefrog (it's also available on iTunes, by the way) is just the right kind of sublime -- an effortless downtempo RnB simmer, one of my favorites this year so far -- and their absolutely tight playing last night, at their very first U.S. concert ever, confirmed this.

Little Dragon is a band, first of all, and this is even clearer in concert. (All those tricky drum fills are performed live.) But there's no denying the fact that Yukimi Nagano's voice -- wonderfully wispy, soulfully expressive -- is the real draw. She's also totally riveting to watch on stage, especially when she seems to lose herself in the music, dancing and twisting just before she begins to sing.

They started the set off with "Twice". The last three songs were "Constant Surprises" (right before the encore), "Wink", and "Scribbled Paper" (about one of their favorite poets from Gothenburg).

"Test", of course, was somewhere in there. So was a ridiculously funky "Recommendation" (prompting an echo of "Recommendation" from the crowd during the chorus, all embellished with fluty keyboards and major hi-hat action), a slinky "Forever" (that "ha ha ha ho ho" refrain towards the end was even better live), "Turn Left" (and yes, the crowd was singing along to the "pa pa ra ro pa ra pa" refrain at the end as well), "After the Rain" (is this song about Hurricane Katrina or something?), and a few songs (one called "Tendencies", plus two new songs, "Roundabout" and "Looking Glass") that I didn't recognize.

Anyhow, as you folks can tell, I enjoyed the concert immensely. Only two U.S. dates left -- Goleta tonight, Los Angeles on Friday -- so catch 'em if they're in your area! (Here's a good idea of how they sound live -- a concert recording at Cargo in London earlier this year.)

p.s. Eloise and I were dancing up front right next to the stage, even to the music played by the DJ in between sets. (Geraldine and Kennedy and Stephanie were somewhere in the middle.) At some point Eloise wonders out loud why there were only five other people dancing in the club. (Everyone else was doing the hipster nod, which Little Dragon parodies so wonderfully in the "Test" video.) "Probably because we're from the East Bay," I said. She turns around to ask the woman next to us where she was from. We were right.

p.s. 2. Sorry, Darren: I didn't take any photos, though I was about three feet away from Yukimi's toes.

The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2007 Edition.

So yes, this list is awfully late. And it's rather odd, because the two bands I probably listened to most this year -- mostly because I did a massive, expensive-at-import-prices excavation of their discographies -- don't show up on this list. They happen to be two wonderful Japanese bands, Spangle call Lilli line (here's their profile on keikaku.net) and chatmonchy. I suspect this is because both may be best appreciated in terms of some amazing singles, some of which have been featured on this blog before). (Come to think of it, my favorite album of the year is also of Japanese provenance.)

And at the end of this year -- especially since I was so busy in December and January -- I found myself in the depressing position of being part of a weary chorus, led by Pitchfork and the late lamented Stylus and the Village Voice and every other music blogger out there, all trumpeting the praises of the same albums repeatedly and all swooning over "All My Friends". So did I.

Nonetheless, I'm a little reluctant to add to the verbiage, so I broke from tradition and did the next best lazy-ass thing. For a few obvious choices, I just took reviews from the usual places (actually, just the first page of reviews on Google or Metacritic), pasted the text into online software, and generated a word-frequency count. (This exercise would have been a little more productive if I had added more reviews, but again: too lazy.) The results are below, excepting articles and words like "drums" or "guitar", or song titles. And hey, it seems to work.

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And now, the best music I heard all year, in alphabetical order:

1. Battles, Mirrored (2007)

6 METAL, 5 JAZZ, 5 WORK, 5 PLAY, 5 SICK, 4 TECHNOLOGY, 4 DANCE, 4 MEN, 3 MATH, 3 ASTOUNDING, 3 AVANT, 3 ELECTRONICS, 3 TOGETHER, 2 HAMMERS, 2 ECSTATIC, 2 FUCK, 2 BOOM, 2 BIG, 2 JUMBLE, 2 VIRTUOSITY, 2 TECHNICAL, 2 PROFICIENCY, 2 LOOPS, 2 THRILLING, 2 BRILLIANT, 2 MACHINE, 2 ROBOT, 2 SKILLS, 2 SYMPHONIC, 2 PROG, 2 PROCESSED, 2 COLLECTIVE, 2 GLORIOUS

Amazon link.
Video for "Atlas" on YouTube.
Official website.

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2. Chillitees, Extra Rice (2006)

I don't think I'm the right audience for this album, which seems crafted as background music for making out at 2:30 in the morning with some hottie in your apartment after the bars have closed and the prospect of a snack at Goodah! isn't as appealing, as of course it shouldn't be, as a possible roll in the hay. But that's what Extra Rice sounds like: a polished slice of Pinoy after-club chill, with keyboards that wouldn't be out of place on an early-70s CTI album, and lyrics just lovingly drenched with post-coital afterglow. "Ikaw ang paglunas sa aking pangungulila," Uela Basco sings the morning after to a lover in bed who's not entirely hers to keep, if you know what I mean. Either way, it's consummately performed and produced, and, particularly for the Philippines, just sounds deliciously illicit.

Amazon link.
Video for "Sama Na" on YouTube.
Official website.

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3. Anna Järvinen, Jag fick feeling (2007)

It's not easy to write about song-based pop albums when one has no notion of what the lyrics are about. In this case, I'd like to think it's about love. Anna Järvinen used to be one of the lead singers for the band Granada -- pretty music, certainly, but nothing compared to the pristine beauty of her debut album, Jag fick feeling.

But I'll tell you about the songs anyway. It's hard to pick a favorite, and why: there's the torch balladry of "Nedgångslåten", complete with a forlorn whistled riff; the unpredictable flowing verse structure of "Götgatan"; the unashamed "la la la" ending of "PS, Tjörn", lighter than air; a flute intro to the lovely "Svensktalande bättre folk", which feels like a Roger Nichols - Paul Williams track cut for A&M (and I mean that with very high praise).

It's not easy to place a finger on the musical antecedents of this strummed folk-pop -- that's Dungen as her backing band, by the way -- though the inevitable comparisons are to Nina Persson back in the pre-Life days, though not as twee. (If I had to pick a reference point on the vocal-creaminess spectrum: Harriet Wheeler? Bic Runga? Though stylistically they're not even the same.)

Whatever it all means, it's one of my favorite albums of the year. Listening to it the first time, I was looking out my window at the orange leaves falling to the ground and it felt like a lonely love letter from Sweden had just arrived in the mail.

Amazon link.
Video for "Götgatan" on YouTube.
MySpace page.

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4. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver (2007)

8 DANCE, 8 PUNK, 7 EMOTIONAL, 4 ELECTRO, 4 DISCO, 4 ACID, 4 SONGWRITING, 4 TEENAGER, 3 RHYTHM, 3 OBSESSIVE, 3 DEPTH, 3 FUNK, 3 MELODIC, 3 TECHNO, 3 GROOVE, 2 CLUB, 2 FUNKY, 2 INFECTIOUS, 2 DETROIT, 2 KRAUTROCK, 2 HIPSTER, 2 EPIPHANIES, 2 LOSS, 2 REMINISCENCE, 2 REGRET

Amazon link.
Video for "All My Friends" on YouTube.
Official website.

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5. Midlake, The Trials of Van Occupanther (2006)

7 TIME, 7 TEXAS, 6 YOUNG, 6 ART, 4 LOVE, 3 OLD, 3 CONCEPT, 3 LIFE, 3 HARMONIES, 3 MAC, 3 SEVENTIES, 3 EARLY, 3 STORY, 2 FOREST, 2 ACOUSTIC, 2 MEANINGFUL, 2 CLEAR, 2 PASTORAL, 2 FM, 2 VILLAGE, 2 FLEETWOOD, 2 RETROSPECT, 2 MOODY

Amazon link.
Video for "Roscoe" on YouTube.
Official website.

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6. MONO & World's End Girlfriend, Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain (2006)

(Reposted from an earlier entry over a year ago, in January.)

A five-part chamber music suite for string quartet and post-rock band. A collaboration between Japanese composer Katsuhiko Maeda and the thunderous Tokyo quartet that is MONO, the album is surely going to be one of my favorites of the year (and it's only January!).

Doubtless a lot of music fans more knowledgeable than I would point to music from a different tradition -- say, Shostakovich, Pärt, or Gorecki -- as more complex, more profoundly moving. But the difference is that MONO rocks: the moment in "Part Three" when MONO's Mogwai-influenced wall of guitar comes crashing down on the orchestra is a cathartic sonic event, only made more poignant by the calm resignation of the finale.

It's hard to describe the widescreen sorrow at the core of this music. It's something as mundane as the inherent loneliness of automobiles stranded on the freeway at sunset. But the ineffable grandeur it evokes is not just exit music for a film, it's Exit Music for real: ruined cities, a threnody for the broken earth, the dying sun's last defiant flare before the beginning of a cold, dead universe. Or as C.K. Williams puts it in his poem "Light," "…everything ends, / world, after-world, even their memory, steamed away / like the film of uncertain vapor of the last of the luscious rain."

Amazon link.
Official MONO website.
MySpace page for World's End Girlfriend.

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7. The National, Boxer (2007)

5 BARITONE, 5 SUBTLE, 4 GROWER, 4 BRILLIANT, 3 SPACE, 3 IMAGERY, 3 MOOD, 3 POWERFUL, 2 PRETTY, 2 AMERICAN, 2 DRAMATIC, 2 METAPHOR, 2 BEAUTIFUL, 2 DENSE, 2 RESTRAINT, 2 NIGHT, 2 PERSONAL, 2 JOURNEY, 2 DIFFICULT, 2 ACCLAIM, 2 MASTERPIECE, 2 MODERN, 2 BED, 2 PUNCH, 2 MELANCHOLY, 2 LEONARD, 2 COHEN

Amazon link.
Video for "Mistaken for Strangers" on Youtube.
Official website.

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8. Kanye West, Graduation (2007)

9 HIMSELF, 8 LIFE, 7 GREAT, 5 HOT, 5 SOUL, 4 ELECTRONIC, 3 HOOKS, 3 CHICKS, 3 CELEB, 3 CONSISTENT, 3 SUMMER, 3 PRIDE, 2 ELECTRO, 2 TIGHT, 2 COOL, 2 PLEASURE, 2 CELEBRATORY, 2 PERSONAL, 2 SUBSTANTIAL, 2 FAMILIAR, 2 CARTOON, 2 LEGEND, 2 DAMN, 2 STATUS, 2 LOVE, 2 PUBLIC, 2 EGO, 2 ROCKING, 2 BOASTS, 2 JEWELRY, 2 VUITTON

Amazon link.
Video for "The Good Life" on YouTube.
Official website.

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The 2006 list, plus the runners-up.

The 2005 list, plus the runners-up.

The 2004 list.

The 2003 list.

The 2002 list.

The 2001 list.

The Best Music I Heard All Year, 2007 Edition: The Runners-Up.

As always, my (very late) list of favorite albums I heard in 2007 is limited to just that, which includes albums I missed the first go-round. (This is why none of these albums are actually from 2007.)

The three runners-up, in alphabetical order:

1. Eluvium, Talk amongst the Trees (2005).

Ghostly, static haze lingering at the portals of perception.

Amazon link.
Official website.

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2. Simon Dawes, Carnivore (2006)

Brash, immensely enjoyable power pop.

Amazon link.
Promo video on YouTube.
The Simon Dawes blog.

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3. Some Tweetlove, Cafard Mondial (2006)

If only for the shivering beauty of "La Nostalgie Des Hauts-Fourneaux".

Album link (on Matamore).
Official website.

Love Ko 'To!

Image taken from -- oh, you all know where it's from.

So there's this project I've been working on for some time (and to be roundtabled here next month -- oops, they have my affiliation wrong!) that deals with the question of Pinoys and music and how Pinoy performers explain why and how they do what they do. A big excerpt from my writings might explain this better:

In my interviews, Overseas Performing Artist returnees constantly spoke of a spontaneous and naturally Filipino ability to imitate. As a skeptical cultural anthropologist, I initially wanted to dismiss this out of hand. There was, of course, no such thing as a natural ability to imitate, much more a naturally Filipino one.

But the discourse that supported this supposedly inherent mimetic ability could be consistently drawn from over a century's worth of history. What was one to do, for instance, with Dean Worcester's assertion in 1900 that "the Filipino ...is endowed with great talent for imitation.... ...in a short time [the Filipino] learns how to play any sort of an instrument, but the bands...are poor because of their lack of knowledge of principles, and many of them play by ear without understanding a single note?"

Or of the New York Times reporter who wrote in the twenties, "Where music is concerned, the Filipinos are known as the Italians of the East. Add their own barbaric musical strain -- a blend of Oriental and Spanish 'ear culture' -- and you get an idea of their adeptness with the torturous instruments of jazz?" Or of essayist Pico Iyer, and anthropologist Arjun Appadurai after him, who, after watching a Filipino band play the music of John Denver, would pronounce Filipinos as "[creating] a nation of make-believe Americans?"

Or the countless Filipinos who would assert the seeming truism, "Magaling manggaya ang mga Pilipino [Filipinos are great at imitation]?" Or Danny, a keyboardist who had played in Tokyo and Pasadena, who told me, matter-of-factly, "Filipinos can imitate any sound?" Or RJ, a guitarist I interviewed in the summer of 2007, who said, "Ang Pilipino, sila lang ang tanging may dila na katulad nang loro [Filipinos are the only people with tongues like parrots]?"

A "natural ability to sing" and a "natural ability to imitate" are two different things, of course, but you get the general idea: to sing well is seen as natural for and by Filipinos. (Not me, of course, as my friends can attest. But give me a karaoke mic in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other and I can do the collected oeuvre of Thom Yorke fairly well.)

So I am quite tickled by the idea that 3 out of the 14 finalists for the Voice of McDonald's II competition -- which I found out about via the New York Times -- are Filipino. (The third, if you even had to guess, is the Canadian guy.)

And I just love the fact that Mary Yu -- who does those cute hand gestures (and more) on "Son of a Preacher Man" -- is a choir member and "worship/song leader in our church." Holy Dusty Springfield! That's sure some church -- sign me up!

Meanwhile, speaking of other Filipinos, my friend Carolyn (who isn't Pinay but knows how to spot 'em) sent me this hilarious YouTube video of a Southwest Airlines commercial. That guy's gotta be Pinoy. What's even funnier is that I could totally see a Filipino guy doing this in real life, if I actually went to clubs.

Taken By Cars, "Endings of a New Kind".

My friend Ruthie, who's all the way in Manila, and I (over here in Oakland) have this ongoing exchange over IM: she envies my being able to watch, say, Explosions in the Sky, and I'm envious of her being able to see, for instance, Up Dharma Down, pretty much any evening of the week. She's probably right, of course, but I would love to be able to catch my new favorite Filipino band discovery, Taken by Cars, in concert again.

I do like championing music I hear on this blog, even if everyone already knows who they are, but it's especially cooler to me if they happen to be Filipino (for obvious reasons). I saw Taken by Cars live at saGuijo in June of 2007, and I realize now, looking at my old entry, that I didn't really write anything about them. This was probably because I was being the uber-fanboy with the two other bands, but I do remember asking their lead singer (Was it her, drinking outside? How could I have forgotten that? How much did I have to drink?) about when their debut album was going to be released.

Well, it's finally out. The name Taken by Cars suggests a soundtrack to an abduction. Or escape. Either way (and those contradictions are present in the music), their debut album Endings of a New Kind is a driving record, no question about it. The propulsive rhythms suggest a restless urban energy, speeding metal vehicles, dangerous sideswipes in the dark, streetlights reflected off kilter in windshields, shards of glass twinkling dully on the pavement. In Manila that kind of driving happens anytime, but this is an evening record for sure. There's a chill to this music, but it's great for dancing to: imagine a sweaty tangle of brown limbs on the dance floor, if people weren't so shy at saGuijo (and the place wasn't so small). Cold and hot: those contradictions again.

It's not necessarily groundbreaking music, but if the idea of, say, Bloc Party, fronted by a woman vocalist sounds appealing to you, then Taken By Cars should be worth checking out. Endings of a New Kind is full of a nervous, postpunk energy -- maybe a little too clean to sound like the bruised guitars of Gang of Four, but it's certainly from the same musical gene pool. And it's simply great stuff.

The second track, "Uh Oh" (the album's real beginning) has a perfect opening, as instruments fall rapidly into formation: drum heartbeat, stabbing guitar riff, and suddenly, best of all, a synth refrain parachuted in from 1982. "Here I am in full battle gear," sings Sarah Marco. "Here I am wanting you," she adds, and it's a tribute to her voice -- of limited range, maybe, but perfect for communicating this hovering between desire and defense, between languor and tension. It's slurry and drugged for one song (as on "Colourway"), breathy and poppy on another (as on "The Afterhours", with its swirl of crunchy electronic squiggles). (Her phrasings are from the same era, too -- Anja Huwe? Siouxsie? I can't tell.)

The guitar introduction to "All for a Tuesday" seems to steal a bit from Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" -- there's no hiding their musical influences, which is okay -- but this track showcases the twin guitar attack from Bryce Zialcita and Siopao Chua: chug and jangle on the left, soar and swoop on the right. "Logistical Nightmare" rests on a spiky foundation of driving rhythms and piercing guitar chimes, then positively levitates when it gets to the chorus. "Sexy confrontation" indeed.

If I have one small complaint, it has to do with the sequencing: all the fast songs are in a cramped queue on the first half of the album, with the second half being noticeably brighter and club-oriented than the first. ("Stereolove" is probably the weakest track in the collection, as if some DJ simply took the vocal track and plopped it onto a lackluster techno remix.) But we are at least rewarded with the concluding "Shapeshifter", though it does nothing of the sort, except that it builds into an uncoiling, multivocal crescendo that ends the album on a high note.

p.s. to Ruthie: Go get the album!

p.s.2. While the CD can be purchased at their gigs, mp3s can be downloaded at splintr.com, though I haven't tried it yet.

Song of the Day.

Just because: Eraserheads, "Huwag Mo Nang Itanong" (Cutterpillow, 1995)

Hika ang inabot ko
Nang piliting sumabay sa'yo
Hanggang kanto
Ng isipan mong parang Sweepstakes
Ang hirap manalo

Ngayon pagdating ko sa bahay
Ibaba ang iyong kilay
Ayoko ng ingay

Huwag mo nang itanong sa akin
Di ko rin naman sasabihin
Huwag mo nang itanong sa akin
At di ko na iisipin

Field trip sa may pagawaan ng lapis
Ay katulad ng buhay natin
Isang mahabang pila
Mabagal at walang katuturan

Ewan ko hindi ko alam
Puwede bang huwag na lang
Nating pag-usapan

Huwag mo nang itanong sa akin
Di ko rin naman sasabihin
Huwag mo nang itanong sa akin
At di ko na iisipin

Ewan ko hindi ko alam
Puwede bang huwag na lang
Natin pag-usapan

Huwag mo nang itanong sa akin
Di ko rin naman sasabihin
Huwag mo nang itanong sa akin
At di ko na iisipin

Huwag na lang
Huwag na lang

Ten Years Old This Year.

My friend Karen reminds me that I haven't updated my blog in almost a month. Well, I've been busy. I haven't even come up with my usual year-end lists (and this year, the music list is rather predictable). Stay tuned for those though; the post on my favorite movies is shaping up pretty nicely.

But since this is the first post of 2008, I thought I'd remind you readers of the inexorable passage of time: everything below is ten years old this year.

A list of some of the pop singles of 1998 tells me that very few of these have aged particularly well (not that they were ever very good in the first place):

- Shania Twain's "You're Still The One"
- LeAnn Rimes' "How Do I Live"
- Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" (okay, I actually really like this song)
- Madonna's "Ray Of Light" (this one too, plus it has the second-greatest Madonna video ever, next only to "Lucky Star")
- Stardust's "Music Sounds Better With You"
- Marcy Playground's "Sex And Candy"
- Aerosmith's "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing"
- Alanis Morissette's "Thank U"

and of course, the theme song from the biggest movie of 1998, and possibly even the decade, Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." The horror.

Meanwhile, some very good artists released some very middling albums: Whitechocolatespaceegg, Hello Nasty, Is This Desire?, Mutations, Angels With Dirty Faces. I bought them all that year and I don't think I've listened to them since then.

But for every single by Savage Garden, Matchbox 20, Third Eye Blind, Jennifer Paige, and Creed -- god, just typing these names makes my skin crawl -- there were at least a few bright spots: Lauryn Hill's debut album, Jay-Z's "Hard Knock Life", Black Star, Buena Vista Social Club, The Boy With the Arab Strap, New Radicals' "You Get What You Give", and Music Has The Right To Children.

But yeah, think about it: it's been ten years.

Best Concert Year Ever.

34. Shonen Knife, Slim's, SF, 12/11/07.

(Snagged by Laurel, since we were standing in front of the monitors.)

There used to be a time, back in those days when Kurt Cobain was still alive and saying things like "When I finally got to see them live, I was transformed into a hysterical nine-year-old girl at a Beatles concert," Shonen Knife was being derided as part of some Hello Kitty Orientalist Conspiracy, only valued for being petite and cute and not having real musical chops and playing sub-Ramones songs. Well. That's clearly because they've never seen Shonen Knife live.

Funny, too: I was properly introduced to Laurel about three years ago at a Shonen Knife concert, also at Slim's, and we've been carrying halves of a BFF medallion ever since, ha ha. (Just be gentle when you pull out the feeding tube.)

And with that, my concert year comes to an end -- 34 shows!!! -- with some of the most memorable concerts I've ever been to, period. (And since this is an end-of-the-year thing, I'd like to say "thanks" to my 2007 concert buddies too: Laurel, Rinna, Eloise & Son & Weiss, Lan & Juan, Jens, Randall, Karen & Craig, Romeo, Roy, Talaya & Ben, Jeannie, & the other Eloise (who calls the other Eloise "the other Eloise" too). Here's to 2008.)

Best Concert Year Ever highlights:

4. Midlake, Bottom of the Hill, 3/4/07.

I didn't write anything down, so here's Midlake's setlist, off the top of my head:

1. We Gathered In Spring
2. Roscoe
3. Van Occupanther
4. In This Camp
5. Balloon Maker
6. Some Of Them Were Superstitious
7. Children of the Grounds [at least that's what the title sounded like]
8. Young Bride
9. Chasing After Deer
10. Bandits
11. Head Home

[encore]

12. It Covers The Hillside
13. Branches

Exit music: Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne"

And I dug how people were singing along to America's "Sister Golden Hair" while Midlake was setting up the stage. Needless to say, Midlake was just fantastic.

Other random things:

- The new song rocked harder than most Midlake songs, i.e., big crunching guitar solo in the middle.
- The DVD projecting the films behind them broke down at some point, but I seem to remember something from Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible."
- I've never seen so much gear for a small-club performance before; they were unloading a U-Haul trailer and the equipment basically covered half the passageway in front of the restrooms at the Bottom of the Hill.

5. Gene Loves Jezebel, Red Devil Lounge, SF, 3/8/07.

Michael Aston, the lead singer, called me "a sick motherfucker," but that's okay. (I had yelled out for "The Motion of Love.") Later he elaborated: "No single heterosexual has ever requested 'The Motion of Love.' But then we're in San Francisco." (The woman next to me said, "I love that song, and I'm straight!" Maybe I should have asked for her number or something.)

Okay -- so I'm not the biggest Gene Loves Jezebel fan, and, I swear, I can probably only really recognize three songs in their entire oeuvre. So I was pleasantly surprised at how kickass Aston's backup band was.

What I remember, kind of:

- "Don't Fear The Reaper"
- an acoustic version of "Desire"
- a Doors song played on FM radio all the time, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was
- "Suspicion" somewhere in there
- "Exploding Girl" dedicated to "the people of Palestine and their struggle"
- "Gorgeous," of course
- women climbing up on stage and practically molesting Michael Aston

p.s. To the random drunk/high hot chick who danced with me, drank my beer, rubbed up against me, and gave me a kiss: thank you.

9. LCD Soundsystem, Mezzanine, SF, 4/30/07.

LCD Soundsystem's setlist, if my beer-fogged mind can remember:

- Us and Them
- Daft Punk Is Playing At My House (speeded up a notch)
- Time to Get Away
- North American Scum (great shout-along for this one)
- All My Friends (probably the highlight of the concert, just a slow-driving accretion of layers)

(note: here's where the order gets tricky, because it's late and I'm tired and I had a good amount to drink, so take it with a grain of salt)

- Tribulations (excellent)
- Watch The Tapes (more shout-along for this song)
- Movement (rawk!)
- Yeah (plus Murphy does a series of drum/cowbell solos on this one)

(encore)

- Someone Great
- (didn't recognize this one, though it sounded vaguely familiar, like something from the '80s; rocked harder than usual. A cover maybe? The refrain sounded like "I need it") [This turned out to be Joy Division's "No Love Lost".]
- New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down

10. Explosions in the Sky / Eluvium, Slim's, SF, 5/1/2007.

To see a nice chunk of Temporary Recordings' roster in concert -- including Mono -- in a span of five days is absolutely thrilling. So it was with great excitement that I caught this particular sold-out show.

Eluvium started the concert. Not sure how to describe the live experience, since it's just Matthew Cooper with a guitar, hunched over laptop and keyboards for the most part, plus projected loops of film in the background, featuring birds flying in circles around a smokestack. Interestingly, he didn't play any of the solo piano pieces, or even the Philip Glass-like compositions, but the long, droning melodies slowly being overtaken by cascading sheets of noise. Beautiful stuff, but loud -- members of the audience were pressing hard on their earplugs.

The setlist, I think (as usual, not sure of the titles):

- Ostinato
- Under The Water It Glowed
- Taken
- Zerthis Was A Shivering Human Image [if not, it sure was harsh and metallic like this track]

And then finally, Explosions in the Sky. Damn, they're great to watch live; like Mono, the audience was treated to the sight of the band swaying in unison (though a couple of the guitarists would disappear from (my) sight, presumably fiddling with the pedals on the floor). Fantastic show, with a respectful audience that stayed dead silent during the quiet passages.

I'm even worse with EitS titles, so I can write for a fact that "The Only Moment We Were Alone" was the last song, and the absolutely glorious "First Breath after Coma" was the first one, and "Catastrophe and the Cure" was the penultimate song, but everything else is a blur.

13. Up Dharma Down / The Dawn, saGuijo, Makati, 6/7/07.

Concert write-up here.

15. Battles, Slim's, 07/02/07.

Saw them twice this year, but the first time was the best: total eekamony-eekamony madness.

16. SUNN O))) / Earth, The Independent, SF, 7/4/07.

Concert write-up here.

18. The Polyphonic Spree, The Great American Music Hall, SF, 7/17/07.

Concert write-up here.

19. Sonic Youth, Berkeley Community Theatre, Berkeley, 07/19/07.

It's odd when you know exactly what the setlist will be -- in this case, Daydream Nation in its entirety -- which returns the concert-record experience to its original historical state, i.e., having the shellac / vinyl / 8-track / tape / minidisc / CD / mp3s be the musical record of the concert. Not the best venue for rocking out, but a stellar show all the same. And thanks to Eloise for the tickets!

20. Slint, Bimbo's, SF, 07/22/07.

Spiderland in its entirety; enough said.

21. The Smashing Pumpkins, The Fillmore, SF, 07/31/07.

This was actually a rather disappointing concert (write-up here), but made memorable for the way the tickets were purchased. Thanks again to Eloise for the tickets!

22. Mandy Moore, The Fillmore, SF, 08/22/07.

Concert write-up here.

24. The Treasure Island Music Festival, SF, 09/16/07.

No concert write-up, but I mention it in one of those monthly mix posts.

25. The National, The Grand, SF, 09/29/07.

Maybe not the greatest band live, but when they're playing music from my favorite album (Boxer) released in 2007, it's still quite an experience.

26. Charlie Louvin, Amoeba Records, SF, 10/06/07.

In the presence of a legend: Charlie Louvin, his voice, his band, and about 25 other people on a Saturday afternoon.

27. Boris / Damon & Naomi, The Independent, SF, 10/14/07.

Concert write-up here.

29. Mono, The Independent, SF, 10/28/07.

Second time to see them this year, and this was the best of all. No concert write-up, but you can get a sense of their live show in my DVD review.

31. M.I.A. / Cool Kids, The Fillmore, 11/7/07.

Just unbelievable: I've never been to a concert with a crowd this excited before. Maya Arulpragasam is a goddess. I think I've written that before.

32. Dengue Fever, The Independent, 11/9/07.

Third time to see the Coolest Band in America in 2007, and maybe the sixth or seventh overall? Concert write-up here. Chhom Nimol is a goddess. I think I've written that before too.

33. PUFFY, Slim's, 11/15/07.

Once again, snagged by Laurel, since we were standing in front of the monitors. (We did wait for two hours in the cold so we could be right up front.) The last time PUFFY came through SF, I stupidly blew them off for a terrible Claire Denis film, for which I had already bought tickets. Note to self: You never, ever do that for one of your favorite bands ever. And this Slim's gig was just about perfect.

The October / November 2007 Mix.

I want to make a quick plug for my new favorite album, Anna Järvinen's Jag fick feeling, from the Häpna label. Reviews later (like every other blogger out there, I feel obliged to come up with my year-end list soon), but here's the album blurb (plus downloadable mp3s and a video), and you can buy the whole album right away from Klicktrack (there are 30-second samples for each song). Or, if you want the physical thing, it's arriving on Amazon in a week. I'm not kidding, though, when I write that it's one of the greatest things I've heard this year. I just wish I could understand what she was singing.

(For people who don't know how this works: a flash widget opens at the bottom of the entry. Sometimes it takes a long time. You can play them and do other things, like d--nl--d them. Then I delete the mp3s after a while.)

1. Bergheim 34, "Take My Soul"
from the 2003 album It's Not For You As It Is For Us

I love the cold, Teutonic, skeletal clatter: the metallic rattle of robot femurs in a disco laboratory.

Forced Exposure link.
Bergheim 34 discography.

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2. Caribou, "Melody Day"
from the 2007 album Andorra

I was totally unprepared for the twin-drum attack at the Caribou show at Slim's a few months ago, but you can hear it on the bridges of this track of swirly, sun-tinged electronic pop.

Video on YouTube.
Amazon link.
Official website.

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3. Wild Billy Childish and The Musicians of the British Empire, "Date with Doug"
from the 2007 album Punk Rock at the British Legion Hall

There are more things in the Billy Childish discography than are dreamt of in your philosophy, and this three-minute, eleven-second track is but a tiny fraction of Childish's output. The man's a jack of all trades: singer, painter, composer, poet, Stuckist, guitarist, "the king of garage rock" -- and purveyor of this ragged piece of pop bubblegum, with Nurse Julie on vocals. (It's an unnecessarily mean song though, but it's part of Childish's long war against the insipid.)

Amazon link.
Official website.

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4. Hem, "Jackson"
from the 2002 album I'm Talking With My Mouth

Something in the water in Brooklyn feeding all this talent -- check. (That's where Hem is from, and not somewhere a little more south.) You may be more familiar with the faster Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash duet from At Folsom Prison; Hem slows it way down and luxuriates over one of the greatest opening lines ever: "We got married in a fever."

Amazon link.
Official website.

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5. Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings, "What Have You Done For Me Lately?, Part 1"
from the 2006 compilation Daptone 7-Inch Singles Collection, Vol. 1

It's a 21-year old song made to sound 35, and the dance pop of Janet Jackson's original is channeled here into a furious Declaration of Asskicking.

Amazon link.
Official website.

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6. Jean Knight, "Do Me"
from the 1971 album Mr. Big Stuff

This song just sounds dangerous, a nice thick slab of sizzling funk that can't be healthy for you.

Amazon link.
Wikipedia page.

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7. Jesse Sykes and The Sweet Hereafter, "Your Eyes Told"
from the 2004 album Oh, My Girl

Tin roof shaking, crashing black
Well, i ain’t going back
Deliver me, take me in
Let me breathe your coarse wind
Day is empty, night too long
River hums a sweet song

Every song your lungs sang
Every lie your eyes told
Canyon whisper, canyon weep
I thought you were behind me

Tin roof shaking, crashing black
Well i ain’t going back
Deliver me, take me in
Let me breathe your coarse wind

Sublime music for driving in a dry country.

Amazon link.
Official website.

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8. The Zombies, "This Will Be Our Year"
from the 1968 album Odessey and Oracle

The warmth of your love
is like the warmth of the sun
and this will be our year
took a long time to come

don't let go of my hand
now darkness has gone
and this will be our year
took a long time to come

and I won't forget
the way you held me up when I was down
and I won't forget the way you said,
"Darling I love you"
You gave me faith to go on

Now we're there and we've only just begun
This will be our year
took a long time to come

The warmth of your smile
smile for me, little one
and this will be our year
took a long time to come

You don't have to worry
all your worried days are gone
this will be our year
took a long time to come

and I won't forget
the way you held me up when I was down
and I won't forget the way you said,
"Darling I love you"
You gave me faith to go on

Now we're there and we've only just begun
and this will be our year
took a long time to come

Yeah we only just begun
yeah this will be our year
took a long time to come

My first reaction upon hearing this song was, "Where has this been all my life???" People should dance to this at weddings.

Amazon link.
Wikipedia page.

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Dengue Fever, The Independent, SF, 11/09/07.

1. In what is clearly my Best Concert Year Ever, I met Chhom Nimol, the lead singer of Dengue Fever (the coolest band in America, as I've written many times) this evening. I bought her a shot of Jagermeister, which she requested ("Medicine for singers," she said).

(2. Imagine three exclamation points at the end of each sentence and you'll have a good idea of how I'm feeling.)

3. I was standing in the back of the venue when I turned around to look at the bar and saw Chhom Nimol. Who was waving at me. I turn back to my friends (Talaya, Ben and Carlo) and point her out. And she was indeed waving at me. I couldn't believe it.

4. Later she said she recognized me from seeing me at the shows (!). (I think it was a case of mistaken identity, but still! How cool is that?)

5. So she gave Talaya (who speaks Khmer, a good thing) her cell phone number and told her to call and wait until after the show, when she came out. So we all got to talk afterwards and have pictures taken and CDs signed. She was sooooo cool and friendly; she wanted photographs with everyone, and was giving us hugs right and left. (She started telling us a story about having a room next to Maya Arulpragasam during the Treasure Island Music Festival, and how she was wearing all blue, and bringing Cambodian CDs, but I didn't hear the rest.)

6. Oh, wait, the show: an excellent set, as always, with more new songs from the forthcoming album creeping into the list (I'm wondering if "Doo Wop" or "A-Go-Go" will ever show up on it).

(7. The opening night selection at this year's Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival was none other than John Pirozzi's Sleepwalking through the Mekong! I can't wait to see it.)

8. And Talaya sung "I'm Only Sixteen" with Dengue Fever at the encore! (There was no way she'd mess it up like I did before.)

Thanks For Making Me Feel Really Old, Pitchfork!

Give or take a year, I'm the same age as (my musical heroes) Polly Jean Harvey and James Murphy, who I presume are also in that big nebulous open-ended Middle Age / Senior Citizen group.

A Musical Exercise: 5 from the '50s.

Arranged by year of release, here are my five favorite songs from the '50s. (See also the rationale behind all of this.)

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1. Nat King Cole, "Red Sails in the Sunset"
1955

There are two distinct periods to Nat King Cole's long body of work: first, the pianist leading his swinging jazz trio; second, the "Unforgettable" crooner bringing his music to a bigger (and whiter) audience. My dad loved the latter Cole, his uncomplicated, unruffled songs now overlaid with strings and the most syrupy backing choral arrangements this side of, I don't know, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. (Listen to his renditions of "Ramblin' Rose" and "The Yellow Rose of Texas", for instance; they're irredeemably terrible.)

This was unfortunate, and I did not, in fact, find out that Cole actually played piano until the early '90s! It was, however, the Nat King Cole I grew up with: the Cole of "Smile" and "L-O-V-E" (though the fantastic "A Blossom Fell" is from this era too); the Cole played over and over on the stereo and later, once technology permitted, on long road trips; the Cole whose enunciation was held up by my father as a paragon of good singing, "unlike the music you listen to -- is he even saying anything?" he'd address me. (I might have been particularly obsessed with New Order's mumbly "Ceremony" at that point.)

And so "Red Sails in the Sunset" is from the wrong Cole period, but it's lovely nonetheless, and included here for all the right reasons: my dad sang me to sleep with this song, and I sing my daughter to sleep with it as well.

Amazon link for the compilation Unforgettable.

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2. Frank Sinatra, "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning"
from the 1955 album In the Wee Small Hours

The song is cinematically, melodramatically, solitary from the get-go: the ironic lullaby-like notes in the beginning, with the strings gently nudging the weary Sinatra into an effortless recitation of his loss. The languidness of the song's arrangement, and the odd, redundant juxtaposition of "wee" and "small" (but what the first few words do is shape the singer's mouth not into a caress, but into a kind of tired, slackjawed mourning, i.e., no plosives or fricatives), are in perfect consonance with the resigned melancholy of the lyrics. But the almost somnolent haze of the song belies what's most important: he is wide awake, he does not want to go to sleep, and he is waiting for a call which he knows will never arrive. And he is all alone.

Amazon link.

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3. Billie Holiday, "I Thought About You"
from the 1956 album Lady Sings The Blues

For me it's all about that purring lilt in her voice at the end of the line when she sings "The one going back to you." Sometimes, though, what does it for me is the couplet that goes

And every stop that we made
oh, I thought about you

The "we" of course refers to her and the train's passengers, but I like thinking she's with someone else.

Amazon link.

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4. Link Wray, "Rumble"
1958

I mean, listen to it! It even sounds filthy and dangerous and about to stab you with a dirty knife.

Amazon link for the compilation Rumble! The Best of Link Wray.

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5. The Teddy Bears, "To Know Him Is To Love Him"
1958

Phil Spector was all of seventeen years old when he wrote this simple, straightforward philosophical equation of "to know" and "to love" (he also arranged it, and sang in the background), and it's already a fully-formed marvel of adolescent longing from afar. (Though it's really a tribute -- like Bread's "Everything I Own" -- to Spector's late father.)

But we don't find out about the "from afar" part until we hear the second stanza, and we move from the present tense to the future conditional, and the bridge, when Annette Kleinbard finally lets loose, only accentuates the despair: "Why can't he see me?" This three-part structure is mirrored as well in that fantastic opening line, progressing from "know know know" to "love love love" and finally to -- what else, in 1958? -- "and I do and I do and I do."

Amazon link for Phil Spector's box set Back to Mono.

A Musical Exercise.

I wish I understood music better. That lack of vocabulary or technical background feels like it renders senseless my faux-critic writing for this blog: I can't tell a middle fifth from a particular piano chord, but I know when a guitar solo kicks ass. But I can't tell you exactly what makes the music good. It's easier on my part to chart the emotional trajectories of the music, to map out the avenues of sentiment, to write, if paradoxically, about the ineffable. I suppose it's an oblique testimony to what's best about popular music: its ability to better articulate words that can't be said. (Which is why pop music is also responsible for the phenomenon of the crappy mixtape.)

But maybe the inarticulable reveals itself in other perhaps less welcome ways as well. There are parts of my waking and walking life where half-remembered lines, fragments of lyrics, as if I were guided by voices, burrow through my head in a series of non sequiturs. And I did not think the girl could be so cruel. But how strange the change from major to minor. The arc of a love affair, rainbows in the high desert air. I'm on the lawn with someone else's wife. Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to. And your telephone's been ringing while you're dancing in the rain. Provided of course you're not dumb enough to actually try it.

Surely this aural affliction isn't just a result of my music geekery, a reminder that I don't consume music; it's the other way around. Being haunted by music is a wonderful thing.

And so, a musical exercise, or is it exorcism: pick an increasing number of favorite pop songs from each decade, maybe to nail down something definitive though inevitably mutable, as if a recitation would dispel these musical ghosts, an attempt to render into digital bits the swirl of words in the ether, or to intellectually justify making a list I would have made anyway. I've done different versions of this before, but this time it's even more restrictive: 5 from the '50s, 6 from the '60s, 7 from the '70s, and so on, with the net of choices widening in proportion to my familiarity with those years. (Granted, I could have picked from the '30s and '40s as well, but I just don't have that many songs. The lyrics cited above -- bonus points if you recognize them without googling! -- don't correspond with my choices either.)

There is no logic to the choices, really -- it's all emotion, with no consideration for historical significance or any of the criteria that musicologists deem important -- except that the songs show that I am clearly one big fucking sap. It's funny how most of these songs are somehow about longing -- I suppose it's what my research is about, in some ways -- but good lord, I'm clearly throwing out any ounce of indie cred I ever had with these selections. (I'd love to be able to boast that I was listening to the Dead Kennedys or the Minutemen or something when I was in high school, but no -- that's the Philippines for you. But true fact: I was the only one listening to Talking Heads in the entire school.)

While this is an essentially nostalgic endeavor, I still think about old friends who unplugged themselves from the radio after graduation, who never moved on musically, people who slipped quietly into a musical lassitude and pronounce, over their drinks, that they don't write 'em like they used to. But of course they do. Either that or they succumb to the sanitized, cheap embrace of Adult Contemporary. May I be struck down by lightning if this ever happens. But here I am, tempting lightning bolts to rain down on my head anyway.

(The first post in this 5-part series appears next week, and the rest -- who knows.)

Boris / Damon & Naomi, The Independent, SF, 10/14/2007.

Last Sunday night's show at the Independent was as pedigreed a concert as could be assembled on one stage in one evening: two-thirds of Galaxie 500 (one of my favorite bands ever), one-fifth of Ghost (yet another), one-sixth of Espers, one-half of nmperign, and all three of the mighty Boris. The "linchpin" for the concert, as Damon Krukowski put it, was none other than Michio Kurihara from Ghost, who was essentially playing that night for a couple of hours with both Damon and Naomi and Boris.

I can't say I envied Damon and Naomi opening for such a legendarily loud band like Boris. (The announcer at the Independent actually warned the audience to get earplugs -- the first time in three years, said the coat-check woman.) Their frail bedroom music didn't seem particularly matched for an audience mostly clad in black and in Pig Destroyer and Converge T-shirts. (I myself was wearing a Swans T-shirt.) But soldier on they did, augmented by folks including Kurihara on guitar, Bhob Rainey on sax, and Helena Espvall on cello; "We're the silent part of the Silent Thunder tour, if only to make Boris sound even louder," Krukowski told the crowd.

Things don't really get rolling until two guitar-related moments: first, when Kurihara launches into a beautifully Allmanesque guitar solo on the second song. And the second, when Naomi Yang leaves the keyboard and finally picks up her Gibson bass. (I'm not a guitar person at all, but Yang's bass lines are as immediately recognizable to me as, say, Peter Hook's.) Excellent set all in all, but slightly marred by all the folks talking in the back. (I haven't heard the latest album yet -- it's on top of my shopping list -- but one great song sounded vaguely familiar from their set list: a Sandy Denny / Shirley Collins / Pentangle cover, maybe?)

I didn't expect Boris's drummer Atsuo to do a stage-dive right on top of my head, but such are the wages of standing front and center. At least I wasn't directly inhaling all the liquid nitrogen from the smoke machines (note to the Independent folks: aim them up like you did at the SUNN O)))) concert!). But it was the perfect place to witness how all those slabs of drone / doom metal / hard rock were produced: Kurihara freaking out with his guitar during the encore, Atsuo yelling in delight, Wata very calmly playing furious solos on a guitar that (and I know this sounds patronizing) looked heavier and longer than herself. Too bad Takeshi was having problems with his guitar at the beginning of the set, but otherwise an excellent evening.

Modern Girls and Modern Rock & Roll.

It's Lack of Circumspection time at The Wily Filipino again! A few years ago I decided to give online dating a try -- which I had never done before -- and so one night put some thought into writing a description for myself (what I was like, my interests, who I was looking for, and so on). And I thought I'd toss in, as a tidbit (but probably also as an unnecessary "test" of sorts), the fact that I was still in shock that my favorite band, Guided by Voices, was breaking up.

So I wrote this all up -- these things take forever to write, by the way* -- and decided to send a copy to my good friend Jane so she could vet it -- and the following frustrating (paraphrased) IM conversation ensued:

me: what did you think?

jane: i think it looks good. except...

me: what?

jane: i think you should remove the guided by voices reference

me [genuinely shocked]: what? why?

jane: they're a real guy band

me: of course they're not

jane: no really

me: they happen to be all guys, but still

jane: you need to find someone more neutral, something women would like

me: but i already namedrop bjork!

jane: see, i'm having second thoughts about including her as well

me: why?

jane: you have no idea how many women hate bjork

me: but it's meant as a general reference to the kind of music i like. besides i really love gbv

jane: potential dates might think you broke up with your wife because you were more into male-bonding**

me: are you serious???

jane: think of someone more neutral

me: i already namedrop "In the Mood for Love!" who should i include, avril lavigne??

jane: not if you don't really like her

me [desperately thinking of my other favorite band]: how about yo la tengo?

jane: that's better. at least they have georgia hubley

me: but what's so wrong about gbv?

jane: potential dates don't like bands that throw beer bottles at the audience

me: they *hand* beer bottles to audience members. that's different!

jane: it's like telling someone on the first date that you're into heavy metal

me: but gbv isn't even close to heavy metal!

jane: but you see what i mean

me: no i don't

jane: you don't want to turn them off before they even meet you

me [getting really irate now]: gbv won't do that!

Suffice it to say that I quickly abandoned that entire avenue of possibility before it even began -- not because I refused to back down on the universal appeal of Guided by Voices, but because the whole online dating thing seemed kind of futile anyway. But not before accidentally coming across a couple of Filipino American academics' profiles whose names I will not divulge. (They were several pages deep anyway, and therefore far beyond any spheres of compatibility.)

However, this made me wonder about all this inordinate interest in music on my part. I mean, it's not as if a date's horrible musical tastes were going to be a dealbreaker... or were they? Is musical compatibility really all that important in general? Would I turn down a hot date just because she was, say, a huge Celine Dion fan? (Very likely, but I'm an idiot that way.***)

Last week a woman I'd never met or spoken to wrote me to say that my "cool taste in music alone would want me to date you." If that wasn't confirmation of, well, something, I don't know what is. (She was married though.)

But... maybe music in and of itself is important, period. About a couple of months ago my friends were regretting not bringing music to the Lake Tahoe cabin where we were on holiday -- not that there were any uncomfortable silences that needed to be filled or anything -- but, as one person put it, "One day we'll hear a song on the radio and it will remind us of this weekend. But unfortunately we don't have any songs to remember it by."

In this example the song seems more powerful a symbol than the referent, i.e., the experience of being in Tahoe, itself! None of us will be likely to forget the Tahoe experience any time soon -- I am still constantly harassed by my friends about my numerous half-drownings while kayaking and wearing a life vest in five feet of water -- but here, music is seen as crucial in creating memory itself.

Music not only serves as a memory-trigger, though. It's an illustration of the way in which music is imbued with the ability to structure and frame experience. (Clothing stores know this, therefore the pianist at Nordstrom's, the bouncy catwalk music at the Gap.) Music charges and changes a room; it creates atmosphere; it generates moods; it summons up memories; it elicits emotions -- all in ways perhaps more efficient, immediate, and sometimes even more indelible than our other senses do. It functions as an aesthetic overlay mapped onto our collective experience. Life in general may simply go better with a soundtrack. Maybe other people do too.

Still, this recognition of the aesthetic importance of music in the everyday didn't explain my unreasonable intertwining of the romantic and the aural. (As if She would walk into a room accompanied by, say, Luna's "I Want Everything." Or Built To Spill's "Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss.") In any case, an answer came to me, in the way that all good answers arrive, i.e., serendipitously.

A few weeks ago I was holding Pierre Bourdieu's "Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste" in one hand and weighing whether I should get rid of it or not. (In this case it was literal weighing; the book is the size of a small metropolitan area's White Pages, and takes up almost as much space.) And suddenly, there it was -- who would have known that a dead French sociologist would know exactly what I was talking about, and write about it in such cruelly hilarious detail?

Taste is a match-maker; it marries colours and also people, who make 'well-matched couples', initially in regard to taste... Hence the astonishing harmony of ordinary couples who, often matched initially, progressively match each other by a sort of mutual acculturation. This spontaneous decoding of one habitus by another is the basis of the immediate affinities which orient social encounters, discouraging socially discordant relationships, encouraging well-matched relationships, without these operations ever having to be formulated other than in the socially innocent language of likes and dislikes. The extreme improbability of the particular encounter between particular people, which masks the probability of interchangeable chance events, induces couples to experience their mutual election as a happy accident, a coincidence which mimics transcendent design ('made for each other') and intensifies the sense of the miraculous.

Those whom we find to our taste put into their practices a taste which does not differ from the taste we put into operation in perceiving their practices. Two people can give each other no better proof of the affinity of their tastes than the taste they have for each other.

But still I wasn't convinced. Understanding the social mechanics didn't answer my most pressing questions.

I mean, what if she prefers late R.E.M. to early R.E.M.? What if she drags me to a Josh Groban concert? Or, god forbid, what if she doesn't like the mix CDs I make for her? And, if I were somehow extremely blessed, would she have Guided by Voices' Bee Thousand on her shelf?

*My "About Me" entry on Facebook, just to give you an example, ended up reading: "Must see! Charming, spacious and immaculate. Newly remodeled, granite counter top, utilities included, walk-in closet, views of the Bay. Great location, close to restaurants, MUNI, Safeway, 280 and 101, etc."

**Absolutely not true. But I did check her out and her music collection, and upon seeing Everything But The Girl and Rickie Lee Jones, I knew we'd be cool together. (Needless to say there were more things that attracted me to her than just the CDs, but you know what I mean.)

***Read: obviously *I'm* the one who's being difficult here, and I'm probably shooting myself in the foot because mendicancy doesn't leave people with many options, after all. Yeah, like I have to shoo women away with a stick. And as if all this music-geekery on display wasn't already Danger Signal #1.

The September 2007 Mix.

Only four songs this month (and about ten days late too), but rest assured they're of very high quality.

It would have been five, actually -- the fifth would have been the excellent "Long Summer Day" by Two Gallants, but it threatened to turn into this big disquisition on its lyrics, race, Quentin Tarantino, the "N-word", and one of the funniest scenes in Richard Wong's Colma: The Musical (one of my favorite films this year), and I couldn't hook it all together coherently enough, so I dropped it.

Also, I'm removing the files off box.net once the entry drops off the first page on the blog. They won't be here forever, folks!

1. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, "Underwater (You and Me)"
from the 2007 album Some Loud Thunder

Some songs see us sailing away
Navigating foreign borders, and climbing the waves
Someday your secret will be revealed
Either one you're thinking of when the sun goes down into the water

We're struck by the still of the moon
Hanging up there in the sky as though a balloon
Anchored by an astronaut's patriot tune
We will buy the ship and fly to the land that would be rediscovered

We'll design a clever disguise
We'll retreat to the bottom of the sea
We were destined to live out our lives underwater, you and me

We'll escape beneath the violet sky
Clouds come and night falls
You seem different on my mind
Upon an endless trail of moonlight
You'll never realize that we have gone, we have gone right out of, out of sight

We'll design a clever disguise
We'll retreat to the bottom of the sea
We were destined to live out our lives underwater, you and me

Fact: Alec Ounsworth is a terrible singer on record and an even worse one live. My friend Eloise and I saw them play live at the Treasure Island Music Festival (along with the aforementioned Two Gallants, a lackluster Au Revoir Simone (but I knew that coming in), a very cool M. Ward, an always-reliable Built to Spill, a very good Spoon, and Modest Mouse, whom we skipped. My humble pictures taken from the center here, by the way; scroll down to the 20 pictures at the bottom).

Our response, unfortunately, wasn't clapping our hands or saying "yeah"; it was more of looking at each other with puzzlement. (Though the lone, barely-sentient Filipino guy who just happened to be standing next to us made the concert way, way better with his generosity, for which I traded a couple of oatmeal cookies. The woman behind us commented that this was "the greatest thing I'd ever seen," referring to our exchange. "This restores my faith in humanity," she said. Eloise was happy too.)

The best thing about the concert was the excellent title track ("Some Loud Thunder"), which we hear in the shittiest mix imaginable on the record, but was now more intelligible through the wall of speakers. Unfortunately they didn't play "Underwater (You and Me)", which does restore my faith in indie rock, at least. There's nothing quite like a good Running Away Song -- like Born to Run is full of nothing but Running Away Songs -- and "Underwater (You and Me)" is a perfect example. If this ever came out as a single, Michel Gondry would do a great job directing the video.

Live version on YouTube.
Amazon link.
Official website.

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2. Monday Michiru, "Slo"
from the 2003 album Moods

I've said it a couple times before, and I'll say it again: Monday Michiru should be a massive, worldwide star. An already-glorious career as an acid-jazz diva, a hugely appealing lyricist, a bold and ambitious plunge into straight-up jazz, a genuine musical pedigree, a remarkably supple and sophisticated voice (not to mention the fact that she's drop-dead gorgeous) -- what's wrong with you people?

Amazon link.
Official website.

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3. Maria Taylor, "A Good Start"
from the 2007 album Lynn Teeter Flower

You're one with the burden of intuition.
You're one with the freedom of a blank stare.
You're one with the best friend you lost,
You wish was still there.

You're one with the dust on that old piano.
You're one with the strings on your new guitar.
You're one with the wind through the open window,
You are.

It was a faint line that brought you here,
And a pulse that kept you in time.
It was the comfort of a tradition,
Like the few that were not that kind.

It's a shame now, baby, you can't see yourself
And everything you're running from.
And it's the same world, honey, that has brought you down,
As the one that's gonna pick you up.
And pick you up.

You're one with the echoes of conversation.
You're one with the strangers you overheard.
You're one with the lesson that was the best one you learned.

It was a faint line that brought you here,
And a pulse that kept you in time.
It was the comfort of a tradition,
Like the few that were not that kind.

It's a shame now, baby, you can't see yourself
And everything you're running from.
And it's the same world, honey, that has brought you down,
As the one that's gonna pick you up.
And pick you up.

It was a cold, dark, sleepy morning walk.
You fell down facing up.
It was a good start.
It was a good start.

It was a cold, dark, sleepy morning walk.
You fell down facing up.
It was a good start.
It was a good start.

It's a shame now, baby, you can't see yourself
And everything you're running from.
And it's the same world, honey, that has brought you down,
As the one that's gonna pick you up.
And pick you up.

And it's a shame now, baby, you can't separate
Yourself from where you stood.
And it's the same world, honey, that made you feel so bad,
That makes you feel so good.
Feel so good.

I'm a not-so-secret admirer of indie female singer-songwriters (whatever that means), and this song goes straight to that indie-female-singer-songwriter-admiring part of my brain.

Video on YouTube.
Amazon link.
Official website.

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4. Kanye West, "Barry Bonds (feat. Lil Wayne)"
from the 2007 album Graduation

And finally, the best song, hands down, from my favorite album of the month and certainly one of the best albums of the year. "Only I could come up with some shit like this." Indeed. (But why Lil Wayne -- in a fantastic, even more gravelly-voiced than usual, guest appearance here, still feels compelled to stupidly say "no homo" in such enlightened times is a mystery.)

Why I love this song: lots of reasons -- "bow so hard till your knees hit your forehead," the way the instruments all tumble together slowly at the beginning, "ice in my teeth so refrigerated," the constant stop-start rhythm, but when it comes down to it -- it's all about the throat-clearing.

Amazon link.
Official website.

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New Routine.

Izzy is short for Isabella. I don't always call her with all four syllables, unless it's in a singsong tone ("I-sa-BEL-la!") or an escalation of a series of unheard "Izzy!"s. (Of course, her full name gets deployed only when I'm really angry, which rarely, if ever, happens. And her full full name only got trotted out to impress visitors when she was younger.)

A couple of weekends ago, we accidentally stumbled upon a new routine. (Izzy says she heard it on a summer day camp field trip -- the bigger kids knew the song, she said.)

Me: Isabella.

Izzy: Ella.

Me: Ella.

Izzy: Eh.

Me: Eh.

Izzy: Eh.

Ah, kids these days. When I was six my notion of pop music was probably limited only to the Pointer Sisters singing "1-2-3-4-5, 6-7-8-9-10, 11-12, doo doo doo doo..." And Ernie's "Rubber Duckie."

The August 2007 Mix.

It's The National month here at The Wily Filipino, but there's other music besides. So here goes: my favorite music of the last 30 days. (The mp3s can be played in the Box widget at the end of the entry. No, you can't download them, because I'm already violating enough copyright as it is. UPDATE: Oops. It looks like you can indeed download the stuff. Hmm.)

1. the brilliant green, "Flowers"
from the 2002 album THE WINTER ALBUM

Other than the fact that their lead singer, Tomoko Kawase, is the most beautiful woman in the world other than Rosario Dawson -- and feel free to navigate away from here and come back in 15 minutes -- the brilliant green specializes in straightforward, no-nonsense, radio-friendly guitar pop of the highest order. Tommy Kawase herself has two excellent side projects, Tommy February6 and Tommy Heavenly6, exploring different facets of her personality, but now TBG are together again. (Funny thing is, Tommy clearly can't sing live very well, and despite her danceable, creme-filled TF6 songs, is a rather lackluster dancer. I love her anyway.)

It's the brilliant green's midtempo ballads that really shine, though. Folks familiar with their singles would probably hear nothing very little in "Flowers" to differentiate it from, say, their hits like "Angel Song" or "Hello Another Way", but such perfectly calibrated, wistful pop -- particularly this song buried in the middle of the album -- shouldn't go unnoticed.

Lyrics in English transliteration.
Live version on YouTube.
Amazon Link.
Official website.

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2. Eggstone, "Against the Sun"
from the 1994 album S