Van Hunt's new album What Were You Hoping For? is in the very early stages of rocking my world.  It's a little bit Funkadelic, a little bit Prince, a little bit Of Monreal.  Ok, and maybe a little bit Lenny Kravitz?  It's funky, sweet, bratty, smart, and I listen to it every day, which is something I haven't done in a while.

The line in the title comes from the song Plum, where he sings:

Don't tell my how to hold my nuclear bomb

Until you've resisted urge to love one

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Or the spectacularly rocking Watching You Go Crazy is Making Me Lose My Mind.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Van Hunt has a lot to offer.  His guitar playing is inspiring, and he can sing a sweet-as-honey neo-soul growl while he sings about the joys and pitfalls of cross-dressing.

Ok, one slow one, just to show how pretty his little croak is.  This is Moving Targets:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Walk down Bowery from the Lower East Side and watch as the signs turn to Chinese.

and things are marketed a little differently,

walk into what looks like a little alley with hipsters milling about and see if you can find 9 Doyers St.

so you can walk into the (not really) secret bar of Apothéke, an amazing, fancy cocktail bar.

Notice the chandelier made from flasks.

The drinks are $15 but they're worth it.

Dogtooth, the 2009 Greek film, is not going to be for everyone.  In a sense, it's a slow dark comedy horror movie, which happens to be a genre I like.  Movies like The Shining, Let There Be Blood, and Drag Me To Hell, all fall into this category for me as well.  There's a little blood in Dogtooth and if you can't stomach a few disturbing images, then this is not the movie for you.  Mom, please do not watch this movie.

For me though, Dogtooth does a lot right.  The best thing a movie can do is make me intensely curious about what's happening and how it's going to turn out from the very first moment.  Then as the state of things is slowly revealed, retain that sense of total curiosity.  Dogtooth did that.

Families have their own weird myths and in-jokes and this movie kind of takes that idea and blows it out to the highest degree.  Almost the entire movie takes place in a beautiful greek home out in the boonies of Greece, since the three teenage children who live there are not allowed to leave the premises.  The idea seems sweetly innocent, and indeed the beautiful children play many innocent and beautiful games, even though enduring pain seems to be a common theme of many of them.

As the movie progresses though it becomes clear just how twisted and perverse their upbringing has been, and that the parents are willfully doing it, for whatever reason.  In my opinion though, it never devolves into total slasher nightmare.  These teenagers natural aggression and sexuality just doesn't have anywhere to go, and it bubbles out in increasingly inappropriate ways.

As you might be able to guess, there are serious sexual overtones, and some of the sexual scenes are pretty explicit.  I doubt this movie would have been able to receive an R rating in the US.  If you liked movies like Secretary, then it's very possible you'd find this movie hot, in spite of the twisted nature of its sexual rhythm.

Plus, it's on Netflix on Demand for the moment, so you can just whip it open in your browser right now and watch it.  Also, here's the trailer, but if you're willing to see it without watching the trailer, I recommend it, since the trailer spoils a bunch of the surprises.  It's a movie best left to unfold at its own pace.

Met an old Seattle friend. She dragged me home to do kitchen counter-top karaoke with her housemates. (Hi Sunde! (pictured above))

One of them, Thomas had my same birthday (May 9th) and in our drunken YouTube-ings, he brought up this awesome video from the early 70's of French pop star Adriano Celentano hamming it up to total nonsense in this video. I've watched it like a dozen times already.  Turns out this guy has been huge in Italy for 40 years, and he's been in movies from La Dolce Vita to playing satan in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ.

Witness the 70's goodness:

These aren't even hits, technically.

I listen to a whole metric crapload of new music, and I'm really diligent about marking songs with a star-rating when something really pops out for me.  Later, I go back and see that plenty of times only one song stood out to me.  These songs are often spectacular in some way, but the rest of the album just doesn't even register as something I want to write about.

These are some songs I've totally fallen in love with but ultimately can't recommend the rest of the album.

First up is indie darling Bear in Heaven, from their album Beast Rest Forth Mouth.  They were indie darlings last year, but they just sounded generic to me.  However, this song You Do You just sounds like some amazing modern Genesis song (minus Phil Collins):

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Next is from Blackroc, a vanity project by otherwise awesome The Black Keys working with a bunch of otherwise awesome rappers like Mos Def, RZA, and Q-Tip.  Sounded great but nothing really quite moved me except for the back-from-the-grave collaboration with some old recording from Ol' Dirty Bastard and a nice verse by Ludacris.  It's a crass rap called Coochie as in "That Coochie got me so confused I don't know what to do."  Note the reverb-dripping Black Keys licks.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

When this song, Fortune Teller by Forest Fire came on, I was so convinced this album was going to blow me away.   It didn't.  But I still love this song about "melting faces with gatlin' gun social skills," that asks the musical question, "why not kill someone you hate?"  I've been feeling like this socially a lot lately.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Really this whole album by Citay is not bad at all, but nothing else on the album quite carries the spirit of an Angelic Choir led by a leaderless Van Halen.  Check the lovely instramental Careful With That Hat:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Okay, this song is a tour de force.  I can't even believe someone good enough to do a song like this would do the rest of the songs on his album On Blue Fog as kind of a regular folk album.  The guy is Andew Ethier, and the one hit wonder is a song called On Lies.  I am not shitting you, this song is amazing top to bottom.  Amazing guitar work, amazing Dylanesque singing that runs from growl to howl like necessary, and a spectacular sax solo near the end.  This is a 6:15 journey that I wouldn't mind being on the soundtrack to my autobiography:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Anyone else have any indie one hit wonders to recommend?   Disagree and think one of these artists has other awesome stuff?  Like or hate one of these songs?

Let me know.

In the nearly final final scene of the spectacular movie Fish Tank, perhaps even more amazing because it's on Netflix on Demand right now, the lead actress, played by the magnificent Katie Jarvis dances with her little sister and mom to Nas' Life's a Bitch (which you can play while you read the rest of the review):

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Dancing is an important part of the movie in its own awkward way, so her dancing with her more innocent sister and less innocent drunken mom ties the whole thing together.

Usually this kind of British poverty stricken youth thing gets kind of tiresome for me, but this movie is something special.  Its acting and writing is immediate and streamlined.  When it's sexy, it's sexy without apology.  It impressed me with its first moments, and I enjoyed it all the way through.

Check the trailer:

My friend Louie just hit me up on IM and the Ida Maria song Louie popped into my head.  I wanted to play him the song, and also realized that I'd never written about Ida Maria, and I really love her.

I can't help thinking she came out in the wrong era.  If she'd released this album alongside Blondie in the 80's I feel like this could have had big hits, and they'd be playing Drive Away My Heart at weddings across the country.

But maybe there's just something too spiky, too howling, too raw, too hookless to really be popular.  I think I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked was meant to be the hit, and it has a damn cool video, but I can't say it's my favorite song on the album:

Cute huh?  Ok, then let's get right to the Louie and play the Louie song for Louie!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

And then the songs I really like the most.  First of all the bomb album opener Oh My God. Weirdly when this album came out I used to like to put this on as I started off to work, and I'm sure if I were a girl it's the kind of thing I'd rock out to in the mirror while I put on lipstick:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

And her drunken send-off, Queen of the World, where she explains why she's so damn drunk:

I got no plans for tomorrow
I got no plans in sight
In fact I'm free this week
I'm free this month
I'm lonely
Lonely this year
I'm lonely forever

But you know, tonight she's Queen of the World. She bumps into things. She spins around in circles.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I'm not sure why Ida Maria Sivertsen's songs have stuck with me for so long, but to each his own right?

When I first heard Kurt's Vile's album, Smoke Rings For My Halo, I was so expecting something vile.  I was almost disappointed, so I hardly even heard it.

I went back and listened though, and I'm glad I did.  This is some really passionate, low-key Rock n' Roll that makes Kurt sound like some kind of veteran.  Like, he already got famous and this is an album he did years later.

Not really though, Kurt's still an up-and-comer, and I'm about to listen to his other three albums, cause he has my attention.

I'm listening to Puppet To The Man:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Jesus Fever

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Peeping Tomboy

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

And a video from his first album:

Neko Case got so much attention for this album when it came out that I forget sometimes how many people didn't experience her until KEXP started playing the haunting Deep Red Bells.  By then I already was in love with Furnace Room Lullaby.

Neko Case and her wailing power have no like.  She is a monster.   And this isn't the only album where she depicts herself dead.   Hell, even though it's true that this album is about heartbreak and death, theres plenty that's uplifting about it to me.  It's just about being in pain and making an amazing howl of it.  Plus there's a real amazing love song to Tacoma, and you don't see that very often.

Later on, her production gets smoother, and she refines her Women's-Lib-Aware Country Femme Fatale songwriting style to a more polished shine, but here it's not so smooth.  Just rousing country music songs with her voice slicing through everything like a knife.  There isn't a single song I don't love on this album, but there's a few that stand out to me.

First, there's Mood To Burn Bridges, her ode to giving the kiss-off to "Snooty Bitches":

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Then, I am a huge sucker for the watery guitar and Patsy Cline style of No Need To Cry:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Finally, I think you're ready for the heavy hitter, the astounding South Tacoma Way.  Is it too inexact to just say I consider this an example of some kickass songwriting?  From the very first words, "I put on that sweater you gave me.  I woke up in the kitchen, a few minutes later.  I didn't know how I had gotten there.  Did you guide me?" to "couldn't pay my respects to a dead man, your life was so much more to me, and I chased it away with sticks and stones, but that rage kept following me" to "I can't comprehend the ways that I miss you, they come to life in my mistakes" to "the cross-streets bear your name."  (Which, I'm sure they do.)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Today I woke up to find out the whole new Fleet Foxes album, Helplessness Blues had leaked.  I had to have it.  Say what you want about the Fleet Foxes.  Maybe you're never in the mood for this kind of music, and consider it too precious or pastoral, but to me the far worse sins in music are being offhand or unenduring.  Fleet Foxes and their new album Helplessness Blues are none of these things.

A few people out there have been playing Bedouin Dress or Battery Kinzie, but I'd like to feature the epic, and probably most experimental (and one of two songs with a slash dividing the title of the song in two.  See also: The Plains / Bitter Dancer).

This is sing is called The Shrine / An Argument, and clocks in at a humble 8:07.  It's got everything that makes the Fleet Foxes the Fleet Foxes, you know, lovely vocal harmonies, and Robin singing his heart out about nature or some shit.  A cover that makes to look like LSD is a required ingredient for enjoying the album.  Plus some squalling, discordant horns and some other weird noises.  But… would I present this to you if it wasn't a badass, manly hunk of song?  No, I wouldn't.  Be among the first to enjoy this fine song:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.