I have to really respect that there's at least one or two people on the earth who have made a career out of non-rhyming spoken word, and I'm pretty sure Saul Williams and Laurie Anderson have at least brushed against it.

To do it, you have to be able to say some really smart shit, and deliver it just right.  Laurie Anderson has been doing this since, what, around the time of new wave?

What kind of person do you have to be to be married to Lou Reed?!

An easy entry to the album is Only an Expert, which just gets better and better as she develops her theme:

And if you're willing to dig in a little more to Homeland, the long and strong, slowed down and creepy, where she does what she calls "audio drag", Another Day in America:

I'm really loving The Morning Benders, and crying that I didn't see them when they were here in Seattle at the Crocodile.

But, I'm on their mailing list.  And they actually have good stuff on their mailing list.  Case in point: they released a little free album of covers called The Bedroom Covers.  Here are a couple of my favorite Bedroom Covers:

Dreams, a pitch perfect Fleetwood Mac cover:

and Lovefool, a Cardigans cover… and the perfect match for The Morning Benders… they should do an album version!

Also, just a reminder that their recent album Big Echo is just the shit, and worth 100 listens.

In my early 20's, I first got exposed to jazz, and still love most of those crowd pleasers, including one I'm sure everyone's heard of: the so-smooth-as-butter that even the Starbucks generation has it on their iPod: Getz/Gilberto.

Girl From Ipanema has been so played and covered and tastefully coffee shopped that it's hard to remember sometimes that Stan Getz did amazing and different stuff both before and after the Bossa Nova thing. He could have easily ridden that train until the end of his days.

But it's not Getz/Gilberto, or even his later work that I want to turn you on to.

It's his 1961 masterpiece: Focus.

Allow me to set the stage.  Another album I love is Joanna Newsom's 2006 Ys album.  In Ys (pronounced like "ease"), Joanna sat down on pedal harp and recorded 5 long original songs in very few takes.  Once the recording was finished, she worked with composer Van Dyke Parks to create an orchestral score to lay behind her recording.  It's an amazing accomplishment, and I think it's kind of cool that Stan Getz did kind of the reverse on Focus.

Getz commissioned big band composer Eddie Sauter, to make him an album of modern classical pieces for strings, bass and harp, which Sauter delivered.

Now, I don't have the liner notes in front of me anymore, and can't find them on the internet anymore, but as I remember it, Getz laid down his saxophone takes on his first listen of each track!!!

I liked the whole album, but I remember about a minute into Night Rider just having a feeling like all the air was being sucked out of my chest.  Have a listen:

It's well known that the sax is improvised, but if it's true that he improvised the first time he heard the recordings, then it just blows me away, that he was able to create this level of excitement and invention without any planning at all.

Also worth listening to is another exciting track, I'm Late, I'm Late:

And a mellower ballad, I Remember When:

My dad turned me on to Poinciana the other day… holy crap, what an amazing jazz song.    So, for starters, just listen to someone take a jazz piano standard and turn it into something definitive:

This is just a fantastic merging of percussion and piano.  I wish there was video so I could see if they had halos over their heads or something.

Another spectacular one, Woody'n You:

A more chilled out but equally impressive Moonlight in Vermont:

It was hard for me to pick out highlights, because I've just been listening to the whole album over and over again.

I've been slowly but surely listening to this short-but-sweet album from the UK Band Forest Swords.

I'm a big fan of the spare, spooky music from the old spaghetti westerns and I'm sure Ennio Morricone would approve of Dagger Paths.  The album starts with Miarches, eerie echoing surf guitar and dubstep-like female vocals.

Holyoke Mist could seriously could be the soundtrack to a modern spaghetti western, with dramatic drums and spooky strings.

I'm ready to call Janelle Monae the Andre 3000 replacement for the new decade, and these two albums the new Speakerboxxx.   Big Boi appears on Janelle's new album, and Janelle of course appears on Big Boi's new album, and the production is so mind-blowing and consistent you could put these two albums together on shuffle and call it a new wonder album.

Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty (which you can listen to in its entirety on his myspace page) is a wonder, and an easy sequel to his half of Outkast's Speakerboxxx album.  He finally realized Andre was not going to get his shit together and just went ahead and released a beautiful, smart, sexy, dirty album the continues along the same frame as some of the best of Outkast.

Janelle Monae's album has been out for about a month, and I still get frustrated with how unbelievably talented she is.  She can sing, rap, write, and just generally kick ass with her own weird, robotic style.  I think Tightrope is the most amazing hip-hop/pop song since Hey Ya.  I have been wearing this song OUT and just finally saw the video, which only enraged me more because I was like, "Oh, she's an amazing and unique dancer too?!"

And lesser but also cool is the video for the remix:

So get these two albums and bump them, because there's so many enjoyable songs between the two of them that I want to barf.  I've been waiting for Chico dusty for a year, and didn't realize I was going to get a double album of Big Boi style goodness.

Both of these brand new rap albums are good in their own way.

When some people listen to new rap albums, they're paying primarily to the music and the rhythms to hear if it's good or worth listening to.  I don't.

To me, a rapper needs to have something to say.  Seriously.  You're just talking, motherfucker, and it's 2010.  Do you have something to say, or are you just filling space?  Are you going to tell me something about your personal struggle… honestly, so I can compare my experience to yours and see if I can learn anything, even from your mistakes?  Or, are you just going to brag about the same animal shit that a dog rapper would rap about if he could talk?

So, here's two rappers who, to some extent, have something to say about what they're going through (and manage to place it well alongside some solid, striking music).

Drake, is a Lil' Wayne protege, and talks like he's a made man.  He bitches about why he's only known the people who surround him for less than a year, and then at the same time wonders why his old friends are complaining he doesn't have time for them.  He brags about how great his life is, but then at the same time, childishly bitches about the plastic feeling it creates.  The funny thing is his original raps were about fame before he was even famous.  He seems to able to create this weird mix of arrogance and yearning, and you can see how he created the beautiful and sterile world he created for himself.

I guess he must have been drawing on his previous fame experience as Jimmy in the Canadian Degrassi Jr. High sequel: The Next Generation.

Plus, he really knows how to craft a hook.

The Roots, on the other hand, have been making albums for 15 years.  They've gone through a few cycles of fame, even though none of them has really become a superstar.  They're amazing musical craftsmen, and could rap circles around Drake.  Instead of including a mega-star who's mentoring them, like Drake and Lil Wayne, they're hyping indie bands and singers like Joanna Newsom, M. Ward and the Monsters of Folk, and the girl singers of The Dirty Projectors.  The Joanna Newsom cut, with a slowed-down sample of "Right On" is particularly good.

So what do The Roots have to say?  They have a little more grown-up feeling.  They're not gonna talk about how famous they are.  They're almost talking about being regular grown-ups with regular problems.  Except, they are 15 years into a great career and trying to make sure they're the best they can be.  You hear regular frustration and humility, and… they actually play real drums.

The Roots I'll probably still be listening to next year, but I'm having no problem bumping Drake this summer.

Recommended listens for The Roots, on their myspace page: Dear God 2.0, Radio Daze, Right On.

Recommended listens for Drake, (unfortunately not on his myspace page): The Resistance, Fancy.

Well, first of all, there's this Tallest Man on Earth cover of Paul Simon's Graceland:

Then there's this track off the upcoming Cee-Lo solo album, which sounds very much like a Gnarls Barkeley track for sure (note that Cee-Lo is the singer of GB).

Oh, and every goddamn song on Janelle Monae's unbelievably good new album The ArchAndroid.

When my girl and I thought that The Antlers' album Hospice was a true story, I told her she had to listen closely to it in the car on the way to Burning Man last year. By the time we got to the late-album crescendo, Wake, we both had tears streaming down our face.

The album can still get me misty, but now we both know it's not literally true.

Peter Silberman of The Antlers did not work at a hospice, and did not befriend a young, abusive girl with bone cancer and care for her until her death.  He did, however, write an amazingly sweet story about it, in album form, that touches on real themes of death, guilt, love, generosity, abuse, and the meaning of life.  He wrapped it in amazing package of shimmering shoegazer rock and some pretty goddamn touching vocals.

His self-released CD slowly grew in popularity in Brooklyn until finally Frenchkiss picked it up and gave it a real release.

Peter and the band have had a pretty good year since then, I guess, and tonight I finally get to hear them play the album live at Neumos.  Thanks, pretty girlfriend.

Note: The above photo is from the pdf liner notes for the album.

Ok, say it and let's just get it over. He sounds like a young Dylan. Or like he's trying really hard to sound like one.

Yes, he kinda sounds like a young Bob Dylan, but he's kind of passionate in a way that Dylan never was.

Plus, I like it when my girl says, "Who is this?" and I can say with a straight face: it's The Tallest Man on Earth.

Edit: I just wanted to add one more song… this one is pretty amazing too.